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I think it is way to early to tell what tone the game will have. Too much of the discussion is about what might be rather than what it is.
There are too many rumors and too many gaps in the things we do know.
I understand that there is fear that it will become pencil and paper WoW. That fear combined with an emotional reaction to the demise of Dungeon and Dragon has lead many to assume the worst.
I happen to like the bits I have seen. That does not mean I believe the final product will be worth playing.
That is a decision that will have to wait until I can read the new PHB, DMG, and MM. Even at that point it may take a game or two to know if it warrants a long term commitment.
Until then its all just speculation.
It is just speculation.
Count me in on those who love to speculate. :)
I think I have the same assessment of D&D 4e as you, CE25 - based on what we've seen thus far.
Monsters don't have FEATS in 4E?! WHAT!?
Whatever happened to the enemy having the same resources as the player? Oh that's bull...I can't make a horde of orcs with, say, Power Attack (that's gone, too, I know, but used as an example) and Weapon Focus greataxes to attack my players?
Lame.
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Yep, monsters no longer have hit dice or feats. They have whatever abilites they need to fulfil there "role". No more adding templates and classes to get some unique monsters and villians. Everything is cookie-cutter. You can make them more difficult by making them "elite" or adding hp and attack bonuses, but any significant customization seems to be history. Everyone gets 30 levels of powers, has a clearly defined "role", gets to heal while attacking, and wizards are just blasters now. Practically every single confirmed change we have heard about 4.0 does scream, "MMO on paper!"
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While 3e is wonderfully flexible, it can be very complex and cumbersome. Preparing a complex NPC can take a very long time, and so can improving a basic model monster. I used to spend ages in preparation, just doing monster stats. While I love the beauty of the 3e rules, a less cumbersome system that sacrifices some of that to make the DMs life a bit easier has its attractions. I'll reserve judgement until I see it.
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I have noticed that 4th edition has been effectively described in several threads, by posters, as having a 'videogame' (or WoW) 'feel' to it, according to the information received so far. (Summaries of rumours and facts can be found at sites such as: This.)
If 4th edition is going to be going this way, then it will have numerous implications. Off the top of my head, the one most obvious to me, is that maps (electronic and/or tabletop) are increasingly likely to be essential for clarity, given the increase of area effects during combat, such as the paladin's 'smite one enemy, +x hp to all my allies within y squares'. This may or may not be convenient for some game groups.
The way that chances for 'attacks of opportunity' to occur have been cut down does not surprise me. A lot of the game looks like it may be about players moving their characters into exactly the right positions to be able to employ their 'cool' new powers to the maximum effect. Monsters being able to swipe at them with their weapons/claws whilst the PC's maneuver to achieve this would be a major distraction/complication which the game-designers apparently don't want players to have to worry about. (I accept that I may be proved wrong on this count by as-yet-to-be released information, but it looks this way to me as of the date that I am writing this.)
The 'monsters won't have feats' (I assume that this is with regard to their monstrous HD) reminds me of 2nd edition where it was simpler for a DM to make up the stats for a monster on the fly- and much simpler and easier for players to put most monsters down. (If monsters are given awesome special powers to make up for the fact that they lack those feats, whilst the players chaarcters will have BOTH powers AND feats it may keep combat from being quite that simple, although given WotC promises to 'simplify' the game I suspect that this may not be the case.)
It looks like it might be tremendous fun from a 'hack and slash' player...
All the rules from the beginning have been such that it seems to support "hack and slash' play and in the early days that is pretty much what you got with most players, DMs and groups.
Other styles of play developed as DMs and players grew in their playing style. That can never be built into the game or even an adventure - it is up to the DM and the group to create the game they want to. That has always been what D&D is really about. The game mechanics do not really impact that so much. It is just a way to resolve what the players decide to do in the game from climb a rope to attack the BBEG.
Splooooooorrrtttccchhh
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Yep, monsters no longer have hit dice or feats. They have whatever abilites they need to fulfil there "role". No more adding templates and classes to get some unique monsters and villians. Everything is cookie-cutter. You can make them more difficult by making them "elite" or adding hp and attack bonuses, but any significant customization seems to be history. Everyone gets 30 levels of powers, has a clearly defined "role", gets to heal while attacking, and wizards are just blasters now. Practically every single confirmed change we have heard about 4.0 does scream, "MMO on paper!"
