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So, here's the thing... We've been looking at taking a stab at RPG's, and wanted to go with more or less generic fantasy. D&D seems the obvious answer there, due to the sheer mass of stuff available for it, and the rather minuscule likelihood of it going away any time soon. The problem is, I've played exactly one game of D&D in my life, and that was back in 2nd edition.

So, I know 4th edition got a lot of bad press when it was released, due to things being generally streamlined (or 'dumbed down' if you're less of a fan of that sort of behaviour) .... but now that it's been around for a while, what's the general opinion? Is it actually that dire, or is it just different?

I had a look into Pathfinder (on the basis that it was basically D&D 3.5, but with continuing support) back when they were offering the Beta rules for free download, and the sheer amount of information to wade through to get started was a little bewildering. So if 4th edition D&D is a little more streamlined, it seems like it might be the better choice for a newbie gaming group...

Any thoughts?

To answer the first question, no it isn't. Every edition tends to draw ire from the earlier groups, it is just the nature of the hobby. There are still people who play 1st edition and will tell you why 2nd, 3rd (3.5, Pathfinder), and 4th are all crap. I've played them all and really enjoy 4th. It is different but like the others it has it's good and bad points.

Find out which one has the best support in your area and that is the way to go. If there is a large group of 4th edition, go there. If instead you have a decent Pathfinder group go with that. If it is even go with 4th because the support for it is much greater.

My only issue with 4th is that I really can't bring myself to spend the money on new D&D books when I have two bookcase shelves full of 3rd and 3.5.

Everyone I know that plays 4th likes it though. I'd say give it a chance.

I started playing with 3rd/3.5, and then switched over to 4th. I find that 4th edition you create a less specialised character. It's easier to DM, but there's less customization(such as templates and racial levels etc...) I will play either system, but I will not DM 3.5.

4th edition's greatest criticisms are the changes they made to the game since 3.5, which was what grew out of the end of 2.5.

4th edition streamlined the game as you mentioned. It makes the game faster, and it makes the DM's job a bit more enjoyable as it makes the rules simplier for them to work with. It gives all the players clearly defined rolls for what their characters do and what they should be building their characters as. It also "levels" the playing field by making all classes equally represented in terms of their powers and the way their classes now all operate under a similar ruleset (i.e. Warrior and Wizard spells all act as powers with certain uses each gaming session rather than warrior swings sword and wizard cases several hundred intricate spells in succession. It's "I activate this power and this happens" for everyone). So the transition from playing a warrior to a wizard is not as daunting.

The vices of the game:

1. Feels too much like WoW:RPG. However, DnD borrows from the current climate in terms of feel and game mechanics, so the 4th edition ruleset is encouraged to entice today's players to step into the game and be able to like playing rather then being forced to play.

2. Dumbed down classes. Wizards and clerics don't feel the same anymore, as their classes had huge resources of spells to call upon and thus you may feel between 3.5 and 4.0 that your options are limited. In a way, yes. However, as they expand 4th edition, the flexibility of your class becomes greater as they give you more options.

3. Multiclassing nerfed. One of the big things that 3.5 allowed was practically endless mutliclassing; kinda of a way to represent your character going through life changes and being able to change careers much like modern people do today. However, it got ridiculous when you saw Monk1/Paladin1/Fighter4/crazy number of prestige classes as players just picked the best stats and bonuses from each class and abandoned it when it didn't provide anything useful anymore. 4th edition multiclassing is a bit straightjacketed, but it makes the game more balanced.

4. Classes don't feel like themselves anymore...-this one is hard to describe, but with the newly defined roles and changes to classes, some classes don't feel like the traditional classes DnD used to represent them as. For instance, many wizard powers are "I shoot you with damage, get pushed X spaces." ....wut? Wizard spells now push people around? Wizards obviously have a bit more versatility to them, but some of the class powers made me scratch my head when I tried putting them in context to their older versions.

