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

[Khairn]

And if someone spends $30+ on a book it's kind of lame for the DM to just ban everything inside of it. There is a difference between "baninate" and "be a doormat" and "let your players use cool new stuff without actively trying to jack up your game".

In my experience, only inexperienced GM's or GM's who are deliberately trying to play a broken game allow players to use classes, feats and powers just because they bought a book. Power creep comes to almost every game once the publishers start with splatbooks.

IMHO WotC (and D&D) are the poster children for the unbalanced nature of splats. A perception that I would be willing to bet money on that will only grow as new splats, new PHB's and 3rd party publishers hit the store shelves.

You say its lame for a GM to ban the content of a book his player has bought. I say its lame for anyone. player or GM, to include any power, class feat or ability simply because its in a book. The GM needs to be clear at the start of his game on the books, classes and feats that will be included. Then he should carefully look new material over before allowing them into his game. If he isn't careful, that new power that just came out in WotC's new "Book of Uber-Powers" could very well break his game.

 

[Andor]

In my experience, only inexperienced GM's or GM's who are deliberately trying to play a broken game allow players to use classes, feats and powers just because they bought a book. Power creep comes to almost every game once the publishers start with splatbooks.

IMHO WotC (and D&D) are the poster children for the unbalanced nature of splats. A perception that I would be willing to bet money on that will only grow as new splats, new PHB's and 3rd party publishers hit the store shelves.

You say its lame for a GM to ban the content of a book his player has bought. I say its lame for anyone. player or GM, to include any power, class feat or ability simply because its in a book. The GM needs to be clear at the start of his game on the books, classes and feats that will be included. Then he should carefully look new material over before allowing them into his game. If he isn't careful, that new power that just came out in WotC's new "Book of Uber-Powers" could very well break his game.

Almost every 3e game I've played has been "All Wotc books allowed." It hasn't been a problem. And if you think 3e is the posterchile for unbalanced splats... all I can say is you never played Rifts.

 

[Khairn]

Almost every 3e game I've played has been "All Wotc books allowed." It hasn't been a problem.

You sir, are a better (and braver) man than me !

If D&D is the poster child ... that makes Rifts the deified paragon of power creep in gaming supplements.

How's that?

 

[megamania]

3.5 works very very very well. The possibilities are nearly endless. So why "fix" it?



answer greed. My wallet is speaking for me.

 

[Alzrius]

3.x multi rules ARE broken. It is a fact, if you want to acknowledge it or not. A bard3/monk4 is the same CR/EL as a barb4/fighter2. Seriously, give me a break.

How about you give us a break? Seriously, the "fact" that some rules are broken is an opinion of yours, and nothing more.

And if someone spends $30+ on a book it's kind of lame for the DM to just ban everything inside of it. There is a difference between "baninate" and "be a doormat" and "let your players use cool new stuff without actively trying to jack up your game".

Maybe the person should have checked with their DM before buying it? Plenty of DM's I know say "nothing outside the Core Rules unless I approve it first" and then will be unafraid to say "no" when the player asks for something from another book.

But that's not the point. The point is, this thread is about airing what we don't like about the new edition. Stop making this into a debate about 3.5 versus 4.0.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

You say its lame for a GM to ban the content of a book his player has bought. I say its lame for anyone. player or GM, to include any power, class feat or ability simply because its in a book. The GM needs to be clear at the start of his game on the books, classes and feats that will be included. Then he should carefully look new material over before allowing them into his game. If he isn't careful, that new power that just came out in WotC's new "Book of Uber-Powers" could very well break his game.

You Sir are a wise man. This is one of the first things I tell any new GM. Any game I run has a set list of allowed books and other stuff is only allowed after it has been carefully looked over and picked apart.

 

[pawsplay]

And if someone spends $30+ on a book it's kind of lame for the DM to just ban everything inside of it.

Not if it's the Book of Exalted Deeds. But seriously, I wouldn't bring a copy of Rifts to a D&D game and demand we all play Rifts because I bought it, why would that logic work with any particular D&D book?

 

[FriarRosing]

My list of dislikes isn't that long in comparison to other peoples. There's some stuff I like, I'll admit, and there's some stuff I dislike, but I'd assume that's true of everyone.


Really, this is more or less what everyone else has already said, but that doesn't matter.
Dislikes:

1. The Artwork: I just think the interior art in this edition is really crappy in comparison to the last one. This was really the first thing I noticed. All of the illustrations of the classes and races just seemed really dull and I'm rather annoyed with the amount of recycled art in the Monster Manual. I can admit, though, that I do like the cover design a lot more than 3rd edition.

2. No Barbarian or Druid: I really like the more "savage" or nature based classes, and while we still do have the Ranger, I feel like that niche still isn't really filled. I miss my Druid . I know they're supposed to fix this with the next PHB with some nonsense about "Primal" Power sources, and that sounds fine, but I'd rather have had it now. Because, personally, I find the Warlord kind of stupid. I don't really think it was necessary to put him in this one. I guess they needed another class to fill the Leader (is that what it's called?) role, but I'd certainly have preferred something more traditional.

3. 3 Elf Type Races: Do we really need three types of Elves? Do people love Elves that much? So much that we get three of them but no Gnomes or Half-Orcs. I don't even like Half-Orcs that much, but I certainly like them more than an assault of redundant Elves.

4. POWERS!: I'd like powers a lot if they weren't all so similar between classes, and if they hadn't made spell casting not feel like spell casting anyway. Well, maybe they still feel like spell casting, but not D&D spell casting.

