What is, by consensus opinion, obviously broken?

[Mercurius]

I just read the James Wyatt Interrogation, Part 2 with interest, such as his implication that the next setting (2011) will be a new one (or that is how he would like it). With regards to 5E, he said:

"I wouldn’t change the big picture. There are little things I would change. The way we are approaching updates to the game now is releasing errata and rules updates all the time so the game is always growing and changing. We can tweak things as we go. Every once in a while things come that we say “oh gee, it would be nice if we could fix that but it will have to wait until 5th edition” because it is too big of a change...

He went on to give two examples of things he would change: rituals and magic items.

This got me thinking: What are the obviously broken parts about 4E, by consensus opinion? Okay, it goes without saying that everyone might have a slightly different answer to this question and there may not be an "objective" answer, but let's try to take it beyond the purely personal or subjective into the inter-subjective.

When we look at 3E, it seems an obvious example of brokenness was high level play in general, especially the reliance on magic items and the fact that spellcasters became much more powerful than other classes (although many folks didn't mind this).

Wyatt mentioned rituals and magic items; these seem strong candidates, as do skill challenges. What else?

To be clear, I'm not asking what you don't like about 4E, but what many people have said they don't like to the point that it seems obvious that things will be different in 5E. So the list so far:

Rituals
Magic Items
Skill Challenges

Another that comes to mind is the extreme imbalance in the ratio of combat to non-combat powers, but maybe this is partially why Wyatt mentions rituals. While the idea of rituals being separate is nice, I've found the actuality to be very problematic (and I'm dabbling with house rules to bring them back into the fold, even simply making them utility powers and giving spellcasters extra slots; but I digress...).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Squirrel arms.

Aside from that, you're not likely to get a lot of agreement here at ENWorld anyway. There are still people that think the original iteration of Skill Challenges were fine. We can speculate, but for every group that thinks Rule X is broken, there's at least one other person who says that group doesn't know what they're talking about.

(Rituals were brilliant in concept -- segregating combat stuff from noncombat stuff is a good idea -- but have failed in at least three different ways in execution, IMO).

 

[awesomeocalypse]

Stacking save penalties, aka orbizards. Blatantly, inarguably broken.

 

[Umbran]

I'm going to guess that skill challenges will actually be largely the same - they'll just be presented differently. In the long run, they aren't so much a mechanic as a way to work with non-combat skills in a structured way.

 

[Rechan]

I'm going to go with my preferred bugaboo: Too Many Fiddly Bits To Lose Track Of.

So many "This effect ends at the end of your turn" from powers and monster effects and so on, plus situational modifiers, it gets to the point you can easily forget modifiers when they apply.

This is specially egregious when you have lots of effects that trigger on critical hits. Just using the Chaos Sorcerer as an example: You roll a 20. First, you do multiple things for rolling a crit (extra weapon damage, class effect). Then you do something special because you rolled an Even number. That's before you resolve the power!

My second thing (which I doubt I'll get a lot of agreement on) is the way that Primary Ability Scores are really so important for the class. The mad rush to get the 18/20 so you have a +5% chance to hit. The way that you can't multi-class into Y class because class Y doesn't use your Primary or Secondary ability score. Or the the fact that since your class doesn't use Str, you have so little chance to make a basic melee attack (even if you're a weapon using class: see Cha-paladins, Avengers, Rogues, and so on).

 

[I'm A Banana]

So many "This effect ends at the end of your turn" from powers and monster effects and so on, plus situational modifiers, it gets to the point you can easily forget modifiers when they apply.

This is specially egregious when you have lots of effects that trigger on critical hits.

My second thing (which I doubt I'll get a lot of agreement on) is the way that Ability Scores are really so important for the class. The mad rush to get the 18/20 so you have a +5% chance to hit. The way that you can't multi-class into Y class because class Y doesn't use your Primary or Secondary ability score. Or the the fact that since your class doesn't use Str, you have so little chance to make a basic melee attack (even if you're a weapon using class: see Cha-paladins, Avengers, Rogues, and so on).

I'm in total agreement with all of this. Fiddly bits and inflexible characters both suck pretty badly.

 

[Fifth Element]

I'm going to go with my preferred bugaboo: Too Many Fiddly Bits To Lose Track Of.

I don't think that fits in the "broken" category, but god yes, I hope they do something about that. I don't find 4E quite as bad as 3E in that regard, but it's still bad.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well:

Orbwizards

Stacking damage modifiers. It is rapidly getting to the point where rolling damage dice is a waste of time, or at best a moderate increase in damage.

Stacking or not stacking feats, items, etc: I thought a 4E design goal was to stop this, well, it did not.

Healing is a bit weird. Lotta stacking and situational modifiers that really increase the amount possible.

A few magic items (mostly those with damage increases

The whole weapon/implement fiasco. Please Wizards, clarify this. There are weapon properties that are obviously not supposed to be used with implement attacks and vice versa. Would have been nice to use the weapon and implement keywords a lot more instead of the easily manipulated "Attacks with this weapon"

For example
"Implement attacks with this weapon"
"Weapon attacks with this weapon"
"All attacks with this weapon"

They broke attacks into these tow areas carefully, but did not take it far enough.

Character Op, though this is not WOTC's fault.

 

[Leatherhead]

Action economy balance is extremely fragile, and skipping your turn isn't fun. There are allot of powers that can effectively force characters to do nothing, and there are allot of powers that can actually force characters to do nothing.

Getting rid of stun is a good place to start. Giving saving throw bonuses each time you roll a save would do wonders for allowing control powers to be more viable on elites and solos while making it harder for everything to be completely locked down.

 

[yesnomu]

Character Op, though this is not WOTC's fault.

As a frequent CO board visitor, I take umbrage at this. If a game has a sufficient spread of options, some will be better and some will be worse. CharOp exists to figure out which is which. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to have an effective character, and CharOp is a good way to take the guesswork out of it.

And lest you forget, the CO boards are also one of the earliest identifiers of broken (in both respects) material. The best way to spot future errata is to check out their reactions.

On-topic, orbizards still need a smack with the nerf bat, and roughly a quarter of the level 30 Epic Destiny features break the game in half, from Demigod's (still) to Magister's. Hide Armor Expertise needs to be changed to stop Barbarians from having better AC than Fighters, as well.