5. Books/RPG element are slimmed down- the older 3.0/3.5 books were perhaps some of the most fertile resources in regards to RPG elements related to their campaign worlds and how they used to be described. 3.0 and 3.5 introduced fairly large books that described worlds in great detail and gave you a lot of imagination fuel to kick start your own campaigns. By comparison, the 4.0 books feel neglected, and the novels have been reduced in terms of production, going so far as to re-release the old Dark Sun books rather than issue new ones for the new release of the Dark Sun campaign.

Also, as apart of my 5th criticism, as 3.0 and 3.5 continued, the game still evolves by toning down the story aspect of the story for just simply another game of number crunching and monster bashing. Well, yeah that is what DnD is...make powerful heroes and beat up monsters for lewt. But DnD 4.0 has continued the trend where you simply get a quest and go hunt monsters rather than the more complex social interactions and challenging and engaging stories that are concocted by home grown campaigns.

With this in mind, 4th edition is a polished by-product of today's modern gamer. It stripped away the crazy do whatever you want spirit of 3.5 to give it more focus and ease to play.

It is for you to decide if the game is worth playing.

Go for it. 4th ed took a lot of the annoying book-keeping out of D&D and made it so that you can just play.

Yes, some of the customization left (although that is returning with new books), but it is overall very solid.


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Oh and rebuttals:

1) D&D 4th Ed doesn't feel like WOW. Wow feels like D&D 4th Ed. Almost everything that WOW is came from D&D which came from numerous things before it. Yes, some of the mechanics are simplified, but that is the direction that D&D has been going for years (think back to 1st). I think the WOW'ization is coincidental and overplayed.

2) This is true. The option glut has been removed. But it was pretty crazy to try to manage in previous editions. Clerics literally had every spell. That's a lot. Wizards could have every spell. Again, a lot. But no one used EVERY spell. I think they cut it down to where it is manageable. That being said, you did lose the crazy-pull-it-out-of-your-arse versatility.

3) Multiclassing in 3.5 was broken. Fun, yes. Broken though. I had a 17th level character with 9th level mage spells, 6th level bard spells, 4th level paladin spells, platemail a summoned horsey and sick melee damage. It was insane. MC was so open and there were so many books that the options were bound to break at some point. It is simpler now and I enjoy that.

4) Wizard spells have always been weird. They aren't that much different. Sure there are a couple, pushpullslide spells but there are also mostly old classics gussied up for 4th.

5) Absolutely true. 3.5/3.0 had TONS of fluff. The fluff has been cut down to allow DM's more customization. I personally loved the fluff, not for my games, but for reading. The lack of fluff doesn't harm my games because I just make it up anyways. But I do miss the reading material.


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Yes, I am a rampant 4th ed apologist.


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Oh and I missed your last point. The social interactions actually have mechanics to help out now instead of just being 'DM figure it out'.

Still, social and plot are always going to be the DM's providence. That didn't really change with 4.0 vs 3.5. Just now there are fewer individual skills and a new skill challenge system to work with.

4th edition is more about combat nd less about role playing.

If you want something thats more into actual role playing then I suggest pathfinder, as it closely resmebels 3.5

Catyrpelius wrote:4th edition is more about combat nd less about role playing.

If you want something thats more into actual role playing then I suggest pathfinder, as it closely resmebels 3.5

That seems more a like a personal problem and less of a reality. A person can roleplay all day without any kind of rules at all, so the inclusion of rules won't determine your level of roleplaying, the player will. Any system can be turned into a numbers crunch with little roleplaying. Fourth Edition does make combat more accessible and streamlined, but that doesn't mean you can't roleplay. I mean, if you don't want to roleplay while you are playing 4th, more power to you, but that isn't an inherent flaw in the system.

