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MindwandererB, a frequent poster at andycollins.net and montecook.com, has posted this BLOG at gleemax. Linked here for your enjoyment. (it is shown as Alethea, and he has stated at andycollins.net that it is indeed him, and gleemax is working on foxing the error)
I suggest reading the whole thing. He is a very astute gamer. His comments at the might be some red meat for the Paizonians.
On the flip side, I went unconscious in three out of five encounters. One was my own fault--I teleported in by my lonesome to test out the grappling rules.
A ranger with teleport??? Yeesh.
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D&D Experience: Day 1
Posted By: Alethea, 2/28/2008 6:30:52 PMI've finished my first day at DDXP 2008, and played my first 4e game. I'm not going to talk too much about the seminar; others are doing that just as well as I can. I can, however, show you the first 33 slides of the presentation (sorry I don't have them all, my camera battery died), which you can find here.
Some key points that weren't captured in my pictures:
- RPGA gamers will now get everything. No cards, no closed content; if it's been published, you can use it. No word on whether Dragon counts, but it sounds like Dragon will have some more cred from now on. DMs will get more encouragement to judge RPGA so they can share their "DM-Fu."< br /> - Dragon and Dungeon will get regular "best of" compilations, published like any other book.
- The magazines' content will be searchable online (in the rules database), and the crunchy bits can be viewed from the database if you're a subscriber. Speaking of which, that's true for the books: look up a feat, and if you're a subscriber, you get the text of the feat; if you're not, you get the book and page number only.
- A subscription does not get you any minis for monsters, or any dungeon tiles. You get a starter set of each as a limited time offer, but otherwise you have to buy them as singles. They'll be cheap, though.
- E-books, e-adventures, and pdfs of the magazines can be purchases whether or not you subscribe. The mags will cost about $3 an issue.
- Subscribers get a certain number of 24-hour passes to DDI that they can give to their friends. You can also buy said passes for about $3.
- Non-subscribers can use crippled versions of the visualizer and dungeon builder for free.
- June 7 will be D&D Game Day--the day after 4e's release.Now, for my experiences.
I played LFR 2, Scalegloom Hall. Kobolds were the primary adversaries, with a boss I won't reveal but was a solo encounter. And that probably tells you everything you need to guess what it is. I played the eladrin ranger; my party mates were a dwarf fighter, a halfling paladin, a half-elf warlock, a tiefling wizard, and a human cleric. I have my character sheet, but as we were allowed to keep them, I imagine copies will be everywhere by Monday. I'll scan and share it if no one else does before I get to my home scanner.
The eladrin ranger was a glass cannon. I did by far the most damage, using my at-will power that gave me +4 to hit, for a whopping +10 total, damage 1d10+4, plus another d8 if I used Hunter's Quarry to mark it as my prey (which is a minor action, so no reason not to). The first action of the game was me dishing out 22 damage to a kobold slinger--and it lived. My other at-will and encounter powers were mobility-related, not attack, but my daily (Split the Tree) was used to devastating effect in the penultimate encounter: I used my eladrin Fey Step to teleport up to a sniping position, then took out the slightly-injured cleric and severely wounded the dragonshield kobold in one shot.
On the flip side, I went unconscious in three out of five encounters. One was my own fault--I teleported in by my lonesome to test out the grappling rules. There's no "grapple," ; just a "grab," which is a Strength attack opposed by Reflex defense and immobilizes the target; they can escape with either Acrobatics against your Reflex, or Athletics against your Fortitude. So the DM told me, anyway; I missed the attack, and the cleric had to save my sorry butt. I returned the favor, though, by lowering a rope to get him out of the slime pit that a kobold trap had knocked him into.
By the way, you still need a cleric (or a warlord, presumably) in your party. Although everyone can self-heal, they mainly suck at it (except the dwarf fighter, who can do it as a minor action and gets a bazillion of them) without a cleric's assistance. You can live without any other member, but the lack of a Leader is death. In my case, it would have been literally death, as he brought me back from unconsciousness three times.
