I second the honest turtle’s post. I too had the same thoughts when learning about the new mechanics. To add insult to injury, there are plenty of games out there that treat fighter abilities using the exact same mechanic as spells – if I wanted to play one of them, I’d play one of them.
Having only gone over the 4th edition a little bit and not being happy with it, I am not certain of the details, but how may of those are at-will? I would personally say that they are not “spell-like” if they are at-will (though 4th edition seems to have a lot of at-will spells as well if I am understanding it). Many of the above abilities are already present in 3/3.5 from feats (combat expertise, improved [whatever]) or simply from standard combat options (bull-rush, disarm, charge, trip, shield bash, grapple etc.)
It appears that they may have taken a lot of the options that were available to everyone in any combat round and made them class specific and restricted how frequently they can be used (unless they are all at-will). I know that when I play 3.5 fighters, the number of rounds that I used a basic attack were less than the number that I used things such as power attack or combat expertise at a minimum, while often it was something like trip, disarm, or sunder. The 3.5 fighter was at no loss for options. Anyone could perform these techniques, though, it was just the fighter (with appropriate feats) who did them best.
ETA: Oh, and my initial impression upon reading the 4th edition books mirrored an earlier poster in that it seems specifically designed for ease of porting into an MMORPG. My guess is that they figured 90% of D&D would be played with the use of a computer, if not entirely online, before the next major revision to the rules occurred.
All of them. I didn’t even need to dip into another category for those examples.
4e also posesses bull rush, charge, grapple, and some others. I think they dropped disarm, sunder, and trip, however.
A) They are at will, B) they haven’t disallowed any of the basic stuff, they just make people better at it.
Power attack and its ilk still exist…AS WELL! (Dun dun duhn!)
Well, clearly THAT was a bad bet. 
As for the essentially subjective assertion that anything that’s a “castable ability” (What does “castable” mean, anyway? Help me out here.) is a spell seems…well… until you can define what “castable” is, I don’t think you have a case.
If you’re arguing that you must have some sort of different mechanic for a different sort of ability in order for it to be “different”, I would come out and say that virtually the entire evolution of the roleplaying game proves you wrong in that regard. Early edition games had special rules for every random circumstance - if you were picking a lock, you were making a percentage roll, but if you were forcing a door, you rolled d6, blah blah etc. The world at large has determined that that is fundamentally stupid, and most if not all modern RPGs use the same base mechanics for everything. I’m not even talking about 4e here, though certainly it applies. But “Storyteller”? Yup. Mouse Guard? Yup. Dogs in the Vinyard? Sure. New Versions of Shadowrun? At least a lot closer than the old versions. The trend in tabletop gaming, because it makes sense, is to use a single unified mechanical system for all types of actions - and it doesn’t matter if it’s casting a spell, winning at cards, swinging a sword, or dredging up a piece of forgotten lore. So… yeah. I don’t think the whole “casting a spell is mechanically identical to hitting someone with your shield except that you use different stats” argument really holds a lot of water as a complaint.
You’re being over-precise. I’m talking about all mark-causing effects, which can and do have a variety of effects which last as long as the specific Mark effect (which it may not have). You don’t seem to have a terribly clear grasp of the very game you’re defending.
I’m being precise. Up to you if that’s overprecise or not, I guess. Your original assertion was that marks overwrote one another and that it was pure bookkeeping with no game-world explanation.
I figured you weren’t talking about things other than the actual Mark condition, because abilities that put a condition on the target that is not a Mark (such as a warlock’s Curse ability or the ranger’s designation of a target as prey) don’t overwrite marks in the way you described.
If you were making that assertion, then please provide a cite that shows such a thing; the only overwrite condition I am aware of is that Marks from different sources on the same target. You may simply be misreading the rules text; there are a fair number of power descriptions that say things like “..and the target is marked.”
I’m willing to be wrong, but since you seem to be coming from a position of disliking the game, this gives me some reason to suspect that you may not have read the rules thoroughly.
The same definition MMOs and other video games use, basically. A pre-packaged effect a character can trigger, on some sort of cooldown (which may be effectively instantaneous) or resource limitation. In MMOs, you may ONLY have castable abilities. (Though most MMOs do a better job of distinguishing their classes than 4E, they’re still ‘caster classes’.) Starcraft II, on the other hand, has units with castable abilities in addition to their default basic attacks. That’s where I’m picking up the terminology. Templar ‘cast’ psionic storm, and SCVs ‘cast’ repair.