I agree that this is all speculation at this point until we have the final rules in hand. But so what.... If they drop feats then as the DM you just add them back in. You make up a stat block template for them and make the monster the way you want. The rule police are not going to show up and make sure your monsters do not have any feats. To make up a BBEG that these days requires that level of work anyway - just do not change how you do it... Most players develop their own houserules as they go along anyway. Just keep what you want. Unearthed Arcana is all about the variant rules as are several other books. That is one thing I love about the current game with allt he D20 and OGL stuff out there and all the variant rules WotC has put out you can do it your way. No reason to change because the rules do.
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Yep, monsters no longer have hit dice or feats. They have whatever abilites they need to fulfil there "role". No more adding templates and classes to get some unique monsters and villians. Everything is cookie-cutter. You can make them more difficult by making them "elite" or adding hp and attack bonuses, but any significant customization seems to be history. Everyone gets 30 levels of powers, has a clearly defined "role", gets to heal while attacking, and wizards are just blasters now. Practically every single confirmed change we have heard about 4.0 does scream, "MMO on paper!"I agree that this is all speculation at this point until we have the final rules in hand. But so what.... If they drop feats then as the DM you just add them back in. You make up a stat block template for them and make the monster the way you want. The rule police are not going to show up and make sure your monsters do not have any feats. To make up a BBEG that these days requires that level of work anyway - just do not change how you do it... Most players develop their own houserules as they go along anyway. Just keep what you want. Unearthed Arcana is all about the variant rules as are several other books. That is one thing I love about the current game with allt he D20 and OGL stuff out there and all the variant rules WotC has put out you can do it your way. No reason to change because the rules do.
That is true to some extent. However, if you don't have a conistant, balanced, playtested way to customize monsters and villians, it can get a bit messy and chaotic when you start adding feats, and house-ruled templates to things. When you mess with one part of the system, you can throw everything else out of whack.
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And of course, cory, thats exactly where 1st edition ended up and "why" 2nd edition came out, so you are dead-on.
These "mmo-rules", for lack of a better term, work well in an environment where the DM is the genie-behind-the-curtain (game developers). The game is has centralized control and everyone plays THAT game.
With D&D its different, its cellular control. Many different DMs (developers) creating all kinds of rule sets. 3E was great for this because it introduced "options" (that was its claim to fame) to allow you to customize. 3rd party OGL companies did this with success (and others with failure I might add) and DMs did it in their home games with gusto.
4E is moving away from this. Its moving towards a more "centralized" command and control. This certainly makes sense to them, and I can see why they want to do it. When things like Iron Heroes, Ptolus, Advanced Bestiary, etc get more buzz than your own products, thats bad for the bottom line. Its a monopoly move, to be sure, but it IS THEIR IP, and they are well within their rights to do so.
Luckily, the genie is out of the bottle with 3E and I think we are in for some good old fashioned competition. In years prior, games designers tried to break into the D&D market with mixed success. GURPS has done ok and is still around, but few others really made it. The internet changes that equation. The buzz moves faster, we can read and find "niche" games that are more to our liking more easily.
I'd like to add one other comment, pertaining to MMO's. I think MMO's have reached the end of their current life cycle (MUDs being the first). Games are looking more and more alike in MMO-Land, and its getting a bit repetitive. Its ironic because looking at the upcoming releases you see a lot of "wow-clones" ( i use that loosely, I hate the term, its lazy but easy to use) right at the time when people really want something different. Personally, I think the next "successful" MMO model isn't going to be multiple servers of the same game, but multiple variations of the same game (Different rule set servers) - much like Iron Heroes is to D&D, or Arcana Evolved. In that vein, I think WotC would be better served by publishing multiple rule sets (sword and sorcery, low fantasy, high fantasy) and get a jump on a trend I think must inevitably arise. Otherwise, we will be looking at different publishers for the rule set that fits us best.
