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

[Pinotage]

Mechanically, I'm feeling a lot of what they're doing. Conceptually, I'm having some problems.

I'm partially in this camp. I like some of what I see mechanically, but other things not, but it's the conceptual issues that I'm trying to get my head around and digest.

That, and I need to figure out a way of dealing with immediate actions in PbP games, because, since 4e has a lot of them, it makes PbP really problematic.

Other than that, I'm still on the fence (though others might disagree with this assessment of where I see myself).

Pinotage

 

[WheresMyD20]

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.

That sounds like my experience. I think the game would benefit greatly from fewer choices in character creation and advancement, eliminating rules that don't come into play often, and returning to the assumption that players *aren't* using minis-and-grid.

 

[qstor]

At this point, its impossible for me to not like 4e. Its like the designers read my mind and took everything I have ever disliked about D&D and dumped it, and took everything I ever wanted and added it in.

No level/ability drain
Static HPs
More HPs and cool stuff at level 1
At-will powers
No Vancian casting
The term "level" has a consistent meaning across class, monsters, items, powers
No more scry-buff-teleport
Smoother power scale across all levels and classes
Attacker always rolls and static defenses
Saving every round to end ongoing effects (No more sitting out the combat because you failed a save)
No save or die
A plethora of cool magical items and gear but less dependence on them
Reduced emphasis on simulation and more emphasis on narrative and cinematic action
Cool powers now spread across classes instead of hoarded by casters

These to me are what D&D "is". The Vancian casting is at the heart of D&D. There is no at will powers in D&D. What can change my opinion on 4e? Stop calling it D&D can name it as another system.

Mike

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I'm pretty pro-4E.

For $29.95, I will gladly change my stance.

Later
silver

 

[Dragonblade]

These to me are what D&D "is". The Vancian casting is at the heart of D&D. There is no at will powers in D&D. What can change my opinion on 4e? Stop calling it D&D can name it as another system.

Mike

Fair enough. I suppose that explains why you are not happy with 4e.

But everything you like is stuff I have disliked or outrighted hated for the 20+ years I have been playing. For the first time ever, I feel like I can toss my house rules and actually play D&D by the book. And that has me incredibly excited.

 

[Ingolf]

I am enthusiastic about 4e based on what I've seen so far, and like a lot of other "pro-" 4e folks here I think only getting my hands on the books, reading and digesting them and then playing is likely to change that.

I find it funny that some things identified earlier in the thread as being defining characteristics of D&D for some people are exactly the things that drove me away from the game 25 years ago. I only picked it back up after the launch of 3e, so I am a pretty obvious candidate for 4e, as it is moving even further from the 1st/2nd edition rules that I disliked so much.

 

[BryonD]

I'm pretty pro-4E.

For $29.95, I will gladly change my stance.

Later
silver

I'll offer $12.50.

 

[Mephistopheles]

My initial reaction to 4E was negative mainly because I was just thinking "What? Already?".

Since then while I've found myself agreeing for the most part with the narrative coming from WotC staff about the intention and theory driving the design of 4E I've mostly found myself not liking the implementations we're seeing.

It also seems to me that they are running on a schedule that is pushing them to their limits. I'm concerned there won't have been enough playtesting and there will be a lot of errata.

Despite all that I'm doing my best not to write it off until I get to take a look a the final product. So in my case the only thing that will change my opinion is the quality of the final product itself. Although by final product I'm most likely talking about waiting for a second or third printing of the rulebooks unless an initial skim in a game shop sells it to me immediately.

 

[Lurker37]

Overall I'm positive, but I'll drop 4E like a loaded grenade if playing without a grid or minis breaks too many class abilities.

 

[Arkhandus]

Nothing can change my opinion of 4E at this point. We've gotten enough information to solidly put me in the 4E-Haters crowd, regardless of whatever else WotC does with the actual release and support for 4th Edition.

While I appreciate a few of the mechanical and conceptual changes, there are too many problems with them and too many things I think they abandoned, destroyed, or mangled, that were important to me as part of D&D.

4E will be a fine game in its own right, but it won't be D&D to me, and it won't be the kind of not-D&D game that I would want to play on the few occasions that I actually play something other than D&D. It's a wierd, tangentially-kinda-vaguely-D&Dish game in my mind.

At the very most, if the gamers I respect the most and prefer to game with (when I have the opportunity, which I haven't for the past year or two) choose to convert fully to 4E, then I might just buy a 4E PHB and continue gaming with that group, despite my seething hatred for 4th Edition.

Too many D&Disms were mangled or abandoned by 4th Edition, and it all seems to just spit in the face of everyone who ever liked D&D for being D&D.