"All right, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. GET MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR **** LEMONS! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?! DEMAND TO SEE LIFE'S MANAGER! Make life RUE the day it thought it could give CAVE JOHNSON LEMONS! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I'M THE MAN WHO'S GONNA BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN! WITH THE LEMONS! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that's gonna BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!" -Cave Johnson, Portal 2
5) Power Struggles To me, there seems to be some disparity between the classes. I run two different groups. One of them has a psion that is a continual thorn in my side. He only has one offensive power, but he can augment it to the point of ridiculousness. Worse still, he has a feat or something that allows him to slide creatures as a free action, at will! He continually throws my monsters up against walls and one another and wants them to take damage from the impact (which is not covered in the rules).
This isn't anything new to 4E. "Stuff the Rules Don't Cover" has been a fun part of the game ever since it first came out (I assume). For this case, you have three options: 1) Don't allow it to deal damage, which is Rules as Written. 2) Have it deal a small amount of damage (say, 1d6), but only for hitting them against blocking terrain. If the forced movement was enough to deal damage, the power would have it built in (some do). 3) Have it deal a lot of damage (say, 1d6 per square moved). This will lead to your players optimizing for forced movement. In all cases, it should work the same for PCs and monsters.
Except, forced movement covers this rule. Forced movement doesn't cause damage, even if you force them into a wall or whatever. Only exceptions are movement into hazards, in which case the bad guy gets a saving throw to fall prone next to the hazard.
Salla, on minions: I typically use them as encounter filler. 'I didn't quite fill out the XP budget, not enough room left for a decent near-level monster ... sprinkle in a few minions'. Kind of like monster styrofoam packing peanuts.
1) D&D meets WoW This is probably my biggest complaint about 4E. It feels like a tabletop video game. I have a character that has powers that can be used once per turn, once per encounter, and once per day. Not unlike having powers in a videogame that have to have time to regenerate. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy video games, but I don't like the feel that the current edition has that feels more like a videogame than an RPG.
I think the best way to approach the At-Wil/Encounter/Daily is not from the perspective of a videogame, to think of it in terms of gameplay and cinematics.
First in terms of game play:
At-will powers give characters a meaning and interesting way of contributing to the encounter every round. They allow the character to always be able perform his class function and doing something interesting, opposed to falling back on monotone "I hit it with my sword" or "I shoot it with my crossbow and 1/2lvl Bab" crossbow.
Encounter and Dailies powers encourage tactical variety on a round-by-round basis. Every encounter and daily power does something a bit different, and you generally can have only one copy of each. So strategy comes from figuring out interesting ways to combine your different powers, or figuring out synergies with your allies rather than spamming the same ability over and over. Each round of combat, you will likely be doing something at least a bit differently than the round before.
Dailies, in particular, give you those big, powerful effects that give your character a chance to shine and take center stage by potentially altering the flow of combat. And when view as a party resource rather than an individual one, a party can typically expect to see one of these used every encounter or so.
This is a big change from the old school method of combat where you usually find that one trick that works and spam for the entirety of their adventuring career.
And in terms of cinematics:
At-wills can be viewed as your basic techniques - the filler/set-up between the really cool moves. Encounters are the cool stunts and maneuvers that make the scene worth watching. And Dailies are the big-budget effects the heroes whip out either during the climax, when their back is to the wall, when they're doing a Big Damn Heroes moment, or when they just learned that the BBEG is their father.
And the system works very well in play. Combat length varies, but 6-ish rounds is what I normally hear reported. That's usually just enough time to play off a few strategies with your encounters and toss in a daily or two.
I find that this isn't too different to how combat usually panned out in 3e (albeit with a lot less pre-battle buffing). The party will usually spend some mid-cost abilities to soften up their foes (mid-level spells/powers, stunning fist, trip attempts, bardic music, psionic focus feats etc), perhaps whip out a high-cost ability (top-level spells, full-attacks, UMD+Wands, Dragon Breath), and intersperse some low cost abilities to finish foes, mop up, or do something between set-ups (standard attacks, low level spells, Reserve feats).
2) Magic Items My second biggest gripe. I'm an old-school gamer. I recall the days when your characters found a magical sword and everyone spent the entire evening wondering what properties it might have. In 4E, anyone with the Arcana skill can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the weapon in ten minutes. To me, that sucks some of the fun out of the game. It also precludes the possibilities of things like cursed weapons (remember those?).
