Podunk said:
I don't mind at all. As I mentioned before, the 'MMO' style of play just isn't my kind of fantasy game. Arbitrary level requirements to use/wear different items, cool-down times on your character's attack/magic abilities, movement represented solely and specifically in squares that implies you have to buy some of their conveniently cross-promoted miniature figures, the game just seems too combat-heavy. Focusing on the hacking and slashing that worked alright in the previous iteration, with as much if not more excitement and fun if your DM is into dramatic combat sequences (like me).
As for Wizards marketing, they just seem very intent to wring as much money as they can out of their customers. In previous versions of D&D, for example, new sourcebooks would be released after a time to inject some freshness and new ideas into the game. These were grouped by class. Are you a fighter-type, or are your players? Check out the Complete Warrior for some new directions to take your martial characters in. Cleric? Complete Divine. Mage? Complete Arcane, and so forth. For 4th edition, however, it feels much more like they've taken the same content and tried to divide it up and spread it as thinly as they could, which is why you need the Player's Handbook 1 and 2 just to get all of the core classes from the 3.5 PHB. Rather than group content by relevance they would much rather throw a few classes/races into a book at one time at put it out on a shelf. You would be hard-pressed to convince me that the Players Handbook 3 is the end of it and a PHB4 isn't already in the works. Aside from the proliferation of core rulebooks, the other largest issue is the insidious tie-ins. The miniatures(to function in their square-based world, as noted above), the official dice, the dungeon tile sets(which actually I use because they are pretty cool), they are for want of a better term pimping the hell out of this thing. I could probably go on for a while longer, but looking at this wall of text I think I should wrap things up.
Hopefully this has been educational, or at the very least, interesting.
It's a lot of both, thanks for sharing!
I think I can understand where you're coming from, especially about spreading content thin- if it's true. I honestly can't speculate; I saw a 3.5 Player's Handbook
once, and couldn't begin to recall how many races, classes, options and what have you it contained. If you say 4E sourcebooks don't stack up (and, resultantly, start to stack up), I defer to your greater knowledge.
One thing I can say is that it definitely isn't the different PHB's anyone should be upset about, if they're looking to get their ire up over something. To be frank, I think the races, classes and feats presented in the three PHB's give a wealth of flexibility and diversity, and with both Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies taking the place of Prestige classes, that, tied with both multiclassing and now
hybrid classes,
and now Skill Powers, there are now officially too many options for me to ever keep up with in the primary sourcebook canon alone, though I'm certainly no munchkin. (Good news! Monk is finally here. More good news! It ROCKS SO HARD.)
It's the Power Source books (Martial Power, Divine Power, etc) that stick in the craw of the finance-minded roleplayer. They're considerably
thinner than the main sourcebooks, yet without being proportionally
cheaper, and if you wished to make a case for milking the franchise dry, they are certainly a good starting point. The truly irksome thing is that they actually do contain a lot of interesting content: feats seem the driest areas out of the main PHB's, but a great crop of them are present in any and all of the Power Source handbooks, along with one or two new class features for all the classes available at the time, pages of new powers, more Paragon and Epic paths and destinies, and, happily, lots of fluff background for people like me interested in the setting details. Did you know, for instance, that Bahamut isn't himself a dragon, at least in 4E? Wouldn't have seen that coming. But damn, is it a lot of money for those things.
I don't quite understand the complaints about the minis and game grids, but this, again, is from my own lack of knowledge about both how things are and how they used to be. I got the impression that minis and grids had
always been the norm, at least in 3.5, but all the squawking about them now seems to contraindicate that. My question for you is this: it seems like in 3.5 people just used graph paper maps and pins or paperclips or whatever for players on the stage if they chose not to go the minis and grids route, so... why doesn't this work just as well for 4E? From what little I remember about the 3.5 handbook, isn't it, too, a world of 5x5 squares? Didn't fighters have to mind where they stepped, where all the enemies where before, fields of vision and effect, areas for mage's and clerics spell effects, and what have you? It just seems to me like if grid paper maps and odds 'n' ends for characters worked for all that stuff in 3.5, why wouldn't it work today? What makes the cardboard battle grids and minis seem so essential today? Or am I completely off the mark? Please help me out on that one.
