Buford
Well-Known Member
I'll start this off by saying... yeah, I'm a D&D geek. (You know, if the thread title didn't tip you off.)
I started with 3rd Edition right around when it came out, and have always stuck to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. When 3.5e came out, it was a minor upgrade that didn't drastically alter anything but made some things that were clunky in 3e work better, and our group switched over almost immediately.
I've been a player in a lot of campaigns, and have been co-DMing a two-player campaign with my wife for three years, so I'm pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the 3.5e system.
So, Wizards of the Coast has just released the 4th Edition of D&D... and I'm less than enthused. After doing rudimentary playtesting of the combat rules it looks like they are turning it into a pencil and paper World of Warcraft. The alignment system is dumbed-down, the old spellcasting method is completely gone, and everything you can do is based on a limited list of granted "powers" by your class that fall into a sort of tech tree. Granted, this makes wizards useful at low level, but it takes away their versatility. No more spell schools and school specialization, no more pure RP or utility spells, and no distinction like 3e had between sorcerer and wizard - all wizards can cast at-will.
The barbarian, bard, and monk classes are gone. Some of the new base races are twinked - tiefling used to have a level adjustment in 3e; and some are a case of "what?"... like elves not having an affinity for magic.
It's much harder to die in 4e than it is in 3e. 1st level characters are nowhere near as weak as they were in 3/3.5e, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. Saves and AC are now based on the better of two stats rather than one core stat which makes your stats less important in my opinion. And skills... skills are broken. Skills have been consolidated (not a bad thing in itself), but no longer do you take ranks in a skill - you're just "trained" or not. "Trained" is a flat +5 to a skill... and your bonus in all skills is 1/2 your level. This means that every character's skillset is practically identical and a high level character is good at doing everything. It's power inflation.
Monster stats are done a little nicer, as the old CR/EL system was terrible at best for estimating a monster's strength, so I do have to give it that.
Despite an attempt to simplify they managed to throw combat modifiers all over everything, which can get incredibly confusing. There used to be only a few standard non-class-specific modifiers that cropped up on a regular basis - charge, +2 to attack, -2 to AC until next turn; flatfooted, lose Dex bonus to AC; and bonuses from spells that last several rounds like a bard's song, etc. Now practically every class has a special power that grants a +2 to a particular target, or a +1 to damage until next turn if the character takes damage during the same turn, a +2 to AC only on Tuesdays with the purchase of a large drink, etc. Okay, I exaggerate on that last one, but it's a lot of one-round bonuses to keep track of that every class can pull out, and nothing is the same among them.
Anybody else play D&D, particularly 3.5e? Any thoughts on 4e?
I started with 3rd Edition right around when it came out, and have always stuck to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. When 3.5e came out, it was a minor upgrade that didn't drastically alter anything but made some things that were clunky in 3e work better, and our group switched over almost immediately.
I've been a player in a lot of campaigns, and have been co-DMing a two-player campaign with my wife for three years, so I'm pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the 3.5e system.
So, Wizards of the Coast has just released the 4th Edition of D&D... and I'm less than enthused. After doing rudimentary playtesting of the combat rules it looks like they are turning it into a pencil and paper World of Warcraft. The alignment system is dumbed-down, the old spellcasting method is completely gone, and everything you can do is based on a limited list of granted "powers" by your class that fall into a sort of tech tree. Granted, this makes wizards useful at low level, but it takes away their versatility. No more spell schools and school specialization, no more pure RP or utility spells, and no distinction like 3e had between sorcerer and wizard - all wizards can cast at-will.
The barbarian, bard, and monk classes are gone. Some of the new base races are twinked - tiefling used to have a level adjustment in 3e; and some are a case of "what?"... like elves not having an affinity for magic.
It's much harder to die in 4e than it is in 3e. 1st level characters are nowhere near as weak as they were in 3/3.5e, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. Saves and AC are now based on the better of two stats rather than one core stat which makes your stats less important in my opinion. And skills... skills are broken. Skills have been consolidated (not a bad thing in itself), but no longer do you take ranks in a skill - you're just "trained" or not. "Trained" is a flat +5 to a skill... and your bonus in all skills is 1/2 your level. This means that every character's skillset is practically identical and a high level character is good at doing everything. It's power inflation.
Monster stats are done a little nicer, as the old CR/EL system was terrible at best for estimating a monster's strength, so I do have to give it that.
Despite an attempt to simplify they managed to throw combat modifiers all over everything, which can get incredibly confusing. There used to be only a few standard non-class-specific modifiers that cropped up on a regular basis - charge, +2 to attack, -2 to AC until next turn; flatfooted, lose Dex bonus to AC; and bonuses from spells that last several rounds like a bard's song, etc. Now practically every class has a special power that grants a +2 to a particular target, or a +1 to damage until next turn if the character takes damage during the same turn, a +2 to AC only on Tuesdays with the purchase of a large drink, etc. Okay, I exaggerate on that last one, but it's a lot of one-round bonuses to keep track of that every class can pull out, and nothing is the same among them.
Anybody else play D&D, particularly 3.5e? Any thoughts on 4e?