From a GM standpoint, it is miiiiles better. So much easier to design your own monsters and classes, and the "out of the box" stuff runs in a way that is both simple and provides depth. Example, Orcs and Gnolls in 3.5 were both basically just humanoids with some minor stat bumps. They didn't play particularly well. Whereas now, Orcs get an extra healing power, making them resilient, tough foes, and Gnolls get bonuses against bloodied enemies, re-inforcing their savage predatory nature. I think 4th did really well with a lot of that stuff.
Roleplaying is independant of system, so I don't think that comes into it too much. What I will criticise is the overall "feel" which is much more cartoony and OTT than my personal taste, and has led to a lot of my gaming buddies refusing to take the game seriously at all. The power descriptions and artwork are often garish and OTT. I think you can work around that (I always did my own descriptions of spells and stuff anyhow, and I don't feel constrained to the art) but it is sad that the production values have slipped.

On the fluff note, I think the basic books have actually got more fluff in them than the 3.5 core (look at the Fallcrest sample starter they give you, for example).
If you pick up a book like "Underdark" you'll find page upon page of pretty cool background, and very little in the way of rules stuff. I think the fluff has just been separated from the rules, for the most part, in terms of publications. I really like 4th edition, and am looking for a group to run a campaign. I think Pathfinder didn't go far enough to fix the problems with 3.5, and I remain unimpressed by it. (although, the artwork in the books is for the most part gorgeous, which is why most people like it over 4th, I think)

Ahtman wrote:

Catyrpelius wrote:4th edition is more about combat nd less about role playing.

If you want something thats more into actual role playing then I suggest pathfinder, as it closely resmebels 3.5

That seems more a like a personal problem and less of a reality. A person can roleplay all day without any kind of rules at all, so the inclusion of rules won't determine your level of roleplaying, the player will. Any system can be turned into a numbers crunch with little roleplaying. Fourth Edition does make combat more accessible and streamlined, but that doesn't mean you can't roleplay. I mean, if you don't want to roleplay while you are playing 4th, more power to you, but that isn't an inherent flaw in the system.

Came to say this in response to Catyrpelius. So thanks, Ahtman.

I sat in on a 4th edition D&D game recently and I have to say, it wasn't my thing at all.

However, if you're coming into it fresh, with no previous RPGing experience, especially no D&D experience? It would probably be OK.

Many of WarOne's criticisms ring VERY true.

The one that rings most true for me is the one about Wizards- all wizard PCs are now basically battle wizards. You can't really make a character who is bad at combat, in this system. It's a pulp fantasy roleplaying system, and it's excellent at it, but if you want a more diverse type of roleplaying it's probably not for you. I think 3.5 wasn't particularly good at doing non-pulp either, without heavy modification. And it wasn't even great at doing action heavy pulp in the way 4th is. But it is a valid criticism. If you're hoping do have fairly "normal" PCs, pick a different system. In 4th ed, everyone is the Goddamned Batman.

While I don't disagree with some of what you are saying, I am curious what you mean by 'all wizard PCs are battle wizards'. Wizards generally do crap for damage but hinder the enemy through various means or help outside combat with utilities and rituals.

Da Boss wrote: In 4th ed, everyone is the Goddamned Batman.

Now THAT was funny!

(And.... true?!? )

Well, what I meant was that the bulk of what Wizards do is directly damaging. In 3.5, because of the yoooge spell selection options, it was possible to play many different archetypes of wizard. You could play one that specialised entirely on divination, or life draining necromancy, or you could play a charmer who used enchantment, or a transmuter. And so on. The basic Wizard has more of a flashy, explodey elemental magic feel in the current set. This doesn't bother me massively, but it does mean certain settings (Ravenloft comes to mind) would be harder to run or require a lot of alteration to allow Wizards in.
Hope that makes it easier to understand- in essence, the pyrotechnics that are part of almost all of the current wizard powers are what I'm talking about.

We were working on ways around that sort of thing before I left my old group. For example, A Warlock whose eldritch blast was represented by him sticking pins in a voodoo doll. No flashy pyrotechnics, but a believable visual mechanic for how his ranged damage abilities work. I like to have that sort of thematic flexibility in my games. In Planescape I used to play a "jobbing necromancer", who wasn't your average "moohahaha" evil necromancer and didn't take many damaging spells at all. It was a lot of fun, and 4th doesn't leave much room for that sort of messing about. Of course, it is easier to create classes, but almost all of them are balanced around the amount of damage they do in combat.