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That is true to some extent. However, if you don't have a conistant, balanced, playtested way to customize monsters and villians, it can get a bit messy and chaotic when you start adding feats, and house-ruled templates to things. When you mess with one part of the system, you can throw everything else out of whack.Yep, monsters no longer have hit dice or feats. They have whatever abilites they need to fulfil there "role". No more adding templates and classes to get some unique monsters and villians. Everything is cookie-cutter. You can make them more difficult by making them "elite" or adding hp and attack bonuses, but any significant customization seems to be history. Everyone gets 30 levels of powers, has a clearly defined "role", gets to heal while attacking, and wizards are just blasters now. Practically every single confirmed change we have heard about 4.0 does scream, "MMO on paper!"I agree that this is all speculation at this point until we have the final rules in hand. But so what.... If they drop feats then as the DM you just add them back in. You make up a stat block template for them and make the monster the way you want. The rule police are not going to show up and make sure your monsters do not have any feats. To make up a BBEG that these days requires that level of work anyway - just do not change how you do it... Most players develop their own houserules as they go along anyway. Just keep what you want. Unearthed Arcana is all about the variant rules as are several other books. That is one thing I love about the current game with allt he D20 and OGL stuff out there and all the variant rules WotC has put out you can do it your way. No reason to change because the rules do.
That is also true. And we are back to having to see the entire edition to figure out whether we (individually) are interested in it or not. I personally am leaning more and more toward not but will take a look to figure it out.
I plan on sticking with 3e, but I will admit to there being some promblem areas. Three come to mind:
1. Turn undead: Some high end undead have to many HD to be turned. This effectively nerfs the class ability. Overall it is a minor problem.
2. Magic items: The constant need to upgrade has started to bother me. I remember in 1e/2e where players kept their magic items well into higher levels. A +3 sword was a big deal, but +1 and +2 weapons were still kept.
3. Grapple: This is my biggest peeve. Creatures with +42 to their grapple checks cannot be beaten.
Still, all in all, 3e is a workable game. While I would welcome a 4e game that solves those problems, the changes to 4e go beyond that. The feel is not what I am interested in right now. Which is somewhat odd given that my next campaign will be Iron Heroes. Still, I cannot help but feel that only a few rule tweeks I could introduce low end magic items from the 2e DMG without distrubing game balance.
I guess the talk about 4e is making me nostalgic for some of the things from 1e/2e.
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Everone lables you as a grognard just because you don't like the direction 4th edition is going or what they did to the magazines. You don't have to be a grognard to have a strong opinion on what you want your D&D game to be like. 4th edition seems to be more like an MMORPG not because of an online component or a large number of people gaming at the same table. It's because we are seeing a lot of things in 4th edition that are staples of MMORPG's. Some examples of these are clearly defined, restrictive "roles", lots of at will and per encounter abilities, and healing and fighting simultaneously. At lot of these don't seem to mesh well with the style of play preferred by many D&D fans.
Yes its gonna be different, but I doubt that the "feel" will be very off,
I can't agree with you here.
Once I found out that all classes will have skills/spells (termed as "powers" by WotC) with cool down times (once per day, once per encounter, once per round, etc.), I was quite certain the game took on a MMORPG "feel" to it.
Sure, the cool down times aren't measured in seconds/minutes - yet. But we are certainly near that point.
What I have seen as the WoWification of DND is mostly represented by a number of changes they're making because they've looked at some of the most successful games ever (WOW currently has, what, 15 million active accounts, each forking over $15 a month? Yikes) and tried to figure out what made those games popular. Some of the things that they have found were created for those games; some came from other games, some from D&D. Heck, some of them came from chess. This is all >fine<. So, players go on quests and have rewards that the GM has already figured out. How does this break the game? It doesn't. So, some classes now have abilities that allow them to distract stupid monsters into attacking them rather than the priest. Does this break the game? No.
What I'm concerned about is whether or not including something written for a >computer game< requires a computer to keep track of. No matter how cool it is, something that can be accomplished in WoW with a couple mouse clicks might require more brainpower than my players seem to bring to the table some time (a fighter with Combat Expertise, Deft Opportunist, another AC/Hit Bonus/Something else feat, and a weapon which has different bonuses depending on who she's fighting has some... problems... with the math). Or, for that matter, more than I want to have to keep track of when I have seven books, a module, and 14 monsters to keep track of. Weapon durability? No way. Line of sight? maaaaybe. PC Rep affecting monster choices in a battle? eh. This goes both ways, by the way. You'll notice that Attacks of Opportunity didn't have much play in DDO.
