What's changed?

[Reynard]

The Essentials thread over in General got me wondering: what's changed (for good or ill, in your opinion) in 4E since the first 3 books? I have those and have played some, but not much 9i don't care for the class/powers system at all, but that's neither here nor there).

I have a DDI membership, but that's mostly because I am lazy and haven't cancelled it.

So, tell me know in some detail, if you don't mind, what's changed in 4E since release.

 

[Shroomy]

From a core rules perspective, not much has changed at all. From the player's perspective, some skill usages have changed (especially Stealth), aid another has changed, and the way some conditions are defined have been changed (they still work the same, but they've been clarified or have had corner cases eliminated). From a DMs perspective, skill challenges have been overhauled from whats in the DMG and the monster accuracy and damage expressions have been updated.

What's really changed is the breadth of options (which also comprises up like 99% of the errata) available to both players and DMs. Simply put, there's tons of stuff to choose from now, and since its exception-based design, there's a lot of creativity in how that new stuff works. Some of the most noticeable changes from a PCs perspective are the psionic-classes that use power points (ardent, battlemind, and psion) to augment at-will powers instead of gaining encounter powers and hybridization, which works similarly to AD&D dual-classing.