D&D 4E What can change your opinion about 4E?

[BASHMAN]

1. Lower the OFFICIAL price of the books to $30. I don't care if you can get it for that much on discount.com-- the OFFICIAL price of $40 each is ridiculous. Haven't these people heard of soft-covers before? Please make soft cover w/ B&W interior art versions and call them "economy editions" or you could call the $40 hardcovers "fancy editions" your choice.

2. Put the Half-Orc, Gnome, Barbarian, Bard, Sorcerer, & Monk in the PH1 or if you buy the "but there's no room" story, MAKE THEM FREE DOWNLOADS. I certainly don't want to pay $40 ransom for these classes & races being held hostage in a PH2 a year from now. They may as well call the book "Shameless cashgrab". Paying $15/month to get access to these things that I can only look at from the screen is also not a reasonable alternative. (Note-- I am not against them selling suppliments at all-- I just think that suppliments should be supplimental, not heldback core material. Suppliments should be new stuff).

3. Give back the OGL & SRD as they were intended to be. This SRL and "not-a-real-SRD" is not cutting it at all. I don't care about the $5,000 buy-in to publish D&D stuff in year one, but I think having the system be open to M&M, Spycraft, etc is actually a good thing.

EDIT: I just wanted to point out that I have NO PROBLEM with the Rules of 4e. I don't LIKE the fluff changes, but those can simply be ignored if you don't like them. My only problems are with the Marketing of 4e-- the 3 things I mentioned above. I am actually not going to buy 4e because of them-- but I will probably play it as my GM looks like he will be buying into it.

 

[keterys]

ransom for these classes & races being held hostage

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

[GlassJaw]

One thing could change my mind about 4e: playtesting it for a few months.

I'm kind of in the same boat but at the same time, I haven't really liked anything I've seen about 4E, so I'm not sure I even want to spend time doing that. I'm more than happy to play with the 3.75 rules I've developed with a friend because it's exactly the game that I want to play.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I'm not sure if I have much to contribute here: I gave up D&D a while ago because I found it to be full of traps in character creation, too caught up in mechanical minutia, and too tactical. 4E has really great flavor, but it still looks like there are too many mechanics and it has actually become more focused on tactics. This doesn't place me in the anti-4E camp, as my current dislike of D&D means I approach the entire issue from a non-extremist outside viewpoint, but I'm probably not wait-and-see because the stuff that would have swayed me has already been set against me.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

Nothing at this point will stop me from purchasing and trying 4E.

The only thing that can change my opinion is if I find running 4E as much of a chore as I do 3E. 3E started out fun and it was interesting to stat out classed monsters, advancing creatures, templating, etc. to try to come up with more unique antagonists. But over time that interest faded and I find myself not wanting to run anymore. If 4E's promises of making the game easier and more enjoyable for the DM fall flat, my opinion will change and I will probably move on to other hobbies all together after 25 years of D&D.

This is pretty much exactly my situation. After 3 1/2 editions and a quarter century of gaming, I'm definitely on board for switching to 4E. It will either reignite my interest in the game, or I'll get out of the hobby altogether. I'm done with 3.x and while I have some nostalgia for 1E, I know it also had a lot of problems I wouldn't be willing to deal with today.

Sad that its come to that. But I am hopeful that 4E will be the solution to my fatigue.

Unlike the other poster however, after 18 years of straight DMing, I threw in the towel on running my own game over a year ago. 4E is actually making me consider participating in a rotating GMing role though.

 

[Odysseus]

Spells/powers and playtesting.
I'm going to buy 4E.And i'm going to run some games with it.
However I suspect the at will magic missile powers is going to feel like giving a PC a laser pistol, totally out of place in most settings. And if spells & powers are alot like that then 4E has a limited use for me.

 

[catsclaw]

2. Put the Half-Orc, Gnome, Barbarian, Bard, Sorcerer, & Monk in the PH1 or if you buy the "but there's no room" story, MAKE THEM FREE DOWNLOADS. I certainly don't want to pay $40 ransom for these classes & races being held hostage in a PH2 a year from now.

To be fair, they've stated they want to be more proactive about adding material to the System Reference Document for 4e. This is probably as close to a deal-breaker for me. It would be monumentally foolish for them to leave them out; they really don't want to have the "official" version competing with a dozen "unofficial" ones that are open license, but there's no telling what happens when you get lawyers involved.

I'm fairly positive about 4e, but my optimism is based on the assumption that there's a solid non-combat roleplaying experience built in. If that's not the case, I simply can't imagine actually playing the game.

 

[keterys]

that there's a solid non-combat roleplaying experience built in. If that's not the case, I simply can't imagine actually playing the game.

Pure curiosity: What non-combat roleplaying experience is built into... any... prior edition of D&D?

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

There are some parts of 3E that I think could use some improvement, and I don't think we've heard much about how 4E will handle them.

Off the top of my head,

magic item creation
diseases
poisons
curses

all come to mind.

If 4E had some really inventive and interesting mechanics for these things, it would sway me towards switching (or at least yanking the mechanics for use in a hybrid edition game).

Ken

 

[WheresMyD20]

Pure curiosity: What non-combat roleplaying experience is built into... any... prior edition of D&D?

In BECMI, there are extensive rules for running kingdoms and questing for immortality.