I can certainly understand where you're coming from, seeing 4E as a completely different sort of vehicle for both combat and roleplaying. I've seen every praise and criticism for every aspect of both 3.5 and 4E, and I, a poorly nub, am not going to be able to add to or clarify any of it. If you want to know the opinion of an ill-informed madman, though, I think 4E sought to separate the rich chocolate of the roleplay from the creamy peanut butter of the combat. A lot of people say this is to simplify both sides of the equation to make them more accessible, and a lot of people say that it is an attempt to abort the former from the latter, for the latter's favor. To be fair (read: noncommittal) I think the intent was to go the first route, but poor presentation makes the second route at least seem like what they ended up with. Some people point to the relatively rules-light approach to all things non-combat and the copious amounts of abstract coaching in the new DMG, and call it a countermeasure against the perceived creeping scourge of overly-simulationist roleplay, making it
more roleplayer-friendly, especially given its codifying of Rule 0.
And then you have the side that interprets the massive amount of pagespace given to numbers for combat and options and the live-and-die aspects, and interpret it as a casting off of roleplaying conventions in favor of crawlier, brawlier non-adventures. Although I'm inclined to side with the first group, the presentation of the material, I think, is what gives the second group its worries: that's all new players are going to
see, so that may be all they come to
know of tabletop without the able guidance of experienced roleplayers and good DM's, an invaluable resource to new players of
any system, and this I must acknowledge as a well-justified fear, as those sources of knowledge are painfully scarce even in systems
not currently having fire and acid rained on it by purists and old schoolers who desperately do NOT want to shell out good money for a whole new library of books, and God I do NOT blame them for that.
I know a lot of 3.5 (and previous edition) devotees take great umbrage at all classes functioning similarly now except for class features and role focus, and I see this as one of the most black and white issues of the schism, which is both good and bad. On one hand, I see it as an elegant solution to the 'linear warriors, scalar wizards' problem that D&D has always had, and homogenizing the workings of the many and diverse classes greatly increases accessibility for players who want to try new things without unlearning and relearning the whole system. On the other hand, if you already knew and liked the functional diversity and power spread of the previous generations as they were, well, y'all are plum out of luck, and I'm just grateful we BOTH have systems we can have a good time with.
*sugh* Why can't we just roll a d20 and see once and for all if 4E is good?
One correction for you, though: there is
no level requirement for any equipment. The PHB goes out of its way to make this clear: a Lv1 Fighter can wield a level 30 Broadsword of Ubersplortch. The item levels are just there to provide a discrete set of stats for different strengths of the same kinds of enchantments, and to give a general idea of what level character they're
intended for, ie, you wouldn't give a Level 5 3.5 character a +5 Longsword of Dayruining (unless you're trying to make the other players jealous), just as that level 1 4E fighter would definitely only have the Level 30 Broadsword of Ubersplortch over his DM's dead body. The only level restriction is that you can't
create magic items of a level higher than yours, which, to me, seems fair and logical.
If I had to point to one thing 4E, without reservation, has
over 3.5, it is accessibility. Yes, yes, I know, pandering and dumbing down, and whatnot, but I think of it this way. I have here beside me the newest version of Shadowrun. The setting is remarkably well-imagined, and offers an unbelievable amount of leeway in what you can do with your character. Do you want to be a Spanish vampire with chaingun arms that astrally projects as a winged lobster? Well,
you can do that,. There is practically
nothing the setting does not allow for, and the adventures you could have in one city alone in Shadowrun 4th equal a plane's worth of adventures in D&D, and I will
never ever play this system because its sheer density of numbers and rules and exceptions, tables, and everything else is so mind-crushingly traumatic that I can't even bring myself to read, much less comprehend, even half a page of the book at a time, and there are those who think of me as a bright person.
I had a similar trouble when my brother first brought home some 3.5 books about a year before the launch of 4E, which he had got from a friend who didn't play anymore. I read through the PHB, but found it similarly confusing. I saw great potential in the setting and the system, but I didn't know anyone at all that could help me ease into the system and I knew I'd never make it on my own, just feeling my way through it all on my lonesome. When he got a 4E Core set from that same player, though, everything just seemed to click: all the rules made sense, the books were easily readable, even *gasp* pleasant. Flying in the face of what I came to be told about it, the paths and destinies, even just the build options themselves gave me near-boundless inspiration for too many characters for me to even recall- and I don't just mean their powers and feats, but where they were born, what made them become an adventurer, and what it would take to make or break their spirit once and for all. There was still a definite learning curve before I was able to even begin to put together an abominable wreck of a character sheet, but the important thing is, it got
made, and left me with a desire to jump in and play. If 4E can do that for other folks, too, it's alright by me, warts and all. Damn shame I've never gotten to play.
Thanks again for enlightening me.
