An observation

[subplotkudzu]

4E has now been out for nearly a week, and so far I have one, count them one, comment from anyone on my Friends list about it - drcpunk's comment on how the book lays flat while reading it and she's happy the 3E faux-notebook visual design is gone. 

Is everyone as ambivalent about this new system as I am? Did anyone even buy it? Where's the love, people? Or the hate, for that matter?

Comments

[mneme]

*nod* And 4e AoO rules are even simpler than 3E ones -- "if you move or attempt a ranged attack while in someone's threat range, you draw an attack of opportunity, but can't draw more than one from the same person, and some movement explicitly doesn't draw (shift, teleportation, forced movement)." That's it, actually; there are no actions other than moving or ranged attack that draw AoO. In some cases, this is because basic actions that used to draw--non-ranged-attack spellcasting, drinking potions, standing up, bull rush, coup de gras, grab (weaker grapple), punch or kick, aid, skill use (including heal)--don't. In others, it's because the action doesn't exist at all as a "standard" action -- disarm, sunder & trip are doable using the new "do anything" rules (basically, ad hoc resolution with a per/level table with difficulties of easy/medium/hard broken out per level), but aren't standard actions any more -- though trip (er, knock prone), certainly, is a not-uncommon power result

Regardless, I think if you can do and prefer 3rd edition without minis, 4th without minis won't be a problem; sure, they refer to distances in terms of squares rather than feet, but you can treat those either as conceptual units (which is, after all, what they are), or multiply by 5 if that's your preference, just like you can treat each round as "6 seconds" or just figure that a round is as long as it needs to be.