Its a PC game on the tabletop. Which is odd because pen and paper roll playing shouldnt be that restricted.

Da Boss wrote:Well, what I meant was that the bulk of what Wizards do is directly damaging. In 3.5, because of the yoooge spell selection options, it was possible to play many different archetypes of wizard. You could play one that specialised entirely on divination, or life draining necromancy, or you could play a charmer who used enchantment, or a transmuter. And so on. The basic Wizard has more of a flashy, explodey elemental magic feel in the current set. This doesn't bother me massively, but it does mean certain settings (Ravenloft comes to mind) would be harder to run or require a lot of alteration to allow Wizards in.
Hope that makes it easier to understand- in essence, the pyrotechnics that are part of almost all of the current wizard powers are what I'm talking about.

We were working on ways around that sort of thing before I left my old group. For example, A Warlock whose eldritch blast was represented by him sticking pins in a voodoo doll. No flashy pyrotechnics, but a believable visual mechanic for how his ranged damage abilities work. I like to have that sort of thematic flexibility in my games. In Planescape I used to play a "jobbing necromancer", who wasn't your average "moohahaha" evil necromancer and didn't take many damaging spells at all. It was a lot of fun, and 4th doesn't leave much room for that sort of messing about. Of course, it is easier to create classes, but almost all of them are balanced around the amount of damage they do in combat.

Well Warlock's are supposed to be damage dealers. which is why they are classified as Strikers. Wizards are Controllers. The elemental spells Wizard has are so-so damage wise but don't do a lot of control, other than taking out minions. You can create a wizard without taking a single elemental spell and be extremely effective. They still have illusion, psychic, conjuration, and summoning schools to select from. With essentials you also now have Mages which are like Wizards but have a school specialization (Evocation, Illusionist, ect). Considering their poor damage, there are more ways to make an effective non-elemental controller than there are a damaging one. There are only a few builds that can do it and almost all require the player to be a Genasi. A lot of time I've seen people playing Wizards forget they can use powers during non-combat parts of the game as well as rituals. We cam across a canyon and there was supposed to be a skill challenge to get across it but the Wizard had the Arcane Gate utility, so poof, no skill challenge. We were going to have to trek across a mountainous area during the winter. The wizard used the Endure Elements ritual making it so much easier for the party because then we just had to worry about navigation and ambushes, not freezing to death.

@Orlanth: It is only as restricted as you are. If you don't put the imagination or time into it, just as one had to in any of the other systems, that isn't the games fault. If you have a DM that doesn't have an imagination or is willing to have fun with the game, again, the game didn't pick your DM. Like any other RPG, you get in what you put out.

pretre wrote:1) D&D 4th Ed doesn't feel like WOW. Wow feels like D&D 4th Ed. Almost everything that WOW is came from D&D which came from numerous things before it. Yes, some of the mechanics are simplified, but that is the direction that D&D has been going for years (think back to 1st). I think the WOW'ization is coincidental and overplayed.

Here is an interesting topic of discussion, as WoW and DnD have their game lore going hand in hand with one another in many ways.

Warcraft was invented when DnD was in its prime during the mid-90's. Warcraft borrowed heavily from the fantasy of the time, taking bits of things from Lord of the Rings, DnD, maybe even a bit from WH40k and WH Fantasy.

Up until about 2002 before they release Warcraft III, Warcraft was always under the shadow of DnD, as DnD had more success and more lore to build from than Warcraft ever did. In a way, DnD was always overshadowing Warcraft.

Then 2004 rolled around and WoW changed everything.

The game had build a sufficiently large lore base with WCIII and when they expanded it to one of the most successful game franchises of all time, DnD all of a sudden became really insignificant in comparison. DnD could not match the popularity WoW was getting.

