Posted By Kaya Kenobi on 06/03/2008 2:40 PM

All in all, 4e is a waste of time. I'm going to stick with 3rd edition.

Posted By MarioCleanstuff on 06/03/2008 4:49 PM
Note that I am not saying your opinions are invalid, but I am amused that you dislike the Cleric being powered down, but also complain about the Wizard being able to cast multiple Fireballs per encounter later in the post.

Anyway, if you want to stick with 3rd, then that's your prerogative.

Posted By Sean-Khan on 06/03/2008 10:29 PM
Well, no-one is forced to convert, there's huge amount of material for 3.5 and you can get more cheaply now... And then there's Pathfinder coming if you want upgraded 3.5

I still have no gaming experience of 4E, but I've been reading a lot. From what I've seen, nothing prevents a cleric from being that tank. He can use chainmail by default and buy feats for platemail. And there's a bunch of rituals, for cleric as well as for wizard.

And when thinking of rogues sneak attack, remember that no-one receives hitpoints like they used to (except for wizards, who got a boost depending on their con in 3.5). If you choose brutal version, you deal Weapon+Dex+Str+2D6 at first level. How is that weak? He WILL deal damage at later levels too!

Posted By GuJiaXian on 06/04/2008 6:50 AM

Kaya Kenobi, I must ask, did you know anything about 4e before you purchased the core rulebooks? This edition of D&D is mechanically very different than 3rd edition (or any other previous edition). That doesn't make it necessarily better or worse than other editions, just different.

There is, in fact, a "tongues" spell: the comprehend languages ritual. Also, spending a single skill point to learn an entire language never made any sense to me at all. Spending a feat still doesn't quite cover it for me (this is a freaking language here, people), but it better conveys the sense that learning languages isn't something you do overnight (and five or six at a time).

And, for the record, 4e does have level charts--well, a level chart that works for all classes. See page 29 of the PHB.

Posted By GuJiaXian on 06/05/2008 6:39 AM
For the record, Kaya, I've had my 4e core rulebooks for two weeks now (WotC Delegate here). We've known for almost a year that some sacred cows, such as wish and miracle, were gone (both were beyond broken in 3rd edition, even even less well defined in earlier editions).

Posted By GuJiaXian on 06/05/2008 10:22 AM

Oh, I won't argue with you that mechanically it's a VERY different (heck, completely different) game than it used to be. I figure that something like wish or miracle would be easy enough to house-rule back into the game as an insanely expensive ritual or something. Putting Vancian spellcasting back in just wouldn't work, of course. I see 4e as the latest iteration of a game that I rarely play strictly by the rules anyway. For me D&D is more about the epic fantasy roleplaying, and the opportunity to let my wife backstab something without me laying in bed at night wondering if she's about to knife me. :)

Posted By Kaya Kenobi on 06/05/2008 3:14 PM
That reminds me, why are there no metallic dragons in the Monster Manuel?

Posted By MarioCleanstuff on 06/05/2008 4:09 PM
There are no Metallic Dragons in the Monster Manual for the same reason there are no Frost Giants, no Iron Golems, no Rust Monsters, and no Air/Earth Archons, to name a few. They want to give us an incentive to buy the second Monster Manual, along with the third, fourth, and so on.

Posted By Kaya Kenobi on 06/03/2008 2:40 PM
I have the books in front of me, and I'm a bit upset with them.

I don't like the fact that there's no bard.

I don't understand what's so great about the paragon paths, and I don't understand why they changed the Cleric to be so limited now.

The Cleric was always a tank in the front lines, could heal and fight. Has now been limited to prayers and only a few "powers" instead of spells per day.

Overall, most of the classes/races seem to be "dumed down". It would take a lot of play testing to be sure. But it looks like WotC intended to make the different classes of about equal "strength". And decided to achieve this the simple way. By making them all, very similar to each other.

Posted By Puggins on 06/10/2008 12:53 PM
The near-universal feedback to this (somewhat justified) first impression is that the classes may look somewhat similar on paper, but they play dramatically different in the actual game.

Posted By XAos on 06/11/2008 6:14 AM


I'm obviously one of the not "near-universal" opinions. Various example why, follw;
When playing the characters, I saw a lot of superficial effects by abilities e.g;
A rogue attack resulted in a 4-square pushback on an enemy. But those differences were "near-universally" irrelevant to actual battle result. After the example pushback, the enemy had no difficulty in moving into position for it's next attack. So the rogue might as well have made a basic attack which just caused damage. 
Or; 3D10 damage from a lightning bolt which is very similar to 3D10 damage from a bastard sword with brutal strike.
Or; There are lots of melee attacks which "slow" the enemy, but if your close enough to hit with a melee attack, speed-2 (slowed) is probably adaquate for what your enemy wants to do.

In other words there are a lot of differences in the attack types of different classes, that actually make no significant difference to the result. There are very few attacks available to PC's which do tactically serious effects like "Stun" (I have so far spotted only 4 out of more than 1000 various attacks for the 8 character classes.

A rogue attack resulted in a 4-square pushback on an enemy. But those differences were "near-universally" irrelevant to actual battle result. After the example pushback, the enemy had no difficulty in moving into position for it's next attack. So the rogue might as well have made a basic attack which just caused damage.
Or; 3D10 damage from a lightning bolt which is very similar to 3D10 damage from a bastard sword with brutal strike.
Or; There are lots of melee attacks which "slow" the enemy, but if your close enough to hit with a melee attack, speed-2 (slowed) is probably adaquate for what your enemy wants to do.

What makes me laugh as well... Everything is now considered spaces. I don't use minis. And most of my players don't use minis. So we'd ignore that, and go to feet, but there it is... spaces.

Posted By Puggins on 06/11/2008 9:39 AM


That's just a conveniance for our metric friends. The rest of the world uses meters and finds feet rather quaint. To make things easier for everone, squares came to be used. Now a square is either 5 feet or 1.5 meters, depending on where you live- more universal, and it requires less editing when adapting the book to other languages.

Posted By GuJiaXian on 06/04/2008 6:50 AM
There is, in fact, a "tongues" spell: the comprehend languages ritual. Also, spending a single skill point to learn an entire language never made any sense to me at all. Spending a feat still doesn't quite cover it for me (this is a freaking language here, people), but it better conveys the sense that learning languages isn't something you do overnight (and five or six at a time).