That’s exactly what happened with 1e->2e and 2e->3e. And there’re plenty of people who still play 1e or 2e.

Probably it’ll take at least a year, though.

To many of my brethren need to just accept that they don’t like the new system for whatever reason (for me, I don’t like the way the game feels) and move on!

I don’t think there’s any reason you can’t have different options at a given tier. The table of DCs is only meant for “challenging terrain,” after all — terrain you need a skill check to cross. If the slime is on fire instead of slippery, it’s another terrain type, hindering terrain in this case. (If it’s both, it’s both challenging and hindering terrain. And slippery, flaming slime is a pretty cool encounter element to deal with.)

The big obstacle I see to picking a class at level-up is that the character will lack certain class features. A fighter picking up a level of warlock wouldn’t have a curse or a pact, for instance. (Keeping the basic multiclass feat goes some way toward addressing this, though.) Giving all of the class’s class features, on the other hand, will probably overpower the character.

I wonder if a choose your class @ level up mechanic has been tried? I will have to playtest it. If each class is well balanced against the others, they should dovetail nicely right? I need to do some more reading on this….after the weekend move.

My paradigm has shifted rather dramatically lately. After spending some time with it, there does appear to be a decent set of core rules under all the other stuff I dislike. so you’ll have to forgive the jeckyl and hyde style posts here and there. There are a few things that I verey much dislike, but my kids enjoying it really helped out. Time to fall back to the tried and true defense of many a DM in the face of silly arbitrariness (assuming of course, that’s even a word)…HOUSERULES!

I agree with you about the multiclassing, though. D&D multiclassing has always been broken in one way or another, and I had hopes that 4e might fix that. It didn’t. I don’t think it’s completely awful, but I can’t say it’s well executed. The initial multiclassing feat was a good idea, and mostly pretty solid, but anything beyond that gets pretty expensive for the benefit it gives, and “paragon multiclassing” gives you (almost) nothing for something, which is bad.

I’m still trying to work out a way to better allow multiclassing in my own games.

Ravyn: That’s the thing, though; I don’t think it is the same slime, any more than the ancient red dragon you’re fighting at level 30 is the same dragon as the white wyrmling you encountered at level 3. I think Wyatt’s quote was badly worded, but that the intent was to say “Make the slime as slippery as it needs to be in order to be a challenge. Don’t worry about ‘realism’ when it would interfere with the game.” That’s what I got out of it, at least.

Dave: Right — and that’s the simulation aspect. People who want to model a consistent fantasy world are correct that 4e doesn’t really do that. 4e is more cinematic than earlier editions, even 3e.

And I can understand people wanting to play a certain type of game. And being disappointed that 4e doesn’t cater to that type of game as well as earlier editions did.

But I can’t get from there to “it’s meant to destroy immersion.” It’s easy to become immersed in a 4e game, in my experience. The system mostly gets out of the way of the characters and the story. Roleplaying’s no harder than it’s ever been. Creativity’s no less encouraged — just the opposite, as far as I’m concerned: the lack of defined noncombat subsystems, in favor of the greater guidelines for improvisation and the “rule of yes”, seem to emphasize flexibility.

“It doesn’t provide the sort of game I like” is a valid complaint. “It destroys immersion” really is not.

I don’t think the first situation is really what the rules talk about at all (and is a “DM’s best friend” situation) whereas the second is the designers saying that cave slime is always slippery, no matter what level you are, which some like and some don’t like.

It just seems off to me to give the slime a constantly changing difficulty when it’s still, as far as we can tell, the same slime. Wouldn’t it be more consistent with clean suspension of disbelief to add an ad hoc penalty to running on slime when fighting against characters who know how to deal with it, without having to go back to “Oh, yeah, I’ve been adventuring for ten years, but I still tend to slip and fall on this stuff despite all my practice in dealing with it” as an overall issue? I don’t think that would get rid of the Awesome any, and it’d still allow it to pose a threat in your fights, but outside of the circumstances where you need an equivalent to Epic Slime the slime could still be a challenge that the group can be proud of having learned to overcome.