And this was DnD 3.5 when WoW came onto the scene. 3.5 still felt like DnD and WoW was still WoW.

Flash foward about four years, and you can see now that DnD looked heavily borrowed from the way WoW looked. Characters looked more like creatures from WoW in regards to how the DnD monsters and characters were portrayed.

Suddenly the roles were reversed.

@insaniak:

Da Boss wrote:From a GM standpoint, it is miiiiles better.

In my experience, this is true. I've only ever played 4th Ed. as a DM and the experience was much more entertaining for me than DMing 3.5 Ed. games. I felt like I had much more time to think about story and roleplaying. The abilities of the monsters do not have the depth of the character abilities--which is GREAT innovation. Think about it: the players only have to manage one being in the world so it's fine that they have complex choixes as they level. But the DM has to deal with every one and thing that is not a PC; having simpler powers with combos that are easy to understand/use makes DMing so much more streamlined. You'd think it would have been incorporated into the game before now. I don't know that creating monsters and classes is any easier than creating them in 3.5. In both editions, I think that is a ticklish subject.

But it doesn't sound like you're really considering Pathfinder or have even played it, so answering your question with comparisons of 4th to it or 3.5 will not be totally helpful. As to the criticisms of 4th Ed, Ahtman already summed it up: there is always resistance to a new edition of a beloved game. Since you have never substantially played any tabletop RPGs before those criticisms shouldn't really matter to you. The main thing about 4th edition is that it's much more like a boardgame than the 2nd Ed game you played many moons ago. It is NOT, however, "generic" fantasy. The rules are very much setting-specific, it's just that the over-setting incorporates several worlds: Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dark Sun, and perhaps Ravenloft again soon. The "laws of nature," as it were, are common to all of them. I would recommend paging through the campaign setting and players' guide books for each of these. If what you see "fluff-wise" interests you, that's enough to start. Because the game itself is really good. But this is an RPG and NOT are wargame/boardgame. You MUST like the setting to truly enjoy the game.

If you want to do your own thing, no edition of D&D is the best product for you. Instead, I would recommend that you get the Savage Worlds book and the Savage Worlds Fantasy companion. Those two books will be much cheaper than obtaining the barebone books for any D&D edition and you will be able to do whatever you can dream up with them. There are several campaign settings that use the Savage Worlds system, so you can look through them as well.

Awesome feedback, peoples. Thanks.

This has actually made it sound like 4th ed is pretty much exactly what we've been looking for. If it tends towards being a little cartoony and action-biased, that won't be a problem at all with the people I'll be playing with. And since I'm the one who will wind up DMing, the easier that is, the better.

Setting-wise, I'll probably be looking into Forgotten Realms, as I've read a lot of the books and like the setting. Generic enough to have all the normal, familiar Fantasy archetypes, while still having plenty of surprises to throw in.

Regardless of what rule set you choose in the end, you only get out of an RPG what you put into that RPG. Approach 4E as though it's a table-top WOW clone dungeon crawl game, and that's exactly what you get.

How much role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing) you get out of it will be entirely up to the players and the GM. No rule book can set that aspect in stone.

insaniak wrote:
Setting-wise, I'll probably be looking into Forgotten Realms, as I've read a lot of the books and like the setting. Generic enough to have all the normal, familiar Fantasy archetypes, while still having plenty of surprises to throw in.

Oh no, you want Dark Sun because your players are bad and they need to be punished.

Ahtman wrote:

insaniak wrote:
Setting-wise, I'll probably be looking into Forgotten Realms, as I've read a lot of the books and like the setting. Generic enough to have all the normal, familiar Fantasy archetypes, while still having plenty of surprises to throw in.

Oh no, you want Dark Sun because your players are bad and they need to be punished.

Plus, because of the spell plague, current day Forgotten Realms has gotten screwed over.

Well, OP hasn't played FR before 4th so that won't really matter. And I like the new FR just as well, actually.

