Sins of 4e

[Username17]

With 4e on the way out (finally!) we can start analyzing where and how they went wrong. I don't mean "things they did that I don't like" (because there are lots of those), I mean "things they did that no one likes." Those are the things that sank the edition.

Skill Challenges

4e really doubled down on Skill Challenges, and their tragic inability to make them function at all is mystifying as it is damning. And it turned a lot of people off. My most 4rrie friends were totally psyched about Skill Challenges and now they... just... don't do them. If you remember the arguments when they first hit, the public was willing to overlook almost any flaws. If they had worked at all they would have been universally adopted and loved. But they didn't, so they eventually drove people away.

I think it really bears special repetition how incredibly forgiving the audience was for Skill Challenges. All they wanted was the loosest of structural frameworks for doing stuff and they were willing to fill in all the details themselves. I am totally serious, people didn't really mind that there weren't any sample DCs for specific tasks or complexity guidelines or action definitions or anything. People were willing to accept the flowchart:

• Everyone tells a little story.
• Everyone rolls a die.
• Hit or Miss is assigned to each player.
• Repeat until the team aggregately succeeds or fails.

People were excited about that, because it was simple and could be applied to "stuff." But the presented mechanics failed to live up to even that, because they encouraged the players to avoid rolling dice or describing actions and to instead just have one player perform all the action. Also, they managed to make success and failure be not particularly in doubt, which is extremely frustrating when you're rolling a die 12 times. That was inexcusable, since it s not conceptually difficult to just have a limited number of die rolls and minimum total hits for success (which would automatically make even the clumsiest of oafs "helpful"), and the math to generate probabilities for such simple operations can be figured on a solar powered calculator in a minute or two.

Racial Determinism

No one likes the Kalashtar. No one knows what they look like, what they smell like, what they talk like, or why they are supposed to care. All they know is that apparently they are one if they want to play a Laser Cleric or Grindadin. No one knows why, and they hate it. It's part and parcel of the whole dual attribute dependency fiasco, but the part that people really notice is the part where if you want to play a certain class there's a very short list of "acceptable" races and if you want to play a specific race there is a very short list "acceptable" classes. That infuriates people.

True story: I got into a rather ugly fight with a 4rrie soon after 4e came out where he said that he intended to play an Eladrin Rogue/Wizard. And I pointed out that that simply wasn't a supported archetype in 4e. That the Rogue requires two stats to be kept high and neither of those stats are Intelligence, and Wizard powers require a maxed Intelligence, and you only get two stats maxed in 4e. And I didn't throw out any swear words or personal insults, but the man was enraged beyond comprehension. He let out a torrent of curses and banned me from his forum so that he wouldn't have to hear that line of reasoning. But of course, he eventually did put that to the test and discovered exactly what I had said would happen: you can't actually really make an effective Rogue/Wizard, Eladrin or no.

People are seemingly OK with being told that they can't play a Wizard because they are a Dwarf. Sure, they don't like it very much, but it's something they are willing to accept. Under no circumstances do they want to be told that as a Dwarf they have to play a specific type of Druid. That shit is bullshit, and everyone realizes it.

The funny thing is that they even recognized this problem before proceeding to write it in for 4e. They had those little essays about how a race shouldn't be selected just for a bonus, it should really matter and blah blah blah. And that was the idea behind giving each race two separate stat bonuses - even if you essentially needed a Charisma bonus to play a Sorcerer, by having more than a third of the races provide a Charisma bonus it wasn't really that big of a deal. But then what did they do?

• They made all the classes DAD, so the progress towards not wanting specific races for specific bonuses was negative. Now instead of having only 1 in 6 races give the "right" bonus, only 1 in 15 did.
• They made a bunch of race + class specific feats that were specifically better than other feats, so if you chose the right race/class combo you were massively superior to someone who didn't.

And because they slowed way the fuck down on printing classes, but printed like a gajillion feats, they accelerated this problem more and more. And now, you are a frickin sucker if your Grindadin isn't a Kalashtar or your Illusion Orbizard isn't a Gnome. And people really hate that.