5. Everything Feels Artificial: At least, it feels artificial from a relative sense, because certainly everything in a roleplaying game like this is made up. I just mean that everything is organized perfectly and fits in an exact mold and in an exact spot. Some people might like this, and I can certainly see the logic behind in terms of game balance, but I personally kind of feel like it makes the game feel more superficial for some reason. Or like it lacks mystery. It makes magic feel like it's not supernatural. Something like that.


Now just a thought on so-called "Sacred Cows":

I don't mind change, and I personally was looking forward to a new edition, and overall I actually do like this one for the most part. But, I think a lot of Dungeons and Dragons is defined by tradition. It's been around for a long time, and even though it's gone through many changes in its lifetime, there have always been things within the game that stayed put and were always recognizable. You can fiddle with various aspects of the game all you want, but a lot of D&D is its tradition, and I do think that "slaughtering" these "sacred cows" wasn't necessarily the best idea they could have had. Especially when they could have just altered pre-existing things they might have had issues with. Fantasy is about recognizable archetypes, and that's reflected in D&D. The tradition of Dungeons and Dragons is important, and while I'm totally okay with adding elements to it, I think you should definitely think before taking elements away. You need to think about how it will affect the flavor, look and appeal of the game. I don't know, maybe they decided that gnomes won't sell, or figured who the hell wants to play a barbarian? But I doubt it. For me, I don't mind a lot of changes. Vancian casting? Whatever. Saving throws? Go ahead, make them defenses. Gnomes, bards and druids? Why would you get rid of enduring elements of the game and replace them with goofy, cartoonish nonsense like Dragon people? Especially whose females, while supposedly repilian, possess mammary glands.


But no, I do like 4th edition and I'm excited about it. There are just a few things that rub me the wrong way.

 

[Felix]

All the reasonable stuff has been said, over and over, ad nauseum. LOL you should pay more attention.

Ah. Yes. "LOL".

So after reason has been attempted, we should abandon it for name calling. Brilliant.

None of it is actually reasonable remember? We are afraid of change, or just dont understand the new paradigm and once we do we too will fall to our knees and worship at the idol of 4e because its so much better.......

And I'm sure some folks are afraid of change. It's only a matter of how they digest these changes and expel that digestion back into the world.

I don't like the change in these forums: the Rules forum has split, and traffic is way down for the 3e rules; I used to spend a lot of time there, because that's where the rules discussions were. 4e didn't maliciously take the Rules Forum from me, it's simply a result of its existence that people are discussing other rules.

I don't like the loss of Dungeon and Dragon: I have a magazine rack next to my porcelain throne where I have my old issues; those issues will never be updated.

I don't like rabid edition-warring name calling, on either side: that's what we had on these boards for a good while until the moratorium.

I don't like one of my groups going 4e: the campaign we have can't be converted 1-to-1. So we start a new campaign instead, with the loss of character development, backstory and ass-kickery; my half-orc bard/dread pirate will be sent to see old Hob, and such a loss!

All of those changes are incidental to 4e, and have nothing to do with the merits of the system itself. And yet those changes have a real effect on my enjoyment of DnD. So it's not unreasonable for 4e proponents to accuse detractors of hating 4e for reasons unrelated to the system unless those reasons are explicitly stated in your posts. Calling it a heap of rubbish (which it may indeed be) doesn't mean anything if you don't elaborate on why it is a heap.

I suppose i'm bitter because i was really looking forward to a 4th edition. Alot of the early stuff when it was just ideas sounded good to me. Its the execution of those ideas that sucks. Like the guy before you said, its probably a perfectly good board game. Unfortunately that sucks in my opinion.

Yeah. Poor execution for some of the designs. Some of the design ideas were clever; the racial bonus progression that was dropped was the big one for me.

But in an effort to be reasonable and rationale, i thought about posting a list of my dislikes, problem was it was ridiculously long.

The infinite aether of the interweb has enough room for your ridiculous dislikes. Actually, I somewhat curious: with the vitriol you heaved at 4e, I'm interested to know what the big stumbling blocks for you are.

 

[fuzzlewump]

How about you give us a break? Seriously, the "fact" that some rules are broken is an opinion of yours, and nothing more.

Yeah, you pretty much ignored his point there. The freedom of 3.5 multiclassing lead to a huge variance in the end result. Those who didn't optimize but wanted to play a certain type of character, such as a core bard/core monk took a beating. Those who optimized, losing the original concept in a slew of dipping into classes and prestige classes, ended up being very powerful. Even in the core, there is a wide variance in power, like his bard/monk versus fighter/barbarian example. The fact is that a fighter/barbarian has a much higher chance to defeat monsters of his level than a bard/monk. If you disagree, please give examples.

From what I can tell so far, the 4E multiclassing system is a step in the right direction for the overall wellbeing of D&D. Whenever I tried to bring new players into D&D, they definitely did not want to bother with getting the exact right skills and feats so they can dip into a prestige class later and have the right set of abilities to perfectly coincide with a level a certain class later on. I mean, I didn't even want to bother with it, but I had the willpower to do it a few times. 4E gives you narrower multiclassing choices that as a result do not deviate as strongly from the fragile line of power that exists in all editions of the game.

This isn't to say that fun can't be had from making these multiclassed characters and playing them, because when it came down to it, it was fun to have an multiclassed character with tons of options. But, the problem is, I'm having more fun playing 4E as it is and spend way less time in preparation. Perhaps this will lead to a game even more shortlived than 3rd edition, but I am willing to take the risk.