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

[megamania]

The speculation that the following week you learn is not true.... :\

 

[JustinM]

Getting rid of Dragon and Dungeon FORCING one to subscribe to their new website which I can not load without taking a twenty minute break. (I have an extremely poor hook up....snail mail is faster and after two months I have major withdraw symtoms from the magazines)

Do they have a gun to your head or something?

My beef with the DI is that it seems you have to have a DI subscription in order to get full use of the material from a book. If that's been refuted, I missed it.

 

[Aloïsius]

I should add WAR doing the cover. or more precisely, WAR doing those covers we have seen. Maybe it's an incentive to buy the De Luxe version ?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This is really my one "Ehh!" thing so far.

Oh, I forgot to add that...

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I personally think that each alignment can have a champion of all that it is without diminishing the Paladin

Prestige classes sort of filled this role in 3E, along with the paladin and some base classes. While the Holy Liberator and Blackguard were really too much "paladin with the serial numbers filed off," there were some better options. Here's one way you could have set up each alignment with a unique champion:
LG: Paladin
LN: Monk-type PrC
LE: Mindbender or Assassin
NG: Radiant Servant of Pelor
NE: Assassin or fear-based spellcaster
CG: Bard-type PrC
CN: Wild Mage
CE: Frenzied Berserker

N is the toughest, but the Horizon Walker seems most fitting. Or maybe a druid-type PrC.

 

[Arnwyn]

What, so far, don't you like?

- All the fluff they've introduced so far (including, and especially, changes to FR).
- Popular monsters deliberately withheld from the first monster book.

 

[A'koss]

My biggest gripes so far...

1. As Irda Ranger points out - the deliberate removal of some of the classic D&D monsters from the 1st MM to help pad out the manuals down the line.

2. Some of the names WotC manages to come up with makes me hang my head in sadness - some of the Wizard Traditions, Feywild... you know them.

3. The astonishing idea that WotC might actually charge you extra to use their digital miniatures (beyond an initial "starter set") in their virtual tabletop game. This... questionable line of thought is further compounded by the idea they're tossing around to sell random digital monster packs. My mind reels at that one.

What I think they should do is open it up to the community like Neverwinter Nights has and allow fans to create content (monsters, trappings, etc.) that other users can download for their games. That would go a long way towards making it a more compelling package IMO.

 

[cthulhu_duck]

What I was interested in was a refined and polished 3.5 than a whole new edition.

Some of the art, in particular the nose-spikes on the chromatic dragons.

The platform choices made for the DDI programs.

More books, not less books seemingly to get the same options as the core 3E material.

The spin that's coming from the blogs and other Wizards promotional material that instinctively makes me distrustful. I want to like something because it's something I like, not because someone's been telling me I'll like it for nine months. This feels much more like Microsoft's attempt to sell me Vista.

Automatic criticals that should occur 5% of the time (1 in 20 chance).

The solution to problematic 3E rules seemingly being to remove that option from the game rather than try and find a solution.

What feels like limited and rushed playtesting, with the core rules apparently already locked in. This suggests the playtesting may be to only identify areas where two rules combine to cause problems, prompting some sub rule to override the problematic combination.

 

[A'koss]

What feels like limited and rushed playtesting, with the core rules apparently already locked in.

Actually, this has been increasingly on my mind as well. When our group was playtesting 3e, we had ~8 months, and there were groups doing it longer than that. Even that didn't feel like enough time. While I realize the game isn't as great a departure from the previous edition as 3e was, it is still a significant change. It takes an average group several weeks to de-program/re-program themselves with a new edition and they'll have maybe 2 or 3 months of playtest time?

Yeah, I'm concerned.

 

[Quicken]

The wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This is the part I like the most! Oh well, I guess you can't please everyone