So we did some more testing with this new 4.0 Dungeons and Dragons to see how it fits this game group.

Well the combats were slow, the information about powers were scattered over five books, there was dozen or so of little things to be remembered on each round and attack, there was no real threat and game was lot more focused on DPR than on special effects.

So we won the fights quite easily as no healing was needed and only one daily power was used, but so was also the fights quite boring. In 3½ there was more real impact on effects like spells and feats ect. While in 4.0 you just hack and slash dropping minor penaltys or bonuses. In 4.0 you get 'Oh noes, i am blind for total of one total round' when in 3½ there was 'Crap, i am blind permanently. Time to get creative' or 'I got -2 to all attacks i do for rest of the encounter? Wow, maybe i should swift to flank then' vs 'I got permanent -6 on attacks? Ok, this needs some planing'.

DnD 4.0 is just WoW on paper.
Even the effects are similiary ridiculously over hyped. 'You shatter armor and bone with a ringing blow.' and you do like 30 points of damage thats maybe 1/5 of targets HPs? Uuu, scary. In 3½ the DM said how well the hit was done, so when your fireball ended up with all 1's you didn't get any 'A fiery red bead streaks from your finger to the spot you indicate, where it bursts into a great ball of magical flame.'. You did less damage than average commoner with axe, why are you making all that show down there?

Its been quite some time that i have been feeling the way i do thus 4.0 is for casual players where you can bang your head against obstacels few times safely and don't need to know anything before hand, you got enough HPs and healing surges to figure out how to win the fights. No one really shines out, regaldess of ammount of metagaming, classes, races, tactics or strategy. You just grind 'em to death with At-Will powers after you have dished out encounter powers and search for loot.
The 3½ is where there the advetures are and the challenges, where you need to know your craft/role or you can really loose. Or the team gets some good laughs when the blind, confused, ungly wizard tries to get his imprisoned, stoned, feebleminded and petrified party out of trouble. Sure team of warforgeds could be powerfull group able to handle easilly most of battles you dish them out but *daa* they are warforgeds. You seen lot of them sweet talking them out of tight spots or bluffing the dragon to hading over the tresure for safe keeping? In 3½ classes and races had clear spotlights and shadows, while in 4.0 its just all marginal perks.

If you ask me, i hope we 'fall'back to 3½ even if we got all the 4.0 books. At least we got there a situation where our juggeranut is possesed by chaotic evil intelligent docent that would like to rule the world. Well so does the character itself as he is lawful evil, but he does not wan't to get rest of us dead...

Now i am off to play some DDO even tough i hate the Action Pont Enhancement (APE) system it has. Plus it does not follow DnD rules in tons of things, but at least there my WF can bash a vampire into a sack of bones with a hollow laughter while rest of the fleshbag team is running away.