I have been playing D&D since 1978. I started with 3 little brown books, went to the blue Basic D&D set then to 1st edition AD&D, 2nd edition, 3rd edition, and finally 3.5E. At each step along the way I have thought the game and the mechanics were improved. So it was with great anticipation that I awaited the arrival of 4E from Wizards of the Coast. I thought 3.5 was awesome but there were still a few problems which needed to get worked out such as the sorcerer class (which I loved). I was really looking forward to getting 4E because I hoped they would have tweaked the 3.5 rules to fix these problems.

I knew that most of it would either be written by the 10% of D&D players who will hate any changes to the game (these are usually the people who would still be playing with the little brown books if the could find them), or the 10% of the D&D community who love everything and anything Wizards of the Coast publish no matter what (WoTC could crap on a paper plate, slap it in a hard covered book and these people would run right out an buy it). I certainly didn’t want to fall into either of these categories or have my views influenced by them. In any case, I ignored all of the pre-release hype. Although I will say that I was fully prepared to become a lover.

When I finally got my books, I was very disappointed by what I found inside. Instead of building on the 3.5E version, which I thought was a well thought out rule set, WoTC had scrapped or completely rewritten large portions of the rules. After my initial cries of anguish, I took a deep breath, and decided to give it try first before I cried foul. After all it had taken me a while to warm up to 3E. I quickly figured out that there was no way to easily update any of my existing 3.5 campaigns. Instead I decided to start a new 4E campaign. After several weeks of playing, I have concluded that unfortunately my initial impressions were correct. My anticipation and excitement has turned to frustration and disappointment. Here is an overview of my criticisms of the new system:

Random Changes to Races and Character Classes
I for one loved the sorcerer class. I will also be the first to admit that it still needed some work (I will post the house rules that we used to improve the sorcerer at some point). That was one of the things I was sure they were going to fix in 4.0. Instead they scrapped it all together replacing it with the Warlock. Why? As for the new races like the Dragon Born and Eladrin again, I have only one question. Why? Were there not enough races already in D&D that you had to add two more and add them in the Core Rules of all places!?! What about Gnomes? Well they moved them to the Monster Manual so you can still play them. OK, then why not leave Gnomes in the Players Handbook and add the Dragon Born and Eladrin to the Monster Manual? These are changes which I just don’t understand. There was no good reason for making these types of changes to the core rule set that I can think of .

Unfortunately for me they picked a number of items for inclusion which as supplements for 3.5 were already on my Do Not Use list. These are mainly personal for me and not an indictment of the system as a whole. I have always disliked the Warlock this was one of only two classes which as a DM I refused to allow in any campaign I ran. I hate to say this Mr. Bruce Cordell but Races of the Dragon is one of the supplements I bought flipped through once and put on the shelf. I think its still there and if it isn’t I certainly haven’t missed it.

Difficult to Upgrade From 3.5
This is without a doubt probably my A #1 biggest complaint. I have spent a small fortune on books from the previous versions. I currently run 3 campaigns in 3.5, one in my own world, a Drow based on in the Forgotten Realms, and an Eberron campaign. I looked at moving one or more of these over to 4E but I couldn’t find a clear path to upgrade existing 3.5 campaigns/characters to 4E. This greatly reduces the incentive to migrate to 4E because if I do, large amounts of expensive reference materials will become practically useless. While it is possible to migrate to 4E it requires significant effort, especially on the part of the Dungeon Master. I’ve been reading the forums and every time someone brings up a specific example you get all kinds of advice on how if you do this and this and this and that you will almost have the same thing. But that is on a case by case basis and figuring that out especially for a DM is a lot of work. I know, I know, no one is saying that you can’t keep playing 3.5. And I probably will do just that, but without any fresh blood, so to speak, it will eventually get old.

Reduced flexibility in Character Creation
The loss of prestige classes was a devastating blow. Multi-classing and prestige classes in 3.5 were great. I felt like I finally had the flexibility to create and mold a character to the image I had in my mind. In all of my campaigns almost all of the PCs have one or more prestige classes. I’ve been reading the forums and every time someone brings up a specific example you get all kinds of advice on if you do this and this and this and that you will almost have the same thing. I loved the flexibility and one of our house rules was no experience penalty for multi-classing as long as you had a good role playing justification within the storyline.

I have seen a lot of people say that 4.0 does a lot to make the game balanced. For me this was always the DM’s job instead of the rules. As a DM I have no problem with imbalance in the game. Frankly the real world isn’t balanced so why does my fantasy world need to be. There is no reason a 16th level fighter has to be the equivalent of an 16th level wizard. To me the balance comes from the fact that the 16th level magic user should get to kick ass because he spent his first 4-5 level getting beat up by anything with a pointy stick and cringing behind the fighter. I also never enforced the rules for powerful races.

