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

[Jeff Wilder]

Barring a designer-rethink of the 1-1-1-1 diagonal movement rules, nothing will change my mind about 4E. That rule literally nauseates me, and I don't think it's going to be as easy to house-rule away as some folks believe.

 

[Tewligan]

At this point, I don't think there's really much that can make me pro-4e. It looks like the combat portion has gone even more boardgame-style than 3e was, and I didn't like it in that edition either. Plus, it seems like characters have gotten too "Wahoo!" to suit me - too weird, too powerful, too far removed from the "classic" D&D feel I started out on and still prefer. I don't like the removal of Vancian magic, or losing the need to manage resources. I don't like replacing feet with squares - which is, I guess, tied in to my "boardgame" complaint. I don't like taking the bite out of a lot of effects (save or die, petrification, hold, level drain, etc.) just because it's "not fun" for a character to not be doing stuff every single round or to lose something. I don't like the standardization of point buy rather than the thrill of rolling up a new character.

Um...yeah. Anyway, reverse all that stuff, and maybe I'll come around!

 

[Campbell]

Here's my list

• Alignment having too much of a mechanical effect.
• Noncombat elements that are poorly implemented.
• The presence of "I win" abilities.
• A high level of divergence between normal and optimized characters.
• Tactically unsatisfying combat.
• Focusing too much on corner cases in the rules text.

 

[Will]

I'm tentatively pro-4e.

The following would cause me to go anti-4e:
House ruling back in 1-2-1-2 or switching to hex causes problems with class abilities
Abilities are consistently non-immersive, like some of the warlord preview -- that is, I didn't get a good feel for 'this is what's happening in the game world.'
A profusion of stuff named nonevocative stuff like 'Golden Wyvern Adept' (sort of a corollary of the previous)
Skill challenges are skimpy and poorly supported.
Prep time isn't actually reduced.

The first two are biggies, the other three are less likely to cause me to drop the game on their own.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Nothing I can think of at this point can make me like 4e as D&D.Theres just to may dead cows to much of that classic d&d feel is gone or mangled to a point I do not like.Looks like it may be an ok game for when im bored or got nothing else to do but its just not giving me the feel I want .Nore do the rules looks like they will support my style of play .

 

[trancejeremy]

A name change would probably help, since I don't think it's very D&D-ish in feel.

But my big hang-up is the new OGL. I loved the old OGL, which let anyone just about do anything with the D&D rules. For good or for bad. Sure, a lot of it was bad, but so was a lot of the stuff WOTC produced (especially the first few 3.0 splatbooks). Yes, some of the big guys ponyed up the $5k for , but IMHO, a lot of the most creative stuff came from the little guys. And I also liked a lot of the PDF stuff (at least the ideas of it, I never read all that much since I had reading PDFs on the computer)

If they go back to the old OGL, then I'd be more positive about 4e.

 

[keterys]

Well, the little guys can jump in starting next year... but who knows what the restrictions will be. I suspect that in terms of pdfs, most of them would still be able to be made.

It's more the stuff like '7th Sea d20' 'Traveller d20' 'True 20' and 'Kitchen Sink x20' that won't be able to happen... which makes me sad, cause I think some truly inventive products happened.

That said, there was... well... a _lot_ of crap and hackjob game conversions... that were done, so I can certainly understand the desire to weed the garden a little.

But... Mutants and Masterminds and Iron Heroes were really cool, so I can't help but be sad for the decision being made.

 

[Iron Sky]

I'll probably get the books regardless, but the following might steer my group away from 4E.

If all classes feel the same. After discussing our playtests with my players, the "at will 1dX + rider", encounter "2dX + rider", daily "3dX + rider or 2dX + big rider" deal is what has some of my players skeptical. Unless there's enough variety in powers to make the various classes really feel different in game, there's going to be a chorus of "meh" from my players. If they are all similar at lower levels, that's somewhat understandable and acceptable, but if they don't seem REALLY different by the time they reach Paragon...

If you only have 2 at-will powers for longer than the first few levels. In short battles this won't be as much of an issue as people will have a variety of at-will/encounter/daily/magic item/etc powers, but if the battle goes long enough and all the players have left is one or two daily powers over and over and over again for 20 rounds.

If multiclassing sucks. This probably won't be an issue in the first game or two, but if multiclassing makes underpowered characters that no one wants to play, I see the lifespan of the game dropping considerably. This also assumes that the above two don't kill the game before the 2nd/3rd/4th game is reached. If they expect us to buy additional books (which we might, though all the books we bought for 3.0 killed our desire to buy any 3.5 books - got the PHB II and that's it) in order to cover the lack of variety in the core 8 classes and multi-class combinations, they aren't likely to get any sales amongst my group.

 

[Raith5]

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.

This is the big one (I guess I can live converting squares to feet), but other issues which are potential deal breakers are the questions of how reasonable multiclassing is and whether daily powers are too powerful (especially for fighters) or too complex and therefore slow things down.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The announcement that a detect evil spell is once again in the rules (a ritual however might be ok). Wizards losing spellbook and cantrips.