Damage is up--the crappy kobolds were hurting me so badly that using my second wind would have been a waste of a round most of the time (I heal for 5, they hit me twice for 11--not worth it). Modifiers are down, and everything is a modifier now. Concealment is an attack penalty. Combat Advantage is an attack bonus. Blindness is a -5 attack penalty! Oh, and the Darkness spell is total concealment once again, and is countered by Light of any level. You may want to remember that when fighting high-AC targets with Darkness, like a certain solo monster in this mod. I found level 1 to be as deadly in 4e as it was in 3e; no more going down in one hit from a greatsword (I think--the kobolds didn't have 'em), but three or four hits could easily take you down unless they're from minions or you're a Defender. Ongoing damage is a *****, and when you combine three normal bad guys, a dangerous trap, a mess of minions, and being set on fire(!), you'd better not take a fight casually.
Overall, a game of 4e felt much like one of 3e. It wasn't appreciably faster, but I played with a bunch of really inexperienced players (didn't know 3e rules--and had no dice at a D&D convention!), and it was certainly no slower than a 3e game. Slower than running a 3e Barbarian, faster than a 3e Swordsage. The traps were pretty fun--dangerous but not instantly deadly (although the mage is not the one you want squished by a boulder), and having someone in the party with good Thievery would have helped a lot. They moved at a good clip, too. Speaking of movement, the lack of 1.5-square diagonals is a huge boon--it may be less realistic, but it speeds up turns by a huge margin. All the movement-related abilities (slides, pushes, teleports) would have been a nightmare under 3e distance rules.
One problem was a lack of versatility. The role thing is good: the cleric can both fight and heal at the same time, as promised, and every other character can do what they were meant to do, but they're a little too dedicated. I never wanted to use my sword if I could possibly help it, and the fighter and paladin were the opposite--a choke point where they couldn't get in to fight, or where the ranger was stuck in melee and they were as worthless as a wizard with a crossbow. The paladin often found that the most useful thing he could do was declare an enemy as his mark, then just leave, so it would hurt itself every time it attacked someone else.
But ultimately, this was still the game I know and love. I think it's more streamlined than 3e--I don't think the game is necessarily faster, but many of the "choke points" were addressed. The traps were creative, but nothing that couldn't have been done just as well in 3e. Much of the difference between 3e and 4e is in behind-the-scenes numerical balancing, which seemed to have been well-done but it's hard to evaluate based on one game. The only concern I would have--and I think it's the main concern anyone ought to have about whether to get into 4e--is the opportunity cost. Is it worth it to lose all the classes, races, and monsters you've accumulated in 3e to get cleaner math? I think so--a fun but small set of options makes for a better game than a whole gamut of options that don't work as well. But if you have an emotional attachment to a particular race, class, monster, PrC, or whatever that didn't make the cut... not getting 4e won't be a bad idea. Many folks are jumping on the "3.75" bandwagon (taking many of 4e's steamlining changes and keeping 3e's content), and that's not a bad way to go. I think it's quite doable, and I'm sure some enterprising person on the WotC forums or ENWorld will come up with such a system within days of 4e's release.
Seems like a very balanced review of the game play. I really enjoyed reading it; especially because of the objectivity shown.
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OH SWEET PELOR SOMEONE POSTED A REVIEW THAT DIDN'T SOUND LIKE A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER WITH TORRETS TO SAY COOL ALL THE TIME!
Okay, now that that is out of my system, I'd like to point out one thing:
By the way, you still need a cleric (or a warlord, presumably) in your party. Although everyone can self-heal, they mainly suck at it (except the dwarf fighter, who can do it as a minor action and gets a bazillion of them) without a cleric's assistance. You can live without any other member, but the lack of a Leader is death. In my case, it would have been literally death, as he brought me back from unconsciousness three times.
This is interesting. I somewhat expected this, to tell the truth. But perhaps his DM was more blood thirsty, like myself. Granted, at least the one guy who gets forced into playing a healer can still choose warlord.
The only other point that really stuck out had to be that it may not be for everyone, especially if there's a specific character type you like to play.
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I heartily agree that it's refreshing to see a review that is presented in an objective voice. Every blog before this seems to say "3.5 was crap, 4.0 is awesome. You'd be a grognard not to preorder right now!"