I don't know how it work before, but in 3e at least, identifying items was nothing more than an annoying formallity. Your choices were: 1) You cast Identify and 100gp and in in-game hour later, you learn whether or not the item was worth the time money to identify (100gp is a huge chunk of change at low levels, and a pittenance at higher levels). 2) If you don't have someone in your party with Identify (very likely), you pay an NPC to cast it or get a scroll of it, which takes even more time and more money. 3) You hope the DM gives you enough clues so you can try to figure the item out and hope it doesn't curse you/blow up in your face/stat drain the cleric/etc. And considering the different methods of activating magic items in 3e, you could spend days in-game trying to figure out how an item works and fail because its unlikely that "wubba-wubba" every crosses anyone's mind.
And of course, most of those objects means that you have to wait until after the adventure to actually use the cool item you picked up, which can be a downer for both the players and the DM, since the DM can't reasonably craft an adventure with a cool new item taking center stage for a while. Sorry Aladdin, no magic carpet escape from the Cave of Wonders for you until you get back to town and higher a mage.
I would assume that the fun aspect of items for most players is actually using those items, or the exciting adventure it took to acquire them. Handwaving the in-game hour and paying the identify-tax, not so much.
Of course, if you want identifying items to be harder, it would extremely easy to houserule it so.
Also cursed items were reintroduced in Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium, which just came out. So they have not been forgotten.
On a similar note, I also dislike the idea that the players can build a "shopping list" which they give to the GM to be sown into the adventures. It reduces finding magical goodies to a case of, "Oh, boots of the eladrin. Didn't the rogue want those?" Remember when there was dicing to see who would ge the magical cloak and you didn't even know what it did yet?
Wrong!
I normally don't like coming out and saying someone is just completely wrong, but this piece of misinformation keeps coming out of the wood work like some kind of foul demon clockroach and needs to die. Now. With fire. That's on fire. Double-fire.
A wish list is not a shopping list. A wish list gives the DM an idea of what kind of items the player is interested in. And with that information, the DM can decide how he wants to adjust the loot in his adventures to make items for fun for his players. The goal of wish lists is to provide players with items that they'll enjoy using rather than attempt to sell at the nearest vendor trash facility ASAP. The DM is still in full control of what loot he puts into the game. To that end, the DM is not obligated to give any, let alone all, of the items the players request. Likewise, the DM is not obligated to give the exact same items requested. And since the Wish Lists are a suggestion and not a rule, your group can ignore it completely.
Don't like the idea of your players letting you know what kinda of stuff they'll like, then ignore that suggestion.
Then there's the fact that it is expected that the characters will have a certain amount of treasure by a certain level, and if they don't then they are underpowered. This makes it difficult to hide treasures and magical items, because if they are overlooked, then the characters miss out on something they should have received to keep the game balanced. If, for example, the orcs are using the staff of fire as a spit for roasting their suckling pig, it could easily be overlooked when searching the lair.
This is not concept new to 4e. In 3e at least, PCs were expected to have a certain amount of wealth for balance as well, which is covered in the 3eDMG Wealth By Level guidelines.
Again, remember that the DM is always in control of the what, when, where, and whys of the loot he puts into the game. If the players miss an item, you can always put that item or something similar into your loot later. The game won't fall apart with your characters are over or under budget a for a while.
And really, there's only 3 types of items that they really need to keep up to date. Their weapon(s)/implement, armor, and neck-slot items. Anything else is gravy.
And whose idea was it to give magic items daily uses? Did the One Ring only allow Frodo to be invisible for ten minutes between each extended rest? (Okay, it was an artifact, and the rules are different for them.) But really, it just adds to the videogame feeling that I mentioned earlier.
Lastly (on this subject), magical items in my campaigns have always been rare and wondrous things. If a character got a +1 sword, it meant something! That sword was manufactured by someone for someone or some specific purpose. It had a history and a reason for existing. In 4E, there are magical sweatshops full of wizards cranking out hundreds of magical goodies each day. Magic has become disposable. Doubtless somewhere in the Realms, there is a huge landfill brimming with old +1 weapons.
Abundant magical items is also not new to 4e (3e characters could buy whole kingdoms just by selling their swords alone), though enhancements bonuses are more important to maintaining balance in 4e.
Though you have the standard lore off. The standard explanation is that most magic items are relics of a by-gone era, during an age where magic was more abundant and mundane. So there's lots of magic lying around...if you are willing to risk life and limb to dive into abandoned ruins and dangerous locales to so.
