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4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
Be My Head:
Basically, I'm not all that worried about the new system. What I AM worried about, is the 4th Edition version of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
***SPOILARS***
The designers decided that two gods (Cyric and Shar) are going to murder the Goddess of Magic (Mystra, aka Midnight) and plunge the realms into chaos. This basically causes a phenomenon known as the "Spellplague" where Magic ceases to work the way it did before (Sound familiar?) and most wizards either die or go insane. Helm dies in a duel with Tyr over some retarded ass reason, Elminster goes insane, Toril gets "merged" with another world, and we have NO fucking clue what happens to Larloch. Also the Red motherfucking Wizards of Thay get destroyed, along with Luskan.
Basically the whole idea was to shit on the core fanbase and try and make the setting more "friendly" to attract new players. They assume that all new players are intimidated by The Chosen of Mystra (hence the destruction of her and her portfolio). They also assume that the magic system is too complicated (now instead of drawing magic from the weave and shadow weave, magic comes from "everywhere"). Also they assume that there are too many Gods, hence the killing off of any deity who is remotely similar to another (Deneir, Helm, etc..)
/nerd rage
Alex C:
I wouldn't say new players I'ved talked to over the years have ever been really intimidated by The Chosen of Mystra so much as they found them to be really fuckin' stupid. They're the D&D equivalent of Immortal Elves in Shadowrun-- they're not particularly necessary, and whenever they're trotted out it feels like one of the authors just whipped it out and proceeded to make the pages of your Dungeon Master's Manual all sticky.
Dimmukane:
I think that taking out classes isn't really much of an issue, to be honest. My DM is going to create his own druid and monk, and he seems pretty confident it will be easy. All he's really got to worry about are picking powers and doing the paragon/heroic paths bit. For the druid, he can borrow heavily from the ranger if he wants to, and a little bit from the wizards, and it's mostly done. And truthfully, I agree completely with the Barbarian sentiment. In fact, instead of releasing new classes, they could probably just update path/power choices.
Surgoshan:
Be My Head, take a few deep breaths and calm the nerdrage. WotC employees love the game, they love the Realms. They're not going to rape them. They've altered them so that you can continue to use a beloved world in a new ruleset. Do you think they're going to simultaneously acknowledge a devoted fanbase and then make it so that the world they love is completely ruined and unusable? Seriously? No.
The Wizards of Thay are still around, they're still powerful, and they're ruled by Szass. He was one of the first to master the new system of magic, which is why he's still in charge and they're still powerful.
Elminster is not insane. Instead, in keeping with the established history of the character he's absorbed the memories of several powerful beings (The sisters? Mystra herself? Some of the lesser deities?) who tend to try and take over his mind when he uses magic. What this means is that Elminster is still influential and powerful, but he's not a game/book-breaker. The DM/author no longer have to come up with some absurd reason why Elminster, being pretty much a god, doesn't just solve the problem himself. He's there, he advises, he gives you the hook, then he disappears. He could also become a hook himself later.
There was nothing in the change that was antagonistic toward Mystra or the chosen except that they were broken, the game needed balance, and it was the best way to explain the changes and allow the realms to come into 4th edition.
As for classes not existing; they wanted to keep the books from getting huge and becoming money-sucking tomes. They limited themselves, with difficulty, to 8 races and 8 classes. This, plus some other necessary info, kept the book to a manageable 300+ pages. We'll get more classes later. The classes they left out were loved by some, but either didn't have broad appeal (bard, barbarian, monk) or had serious workability issues (druid, monk). They needed more time, they got more time.
In the meantime, you can focus a wizard on elemental type spells and make yourself a controller druid, or multiclass a ranger and cleric to make yourself a melee druid. He won't have summons (serious balance issues) and won't shapechange, but that's good. They need to leave something to make the druid unique. What I can recall is that the druid will be in PH2, though I don't know what role he'll have (I think elemental control will be given to a shaman character, and elemental defender to the barbarian). The bard will definitely be in the PH2 and will be an arcane striker.
Oskik:
My Nerd rage has been dulled significantly by surgoshan's post. I think that if I split my playing between old and new I will be very much satisfied. 4th edition is new and innovative and shiny, but it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi, what with it being much more of a minis game. On the other hand, I was borne into 3.5 and love it forever, and it's pretty awesome if you can get your head around some of the complications. Once you do, though, it's very in-depth and very much fun if you've got a good DM; there's alot of different options. However, I'm sure that 4th will catch up content wise sometime.
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