The Narrow Classes
I don't honestly care if there are 40 very narrow classes or 4 very wide classes. It seriously doesn't mean shit to me. And there are people who really care, but I don't think that they are a majority. There seriously are people for whom it is a make or break proposition whether they write "Swashbuckler" on their character sheet or "Warrior (and happen to select swashbucklering abilities off the warrior list)." And as far as I can tell, either choice will attract and drive away roughly equivalent numbers of potential gamers.

But you know what's the wrong choice? Having a small number of incredibly narrow classes. That's fucked up. That makes people not want to play your game. And yet, that's what they went with. And the fans were cautiously willing to give them a pass on that. People complained that they couldn't get their bard or druiding on, and fans said "Don't worry, there will be new classes coming shortly." And that just didn't really happen. There still isn't a bow sniper, mobility spearman, or even halfling halberdier to be played. As discussed in the Classplosion thread, people would have been willing to accept the incredible limitations of the Rogue and Paladin class if there had been Thugs and Cavaliers and shit to play instead. But there weren't. There still aren't. And people are unhappy. And rightfully so.

What Would You Do About It?

So there are lots of ways you could go about fixing that up. And oddly, I think it genuinely could be addressed by coming out with a new box set. Possibly, even probably not enough to make me personally like it, but enough to make people in general happy with it. It comes in just a few steps:

• Skill Challenges: You're writing a new DM section anyway. It would be simple enough to include a Skill Challenge system that rewarded participation and had meaningful chances of success and failure.
• New Classes: You're writing the classes over again. Drop DAD. This is super important. When you do the new Laser Cleric powers, they are Wisdom Only. You could go farther and make classes a lot more open, but just by taking the Charisma riders off of Laser Cleric powers, you'd suddenly open the class up to Elves and Dwarves and Humans. And no one would care what Kalashtar were and we'd all be happier.
• New Feats Or even no feats. The 4e feats are by and large very bad for the game. But just by clearing out the racial feats, you'd go a long way toward making the game less stupid and aggravating.
• Classplode! We only have the first 4 months of the new edition, and apparently they are only releasing a total of 8 classes in that period. And that's not good. Especially since they are releasing 10 races in the same period (although 4 of those races are elves, so there is still more diversity in the classes). But there's a whole new year coming out, and the entire DDI for that period. So they could plausibly release the several dozen classes you need to make a 4e style game feel like anything but a straight jacket.

But if you were starting from total scratch (rather than just doing a 4e simplified version), I'd drop attributes altogether. They have a seriously negative impact on how 4e functions at every level.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

Could skill challenges be fixed simply by only counting successes and not failures?

Also, what's DAD? Dual Attribute Dependency? From what I understand of 4.0, that makes sense.

[ggroy]

[ggroy]

[Lokathor]

So basically the entire "revised" skill challenge system would be:

• A skill challenge is 3 "rounds" by default. The DM can make them longer if they really want to, but they probably shouldn't.
• Each round, a player make a skill check and says what they're doing. If the group likes it (as in, it either makes sense or is awesome) then the check gets +2. If they don't, the check gets -2. If the player has used the skill during the previous round, they also get -2.
• The DC for the skill challenge is determined by the level of the challenge, and all skills use the same DC. The default DC is 14+Half Level.
• Each success that a player gets adds towards the group's total.
• If a player gets 2 failures, they can't participate in any future rounds of the challenge (make up a story reason; the king hates them, they're knocked out, whatever).
• Once the challenge is over, if the group got the number of successes they needed, they pass. By default, they need at least 15 successes.

And then just fiddle with the numbers I used until you get the right probabilities?

[Leress]

[*]Each round, a player make a skill check and says what they're doing. If the group likes it (as in, it either makes sense or is awesome) then the check gets +2. If they don't, the check gets -2. If the player has used the skill during the previous round, they also get -2.

Why would the group say they won't like it? This really just encourages bullshit excuses to get the pluses.

