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Sep 29, 2011 -- 4:37AM, Pluisjen wrote:

Makes sense, doesn't it? Like I said; you'll be spent a lot faster. If you're really making an effort to not work together (rather then just not making to do work together) you'll probably not even make it through a single battle.

That's kinda how skirmishes work. You work with your allies, because 1v1v1v1v1v5 is probably going to be won by the five. Best to make your party the 5, and not the monsters. 

Death and having to create a whole new party is what makes you work together. Encourages, Makes really what's the difference? If someone has a gun to your head it could be considered an encouragement to do what the man says but in reality he is still making you do what he says.

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Sep 29, 2011 -- 4:34AM, XunValDorl_of_HouseKilsek wrote:

Sep 29, 2011 -- 4:23AM, Pluisjen wrote:

Encourages. You can play without teamwork, but you'll probably be spent after 2 battles instead of 5, which will make the team as a whole a lot less effective.

More times you will end up dead. We tried this a few times and we ended dying almost every time. Each person did their own thing and it did not go over to well.  The cleric healed himself and not anyone else, the fighter only hit creatures and didn't worry about keeping them away from anyone else. The Wizard was dropping AOE's on top of monsters regardless of whether or not a PC was standing there because the Wizard was only looking out for himself just like everyone else. The character that lived the most was the rogue because all he did was use stealth and sneak away.

I think this is one of the good points of the game.  Any healer who only heals himself is not going to be very popular.  Any wizard who constantly blasts his friends "because he was only looking out for himself" isn't going to be very popular.  Etc.  While there might be some RPG systems that allow the entire group to play selfish characters, every game that I have played encourages team play.  There is a reason the heroes are together, after all.
Besides teamwork, I (as others have said) mostly enjoy how much easier the game is for the DM.  From the Player side, I like how any character I make will be an effective addition to the party.

Sort of related to the current muck, but back on topic....

I love leaders. My reintroduction to D&D, with the 4E rules, was my fiancee (gf at the time) telling me she was going to play in a group with some friends of ours. All of them were pretty new to D&D and I had been playing since I was 8 years old, but I had sworn off tabletop roleplaying due to some of the things I disliked about 3.5.

But I was damned if I was going to be a D&D widower.

Now I wasn't going to be DMing, but I was a very experienced gamer going to be sitting down with 4 newer players, all of whom I was very close with. I didn't want to make a character that would run roughshod over all of them, spoiling their fun, but I didn't want to just softball my character either.

Then I discovered leaders. Here was a character type I could optimize and make very effective, but what it would really do is make everyone else very effective. I could have my cake and eat it too!

What is great, and a subtantial improvement over previous editions
- The tiered level system.  
- The abundance of classes covering a large variety of archetypes and concepts, including several that are entirely new and very awesome, like Warlords and Avengers.
- The relatively good inter-class and inter-level balance
- The abstraction and simplification of lots of mechanics
- The vast reduction in difficulty of encounter/adventure design
- The new cosmology
- Most of the fluff for races, classes, etc. is just plain better than previous editions.  Some examples: Clerics receive spells through ordination rather than "god plants it in their brains lol"; separation of eladrin and elf as two subspecies and the fantastic reinventions and increased distinction of halflings and gnomes.  Alignment, while it should probably just be done away with, is handled much better.
- Roles that are clearly defined but still allow for overlap
- The high starting HP and lowered range of HP between characters and levels.
- The abundance of race and class oriented feats that help improve flavor substantially
- Combat that favors synergy and tactics and feels very cinematic and viscerally satisfying.
- Healing surges/limited self healing >>> over-dependence on a dedicated healer
- The overall design of monsters, including roles, types (minions!), and origins, particularly with the new stat blocks.

What I think needs improving
- Classes would be better handled as a nested hierarchy
- The modular power system is a double edged sword.  I think that having modular vs. e-style classes is the best solution for this, but they need to be more clearly demarcated than they are currently.
- The math gap and the resulting usage of scaling bonus fixes for things that common sense tells you shouldn't scale (I just learned there's a new one for AC in the Emporium, wth!?)  
- Masterwork armor is asymmetrical and oddly implemented.  
- Ability scores are too significant with regard to class, too insignificant otherwise, and poorly balanced against one another. Dex shouldn't obsolete Int, etc.  
- The lack of "Unearthed Arcana", or optional, modular systems that the player based has wildly mixed opinions on, such as injuries for grit and non-adventuring skills/abilities/spells for world simulation.  These shouldn't be core, but they should exist as optional subsystem options for the many people who would really enjoy and appreciate them.  
- Certain game elements, feats in particular, have poor QA and are treated far too casually by developers, too many have been conceptually redundant, made obsolete, thrown in carelessly, overpowered, etc.
-The standard of quality and amount of content per price for published products seems lower than 3rd edition.  The best example of this is the 3e FR sourcebook vs. the 4e one, the former is sustantially and obviously a superior product with more effort put into it.
- While the skill system has grown on me a bit, I still think it could be better.
- There is still an overdependence on magic items.  I don't think they should go away, but the way 4e is designed they have to be excessively micromanaged which I see as problematic.