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Hey folks,

Im almost always dming in dnd. Our group is the same for over 9 years so we know each other very well and we usually enjoy our dnd sessions.

With a standard party of 4 we enjoyed 2nd and 3rd edition. Admittedly we didnt make it to high levels (highest was 13th level) so we didnt experience the brokedness of the system but overall we had a great time. We still talk about the red hand of doom adventure, and the cool adventure paths in dungeon magazines.

When 4th came out I was very excited. But it didnt go well. We managed to play kobold hall and keep on the shadowfell with me forcing them to continue sometimes. They didnt like it so we stayed with 3.5 and later on with PF.

We tried ddn, they are pretty happy with pf but I insisted. We gave it a shot and they loved it! Keep up the good job folks. In case you are interested here's what we disliked the most about 4e

Fighter. Our fighter was pretty impressed with his new powers at 1st. He especially loved his new defender marking abilities. After a while he started trying to improvise because he felt he was doing the same thing over and over again. Using the 42pg rules I went with it. But he was annoyed. The impro rules damage expressions meant he was dealing less damage than with using his powers, so he went back to using them most the time until he got bored. He thought monsters had way too many hps and that made our combats too slow and too gritty. When he finally managed to get his first crit he was excited again. When maxed damage added and he didnt manage to kill not even 1 average mob kobold heh... I think I lost him right there.

Cleric. I think our cleric was the happiest man in our 4e tour. He loved the minor action-healing idea while he could still do other things instead of the constant running around the battlefield touching (healing) people back in 3.5. What bothered him a bit was the encounter structure in the adventure. Most of the times the encounters were pretty easy, he didnt feel the rush that everything could go wrong...In the aforementioned BBEG kalarel encounter when he was most needed his heals werent enough. That made him grumpy so his overall impression was: most combats were so easy he didnt feel we was needed at all especially when everyone can second wind themselves and when the big bang happened he was very limited in heals to handle it. He didnt say it but I think he didnt feel special enough when the traditional healer loses his " I may not be the greatest fighter/caster in game but I can save your butt when things go terribly wrong".

Rogue. Again our rogue was very happy with his new striker status. His damage was considerable and he felt great he outdamaged any1 on party. He was esp happy when he found out he could sneak attack anything now esp undead. He really hates undead... He wasnt happy with other issues tho. Perception checks for traps were too high, he was frustrated our cleric could spot things he couldnt. Traps being part of the encounter... he didnt like that 1 bit. He found it unrealistic that it was the norm for many encounters since he was losing all the fun trying to disable traps while the others were fighting. He said he would be ok with it if this happened sometimes but being the norm meant he would lose 1,2 or 3 rounds of every combat when a trap was present and that didnt make him happy. Last but not least he found skill challenges to be one ugly forced mechanic to roll play. Why someone would need to be convinced 6 times before agreeing or disagreeing. A bright exception was when I skill challenged him to a chase in winterhaven trying to capture ninaran, he had lots of fun there.

Wizard. As you can imagine our wizard was completely horrified with 4e. He liked that he didnt have to rely on longbow anymore and thought at wills were a great addition. But he found his spells unimaginative, not much of control when you slide 1 ( he liked the level 3 encounter icy rays which immobilised mobs though). Most spells in phb was plain all damage or too few damage with a hint at control. He was bored really fast, he thought himself more like a sorcerer blaster canon and he said that making a class just to be a minion killer was not a thrilling prospect.

Dm. I liked the easy encounter building in 4e most of all. Building an encounter on the fly was never easier imo. I also liked the easily manageable monster format in MM. What I didnt like... Too long encounters, high ac with heaps hps. 10 round combats took too long with pcs just pounding at monsters. Complex grid... took me too long to set up each encounter. When you build up suspense before a battle taking a 15min break to set up tiles and place monsters was a huge turn off. The whole economic system was too artificial. Yes you can find anything you want in every village, yes you always find magical fullblades and mordenkrads in every adventure cause this is what you use so these exotic weapons are everywhere. Wish lists, gosh I hated wish lists. My players thought it so absurd that they should make a list of what they want and I'll pop some in the adventure they laughed right back at me. Needless to say they never filled one.

When I talked to them and asked what was the biggest thing they didnt like about 4e they were in agreement. 4e was too artificial, I never managed to immerse them into the story, they never cared. The loot system was laughable, throwing a dagger so you can blind a bunch of folks once per day, creating a prone ooze or taunting it, sneak attacking an undead and many other examples. They found it too gamish, too fake.

Sorry folks, long post I know. Im not a regular poster and I certainly dont want to ignite more edition fuel just an honest account of what we didnt like about 4e. I really hope Next will bring that role playing atmosphere back in the game and this pack certainly did a good job imo.

Let me first of all say (if you haven't been around much and haven't seen this) I am a HUGE fan of 4e.

Many of your complaints about 4e are similar to issues myself and the group I play with have as well.

Page 42 is great BUT like some of the interesting looking magic items the things you can do from page 42 are overshadowed by your regular attacks so they get underutilized.  My paladin has had a ring for about a dozen levels with a REALLY cool daily attack that lets me force a mob to try to come engage me in combat but I have used that attack exactly 1 time due to the fact that the roll is something like 7 or 8 points lower than my regular attack.  Great idea poor execution. 

Grindy combats suck and massive hp numbers on EVERYTHING leads the fights to be too long.  Something I hope they fix in 5e.  I think they improved this in later Monster manuals somewhat but I'm not positive but that wasn't any help on first impressions.
 
Skill challenges are another great idea poorly executed.  Not sure about your rogues other issues but I do know that I hate the way skill challenges are done.

I think your clerics issue were caused by 2 things.  First is the module you are talking about is just not well written if I recall correctly.  Second is being low level or not having the right daily selection- our clerics leaders seem to have plenty of OH CRAP abilities to pull a fight out when its desperate.  Not sure which of these had more of an impact.

Your wizards dislikes are somewhat caused by the fact that his options were limited compared to previous editions.  This somewhat would have gotten better with additional material from other books but that once again wouldn't help first impressions.  I also thik a better implementation of the rituals would have helped here- all the noncombat stuff as rituals was great until you realized trying to use them were just too expensive and time consuming so they never get used.

I agree completely with just about everything you said as dm (especially on the economics -HATE them) except the part about proning an ooze -that doesnt bother me.

All of that said we still prefered 4th edition to 3rd.  I was hoping that 5th edition would fix the things I hated while keeping the things I like but with what has been released so far they seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. 

I was very excited when 4e first came out, ran the group through Kobold Hall, Keep on Shadowfell, and Thunderspire Labyrinth (was that it?) using PHB 1 characters.  It felt stilted and artificial with a limited range of options.  It wasn't until about PHB 3 before there were enough options that I started liking 4e.  It improved dramatically over the course of its life. 

Tnx for the replies folks.

I was always wondering if others stumbled on the same problems we did. I just hope we wont see them again in Next.

Yup a friend in flgs mentioned later books and essentials fixed a lot of things, but first impressions are hard to shake. 2 years (not sure if time is correct) is a long time to wait for something you dont have fun with.

Wish lists...yup I think it was a terrble mistake. In my defense I was already losing them so I just tried it. (Just a regular dm trying whatever I could think of).

Just a post to inform 4e fans why some ppl ( at least me and my party ) didnt like/follow this edition.

Looking forward to more Next playtests