[TheWorid]

Seems like a simple "DM makes a call" situation to me. Throw some guidelines and examples in the book and I see no need for group decisions.

[souran]

• Skill Challenges: You're writing a new DM section anyway. It would be simple enough to include a Skill Challenge system that rewarded participation and had meaningful chances of success and failure.

Except this is what they have been trying to do. Since the first revision of these rules. This fix is saying "they should make this work." What they need to do even more than that is get a statitician on staff. Then they really need to look at what modifiers do to their system and really examine the rate of stat growth.

They have lots of things that would be good basis rules for building skill challenges. The existing DISEASE rules are not a bad example of how such a skill challenge might work ( You go up and down on a slider, shit happens depending on your current condition) the problem is really that the 1st rules for skill challenges were unwinnable except by having only one person participate and the more recent versions were unlosable if you had talentless people sit out.

[*] New Classes: You're writing the classes over again. Drop DAD. This is super important. When you do the new Laser Cleric powers, they are Wisdom Only. You could go farther and make classes a lot more open, but just by taking the Charisma riders off of Laser Cleric powers, you'd suddenly open the class up to Elves and Dwarves and Humans. And no one would care what Kalashtar were and we'd all be happier.

Everybody SHOULD be depenant on multiple stats. That was a good idea becasue SAD characters will fuck up your game. No character should be a sad character. What they need to do to fix races and classes is makes the classes have the stat modifers and remove stat modifiers as a "normal" feature of races . You can approach elves being quick and dwarves being tough in other ways than giving them a bonus that becomes mandatory to play a certain class. Besides the game already says "you are not a typical member of your race." If you give a race a stat bonus it should because that race is defined by that stat. Like minotaurs and strength. Even then, PC minotuars should get a SMALL bonus to strength because that player is already likely to max his strength further.

[*] New Feats Or even no feats. The 4e feats are by and large very bad for the game. But just by clearing out the racial feats, you'd go a long way toward making the game less stupid and aggravating.

Any level where you don't get to pick to add something to your character sucks. Feats can be totally gone as long as every level gives you either a big choice or a couple of small choices.

[*] Classplode! We only have the first 4 months of the new edition, and apparently they are only releasing a total of 8 classes in that period. And that's not good. Especially since they are releasing 10 races in the same period (although 4 of those races are elves, so there is still more diversity in the classes). But there's a whole new year coming out, and the entire DDI for that period. So they could plausibly release the several dozen classes you need to make a 4e style game feel like anything but a straight jacket.[/list]

Remember that if you push options that fast you will end up with a LOT of filler options and pointless builds.

Part of the problem with 4e right now is that the powers have about 60% of the structure of a magic card but they are not expandible or combinable like magic cards.

In magic you might have a 1/1 casting cost 1 colored and 1 colorless card in each expansion. That card seems fairly pathetic except that you can fill its keyword box with junk that makes it useful in legacy play and such that even a boring 1/1 with no powers of its own recieves some stacking benefit with your more useful combination cards. You end up with 4 of these boring ass cards in your deck becasue they have a usefulness that can be accentuated later and because you get 60 or more cards,

About half the existing class powers are like these 1/1 cards. Except, the other half at each level are like ultra rares that you build the heart of your deck around. And instead of them having different casting costs they all cost the same to use.

Maybe they should ask if any of the designers has any DESIRE to ever use any power before adding it to the game. Filler options suck. they always suck and pumping out classes so fast they have only 1 decent path of powers will make these classes just as narrow as they are now.

[souran]

sorry for double post

[RandomCasualty2]

Everybody SHOULD be depenant on multiple stats. That was a good idea becasue SAD characters will fuck up your game. No character should be a sad character. What they need to do to fix races and classes is makes the classes have the stat modifers and remove stat modifiers as a "normal" feature of races . You can approach elves being quick and dwarves being tough in other ways than giving them a bonus that becomes mandatory to play a certain class. Besides the game already says "you are not a typical member of your race." If you give a race a stat bonus it should because that race is defined by that stat. Like minotaurs and strength. Even then, PC minotuars should get a SMALL bonus to strength because that player is already likely to max his strength further.

