Why did you quit playing 4e

[Remathilis]

Because 75% of my players revolted.

4e < old playgroup.

Long story short.

Option? I guess find new players...

 

[WarlockLord]

We hated the lack of character options, didn't want to buy more books, and got sick of long, boring, drawn-out battles. Pretty much the same as everyone else in this thread.

 

[Drowbane]

1. Game is to bland.
2. Not enough options for characters(Yes I know more books are coming out)
3. Balance is fine. 4e went way to far though, every class looks the same to me.

The above, also
4. 4e doesn't feel like D&D to me. There are alot of good fantasy RPGs out there that I don't play... 4e is one of them.

 

[Teflon Billy]

The first time I played it, I had fun. It reminded me somewhat of Descent.

The second time I played it, the powers were getting repetitive. It reminded me of an MMO, where I like the powers concept because of the ease of play. Since I'm not clicking a mouse when I'm playing tabletop, I don't need that particular mechanic to do cool stuff in combat. I also noticed that combats were really starting to drag.

The third time I played it, I was getting annoyed with powers, and my players were having a great deal less fun than we had with 3rd edition and True20. They also didn't like their limited class and race choices.

Finally, the books were not meant to be read. With 3E, part of the fun is sitting down and reading the thing while figuring out what you might want to add to your character.

I was initially looking forward to 4E, but it took very little time for that to be replaced with disappointment.

Wow...I'm not in Darrin's group, but that sums things up nicely for our group as well.

We switched off to Mutants and Masterminds for awhile and will be moving on to Warhammer in the new year.

 

[RFisher]

After reading about how they had fixed the 15-minute adventuring day, I thought it was really funny when our group decided that if a time is good enough for a short rest it is good enough for a long rest. ^_^

I am curious how many of the above posters really enjoy the high level wizard type classes in 3.5 as a player. I have played a high level wizard and found it wasn't for me, too many options, too many things I had to decide to use in the midst of combat. It was a chore for me and I did not enjoy it. I suspect however that many of the above do enjoy that level of complexity in their characters.

3.5 is not my D&D-of-choice. I recently did get a chance to play a high-level 3.5 wizard, however, and I did enjoy it.

My favorite class has always been fighter. 3.x bugged me because I liked the simplicity of the fighter and they added complications. It bugged me even more that those complications didn’t really allow me to flesh out my character the way I’d hoped complications would. In 3.x, I actually like the Aristocrat NPC class more than Fighter.

The 4e Fighter bugged me because it felt too much like playing a magic-user.

Second question, how many of the above posters are DMs of high level 3.5 games?

I enjoy playing 3.x, but I gave up DMing it before 3.5 came out. I’d just rather run B/X D&D instead. Nothing about 4e has given me reason to think I wouldn’t feel the same way about DMing it.

 

[Galloglaich]

3.5 is kind of swollen and I agree it's not fun to DM at high levels, but I never liked playing really high-levels anyway. In fact my main beef with 3.5 was that it seemed to shove all square, triangular etc. pegs into the same round hole of high-magic / high - level play. So I did think it was ready for a significant reform, but from everything I read about 4E it seemed like they were taking it in almost exactly the wrong direction (with the single exception of overall simplification which is a good idea) I expected 4E was going to be a catastrophe, without even the saving grace of the D20 / OGL escape valve.

From this thread it sounds like 4E is everything I expected and more.

G.

EDIT: I agree with a lot of other posters that Warhammer FRPG looks a lot more like the kind of game I prefer over 4E, I wish DnD had gone more in that direction...

 

[Iz]

I see that the 4E is not getting good publicity, but I agree with most of the flaws mentionned.

Oddly enough, though, I find that the amount of work put on the GM in order to prepare the battles (which in a way has been the 'basic' center of most D&D games in the past) is a lot lighter than in the previous 3/3.5 edition where it was getting rapidly tedious past level 10.

I have GMed 3.5 around leve 9 and it was quite tedious, not to mention that the battles were longue, that there were many options with both the players and with the many monsters. Also the CR was a complicated system, so I personnally though.

I suppose that it all depends on how you want to have your game played, we are a group that is much more RP focused, the first problem we noted with the 4E was the generalisation of skills, which was annoying and limiting.

