I'll take a stab at these. I may be shooting myself in the foot, but we'll see. There's two kinds of people that ask questions on the internet: people who are honestly questioning, and people who are just inflamatory. The first set I'll happily try and help, the second set won't listen to me regardless of what I say. I hope you're in that first set, but it can be hard to tell from one post.
ladydeath said:
1. If I am a warlock once I choose to make a pact where are my choices in my abilities? It seems that if I choose to be a fey warlock all of my abilities from level 1 on have already been decided.
You can choose whichever you want. You only get the additional bonus from powers related to your pact. Sometimes it makes the choice obvious. Sometimes not. The additional effect is rarely all *that* important (teleport 5 vs teleport 5+int modifier, for example) so you're not really heavily penalized for taking powers outside of pact.
2. I understand that if I want to make a fighter/archer I can just choose to be a ranger. But what if I would like to have a fighter, sorry character, who can use all sorts of weapons and not specialize in using just one. The fighter doesn't get ANY ranged at will abilities and the ranger only has two weapon melee abilities. How would my character survive in a gladitorial game?
Fighter doesn't specialize unless you want him to. As above with the warlock, you only get a minor benefit to choosing powers that are related to the weapon you are using. Are they nice? Sure they are! Do you *have* to take the hammer power if you use a hammer? Not at all. Sometimes the power that isn't tied to my favorite weapon has an ability that I like more than the one tied to my weapon.
For the second part... the only thing you get from proficiencies is the +2 (+3 for swords) to hit. That's it. A fighter or ranger or hell, even a wizard can pick up any item he'd like and try to hit with it. You're making a basic melee or basic ranged attack dependant. With fighters, this is fine. Their powers work with any melee weapon. Same with rangers and ranged weapons. If you're really concerned about a character using both melee *and* range, take a ranger and do both. Take some twf powers and some ranged powers and switch weapons.
3.Spellcasters. In 4e all wizards get at will ranged attack spells. Not bad but what if I wanted to make an illusionist? Or a conjurer. Sorry can't do that anymore.
Some illusions are in the rituals, so those are there, just handled a bit differently. Conjurers are *complicated*, and a big part of why I (and others) got frustrated with 3.x. The more stuff you, as a player, have on the board, the longer your turns and the more you have to take care of. The longer your turns, the more you slow down combat and take away from the fun of other players. Clerics and Wizards have some summonable help in the form of rituals, and some dailies. If you want more than this, just sit back and wait a bit. It's going to take the designers time to figure out how to bring this mechanic back in without breaking the advantages that 4e has.
4. There used to be different kinds of rogues. Facemen, thugs, conmen, cat burglars. Now every rogue (or anyone with the thievery skill) is just as good at picking locks as they are at picking pockets or disarming traps. What if I just want a pickpocket? I guess I can just ignore my characters other abilities.
This is directly addressed by my OP. What you see as a negative, I see as a positive. Now I can play a faceman, thug, con man or cat burglar without having to choose to suck at other rogue skills. I can opt to play a fun character archetype without knowing that mechanically I'm making the game more difficult.
Here's an example from play. Say you play the con man rogue in a party of 5, in a 3.x game. You're the "rogue", so you've got that spot covered in the group. Your character's fun, people are having a good time, everything's great when you're in town. Then you get into a dungeon, run into a trap or locked door and suddenly your awesome concept grinds to a halt. The party waits for you to do your normal rogue thing, but can't. You put your points in bluff, diplomacy and intimidate rather than pick lots or disarm traps. There's only so many people in the group, so when you took the "rogue" spot, everyone else picked fighter or mage or cleric or whatever.
Conversely, in 4e, I can *play* the con man archetype all I want. I can choose bluff and intimidate as my talky skills. But what I can't do is *not* take Thievery. If I'm playing the Rogue, I have to do what rogue's do. And thus the party, the DM (i.e. my friends) will thank me for doing my part in the game rather than getting irritated when I can't.
It seems to me that character creation in 4e was more about dumbing down the process and concentrating on miniatures fighting. Don't get me wrong, miniature combat is a great time but it is not roleplaying.
You call it "dumbing down", I call it something else entirely. The system is simpler, definitely. It's easier to make a character, easier to prepare a game as a DM, and easier to fix problems on the fly if you make mistakes at either of those things.
The set of people who enjoy spending hours of prep time either working on a character or setting up an evening of adventure isn't all that large. And that set of people is *tapped out*. I'd bet pretty much all of them have tried 3.x and figured out their opinions on it. The set of people who don't want to spend much time between games, who'd rather just *play* a fun, action-fantasy game is (I'd bet, and I'd also bet WotC marketing would support me on this) much larger and barely scratched. 3.X did exactly what it wanted to, and ran its course. As I've said, I'll miss some aspects of it. But the gains are far larger than the losses, for me.
The people who like the prep time, who like the complex rules of CharOp or designing their own monsters have their stuff and have had their time and their game.
4e does have some good stuff. Minions are great. I like some of the new monster special abilities. But I'm not too sure about character development. Why can't a fighter be artillery or a rogue the leader?
Because Fighter means "melee defender" and Rogue means "melee strker" in the 4e terminology. Classes are defined by what they do, not the other way around. I don't even know what you mean by "Rogue leader" (ack! Bad Star Wars pun alert!). Do you mean "Rogue who leads the party"? Or do you mean "Rogue with leader powers"? You can do both. But you're not going to find leader powers under the Rogue section of the book. That's what the Warlord is for.
