My exposure to Vista has been limited and the things I don’t like about Vista from my initial uses are a matter of control. I don’t like the computer doing things that I don’t tell it to do. I don’t want auto-pilot I want to handle the driving myself. Maybe that’s the twinge I get when I played the 4e adventure. Too much stuff that I like to do has been taken out of my hands in favour of other things (micro-management).

Thing is, after using Vista since July, I’ve found it to be the exact opposite. Nothing happens without me explicitly telling Vista to do it. And yes, I run with the UAC on explicitly for this reason. I’m not entirely sure of what it was doing without your consent (was your experience possibly during Beta?), but I haven’t come across that.

Anyways…

Healing, eh?

Okay, I think I can see where you’re coming from. Though I think that you’re in the minority if you liked regularly playing a healing cleric in 3e. My experience has usually been that the cleric either doesn’t get played, or gets somewhat forced on a player.

That said, I do see what you mean. A healing ability not based off healing surges would be nice, though difficult to do as an at-will or encounter power. We may see such an ability, still. It just might not be at level 1.

Still I wonder when 4e’s Service Pack 1 will be released?

Oh, there will be initial errata, for sure, as everyone figures out how to break their new system. But with the amount of work they’ve put into it, especially into the math, compared to 3e, I expect the errata to both not be as extensive as 3e’s was and to come out quickly.

My biggest issue is how healing works (again from a limited non-authorized playtest). I liked playing a cleric in 3.x e and don’t like how they have been seemingly neutered in 4e.

Still time will tell and full judgement can only be reserved until the books hit the shelves and a few sessions have been played to get a true feel for it. Still I wonder when 4e’s Service Pack 1 will be released?

Amusingly, I made the same Vista comparison while talking to Chatty earlier tonight.

I came to a far different conclusion, however. Y’see, I use and enjoy Vista. It fixes a lot of what was wrong with XP, and does certain things in a much more elegant and organized manner. People are skeptical, and some have had bad experiences. This is fine, and Vista won’t be for everyone, but it’s still working its way through a large-scale install base, and the problems that arise in those situations. Altogether, it’s an (IMO) superior product with some flaws that they are working on.

Now take that, and replace “Vista” with “4e”, “XP” with “3.X”, and “install base” with “playtesting”, and you have my thoughts about 4e thus far.

(If you prefer, you could use OSX instead of Vista for a similar argument from Mac users.)

Interesting how from a different point of view, the same analogy can mean something completely different.

Now, with the understanding that this is not a full preview of the upcoming edition and some important elements were missing, my initial thoughts were…”I want to like it but something that I can’t quite name holds me back”. The combats were fine and characters certainly could do a lot. There were some neat things going on even if it tied us to a battle mat a bit more than I would have liked. However, it almost felt like the ‘heart’ was missing. Hopefully when the full books come out in June that element will be present.

I guess to sum it all up I am not as excited about this edition of D&D as I was about 3rd. Maybe its the Windows Vista to my Windows XP. It promises the world and looks pretty but it just doesn’t do what I want it to the do in the same way and I’m not sure I will be flushing my bookshelves of 3.x books just yet.

And having played a lot of the computer versions, I can see why they decided to do a 4e. Doing something more user-friendly and easy to computerize makes sense - they do a lot of cross-business with D&D computer games, and it appeals to the current RPG crowd who associate the MMO with RPGs. This is, of course, totally wrong-headed - just because I have to play computer RPGs to get my game on doesn’t make me pretend I’m actually role-playing. I don’t eat carob and pretend it’s chocolate either.

Still, some of the computer-game elements aren’t bad ones to incorporate - and there isn’t any real role-playing in computer games either. Not putting in a ton of role-playing specific rules is not a bad idea, though. Either you focus the game on role-playing and build the ruleset accordingly, or you focus in on action, and go down that road. Trying to do both probably makes it all half-baked. Besides, role-playing comes from the group and the GM, and easier, streamlined and fun combat in which no-one gets marginalized gives more time for role-playing, if the group is so inclined.

Hell, there’s always house rules if you want to do different stuff.

I may throw most of my D&D books out come June but the 1ed DMG is one of the books that keeps making the cut edition after edition.

It’s easy enough to say “It’s always been this way.” For Planescape, all that needs to be done is:
- add portals
- make it so you can’t get between Astral Sea locations easily without portals

That’s exactly everything that needs to be done for it to work with the current cosmology. You can call it Retconning if you want to, but when you look at it, it could have always been this way and none of the denizens would ever have known the difference.

Bu switching back to the Great Wheel, there is one more issue you’ll need to deal with. Many (most?) outsiders no longer have Plane Shift abilities, thus trapping them on their respective planes.

for example, wheres the ethereal? if it’s gone, what really happened in all the novels when someone went ethereal?

Ethereal is, I believe, either the edge of the Shadowfell or the edge of the Feywild.

also i don’t think planes that were damaging, hard to reach or survive on without magic or resources was ever non-conducive to adventuring. it sounds more like adventure removal in that case

Well, we need to remember three things here.

In 3e, these planes impossible to survive on without magic.
In 3e, you could also be randomly shunted to a random plane, which included these.
…not fun.

In 4e, the locations that need magic to survive in do still exist, but not as planes. Fire, Water, Earth. All are part of the Elemental Chaos. As such, some parts of the EC will resemble each of the previous planes, including parts that are huge areas of raging inferno that you need magic to survive in.
Key difference: you don’t need a Plane Shift spell to get out if you run into trouble.

In 4e, not only would these planes be deadly to PCs, but since immunities are pretty much gone, they would also be deadly to their denizens. The plane of fire would become both deadly and empty, as nobody could survive there any more, due to fire immunity being all but gone.

—

…wow, that was a long comment.

Anyways, I have no problem with people putting the Great Wheel back in. I just want to make sure they know what they’re getting into by doing so, especially with the non-life-friendly planes.