A better question is, why have stats at all? In 4E, they seriously don't do anything. Everyone needs 2 stats, and basically you're going to build your character such that your primary stat is your highest and your secondary stat is almost as high. Everything else is a dump stat. We know that orbizards are going to be int/wis, grind paladins are going to be str/wis and tactical warlords are going to be str/int.

It's seriously a nonchoice, so why even have it at all? Basically just give people a set bonus to their primary schtick and spare yourself the trouble of keeping track of those 6 ability scores which 4E doesn't even use anyway. You just assume that if someone has the ability, that they're good with it. For a fantasy game that's fine. You paid power slots or skill slots or feat slots or whatever to take that ability, so you should be competent with it. The game is limited as it is in telling you what you can't take, ability scores are just a tightening of an already rigid strait-jacket.

And to make matters worse, ability scores are a newbie trap.

[Lokathor]

[*]Each round, a player make a skill check and says what they're doing. If the group likes it (as in, it either makes sense or is awesome) then the check gets +2. If they don't, the check gets -2. If the player has used the skill during the previous round, they also get -2.

Why would the group say they won't like it? This really just encourages bullshit excuses to get the pluses.

I guess you haven't played with the kind of people I have. We usually call each other's half-baked ideas stupid and hate on them all the time even if it would be a net power gain for the group. We have a minimal level of egalitarian action at work.

[Username17]

So basically the entire "revised" skill challenge system would be:

• A skill challenge is 3 "rounds" by default. The DM can make them longer if they really want to, but they probably shouldn't.
• Each round, a player make a skill check and says what they're doing. If the group likes it (as in, it either makes sense or is awesome) then the check gets +2. If they don't, the check gets -2. If the player has used the skill during the previous round, they also get -2.
• The DC for the skill challenge is determined by the level of the challenge, and all skills use the same DC. The default DC is 14+Half Level.
• Each success that a player gets adds towards the group's total.
• If a player gets 2 failures, they can't participate in any future rounds of the challenge (make up a story reason; the king hates them, they're knocked out, whatever).
• Once the challenge is over, if the group got the number of successes they needed, they pass. By default, they need at least 15 successes.

And then just fiddle with the numbers I used until you get the right probabilities?

That's pretty close to a working system. There's no reason at all to have players kicked out of the challenge after 2 failures, because the test only goes 3 rounds (four or five rounds for a "complex" challenge). And you're going to want the numbers to vary by more than +/-2 for using a good or bad (or repeated) skill, because 4e characters have skill bonuses vary by more than 5 points, and you don't want the skill challenge rules boil down to "Listen to Lidda's player use Thievery over and over again.

But basically, yes. You have five players each try three things,and if a total of 10 of them work, the challenge is a success. Then you fiddle with DCs and incentives for varying up your strategies.

Except this is what they have been trying to do. Since the first revision of these rules. This fix is saying "they should make this work." What they need to do even more than that is get a statitician on staff. Then they really need to look at what modifiers do to their system and really examine the rate of stat growth.

They have lots of things that would be good basis rules for building skill challenges. The existing DISEASE rules are not a bad example of how such a skill challenge might work ( You go up and down on a slider, shit happens depending on your current condition) the problem is really that the 1st rules for skill challenges were unwinnable except by having only one person participate and the more recent versions were unlosable if you had talentless people sit out.

Their inability to make the math work is puzzling and infuriating. But no, it's more than that. And the disease rules would not work either. The problem is that as long as failing a die roll keeps doing something in addition to not adding a success, players keep being incentivized to not describe actions or roll dice. It would be like if they published a combat system where missing caused the enemy to gain hit points.

There's just no excuse for punishing participation in he skill challenge system. The math failure is insulting and all, but people honestly wouldn't even care that much if the core mechanic still encouraged players to describe actions and roll dice. And all they have to do is to make it so that you count hits and ignore misses (and be limited by how many times each player gets to act), rather than having it count hits and misses separately (and be limited by the total number of actions that all the players together can take).

