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<blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 4269105" data-attributes="member: 9053">So I have had about an hour with the D&amp;D books now, and have started putting together a review. In putting my thoughts into place, I started with the PHB, and I really have to wonder what happened to arcane and divine characters.For one thing, we have only two examples of them as opposed to four martial characters, which inherently gives fewer choices, and thus fewer options. That's a bit of an aside, however.What I'm really struck with, when I look at low level characters, is how much of their abilities just seen to be gone. As a low level cleric, I can make attacks, some of which have minor buffing effects on my allies or perform healing. That's great for combat, but it's only a small part of being a cleric ... what do I do outside of combat?The obvious thing is &quot;use rituals&quot; but in my limited perusal of the ritual effects, it looks like a lot of things one could do as a cleric are just gone from the rules. By that, I don't mean &quot;things you could do with all 900 splat books,&quot; I'm talking about core class functions from previous editions.It seems like the wizard is helped by still having cantrips, but again, where is the tremendous flexibility of being a wizard? I see attack spells, and some limited situational movement and defensive powers, but there doesn't seem to be much to do with your powers outside of combat.Now all of this comes from looking at the rules for a grand total of an hour, so feel free to tell me that I'm wrong and that I've just missed something, because otherwise it looks like 4E is not addressing the &quot;out of combat&quot; situations very well at all for these characters.Color me confused, so help me out, ENWorld!--Steve</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SteveC, post: 4269105, member: 9053"] So I have had about an hour with the D&D books now, and have started putting together a review. In putting my thoughts into place, I started with the PHB, and I really have to wonder what happened to arcane and divine characters. For one thing, we have only two examples of them as opposed to four martial characters, which inherently gives fewer choices, and thus fewer options. That's a bit of an aside, however. What I'm really struck with, when I look at low level characters, is how much of their abilities just seen to be [B]gone[/B]. As a low level cleric, I can make attacks, some of which have minor buffing effects on my allies or perform healing. That's great for combat, but it's only a small part of being a cleric ... what do I do outside of combat? The obvious thing is "use rituals" but in my limited perusal of the ritual effects, it looks like a lot of things one could do as a cleric are just gone from the rules. By that, I don't mean "things you could do with all 900 splat books," I'm talking about core class functions from previous editions. It seems like the wizard is helped by still having cantrips, but again, where is the tremendous flexibility of being a wizard? I see attack spells, and some limited situational movement and defensive powers, but there doesn't seem to be much to do with your powers outside of combat. Now all of this comes from looking at the rules for a grand total of an hour, so feel free to tell me that I'm wrong and that I've just missed something, because otherwise it looks like 4E is not addressing the "out of combat" situations very well at all for these characters. Color me confused, so help me out, ENWorld! --Steve [/QUOTE]

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