The way we do things right now, we take the time to prepare battle of the 3.5 and transfer it to prepare good load of RP for the 4E. All in all it becomes interesting, since at first we thought that the skill challenges was quite a ridiculous concept, and yet you get used to it (after playing for months).

Here are the few RP options that we added:

Reputation: You get certain boni adding to certain people according to your character personnality, background and status. For instance, a level 6, pirate raised Rogue would get a +2 bonus (bonus adjustable according to level) for checks made against other pirates, sailors and portuary merchants.

Adding Skills: Though these skills cannot be used in skill challenges they give a flavour to the character and makes him more 'unique'. For example, my level 5 cleric was considered trained in navigation and had a racial bonus of +5. Nope, it's not too strong, but it lets him be good at something.

Attack/Spell Fluff: All the attacks and spells descriptions can be changed. Simple, and yet very efficient. Of course a evil cleric casting a beam of halo light with white feathers does not seem quite realistic.

RP solution to boring fights: Fights can get very long, very boring. It says in the book that an usual encounter should take more or less an hour. Hell! An hour! On a boss, yes, on a regular encounter, no way! We are encouraged to find solutions around fights (and still get the XP, sounds familiar) or to get rid of ennemies without fighting (boulders down a hill for example) and we are given XP for it.

Also we use our imagination a lot, and our GM might decide to solve a fight with a skill challenge, each describing their action and making a skill check instead of attack rolls, makes the game go faster and that way we don't need to take out the mat.

Finally, nothing stops a willing GM to create spells (why not?), races, classes. Eventually books will be out with more choices (I'm looking at you Complete warrior/mage/arcane/divine/...) but for the moment the system is new... you thus have to use your imagination for things like that. I think that the game is not so limited with the Paragon Paths, where you can make your character more what you want (sure its level 11 and thats far but it's not impossible). Paragon Paths, in my opinion, are better than Prestige class for they do not allow abusing and power gaming.

Anyhow, not big solutions, but it's important to be flexible with the rules and game as the GM and as players. The rules given in the books are only a core set, you're free to do whatever you want with them after.

All in all we did not quit playing and we're not bored with the game yet.

*yes I wasted my first post on this -.-*

 

[Plane Sailing]

I generally have to play the tank for the group so fourth is great for me. No more waiting for my turn and saying I swing my sword end turn.

Ive been playing 4th for about 4 months now maybe 5 and at first I was super pumped about being able to use different abilities during my turn. But those abilities tended to get repetitive so rather than saying I use X ability I would just say what my character does then roll and apply the proper mechanics. So the mechanics stayed the same but the flavor changed. There are a couple new players in my group that have never played any RPG before so once they saw me describing the actions they wanted to do it too. One guy went to attack a minion and only needed a 2 to hit so the GM just said ok its dead. But the player got angry that he didn't get to describe what his character did.

This is a thread for people who quit playing 4e. Seems like you are still playing it and enjoying it (which is great), but this isn't the thread for you!

Thanks

 

[Shazman]

I had similar experiences with 4E as the OP. My opinions of the game are as follows:
1) The game feels more like a board game/tactical minis game with MMO elements thrown in than an RPG. If I want to play a game with that limited depth, I'll play a video game.

2) The combats are bland, repetitive, and take way too long. The powers system is really repetitive, especially at low levels. Any round you don't do something special like use a daily or an actions point feels exactly the same as the previous rounds. Monster hit points and defenses are way too high compared to PC attack and damage capabilities, turning every combat into a long, drawn out slugfest.

3) The overwhelming emphasis on balance between classes and races coupled with the powers system causes all PC's to feel very much the same. There just isn't that much to differentiate your dragonborn paladin from your friend's half-elf warlord.

 

[Nebulous]

EDIT: I agree with a lot of other posters that Warhammer FRPG looks a lot more like the kind of game I prefer over 4E, I wish DnD had gone more in that direction...

If you took WFRP 2.0 and spliced it with some 1st edition magic items (and a few spells) you'd probably have exactly the kind of D&D game you were looking for. If the body count is too high just modify the crit system a little.