D&D 4E What don't you like about 4E so far? (Not a rant)

[Tharen the Damned]

I have nothing against killing holy cows, but it seems to me they slaughtered the whole herd.

Overall I see that a RPG has to evolve to give us gamers something new to buy and for the WoC to make money.
I see that you have to look at every aspect of the game and evaluate it. Be it game mechanics or fluff elements or a combination of both.
I see that there may be changes to old traditions going back to EGGs first scribbled notes. I may or may not like these changes.
But, D&D is a game with a 30 year history and IMO you have to treat the game and all its traditions with respect.
Respect to tradition means to carefully evaluate if you HAVE to change this aspect of game, not if you WANT to change it for the sake of change.
All that I have seen so far suggests to me that this respect is utterly missing.

D&D and AD&D 1st/2nd was a big manor with a lot of outlying buildings. In the end of the 90ties the substance was somewhat rotten. So the 3rd designers demolished what could not be saved and renewed the interior (rules) but used the old facade (fluff). The rebuild the old manor in the old style but with up to date interior rooms.
Now the manor is not yet rotten as it was in the 90ties. It is very solid and has a good substance. But here and there paint has to be renewed or some rooms have to be remade (e.g. the grapple room).
What do the 4th edition designers do?
Boom! They blow up the whole manor and start building a completely new house.
The rooms will probably to notch, but I do not know if I like the style of the house.

 

[Henrix]

I don't like the thrashiong of the Great Wheel - it seems to me to be ditching a lot of time honoured goodness and well written material for a few ideas.

But my greatest worry is the skill system. The 3e system is very good for building characters with character. I'm afraid they'll become flatter and less uninteresting in the name of minmaxing.

 

[jasin]

1) Leaving out monsters from MM1.

2) The vibe I've been getting that wizardy is going to be more scorching rays and magic missiles than arcane eye and planar binding.

3) The funny, overly compound monster names. Things like bonecrusher zombie, hellsword cambion. On their own, they're OK, I just hope not every monster is going to be [compoundword] [noun].

 

[FourthBear]

My primary concern has to do with the Digital Initiative. I'm sure they have good intentions and all, but in my mind, WotC doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to implementing things electronic. I also suspect that it will take them a very long time to get up to speed with their web-based content. So while I've got pretty good feelings about the content of the three core books, I'm highly skeptical that WotC will do a good job with the DDI system. I'll probably still pick it up for the early days and I hope I'm pleasantly surprised.

After that, I'd say I'm concerned about the short time of playtesting. It does seem pretty rushed to me. I like pretty much all of the changes they've talked about (or am at least neutral), but I am worried that it will come out in May half-baked. I hope they're not depending on online methods of distributing fixes and corrections to the main books and that 4e doesn't turn out to be the equivalent of a beta test.

 

[Nebulous]

I don't like stringing out products indefinitely year after year by adding tidbits of information that old-timers recognize as "classic" D&D just to entice them to buy it. It feels...devious. Otherwise the rules changes sound good to me. I don't really care about any of the planar changes.

1) Leaving out monsters from MM1.

3) The funny, overly compound monster names. Things like bonecrusher zombie, hellsword cambion. On their own, they're OK, I just hope not every monster is going to be [compoundword] [noun].

Interestingly, that's also how the miniatures are labeled. A direct shoe-in marketing strategy i assume.

 

[DaveMage]

What I don't like:

The timing of 4E (too soon).

More than three 'core' books - and the annual release of same.

What Dragon magazine has become.

There's more, but without any good mechanic information outside of the one tidbit that came out last week, I'll just leave it at these three for now.

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm not sure how I feel about monsters not using the same rules as PC's. I waited 20 years for that and it was one of the (minor) points that pushed me away from D&D in the later 80's and 90's.

On the other hand, um, I don't bother statting up monsters as fully as PC's now. If I want to add 6 rogue levels to a hobgoblin, I write down '+3d6 sneak attack', Sneak (we already collapse similar skills) +10 and eyeball-add some HP and BAB. So the new rules - which sound slightly more abstract - are probably actually what I'm doing right now. We still don't know. Could be that with a couple more levels of abstraction, you could do a monster manual in 20 pages.

I might have some complaints about some of the other things I've seen in this thread but I think I've read almost all the preview material and I don't remember seeing some of those things, such as the clerical auto-heal thing. I'm not sure how I'd like that because I can't think of a way to logically justify it. But that falls into the realm of 'I'll have a firm opinion once we start seeing classes and races and magic'.

My one big peeve is one in the realm of fantasy; the changes still don't go far enough. There is no reason to, again, have three big-ass books to play this game. One less-than-200 page volume should be enough. I don't want a PHB that's full of spells we'll never use, a DMG that's full of magic items we'll never use, and a MM that's full of monsters we'll never use. That's just not going to happen, though, so I'm OK with it for the most part.

 

[Psion]

1) Spreading the core across different books so WotC can re-brand supplements as core. So much for the "I'll get the core books and then see" plan. Of all these, I consider this one the most likely to come back and bite them. I'm a "supplement a month" guy, so it wouldn't make that much difference to me. But I think part of the large installed player base of D&D arises from the fact you can plug into so much with just the 3 core books. I think many of the more casual players aren't going to bite.
2) Replacing the great wheel with another overly specific cosmology. (I would have no problem replacing the great wheel with a generic baseline for a cosmology, but the cosmology presented is too specific for core books, and belongs in a setting.)
3) I'm dubious about the per-encounter craze, but it may turn out alright. It doesn't sound like the designers are banking on it to the extent some were thinking they were.
4) Re-imagining monsters. Succubi are demons, have been since 1e.
5) I would say "save or die", but I wonder if that's just a marketing thing and it's just a consequence of having no saves. Of course if you think save or die is a pisser, the DM rolling some dice and saying "your dead" sounds like even more of a pisser. Guess I'll wait and see on this one.
6) Re-imagining monsters.
7) Coring the Warlock.
8) Concerned about skill system, too, but definitely need more detail here. I'm glad, at least, that the authors have said it won't be a clone of SWSE's skill system.
9) Coring of tiefling.
10) Re-imagining eladrin to be the supposedly non-subrace elf. A rose is a rose, no need to slaughter a functional creature to pretend it's a petunia.
11) (Edit: Thanks Wayne) Monsters using different rules than PCs. This aspect is what sold me on 3e. Sure, it needed fixed. The designers apparently gave up.

 

[Ahnehnois]

• Points of Light
• New Cosmology
• Demon/Devil changes
• Core Tieflings
• "Per encounter"; What's an encounter?
• Paladins are still an independent class. Why?
• No saving throws
• 30 levels
• No sign of druids. They'd better not kill off/merge into another class my druids!
• Supercharging level 1 characters
• Making monsters and PCs more different
• D&D Insider

 

[TerraDave]

I: All those promises, with so little to back them up.

II: the mediocre "flavour" that we are seeing (then again, at least I am paying attention, which hasn't been the case for a few editions).

But the devil will be in the details....and we haven't seen them.