ewancummins wrote:Oh, and Drinnik- are you familiar with the history of the Basic Sets for D&D?
http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/basic.html
4E was hardly the first version of the game that included material aimed at teaching a beginning gamer how to run and play the game.
The parts of 4E that appeal to me are:
- tiers of play
simpler alignment system
simpler skills
stronger archetypes/simplified class options
Some things that don't appeal to me:
- removal or reduction of various deadly or crippling effects- no save or die
healing surges
change from Vancean magic to a powers system that seems unncessarily complicated
a general trend towards change for the sake of change
a general trend towards 'player empowerment' that seems to emulate video games
I would definitely give 5E consideration if it retained the stuff in 4E that I like, and removed/reduced the stuff I dislike.
I'm going to address your problems with 4th Ed first and give my opinions on them:
Save or die is cheap. It's not fun, it's not rewarding and it doesn't add drama. What it does do, in my experience, is cause hassle and grief to players and can completely derail a game. What's fun about losing a character because they failed one die roll? They have to then go through the hassle of making a new character, which can take ages depending on what rules you are using (particularly Skills and Powers). Removing it is probably one of the best things in the game. That's not to say instant death is gone in 4th Ed, but you usually get one or two rounds of saves in first to help your allies get to you and save you first.
Healing surges are a simple way to recover from a battle, removes the need for a healer to lose all their spells to spontaneous casting after one fight and provide an easy way to judge how much gas is left in a PC's tank, so to speak. Saying "I've got 30hp left" when usually only you know your full total is not as easy as saying, "I've got 2 surges left." The second way allows the party to judge how battered they are and mean they know when the best time to take a rest is.
The changes in 4th Ed are purely cosmetic. You can go back to the old Cosmology if you want, for example. And Vancian magic still exists after a fashion; Wizards can swap their encounter and daily powers after an extended rest, similar to how mages selected their spells in previous editions. The major difference is, the encounter spells can be recovered quickly.
There's nothing wrong with change. Change can push the game forward; I think some of the changes have been welcome. Streamlining the number of gods and making some gods from older editions exarchs of the main gods makes it a cleaner system. Instead of there being 10 gods of war, there's two; Bane and Gruumsh, with the older gods like Malglibuyt being an exarch of Bane worshiped by goblins instead of a seperate war god. Expanding the Shadow Plane and the Plane of Fairie gave them more substance and encourages more diverse play. Though the changes to the Elemental planes, in my opinion, was too drastic.
The comparison to video games was made when 3rd ed came out too; but it's simplified what was a bloated and overly-complex system. And it encourages new players; make it simple and relatable and new people will play. WotC simply took the zeitgeist of the moment and channeled it into D&D. And what's wrong with player empowerment? I've found playing a character with an array of simple starting abilities is much more fun than playing a 4hp mage who can cast one spell and has no hope of getting to level 2 in less than 6 months of play.
For your first point, I'm aware of D&D's history. I started on the Basic Rule's set, moved on to AD&D and Skills and Powers, then 3rd and 4th Eds. And I much, much prefer the last two editions over the rest. I think that it's not financially viable to have two versions of the same game on the market, and why bother? 4th ed has done well with the Essentials options it has with the Heroes of the Fallen Lands and other books. Remember it was splitting its resources so much that killed TSR, and WotC would not want to repeat its mistake by splitting the audience of one of it's flagship titles.