That said, I can understand your complaint. You should look into the inherent-bonus variant detailed in the DMG2. The basic idea is that characters automatically get the enhancement bonuses that they normally would get from weapons, armor, and neck-slot items. This effectively removes all need for magic items and perserves the mechanical balance. As I said earlier, everything else is gravy. So actual magic items can be made much rarer or given out with some alternative system.
3) Encounter-driven Expeditions Again, I'm an old school gamer. I remember extended underground expeditions where characters would be so long out of the sunlight that it hurt when they came back to the surface. While such is certainly possible in 4E, the game isn't designed for it. On average, characters should go up a level every 8-12 encounters. Can you imagine trying to play through the Caves of Chaos? They would overshoot the upper limit of the adventure in the first three caverns! Oh, but it can be done. After all, Wizards did it with the Encounters program. True, but how much did they have to write out of that in order to make it fit within the format? Why are rations and water even a concern in the new rules? In a typical adventure, characters will be home in time for dinner at the local tavern.
I'm familiar at all with Caves of Chaos or the Encounters program, so I can't comment too much on the subject. Though I can say that how the Encounters program runs their game does not affect your home game at all.
Also, it sounds like the Cave of Chaos is some sort of mega-dungeon type deally? If so, I can't imagine how the 4e rules are not set up to handle such an adventure. If its simply because players would level up too fast, you could simply adjust how XP is handled (you have that power as the DM), or keep the possibility of players leveling up in mind when planning your encounters. And there's nothing stopping an adventuring party from spending days or even weeks in an adventuring local.
4) Roleplaying Diminished This is going to start an argument, I know it, but I'm putting it in here anyway. When cries of, "The fighter rushes the group of orcs shouting, 'Die, pig-faces!'" are replaced with cries of "Move me up 3 squares. I charge and make a basic melee attack against the lead orc while spending a minor action to blast the second rank with dragon's breath," something is wrong. The game has become more like a board game than a role-playing game, with the use of miniatures almost mandatory. What happened to using your imagination? It's just that the game seems more... mechanical... to me now.
This is also just wrong. Double-Double Fire! (Fire Squared?)
No matter the edition or system (D&D or otherwise), roleplaying is now, was, and always will be a product of the player's imagination. Nothing in the system is stopping you from describing your actions narratively. In fact, you did it right there: You charged your foe's leader, degracing his racial pride before rending him soundly with the cold steel of your blade, and then incinerating his men while they were still trying to come to grips with the grisly image of their glorious leader falling ingloriously in a pool of his own blood.
Spending actions to do stuff and referencing mechanics for resolution is as old as D&D itself. If you were able to roleplay between the mechanics before, there nothing stopping you from doing so now.
In fact, is extremely easy to flavor your powers however you choose because the flavor is not married the mechanics (which was not always the case in past editions). So if you don't like the flavor built into something, you can change it or substitute it completely if you like, without needing to worry about breaking the system somehow.
However, I will give you that 4e does place lots of emphasis on tactical movement. Though the trend on more reliance on the grid is at least as old at 3e. If you are looking for a gridless system, 4e may not be for you. Though I really doubt that the existence of the grid is directly interfering with your roleplaying since the most that it does is make your relative position tactically important.
I would propose a different theory for why you feel that 4e lacks roleplaying. I would bet that you are simply not yet comfortable with all the rules differences. If you think back to when you were completely new to D&D, I would bet that your roleplaying was a lot more mechanical (no pun intended). As you became more used to the system and as the system became more second nature to you, you found it easier to roleplay because you could skim over now-intuitively understood mechanical parts and go straight to the descriptions without cognitive interruptions.
And like a new player, you are entering 4e needing to become familiar with the system. But unlike a new player, you not only already know what it feels like to have mastered a system enough to become second nature, but also come into the system with previous system baggage of how stuff used to work which has to be resolved with how stuff works now (i.e. Negative Transfer). So you more recently, newbish experience with 4e is being compared to your latest, expert-level level experience of whatever edition you last played, instead of the distant memory of your first experience with D&D. A cognitive bias leading to an unfair comparison.
5) Power Struggles To me, there seems to be some disparity between the classes. I run two different groups. One of them has a psion that is a continual thorn in my side. He only has one offensive power, but he can augment it to the point of ridiculousness. Worse still, he has a feat or something that allows him to slide creatures as a free action, at will! He continually throws my monsters up against walls and one another and wants them to take damage from the impact (which is not covered in the rules).
