That may have been true of previous editions, but I don’t think it’s a fair description of the art in 4e, at least not the racial portraits. Of the 8 females shown, only the dwarf, tiefling and possibly the half-elf could be described as “busty”. (And the dwarf woman would probably look weird if she *wasn’t*.)

2. Lets look at your classification: “Cheesy.” What makes a line cheesy. Without a doubt, it’s the constant over-playing of a line that dilutes its effectiveness–but recall back when you were but a kid watching “Big Trouble in Little China” and you watched Jack Burton cock his head to the side and say, “Besides, its all in the reflexes.” Did you not think it was best thing in the world! Could you not wait till you could try that line out yourself. (Maybe even go so far as to try to set something up so you could impress your little brother?) But then you saw it again elsewhere. Or your friends saw the movie too and they started in on YOUR quote. Yeah, that made it cheesy. But back to my point, believe it or not, this book wasn’t just printed for you. I know, I know you may find it hard to believe but being a business, WOTC may have also wanted to try to get new players too. So though you and I may see these lines as cheesy, just think about all the younger generations that haven’t had those lines diluted yet and humor WOTC with just a roll of your eyes.

3. Certain elements are too abstract? What a golden opportunity! Now, I don’t know how long you’ve been playing so I’m going to assume that you, like me, have seen or played the first edition of the game. Think back–way back–to the original magic missile. It use to be that magic missile would manifest itself as an arrow of pure energy that would hover next to the caster for a number of rounds or turns. Currently, it is described as a bolt of energy. Why do I bring this up? To highlight that in the beginning of D&D, there wasn’t anything like magic missile at all–in literature and in the movies. Think about spell casters prior to D&D. At best, you’d see a spell caster throw a fireball. All the notions of magic and its physical manifestations needed to be spelled out since nothing like the spells they had come up with had ever been seen. Since then, all kinds of power forms have developed. With the help of movie special effects, animation, and good ol’ novels, we have so many different ways of showing the same thing. I think D&D 4e’s abstraction should be just that and allow the DM’s and players to color it anyway they want. Does a cleric toss something in the air to only have it explode in bright sparkly light and waft gently down the target to heal them or is it warm golden laying on hands that surrounds the wounded and the cleric in a holy halo. With such abstractions, you can decide.

4. I agree that basing xp on skill roles can really dilute the game. So I just got rid of it altogher. I give out more xp on original thinking and role-playing.

5. I noticed your observation as well but hey they are a business and they are trying to make money. Such optional stuff is tiered and if you have the budget and the inclination then you should utilize it. If not, then move on to something else. I like the tiles and I even collected them for a while but we’ve already gone back to the giant mat with markers. It’s just easier for me. I do have the miniatures but I do miss the old days of painting your own–though at my age, holding a paint brush steady is a feat unto itself!

Nice post, Jonathan and it looks like you got some great responses.

Healing Surges is just a game mechanic to destabilize the Cleric/Druid/Bard class monopoly on healing, and allow for a party to be able to get by without having any of these classes. No one would really argue if a Barbarian were given healing surges / second winds to maintain in the face of serious injuries, now they’ve just made ALL characters as badass as that (which makes me even MORE excited to see how stubborn the Barbarian class will be).

1. Especially Tieflings. A player once asked me if they had to have giant ram horns if they were going to be a tiefling. I said no. Art isn’t rules, it’s just (bad) decoration, IMO. My tieflings can still pass for human with a bit of work.

2. All read-aloud text in every supplement published should be ignored or at least re-interpreted and paraphrased, even the good stuff.

3. I’m not sure I agree on this one. I think of morale, shock, fatigue, minor cuts, sprains and bruises as the current hp/surges, but I suppose that’s just me filling in the obvious gaps. On the other hand HP’s have always been pretty abstract.

4. I agree. Even the more balanced errata-ed skill challenges don’t work for me. I just wing em.

5. M&M’s aren’t just candy, they’re also minions! I think that the hard tie-in to grid based tactical combat is the breaker for many people. That is, if you don’t LIKE grid based tactical combat it would be. The big-font, big art, medium page count, buy-part-two-in-a-few-months players handbook is also disappointing. Another 32 pages, or a half point smaller font size and we could have had all the old core classes in the core books. Too much to ask?

They have no idea, but I will randomly choose d4 skills as auto-fail. Different each time :) We then go through the checks, with the player describing his check. I sometimes give style points if the action is VERY well thought out and executed.

Doing this fixed (for us) the problems that the RAW skill challenge presented. Everyone can participate – based on their strengths, not weaknesses, and there is just as much a chance the lead diplomat gets served as the flexing fighter.

LOL! I also agree completely with the Tieflings…much preferred the subtlety of the planescape art.

“Tieflings” just sounds like something Gambit would say. Like if some kids picked his pocket. “Ah, mon ami! Thos’ little Tieflings took my wallet!”

I remember when the developers of Dark Alliance switched over to making EverQuest games, the gameplay was pretty much the same, but all of a sudden I could play lizardmen and lions and stuff.

Where’s my D&D lion PCs? I demand D&D 4.5!

@Gary:
1.A) And the females of all races will have at least crippling back pain. ;P
5) Dang you; I have to go draw that now. The latter especially amused me. :D