Well that was fun...

[Xorn]

Minis complaints make me chuckle. When your wizard used to cast fireball near the rest of the party, how did you decide if he caught any of this friends in the blast?

Got your answer?

Okay, do that in 4th Edition. No minis needed. But just to quote the Basic 1981 Red Box DMG:

As you try to imagine your characters and the areas they explore, it is helpful to use miniature figures to represent the characters and monsters. Several types of miniature figures are available from toy and hobby shops worldwide, made of metal or plastic and suitable for painting. You should be able to find figures that look very similar to your characters. Official DUNGEONS & DRAGONS© figures are available.

To keep track of the party marching order, line up the miniature figures on the playing table. You may use a large piece of graph paper to draw the rooms and corridors found by the characters, and simply move the figures around on the paper. Several types of more permanent playing surfaces are available in plastic and vinyl, and the rooms drawn on them can be easily erased.

Scale Movement: When using miniature figures on a playing surface, a ruler is used to determine distance moved. One inch represents 10 feet. A movement rate of 60‘ per turn means that the figure moves 6 inches each turn. Spell ranges and other ranges are easily determined when an accurate scale is used.

The point? You were tracking where everyone was BEFORE, and even then the designers felt minis was the easiest way. By 3E they just assumed you were using minis, coins, erasers, silly putty, something. If not, then you are either remembering where everyone is, or tracking it behind the DM screen.

What's stopping you from doing that in 4E?

"The chamber is 90x50 with pillars every 10 feet, set in 10 feet from the long wall edge. (Looks at their map to nod it's correct.) There are more goblinoids than you can count flooding into the hallway, charging towards you all. From the storeroom you just left, you hear screams of fury and stomping feet getting closer--it looks like you're surrounded."

There are 36 goblinoids coming at the party from both sides. Run the fight without minis and you should be able to run 4E without minis.

This is a common 3E scenario, from The Sunless Citadel, if a goblin javelin thrower manages to get away and warn the rest of the top level.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I stopped after reading your comments on races/classes and ability scores and I do agree to a certain point. But it isn't quite as bad as you think at first glance. Many classes have two primary ability scores. You can select powers to only use one of them. All the races except humans have bonuses to two ability scores.

Humans work with every class as they can choose what stat is high. You want to play a human? Fine, you can choose whatever class you want.

If you want to play a ..... look at ..... race:
Cleric (wis or str) Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf
Fighter (str) Dragonborn
Paladin (str or cha) Dragonborn, Half-elf, Halfling, Tiefling
Ranger (str or dex) Dragonborn, Eladrin, Elf, Halfling
Rogue (dex) Eladrin, Elf, Halfling
Warlock (cha or con) Half-elf, Tiefling, Dwarf, halfling
Warlord (str) Dragonborn
Wizard (int) Tiefling, Eladrin



For me it looks like to few races have bonuses to str, or that to many classes relies only on strength. From the numbers above I can say how many classes each race is suitable for

Dragonborn 5
Dwarf 2
Eladrin 2
Elf 2
Half-Elf 2
Halfling 4
Human 8
Tiefling 2

On average: 27/8 = 3.4 or 19/7 = 2.7 without humans

Nearly as bad as you said. If you don't like dragonborn (I don't, its banned from my game!) you get 22/7= 3,1

I did a poll on what classes people liked mechanically, and the half-elf and tiefling got no love (24 and 28 rating instead of 41-68 for the other races. http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=229313

I think I will let the player choose if they want their half-elf to have +2 con/str and let the player choose if they want their thiefling to have +2cha/str. Even with the banned dragonborn, that gives 6 more choices, for 28/7 = 4 choices for each race.

Some might say that this leaves the human with paltry one +2 instead of two +2 as every other race gets, but on the other hand, humans had the second highest rating in the poll before this change...

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Sorry you don't like it. I just picked up a PHB yesterday, and my gift set is still en route. So I've just started making a solid perusal of the content.

What I've seen so far, I like. My impression is that they've delivered what they promised, but I won't really know until I've played.

The Warforged article timing was... strange, and I think poorly thought out. (Though to be fair, I'm glad they gave us this kind of thing as a preview of the DI). However, as I was discussing with someone last night, even though I like the new edition does not mean I'll be buying into the marketing strategy whole sale. I have not been convinced that the DI is worth my time, and I will not be buying as many books this go-around (and my 3.x collection is pretty moderate, 15-20 books or so).

Anyway, good luck finding something that you like!

 

[phil500]

The races: each race has one or two classes they can play without sucking.

yeah, if youre not getting +2 to your main stat the other bonuses of a race dont matter.