I like the suggestion of powerful racial abilities, whether movement-based or otherwise. I was glad to hear the game flow was what I expected: not much faster. Changing many spell and lighting conditions to modifiers is good, too. Percentile rolls aren't really needed imo.
Reading the review just reinforces my plan to swipe all the mechanical changes that seem to streamline/improve play and port it to my 3.5 game.
Man do I appreciate an balanced review. Sadly it makes it sound more and more like a game I don't want to play. The extra damage so that you can get cool abilities just required the hit points to be higher and more counting by the players. I expect my wife to hate it. At least I'll save mony this year. ;p
That's an interesting and well-balanced review of a 4E session. It doesn't make me want to play 4E but it does make me want to see 3.75! I wonder if any publisher will pick up the guantlet and create D&D 3.75?
It's a good review. I read it yesterday when it was one of the only ones around. That wasn't by a playtester, I mean. I expect more people who played in the games buy aren't playtesters to start posting soon.
The guy had a lot of interesting things to say. I think it's worth noting that he almost died 3 times, which is about the normal for a good fight at my home games, so sound good. So much for players never dying. It probably is still, as always, up to how the DM plays it.
Oh, and for those who go the 3.75 route, I think that would be great. Hell, I might have done that myself if I hadn't refused to buy anything 3.5 in the first place. I have no real investment in the system so it's easier for me.
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Here is something interesting from another blog:
Two interesting things from the podcast. Weapons now have accuracy as well as damage. A character profient with a weapon gains +2 to hit. Rapiers are more accurate than warhammers. When a dm builds an encounter he or she does so with an experience budget. Every monster is worth a flat exp amount. The dm knows that each encounter should have say 5000 xp so he or she uses that many monsters like one thousand kobolds.
Weapons getting bonuses to hit based on weapon type...hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that; it is an interesting idea.
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"Overall, a game of 4e felt much like one of 3e. It wasn't appreciably faster, but I played with a bunch of really inexperienced players (didn't know 3e rules--and had no dice at a D&D convention!), and it was certainly no slower than a 3e game. Slower than running a 3e Barbarian, faster than a 3e Swordsage."
It wasn't appreciably faster.......
I thought that was most of the point of the whole change, to streamline play and make it much faster.
It was no slower than a 3E game........
That is reassuring.
"Overall, a game of 4e felt much like one of 3e. It wasn't appreciably faster, but I played with a bunch of really inexperienced players (didn't know 3e rules--and had no dice at a D&D convention!), and it was certainly no slower than a 3e game. Slower than running a 3e Barbarian, faster than a 3e Swordsage."
It wasn't appreciably faster.......
I thought that was most of the point of the whole change, to streamline play and make it much faster.
It was no slower than a 3E game........
That is reassuring.
How much faster of a first playing of a game can you have versus something you have been playing for years. There has to be some learning curve time.
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The paladin often found that the most useful thing he could do was declare an enemy as his mark, then just leave, so it would hurt itself every time it attacked someone else.
?
I thought the justification for 'marking' was that you were actively harassing or obstructing your mark, sticking to him like glue, using your shield to defend your allies, or you were issuing a challenge, that they have to accept, or else lose morale (ie hp).
I can't see how you can mark someone if you're not there, getting in his face.
And anyone who challenges someone, then slopes out the back door; well, that hardly counts as a challenge, now, does it? If anything, it's the paladin who should lose face, and his enemy should get a cheer (and some bonus hp!) from his pals!
Yeah, this Paladin is RULE-Playing not ROLE-Playing, for sure... :(The paladin often found that the most useful thing he could do was declare an enemy as his mark, then just leave, so it would hurt itself every time it attacked someone else.?
I thought the justification for 'marking' was that you were actively harassing or obstructing your mark, sticking to him like glue, using your shield to defend your allies, or you were issuing a challenge, that they have to accept, or else lose morale (ie hp).
I can't see how you can mark someone if you're not there, getting in his face.
And anyone who challenges someone, then slopes out the back door; well, that hardly counts as a challenge, now, does it? If anything, it's the paladin who should lose face, and his enemy should get a cheer (and some bonus hp!) from his pals!
