That's a pretty loaded question. By definition, the more changes you make, the less the new product will be like the prior edition.Psychic Robot wrote:Then here's a question:
Disregarding some of the aesthetic changes (such as dragonbortions), is 4e more or less like D&D? And is this a good thing or a bad thing?
As far as capturing the feel of D&D, I feel that the combat system does a good job of that, at least in the limited playtests that I've run using the DDXP material (haven't played KotS yet). The game is still relatively tactical, and the monsters feel more diverse and interesting than ever.
Really, all the classes except the wizard felt D&D to me. The wizard is in sorry shape, given that he's been turned from a battlefield controller to a pure area blast machine. You've got one spell, sleep that controls actions, and that's your daily. I'd have liked to have some stuff like daze humanoid or grease or something. While I haven't actually played the wizard, based on how I've seen him played, he just didn't feel like the D&D wizard we're all used to. No illusions, no incapacitation spells beyond sleep (which was fairly decent actually, but you could only use it 1/day). It's not so much that the wizard was ineffective, so much that he lost the initial flavor of the wizard of prior editions and really felt more like a warmage than a wizard.
Aside from that, the other classes are fun and interesting, and the monsters are especially great.
In fact, if you ignore the wizard, I'd say 4E feels more like D&D than prior editions. The tactical combat system is much improved. I didn't really the MMORPG feel at all for 4E. It played pretty much like I'd expect a tactical wargame to play. It was just a more interesting wargame than prior editions.
Of course, these are just level 1 characters. Whether the math holds up or falls on its face at higher levels, I don't know. Also, it seems evident based on what we know about higher level abilities that playing a high level character may not feel like a high level character anymore. I suspect that the real problems with 4E will tend to surface around mid to high level.
I'm also somewhat concerned about solo monsters. While we never used one in my sessions, they seem like their super high hp will really make the combat drag on and on, and it will have little tactical value beyond being a bunch of PCs surrounding a big monster beating on it. That legitimately concerns me, as the system doesn't seem to mesh well with solo battles at all. It's much more interesting to have the PCs face off against 2 or more monsters with different roles.