BTW, in case you were wondering, the results of the playtest were a bit so-and-so. Of couse it was severely limited, because we just used the 6 pregen characters, 3 vs 3.
Generally speaking, the battle worked ok. Nearly everyone had something nice to do all the time with some exception.
Things that left a rather bitter aftertaste:
- It wasn't faster than 3e; of course, we
know how to play 3e while we don't know yet 4e so we wasted a lot of time discussing the rules, trying to look for a way to use all our action, choosing which power to use etc, so it's our fault. It took about 2.5-3 hours just for 1 battle
It was a long battle anyway, perhaps around 8-10 rounds (multiplied by 6 characters it's a lot of turns). I think however that perhaps the number of special abilities at 1st level is too many.
- Diagonals were slightly frustrating. Clearly, again our fault that we're used to the old way, because the frustration came from the fact that often we didn't notice how close we were from an opponent's charge/move. Lesson learned: when running away from someone, you must always run diagonally
- "Marking" abilities were hard to track. When casting a curse-type spell in 3e you normally have to remember only what is the effect, while in 4e these abilities require to keep track of WHO did the marking. Soon almost everyone was marked, someone multiple times, and that was a little mess.
- The Ranger's quarry seemed a little bit too good, coupled with Accurate Strike it almost always hit and the PC was definitely the best of the bunch, and the last man standing. Perhaps it just got the best player... but anyway it seemed by far the best at-will power.