I'm glad to see that one thing has certainly survived the edition change: Munchkinism
Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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Yeah, this Paladin is RULE-Playing not ROLE-Playing, for sure... :(The paladin often found that the most useful thing he could do was declare an enemy as his mark, then just leave, so it would hurt itself every time it attacked someone else.?
I thought the justification for 'marking' was that you were actively harassing or obstructing your mark, sticking to him like glue, using your shield to defend your allies, or you were issuing a challenge, that they have to accept, or else lose morale (ie hp).
I can't see how you can mark someone if you're not there, getting in his face.
And anyone who challenges someone, then slopes out the back door; well, that hardly counts as a challenge, now, does it? If anything, it's the paladin who should lose face, and his enemy should get a cheer (and some bonus hp!) from his pals!
Well quoting Rodney Thompson from the Marked thread
So I'm fairly sure that isn't how the paladin should have been doing it. I certainly hope not!To address some concerns in a totally informal way:
Concern 1: Hey, can't the paladin just mark the target and just run away?
Answer 1: Gee, that does seem like the kind of thing the ability should take into consideration. Last I checked...it does. If a paladin calls upon the power of his god to lay his divine vengeance upon any who are to cowardly to face him...he'd better be ready to face them.
Sounds like we may have our first rule change for 4.5...
Yeesh... you're right, sounds like WoW. Even more so if you've seen the changes they have in store for the Forgotten Realms.
Eladrin fey step just seems stupid.
Given the massive changes, it's a good bet that a 4.5 or a 5.0 will follow hot on the heels of 4E.
Keep in mind that the teleport wasn't the ranger ability, but the Fey Step ability from being an Eladrin:
I used my eladrin Fey Step to teleport up to a sniping position, then took out the slightly-injured cleric and severely wounded the dragonshield kobold in one shot.But, yeah, from everything I've heard about 4E, it's starting to sound a lot like WoW. If I wanted WoW, I'd play WoW. I'll probably end up dropping the 4E classes and races and just keeping the mechanics. Yes, a lot of work finding middle ground between 3.5 and 4... but from what I've seen and read... worth it.
^-- And that was completely off topic... my bad.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Here is something interesting from another blog:
Two interesting things from the podcast. Weapons now have accuracy as well as damage. A character profient with a weapon gains +2 to hit. Rapiers are more accurate than warhammers. When a dm builds an encounter he or she does so with an experience budget. Every monster is worth a flat exp amount. The dm knows that each encounter should have say 5000 xp so he or she uses that many monsters like one thousand kobolds.Weapons getting bonuses to hit based on weapon type...hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that; it is an interesting idea.
It's not a new idea, however; White Wolf's been using it for several years in their World of Darkness and Exalted lines.
I'm not entirely sure what to think about the fact that proficiency gives bonuses: it implies that non-proficiency has no penalties.
I'm not entirely sure what to think about the fact that proficiency gives bonuses: it implies that non-proficiency has no penalties.
It seems to me as if the entire math-pattern has shifted upwards by +2 or +4, so to eliminate all negative numbers and only have "positive" math.
Or it could be that the GM was not applying the rules properly.
Or one of the cardinal sins of game-design, balancing mechanical benefit against rp-only cost.
I like this review, I want see more from this reviewer, as other info released from D&D XP does little to improve my ambivalent attitude towards 4e (I'm on the hook for the 4e PHB, not further committed atm).
Specifically the HP/DMG glut (it is blatant power creep. I realize some schools of though figure it is easier to balance high rather than low, but we're talking an order of magnitude here..) and the changes to wizards (no enchantment/illusion for a controller?) and the bit about having to resolve hit rolls on area of affect spells (one roll per target on an AE?)
do not inspire confidence. As other posters have mentioned, I'll probably end up taking what I can and forging ahead with 3.X (which may be swamped with splat books, but is at least is easily extensible.)
I doubt that it is all positive numbers. Lighting conditions and cover must subtract something somewhere... unless "normal light" gives +2 and "no cover" gives +4.
Not at all. Lighting and cover can add to the targets defense instead of subtracting from to hit roll.
