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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6094183" data-attributes="member: 42582">This doesn't bother me in itself - it's a combination of design priorities plus retro-oriented marketing.I don't see a lot in common between Next backgrounds and 4e backgrounds. They seem in many ways closer to 2nd ed kits. And in my view they are far and away the most interesting thing about Next, especially when combined with the stat + freeform descriptor approach to skills.  [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] was taking roughly this sort of approach to skills in his 4e game three or four years ago, and I think it makes a lot of sense and has the potential to drive some very interesting roleplay. It also seems to me to have the advantage of being a system that can appeal both to the "old school" strong GM force crowd, and to the "indie" player-driven with GM-introduced complications crowd. (I suspect it may be unpopular among the 3E "don't really like GM adjudication" crowd, though.)Specialties seem to me to have less in common with themes, or at least to straddle a number of different features of 4e - elements of theme, elements of feats, elements of power selection (including skill powers), elements of paragon paths. Because 4e has so many moving parts it is probably more flexible and allows greater focus in PC building, but that's just a consequence of greater complexity. Specialties in Next neither excite nor irritate me!Advantage, finesse weapons, mental stats for magical attacks and bloodied all strike me as pretty minor (and mental stats for magical attacks really has its origin in 3E and the stat adjustment to saving throws, I think) - which isn't to say they're objectionable at all, but (a bit like turning THACO into an ascending attack bonus) I find them hard to laud as design innovations - though using advantage-as-reroll in the context of bounded accuracy is undeniably a clever departure from the D&D norm of additive bonuses.Of the features you mention, at-will spells and hit dice are the ones that come closes to my central concern:This is what I'm most focused on, because for me this is where 4e just continues to deliver session after session, and to really show its strength.And at the risk of repeating myself, it shows itself in multiple, versatile ways. There's the in-combat pacing that results from the imbalance beteen PC and monster hit points and damage output, counterbalanced by PC depth in encounter/daily powers and healing resources. This assymmetry is itself a source of tension and drama in play, and the need for players to cleverly exploit the action economy to access their resources adds in another dimension.But on top of that there's the daily cycle, which can be approached in a range of viable ways - frequent resting (which makes milestones less important and daily use more frequent), limited resting (which makes milestones and healing surges very important and encourages rationing of daily powers) and other, intermediate options. And because of the rough equivalence in player resource loadout over both the per-encounter and the per-day cycles, however a given group tackles this, or if a group's pacing here varies over time, the balance of effectiveness across players remains pretty stable. And the dialling back of the wizard's ability to seize control of recharge pacing (via Rope Trick, teleport and the like) means that the game (at least as I've played it now up to the top of paragon tier) doesn't cause a "default solution" - 15 minute adventuring day - to fall out automatically - but even if it did, the PCs would still be comparably effective.My biggest concern with Next, from the point of view of 4e-style play, is the assymmetric class design which mandates a particular XP-length "adventuring day" to ensure balance, in combaination with an apparent return to wizard powers that can disrupt this pacing, making for an unhappy contest between player and GM authority over pacing. Wizard at-wills don't seem to me to be a big enough part of the wizard's payload to incentivise things back the other way.Hit dice I just find a bit weird. They look like healing surges, although harshly rationed compared to 4e. Except you can't unlock them during combat. And out of combat you need a "healer's kit", which (i) costs almost nothing, and (ii) contains 20 uses, and (iii) with each use can permit an unlimited number of hit dice to be spent. I gather this is meant to preserve verisimilitude, but I find the notion of a band-aid's worth of healer's kit being more effective at healing than a cure critical wounds spell hurts rather than supports my suspension of disbelief. If the game is going to abandon "plot point" hit points and the inspirational healing that goes along with that, I'd rather it did it with gusto, and made healing with a "healer's kit" a bit more verisimilitudinous. (I'm thinking RM or RQ, or even the 1d3 from First Aid in the old AD&D proficiency system, which was a bit wonky on 0-level NPCs or 1st level thieves and wizards but was otherwise a token amount that would seem to fit well with most hit point loss being serious meat ablation.)And as I've been posting on some fo the recent healing threads, I think the uncertainty about healing is reflective of deep uncertainties about how the adventuring day pacing is going to be enforced, and whether or not ingame time is a player resource.</blockquote>

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