There are all kinds of things out there that make perfect sense in a computer game that I have no room for on my gaming table.
No matter how cool it is, something that can be accomplished in WoW with a couple mouse clicks might require more brainpower than my players seem to bring to the table some time (a fighter with Combat Expertise, Deft Opportunist, another AC/Hit Bonus/Something else feat, and a weapon which has different bonuses depending on who she's fighting has some... problems... with the math).
As dicussed on a different thread, its not that I (or my gaming table) can't do math, its that the math becomes cumbersome for the reasons Colin mentions above. Thus, we've resorted to Spreadsheets to automate the character sheet.
To tie my comment to the thread, I hope that 4e doesn't aggravate the situation.
Once I found out that all classes will have skills/spells (termed as "powers" by WotC) with cool down times (once per day, once per encounter, once per round, etc.), I was quite certain the game took on a MMORPG "feel" to it.
Sure, the cool down times aren't measured in seconds/minutes - yet. But we are certainly near that point.
That's right, adding a second/minute cool down into D&D is heresy D&D measures it's cool down time in hours and days, and anything else would be sacrilege.
Or have you forgotten that when the party goes to sleep so that wizards and clerics regain their spells, it's only going to actually take a few seconds for that time to pass unless the party is going to be attacked in the middle of the night? How, exactly, is that any different mechanically then a cool down from an MMO?
And what, exactly, is your point about having skills/spells with cooldowns? How is that different from the game we play now? Does the 1/day Barbarian rage power not count for some reason? Or bardic music? Or Druid shapeshifting powers?
And please, don't say that the length of time for the cooldown changes anything about how we play D&D.
"Game time" does not egual real time. No adventuring party I have ever played with keeps going once the cleric was out of spells. I've seen people plod on once the wizard becomes useless, but how many of you actually ENJOY playing that character? Do you like being a first level wizard who is limited to a single spell per day? Do you enjoy sitting at your gaming table for hours, doing nothing but some light 'impromptu trap finding', once you've cast your single magic missile spell for the day?
I hate that part of D&D. If that goes away in fourth edition, and every character will get to participate in every encounter, then I will be a very happy player and DM.
I'm sorry, I just don't buy the premise of this thread.
D&D can't be made more like an MMO, Dungeons and Dragons was the first massively multiplayer game. It has from the very beginning, and it really became so once the RPGA came into existence. D&D has almost every single MMO game play quality, and has for decades.
Small parties of people, tramping thru dungeons, gathering treasure and completing quests given to you by NPCs for money and reputation? Have you ever, in your life, played a D&D game that didn't comtain these? Sure, maybe your dungeon was a keep out on the borderlands, but it's the same thing.
Cool down times? Don't blame WoW, D&D started that mess. Mages have had per day spell since the very first edition. Barbarians are only allowed to get mad once per day until they get above level five, Bards can only sing a certain number of times per day, and for some reason Druids just can't manage to turn into a badger more then few times per day. None of that make sense, once you get outside a single encounter. We have hundreds of cool downs in D&D. All sorts of abilities were once per day back in the first editions of the game, even the Hand of Vecna couldn't kill more then one person a day. The higher your level, the more magic items you collected, and thus the more daily powers you had. Just like leveling up in a MMO.
Mana? We've got that already. "Spells per day" is the same thing as mana, it always has been. So are pscionic power points, just more blatantly. Which have been around since 2nd edition, at least.
Aggro management? Taunting powers have been around for ages, in the form of spells and sometimes just player actions. What exactly do you think the Kender was supposed to be? Players have been tricking and taunting monsters into attacking them forever. Mages have alway stood in the back so they don't get attack, well armored warriors take the front row and keep the monster intrested, while the cleric always stands in the back healing the tank. In a MMO, it's called raiding. In D&D it's called marching order.
Crowd Control? Clerics have turned undead from the very beginning. Illusions spells are the king of crowd control. Polymorph, hold person, almost every MMO crowd control ability was stolen from D&D. Mostly from wizards.
MMO's were designed so that people could play a hack and slash RPG without a Dungeon Master. They stole concepts from classic RPG's, because thats what people wanted to play, and now classic RPG's are going to return the favor.
