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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9575034" data-attributes="member: 907">As the saying goes: first impressions last. So just looking at the three core books:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gnomes and half-orcs were removed in favor of tieflings, eladrin, and dragonborn.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Barbarians, bards, druids, monks, and sorcerers were removed in favor of warlocks and warlords.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rangers lost their magic and animal companions in favor of being a purely martial class.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighters lost flexibility and became solely melee-oriented defenders, losing the ability to be heavy-hitters or range-focused.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">People got the impression that many spells were removed, although in many cases they were just reassigned as rituals. But the system could have been clearer that rituals were where non-combat magic lived now.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Casters had significantly fewer spells to play around with – I believe it topped out at four dailies, four encounters, and two at-wills (and maybe some utilities). By comparison, a 10th level cleric in 3e would likely have 23 spells of level 1 through 5.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I believe the PHB didn't have any summoning spells. Even once they showed up, they were basically just a reskinned DoT rather than summoning an actual creature with actual stats.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Metallic dragons.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pure elementals – as I recall, the MM1 only had mixed ones.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Frost, cloud, and storm giants; and the giants that remained were given much more elemental natures.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lots of celestials.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wish-list magic items to fit builds as opposed to finding what the DM chose to place and then having to sell and buy/make them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lots of magic items were gone to make room for a variety of +X items with a single special ability.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Great Wheel removed in favor of World Axis, with all of its knock-on effects.</li> </ul>There are probably some other things that got removed that I forgot. Some of these are positive changes, but still feel different. Others got fixed in later supplements, e.g. missing races/classes, but at that time the impression had already been made.</blockquote>

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