D&D 4E What changes aren't being made in 4E that you think should be

[rkanodia]

Personally, it seems like Rangers are going to be largely redundant with Rogues. I suspect Favored Enemy will be gone, because the designers have talked about how they didn't like the way it meant that the DM, not the player, chose when the power was active. After that, it's just a matter of ditching the lame spell progression (hey, that's what Druid Training will be for, right?) and there's nothing but nature-themed fluff keeping you from being 'lightly armored skill-using bow striker' vs 'lightly-armored skill using stabby striker'. Sounds to me like that could be handled with power choices. Not that I am optimistic about this happening.

No Attacks of Opportunity for attacking an armed opponent while you are unarmed. There's ALREADY a penalty for fighting unarmed. It's called 'your opponent is armed, and you aren't!' In fact, I would love to see Attacks of Opportunity reduced to almost nothing. Or even nothing as the default, with only 'sticky' characters being able to pull them off. There's ALREADY a penalty for drinking a potion while standing in front of an ogre. It's called, 'you're standing in front of an ogre, and you wasted your turn drinking a potion!' Unfortunately, it sounds like the current plan is to keep them largely the same, and then add bonuses to AoO for Fighter types - so much for those 'mobile combats' they keep hyping up!

Potions. I really want to see some kind of horribly non-simulative rules which limit the number of potions you can drink per encounter, or per day. Maybe it's like the magic rings, where you can only wear one on each hand - drink too many magic potions, and the magic fields start to interfere with each other, or the alchemical components combine in unhealthy ways, or something. Potions would be much easier to balance by cost if you could just assume that players have access to no more than X number of potions.

 

[Rechan]

I don't know if this exists, but I wish they would get rid of the "Use a ranged weapon in melee, he gets an AoO".

 

[Mercule]

Personally, it seems like Rangers are going to be largely redundant with Rogues. I suspect Favored Enemy will be gone, because the designers have talked about how they didn't like the way it meant that the DM, not the player, chose when the power was active. After that, it's just a matter of ditching the lame spell progression (hey, that's what Druid Training will be for, right?) and there's nothing but nature-themed fluff keeping you from being 'lightly armored skill-using bow striker' vs 'lightly-armored skill using stabby striker'. Sounds to me like that could be handled with power choices. Not that I am optimistic about this happening.

It depends. I see some of the same weaknesses that you're calling out. I'm still maintaining hope that it all means that the ranger will end up, as I said before, "tough as nails". Rangers don't have to fight as well as the fighter, but I can't think of a better archetype to be able to soak damage -- c'mon, these are the grizzled wanderers who do things like run for miles, sleep just fine in the rain, wait motionless for hours, and manage to travel twenty-five miles back to town by themselves after chopping off their own foot to get out of the bear trap.

 

[rkanodia]

I hear you, Mercule, but I think you're going to find yourself out of luck; I seem to recall R&C being pretty clear about Rangers being under the Striker role, which would preclude them from being damage sponges.

Ranger = Rogue with Toughness and Druid Training

 

[rounser]

Hey, if Bards have an archetype to fill, then the Warlord does.

The 1E bard hewed closely to the mythological bard (admittedly in D&D's abstract way). That one had an archetype that approximated the legendary bard - overpowered (i.e. good at most everything, just like in the myths), celtic (the druid magic), and rare.

2E made it into a minstrel jack-of-all-trades. That's where the D&D-relevant archetype got lost, IMO, and we got lutes-in-a-dungeon. 3E just continued the mistake.

Comparing the warlord to the relevancy of the bard does it no favours. Let's face it - marshal and warlord are just the 2E mistake minus the lute. Instead of minstrel-in-a-dungeon, we've got sergeant-in-a-dungeon. Neither fit. And the name's even less appropriate than that of the bard.

 

[Rechan]

Comparing the warlord to the relevancy of the bard does it no favours. Let's face it - marshal and warlord are just the 2E mistake minus the lute. Instead of minstrel-in-a-dungeon, we've got sergeant-in-a-dungeon. Neither fit. And the name's even less appropriate than that of the bard.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Warlords get me excited. They're not just "Everybody gets a +1", but giving archers or mages immediate actions to attack, or giving blanket bonuses.

They look to me more like the Dragon Shaman, with those auras. I wanted to play a DS so badly, but they're too MAD-happy for a good build, really, and a bit feat starved.

 

[AllisterH]

I do think the Warlord/Bard role makes sense.

The idea of "when character X is around, we all fight better" is a sound role but the problem is that again, the MU can and do the job better.

Better to buff with a group spell rather than have an entire new class. Will see if 4E restricts the wizard from this role as well.

 

[kennew142]

The 1E bard hewed closely to the mythological bard (admittedly in D&D's abstract way). That one had an archetype that approximated the legendary bard - overpowered (i.e. good at most everything, just like in the myths), celtic (the druid magic), and rare.

I played a bard in 1e. I found it to be a very difficult class to get into (1e prestige class). And once you were there, you did a lot of things really poorly - and nothing well. Nevertheless, I did enjoy playing Aidan MacStorn.

2E made it into a minstrel jack-of-all-trades. That's where the D&D-relevant archetype got lost, IMO, and we got lutes-in-a-dungeon.

This is where we differ. I thought the 2e bard was the best version. He did a little bit of a lot of things, and had access to the whole arcane spell list (up to 6th level, was it?). I played an elven bard named Rassilor. He was one of my favorite 2e characters.

3E just continued the mistake.

I found the 3e bard to be inferior in just about every way to the 2e bard. The character couldn't stand up in a fight, and his spell casting was weak. If they could have given the bard some more roguish skills that would have been great. Even better would have been a prestige class (like 1e) that combined rogue and sorcerer.

Comparing the warlord to the relevancy of the bard does it no favours. Let's face it - marshal and warlord are just the 2E mistake minus the lute. Instead of minstrel-in-a-dungeon, we've got sergeant-in-a-dungeon. Neither fit. And the name's even less appropriate than that of the bard.

This point has kind of been done to death. Warlord is the preferred (by a very slim plurality) name for this class. I don't like it either; I just like it better than any of the alternatives. Where you see a drill sergeant, I see a natural leader and skilled tactician who is able to inspire his fellows to greatness.

If someone in our group played a warlord and started shouting out orders, we'd ask them to leave our gaming group. No joke.

This last scenario should be defused by the actual text from the PHB 4e (released earlier on another thread) wherein it was made clear that the Leader role does not mean that the character is the leader of the group.

I am very intrigued by the warlord class and intend to play one early on in the new edition, perhaps in my brother-in-law's Waterdeep game.

 

[Greg K]

As for the Shaman, perhaps. I've read a lot of fantasy and don't see the witch as a separate archetype from other magic-using characters. I feel pretty much the same way about the wu-jen, shugenja et al. The new emphasis on reusable abilities and magical implements should go a long way towards portraying a witch, unless I'm missing what you mean when you say witch..

in 3.x terms, the witch would be a spontaneous wisdom based arcane caster lacking flashy destructive spells (e.g, fireball, cone of cold), and whose spells have an emphasis on divination, charm, illusion and transformation supplemented with some spells involving blessing, curses, healing, nature (animals, plants, weather control) as well as the classic stealing/restoring youth. Additional class features include familiar, bonus metagic and item creation (potions, charms, etc.), the ability to change appearance, and longevity.

 

[Liquid Ghost]

Use of Metric System.

I'm tired of calculating back and forth from metric and outdated imperial units.