As for the comment about in 4th ed being able to “shift to flank the monster and sneak attack with my combat advantage and use my rampant charge encounter power to charge the dragon” how is that any different from the 3.5 version of “I take my free 5 foot step to move into flanking position which gives me a plus 2 to hit, and I can now deal sneak attack damage with my attacks because Im flanking, since I took two-weapon fighting I can attack twice” ?

I’ve been playing 3.5 since 04 and I was extremely excited for 4th ed. Coming out. One of the guys I game with bought the book and I got to read through it and im glad I didn’t buy it, we later discovered pathfinder which is highly regarded as 3.75 and everyone in my group loves it. It keeps to the 3.5 rules but powers everything up, it streamlines the skills but still gives you the choice of which ones you want your character to be trained in. Feats come more often and spell casters get unlimited 0 lvl spells so they’re not out of spells after half a battle at first level. If you’re looking for a great medium between 3.5 and 4.0 check out pazio’s pathfinder. The books should be in your local game store but the info is also offered free on pazio’s website if you want to look into it first.

Sorry I didn’t mean for this post to become a push for pathfinder but I guess I was expecting 4th ed to be what pathfinder is

If you have a spell from 3.5 that you like, and it’s not in 4th, make it a ritual or translate it into a combat power. My DM let me have a LOT of non-combat rituals from the 3.5 book, but with more “oomph” to them because they took 10 minutes to cast instead of 10 seconds. Having an Unseen Servant for an entire day w/o having to use a spell slot ROCKS. Having a 5th level ritual for Cantrip that works for a month gives me a HUGE role-playing tool to play with. And when my third level character tries to cast an eighth level ritual and fails miserably, which is something that CANNOT happen in 3.5, the results remind you of the tinker gnomes of Dragonlance.

As for 3.5 vs 4th, they are two distinct incarnations of a system that is based off of a common theme: swords and sorcery. Just ’cause there are specific rules in place as a GUIDELINE for how to do things, is not to say that a CREATIVE person cannot come up with a way to do what they want within the guidelines that the DM will allow.

You run out of ideas when you run out of imagination, not when you run out of pages of a rulebook.

AS for powers I have two things to say. One is that limiting there use makes sense both from a mechanical and role-playing perspective, or at least I think it does. Mechanically it prevents people from “spamming” the same move over and over. MY sorcerer has a power that if it hits, turns him invisible to the enemy I hit, damages that enemy further when it attacks, and allows me to teleport short distances when that happens. If I had the choice I’d use that every single attack, it rocks, but then the game would get boring as I’d never be attacked by anything. From a role-playing perspective it makes sense as well. Such a casting would require an enormous amount of power, not something to be done to often. But throwing a bolt of power is minuscule in comparison. It even makes sense for fighters, despite an earlier comment about real-life martial arts fighting. Sure you can try a maneuver many times, but if you used it once your opponent, if they know what they are doing, won’t fall for it again. And maybe a more drastic move strains the muscle in the characters body and he knows it’s safer not to use it again until he can rest up a bit.

The other thing about powers is that in promoting them everyone focuses on the arcane classes. Which I agree they are a massive boon, but they also help out classes such as the fighter. Yes 3.5 had combat options such as bull rushes, grappling, tripping, disarming, ect. that a fighter could use, but without a book to refer to most people would fall back on the basics ie “I swing my sword. Next turn: I swing my sword again. Next turn: I swing my sword again.” You can add fluff to make it interesting, but really that was what it seems to boil down to. While wizards got to throwing a choking fog and shoot lighting from their hands. Now fighters have more dramatic options. there is a power that is basically stabbing an enemy and then throwing the blade from your weapon into another enemies eyes to blind them. How many fighters could blind if they’re only attack was… attacking? So I’d say not only wizards gained, but all classes now have more options, they cleric isn’t stuck throwing around cure light wounds while the fighter cleaves the enemy in two. And warriors don’t just sit there while wizards rain down fiery death from above. All the while doing it in a way that doesn’t require encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, which means you’re not thinking of the rulebooks, you’re focused on the game.

That’s my two-cents anyways. And if all else falls… just keep playing your game like always, no one will try and stop you

There’s a resource (Arcane Power) that allows you to make use of spells that do minimal damage (if at all), and also take note that the hit point system is a bit more abstract in 4E in the sense that “damage” is effectively how you describe it: be it the target wracking in pain, or losing in stamina/will to fight/capability to fight, or actually bleeding to death, the whole thing is how you fluff it.

A lot of the material has simply been reorganized and simplified so that you don’t have hundreds of variations of the same thing (e.g. Combat Advantage and the +2 to hit it grants, see how many versions of that are in 3rd Ed), and overall I’m liking the system not only because it’s more organized and DM-friendly, but also because of how much leeway the game grants in terms of role-playing.

And note that even those “more unorthodox choices and non-combat”? It’s still in the game, except instead of putting the rules about it in the Player’s Handbook, it’s now in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, which is seemingly appropriate because it’s still the DM’s discretion as to what happens because of what you want to do.

There’s a lot more cinematics available in 4E because of the level of abstraction it has (balancing it with a defining set of rules that help minimize the chances of something too game-breaking from happening).

As for the Barbarian having too high a natural Diplomacy, aside from the experience he has from his travels, rumors of his accomplishments in life may help conversations sway his way.

Also, given how the whole thing is still within the purvey of the DM (because they empowered plot to control the game, and not super-detailing every NPC and mechanic in the system), he has every right to grant or even deny bonuses based on whatever background you chose or whatever situation you’re in… or scale up or down the difficulty as he sees fit, or even modify it so that there would be additional benefits or penalties with spectacular successes or failures.

In any case, it’s not like 4E just popped ideas out of nowhere and killed off everything that made D&D, D&D. Action points came from Eberron, non-AC defenses are pre-4E saving throws modified so that the player does the rolls instead of the DM, various hit point mechanics were revamped and adjusted (and seriously, we need to remove the 4-HP Wizard and tone him down at higher levels so that you didn’t need a bachelor’s degree in character building to play the game), and everything was adjusted so that you don’t need to be X multiclassed to Y and C and F with alignment Z to use item A for maximum output against B which just so happens to be the staple monster used in the DM’s game.

Alignment is now a guide, rather than a straightjacket, and I’m glad that’s out of the picture in terms of what items or powers you can take advantage of.

Speaking of which, while you can take advantage of multiclassing and hybriding and certain item and feat combinations to have a significant advantage, the whole system overall is much more difficult to break, even at high levels.

Multiclassing was introduced in PHB2, and Hybriding (dual-classing) was introduced in PHB3. Prestige classes are effectively Paragon Paths, which have been there since the original PHB, so I can’t see why you missed out on that.

I guess my gripes lie in the that with the streamlining of combat, they took a bit of the bizarreness out of some of the more unorthodox choices and non-combat. I know we can say “it’s a game; we can customize the rules all we want,” but I feel like if I wanted to customize the 4ed system to my liking it would literally turn into 3.5ed

I really don’t like how much emphasis was put on damage spells. It feels like the wizard is now just an evoker (boring, in my opinion; damage spells all feel roughly the same to me).

Also, no multiclassing or prestige? :(
You really can’t homebrew either because of the weird way leveling is handled.

Thanks for the summary, it’s confirmed most of my worst fears about the changes and will keep me using 3.5 or earlier.