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More balanced reviews:
General - 6 players, 5 hours, 4th edition--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----
Got to play 4th Ed. last night for the first time. I've had a generally ambivalent attitude (I think). I've tried to avoid delving into the rumours and what not, trying to hold off on forming an impression until I got the books in my mitts. I've been mostly successful. And what things I've absorbed by hanging out here and ENWorld have been a mixed bag.
So, I went into the game last night I think with a pretty neutral attitude. I won't deny a little anticipation, but I'm only human.
For those that may want to play the 'Scalegloom Hall' scenario, there will be spoilers here. Then again, the scenario is really just a sequence of rooms, with nothing but combat, so there really isn't much to spoil. There's probably a fair bit of overlap here and with what others have posted as well, so if I bore you, I apologize. Any mistakes are the result of faulty memory or bad hearing The DM did a great job keeping things going, and while I'm sure some things may not have been done correctly, it's all new, so it's bound to happen.
The party consisted of a dwarf fighter, wizard, tiefling warlock, halfling paladin, eladrin ranger (me!), and a cleric. Everyone else at the table had played in an earlier game, so I was the sole 4th Ed. virgin. There was the two page summary handout that was reasonably useful, and I picked up the essentials right away. I generally pick up rules pretty fast, and all modesty aside, I think within a few minutes I had a better grasp on them then the ones that had played already.
The first encounter was a rectangular room with a 10'x20' slimey pit. Excuse me, a 2 square by 4 square slimey pit. :rolleyes: There were single square corridors N and E. There were kobolds slinging grenades of fire and sticky-stuff. We roll init, and off we go.
I won init, but I was at the back of the group with no clear path forward. Not yet aware that I could shoot through friendlies with no modifier, my ranger used a per-encounter racial ability called 'Fey step' (move action) to teleport 5 squares to the edge of the pit, and a standard action to shoot one of the slingers. The melee types move to engage, more kobolds appear, and they are quickly surrounded. The sticky bombs and fire bombs serve to immobilize and burn the warriors, but eventually the kobolds are killed. I also used the 'Split the Tree' power (daily) to shoot the original slinger and one of his reinforcements. Several of the kobolds were 'minions', who need merely be hit to die. Nothing original there, but there is some room for clarification as the minions have to be hit via an attack roll, but the melee classes had some abilities that would have done damage without the attack roll, and hence the minions were immune.
I wanted to jump across the pit to learn the jumping rules, and everyone else is 'Why would you do that when you could move around it?) (Jumping is a straight check, with 1 square jumped per 10 rolled, so for the 2-square jump, I needed a 20. Running would have given me a bonus).
Due to the sticky pots and continuous damage from the firebombs, there were a lot of conditions that had to be tracked, saves to be made every round, etc.
The party takes a short rest that refreshes 'per encounter' abilities, heals up a bit, and goes to the next room. Oh, and apparently, there is no timescale. Encounters are roughly 5 minutes, for example.
Second encounter was a room with tombs and pressure-plate traps. This room was a paragon of bad design. The person triggering the trap would be immobilized, and if anyone else set off a trap, any character on a pressure plate would take additional damage. So right away, one of the players set off a trap, took some decent damage, and was stuck until they made a save *at the end of their next turn*. And if you're still on a plate, you're still triggering the trap, so you're guaranteed to take at least a second round of damage. And when the second person moved around to engage the kobolds that were closing with us and stepped on a second plate, the first person took still more damage.
This room did give us a chance to use the 'forced movement' rules, so my ranger teleported in front of the first stuck person and pushed them off the pressure plate, and someone else pulled the second person off of theirs. We made short work of the kobolds and moved on.
Again, there were a lot of ongoing conditions to track, and saves to remember, and the stuck until after your next move and take more damage if someone else moving to help you trips a trap wasn't fun, and I could tell several of the players were getting a bit frustrated. Having no rogue in the party was a bad choice.
Having completed our second encounter, we got a second action point (we started with one). The apparent design intent is you get an AP every other encounter, but can use only one per encounter, and when the party takes a long? (extended? I forget the term) rest to heal and regain per-day abilities, APs reset to '1'. This encourages you to use them frequently.
