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Well hard to say, most of the stuff I liked from old editions seemed to be done better and more inteligently in 4e, which is why I liked it so much. I mean sure 4e had problems (like the wacko feats for multiclassing, it could have worked had they been a bit smarter with those), and some real derp ups (like making monk attack powers not use weapon die, what the flumph were they smoking?),  but for the most part it did most things I cared about better than previous editions I had played (3e and 3.5).

I guess i'd like to see the concept of a PRestige class re-instated as somethign that you can qualify for via multiple routes instead of all hospitalers having to be paladins. You wouldn't even need to bring back multi-classing, you can just use something similar to the paragon path system but have less class specific requirements.

That and half-dragons, D-born are nice and all, but sometimes you just wanna be able to call mom for a ride home. 

I like how...

Well, you know what, most of the things I liked in the older editions over 4th edition largely stem from publication decisions instead of actual rule changes. For example, I like how 2e had a number of supported campaign settings and even how 3e took two campaign settings and delved deeply into them. I had high hopes for 4e plan for giving two or three books for a campaign and then a new campaign every year, but the actual implementation of it was, well, not very good.

That plan would only really work out if the edition was around for a long time (like 8 years or so, I guess), and then to spend one of those years on a sub-section of Forgotten Realms felt kind of like cheating. Even though the actual book was kind of nice, I would still like to have seen either a new place or an older place revisted, like Dragonlance or Ravenloft or one of the other high fantasy settings from 2e.

I also liked how 3e (and 2e) had books dedicated to new classes with completely new mechanics, like the Tome of Battle with its new maneuver mechanic, or the Book of Incarnum, or the Tome of Magic (three new types of magic!). No matter how good AEDU might have been in general, I did like seeing the wider variety of mechanics in 3e (although I can imagine it is much harder to balance, which is important to me).

Mechanically though, I think the only thing I really do miss from the earlier editions is choice in assigning skill points. I like being able to choose which skills I improved from one level to the next as opposed to the automatic increases that 4e offerred (this is already in 5e, so yeah).

It is important to note that I am looking at 4e from what it is at the end compared to at the beginning (more or less). I like expanded monster descriptions and I like how 4e has presented that in its latest books compared to the more sparse information in the earlier books.

Sep 16, 2012 -- 4:38PM, Crimson_Concerto wrote:

Big fan of 4E here. I will generally play previous editions without complaint, but I prefer 4E and will only DM 4E.

One thing that I didn't like about 4E was that it didn't feel finished right out of the box, by which I mean that there were some basic character concepts that were not available right from the get-go which made options feel much more limited.

I agree with this, but I predict it will be true of Next also. Just like it was true of every other wide-scope game system when first released.

(3.5E and Pathfinder don't count, because neither was ever the first release of a game system. They are minor mods of 3E that can carry over practically everything.)

I was there for the early days of 1E AD&D. About the third time I created a character I was trying to build a concept that the system didn't support.