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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 4098086" data-attributes="member: 8863">I think these three are what bothers me the most.  I like the traditional stuff even though some may hate it.  Along these same lines are the exclusion of classic elements like the druid and frost giant that are pretty popular and seem to be set aside at least in part to generate future hardback sales.  I don't like the idea of something being left out that I either have to wait to use or homebrew it only to have it shot to hell by a later release.  And I understand that WotC wants to sell books, but there's also always been a tipping point where x number of books was too many and made the game cumbersome.I agree with this analysis.  I think that's another big thing.  A lot of us in the geek subculture do get pretty defensive, but we do invest a lot in our hobbies, and so we get upset when things get shifted around and made unfamiliar.  That arguement's been around since 3e.  And I've always viewed it the same way.  D&D grew out of wargaming, so wargaming is hardly an alien element.  People have used miniatures for play since the beginning, and personally, I'd prefer the rules to at least acknowledge that enough so that people using minis can use them in their games without serious problems.  And besides, if WotC can use the mini game to generate profits without having to crank out too many rule books or new editions too soon, then by all means they should do so.I'll miss Vancian magic, but it's not a shocking change.  That's always been a hated element of the game by at least a very vocal minority.  And perhaps not even a minority.  Prior to 3e, the big argument was "why does the character hith the highests Int have to keep memorizing spells that he just forgets?"  Replacing memorization with preparation in 3e handled that argument well, but people continued to hate Vancian for other reasons I guess.  One thing Vancian magic handled poorly were the types of spells that take casters days to set up and cast.  Perhaps rituals will help evoke a style of magic that's not terribly uncommon in fantasy.The bottom line is that Gary originally put the Vancian magic in as a balancing factor.  Many games since have had different magic systems, and as long whatever 4e's system is reasonably balanced, then I'm not too worried.I don't pay too much attention to this stuff.  D&D's hit point system has always been abstract, and while there have long been detractors, it always worked well enough.  Sometimes too much realism hurts a game more than it helps.No more threats from single lethal hits at first level does remove an element of gameplay that's been around since the beginning too, but this might be overstated.  It's never fun to roll up a character and get killed by the first goblin the party encounters either.  Too many abilities at first level has a problem of potential frontloading.  If it's not bad frontloading, then I'm not sure if I care.I don't know how much of that I would actually agree with.  Resource management has often been overlooked in some of the games I played.  Keeping track of rations, mundane equipment, and common spell components (not stuff that had a set cost!) was frequently fudged over.  Some of it isn't worth the bother.  I didn't care about strictly tracking player equipment like the 50' of rope, the oil flasks, the 10' poles and the like because it just made more paperwork for me as a DM.  I did track magic items, because there were more serious game balance issues there.  Some of the supply tracking was also meant as a way to eat up a PC's gp, since in the old days, treasure granted experience points.  This lead to the vicious cycle of adventuring where the PCs loot treasure hordes, spend it on more gear and training costs, and then hit another horde so they could start all over again.  D&D doesn't need that to function. It's fine if the rules support resource attrition for groups that want it, but don't penalize groups that find it distasteful.  Actually, I feel the same way about minis.  Support for the players that want it while not hurting players that hate them.The big parties and tons of henchmen grew out of early D&D being marketed to wargaming groups that had a dozen or so members and thus would have larger parties of PCs.  But how many people play the game like this these days?  How many people grew up playing the game with 3 or 4 friends rather than two or three times as many players at once?  I'll agree that the lack of sacred cows (and the glee of some that holy bovines have been butchered) isn't necessarily a good thing.I don't know how healing surges will actually affect the game, but one disappointing aspect of the 3e dungeon crawl was its lack of viability.  The CR/experience system as written made a traditional big dungeon very hard to do, since it would tend to level up the party too quickly.  And it also got annoying when the players would blow all their spells on 2 or 3 encounters, then hole up in a room for 8 hours to "recharge", giving me two options. One, I could allow something that felt cheesy, or two I could be a jerk and throw wandering monsters around enough to make the dungeon unsleepable.   Perhaps both healing surges and the removal of Vancian magic will make the classic dungeon crawl more playable.  Of course another element of old school healing was the ubiquitous potions of healing while the game tried to keep magic items rare for balance.  Healing surges might be a more elegant approach than that.Well, in the old days PCs also ran from more encounters.  Unless the DM wanted to be an ass about that as well and ran them down.  It was always a matter of not going too deep and getting over your head either.  A more lenitent DM at least would hold up on wandering monsters if a party decided to head out instead of pushing their luck.</blockquote>

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