4e has been leaked

[Arek]

Which I don't condone, for the record. I just don't get excited enough to condemn my friend for downloading it. According to him, and some others I've seen giving reports, they're going to buy the books anyway, so I assume it works out.

He and some friends played a game the other day. Here, in his own words...

The Good points?
It's much much easier to run and design encounters.
Also: There are no dead levels.
Also: You will never just spend a whole encounter repeating the full attack action.


Me: Okay. Any difficulties?

Him: Plenty.

Ok..

So one of the big problems I've had so far is everything is becoming very specialized.

Classes have specific roles in their description

Striker, Controller, Defender, and Leader

And if you're not THAT CLASS.

You're pretty much incapable of doing that job if you need to.

I had a problem, a big one, Tanking as a Warlord, which is a Leader.

And with two leaders and two strikers we had absolutely no battlefield control at all. Party balance is extremely important which leads people away from playing what they like.

Other stuff I've seen from people analyzing it...

Well, it seems to be not nearly as customizeable, monster HP increases faster than your ability to do damage does at each level meaning combats get long, utility spells are considered to be things like 'expeditious retreat' which don't directly do damage to the enemy, and...oh, I could go on.

On the good side, even the people pointing out the flaws admit they'd play it as a social session with their friends.

[xredjasonx]

I've looked at the pdf's, my DM has them and we converted our 12th level characters to 4E and I must say, it's much more dynamic and less clunky. I changed my 12th level Warblade (Book of Nine Swords) to a 12th level Fighter (Swordmaster paragon path) and I enjoy it sooo much more. Less things to constantly keep track of, like the DR jewel in my sword hilt amongst a ton of other things, but yet so many other cool options. It's a way better edition of D&D! I love how the combat is more fun and it goes a lot quicker.

[Arek]

I'm not so sure. I have several concerns about the game, both points raised by other people and from spending a couple of hours on my friend's laptop. In no particular order...


--As you level up, monsters get hit points more quickly than you can make them lose them. Furthermore, their main idea about how to make a really awesome "elite" or "solo" fight is to...
...multiply the hit points and give a bonus to saves. As far as I can tell, the game was intentionally designed so that high-level fights drag on forever, but you don't get more of the limited-use powers to make up for it, so if you're against a dragon, the game devolves into an exercise in dice-rolling.

--Magic item merchants have it goin' on, man. If I sell a magic item to Jord Fatbelly the Magic Item Merchant, I get 20%, but if Jord sells it to me, he's allowed to charge full price and tag on an extra 20-40%. So a I get 200 gp for selling a 1000 gp item, and if I buy it, I'm paying 1,200-1,400 gp. And with magic item creation being so darn inefficient, and breaking them down to make more magic items even more so, the best route for getting magic items is to get them from killing monsters and not asking yourself where the monsters got them. Or go around beating up magic item merchants and taking their stuff.

--The Wizard is still getting lots of love. They get some really awesome/interesting powers. I'd be fine with this, if the other classes were on equal footing. Or even the races. Half-elves, for example, still suck, and their major bonus seems to encourage a diplomat to carry around an unconscious half-elf in a sack, to score that diplomacy bonus.

--Feats are...odd. I get the impression that the designers sat down, and had a long debate about what feats should be doing, and then said, "Hell, we'll mostly give people +2 to random crap." and called it a day. I don't want bigger numbers, I want options.

--The customizeability is really...well, it's bleh. There's hardly any rules for creating your own monsters/equipment/races. Some of this, I feel like I'm playing World of Warcraft. Or maybe Monster's Den. http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/monst ... -of-dread/