I think multi-classing actually became more realistic. Now, instead of your character literally being a "Rogue Wizard!", you're suddenly a Rogue with some spellcasting ability. It also means that, if you start as a rogue, you'll never have as much potential arcane power as someone who started from the get-go as a Wizard. In 3.5, you could pick your first level as a rogue and then go Wizard for the next 19, and be equal to a wizard around the same level (or damn close). Made me think about which class I took first a little more, that's for sure.

It also prevents people from taking one level in any given class simply because they want a single ability from the class, and then never touching the class again.

I can understand that feeling, because it looks that way from the PHB, but in practice you really aren't parented at all. It's just that now, if you're a newbie (we had one in our group last night), you're not thrown to the wolves right away. I don't think you've really lost any versatility in the game as a whole: for a quicky example (since this happens to be what I'm looking at on my sheet right now), the fact that there's now only 17 skills allows for a lot of versatility, for the DM especially, as to what those skills do. I think what people also need to keep in mind is that it's very hard to be able to strip 3.5 (and to some extend, 3.0) down from all the supplements and just look at the core books, because all 4th has right now is core books (or maybe it's just hard for me). That may or may not contribute to some of the loss of versatility people are feeling.

I also think there's a lot more versatility in terms of playable races; when I say playable, I'm not just talking about the PHB ones, but also the ones that they give you stats for at the end of the Monster Manual. It seems like WotC actually tried to make a lot of these races playable as PC's this time around, where as in 3.5, a DM would have had to do quite a bit of shoehorning to get some of these to work nice (Goblins weren't exactly a viable race in 3.5; now, they could be).

EDIT: For those that were/are interested, a fillable PDF form of the 4th Edition character sheet can be found here. It's not perfect, but I'm happy it turned out alright. Most of it lines up well, and it's a hell of a lot easier than constantly erasing stuff.

EDIT2: Holyf*ckpaladinsdon'thavealignmentrestrictionsanym ore.
Evil Warforged Paladin goodness heading for Rokrin. *crumples Eladrin Rogue*

You may not like the fact that multiclassing got yanked way way down, but think about it realistically.

Order of the Stick was spot on - it made no sense that a bard at 12th level or thereabouts just could go, "Hm, you know, I'm going to be a wizard now!" And suddenly it was retconned that he'd been looking at Varsuuvius' spellbook for a while and learning how to cast. It gave Elan in a matter of a split-second descision the ability to cast several 1st level spells and a few cantrips even though it took Varsuuvius a hundred years to learn.

Now you just pick up a few talents from the spellcasters. Now that sorcerers don't exist anymore you could just as easily say, hey, you know, the rogue in the party is suddenly developing sorcerous talents.

Multiclassing may be dead but it never really made sense that a character would spend years training in the academy and adventuring only to go out and forage a bit in the wilderness and suddenly he's got twin-sword style.

I've only read a tiny bit, but... well, it kind of annoys me that they more or less force you to abandon your character at level 30. Yes, I KNOW that I'll probably never get that far, and I KNOW that I'll probably be bored of him by then, and I KNOW you have to finish an epic quest first, but... they basically say that once your character's done that epic quest, they're gone from the mortal coil.

Basically, you win so hard that you lose. That bugs me.

Though I really like a lot of the things that they've done with the system, it also seems like they've fallen a bit to fanservice. I mean, Dragonborn are a player race, but not gnomes?

Mirai, please feel free to speak for me from now on, because it comes out better when you say it. :p

One interesting thing that came up in discussion on WotC's chat room was Two-Weapon Fighting things. This was brought up because, although all classes can take the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, only Rangers really get an extra attack from dual-wielding; everyone else just get's a tiny attack bonus. Another thing that stemmed off of this was whether or not TWF should be a prerequisite for TW Defense, because [in someone's opinion] you don't need to know how to fight with a weapon to block with it. The counter-point to this from someone else was "if you're going to do that, just buy a dagger and use shield stats and mechanics". I thought it was an interesting debate, especially since TWF was one of the factors in my Eladrin Rogue creation.