Third room, squarish with tombs and another slime pit. There's a 10' platform at the far end, with kobolds, and a door. (How many squares is 10'?) One of them had a tether-ball thingy that he used to knock the wizard back as he moved into the room. Could have been fun, but movement rates relative to the room size were so fast that it only came up once. On my action, I double-move to get past the party and close to the ledge, then spend an AP to get another move action and Fey Step to the top. Bad idea, as the one kobold I could see was accompanied by several others I couldn't.
Still, it was fun, and I seemed to be the only more interested in exploring the system than in beating the scenario. I get dropped to unconscious in short order, but on his next action the cleric uses a word of healing, and I go from out of it to almost full health. Fortunately, the kobolds had moved in the interim.
A couple more rounds, and it's over. There was some good melee stuff this time, as the kobolds and the fighter engaged in a chess match, with the kobolds using their ability to shift to their advantage, and the fighter using his various powers to counter. Neat to watch, but slow, and I would think playing these kinds of combats in a PbP or electronic tabletop would be excruciating.
Fourth room. This was my favorite. A largeish room, with a 10' wall perimter forming a square in the middle, with kobolds slingers. The paladin moves in, and amid much rumbling, a large rock (ala Indiana Jones) starts rolling around the room. The party splits; I hang in a corner out of the way of the rock, the melee types move to engage some kobolds, including their leader, the casters hung back for a bit and cleaned up the minions that came out from behind the rock.
Seeing the danger the kobold slingers pose with their sticky bombs, I again use Fey step to get to the top of the wall, and push one of the kobolds off directly in the path of the rolling rock (Str vs. Fortitude) He falls down, goes boom. The other kobolds tries to get sneaky and pull the same on me, but fails. I use a move to shift, then Nimble Strike to move another square so he won't get an AoO, and shoot the little bugger.
The rest of the party have the kobolds and their leader cornered. One of the casters uses fear to make them run, causing lots of AoOs and much carnage.
The final encounter was a bloodbath. The six of us fail a Perception check (at 1d20+7, vs. a 30+ DC, not surprising). The large black dragon that was waiting casts darkness over the party, then breathes acid and used some other ability (Dragon fear?) to stun us as well. 80% of the party takes 15 points of damage, plus 5 recurring until a save is made. All but one is stunned, losing their actions until a save is made. So for the better part of three rounds, the cleric is trying to keep up the healing while the dragon keeps breathing, biting, tail whipping, etc. Eventually, we are forced to retreat, with one member dead, and the rest at single-digits or unconscious. The dragon was largely unscathed.
Part 2
There was definitely a lot of '3e' hangover. For example, the differences in how reach works. Players kept forgetting that reach doesn't (usually) count for attacks of opportunity, which caused a little confusion and 'oh, then I would have moved here' moments. Lots of slips of the 'I take a five foot step' or counting out movement in 5' increments.
I will reiterate my dislike for the 'squares' vs 'feet' change. It's unnatural, it unnecessarily reinforces the boardgame aspects, it's bad for immersion, and I won't use it :grumpy: Similarly, the elimination of 1-2-1 movement (all squares cost 1) caused a lot of wonky stuff. For example, in room 4 when I teleported to the top of the wall, it was a purely diagonal move, and had it been old-school 1-2-1 it would have been well out of my range. And the more squares involved, the worse it gets. For normal movement it's barely tolerable, but for running and long range spells and archery, I find it ugly and gamey.
The change in Reach+AoOs, while it may streamline play somewhat, I don't care for. Now, Reach only counts for the creatures attacks; unless they have Threatening Reach, it doesn't come into play for AoOs. No one in the group had a reach weapon, so I don't know how it will effect their usefullness. But on the face of it it seems to nerf something where a better approach would have been to provide better ways of countering it.
The character that died had the worst run of luck I've seen in a while. With the healing checks, saves vs acid, saves vs dying, failed stabilization rolls, etc., I counted ten consecutive 50/50 rolls that came up short before the Grim Reaper claimed his victim. This, for first level characters vs a large black dragon! So, I'm still a little skeptical that combat in normal circumstances will carry the kind of risk that I like to see. Combine the removal of 'Fight Defensively' and the reduction of Total Defense, the rapid healing during and between encounters, and it seems like there is little point in not going toe-to-toe with the enemy and just bashing it out.
