The tragedy of 4th edition.

[The Little Raven]

Which more or less means "Don't buy 4E".

Don't buy a company's products if it has a long-standing precedent for performing some activity or indiscretion that you don't like. It's the same reason I don't buy Ford vehicles anymore.

 

[Mr Jack]

I agree with the OP partially, and partially not.

I find it very strange. 4th is, in my view, 80% very well organised, edited and laid out but 20% of it (including large sections such as Skill Challenges) seem rushed. It's most odd.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Why else is the Rogue the only class with at-will powers after 1st level? They had to errata Humans over that one.

Go read cleric, then fix your post.

Aren't you the guy that made a whole set of awesome power cards?

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

With some 4e time under my belt, I feel like I partially agree with the OP. I am somewhat of a f4nboi, and anyone who wuld like to seem my resume on this can just search for postings and threads by me. I have been pretty pro-4e. I still am. It seems to be the best running RPG I have played. The design goals were right on track with what I would prefer.

That said, the editing is relatively poor. There are a signifigant number of rules that need further clarification to be playable as written. There are some breakdowns in the math. Some of the design goals have not played out the way they were intended.

This does not mean that 4e is tragically flawed to the point of doom for D&D. It just means that there will need to be revisions in the rules. If I was smarter and less ethical, I would have just gotten myself some of those fancy illegal pdfs and waited until this goofiness was all sorted out. They will fix it and I will either have to add sticky notes to my books or buy a new book. Geting out some more official errata would be nice as well. And do not add anything else that breaks the math. Didn't WotC think to get some gamer mathematicians on staff? I am not really even a great mathematician, but I can spot some math breakers in the game. Sheesh.

 

[cildarith]

So it's a pretty significant upgrade under the hood, and there's nothing wrong with it, but a vocal community spends hours upon hours saying it sucks?

Well, I'm sure that's one way to look at it....

...but I don't think its quite what they meant.

 

[Nikosandros]

I agree with the OP.

4th edition looks like a very nice game, but it really looks like the development cycle was cut short by 6 month or a year. A great deal of rules are written in a confusing way.

Also, the original plan was to have D&DI functional at launch and the GSL available far in advance of the actual rules. It seems that with much less time than they hoped for, they had to cut resources to all "secondary " efforts.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hint: You don't change something that isn't broken.

Dude, changing things that weren't broken is practically the cause for 4e.

As to the OP...yeah, the more I play, the more I hate the fact that they really tried for clarity but then got all tangled up and hid very important rules in very obscure places, and managed to still add powers that are worthless, all the while claiming that "accidental suck" is a thing of the past.

Obviously, 4e isn't a dramatic improvement in this respect, which is disappointing, because I was under the impression that it really WANTED to be. I guess they just didn't unearth the root cause of the problem this time around.

As for the rest of this thread....the less said the better.

 

[Corjay]

For the record, WOTC's editing has been consistently atrocious. They have only provided "quality product" in the way of good presentation. I think their editors are too much of gamers and not enough of actual skilled and critical editors. But then, it may also be due in part to the impossible schedule that WOTC forces on its editors.

 

[Fifth Element]

Which more or less means "Don't buy 4E".
Sounds like a tragedy to me when people start doing this...

No, by that interpretation, Mourn would be saying "don't buy any edition of D&D", which is clearly not the case.

Mourn is right. The editing of D&D has never been great, so describing it as the "tragedy" of 4E is off-base.

If you don't have anything on topic to say would you mind not posting unprovoked and irrelevant attacks on other editions?

How is it irrelevant? If the editing has always been atrocious, then it's the "tragedy of D&D", not the "tragedy of 4E".

And if you have a problem with a post, report it. Don't discuss it in the thread.

 

[Mallus]

The real tragedy is the drastic rise in the amount of hyperbole around here.