MMO/TCG Influence
It is obvious that the effect WoTC was looking for was to make D&D more like a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game or a Trading Card game. From a marketing point of view this makes sense. MMOs and Trading Card games are hugely popular among kids and others. WoTC also happens to own a Trading Card game product line so creating synergy between that and D&D is also a natural marketing move. From a business case that makes sense. In my opinion WoTC made a huge strategic blunder here, at the very least in the way it was implemented. If I want to play an MMO guess what? I’m not going to waste my time with pencil, paper, dice, and a stack of hard cover books that cost $30 a pop. I’m going to go online and play an MMO. What they should have done was marketed the cool things about playing D&D that you can’t do in an MMO. Focus on what’s different about D&D from an MMO instead of trying to change it to make it more MMO-like. Your not going to compete that way. As for the trading card influence, integrating the D&D Trading Card Game into the system would have been a good idea as an adjunct to as opposed to a change to the core rules. Maybe you should have made the TCG more like the RPG to try to suck TCG fans into D&D rather than the other way around. I think that is one of the things which for me takes some of the Role-Playing out of the game. It also tends to introduce rules that seem random and make no sense. I have played Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh with my kids. Their OK but they really don’t do anything for me. Nor do the rules have to make sense. If a card says you can do something you do it you don’t spend any time trying to figure out why you can do it. This leads me to my next criticism of 4.0.

Rules Don’t Make Sense in the Setting
When I say this I mean in the context of a the world. I have read/watched lots of media in various fantasy setting and in none of those can just any ole’ character randomly heal themselves in the middle of a fight. I guess I need to understand the rational, not from a mechanics point of view, but from the setting. For example, we know that clerics can caste spells, why can they cast spells well because the deity the worship grants them the ability to do so. Its not much but it enough. Now explain to me why some random fighter can just spontaneously heal the arm that is hanging off by its tendons in the middle of a fight? And if that same fighter knows how to perform a specific technique with his weapon, why can he only perform that technique once in an encounter? Does the knowledge of how to do this disappear from his mind? Or why if a cleric casts a combat spell does another member of his party randomly get a +1 bonus? Mechanically I know how to use these rules but they don’t make sense to me in terms of the setting. Most of the examples I use here are ones that I believe have come about by the trading card game influence on 4.0 (see above).

Lack of Focus on Role-Playing
I have seen this point argued back and forth on the forums. My personal opinion is that there is a lack of focus on Role-Playing. Now the counter argument to that is that. Yes, you can role play around a Magic the Gathering Card Game but that really isn’t the focus and it is therefore a lot more effort. My opinion is that many of the rule changes have focused too heavily on the tactical game play.

Rules not Stream-lined
I have seen loads of people on the net state that the 4.0 rules have been ‘Stream-lined’. I do not get this comment at all. All of the different powers and types of powers and frequency of use, have made combat a real pain in the butt. It actually seems more complicated to me. I don’t think I’m a retard so I’m not sure why there was a need to Stream-line in the first place. In 1/2/3.0/3.5 we just ignored the rules we didn’t like and after a couple of months of playing 4E we still haven’t figured out how to do this yet. Likewise, character creation (especially when you are going after a specific idea in your mind) seems way more complicated to me.

Lower Quality Design
The 4E Artwork isn’t nearly as good. I have seen some people say that they tried to make it closer to the original artwork to which all I can say is that the original art work sucked. Great artwork is a good way to augment your imagination. For me Shadowrun set the standard for this in RPGs. The cool artwork also helped me justify to myself spending $30 per book. While it isn’t awful it certainly doesn’t live up to the standard set by 3.0/3.5. The layout and organization of the books also needs some work. To some extent I feel like WoTC again went back to 1st edition where information was spread all over the place in a hap hazard fashion. These are minor complaints though and things easily fixed in 4.5.

What can I do?
Unfortunately, corporations like politicians have a very hard time admitting that they made a mistake. The best thing to do is let WoTC know how you feel. Send a letter or an email to Wizards of the Coast. Don’t purchase any more of the 4E product line. I have just about every 3.5 source book but I don’t see myself dropping any cash on 4E anytime soon. Next time you go to GenCon or somewhere else where there is a WoTC presence be sure to you’re your Anti-4E T-shirt. Post your own review on your blog, forums, or Amazon. Share this review with your friends. Finally, there is a petition at PetitionOnline.com asking WoTC to continue to build on and support the D&D 3.5 system which I encourage you to sign.

Summary
I really did not intend for this post to be so long. Once I got started I found it hard to stop. There were still even a couple of items that I didn’t include. The bottom line is that, after decades of seeing constant improvements to this gaming environment, I feel very frustrated and disappointed in the latest product version. I really feel like WoTC may too many foundational changes to the game, too fast, without support for older features, and in essence have not stayed true to spirit of D&D. Unlike a lot of the haters out there, I really wanted to love 4E. I still really want to love it. I wish I could, but I can’t.