Although I would second Ahtman about Dark Sun.

WarOne wrote:4th edition's greatest criticisms are the changes they made to the game since 3.5, which was what grew out of the end of 2.5.

The vices of the game:

1. Feels too much like WoW:RPG. However, DnD borrows from the current climate in terms of feel and game mechanics, so the 4th edition ruleset is encouraged to entice today's players to step into the game and be able to like playing rather then being forced to play.

I Agree

2. Dumbed down classes. Wizards and clerics don't feel the same anymore, as their classes had huge resources of spells to call upon and thus you may feel between 3.5 and 4.0 that your options are limited. In a way, yes. However, as they expand 4th edition, the flexibility of your class becomes greater as they give you more options.

You say the 1st part like it’s a bad thing. I tend to put it that “They Simplified it without Dumb-ing it Down.”

3. Multiclassing nerfed. One of the big things that 3.5 allowed was practically endless mutliclassing; kinda of a way to represent your character going through life changes and being able to change careers much like modern people do today. However, it got ridiculous when you saw Monk1/Paladin1/Fighter4/crazy number of prestige classes as players just picked the best stats and bonuses from each class and abandoned it when it didn't provide anything useful anymore. 4th edition multiclassing is a bit straightjacketed, but it makes the game more balanced.

Once more you say the 1st part like it’s a bad thing.
-I do agree that “Multi-Classing” was drastically Changed, until the “Hybrid-Classes” came out in the PH3.

4. Classes don't feel like themselves anymore...-this one is hard to describe, but with the newly defined roles and changes to classes, some classes don't feel like the traditional classes DnD used to represent them as. For instance, many wizard powers are "I shoot you with damage, get pushed X spaces." ....wut? Wizard spells now push people around? Wizards obviously have a bit more versatility to them, but some of the class powers made me scratch my head when I tried putting them in context to their older versions.

Once more you say it like it’s a bad thing.
-I do agree that there was some drastic changes. I have many character that when going from 1st-3rd to 4th had problems, but once my high level Cleric was Made a Paladin he felt more right than he had in years.

5. Books/RPG element are slimmed down- the older 3.0/3.5 books were perhaps some of the most fertile resources in regards to RPG elements related to their campaign worlds and how they used to be described. 3.0 and 3.5 introduced fairly large books that described worlds in great detail and gave you a lot of imagination fuel to kick start your own campaigns. By comparison, the 4.0 books feel neglected, and the novels have been reduced in terms of production, going so far as to re-release the old Dark Sun books rather than issue new ones for the new release of the Dark Sun campaign.

To me they writing all of the Fluff as if you know it already and they are just doing a recap. This is both good and bad at the same time. The lack of detailed information make you do one of two things, neither it think is that bad.
1] Research to find out what they are talking about.
2] Fill in the gaps on your own

Also, as apart of my 5th criticism, as 3.0 and 3.5 continued, the game still evolves by toning down the story aspect of the story for just simply another game of number crunching and monster bashing. Well, yeah that is what DnD is...make powerful heroes and beat up monsters for lewt. But DnD 4.0 has continued the trend where you simply get a quest and go hunt monsters rather than the more complex social interactions and challenging and engaging stories that are concocted by home grown campaigns.

Yes I agree with the “Social Interaction” within the game between PCs and NPCs. Maybe they should have left the “Social Skill Challenges” for the DMG2. I find myself constantly fighting the ballace between the “Social Skill Challenge” mechanics and just winging it.

With this in mind, 4th edition is a polished by-product of today's modern gamer. It stripped away the crazy do whatever you want spirit of 3.5 to give it more focus and ease to play.

It is for you to decide if the game is worth playing.

Once more I agree.

I do think one of the one of there other big problems is nomenclature. here is one example
-Multi-Classing is not Multi-Classing
-Hybrid-Classes are Multi-Classing in the 1st/2nd edition sense.


