I've only played 4e briefly, but some things I definitely liked, that fighters could be as interestingly specialised as wizards, that enemies were statted to be fun to play against, not to use the same system as PCs, that everyone's powers were clearly spelled out on the character sheet, etc.
But the things that bugged me were things that seemed to put mechanics front-and-centre and inhibit anything else. There was a low-level power that dropped an enemy through a portal to a hell-dimension, and then brought him back having suffered 1d6 damage less than a turn later. I was just like, how can you EVER do that and not think "well, maybe it would be more effective if I _didn't_ bring her back"?
And I loved the idea of minions, of streamlining combat against low-level enemies, but it's the sort of thing where your character loses out unless they choose powers based on specific knowledge of the game mechanics, which is hard to make flavourful.
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Date: 2015-07-04 12:49 pm (UTC)I've only played 4e briefly, but some things I definitely liked, that fighters could be as interestingly specialised as wizards, that enemies were statted to be fun to play against, not to use the same system as PCs, that everyone's powers were clearly spelled out on the character sheet, etc.
But the things that bugged me were things that seemed to put mechanics front-and-centre and inhibit anything else. There was a low-level power that dropped an enemy through a portal to a hell-dimension, and then brought him back having suffered 1d6 damage less than a turn later. I was just like, how can you EVER do that and not think "well, maybe it would be more effective if I _didn't_ bring her back"?
And I loved the idea of minions, of streamlining combat against low-level enemies, but it's the sort of thing where your character loses out unless they choose powers based on specific knowledge of the game mechanics, which is hard to make flavourful.