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bothanpirate wrote:

Funny. My group can go whole sessions without drawing a weapon or casting offensive spells. Guess we aren't playing D&D?

Please.

You know very well what he meant, and if you don't then you are not paying very much attention to which forum you're posting to. However, since pedants only respond to pedantry: The D&D rules are almost exclusively about combat, largely cos most non-combat situations are normally best handled through roleplaying and don't require rules to adjudicate and such rules are often woefully inadequate to fully cover the myriad scenarios which occur in such free-form social interaction.

You're welcome.

Neodymium wrote:

4th Edition has offended me and now has to win me over. I'm getting scared that it will succeed. Not because it's been actually designed well but because it'll will be better/different in just a couple of key aspects than 3.X. But those aspects are the ones that will make it difficult to fit into 3rd edition games without dismantling the entire system to work it in. It just becomes easier to use the new system. It's really quite maddening.

At this point, how can any of us be sure that it's not well designed, well thought out? At the D&D Experience, things seemed to flow and be balanced pretty well. And even with the information which came out of the con, we still only know the slightest fraction of the rules. You may find, grudingly perhaps, that you enjoy the new system of play for any number of reasons. And if not, keep plugging away with 3.5. You certainly won't be alone. But I do believe you're right, the thought of converting/meshing the old and new systems isn't viable.

I think there's a lot of ways they could have gone even further from 3.5 and ended up better off than just simplifying and changing some things. I think 4th edition could have been when they moved away from classes as an all-important part and more towards setting them up as archetypes for your characters to work towards if they choose. "Hey, you want to be a Paladin? Here's a sample outline progression that put your character along that path." Generic base classes or no real classes at all could have been worked out.
I believe skills are another area that they changed mostly for the better/convenient but are still too close to(yet so far from) 3.X.

And this is the underlying problem found in many of the anti-4E posts. You'd like to see a more open-ended approach to character development, to do away with classes altogether. Others are dissatisfied that the new system is moving away from the class definitions they know and love. The game can't be all things to all people. If concerns are coming from both sides of the isle, it means they've split the difference, and ultimately have a greater chance of pleasing the largest amount of people.

Number discrepancies seem to be shrinking drastically and i don't know how i feel about it. Will 4.5 remove the use of dice entirely? I know it seems like a slippery slope argument, but i'm honestly getting kind of worried. Are balance issues so important that specialization can't really happen? I don't want to freak out, but damn i'm concerned. About all the ways it could be terrible and also all the ways it could trick me into liking it.

I'm fairly certain that D&D will never do away with dice, regardless of the edition. What's the saying? "Dance with the one that brung ya'." In the storm of change, the dice are the eye of the hurricane. It remains to be seen if specialization is out of the question, rules for such may come forth at a later date. Hopefully by WoTC, and not some third party. It sounds like the devs are striving for balance all down the line, and in my opinion, third party splatbooks are the ultimate imbalancers.

I know as little about the new system as you or anyone else here, and I have concerns as well. I hope we're all able to enjoy 4E without being tricked into it. Patience is a virtue. Unfortunately, it's one I don't possess. This is almost like waiting for Santa.

bothanpirate wrote:

Funny. My group can go whole sessions without drawing a weapon or casting offensive spells. Guess we aren't playing D&D?

Please.

Well, you are playing DnD, but you are in a tiny minority if you play that way. The vast majority of the mechanics of the dnd system are oriented around action. It is entirely possible to do deep role-playing with lots of in charcter dialogue, complicated plots, extensive non-combat game elements, etc. But overall, this isn't what DnD is "good" at. The skill system for non-combat situations is pretty limited, perhaps outright shallow. Most of the things in the rule book are about how to run action sequences. You can do other styles of gaming with DnD, sure, but why would you? There are other games with mechanics that embrace this style of play much better. Most people who I have known who enjoy the style of play you describe usually sneer at d20 games.

It's arguably impossible to make a 20th-level character who can't do something, but a 20th-level character is, by definition, an unrealistic superhero.

To an extent. 4E goes to level 30 and has faster levelling up, so 20th level isn't really "super". Pretty experienced, maybe on par with a 12th to 15th level 3.5 character.