What does that mean to D&D? Very very little. 4th ED will still be an RPG, and that means a real DM is still going to sit across the table from you, or on the other side of a computer screen, and twist the rules to his advantage, play with the monster's hitpoints, and basicly do exactly what we've always been doing anyway.
You'll just have a few different powers, your spells will come back faster in game time, and there will be less times when your level one wizard has to resort to using a dagger like an idiot. And the party won't have to stop adventuring just because the cleric is out of mana. Oh, I'm sorry, spells. We run out of spells.
That is true to some extent. However, if you don't have a conistant, balanced, playtested way to customize monsters and villians, it can get a bit messy and chaotic when you start adding feats, and house-ruled templates to things. When you mess with one part of the system, you can throw everything else out of whack.
And now guess, where you will get these, playtested customized monsters: "Winged, surreal, feral Troll Fighter 3?" Sure, thaaaat's Monster Manual 28, bought it last Friday for 30 bucks!
I'm sorry, I just don't buy the premise of this thread.
I think it's just as viable as any other point of view. I won't say your views on the game aren't correct, because some of them are, but I don't ever recall back in AD&D's day my players ever mentioning to me how much my game resembled Gauntlet. There was a much wider disassociation between TTRPGs and computer games than there is today. I think that's pretty obvious. The fact that the game has focused so much more on mechanics than fluff over the last 8 years is also a key reason for this perception of the MMOization of D&D. I think the difference is each person's perspective on how much a mechanic "feels" like a mouse click, so to speak.
But in the current system melee fighters definitely outshine spellcasters at low levels, and then at higher levels the trend flips the other way. It would be nice to play in a game system where everyone is able to do cool things in combat at all levels of play. I like playing warriors, but find that they start to get boring after a while because their bag of tricks is a lot more limited than a spellcasters. I think having a warrior that has a few more options available to him would make for a more interesting play experience. The key is to make the warriors options feel like they come from his combat skill and aren't some funky supernatural power that he has suddenly gained. I think a lot of critics are worried the game will go this way, but I think the designers know that this is not wanted by the players and are trying to keep the special abilities appropriate to the nature of the character.
I don't think the designers want to sacrifice options or versatility. I'm confident that there will still be plenty of means to customize monsters to keep them interesting. Besides some of the current options don't work that well anyhow. Example- you have massive, plodding dragon turtle with limited movement ability, but a high reflex save just because of the sheer ammount of HD the creature has, when it doesn't make sense that it could be evading fireballs.
What about spell DCs? At high levels it is very tricky for spellcasters to get their DCs up high enough that the monsters will fail them, so a lot of spells become useless because the critters nearly always make their saves. It is also difficult to get one's AC up high enough that monsters aren't constantly hitting you at higher levels (at least without extensive buffs, items and benefits from feats and prestige classes). You would think that being a more skillful warrior would allow you to parry or avoid more blows, but it doesn't. In order to not get hit in 3E you have to be walking around in the heaviest armour you can find glowing with magical items and buff spells.
What about all these characters that at higher levels can make like 6+ attacks per round. It often takes several minutes of die rolling just to get through one character's actions.
From a dm perspective making up cool villain monsters with class levels feats and items can take hours, and in the end the villain may only last a couple of rounds of combat. If this job can be made faster and easier and still produce cool villains then I'm all for it. Besides the players don't see all the underlying mechanics behind a villain, so why make them overly compicated with all the feats and little special abilties etc...
At any rate their is plenty of room for improvement in the game, so I hope that much of these issues can be resolved with a new edition.
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What about all these characters that at higher levels can make like 6+ attacks per round. It often takes several minutes of die rolling just to get through one character's actions.
For a full round attack my 15th level tank rolls as many as 35 dice and my friends dervish rolls close to 50 (he keeps them in a jar and dumps them on his turn).
That does not include the possibility of critical hits. If all my attacks crit then the number of dice shoots up close to 100 and his go through the roof.
That is when I realized that 3.5 has some real big problems.
Mind you - killing a CR20+ giant in one attack action is a blast but enough is enough.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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For a full round attack my 15th level tank rolls as many as 35 dice and my friends dervish rolls close to 50 (he keeps them in a jar and dumps them on his turn).
That does not include the possibility of critical hits. If all my attacks crit then the number of dice shoots up close to 100 and his go through the roof.
