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Well here's a short list:

... But before you all get treated to griping 101, i'll tell you some things I do like.

Things that are sweet:

Dragonborn, I was skeptical, but they work out well as presented in 4E. Kudos

Warlord Class... again, awesome, just a great martial class with a lot of flavor.

Stealth-- by combining Hide w/ move silently WotC put an end to an annoying little gameplay issue that's been ******* off players since 2001. That could be considered minor but well earned praise if I hadn't been doing the same thing in my games since 2002.

Classes that are startlingly MIA:

Barbarian... a seriously cool class with a great little ability set, and a whole heap of flavor. Why not include it? I'll tell you why later, because the reason leads to the whole problem I'm currently having with 4E.

Bard, possibly my biggest grievance. Why is the bard gone? Because roleplaying doesn't matter anymore apparently. Yes, in combat the bard was virtually useless. But they had ridiculously high skills and great utility spells, as well as being a social character, perfect for that urban adventure. Who hasn't played the one where you throw your players in a locked up mansion and have them solve a fake murder that turns out to be real? That was the bard's bread and butter, social and urban roleplaying encounters. The failure of WotC to include bards simply proves that they don't care about the game or about roleplaying and just want to throw out a cheap POS product that will abandon it's niche and attempt to be a tactile substitute for flashy MMORPG's

Druid-- WotC, just because you're lazy and evil doesn't mean druids should suffer. This is a class that has been part of dnd since ADnD debuted, nearly 20 years, it's iconic, it's useful, I mean what is it? It's a cleric! It's a fighter! It's whatever you want it to be!!! Just because you had a brain fart and messed with the alignment system doesn't mean the druid should suffer. Additionally FYI, you really screwed up because it seems to me that the whole Feywild thing that you guys are going ape-**** for would have been a great mechanic and roleplaying element for the druid.

Monk, I can't be the only one who ever made a Bruce Lee rip-off monk right? This was just an amazing class, the perfect balance of skills to stand in for a rogue as the party's scout, a nice fighter, and hell they even had skills that could be used in a roleplaying adventure, then the ass to back it up when you hit the final encounter and everybody's low level and hasn't got crap for gear since you've been roleplaying, solving a mystery, or carrying on intrigues for the whole adventure!

Sorcerer (although I would argue that the Wizard is what's really MIA, since the 4E version looks an awful lot like a sorcerer to me)

Game elements that are MIA:

ROLEPLAYING!!! Correct me if I'm wrong but RPG stands for roleplaying game, and dnd is a "table top" RPG right? So where did all the roleplaying centric rules, skills, and game mechanics go?

Coherent tables that, believe it or not, when laid out like they were in 3.5 greatly simplfy... everything... I mean the defenses section, why not lay that out in a table format? It's simple but I still had to stare at it for like 10 minutes before it dawned on me what they were talking about, that I liked it, and that it made perfect sense.

Races that are MIA:

Half-Orc... ok, you've got orcs, you've got humans, you've got elves, you've got half-elves, why not half-orcs? you can't kick a great race a bone with maybe a page worth of info so that people can play another staple race?

Gnome if you're going to pretend that you showed the halfling the love they deserved when you really just made them tiny humans with a little culture of their own why can't you pull your head out of your ass for 40 seconds and do the same for the gnomes? I mean in the MM they seem to have been completely redefined as creatures of the feywild, great, so why not throw in some of the details on what that means in the PHB?

Missing Monsters:

... Where the hell are the metallic dragons in the MM? Is that a big deal to anyone else? Metallic dragons have been there since the game started... and the players handbook clearly talks about them, and notes that they're there, so why aren't they in the MM?

Frost Giants... again, they've been there since dnd started... why do they not show up in the MM?

Broken Stuff:

Halflings... where's the challenge of playing a halfling if the only downside is that they are going to do slightly less damage than a human of the same class? And what's the point of playing them for roleplaying flavor if the roleplaying elements of the game have been marginalized? Hey!!! look at me! I'm a really short guy!!! ... great...