Forced movement does not inherently cause damage. There are some psion powers that do work as you describe, but those exceptions will be explicitly spelled out in the power(s) in question. Otherwise, your player has no basis on which to request additional damage.
I'm not an expert on the psion class, this combo sounds highly suspicious. If you can find out what powers and feats the player is using, I'm sure someone can tell you if it's legit or not.
6) Powers That Don't Add Up Here's another one from a real-life example: Both groups have a bard in them. The bards makes good use of Viscious Mockery. But how does this power work against mindless undead? Or unintelligent creatures? Or beings that can't understand the language of the bard? And there are other powers that don't make sense when applied to certain circumstances, either. Timely Distraction comes to mind. If a zombie likely to turn and look because you pretend to spot an owlbear? It seems unlikely to me.
First of all, remember two things. Flavor are not rules (and rules not flavor). And flavor is mutable.
With Viscous Mockery, remember Vicious Mockery is not just a sling of insults. First and foremost that, description aside, you are attacking with magic. And with psychic energy at that. This is even called out in the flavor text of the spell (You unleash a string of insults at your foe, weaving them with bardic magic...). That's why the power is a spell, why it causes damage, and why it uses your implement. The insults are just the entertaining descriptor for what's happening.
Mindless undead may not be intelligent, but they do have something similar enough basic neural network that allow it to move and act with some semblance motor ability and purpose (even if that purpose amounts to no more than braaaaaains).
And whatever the source of that animation is, be it a vengeful soul or foul enchantment, the magic contained in the Vicious Mockery attacks and disrupts that. The same applies for any other unintelligent or mindless creature. The magic either assaults their mind, or assaults whatever it has that passes for a mind.
Of course, that's just justifying the default flavor. I have a Sorcerer|Bard whose Vicious Mockery is described a terrible evil eye that assaults the foe's mind and crushes its senses with a awful psychic force that rings with the sounds of impossibly loud bells.
The same applies to Timely Distraction. Again, you are not simply yelling and pointing. You are weaving an powerful enchant to beguile your foe that compels your foe to drop its guard. And you are not limited to that one line of flavor text in the power's description. So if owlbears aren't doing it for you, describe the attack some other way that does make sense for you. There's nothing stopping you from roleplaying.
Don't misunderstand me. While I feel that there are several problems with 4E, there are also things I like, such as skill challenges, the loss of the Vancian magic system, and the broadened possibilities of race and class combinations. But there has to be a happy medium somewhere. I just can't seem to find it.
So far, your complaints seem to be relatively minor, so I'm pretty sure you can find that happy medium. Good luck.
My players are similarly divided. Some find 4E enjoyable, but not D&D. Some want to switch to Pathfinder. One wants to go back to 2E! One (a rules lawyer by nature) is a die-hard fantical fan of 4E. I just want something that has the old-school feel with rules that work and don't feel like a mathematics exam.
Well, that depends a lot on how you define "old-school" feel. There are about as many definitions of that as there are players.
Thinking about creating a race for 4e? Make things a lil' easier on yourself by reading my Race Mechanic Creation Guide first.
So what you're saying is that a resource management system put in place before Pong even existed is evidence of the infiltration of the heathen videogames into your sacred pasttime?
The entire issue here is that you, as the player, want to feel 4e sucks. This is perfectly summed up in you listing both points 4 and 6.
"boohoo I can't roleplay in this system." "Ok, fine. You knock the Ooze prone. Tell me what your character does to make this happen." "booho the rules don't tell me exactly what happens all the time so that I don't need to roleplay."
Once you realise this, you'll notice that actually none of these things are problems, and once you stop seeing them as problems, you'll notice they'll just go away.
Epic Dungeon Master
Want to give your players a kingdom of their own? I made a 4e rule system to make it happen!
1) 4e is a video game. Okay, so because there are powers that aren't all at usable all the time, 4e "feels" like a video. Well, not only did you not explain what a "video game" feels like (unless you're saying Final Fantasy is Gears of War is Bejeweled is The Legend of Zelda) but your equating resource management to a video game. I mean, if that's true, tons of RPGs (including all D&Ds) and boards are just video games because they have "things that recharge in their usage". It's just a fallicious statement.