Funny, i did not know we had armored vehicles in D&D now ;)
But seriously. I can get to 5 attack rolls + 5 damage rolls (several dice, but essentially one toss) without too much trouble - but that is ten total rolls, not 35. The number of dice is misleading here - in effect, you can even reduce it to 6 rolls if you use color-coded D20s for the attack roll.
Not a really big problem in my book.
By the way, i am curious - what parts of 3(.5)rd Edition did you actually like? It may be too late to save them, but i'd like to derail this a bit from the archetypal "bash and counterbash"
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For a full round attack my 15th level tank rolls as many as 35 dice and my friends dervish rolls close to 50 (he keeps them in a jar and dumps them on his turn).
That does not include the possibility of critical hits. If all my attacks crit then the number of dice shoots up close to 100 and his go through the roof.
That is when I realized that 3.5 has some real big problems.
Out of curiousity, how are you, a 15th level tank, rolling 35 dice as a full attack? Are you talking about attack, weapon damage, energy damage, etc? Because the best I can come up with is 3 attacks, 6 dice for weapon, and 3 for energy, barring crits and haste. Even with those that should be 4d20's, 14 weapon dice, 8 energy dice for 26 dice.
And your friend with nearly 50 dice?? I've got a 2 weapon fighting Ranger 20/Derv 15 in my epic game, and even with an ever dancing weapon she doesn't roll 40 dice a round, barring crits.
Regardless of how you got those numbers, I can understand that your frustrated by what you perceive as needlessly slowed combat at higher levels, but maybe you guys are making it more difficult than you should.
I guess from what all the 3.x critics have been saying I have been really lucky in that I've never had an rule abusive player. Everyone has always tried to make things flow better in my games. If something started slowing the game down, the player usually reworks to eliminate the problem. I must have been very lucky so far.
No offense, but maybe the problems aren't just with the rules....
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Out of curiousity, how are you, a 15th level tank, rolling 35 dice as a full attack?
Full attack action + boots of speed + holy + sacred + evil outsider bane + star metal
so the number of dice will vary depending on the foe.
And your friend with nearly 50 dice?? I've got a 2 weapon fighting Ranger 20/Derv 15 in my epic game, and even with an ever dancing weapon she doesn't roll 40 dice a round, barring crits.
each of his weapons has an energy boost, a bane, holy/sacred, plus sneak attack damage
I didn't even include my 13th level order of the bow initiate that also generates 5 attacks a round with a similar mix of weapon enchants. To evil outsiders he does like 6d6 per arrow.
Regardless of how you got those numbers, I can understand that your frustrated by what you perceive as needlessly slowed combat at higher levels, but maybe you guys are making it more difficult than you should.
Yes and no. Wizards made it possible for magic weapons to add a gazzillion dice to each hit. We are just playing by the rules.
No offense, but maybe the problems aren't just with the rules....
If the rules make it possible to slow the game to a crawl then I don't see how it isn't a problem with the rules. Most of the suggestions I have seen for problematic rules is to make house rules to streamline them.
Why not just fix the rules then? Hence my desire to switch to 4E or a completely different game like WFRP.
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By the way, i am curious - what parts of 3(.5)rd Edition did you actually like? It may be too late to save them, but i'd like to derail this a bit from the archetypal "bash and counterbash"
3.5 is GREAT until 10th level. Then things get way out of balance.
A friend of mine has a 12th lvl half-orc that can do like 250 plus points of damage in a single attack and he gets like 3 of them. I don't even want to go near the whole spirited charge thing he can do.
And that is the problem.
Its a great game until the big nasty powers, big magic items, and wacky prestige classes kick in.
Oh, and my 15th lvl tank that I mentioned AC in the mid 40s, an intelligent cape that can cast mirror image 4/day and a ring of blink. That is just stupid wrong and the main reason I stopped playing him in Living Greyhawk. When a 15th lvl character can go toe-to-toe with an epic storm giant lord and live to tell the tale then something is seriously broken.
If I do adopt 4E I will certainly cap my game at 20th (for those that don't already know it goes to 30) if not lower.
Crosswiredmind, I find it difficult to believe your group is playing by the RAW with the stats you are claiming... But don't take that as a challenge to post proof.
