Anybody else miss 3.5?

[O Senhor Leetz]

I haven't read this whole post, and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it, but 4E justed seems like WoW to me, it focuses more on the Game than the Roleplaying.

[Elemental_Elf]

To continue this girl analogy... Here's the Chorus from Mambo #5

A little bit of Pathfinder in my life
A little bit of Exalted by my side
A little bit of 4E is all I need
A little bit of Changeling is what I see
A little bit of GURPS in the sun
A little bit of Star Wars all night long
A little bit of Vampire here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man

I haven't read this whole post, and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it, but 4E justed seems like WoW to me, it focuses more on the Game than the Roleplaying.

WotC went that direction because everyone and their monkey's uncle derided WotC and how they shoved flavor down their throats. People wanted less flavor and more game from WotC because they (at least the vocal DM community) enjoyed creating their own flavor and backstory for classes, prestige classes, feats and spells. The end result was 4E's mentality of "here's the basics, make your own story." I find it quite ironic that a wholly different community of people complain about this change. :)

[O Senhor Leetz]

except with all these Powers and different, new Races, and, as far as I understand, tying in things like the Feywild and what-not seems like more flavor. I mean, I'm thinking about the 3E manuals, and about the only flavor they shoved was the super-generic Grayhawk gods and characters.

By the by, I'm not arguing with you, just raggin' on WotC. Heyo!

[Kindling]

But they are more like a girl I dated in High school; good memories...but I look for different things now.

Hilarious analogy.

Accurate analogy. I love D20, and although I'm too young to have played ODnD the first time round, I am really getting into a lot of indie OSR stuff that is coming out at the moment . . .  but really I'm only getting into it in terms of feel, in terms of aesthetic. For my mechanics, I'm looking elsewhere.

[Kalontas]

I haven't read this whole post, and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it, but 4E justed seems like WoW to me, it focuses more on the Game than the Roleplaying.

I think it's because they want to leave roleplaying to actual playing a role, as opposing to finding reasons for why you had a critical failure in Perform (Dance) or what does natural 20 on a climb mean. Sure it can lead to some funny or interesting results, but in the heart of it, that's not what roleplaying is about. It's about social interaction, and getting into the head of your character, as opposed to looking at numbers for another two hours.

[LordVreeg]

But they are more like a girl I dated in High school; good memories...but I look for different things now.

Hilarious analogy.

Accurate analogy. I love D20, and although I'm too young to have played ODnD the first time round, I am really getting into a lot of indie OSR stuff that is coming out at the moment . . .  but really I'm only getting into it in terms of feel, in terms of aesthetic. For my mechanics, I'm looking elsewhere.

I have had fun creating and running Accis.   I can pretty much run it with an occasional look at the wiki; fast, fun, great for pure 'adventure' based play.
But I like other rules for the social heavy games I really enjoy.

[O Senhor Leetz]

I haven't read this whole post, and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it, but 4E justed seems like WoW to me, it focuses more on the Game than the Roleplaying.

I think it's because they want to leave roleplaying to actual playing a role, as opposing to finding reasons for why you had a critical failure in Perform (Dance) or what does natural 20 on a climb mean. Sure it can lead to some funny or interesting results, but in the heart of it, that's not what roleplaying is about. It's about social interaction, and getting into the head of your character, as opposed to looking at numbers for another two hours.

that may be true, but I feel like 4E forced lots of "out of character" things "into character", like specializing roles. The great things about pre-4E is that classes only slightly define what your character does. A Fighter could be: a tough guy, a fast guy, an attacker, a defender. A wizard could be: fireball wizard, defensive wizards, handy but sort of useless spell wizard. But 4E sat us down like children and said "Here is a X Class, he is a Controller (or whatever they are called) and this is exactly what a Controller does, we made a nice chart in case you get confused." I'll do what I like with my character, thank you very much.

[Kalontas]

But you still had to make that choice with your character before - except now those choices have different names. Now the tough guy just isn't always described by "fighter", and you can still have martial strikers - with Essentials, you can have a slayer, who's pretty much a striker type of fighter. Those choices are still are there, except their names are changed - and now with less potential to gimp your character and make it useless, because all "tough guy" stuff is banded together.

