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Sean Hardner's avatar

I think most people who don’t like 4e probably didn’t give it a chance & I doubt many of them cut their teeth on Basic or Advanced D&D. If you play with all the exploits, powers, feats & skills of 4e then go to AD&D (1e) it is so boring or you have to modify the rules for when somebody tries to jump across a pit or negotiate with a merchant. Yes you would “role play” that stuff and the DM would decide the outcome but you didn’t have a skill you knew you were better at than the rest of your party. You didn’t have choices in how to build your character other than race selection. All Paladins pretty much turned out the same way & while Magic Users could choose different spells most of them were pretty useless. You sort of have to have some kind of offensive spells like Magic Missile or Sleep or you are just missing with you dagger or staff in combat. Combat while longer and more complex is way more fun in 4e with lots to do. In Advanced your magic user has access to a few limited spells that were memorized for that day & fighters attack over and over with the same weapon dealing damage (usually with no other effects) until a monster is killed. A natural 20 isn’t even a critical it doesn’t do extra damage or give any advantage beyond scoring the hit.

I think if my 4e play group decided to try AD&D for a session they would be off it faster than kobold’s head when a vorpal sword is swinging around!!

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Gabriel Rourke's avatar

I get tired of the whole 4th edition MMO mantra B.S. If it plays like a video game, it plays closer to a turn based tactical rpg then an mmo, the only reason it gets the stupid comparison is the lame ass calling classes controllers, leaders, ex... All 4th edition was guilty of is trying to describe its rules in a manner that people who played MMOs might easily grasp. The system itself plays completely different, Before two months ago I realy, unfairly thought 4th was going to be a big festering pile of donkey doo doo, I actually bought the 3 core books on ebay cause someone I was buying some 2nd edition stuff from had them for sale cheap and I decided what the hell why not. About 3 weeks ago I got bored and started reading them and they totally blew my mind. Mechanically 4th edition is my favorite edition bar none, I have already sunk about 500 in books for it and plan on spending even more. They finally solve the balance issue behind the arms classes and the magic ones, allow magic users to do more then cast a spell or two a day starting out,give fighters more to do then just, ah i attack, ah i attack. Now if i could just figure out how to run a game online all would be right with the world.

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