FWIW: Warlord: Furious Smash and Viper Strike. Artificer: Static Shock and Magic Weapon. In both cases, I found FS and SS vastly more useful than the other power. Same went for my wiz/inv friend who found magic-missile and Sun Strike so useful (and similar) he called one the other.
But doesn't that beg the question: If playing a leader isn't going to feel all the different from one another; why make a big deal about it. I recall arguing with another friend about druids-as-healers and why they sucked at the role (sure they got cures wounds, but at the cost of much better druid spells) and how 4e was going to fix it.
Because those two leaders don't
have to be the same. They are only the same if you choose to play them the same. It sounds like you have a particular play style when playing a leader (which is fine). However, it also sounds like you're conflating
your preferred leader play style with an idea of how all leaders play.
Some wizards like to stand in the back and pelt enemies with spells. Others like to get up in their face with Thunderwave. Neither style is wrong but one might be preferred by a particular player over the other. If you prefer the style of stand in the back and toss magic missiles, then every wizard you play will likely feel similar.
They did. They made sure every leader was good at healing by giving him the exact same healing power with a few changes (add 1d6! add your cha! add both!) and a different name. While it might be fun to say "I'm a cleric! I'm warlord! We're totally different people!" Wouldn't it be interesting to have a leader that grants fast healing? Or one who actually create little potions of healing (set at his healing surge) that character can carry around? (rather than a nonsensical you blow magic smoke at an ally or however Curative Admixture works) What about the idea that, ya know, SHOUTING at a guy to get up isn't as effective as CALLING ON YOUR GOD to heal him?
I think that you would definitely fall into the problem that some of these would be too powerful and others would simply suck. You can't replace healing word with fast healing because they are impossible to balance against each other.
Having played a druid (a class that primarily uses fast healing to heal) in WoW, I know quite a bit about that. Fast healers have to heal preemptively (predict where the damage will be) and can only deal with consistent, moderate damage (druids had a hard time against damage spikes in WoW, which is where the priest class shined). Note that as of the time I quit WoW, druids had been shifted back towards skill with direct healing because Blizzard noticed that their fast healing focus relegated them to the status of backup healers (I have no idea what might have changed since I quit).
It worked, somewhat, in WoW because you can know ahead of time what you are getting into (the tanks need to grab aggro and thus will be the healing focus and you also know whether or not there will be incidental damage on the rest of the group that you will need to worry about). It wouldn't work for D&D because you can't predict a fight the way you can in WoW (where you generally have predefined strategies that you need to follow in a choreographed manner).
As an example, IME the 3.x druidic fast heal spells was virtually useless except as a means of healing
after combat.
Such differentiation would lead to one leader class being far better than the rest (or far worse) which seems to be exactly the sort of thing that WOTC wishes to avoid. IMO, the only way this could be implemented would be to do it
in addition to the basic healing ability that all leader classes get (Fast Healing Word- you can spend a healing surge and also gain fast heal x until the end of the encounter). I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we did see something like this at some point (assuming it doesn't prove overpowered).
I don't believe that it is possible to make the healing of leader types completely different without destroying the balance between them.
Or how bout an illusionist that creates illusions, not just deals psychic damage (like a fire mage deals fire damage) and give him a -2 to hit. Why can my illusionist make an illusion of a foe falling through space and time, but not an illusion of a door?
The problem with not assigning mechanics to something like an illusion is that it places the burden of balancing an effect on the DM in question. Some DMs are great at this. Many are decent. Most new DMs are terrible at it (no offense newbies).
In my time as a player I've seen low level illusions that were allowed to be overpowered (often because the DM loved illusions) or completely sucktastic (because the DM hated them). I've seen a monster blunder into the "pit of death" in his own dungeon because of an illusory floor, and I've seen NPCs who completely ignored an illusions because "everyone knows there are no Red Dragons in this region".
Free form illusions are (IMO) best handled via page 42, and even then I'd say they're best kept as a house rule because inexperienced DMs may still struggle with them. D&D doesn't need to be Mage.
One last note: Even if you built a sorc and wiz around the same spell selection, their would still be play differences. The wizard would have to be more cautious with his spells (because he has less of them per day) and might rely more heavily on wands and scrolls (esp for lesser-needed spells) while the sorcerer having many more spells per day is going to be a bit more free with using them and probably invest in metamagic to expand his spell options rather than item creation. Sure, you'll still be in the back casting spells, but the two would have a lot less in common. (This is EXTRA true if the casters didn't focus on the same spells; a sorcerer obsessed with polymorph feels very different than a necromancer-wizard. Try either of those characters in 4e.)
IMO, it's approximately the same level of differentiation. We've only been comparing the at-will powers of the two classes thus far. Once you move beyond those to encounters, utilities and dailies (especially once you have your full complement of powers) the two classes begin to feel very different. Also, did you ever use the temporary hp version of the Artificer healing power? That's quite different from the Warlord on its own.
Yes, I will grant that a polymorphing sorcerer and a necromancer wizard were two very different characters before 4e. Part of it was that they had an enormous list of powers (spells) compared to 4e classes. Unfortunately, that versatility and variety came at the expense of balance, where the wizard (especially) could have a solution for any problem imaginable and then some.
As Barastrondo pointed out, 4e recognizes that it is a team-oriented game. It thus has to keep classes relatively balanced against each other.
To amend my prior thought: Perhaps the major difference between many of those who see homogenization in 4e and those of us who don't is simply those who like the team-oriented fantasy action-adventure genre and those who don't?
