You don't like the new edition? Tell me about it!

[el-remmen]

Maybe my D&D is not the "True D&D",

There is no such thing as "true D&D".

(And why am I posting this in the "anti 4E" thread? Because I want to force everyone to accept and admit that his understanding of D&D is not the only true form, damn it! )

Yes, exactly what I was trying to get at when I said that 4E doesn't seem like it'd satisfy my D&D jones - the emphasis was there to emphasize that.

 

[GlassJaw]

While there are many, many (many) specific things I don't like about 4E, my main issue is with the high-level design goal itself.

4E made the classes extremely specific in what they can do and in doing so, made characters less customizable. Wizards are blasters. Period. You don't have the option of playing one any other way. No spell lists - all spells are abilities now. Creating an arbitrary ritual list instead of actually fixing spellcasting.

I also think the fluff and implied setting is weaksauce. Dragonborn, tieflings, tissueweave armor? Yuck.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, exactly what I was trying to get at when I said that 4E doesn't seem like it'd satisfy my D&D jones - the emphasis was there to emphasize that.

Your Emphasis can't be emphasized enough.

 

[Eldragon]

I was really quite excited about 4e. I'm not a huge fan of Vancian magic, but the massive spell selection and the raw power of the Mage made it worth it. So when WotC said they were switching to a Daily/Encounter power system I thought that was the right way to go.

But by cutting the spell selection down to 1/20th of what it used to be was a massive mistake on WotC part.

I see it like going to the doctor with a broken toe, and he fixes the problem by cutting off the foot.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If the rule doesn't work for you that's one thing. But please don't insult those of us who like the idea by mockingly calling it Regeneration. A well-reasoned statement that you believe characters are given too many healing surges per day for your tastes is much preferred over mockery.

Out of the thread now, vyvyan Basterd.

You probably shouldn't even be reading this thread, and it certainly isn't your place to come into this thread and attempt to convert people to your view.

 

[Aeolius]

4e is clearly marketed towards new players or amnesiac ones. Mentioning FR and DL as the first campaign settings? A nod to Blackmoor and Greyhawk would have been appropriate. 3e had a conversion manual. I easily adapted a 1e campaign into a 3e one. 4e wants everyone to abandon everything and begin anew.

4e clearly wants to tell you how to play and how to have "fun". I believe the quote was "It's not fun to make characters guess what a magic item is or try to use a magic item without knowing its capabilities." What a load of nonsense.

4e is supposedly even more combat-oriented and mini-dependent. I view that as a defect, but I'm sure those who view D&D as a vast battle arena will be overjoyed.

I could critique all of the entries missing from the 4e MM (locathah, sea elves, merfolk, greenhags, annis, sea hags, etc), but it would be countered with "they'll be in later editions" or "just make them up yourself".

I could always resort to my prior 4e concerns; loss of Greyhawk, no Mac port for the DDI applications, absence of prior core races and classes, and so on, but where's the fun in that.

I'm sure in 3-4 years, 4e will be almost as fun as 3e.

 

[Alzrius]

No trip.

No disarm.

No grapple.

Wasn't this the "more options edition"?

No.

4E has, to the best of my knowledge, never once been marketed as the option with more options. It was supposed to be the "more fun" edition. And that's pretty much my whole problem with it.

I could go on about things like the crippled alignment system, the near-total dearth of fluff or the utterly nerfed mechanics. But the basic complaint I have is, whereas 3.X was built under the "options, not restrictions" credo, 4E is "restrictions in the name of FUN" edition.

The marketing has been very clear on this. 4E has been extensively worked and playtested because the designers know what's fun and what isn't, and have thrown out everything that hinders the players getting to this goal. Restrictions have been gleefully implemented so as to better funnel players to this end. Except, as many people have noted, that's what's ruining it for a lot of people.

3.X was relatively broad in what it could do; 4E has sacrificed that to do one specific game-style very well. People who don't play D&D in that style, however, are pretty much out of luck.

