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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinneus" data-source="post: 5054460" data-attributes="member: 48215">4e's focus is combat and the dungeon crawl. Or, at the very least 'the game.' Any time that 'the game' falls away, 4e's cracks start to show. Stealth is a confusing mess, invisibility is difficult to pull off for more than a round, Intimidate and Diplomacy can feel clunky relying entirely on a die roll. Kill stuff with knives, and the system backs you up. Try to get out of a fight, and well, DM fiat, more or less. Some DMs see this rules vacuum and go, "Cool! Now I can do whatever I want in these spaces!" These are the sort of DMs that are the best 4e DMs, the sort of people that play it, love it, and write in forums about it. But I can sympathize with the other sort of the DM, the one who says, "Out of combat, this game is pretty hollow." They have a point. Personally, I wouldn't want a game with a lot of complicated sub-systems to handle things like stealth, diplomatic situations, out-of-combat stronghold building systems, and so on. I like 4e more or less the way it is, but I can see the emphasis on combat, and I am sometimes irked by it. Spells like Confusion were powerful and awesome in 3e... why did they have to tack on 'psychic damage' to it? I sometimes wish utility powers were actual utility powers, not more combat-oriented bells and whistles going by another name. I want more powers like "Crucial Advice" and less like "Yield Ground," you know? 4e does an astounding job with combat and the standard dungeon crawl. It doesn't necessarily do a bad job with all the out-of-combat stuff... but it doesn't quite blow me out of the water, either.</blockquote>

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