Perhaps, but often it is given an in-game reason that makes some semblance of sense, rather than as a balancing agent. In many games, for example, you may have a limited supply of power points to cast spells. It's still resource management, but it makes more sense than what seems an arbitrary balancing agent.
2) Magic Items. See, this is completely subjective, but I always found pay a buttload of money to figure out what your rewards do is plain bad design. Slows down the game, means I don't get to play with my toys. That's just me. Cursed weapons exist. Their curses aren't explained, however.
Wish list aren't required; they just aid in the DM's job. No one wants to find 3 +1 longbows when it's a party of casters. Random tables just took up too much space for too little pay off.
Once again, reasource management =/= video game.
Otherwise, I agree that the profileration and discardation of magic items is lame. Gimme inheirent bonues any day.
I'm not suggesting we bring back the identify spell (sacrificing a 100 gp gem every time you wanted to know about an item; my groups always relied on experimentation anyway), but the idea that anyone can spend 10 minutes looking over a magic item and then tell you everything you need to know about it irks me.
Fair enough, wish lists are not a requirement. But they are well-liked by many players because it insures that they get exactly what they want for their character. I'm not saying that a group should get random goodies. They should always acquire something useful to them. Even in previous editions of D&D, I always kept an eye towards the composition of the party when allocating magical items. I'm just saying that it kills some of the mystery if the players can just read off their wish lists each time a magical item is found.
3)Amount of Adventuring time per-day Now, I don't imagine the Caves of Chaos were a single day expedition. I'm not sure, I'm new to the game. However, I do know that in previous characters had a lot less HP, and a no built in healing resource. I do know, also, that 4e characters have healing surges, and get all those back in an extended rest. So, frankly, I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. 4e characters have more endurance than ever inregards to D&D, so that you can play longer. This is a fact.
What I'm getting at is that the game is designed with any eye toward modular adventures that fit into convenient 10 encounter blocks (on average) per level. Caves of Chaos was designed for characters levels 1-3 and featured several dozen encounters that could easily fill a span of several sessions (one group I ran it for took three months of two sessions a week to complete it). If you did the same thing with 4E, the characters would easily be 8th level by the time they finished.
Perhaps it would have been better to have said that extended adventures are certainly possible, but due to the math and leveling formula, the DM must be prepared for characters to advance quickly over the course of a single adventure.
4) I echo Salla's cry of bullcrap. If your players can only find time for RP when they just needed to roll a d20, maybe try a simpler game than D&D. I can't tell you how many times my group as RP'd really interesting conflicts IN the combat encounter. I agree, some players get wrapped up in the game, some players WANT to get wrapped up in the game. I disagree that this is a problem. If your group is suddenly not RPing at the table, ask them why. Likewise, players roleplay more when they are engaged by the DM TO roleplay. I find the DM is really the leader of this, and he is the one that should be responsible for this.
Players have just as much responsibility as the DM, and if the game makes it simpler to break things down into a mechanical exercise, then many players who are not strong role-players will tend to do so. When we play Savage Worlds, for example, which we play without miniatures, there is a much greater degree of role-playing because the players are forced to use their imaginations rather than being bound by a set of restrictions. 4E has no mechanic for an attack that lets the hero flip over an opponent and strike from behind, unless it is specifically part of a power. Sure it's possible, and as a GM, I would allow it (with an Athletics or Acrobatics roll, but the players won't try it because that's not what the card says.
For example, the first time the bard used Timely Distraction, he cried out, "Look, an owlbear!" I thought that was brilliant and was ready to congratulate him for great role-playing. Then he replied, "That's what is says on the card. 'Look, an owlbear'" Since then, it's always the same. "Look, an owlbear!" Never, "Is that a dragon?" or "How many legs does a displacer beast have?" or some similar distracting line that would indicate a hint of originality. Is this a problem with the player and not the game? Yes, but it's also the fault of the way the game is designed.
5) Character strength. If you really thing a strong at-will is the be-all, end-all of 4e, then I'm happy for you. You clearly didn't have to put up with anything powerful in the older editions. Frankly, maybe try changing your tactics and your adventuring lay out? And not giving free damage because a player wants it?
I don't permit the free damage, for the record, though it makes more sense that it would cause damage. And I don't think it is the be-all, end-all; I am merely annoyed by the fact that the psion class can do all of these wonderful things seemingly without limitation. They nerfed Magic Missile, so why is the psion permitted to move my critters around the battlefield each turn for free?