Add in to that a lot of the other, related things I don't like (the design philosophy of deliberately holding back popular things to make supplements feel like necessities, the D&DI, the restriction-happy GSL) and it should be easy to see why I'm not at all interested in 4E.

 

[BryonD]

I don't like it because I am a world builder.

I want a game that is about making a cool world and then using that world to build cool characters in it. 4E, to me, is exactly the opposite. 4E is about building the characters and skewing the rest of the world to fit those characters.

I want a world where a monster is imagined and designed to be exactly whatever the DM sees it as. Not a world where its attack bonus and AC are confined to a range to match its level. Not a world where a monster might be a soldier if you meet it one time and a minion if you meet it another.

I want a world where gauntlets of ogre strength simply make you stronger. Being stronger means being stronger and then you deal with balancing that in the game, or not bothering to balance it, as best fits what is fun to you at the time. I don't want a world where gauntlets of ogre strength are simply as close as you can get to "stronger" within the the math constraints for a encounter expected to include level X items. I don't want anything to be defined by balance. I want everything to be defined by what it is and then have balance work backward from there.

I want a world where magic missle isn't just the wizard's version of a longbow.

I want a game which makes a world where the characters don't matter at all, and then leave it up to the players, including the DM, to make characters that make themselves matter.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I believe that it fails for you in the D&D part.

As an example, el-remmen has described what kind of things he likes from his D&D game. For me, they don't sound like the D&D I played, and I would want to play. Maybe my D&D is not the "True D&D", but what I prefer to think is that D&D can be different things to different people. It matters which edition they "grew up" with (if you can grow up with something at the age of 20) and they had the most fun it. (And if they never had fun it, they probably think of D&D as something bad and the bane of all good role-playing, and play Vampire or Das Schwarze Auge... )

And 4E so far doesn't fail to be D&D for me. But it might very well fail for you or el-remmen at being D&D.

(And why am I posting this in the "anti 4E" thread? Because I want to force everyone to accept and admit that his understanding of D&D is not the only true form, damn it! )

Here are my feelings on "true" D&D:

The only "true" D&D is OD&D (1974). This is NOT the edition that I grew up playing. It is "true" only because it is the basis for all other flavors. To use a food metaphor, OD&D is a basic hearty soup.

As new editions emerged, ingredients were added to the basic "soup" to provide added texture and flavor. Different combinations of ingredients were used to produce different flavored soups.

Everyone has thier favorite soup flavor which is the preferred recipe for D&D soup to them.

D&D 4E tastes like Mexicali Soup* to me. Too many ingredients were taken out for my taste.

*(Please read the short story of the same name by Kathryn Hitte to grasp my meaning)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Here are my feelings on "true" D&D:

The only "true" D&D is OD&D (1974). This is NOT the edition that I grew up playing. It is "true" only because it is the basis for all other flavors. To use a food metaphor, OD&D is a basic hearty soup.

As new editions emerged, ingredients were added to the basic "soup" to provide added texture and flavor. Different combinations of ingredients were used to produce different flavored soups.

Everyone has thier favorite soup flavor which is the preferred recipe for D&D soup to them.

D&D 4E tastes like Mexicali Soup* to me. Too many ingredients were taken out for my taste.

*(Please read the short story of the same name by Kathryn Hitte to grasp my meaning)

This is a good metaphor. I'd just adjust it to say that ingredients you preferred where taken out.

I think there is a very narrow core to D&D (basically the essence of what existed in OD&D(1974) ). This core can make something D&D, but it doesn't automatically make it a good game. Usually, each edition had more elements that helped to refine the game into something liked by enough people to become a success.

---

So, to finally say something actually on-topic, I think these are the things I dislike most:
- Lack of Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk and Sorcerer. They are not core to D&D, but I enjoyed their flavor in 3E, and I would have preferred to have them in the initial PHB. (But not at the expense of the Warlord.)

Yes, I know that this would probably increase the page count by 50 %. So what, I have the money for a more expensive PHB, and I can dream, can I not?

- Too many daily powers. I would have preferred less of them. I presume it won't cause any actual problems in game, nor do I know how they could be replaced with something better, but that's how I feel.