Thanks for the review. Exactly what I was looking for; a breakdown of how 4th Ed is different from previous editions of D&D.
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It is in this sense that 4th Ed, as published, seems very much more combat-centric to me than 3.5 Ed (or most of the earlier editions for that matter). The emphasis is clearly on combat in the character powers in 4th Ed, there are no "non-combat" character classes in the PHB whose powers are more or less useless in a fight but possibly extremely useful in a diplomatic impasse or the exploration of uncharted territory or who do nothing but heal.
A pacifist 1st Edition cleric could simply not own a weapon and cast nothing but healing spells, but all four of the cleric's at will powers in 4th Edition do damage to an enemy. They are very much better balanced for combat compared with the other classes powers, but the do presuppose that there is going to be a lot of combat going on. Hence, the rules seem to me to be more combat-centric, and the games I'd want to try running under those rules would be more like dungeon crawls than meetings of the Master Mage's councils.
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This sums up the change in the type of game you can run very well. 4th ed looks to be a lot of fun, but definitely aimed at combats. All editions of D&D have done this, but there was enough non-combat NPC classes and spells to hang the skeleton of a world, and then flesh it out from there. I've done the dungeon crawl in 3.x, but one of the longest games I was in was a low-magic gritty world, with a major emphasis on politics, economics, exploration, and interacting with NPCs. Looking at 4th ed, the changes that would have to be made to run in this setting would be so extensive, it'd be better to find and learn a different game system, rather than fit the square peg in the round hole.
It looks like WotC decided that instead of having a rather clunky game that could work for many different types of roleplaying, they decided to streamline for the dungeon crawl. Good times if that's what you want from D&D. If you want a more emersive experience, then 4th ed is going to be much harder to shape to that.
Mxyzplk has a good post on gamist vs. simulationist and their reactions to 4th ed; he's not fond of 4th ed thus far, but the post is a nice look at why 4th ed is fantastic for some, but won't do it for others.
Mxyzplk's post on 4th ed and types of gamers