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So the game shop I've been hanging out at with some other guys recently became the home of a active D&D group, and I was given the opportunity to get involved. I was like "hell ya!" seeing as I've been looking for a good group to do D&D with. So talking to some of the people they seemed pretty cool and I said "I assume its 3.5?" And they said "actually we run 4.0". Now seeing as I haven't ever looked at 4.0 or given it any chance at all I said that was cool. I mean how different could it be?

So I get home tonight, get a hold of the 4.0 books and...

oh...


oh god...





WHAT IS THIS!?!?!?!?!?!

I am truly terrified.

My mind is called back to my telling these people that I was interested in playing a cleric. And in the exact words they responded, "A really popular build right now is a laser cleric. Which is a cleric that focuses on long range damage powers."

Now a couple warning flags...

Build?
This sounds dangerously close to a WoW reference. I've never heard someone refer to a "build" in D&D. That implies a commonly used set of statistics. Which in 3.5 the options are so numerous it would be hard to have the exact same setup for an individual character that often.

Powers?
lol wut?


I tried to gain some understanding of what I was seeing in this 4.0 PHB by googling for the difference between 3.5 and 4.0. I got a forum post of some people explaining. One of them was talking about how some people say it is "dumbed down" but that the combat was actually a lot more tactical. Apparently positioning on the combat board is a lot more tactical now.


Well from what I've looked through of this 4.0 PHB I've determined that Wizards has turned D&D in to a glorified game of chess...


I could go on a rampage about what I think of what I have seen, but that isn't the purpose of this post. Of those of you who have played some 4.0 can you please clue me in? Is it just me or have they cut spells down to 20% of the options they once were? Is it just me or have the cut down the skills to 20% of what they were? Is it just me or has combat become the entire focus in D&D 4.0? Because I didn't see a single "power" in there that wasn't for combat purposes. Is 4.0 not a "dumbed down" version compared to 3.5 like many have apparently said?

Because at the moment that seems to be it. A dumbed down, idiots guide version of D&D. Where everything is a positive, nothing is a negative, and you only have 4 choices instead of 20.


and for ******** sake. They are SPELLS damn it. Not powers.... really, how gay can you get...

That sounds just horrible, but if they want to make money dumbing it down to super chess will let a lot more people play it that never had before. For a business its a good call, for D&D its the worst thing ever.

Agreed.

I started looking into it, but that paragon stuff turned me off. It looks like it destroyed a lot of the open-ended customization that 3.5 has to offer. So, as far as I'm concerned, 4.0 doesn't exist, it never did, and I will live in blissful ignorance of it for all eternity.

To further explain my experience, I shall tell you a tale of my first 3.5 game with my local game shop. The a small majority of them where hack-and-slashers, power gamers and rule exploiters. I tried tailoring a game for ten people, and it was not fun. I would try to make encounters challenging, but then everyone who was of ECL 1 and higher took out everything by themselves in two rounds. Making everyone else who rolled normal races and classes do nothing combat wise. In situations where a rogue had to pick locks or someone had to use diplomacy, the fighter responded by using his sword. Everything was unbalanced and unfair. Keep in mind, this was a fresh group of people. The main focus of when I run a game is teamwork and having fun. When this was not accomplished, I decided to run 4th edition with a smaller group of people. Combat was know fluent because encounters were easier to set up, no one had overstepped their roles or boundaries, and we all had a good time role-playing.

If I ever get my hands on an AD&D book, I'd most definitely give it a read. Most of the time, I had to have my friend's help in making a character because the tables and charts confused me so much as a newbie. sweatdrop

Long live D&D 3.5, the only version I've evar played!

IT'S OVER 9000!!!

I think Valin said it quite nicely... you should really tri AD&D.