 

[Vempyre]

The warforged in the MM is for NPCS, not players. (Read the into at the start of that section, it's explained).

The warforged in Dragon 364 is for PCs.

When you look at how differently NPCS n PCs are built, how the warforged was treated is very consistent with how 4E views monsters and PCs in relation to each other.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In the old books you could sit back and read all about what a ranger was supposed to do. How they acted and what they did. Now, you get barely two paragraphs because they had to make room for all the kewl powers that str8 pwn.

You know how much flavour text the ranger gets in the 1e PHB? One sentence. 'Rangers are a sub-class of fighter who are adept at woodcraft, tracking, scouting and infiltration and spying.' The kewl powerz that follow do pwn, admittedly.

Oh yeah, the freaking warforged have already been errata'ed? ON THE FIRST DAY! FIRST-GOD-DAMN-DAY? Nice. Put out a book without the right words in it to boost and keep DDI subscriptions. Nice.

It wasn't errata-ed. It's an alternate, expanded version. Use it or the core version, whichever you prefer. Basically you're complaining about Wizards giving you alternate rules for free.

 

[Tortoise]

Out of all my concerns and hesitations for 4e, I would label the inclusion of only four (on average) at-will powers per class ... most suckie? Two more each would have been preferable to me. That way there would be much more variety.

Over-all I think they did a fine job, and no I don't believe they hindered role playing with the rule set at all. It really just works out to a different road to the same old comfortable location.

With (so far) one major drawback which I quoted above. Not enough At Will powers to choose from or even pick up/change during level gains. The options for building character lacks enough variety at 1st level. Admitedly once you start climbing levels that appears to rapidly change. It really does make it feel like they were left out on purpose just to require buying more books and/or subscribe to DDI.

I understand the idea of making money, they are a business, but you should never short-sell a product to your customers. Sell something excellent to make them interested in add-ons, not sell a limited something to require further purchases to get good use from a product. Doing that only creates customer resentment and potentially lost customers.

 

[Piratecat]

It wasn't errata-ed. It's an alternate, expanded version. Use it or the core version, whichever you prefer. Basically you're complaining about Wizards giving you alternate rules for free.

Just to be clear on that, the blurb from the Monster Manual is something like:

"These traits and powers are provided to help DMs create NPCs. This info can also be used as guidelines for creating player character versions of these creatures, within reason. Note that these traits and powers are more in line with monster powers than with player character powers."

With that, it's totally clear that the fast guidelines at the back of the MM aren't meant to be complete for player characters. I think that's kind of cool.

 

[lutecius]

Just to be clear on that, the blurb from the Monster Manual is something like:

"These traits and powers are provided to help DMs create NPCs. This info can also be used as guidelines for creating player character versions of these creatures, within reason. Note that these traits and powers are more in line with monster powers than with player character powers."

With that, it's totally clear that the fast guidelines at the back of the MM aren't meant to be complete for player characters. I think that's kind of cool.

Yeah, so much for the "you can still play a gnome, it's in the MM" argument.
(Not that I wanted to play one, but i have a friend who... well not really a friend, some guy i know...)
Another broken promise, I guess.

 

[Mallus]

But that's the point, with every class getting spells and with them all tied to ability scores, it's just stupid to avoid the bonuses.

Your confusing your desire to optimize with a lack of choice.

Note that there seems to be less distance between optimal and non-optimal choices in 4e, so your point is kinda moot, and no rule set is going to offer much choice if you feel the need to squeeze every last drop of mechanical benefit out of it.

I remember reading though those and being inspired, the text sparked my imagination and made me want to play.

That might have had something to do with being a kid at the time...

In the old books you had dozens of pages dedicated to spells...

And so many of them were either redundant, useless, or broken. Page count ain't everything.

Paragon paths and epic destinies are good. Much better than prestige classes. Great job guys. But with each class you barely include enough at-will powers to create the two sample builds, what the hell?

What was the max level in the original booklets? 6? 8? Give it time.

I have found issue with each and every version of D&D to date. I've played them all and had a blast.

So say we all.

The old stuff brimmed with ideas, practically shot off sparks to ignite the imagination

Which books? And how many of them taken together inform this opinion?

I've already poked around other fantasy RPG systems but really, nothing is sticking out.

Perhaps the problem lies not in the rules but in yourself, Horatio.

It seems like you're asking that WotC sell you inspiration. Or imagination. Maybe some of your childhood back. That's a tall order. And isn't the inspiration for your campaign supposed to come from literature, and to a lesser extent, film? Every edition I own says something to that effect. You want inspiration? Read Conan or LotR, not pages 126-150 of the PHB...