6)Powers that don't add up. I agree with you somewhat, but not for your reason. At some points in early 4e, they pushed a lot of gamist powers out. While easy to ignore, I'm still not a fan of them. However, when you're dealing with magic and a non-sentient creature, the magic is going to win out. And who says zombies ALWAYS have to be the same type?
You may be right, but the whole concept brings gales of laughter every week without fail as the bard informs the giant spider that its mother shaved her legs. Funny? Yes, but it also gets old.
Frankly, you've said a lot of things that sound like, to me, "they changed it so it sucks". Nostalgia goggles always do this. I suggest taking them off.
I'm old, and I like my nostalgia glasses. Now you kids get off my lawn before I get the hose.
it makes more sense than what seems an arbitrary balancing agent.
I don't see the problem. 4eis a cinematic game. The stuff that you would only see characters do once a scene in a movie are encounter powers. The stuff you'd see them do once in the whole movie are dailies. It's not that the player knows he can only use Daily Power X once a day. It's that the opportunity to do something that awesome happens once a day. The character is always looking for the opportunity, but the player gets to decide when that oppotunity occurs.
the idea that anyone can spend 10 minutes looking over a magic item and then tell you everything you need to know about it irks me.
Why? Identify has absolutely no basis in myth or pre-D&D fantasy. It was invented for D&D in order to give even more reasons for wizards to be awesome. The "10 minutes looking" is the experimentation. Please roleplay that out if you enjoy it.
I'm just saying that it kills some of the mystery if the players can just read off their wish lists each time a magical item is found.
But that's not how wish lists work.
Caves of Chaos was designed for characters levels 1-3 and featured several dozen encounters that could easily fill a span of several sessions (one group I ran it for took three months of two sessions a week to complete it). If you did the same thing with 4E, the characters would easily be 8th level by the time they finished.
That's not true. I adapted Caves of Chaos to 4e. It took you from level 1 to 5 (which is about the BD&D equivalent of 1-3) and took you many days of adventure, which the DM intersperses with time in between selling loot and roleplaying at the Keep.
due to the math and leveling formula, the DM must be prepared for characters to advance quickly over the course of a single adventure.
That's not necessarily true. You're just confused by the different ways encounters are defined in BD&D and 4e. In BD&D every room is an encounter, but even in Caves of Chaos, the intent is that one room would be supplemented by the occupants' companiosn rushign to aid them. In 4e, it's the entire complex that may be considere one to three encounters. The entire Caves of Chaos becomes several dozen encounters to be handled over an extended period of time.
4E has no mechanic for an attack that lets the hero flip over an opponent and strike from behind, unless it is specifically part of a power.
Please read the section in the PHB and/or Rules Compendium on improvised attacks. There are rules and guidelines and charts and tables for everything you just described.
I am merely annoyed by the fact that the psion class can do all of these wonderful things seemingly without limitation.
You really need to ask this question in the Rules Q&A or Char Op forums. I really have a feelign you are misreading this power or the rules on psionics.
the whole concept brings gales of laughter every week without fail as the bard informs the giant spider that its mother shaved her legs. Funny? Yes, but it also gets old.
Except that Vicious Mockery has the "Arcane" keyword. He's not making Yo Momma jokes and if that's the only way your players can imagine magically wearing down the ego of a creature, then that's problematic, but not with the game.
Preface: I am an old school guy too. I have played every edition for a long time at this point. I love 4e, though Essentials isin't my cup of tea.
1. WoW/D&D
This one is a 'whatever floats your boat' thing, really. I, and my group, really enjoy the division of power into the A/E/D/U format, because it balances the game, making each class have big-time things they can do, not just the magic using classes (or the multi-class Fighter 2/Sorcerer 2/Rogue 2/Bard 2/Cleric 8 if we are talking 3.5) and because we feel it makes each class FEEL different, but FUNCTION the same.
I agree that it is a good thing in that the cleric is no longer the walking band-aid and the mage has something to do other than fire off a magic missile and then sit out for the rest of the fight. I just don't like the way the mechanic makes it feel like playing Diablo II.
2. Magic Items
If you don't like the shopping list set up, there are other options for treasure distribution out there, as well as the Inherent Bonus option (as Salla pointed out). If you like the mystery of magic items, tell your group that Arcana no longer allows you to ID an item, and add a ritual in that fulfills that role. Personally, I enjoy the easy transition, to combat the invariable 20-30 minutes of REAL time answering questions like "I put the ring on. Am I invisible? I jump in the air. Do I float? I put my head in a bucket of water. Can I breathe? I jump off a table, saying "Up, up and away!". Do I fly? I make a small cut to see if I heal...."