I also see someone downloaded my sheet. Good to know one person other than me might get some use out of it. =p

See? SEE!? I knew I wasn't the only one!

Edit: For those who are wondering how I edited in a quote with a post link, you have to do it manually. I think.

Yeah that was me. PDFs are wonderful.

One thing that I love is the two weapon fighting system. It was always ridiculous that shields gave you a plus one bonus, maybe a plus two if it was really big. There was no reason not to pick up TWF and get an extra attack.

And now they handled it really well - Rangers are the only ones whom are specially trained to be able to do anything useful with the second sword. Everyone else just has an easier time attacking. So sexy.
Heh, thanks, but I felt it was a really great example to show Order of the Stick, a comic that started out making fun of obvious jokes about 3.0/3.5 rules. It just does the explaining for you.

That and the multiclassing system is, like, an offense to all the characters that spend their lives learning how to be that class.

EDIT: To be fair Gnomes are probably going to be released later on with the next book once they introduce bards. And Dragonborn is just a part of the "We're controlling the powergaming now, fuckers" that WOTC is using as their philosophy.

Thank you for downloading it. There are some centering issues that bugged me at first, but Acrobat won't pick up all the square fields, so you have to manually input them...and after shitting a cow trying to line up the fields so that everything looks nice, and discovering that the numbers don't end up in the center of the circle, you pretty much just go "Screw it, if they want their numbers centered, they can hit the space bar" and drop it.
I will end up fixing it at some point. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. =p

This is true. It was an interesting debate, to say the least. I didn't even taken TWF as my first feat (Backstabber instead), but I bought a Dagger anyway and now I just say he dual-wields. XD

That was exactly my problem with it, and OotS does do a good job of illustrating the point. If you spent your life learning how to be a fighter, there is no fricking way you learned how to cast cantrips over a week. Not that I know anyone who would multiclass Fighter/Wizard, but that's beside the point.

I'm skeptical on that point, simply because of how they laid out the monster manual for races; while I'm sure new races will be introduced down the line, I think they'll leave gnome in the monster manual. Or else it's going to be identical to the monster manual, and they're just going to tell you what class the Gnomes like the best.

Dragonborn...I dunno. The whole Honor thing, coupled with their scaly heads, tells the geek inside me "Dragonborn (read: Klingon)".


On another note, I've now acquired the Keep of Shadowfang. I've scanned it (because I take my computer everywhere, I don't haul books), but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in ever using something like MapTool and running through some of it. Doesn't even have to be all of it, but I'm sure there's people who want to throw 4E into the arena and see how it comes out.

I can see nothing easier than the later books or Player's Handbook II being released complete with "New Races and New Classes!" that give you a new and improved gnomes.

Despite the sacrifices one would have to make, I can see some use in a Fighter who'd know how to cast a spell or two.

But maybe that's just me... seeing as I have no clue about DnD yet.

That was in reference to the old multiclassing system, but to answer your question-ish-thing, in DnD, armor inhibits your casting ability. As a result, a Fighter wearing something like chain, plate, scale, heavier leathers, etc, wouldn't be a good caster. That being said, you could take spells that do NOT have somatic components, and cast them fine, but there aren't many of those without investing heavily into the Wizard class...now, if you wanted to have your Fighter wear cloth, then you could explore it more.

I haven't looked that far into how armor affects spellcasting in 4E, mostly because I haven't taken a caster class.

Edit:

That would be nice. I'd like it if they seemed more...what's the word here...gnome-y?
I also want Bard back. I love that class.

Oh the really bad part is when the wizard takes a single fighter level which can double his melee combat power and uses that to qualify for a melee caster prestige class levels sooner than was ever intended. Of course I used to play this game too like when I used to take one level of samurai and then several levels of ninja because I wanted ninja powers but I also wanted to qualify for the Iaijutsu class in about half the levels it would take me as a ninja. That and it meant I didn't have to give up a feat to get a weapon proficiency I needed. That while fun generally made absolutely no sense and was way to easy to abuse.