It's time for another "Good Idea, Bad Idea"

[The Sigil]

Or, here are some things I think 4e got "right" and some things I think it got "wrong." This is all my opinion, your mileage may vary.

RIGHT: Artifacts. They are now almost like major NPCs in their own right, and have goals, objectives, and (most importantly) are to leave the campaign once that goal is completed. They are no longer "uber magic items." I love this treatment of them.

WRONG: Healing Surges. Hit points have always been "a measure of how tough something is to kill (via sheer toughness, luck, skill, or some combination thereof)." Healing surges really spoil this for me, because this level of abstraction - which has been around since the beginning - is lost. Clerical magic had the "it's magic" explanation (and was in character for a priest) in previous editions. Yes, I know the cleric had to spend all his time healing. But healing surges just don't do it for me. Sorry.

RIGHT: A well-balanced, thinking man's combat system. You all but HAVE to cooperate, and it's fairly important to use tactics and work as a group - instead of the old system where, by and large, everyone kind of picked a foe and started slugging away until somebody dropped. There is far more tactical depth in this system.

WRONG: The washing out of skills and removal of everything non-combat that provided differentiation of characters. I liked that my samurai could have a non-weapon proficiency of calligraphy or growing bonsai trees.

RIGHT: Re-mixing spellcasting abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. The sorcerer in 3E was the first step this way, and the Vancian system is now more or less gone.

WRONG: Re-mixing martial abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. NOT because of the lack of realism, but because it makes every character more or less the same... as a pack of magic-card-like abilities that by and large "break the normal rules." That feel just seems kind of "eh" to me. I liked when fighters played "by the rules" with attack rolls as combat machines, wizards played "make them save" with spells, rogues/thieves played "use the skill system" and clerics did a little of all of the above plus turning. Now the fighter's "Exploits" play more or less the same as the wizard's "Spells" and the cleric's "Prayers." Some probably like the homogeneity. I liked heterogeneity. Just a taste thing, I guess.

RIGHT: Changing attacks to be vs. AC, Ref, Fort, or Will. Rolls the "saving throws" into the "attack" operation and more or less drops the calculating Touch AC, Flat-footed AC, etc.

WRONG: Starting characters are too powerful. I *like* the paper-weak 1st and 2nd- level characters of previous editions who had to really FEAR even the lowliest foe. Levels 1-3 in previous editions provided a MARVELOUS opportunity for characters to gain "real" neophyte experience and the likes and dislikes shaped then can really make for great opportunities for character-shaping down the road. Of course you can role-play having gone through the character's first steps as a proto-hero before he was really a competent adventurer, but it's not quite the same as actually going through it.

Just thoughts I wanted to bump off my chest. Nobody else has to agree or disagree with me.

 

[der_kluge]

I think you managed to put into words what I felt far more eloquently than I.

If someone could produce a system that fixed all your wrongs, and kept all the rights, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

 

[Wormwood]

Right: Increased focus on team play and character customization (e.g. wish lists, easy item creation, and retraining).

Wrong: A little too much focus on interaction with the battlemat.

 

[Andor]

Right: Disassociating HP and level. There is no reason a giant or whale has to have a huge hit bonus just because it is tough.

Wrong: Making gameplay static. One of the things that brough a real feeling of accomplishment in D&D was the changing nature of your characters abilities and means of interacting with the world as they grew in level. With 4e's empahsis on the sweetspot math, the gameplay seems like it's the same all the way from 1st to 30th level. Oh wait, you might be able to fly. For 6 seconds. Once a day.

 

[Asmor]

I *like* the paper-weak 1st and 2nd- level characters of previous editions who had to really FEAR even the lowliest foe.

I don't see why everyone always takes grievances with 1st level characters being made tougher, and conveniently forgets/neglects that "even the lowliest foes" have also been made tougher.

If anything, I'd say a level 1 character has more to fear from a level 1 kobold in 4th edition than he did a CR 1 kobold in 3rd edition.

 

[Agamon]

RIGHT: Artifacts. They are now almost like major NPCs in their own right, and have goals, objectives, and (most importantly) are to leave the campaign once that goal is completed. They are no longer "uber magic items." I love this treatment of them.

Not a right or wrong for me. I'd rather all magic items were more like artifacts, though maybe not quite this far.

WRONG: Healing Surges. Hit points have always been "a measure of how tough something is to kill (via sheer toughness, luck, skill, or some combination thereof)." Healing surges really spoil this for me, because this level of abstraction - which has been around since the beginning - is lost. Clerical magic had the "it's magic" explanation (and was in character for a priest) in previous editions. Yes, I know the cleric had to spend all his time healing. But healing surges just don't do it for me. Sorry.

IMO, not only does this keep the abstraction, but it makes it more implicit than it's ever been. I love how easy it is to describe an attack's result now. A right for me.