The change in attacks and saves might do something to reduce the dump-stat problem, but I'm not sure. Depending on the spread of abilities, I think it will still be entirely possible to min-max more than you can now. And it might actually make having a single uber-high stat even more effective than it is now.
Overall, we did 5 encounters in 5 hours, give or take. The relative lack of experience with the rules was offset by playing first level characters with a relatively small number of options at their disposal (althougjh as 1st level eladrin ranger, I had 7 abilities that could be expected to come up often, and two that would be used almost every single round. It will be interesting to see what 20th level characters have at their disposal. Based on my limited experience, I don't see combat running any faster, there were just as many (if not more) die rolls by both the party and the DM, and the level of complexity for 1st level was substantially higher than in 3e. Even if the power curve is flatter, I don't see any substantial improvement in speed or playability.
Some of the changes regarding cover, movement, and other fringe cases kinda bug me, as they really reduce the sense of the dreaded V-word. It's not any one thing, it's a cumulative death of a thousand cuts that at the end of the day makes me feel less like I played an RPG and more like I played a boardgame.
I also think the it's going to exacerbate the effectiveness differential (for lack of a better term) between the power-gamers and the more casual players. As it is now, the causal players that weren't interested in or experienced enough to know how to use all their special abilities to max effectiveness could still fall back on the 'I shoot my bow' or something, and still contribute. Now, though, with the explosion of at-will and per-encounter tricks, a player that doesn't understand them as well is going to be even less effective than before. For groups that play regularly, it won't be as big a deal, but for the once a month or less crowd it might be.
I also started to see some stuff I suspected would happen. Even in our relatively short session, the party's ability to optimize thier tactics started to show, and by the end, combat had already started to fall into a predictable pattern as they figured out what powers were more useful, etc. I also saw the kind of combat metagaming that drives me nuts, where the power-gamers basically plot everyones actions for the whole round before anyone does anything. Eg, Ok, the ranger goes before the paladin and the cleric, so he'll do X so that the paladin can do Y, setting up the cleric to do Z. I rather despise that when it becomes a matter of course, and the combination of at-will and per-encounter abilities, coupled with the synergy between them amongst different classes, and I think its going to get much, much worse.
There can be no doubt that the design has been heavily influenced by MMOs. The concept of beginning every encounter at full strength is long been a balancing staple for the online games, as they learned early on that most players are extremely risk averse and would rather spend 10 minutes sitting on their asses to heal up than go into battle at 75% and risk a slight chance of losing. Similarly, the way some of the 'call out' abilities and such are designed to increase the predictibility of a combat and tilt the balance of control away from the DM and towards the players is highly reminiscent of the static nature of MMO AI.
Overall, I had a very enjoyable time. The group was good, the DM did a great job of explaining things and keeping the combats moving. And to be honest, I'm always a sucker for learning a new game. Before playing, I was ambivalent, and afterward I'm still on the fence. There are some things I like, some I don't, and I suspect my embrace of 4e will largely be dependent on what third-party companies can do to tweak the flavor and style of the game more towards my predilictions. Some of the concepts I get really get into, but the execution seems a little overpowered for my tastes, and some of the fluff I don't care for at all. But if someone offered me the chance to play in a regular 4e game, I'd take it. At least until I saw how it played at high levels.
I am glad there seems to be balanced view points; it helps me make up my mind!!
Lordy...
Thanks for the balanced reviews!
I think I have to go change my vote at the poll. To something more neutral.
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Mindwanderer has added a day2, day3 blog. In addition he has posted a blog directly answering many concerns from this very thread.
You can find all of the blogs HERE
1st level characters vs a large black dragon - seems a little over the top even if they did have to retreat with only 1 death. I would have expected the dragon to be using their bones to pick his teeth with.
blah - staying with 3.5 for now after reading the 2 hands on reviews.
That dragon should be embarrassed. 3.5 or I'm going to be house ruling much tougher opponents in 4E.
Mindwanderer has added a day2, day3 blog. In addition he has posted a blog directly answering many concerns from this very thread.
You can find all of the blogs HERE
Seriously, he calls you guys out by name..
Errr..
He addresses posters by name directly.