Why WILL you switch?

[Nightchilde-2]

I think it sounds like a better game than Third Edition. Fresher and more intriguing setting assumptions, cleaner mechanics which give players more interesting things to do at the table, everything.

This.

And I'm addicted to the new-shiny.

 

[Vayden]

Tons of minor reasons, but there are 2 big ones that stand out:
1) Death of Vancian spell-casting (stupidest, most annoying mechanic ever)
2) Straight Fighters supposedly being actually worth playing after 7th level

 

[Howndawg]

My reasons for going over to 4e:

- A lot more flavor than 3e. As fantasy goes, 3e left me feeling kind of dry.
- Getting rid of CR's and wealth by level.
- Divorcing role from concept. This was a bigger problem in 2e than in 3.x, where you had groups and all priests tended to be aimed as "leaders" whether it fit their concept or not. Now they can make a scholar priest a divine controller and not have to worry about it being a better fighter than the rogue.
- Alignment less metaphysical.
- Powers for fighters.
- Dragonforged warlords.

Things I dislike, but won't keep me away from 4e:

-No barbarians or druids in the PHB.
-Gno gnomes in the PHB.

 

[Raith5]

• Vancian spellcasting.
• Monsters that are time-consuming to prepare and hard to utilize. Our DM is smart, but forgets to use monster feats all the time. He's the improvisational type, not the hours of prep type.
• SoD spells and level-drains.
• Why am I playing a rogue when a wizard gets you all that and a bag of chips?
• Prestige Classes; narrowly defined campaign-specific fluff, or rules-breaking munchkinism? You decide!
• Use Rope skill. What's with that? Bondage R Us.
• Challenge Ratings - they never worked right.
• So many skills, so little skill points!
• AC and attack damage only goes up through itemization.
• Too much dependence on a cleric, who gets to run around healing every turn
• Iterative attacks and the AoO penalties discourage movement in combat. Why move when you'd give up 3 swings by doing so?
• Metamagic feats. Great idea, stupid implementation. "I foresee that I will need an increased range on my fireball spell later this afternoon, so I will memorize it that way in place of a more powerful spell". House-ruled right off the bat.
• XP cost for magic-item creation.
• Multi-classing gimps spell-casters.
• High level melee characters are weak compared to high level clerics, wizards, druids and sorcerers.

I'm aboard for these (well stated) reasons. The 4th ed designers have focused on the right problems with 3.5 IMO.

Simply the things I like about 4th ed - both in terms of mechanics and flavor - are big things and the things I think are lame about 4th ed (eg magic rings) are pretty small.

 

[The Little Raven]

Tell me about it, I sold $5000 worth of 2e stuff about a month before 3e came out. Even though the money was nice, I do wish I had kept all them books. Which is why I won't make the same mistake again

Cheers

PDF any book you own before selling it. That's how I retained a bunch of my old 2e stuff, since I needed money, but wanted the books to delve for inspiration.

 

[Fieari]

I never had troubles with the 15 minute workday as usually depicted, in that, I know how to keep the pressure on my players. But that just ran me into another related problem.

3.x combat is balanced such that the first three encounters of the day are cakewalks, and the fourth is the only one the really challenges the players. The fifth is nearly impossible, and not much fun.

My players don't get a fifteen minute workday, but they wish they did. The monsters keep hounding them, and they run out of resources, and for plot reasons, I can't let up on them... but they need to rest or combat is no fun anymore!

Furthermore, those first fights where the party has resources? They're too easy.

What I often end up doing, is arranging plots so that they only ever come across one monster per day, and that monster is a big nasty strong thing that takes up everything they've got right from the get go. But the game isn't balanced like that, so they've gotten used to the idea that the monsters I pit them against make almost every save, and they are going to fail almost every save. Which pushes them towards the WotC CharOp board for builds just to keep competitive, and we enter into an arms race that they can't win, since I'm the DM... and yet, it's not that I don't want them to win, I just want them to have FUN!

Frustrating enough that I've given up on 3.5e for a while. Waiting for 4e EAGERLY.

Other bonuses? Sane epic-level rules (I'm a follower of Upper_Krust, after all). Defined roles with different power sources for thematic reasons. Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. Options built into the rules (want even less magic items? Give inherent bonuses!) The list goes on.

Things I'm wary about? The flavor of ability names isn't generic and descriptive enough for me. I'm very utilitarian when it comes to ability names. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that it'll be harder to allow a player to play as a monster race, but I'm sure U_K and/or others will be able to find a way to unify the monster and PC rules to make them playable. I also despise the notion of 1-1-1-1 diagonal movement (as I've mentioned in the relevant thread), but that an easy house rule too, so it won't stop me from buying, I'll just be unhappy it's there.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

It simply fits with my style of gameplay more/the world is more akin to my kind of fantasy world.

Also a big thing is it is better able to have low-magic campaigns. That right there is a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE boost toward 4e for me.

Also the possibility of no-class D&D is quite nice as well.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Go-faster stripes.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Just as a counter-thread to those giving their reasons for not switching to 4e, I might as well make a thread for those of us that DO plan to move on to 4e, and why you are making the switch.

A lot of the new rules look positive to me.

Magic-less rangers. (But they probably are still wedded to a TWF combat path. I hope there's more than two paths available.)

Easier-to-make NPCs. Character class options I'd like to see that weren't available before. The warlord class looks awesome. Azriim can actually appear in the game!

A d20 Star Wars SAGA-like skill system. Ability to use "non-class skills" without multiclassing. Or so I've heard. If that's the case, it'll be better than d20 Star Wars SAGA, and I'll steal it for Modern too.

Lengthening the sweet spot. Balancing mages so they don't suck at low levels. (Hopefully they'll also balance them so they don't rule at high levels, too.) Mages (and other characters) can do stuff every round. I think they're also fixing annoying spells like Invisibility and Teleport.

Making alignment less important in the rules.

Easier-to-assign and fewer magic items. The system makes it easy to remove magic items if that's the kind of campaign you want to run.

Characters can boost their AC scores without magic items. Yes! That's one of the biggest draws when it comes to d20 Modern.

Removal of iterative attacks. (I hope they don't go crazy with the "take two attacks at -5" feats. Considering how high AC values look in 4e, they'll probably be useless, but with my luck all my players will gravitate towards them.)

Monster roles codified. Monsters designed to take on an entire party. On a related note, the new dragons look much better. The new pit fiend looked better in some ways only.

Easier-to-assign XP.

Fixing FR.

Probably other things I haven't thought of yet.

 

[Remathilis]

Cuz I'm a sucker for upgrades (even Vista)

But more to the point, I've fallen in love with SW Saga, and if if 4e is anywhere near Saga in its simple brilliance (minus some kinks in the math) I'm on-board 110%.