RIGHT: A well-balanced, thinking man's combat system. You all but HAVE to cooperate, and it's fairly important to use tactics and work as a group - instead of the old system where, by and large, everyone kind of picked a foe and started slugging away until somebody dropped. There is far more tactical depth in this system.

Agreed. Tactical depth to combat encounters equals win.

WRONG: The washing out of skills and removal of everything non-combat that provided differentiation of characters. I liked that my samurai could have a non-weapon proficiency of calligraphy or growing bonsai trees.

A major right for me. If a player of mine wants fluff, I'm happy to be able to oblige him without making him decide on whether to spend PC building points on it and take it away from something that makes his PC more useful, or just including it as part his description.

RIGHT: Re-mixing spellcasting abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. The sorcerer in 3E was the first step this way, and the Vancian system is now more or less gone.

Agreed. The sorcerer and warlock paved the way. Good stuff.

WRONG: Re-mixing martial abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. NOT because of the lack of realism, but because it makes every character more or less the same... as a pack of magic-card-like abilities that by and large "break the normal rules." That feel just seems kind of "eh" to me. I liked when fighters played "by the rules" with attack rolls as combat machines, wizards played "make them save" with spells, rogues/thieves played "use the skill system" and clerics did a little of all of the above plus turning. Now the fighter's "Exploits" play more or less the same as the wizard's "Spells" and the cleric's "Prayers." Some probably like the homogeneity. I liked heterogeneity. Just a taste thing, I guess.

Don't really agree, but like you say, it's a taste thing. I do like the balance this brings, while still leaving each power source and role their own flavor.

RIGHT: Changing attacks to be vs. AC, Ref, Fort, or Will. Rolls the "saving throws" into the "attack" operation and more or less drops the calculating Touch AC, Flat-footed AC, etc.

Yep, more fun for the player, less work for the DM.

WRONG: Starting characters are too powerful. I *like* the paper-weak 1st and 2nd- level characters of previous editions who had to really FEAR even the lowliest foe. Levels 1-3 in previous editions provided a MARVELOUS opportunity for characters to gain "real" neophyte experience and the likes and dislikes shaped then can really make for great opportunities for character-shaping down the road. Of course you can role-play having gone through the character's first steps as a proto-hero before he was really a competent adventurer, but it's not quite the same as actually going through it.

I'll sorta agree with you here. I never had a problem with low level PCs getting killed since Basic D&D. In fact, deaths usually didn't start happening until 6th-7th level, and then the floodgates would open. But I do understand that they were flattening the curve and trying to open up the sweet spot. I don;t have a problem with it, but it does limit creating a true green 1st level PC.

And before you think I'm just a 4anboi, I have some WRONGS of my own (of course, like the DMG says, the game can't be perfect for everyone, so this is just of list of thing's I'd change to make it my game):

RIGHT: Taking alignment out of the mechanics. No more Detect Evil? No more spells that don't hurt Good creatures? No more being class x but you have to be alignment y? Woot!

WRONG: Alignment is still in the game. Luckily, because of the above Right, it's easy to remove.

RIGHT: Trimmed down the Big 7 and the Christmas Tree effect. Too many magic items that were necessary to keep up with monsters. The fact that it's spelled out now what bonuses PCs should have at what level to make handing out magic less necessary is great, too.

WRONG: Trimmed Christmas Trees are still Christmas Trees. PC sheets being made with paper doll silhouettes go to show that the problem was only partially addressed, IMO. More powerful items that do multiple things, much like artifacts are now, is much more along the same lines as fictional fantasy.

RIGHT: More structured combat, from monster roles and levels, to trap design, to simpler monster design, is great for the DM. Monsters have less options individually, but are much more interesting to run and much easier to prepare.

WRONG: The balanced encounter paradigm might have resulted in longer fights. I'm not a big fan of 2 round combat encounters, but 20 round fights are worse. Hopefully it's just lack of familiarity with the system, or this could turn out to be a big wrong.

All IMHO, of course.

 

[jmucchiello]

I'm not picking on your wrongs. I agree with your post entirely. I'm just pointing out simple ways to right your wrongs:

WRONG: The washing out of skills and removal of everything non-combat that provided differentiation of characters. I liked that my samurai could have a non-weapon proficiency of calligraphy or growing bonsai trees.

So write "expert calligrapher" on your character sheet and be done with it. Should your penmanship ever affect a skill challenge, roll a dex check (+5 trained) against whatever DC the DM feels is appropriate. For weeks now I've wanted to post the 1e DMG Secondary Skills chart to the 4e house rules forum in threads lamenting the lack of non-combat skills but I haven't gotten to one of those threads on time. If Secondary Skills don't cut it, adapt 2e NWPs to 4e. To me, non-combat skills are like birth rights. Is the fighter the third son of a minor noble? Maybe, who cares? It doesn't affect game balance as much as it affects face-time balance and that shouldn't be codified in the game books. face-time is a social aspect of the game that only requires the 6 people at the table to buy into.

