Well, I don't really see why you couldn't have some of those things as powers. I mean charm obviously couldn't exist in the 3.5 version, but we can pretty much agree it was overpowered there anyway, where you get basically a permanent slave monster. It would be possible to allow people to instantly charm minions, or possibly charm a larger monster for a shorter period of time, like a "Save ends" effect. Also there could possibly be a longer term charm ritual, where you'd require a piece of the creature to be charmed to cast it, or possibly just handle it with charm potions that you've got to trick the subject to drink (or force down their throat).SphereOfFeetMan wrote: But all those new powers by definition have to be on the same scale as the previous powers. That means that almost everything is an attack with a shift or 1 round status effect or whatever. You can't have Charm Monster, Animate Dead, Silent Image, grappling, great cleave, or anything at all like those powers in 4e.
Animate dead could very well be a ritual that creates minions, I don't see a problem with a PC conjuring a bunch of skeleton or zombie minions.
Silent image really has no trouble being ported over. You'd need some rules to disbelieve an illusion. Either grant a saving throw, or perhaps something like int versus will. But aside from that figments really don't do much besides create terrain that you can pass through, or make fake monsters. They don't do damage and they don't inflict status conditions. So I don't see any reason why silent image couldn't be a utility spell for a wizard.
Grappling is just a more advanced version of 4E grab. In addition to immobilizing them, you also prevent them from attack with anything but a light blade or an unarmed attack. The grabbed guy is prevented from using any power that has the implement keyword as well.
Great cleave is really doable, the ranger has something very similar where he keeps taking attacks on stuff as long as he hits. So an ability that let you keep attacking everytime you dropped a monster would be possible. It'd effectively be like a close burst 1, but actually weaker, because you can only keep attacking if you kill something. You could probably even make great cleave an at will power. It seriously wouldn't be that much better than 4E cleave (which basically guarantees you kill a minion on 1 hit). Great cleave would basically give you the possibility of killing more than 2 minions, but you'd have to roll successful hits on each thing you want to kill. But it really doesn't feel like it'd be inherently better than standard 4E cleave.
Really, most of the 3.5 shit can be translated to 4E, except for stuff like enervation that has old mechanics, and shit that you probably don't want to convert over anyway, like Gate.
Yeah, unfortunately, while it is on par with the spellcasters, it still begs the question of how you can get monsters to survive against those classes.Yup. Fortunately for us, Frank and K have done most of the work for us, and we have a viable Monk.
I generally like to have recurring villains in my campaigns and the 3.5 glass cannon combat system is a real turn off. Because sometimes it's nice if the villain has a chance to get away.