D&D 4E What I miss about 4e (my preferences of course)

[Herschel]

Swift/Minor action healing is another big thing I'm missing.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Swift/Minor action healing is another big thing I'm missing.

I get what you are saying, but the 3.x healing was kind of interesting* as well. If you had a bad encounter, you had to weigh the risk of not healing vs the risk of not doing damage. Often, you ended up not healing at all. In 4e you heal in every fight.

*Until you got the heal spell, it's much more of a no-brainer to use than the cure spells.

 

[Weather Report]

Swift/Minor action healing is another big thing I'm missing.

That's in 5th Ed (a lot of 4th Editionisms are).

 

[jodyjohnson]

Creatures are awesome but the amount of action-denial PCs can select can make it irrelevant.

At the table, I think it falls to groups to feel empowered to select options or house rule items to create their best match whether starting from Next or a previous edition.

4e and it's integration with DDI was strong deterent to making changes to the official default. But I'm more willing to mess with it at this point especially if it's more on the DM side (monster adjustment) or something the players can compensate for (banned lists, stat limitations, build selections).

 

[Esper the Bard]

4e suddenly made non-magic classes interesting, with lots of cool options, and no longer totally overshadowed by spellcasters (especially at higher levels). At the same time, spellcasters felt less magical. They had mechanical, blocky powers confined to the same format at martial classes. So, with D&D Next, this is kind of reversed back. Nonmagic classes have more options than 3.5, but far less than 4e. I understand your lamenting, because I hate the feeling that I have to play a spellcaster if I want a character with lots of options and choices to build its theme/flavor.

 

[Campbell]

What I like most about 4e the most is the strong emphasis on themes. I grew attached to short concise flavor that was reflected in game mechanics and setting material without dictating too much content. Luckily Numenera and especially 13th Age seem to have this in spades.

 

[pemerton]

I think if Essentials had come first, and Players Handbook style classes had been an "advanced option" that was added latter, we wouldn't be talking about 5e today.

I agree with that. I think if the first PHB hadn't been pages and pages of powers in each class, there would have been much less of a gut "WTF?" reaction that seemed the most common response by people who ended up not embracing 4e.

This is very interesting.

I can't judge your predictions here - would other aspects of 4e, like the transparency of its mechanics, still have been "too gamey"?

For my own part, if 4e had looked like Essentials at start I may not have picked it up - the 4e power system came at just the right time to help me consolidate my fantasy RPGing just at a time when I was becoming consciously aware of the tension between my preferred style and some of the mechanics I was using. (Also, Essentials doesn't really solve the problem of nova-ing casters, which has historically been a big issue in my pre-4e play.)

But for all I know this just shows I have minority tastes.