WRONG: Re-mixing martial abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. NOT because of the lack of realism, but because it makes every character more or less the same... as a pack of magic-card-like abilities that by and large "break the normal rules."

There is nothing stopping anyone from creating a 4e class where under class features it says "Magic-users do not gain at-will, encounter and daily powers as defined in the Character Advancement chart on page 29. Instead, magic-users memorize a list of spells each morning based on...." In fact, the 1e magic-user spell chart goes to level 29. Rejigger the 1e spells a little and give the magic-user hit points and healing surges. You can probably place a 1e magic-user in a 4e party. Yeah, sometimes the magic-user is firing a cross-bow but that's part of that character's shtick.

WRONG: Starting characters are too powerful. I *like* the paper-weak 1st and 2nd- level characters of previous editions who had to really FEAR even the lowliest foe.

I so wish I could embrace the GSL. I'd love to update Before Level One to 4e. I'd call it the "Common Beginnings" Tier. Before he was a hero, was your character a farm boy, a prodigal scholar, an escaped slave or something else?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't entirely agree with your list of "WRONG"s, because I feel they improve the game or the alternatives we know at least didn't work so well, but here are my wrongs.

WRONG:
Focus on the battle grid. It works great for my group, I think, but it is a hindrance to others. There should be a way to abstract movement more. Maybe the DMG II, Dragon, the GSL or this very House Rule forum can provide some stuff here.

WRONG:
Daily powers. I am certain it works fine in typical games, and I personally don't have trouble rationalizing martial dailies and stuff like that. Still, others do have problems, and I still don't like that it might still promote 15-minute adventuring days. But I also not that without such a mechanismn, the possibility of operational play and the ability of players to say "This fight is important to me, I will use everything I got" and the DMs ability to create encounters with varying difficulty leves are greatly diminished without daily powers. Even Healing Surges might not be enough.
What I might also like as an alternative would be a "follow-up" maneuver system that replicates the overall effect of the At-Will/Encounter/Daily denotations, but gives people that have trouble rationalizing the system the option to create a more simulationist way to play the game. Maybe that's another topic for House Rules, GLS or DMG II?

WRONG:
They did spend all their effort on combat roles and powers for combat. With another 2 years of design & development, they could have probably created a similar subsystem for non-combat stuff. I think it could have been awesome - or it could have driven even mroe people off, because non-combat powers would ultimately probably add even more meta-game/narrative elements into the game rules. And if people don't like rationalizing a Daily Martial power using narrative control of the player vs in-character knowledge, they might not like narrative rules for advancing storylines. Heck, I don't even know if I would really like the latter. I would just love to see them integrated in game that still faciliates butt-kicking and killing monsters and taking their stuff in a "visual" manner...

RIGHT:
Unified class system. The specifics can be criticized, but I think having a unified system greatly serves playability and balance of he game. And I also think that they achieved the goal to reach a unique flair for each class, despite using the same core mechanic for most aspects.

RIGHT:
Tiers of play. I absolutely love this concept. It gives a DM and the players a feel on what to expect at which levels, what kind of plots will work and what not. At what level are certain abilities reasonable or expected (flight, long-distance travel spells, divinations etc.)

I think there's more, but this has to suffice for now...

 

[lutecius]

RIGHT: Re-mixing spellcasting abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. The sorcerer in 3E was the first step this way, and the Vancian system is now more or less gone.

WRONG: Re-mixing martial abilities into "at will" and "encounter" and "daily" powers. NOT because of the lack of realism, but because it makes every character more or less the same... as a pack of magic-card-like abilities that by and large "break the normal rules." That feel just seems kind of "eh" to me. I liked when fighters played "by the rules" with attack rolls as combat machines, wizards played "make them save" with spells, rogues/thieves played "use the skill system" and clerics did a little of all of the above plus turning. Now the fighter's "Exploits" play more or less the same as the wizard's "Spells" and the cleric's "Prayers." Some probably like the homogeneity. I liked heterogeneity. Just a taste thing, I guess

How is Vancian spellcasting gone? I keep reading this and I know it was announced at gencon. But to me it's still here (and worse has contaminated every class)
Yes, there are some at-will powers and yes, some are per-encounter, instead of daily. But it's still the same basic system of "prepared slots". In a way, it's even more restrictive than Vancian because you can only prepare each power once. At any rate, the 3e sorcerer had much more flexibility and was a lot less Vancian.

I like some streamlining and uniformity as far as classes structure and presentation are concerned, but they should have picked a power system that fits both spellcasters and martial characters. To me the aw/pe/d system fits neither. And yes, I mostly hate it for "realism" reasons.

I completely agree that fighter powers play a lot like spells. And vice versa. This is where heterogenity should lie.
I think that making spells and exploits so much alike and useable only once per combat no matter what and without justification was a really lazy way to balance things.