Thank you for your time
Anpu42
=0o0=

H.B.M.C. wrote:Regardless of what rule set you choose in the end, you only get out of an RPG what you put into that RPG. Approach 4E as though it's a table-top WOW clone dungeon crawl game, and that's exactly what you get.

How much role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing) you get out of it will be entirely up to the players and the GM. No rule book can set that aspect in stone.

Again, this!

My thoughts on the matter:

I'll be honest. I've never played 4th edition. Maybe I don't understand the way the mechanics work out. Still avoided it to this day. I have a passing enough understanding of 2nd, played 3rd, and was intimately familiar with 3.5. They all had glaring flaws. 3.5 was in a lot of ways several steps forward, several steps back. My favorite system is 3.5 in the Ravenloft campaign setting, with special care taken to houserule in the favor of being highly mortal (instant death saves for 10-15 HPs damage and so on). When 4th edition was being developed, my group caught wind of a final draft that was leaked on the internet as it was going to the printers. Naturally we eagerly ripped into to see what was coming our way. I think I was the most disappointed. Between all of the MMO sytle cooldown powers and the fact that it all looked mechanically less mortal than real combat should be. Seemingly gone were the giant spell lists that contain non-combat spells one could pick up for fun. Ventriloquism for example, doesn't appear to exist. Maybe I was the only one who used spells like that, but I for one felt betrayed. Ritual spells were added as what is considered a replacement for those, but those are strictly non-combat because they take longer than the Battle-approved list does. Maybe I've found a way I want to use one of those spells in combat to my advantage. Something outside of the MMO-box.

For me, 4th edition came in the form of Pathfinder. Almost everything I disliked about 3.5 vanished when Pathfinder became a reality. Consolidated skills in a matter that still implied that realized non-combat existed. They made grapple make sense. They rebalanced the power levels of most all of the classes. The classes are still a little more powerful than I would like overall, but the Beastiary does well to balance it out. And the best thing ever? The 3.5 stuff is entirely compatible. So I convert grapple to CMB/CMD, but everything else seems to just connect together well. I can keep running Ravenloft, Ebberon, even Forgotten Realms without buying new books. This is where I get off the RPG train.

I'm not saying that 4E is all that bad. I just liken my first impression of 4E to playing a game of the board game Descent. It looks fast to set up, and I'm sure it's fun enough. It's just that I'm looking for a screwdriver that I can precisely and subtly tailor to my exact desired type of game, and 4E offers me a sledgehammer.

As far as any advice I would give, I would probably have to say this: If you played 3rd/3.5 for even a minute and liked it, if you liked a system that had rules for literally anything under the sun, or one of the best supported with material systems out there, I recommend Pathfinder with as much of the 3.5 expansion material you can get out of ebay/amazon. If you want a system that allows for a quick and fast game requiring little setup being an underlying story, then 4E is probably the way to go.

To the 4th Ed haters (since that's the inevitable direction of this thread), have any of you played any edition of Warhammer Fantasy RPG? What do you think of those?

pretre wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:Regardless of what rule set you choose in the end, you only get out of an RPG what you put into that RPG. Approach 4E as though it's a table-top WOW clone dungeon crawl game, and that's exactly what you get.

How much role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing) you get out of it will be entirely up to the players and the GM. No rule book can set that aspect in stone.

Again, this!

I completely agree. My guys and I played for 15 minutes without consulting a rulebook, dice, or character sheets while we waited for a pizza to cook. We have another DM who can't ad hoc anything that's not a part of cannon rules. He has a plot, but if it's not in a book, it's generally not allowed. 4E would destroy him, more than he already is.

daedalus wrote:My thoughts on the matter:

I'll be honest. I've never played 4th edition.

Not to be mean, but... You should probably try it before passing judgement.

I mean, I get where you are coming from. 3.5 and by extension Pathfinder have pretty beefy systems, but sometimes that beef gets in the way of the story. Either way, I would try it before knocking it. I was resistent to 4th, but it really grew on me.