What's your take on 4th edition now that it's out?

[wulfgyr]

So now that the core books are out and people have played in demos or started playing in 4th edition games, what's your take on the new system?

What do you like about it and what don't you like about it? How do you think it compares to 3/0/3.5?

[joeshill]

I think Wizards has streamlined combat while at the same time making it more fun for all characters involved.

Everyone has options now. The fighter does more than "I Power Attack" "I Power Attack" "I Power Attack". The cleric does more than cast a couple of CLW's and try to smack with his weapon. The mage does more than 2 magic missiles and then spending the rest of the encounter yelling "Go Team!".

Yes, they effectively made everyone a warlock, but they made everyone a fun warlock with their own particular flavor. Race has become a bigger part of the game. Feats look to be less powerful, and more as stepping stones along the way.

Combat rules are much easier. Once you get over the 1-1-1 diagonal movement and the square bursts, you can actually enjoy the game. Tactics become much more important. The warlord beats the crap out of the old Marshall. (Wolfpack tactics are great).

In the end, the RPG is about ROLE-PLAYING. The tactical combat should only be one small part of that. What you do with your character shouldn't be any more limiting if you are playing 3.0, 3.5, 4, or even Shadowrun or Worlds of Darkness, or Heroes system. The Role-Playing is what makes or breaks a game, and that's dependent on the players, not the system.

But yeah, I liked DND 4 more than I thought I would. I'd really like to find a campaign of creative players who want to run with it.

[tomreed]

Well, we played last night and I am still not sure how I feel about 4E. The long time D&D players seemed to like the changes. Me, I''m not sure yet. I looked through another guys books while we were playing. No bard, no sorcerer, but now the Warlock is included. Don't get me wrong, I love the Warlock class. It just seems like a strange inclusion. And now we have Tielflings instead of half orcs.

At first I was excited to be playing a Cleric, but to tell the truth I felt kind of useless, what with everyone having healing surges.
It seemed like everyone was throwing some sort of spells last night.

It just seemed to me that they made everyone too alike.

[joeshill]

Hmm. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it as much as I thought you would. I thought the pre-generated cleric looked fun to play. The thing about everyone having healing surges is that they have to spend a standard action to use them, whereas what the cleric does is grant them the immediate use of one.

I know the bard and sorcerer and half-orc are missing. (As is druid.) I miss them too.

As I understand it, wizards plan for source books is to release different power sources. I think the next book is going to have Primal and two other power sources, and include races such as Gnomes and Half-orcs. The idea of Primal would be that it covers classes like barbarian and druid that get their power from something closer to nature than wizards or clerics.

I will stand by my feeling that the tactical combat is only one part of role-playing and that the player himself is responsible for making the game, good or bad.

[tomreed]

Well, to be honest, I wasn't in the best mood last night, so that probably had something to do with how much I (didn't) enjoy myself. Maybe running a premade character (one I had nothing invested in) affected me more than I thought.

[joeshill]

Yeah, I find I approach pre-made games a lot differently. Without anything invested in the character there is little motivation to seek new ways of doing things. So it's smack smack smack, are we done yet.

[anadverb]

I hate fourth edition and highly doubt that I will ever play it again. The way that it makes all of the classes exactly the same drives me nuts. Just slight flavor differences and a little bit of tactical preference are all that remain. It is true that options for warriors were somewhat limited in older D&D versions, but not everyone plays a warrior. I don't like the flavor of the physical abilities - you perform a slash across the face, then spinning around and slashing your opponents legs. That level of detail is not appropriate as an ability, when you engage in combat you take what opportunities are given by your opponent, not predetermined choreographed dances with weapons that are done whenever it is most beneficial to score an effective hit. I'm have mediocre feelings toward the methods they used to expand the abilities of the physical characters (the expansion of options is a positive, but I don't really like the method - I would rather see a substantial expansion of the feat system)

However, it is the castration of magical classes really irks me. The opportunity for a wizard to have a access to a wide variety of spells simply doesn't exist. It's true that a low level wizard has playability problems in regular D&D but a mid to high level wizard is rather interesting, and 4th ed just doesn't give that versatility.

4th ed has streamlined and simplified the rules, but I think that it has gone way too far. True, 3.5 had some complexities that took a while and a little effort to grasp, but that was part of the point. Personally I missed the hundreds of tables that you rolled for every single little thing from first edition. Each edition has lost rules and complexity from the editions before it, as well as homogenizing the classes, to the point that it is a completely different game that tries to cater to much to broad of an audience. First ed certainly had a problem in that each character was only remotely competent in one precise thing (it's pretty much impossible to make it through a dungeon without two theifs to detect traps - if they don't go first the whole party dies - and you need the second for when the first one fails a check and dies). Moving away from this sort of class differentiation was vital, but fourth ed has now gone as far towards class homogeneity as first ed was towards class orthogonality. The attempt is now to make it some simple game that is somehow "cool" to play, as opposed to the bizarre and complex game favored by socially awkward nerds and geeks. 3.5 contained a lot of practical fixes that made the game more sensible and easier (although I would favor certain aspects of 1st and 2nd be returned) and a more robust, refined, and balanced system be developed.

4th edition goes off in a completely different direction and I have absolutely no intention of following it. I have total faith that they will continue to go in a similar direction, so, as of 4th edition, D&D is dead to me (except for old tomes that I may pull of my bookshelves or dig out of my garage). I know that this isn't an opinion shared by the others commenting on this thread - so, to each his own I guess.