Maybe, but I guess that 20-30 minutes of experimentation was a guilty pleasure after watching a group of PCs ransack in a span of 60 minutes the adventure I had spent several days writing.
3. Encounter Expeiditions
Change the way you divide XP out to the group. My group, which meets once a month to play, has done away with the standard XP distribution listed, and gone with leveling at the end of each session. It allows us to steadily progress through the ranks, experience the different classes at various levels, and not get bored playing at level 3 for 3 months. You, however, could change it the other way, and only award levels at story appropriate times, when you feel the PCs have experienced enough horrors to advance to a higher level of mastery. Whatever you and your group decide preserves the 'old school' feel for you.
We do, but they read the Rules as Written and get prissy when they don't advance as quickly as they feel they should.
4. Role playing is what you make it. I personally have found that 4e CAN lend itself to a mechanical, table-top, wargaming mindset, but often, what is listed as the "missing" feel of roleplaying is a combination of nostalgic remembering of "Remember when we had to track food, or risk starving to death?" or "I remember when my elven ranger had to keep track of his arrows, and we didn't DARE enter Castle Ravenloft without 2 quivers on me, and 4 on the party henchman.." and a misuse of Skill Challenges. Sometimes, DMs seem to feel compelled to shoehorn skill challenges into any and every adventure, when the simpler way would be to just talk to the NPCs, maybe roll a Bluff or Intimidate check here and there, and let the players actually convince YOU (the NPCs) to part with the goods. Just because you call for a check, or even a series of checks, doesn't mean you are replacing role playing with a skill challenge unless you want it to/let it.
See my previous response to a different poster on this subject.
6. Eh. Chalk the powers issue up to magical effect, again like Salla said. If your players are hardcore on wanting mind affecting spells to not work on certain types of monsters, though... house rule it to make them not work on monsters based on the old 3.5 rules.
They aren't the ones protesting it; I was.
(yeah, out of order)
5. This one is sort of two issues. First, your player wanting the forced movement to cause damage. There is nothing in his power saying that it causes damage by forcing the movement into terrain, so it doesn't unless the terrain causes it (like moving them into a fire, or off a ledge). Allow the player to retrain if he doesn't like the fact that it doesn't slam the monster/bad guy into the wall at bone breaking speed. As a side note, I think Psionics were the first real misstep WotC made in power creation. PPs are a sacred cow that should have stayed dead, as the A/E/D/U format was just so perfect for balance, IMO.
Well, on a personal note, I have never thought that psionics belonged in any edition of D&D, which is fantasy role-playing, not science-fiction role-playing. I cringed when they introduced the psion because I knew which of my players would take the class. But that is beside the point.
Second, I PERSONALLY find the balance of 4e to be one of it's most attractive qualities. My fighter is just as effective at his job as your wizard is at his, at 1st level all the way to 30th. I've even read the argument that 4e is SO balanced, that it makes it bland. I could almost side with that argument more than this one, though I of course feel that is wrong as well. THe other quality that works here is that 4e is so modular, that parts can easily be removed (less easily added, but still possible) without significant damage to the system.
As always... YMMV
I agree, and I like the balance, but it still feels mechanical to me. As for removing components, I tried that. I restricted drow as a PC racial option (because I feel that they have been overdone to the point of being cliché and was met with cries of, " But it's in the rules and they are availabler on the character generator!" In the end, while I like the character generator (the one that we could download, anyway; I hate the new one), it was simpler to just say, "Fine. If it's in the generator, you can have it," as opposed to trying to restrict what I didn't want used.
A bards power is not just personality attack.. in fact the ancient bards were curse layers when they mock something they are speaking to the universe not necessarily the target.. the world was created with a song in many myths (check out JRR Tolkeins for an example) and the root words of enchantment and encantation are cant (or song)
A bards magic undermines the universes support for the target death by mockery for sentient entities may be no more silly than suicide... or death of the soul (human souls are immortal but that is based in part on deep seated belief that they are important to god/the universe) .
Death of an uncomprehending target by Bardic power may well be the creature simply ceasing to exist... there history unwound from the threads of the song we call history.
If you want to see things as silly ... you can but you are as much responsible for the flavors of the game as anyone.