But if the only problem was that skill challenges were too easy or too hard, people would be fine with that. They'd routinely have the players confronted with higher or lower level skill challenges, and the players would get more or less XP and the player base would be happy. The part that makes people sad is the part where having Dwarf Druid act in the skill challenge at all punishes the entire teams' chances of success.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Their inability to make the math work is puzzling and infuriating. But no, it's more than that. And the disease rules would not work either. The problem is that as long as failing a die roll keeps doing something in addition to not adding a success, players keep being incentivized to not describe actions or roll dice. It would be like if they published a combat system where missing caused the enemy to gain hit points.

The biggest problem with the skill challenge system isn't the math, but rather the entire concept. There just aren't any meaningful choices to be made, it's just pure dice rolling.

Until someone writes a skill challenge minigame that requires some thinking and strategy, I just can't be bothered to care about it.

[Username17]

The biggest problem with the skill challenge system isn't the math, but rather the entire concept. There just aren't any meaningful choices to be made, it's just pure dice rolling.

Until someone writes a skill challenge minigame that requires some thinking and strategy, I just can't be bothered to care about it.

I'm actually with you there. Perhaps the biggest and best argument against it is that the players simply announce their intent to use their best skill and then they roll it, and then they do it again. But there were a lot of people who were pretty psyched about that. Rules light, narrative first gaming.

Like I said, this isn't about salvaging 4e into something I'd like. I don't think that's really possible. It's about salvaging it into something that enough fans would like to keep it from falling on its own sword.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

For the life of me, I have no idea why people don't get a damage bonus equal to their base level bonus. At epic levels, when grind is the worst it'd shave a round or two off of combat.

If you can do that then you can get rid of bullshit expansion options like Weapon Focus and Echoes of Thunder and Iron Armbands of Power. Sure, people want those things but they don't like them.


Also, the paragon paths and epic destinies should have more to them. Seriously, you could mash up any three random PPs and still have a good chance of getting something worse than a Divine Oracle or a Son of Mercy. If you gave PHB-only characters the chance to be a Battle Captain (with the option of using CHA) or those other three PPs combined about half of people would still be Battle Captains. That's fucking pathetic. Same for the Epic Destinies. It's a fucken shame that the best ratio of epic destinies lies in the PHB, with the worst being the Eternal Seeker. You could seriously let people select three epic destinies and they'd barely notice.

If there were more PPs, which there aren't, I would hunt through all of the books and combine the PPs until we got something decent. Shitty PPs like Beastmaster would be combined with ones like the Stormwarden and the abilities would be spread out.


Also, the advancement schedule sucks ass. The whole 'No More Empty Levels!' bullshit is that. Pure bullshit. Whoever had the bright idea that you could refuse gaining new dailies or encounter powers needs to be kicked in the nuts, because there are seriously quite a few characters who go long stretches of time without wanting or needing to upgraydde their sweet old powers with the shitty new ones. Either characters should be forced to upgrade or they should keep all of their old powers. Yes, this totally means that a level 23 character should have 7 encounter attack powers. Dicks.

[Crissa]

I think someone, somewhere, forgot that misses in a skill system should either be ignored, lose time, or have a funny answer instead of a mechanical penalty that puts you behind the next success... Making it a sliding slope to horribleness.

-Crissa

[Username17]

For the life of me, I have no idea why people don't get a damage bonus equal to their base level bonus. At epic levels, when grind is the worst it'd shave a round or two off of combat.

Yeah, that's a puzzling one. In February of 2008 I think it was, they released the Paladin preview where they talked about how [W] worked. And in that description, they straight up said firstly that you added your level bonus to damage, but secondly implied heavily that you multiplied that bonus by the umber of [W]s on your attack. That was just a few months from the finalization of primary writing for the book, so apparently if they ever playtested the Fighter's ultimate 7[W] attack at all - it was doing an extra 98 damage. Which would make it a lot more interesting and ultimate feeling.