Rogues... in 3E if i wanted a slick skilled fighter who relied on fancy bladework and agility I would have statted out a fighter that way. In 4E i'll just play a rogue!!! honestly I flipped through all 9 odd pages of rogue "class powers" and saw maybe 5 that weren't combat oriented

"Wizards" the whole point of playing a wizard over a sorcerer in 3E was the sheer volume of spells and specialties that you had access to. Your wizard could be damn near anything, just based on what spells you chose to learn, not to mention getting into specialties. Wizards literally had the power to do damn near anything at higher levels, and at lower levels they were a challenge to play because of thier limited sturdiness. They were my favorite class, I could accomplish almost anything with them, but I had to stick with it and wait for the payoffs at high levels to do so. Looking at the 4E "wizard" makes me sick, they're useless, for reasons I won't even begin going into, unless someone asks. The severity of my disappointment on this point has robbed me of my ability to even gripe about it.

Skills, where did all the knowledge go? from what I can tell the new skills basically mean that as long as my character rolls high enough he can know anything. That's like asking a history teacher to solve a calculus problem, more than likely he's going to look at you and pull a stupid face, why? because he's a history teacher, ask him about the revolutionary war and you'll get an answer. But this new system wants to say that just because your character is intelligent he can know just about anything,

Powers + Feats... I don't ever want to hear WotC complain about overpowered characters again. Everybody gets powers yay! but wait, we're going to give them all feats too! The problem being most obvious in the fighter. Most of the feats are straight from 3.5E, and if the fighter worked on feats alone there why the hell should they have both feats and powers in this? doesn't that seem excessive?

overall layout and presentation of the core rulebooks

Things that don't make sense:

Eladrin... if it looks like an elf, acts like an elf, and smells like an elf then it's a damn elf.
Let's compare shall we? What's the difference between elves and eladrin... flavor, that's it! nothing else. Both are considered fey creatures, so stop trying to do away with a system that worked fine, bring back the friggin subraces if you want to spice things up.

Halflings... ok, so the only difference in 4E is that... they can't wield the same size weapons as everyone else?

The new alignment system, way to screw us out of the druid. Aside from that, I mean... really? What was wrong with the old alignment system? It was a loose guideline for players to provide a moral baseline to their characters roleplaying actions. Only douchebags and *******s used the alignment they selected as an excuse for their laziness when it comes to roleplaying, and quite frankly WotC that's an issue for thier DM to solve, not you... so get your meddling dorito-cheese coated **** fondlers (hands) away from my table!!!! I for one am not a retard, nor am I lazy and can thankfully say the same of my players, therefore I'll stick with the old rules.

All in all it seems to me like 4E is a shoddy product that was rushed to market to make some quick cash, I firmly believe that there will be a 4.5E within the next two years, prompting us all to fork over even more cash to a bunch of jackasses who no longer seem to have any consideration for the game that we love. It's unfortunate really since 3.5E has just come into it's own over the last 3 years and could have continued to milk cash out of me for some time to come. In the end though as long as I'm able to ***** in a place where the "chaotic evil" (according to the new and old alignment system) employees of WotC can hear me and possibly feel some kind of self-loathing thanks to my pointed criticism I'll still keep forking it over while I get "forked" because I love dnd.

boggler65 wrote:

ROLEPLAYING!!! Correct me if I'm wrong but RPG stands for roleplaying game, and dnd is a "table top" RPG right? So where did all the roleplaying centric rules, skills, and game mechanics go?

Since when did we need rules for roleplaying? Remember, its "role"playing, not "roll"playing. Roleplaying is imagination-based. I never needed a table, chart, or splatbook to have my PC be good at fishing. Or have an inquisitive nature. Or be bad at socializing with the girls. Or good at painting. If it's a skill that might have a game-altering consequence if you fail at it, then by all means, have a table or die roll that covers it. If it's fluff in the game, it really doesn't need rules to cover it. Does it?

kuonji wrote:

It's not even an issue of skill based stuff, your first sentence says it all.

Where in 3/3.5 are the "rules" for role playing? Because I don't remember ever reading them.

Well you like many are a Zen RP Master. Think about what you "DO" and you will find the rules.

kuonji wrote:

It's not even an issue of skill based stuff, your first sentence says it all.

Where in 3/3.5 are the "rules" for role playing? Because I don't remember ever reading them.

That's my point. Boggler65 stated: "ROLEPLAYING!!! Correct me if I'm wrong but RPG stands for roleplaying game, and dnd is a "table top" RPG right? So where did all the roleplaying centric rules, skills, and game mechanics go?"

They weren't there to begin with. Why would they be there now?