[O Senhor Leetz]

But you still had to make that choice with your character before - except now those choices have different names. Now the tough guy just isn't always described by "fighter", and you can still have martial strikers - with Essentials, you can have a slayer, who's pretty much a striker type of fighter. Those choices are still are there, except their names are changed - and now with less potential to gimp your character and make it useless, because all "tough guy" stuff is banded together.

but thats the thing, the names are terrible and completely "breaks character"! In 3E, you could use the word fighter in character, you could use skill names and feats and it would be fine, but bringing things like Striker and Controller and all that goobley guck just seem terrible.

meh, maybe I'm old fashion.

EDIT: So yes, I do miss 3E.

[Lmns Crn]

In 3E, you could use the word fighter in character

and it would apply to everyone

[Kalontas]

In 3E, you could use the word fighter in character

and it would apply to everyone

That's one of the things I never understood about D&D - having a class named "fighter". I mean, even in the original roster (fighter, wizard, rogue, IIRC), everybody was doing some fighting.

[LordVreeg]

In 3E, you could use the word fighter in character

and it would apply to everyone

That's one of the things I never understood about D&D - having a class named "fighter". I mean, even in the original roster (fighter, wizard, rogue, IIRC), everybody was doing some fighting.

yeah, but the balance was different.  The rules were balanced on the plane of exploration...the fighter was the best guy in combat, or for an encounter.  The thief was the best guy for traps or sneaking or going ahead.  The cleric was the healing guy... and the mage was the jack of all trades (please read the old level 1 and 2 spells, like read lang, detect magic, hold portal, etc).
My issue was that 4e changed the roles to make everyone equal in combat, making the encounter the central part of the game...since it ws the level that the classes were balanced, as compared to 0D&D, which was balanced for the adventure, or AD&D, which was more balanced for the campaign (see what levels they can build keeps and such and how they attract followers).

[LD]

>>In 3E, you could use the word fighter in character
and it would apply to everyone

I agree with LC's statement here... that's one thing that really annoys me about 4E- every class is balanced to do the same amount of damage. It's fair, and it's good for a wargame, but it makes it a bit difficult to focus on the roleplaying when everyone is just as good at everything as everyone else- people don't really have niches.

>>A wizard could be: fireball wizard, defensive wizards, handy but sort of useless spell wizard. But 4E sat us down like children and said "Here is a X Class, he is a Controller (or whatever they are called) and this is exactly what a Controller does, we made a nice chart in case you get confused." I'll do what I like with my character, thank you very much.

Although I agree with you Leetz, to speak for the other side of the argument for a minute- in 4E you can do what you want if you're willing to make a suboptimal character. I run a Warlord who has very low constitution. I spent all his points in CHA, INT, and STR and went into the negatives on everything else. Yet, I CHARGE into every encounter (literally). It barely works for me because I can also usually charge away and most of my allies can heal me a lot (as I can heal myself) but it is possible to experiment a bit.

[Kalontas]

yeah, but the balance was different.  The rules were balanced on the plane of exploration...the fighter was the best guy in combat, or for an encounter.  The thief was the best guy for traps or sneaking or going ahead.  The cleric was the healing guy... and the mage was the jack of all trades (please read the old level 1 and 2 spells, like read lang, detect magic, hold portal, etc).
My issue was that 4e changed the roles to make everyone equal in combat, making the encounter the central part of the game...since it ws the level that the classes were balanced, as compared to 0D&D, which was balanced for the adventure, or AD&D, which was more balanced for the campaign (see what levels they can build keeps and such and how they attract followers).

As I mentioned before, I like that part of 4e, and think it was part of the point of changes. Have the rules define only combat, and have the actual roleplaying and utility not bound by spell names and numbers, leaving it to actually playing a role.
Then again, some people just took what is in the books (only combat) and run with ONLY it, but it's not the fault in the system, but its users, IMO.

[Kindling]

Switching to the "what's wrong with 4E" side of this, rather than the "aren't old editions of DnD nice" side, can anyone who has actually played 4E tell me a bit about the way skills work? From what little I've read about 4E the only real negative, as opposed to just whether or not something suits my personal preference, seems to be this idea of skill challenges, which I only vaguely understand, but seems a bit weird, at least from what I've read about it.