Also, the paragon paths and epic destinies should have more to them.

Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies aren't very interesting. But then, the game isn't that interesting. But people play it anyway.

The real problem with Paragon Paths is that they embrace the Dual Attribute Dependency that mars all of 4e pretty hard. Razor Clerics would kind of like to be Battle Priests, except that if they were suckers and tried to make a Strength/Charisma cleric like they were told they could, they can't be one. Because all the Paragon Paths for Razor Clerics are Strength/Wisdom. That shit has to stop. Also, the strong association between Paragon Paths and Classes needs to stop too. A PP is already restricted by attribute, and by available weaponry. It does not need any other limitations. A Bow Ranger has a high Dex, but he's not going to take Dagger Master because he uses a frickin bow. A Duelist Rogue has a high Charisma, but he isn't going to take Dark Reckoner because he doesn't have an implement.

Seriously, every PP should be open to every class. That would allow a lot of the redundant bullshit to just disappear. Kensei and Astral Blade just don't need to be different PPs.

Also, the advancement schedule sucks ass. The whole 'No More Empty Levels!' bullshit is that. Pure bullshit. Whoever had the bright idea that you could refuse gaining new dailies or encounter powers needs to be kicked in the nuts, because there are seriously quite a few characters who go long stretches of time without wanting or needing to upgraydde their sweet old powers with the shitty new ones. Either characters should be forced to upgrade or they should keep all of their old powers. Yes, this totally means that a level 23 character should have 7 encounter attack powers. Dicks.

Agreed. The advancement schedule is padded to look like there's an option every level, but between levels when they offer you choices of powers that suck to replace your old powers that don't suck and levels where all they do is give you a feat that adds to your numbers to keep you from falling behind in the numbers arms race, there is a lot of dead space. Simply not replacing powers would go a long long way.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Also, the advancement schedule sucks ass. The whole 'No More Empty Levels!' bullshit is that. Pure bullshit. Whoever had the bright idea that you could refuse gaining new dailies or encounter powers needs to be kicked in the nuts, because there are seriously quite a few characters who go long stretches of time without wanting or needing to upgraydde their sweet old powers with the shitty new ones. Either characters should be forced to upgrade or they should keep all of their old powers. Yes, this totally means that a level 23 character should have 7 encounter attack powers. Dicks.

Yeah, it's really sad actually, that the game went to being basically a pure attrition of hit points where the amount of damage was all that mattered for a bunch of class' powers. To make a power better it just had to do... more damage. And they still fucked it up.

[sake]

they should keep all of their old powers. Yes, this totally means that a level 23 character should have 7 encounter attack powers. Dicks.

I've been considering trying that as a house rule (along with giving each race one floating stat) for awhile now, but my group is already starting to complain that I've added too many house rules as is...

[NineInchNall]

Everybody SHOULD be depenant on multiple stats. That was a good idea becasue SAD characters will fuck up your game. No character should be a sad character. What they need to do to fix races and classes is makes the classes have the stat modifers and remove stat modifiers as a "normal" feature of races . You can approach elves being quick and dwarves being tough in other ways than giving them a bonus that becomes mandatory to play a certain class. Besides the game already says "you are not a typical member of your race." If you give a race a stat bonus it should because that race is defined by that stat. Like minotaurs and strength. Even then, PC minotuars should get a SMALL bonus to strength because that player is already likely to max his strength further.

No, SAD characters are fuckers only in comparison to MAD characters. If every character is SAD, then what could possibly be the problem?

[Hicks]

Some people get really freaked out about bigger numbers, probably because bigger Attack Stat increases a game's semblance to Rocket Launcher Tag.

[NineInchNall]

But ... Single Attribute Dependency doesn't logically entail bigger numbers!

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah, that's a puzzling one. In February of 2008 I think it was, they released the Paladin preview where they talked about how [W] worked. And in that description, they straight up said firstly that you added your level bonus to damage, but secondly implied heavily that you multiplied that bonus by the umber of [W]s on your attack. That was just a few months from the finalization of primary writing for the book, so apparently if they ever playtested the Fighter's ultimate 7[W] attack at all - it was doing an extra 98 damage. Which would make it a lot more interesting and ultimate feeling.

