Why do YOU want a new edition

[Mouseferatu]

Clearly you have never seen some of the fighters I have. I just dont see how adding feats will help anything unless the feat becomes ,as a unit, a much less powerful thing.

Who said anything about adding feats?

Classes in 4E are built on an entirely different skeleton than 3E. It's not about taking the 3E fighter and adding feats, or even maneuvers. It's about taking the concept of the fighter, and rebuilding it in a format that takes maneuvers (and whatever other 4E includes) into account.

It's a mistake to think of 4E as "3E with added stuff." While there will be, no doubt, many similarities, it's a new game system. Judging 4E classes by how the classes were balanced or unbalanced in 3E is folly.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Clearly you have never seen some of the fighters I have. I just dont see how adding feats will help anything unless the feat becomes ,as a unit, a much less powerful thing.

Who says its just feats? I think that the ability choices that you make have to be lesser then the current feats or it would be a nightmare to run your character.

for Polymorph I honestly dont expect it to get better. The wording for those spells was caused by someone still working on the product now so itll be different but still will not quite work the way we need it to.

Well, it can't get any worse...

So how do you feel Crafting should work. The rules balance out the fact that you are getting permanent magic from your own soul. It works out. So you level a little slower, you have all this cool stuff.

Well, there's a lot of ways that it could be done. One way is it could be built right into the class. When I hit 10th-level as a Wizard maybe I get a magic wand or weapon that is there as a class feature. Here the balance plays out against other characters as that's now a perk of my class.

Maybe I do like law and rigidity, but you can have avaried concept now, and you will, i garuntee still have characters weaker than others basedon fear choice. Not all feats can be equal and if you want to deal the most damage you can im sure there will still be one feat path that if you focus on it will have you being a more powerful character than if you spread your feats out. That just how it works.Its the price of generalization.

Of course that will happen. Its the nature of the beast. Systems always have flaws and people always exploit them. Do you play with a bunch of rules lawyers that always take those paths? From your posting it seems like that's the case.

 

[psionotic]

I could literally write tons of these. My major points:

• Fighters were totally lame in previous editions. They finally get something interesting to do.
• Combat becomes more then I swing and swing again.
• Simplification of all of the rules makes my job as a DM and a publisher easier.
• Changing the balance of resource management to per encounter fixes all of the "I'm out of spells/rage so let's rest garbage."
• No dead levels means your character is always getting something cool to do.
• Talent trees for different classes means that no two characters will be the same.
• Re-jiggering the way magic items works means that my character is no longer carrying around 30 magic items.
• Assigning a monster a level that is equal to my character just makes sense.
• Making the math the same across all levels means I don't need to reboot my campaign once we hit high level.
• If I'm a 20th-level Wizard I get 20th level spells? Its stuff like this that makes as much sense as having to roll an opponent's Armor Class to hit them.
• The party is defined into 4 distinct roles and there are 2 class types that fill each role equally. Huzzah! There's an alternative healer to the Cleric.
• Rules like Grapple, Magic Item Creation, and Polymorph are just plain broken.
• Creating a character at 1st-level becomes an exercise in deciding my full concept and every Feat I plan to take all the way to level 20.
• Making a character for a game and realizing I didn't do the above because I wasn't sure and having to re-roll another character just to fit with the concept I decided to go with.
• Being able to play a Fighter/Wizard that isn't subpar in both.
• The thought of having a electronic edition of every book I buy that I can have with me wherever I go and is easily searchable brings tears to my eyes.
• Software support out of the box for a game that is numbers heavy just makes sense.
• Playing an Elf now gives me more then a +2 Dex and a -2 Con at 1st-level.
• Playing D&D with friends that are spread across the country anytime I want is awesome (now get going with the Mac support!).
• I'm bored with 3.5 and new products just don't excite me anymore.
• WotC product release schedule is brilliant. New PHB, MM, and DMG every year? Brilliant. Ditto a new Campaign Setting every year. Now I have something to look forward to.
• Anything that fosters conversations about D&D is a good thing.

Wow, I'm in total agreement with everything said here, but just to reinforce a point that I forgot in my initial post, that might be my biggest problem with current D&D:

Magic Items: I hate hate hate the expected current treasure/level mechanic. It drives me crazy that in long adventures, PCs end up getting dozens of +1 longswords. "Oh look, another one, throw it in the barrel..!" I would like a game system in which the default assumption is that PCs (and villians) don't have them, more importantly don't NEED them. The current DR system would of course have to be overhauled, but that's fine.

Magic items should be rare, highly sought after, and do something more interesting than "+1 to hit and damage." When the party comes across one, I want it (and that moment) to be special. I want magic items to be, well, magical.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Wow, I'm in total agreement with everything said here, but just to reinforce a point that I forgot in my initial post, that might be my biggest problem with current D&D:

Magic Items: I hate hate hate the expected current treasure/level mechanic. It drives me crazy that in long adventures, PCs end up getting dozens of +1 longswords.

I said something about this somewhere. There are so many damn threads I can't keep up with them. I think it was the sacred cows thread... Anyhoo, my point was that magic weapons should be magical. No plusses at all. My sword should be able to shoot lightning or be wreathed in flames. If you still want to have + weapons and items, I would relegate that to masterwork items.

 

[Li Shenron]

Magic Items: I hate hate hate the expected current treasure/level mechanic. It drives me crazy that in long adventures, PCs end up getting dozens of +1 longswords. "Oh look, another one, throw it in the barrel..!"

I hate this too, but if you think about it, it's not so much a fault of the "system", but rather of the adventures design.

So many times I've replaced all the miserable useless treasures scattered throughout an adventure with LESS but BETTER items of the same value. I don't understand why the designers keep scattering longswords +1 or ring of protection +1 or cloak of resistance +1 in lots of places...

 

[Riley]

Why do YOU want a new edition?

I want them to fix:
- spellcasting for multiclassed characters,
- the expected accumulation of lots of boring magic items, especially buff items, and
- wizards who want to rest for 23 hours and 45 minutes out of every game day.

Fix those, and the game's golden.

 

[Riley]

I hate this too, but if you think about it, it's not so much a fault of the "system", but rather of the adventures design.

It's the fault of the core rules, where the DMG tells us how many gp worth of magic items a character should have at a given level.


On a related note, I've just been sorting through an old pile of notes from my last 2nd edition campaign, and I'm amused by how few permanent magic items the characters possess:

6th level wizard: ring of invisibility, ring of shooting stars
7th level fighter: +2 bastard sword, +2 shield, continual-light-on-a-stick
7th level cleric: +2 returning hammer, +2 shield
7th level wizard: +2 and +3 daggers; bracers of AC 4; ring of shocking grasp; ring of jumping
7th level cleric: +1 plate mail, +2 spear, longsword +1 (+4 vs. undead), helm of underwater action
5th level barbarian: +2 short sword (she's an enlightened 1st ed barbarian, but she did once smash a talking sword)

It's also worth noting that by 3.x experience rules, these'd easily be 20th level characters. They gained levels slowwww .

 

[Li Shenron]

It's the fault of the core rules, where the DMG tells us how many gp worth of magic items a character should have at a given level.

Why do you think this translates immediately to having ten +1 rings of protection? It could easily mean bigger items in lesser number...

And by the way... the 4e (and 5e and 6e...) DMG will always tell us how many gp worth of magic items a character should have at a given level. There is no going back, because going back would mean "let the DM always decide" and that's definitely not the direction the game is taking.

 

[kmdietri]

I do not want 4e. What I want is continued support for 3.5e, the best DnD system. Period.

Here here!

 

[Campbell]

Why not?