Take that as a lead in to the following.
If that is the kind of stuff your group can pull from 3.5 D&D, then no game system will improve your game.
Your group is obviously very adept at twinking a rules system, and will do that for any game.
I would strongly suggest, in absolute sincerity, either start learning to enjoy "breaking" rules systems - or get out of the hobby.
I am not trying to be mean there. I am not trying to say you aren't welcome. But you are going to be severely disappointed in any game system.
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Wizards made it possible for magic weapons to add a gazzillion dice to each hit. We are just playing by the rules.
If the rules make it possible to slow the game to a crawl then I don't see how it isn't a problem with the rules. Most of the suggestions I have seen for problematic rules is to make house rules to streamline them.
Why not just fix the rules then? Hence my desire to switch to 4E or a completely different game like WFRP.
I'm afraid that you've kind of made my point for me there. To use a legal analogy, down here in Louisiana (and a majority of the world, go civil law!) there are legal rights and abuse of those legal rights. You have the right to use the options, but when you use the options to slow the gameplay such that you and others aren't having fun, you have abused that right.
But it is very tempting to explore the myriad options published by WOTC lately, and a lot of people have been thrilled to use them. Others have withdrawn to the core and select other sources. My groups may use the options occasionally, but for the most part stick to the core. Doing that sounds like it would cure some (not all) of your problems with 3.5.
Maybe it won't. It sounds like you and your friend are intelligent people, intelligent enough to understand the rules, see where things can be optimized. So it may be that you can find broken or at least powerful combinations with just the RAW and be back to rolling so many dice its boring.
My question then becomes, "why do you think 4.0 will be any different?"
Wizards made it possible for magic weapons to add a gazzillion dice to each hit. We are just playing by the rules.
WOTC made 3.0. WOTC is making 4.0. WOTC will produce a product, but regardless of whether it is good or bad, it will be a human made product. As such, it will not be possible for the designers to anticipate and prevent every single way that someone can "abuse the rights" of the game. You and your equally intelligent friend MAY be satisfied at first, but with later "core" and "non-core" books added to the mix you will find other, equally inventive ways to optimize your characters which slow your game down. As Disenchanter said, it will happen regardless of your system.
Many people have houserules to fix their problems with 3.X, and its a logical argument to say that an official rule should fix those problems. I can agree with that conclusion. But where I disagree with you is throwing out all the other rules to fix a broken one. At most (for a lot of us grognards) releasing a book(s) to fix these things alone would have been useful. Releasing a 3.75 rule set fixing these problems, or even a backwards compatible 4.0, would be an option. Instead, they tossed the baby out with the bathwater. Or, to continue the legal analogy, they tossed the Constitution because of poorly written statutes...
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Crosswiredmind, I find it difficult to believe your group is playing by the RAW with the stats you are claiming... But don't take that as a challenge to post proof.
Take that as a lead in to the following.
If that is the kind of stuff your group can pull from 3.5 D&D, then no game system will improve your game.
Your group is obviously very adept at twinking a rules system, and will do that for any game.
I would strongly suggest, in absolute sincerity, either start learning to enjoy "breaking" rules systems - or get out of the hobby.
I am not trying to be mean there. I am not trying to say you aren't welcome. But you are going to be severely disappointed in any game system.
Actually those are living greyhawk characters. If you want to go through my adventure records for 130+ modules you can see where every piece of gold and item came from.
D&D is high fantasy and as such is capable of making maddeningly powerful characters.
There are plenty of systems out there that will not break the way D&D does:
Call of Cthulhu
RuneQuest
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play
Harnmaster
Lord of the Rings FRP
Fudge
Stormbringer
The list goes on from there.
My hope is that 4E moves closer to mid/low fantasy and does away with cheese based rules that are so easily munchkined.
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I think the whole "fighting gobs and gobs of creatures is FUN!!!!" quote from a while back seems to support the MMORPG hypothesis.
I can't see where a drive system designed to "fight gobs and gobs of creatures at a time because it's FUN!!!" is supposed to be the saviour of role playing vs. roll playing.
Lessee.......gobs and gobs of kobolds.....about what, 20? What are their personalities? How am I as a dungeonmaster going to roleplay this ensemble cast? Oh well, the 4e system is simpler, so....