Yeah, that also helps bridge the gap between multi-attack powers and single attack powers.

[Funswoggle]

With 4e on the way out (finally!) we can start analyzing where and how they went wrong. I don't mean "things they did that I don't like" (because there are lots of those), I mean "things they did that no one likes." Those are the things that sank the edition.

Hate to break this to you, but the Essentials line is a marketing ploy to grab new gamers. The products are designed to be sold at major retail outlets rather than just hobby stores.

The products are fully compatible with previously released 4E material, as noted in the copy text on WotC's website. I'll post a link once I'm off work.

Racial Determinism

No one likes the Kalashtar. No one knows what they look like, what they smell like, what they talk like, or why they are supposed to care. All they know is that apparently they are one if they want to play a Laser Cleric or Grindadin. No one knows why, and they hate it. It's part and parcel of the whole dual attribute dependency fiasco, but the part that people really notice is the part where if you want to play a certain class there's a very short list of "acceptable" races and if you want to play a specific race there is a very short list "acceptable" classes. That infuriates people.

This simply isn't accurate.

Let's look at an Eladrin Fighter for instance. Having a racial bonus to DEX/INT might not make them as natural a Fighter as Minotaurs or Dwarves, but an Eladrin can teleport away from a gang of mooks to deliver 3[W] worth of "Fuck You!" to the goblins that are shiving the party Wizard.

I would say that earlier editions were far, FAR more prohibitive towards certain race, class combos. Hell, even Halflings make decent Fighters now.

The Narrow Classes
I don't honestly care if there are 40 very narrow classes or 4 very wide classes. It seriously doesn't mean shit to me. And there are people who really care, but I don't think that they are a majority. There seriously are people for whom it is a make or break proposition whether they write "Swashbuckler" on their character sheet or "Warrior (and happen to select swashbucklering abilities off the warrior list)." And as far as I can tell, either choice will attract and drive away roughly equivalent numbers of potential gamers.

Also inaccurate.

Some of the newer classes haven't had the benefit of multiple splat books yet, but consider the rogue:

You can make an educated "Indiana Jones-esque" explorer Rogue.

An intimidating, brutish thug Rogue.

A charismatic dervish Rogue, focused on swashbuckling.

A super stealthy ninja Rogue.

And that's without multiclassing.

I'm working on a blogpost detailing all four concepts, which is why I mentioned those specifically.

I'm not here to schill my friend's blog though, so if you'd like to have a look I'd be more than happy to link it to you via PM.

[*] New Feats Or even no feats. The 4e feats are by and large very bad for the game. But just by clearing out the racial feats, you'd go a long way toward making the game less stupid and aggravating.

Racial feats are another reason why the classes of the current edition are more inclusionary to many, many races. Also, I think they are one of the better ideas the designers have, as a players choice of character race now has impact beyond 1st level chargen.

The real "sins" of 4th edition are borked game math, over-reliance on base stats, redundant powers, feat taxes, rules abstraction, necessity of miniatures and text littered with metagame language (for instance movement measured in squares, each representing 5sq. feet when they could have easily kept the same system and changed the unit of measurement to yards or meters.)

The biggest problem with 4th edition is that when playing it, one feels as though they are interacting with a game rather than a world, which can hamper one's feeling of immersion quite a bit.

That is the damning thing I can think of concerning the new edition.

[Kaelik]

You know what I was just thinking "Man we need a 4e apologist, but not just any 4e apologist, also a grognard who likes 4e and is so completely gullible that he believes anything wotc says, like that essentials are not reprints, or that you can four different kinds of rogue viable."

Also, hilarious how you think that halflings couldn't be fighters before, even though halflings can't be decent fighters now, and they used to be one of the better ones.

EDIT: On further contemplation, "Racial feats make each class more inclusive of different races" counts as the funniest thing you have said.