How would you distinguish a Ranger’s abilities from a Seeker’s without resorting to the flavor text or the name of the power source? Or do you contend that’s sufficient? “Maneuvers aren’t spells because the book says they’re different somehow.” Really?
I would assert that your video-game-based example is irrelevant in the tabletop space, because everything you do is in some way prepackaged effect that you can choose to trigger. There are a bunch of different options on your turn in combat. You can make an attack. Or you can take a full defense. Or you can trip. Or sunder. or whatever. Each of those options triggers a specific rule path.
In 3rd edition (which you seem, inexplicably, to think is a counterexample to the idea that everyone in 4E is a ‘caster’) if you want to trip someone, then you make an attack roll, and instead of doing damage, you knock them prone. Is that a “spell”? It sure fits your definition of a “castable ability”.
What if I’m a 1st edition rogue and I want to try to backstab someone? Well, guess what? There’s a full set of triggered rules for that too. I guess 1st edition backstab was a castable ability. Who knew?
Or what if you want to hit someone with your sword. That’s not your “basic attack” - because you don’t HAVE a “basic attack”. There are no ‘default actions’ in tabletop RPGs. There’s no ‘autoattack’ that mirrors what you get in an MMO. If you want to hit someone with your sword, that’s a “pre-packaged effect your character can trigger, on some sort of cooldown” (After all, you can only do it once per round!). You say “I want to hit the goblin with my sword!” and… a pre-packaged process ensues! You look up the goblin’s AC! You check your THAC0 (If this was 2nd editon!). You roll a d20 and add modifiers! If you hit, it does d8 damage (plus modifiers!). Fits your “castable ability” definition to the T.
You’re going to need to do better that that to assert that everyone in 4E is a “caster” but everyone in 1st/2nd/3rd wasn’t.
How do you distinguish a trip attack from a sunder in 3e? How do you differentiate an arrow shot from a melf’s acid arrow? There is no difference beyond what dice you roll, and the “flavor text”. Unless you think that rolling a d20 to hit is somehow more representative of “attacking” than your opponent rolling a d20 to “save”, which is more representative of “casting”. Is there some arbitrary reason that a weapon attack’s likelihood of hitting is determined by a random number on the part of the attacker, while a magic spell’s likelihood of…hitting is determined by a random number on the part of the defender? They’re all just “pre-packaged effect(s) a character can trigger” that the rules then help you resolve.
And it gets even “worse” in more abstract systems - heaven forfend we should try to have this discussion about Mouse Guard/Burning Wheel, where all conflicts are resolved using exactly the same system, but just using different stats and modifiers on the same set of actions.
Your argument just doesn’t hold up. If you really wanted to make a case for this, you could at least pick something that holds a little bit of water, like “It doesn’t make any sense that a fighter can only do “combat maneuver X” once per encounter” - which would almost be a legitimate argument if we were trying to be really simulationist about this.
Edit: Boy, I just found this gem in your earlier post:
What else IS there in a tabletop RPG EXCEPT terminology and imagination?
Then you’re shit out of luck because rogues didn’t exist in 1st edition. 
I don’t have a problem with every class having “spell-like” abilities. I think it’s kind of cool that fighters and thieves have some special moves too.
What I don’t like is that almost all of the abilities are geared toward combat: “Meet these conditions and you do more damage/increase you chance to hit.” Most of the abilities boil down to different ways to pump damage points into an enemy, or prevent the enemy from pumping damage points into you.
What I liked about 1st and 2nd edition (never played 3rd) was that the fantasy came first. Each spell or special ability was vivid in its own way, and its combat effects flowed naturally from that core fantasy. With 4th edition it feels like they designed a nice palette of special moves, then retro-fitted them with jazzy names. The result is something that’s better balanced, but homogenized and soulless.
I play 3.5 and followed the development of 4th Ed in detail. You’re dead on. 4th Edition is designed to reduce DM overhead and to make sure each player gets a share of the stage in turn. There is even a section in the 4E DMG about DMless play.
If you like world building, 4th Edition is just garbage. The book goes into detail about essentially building a world around the player characters as they go.
Your comment about pallettes of moves and fancy names practically comes verbatim out of the DMG. I’ve never played because it isn’t worth my time. I have plenty of beer and pretzels tactical games and I don’t need another.
I don’t want to play a D&D that can be played without a DM. I can fire up WoW to get that infinitely better than anything WotC could ever come up with, especially as they’re crippled by Hasbro’s vision of what a “game” is.
But to really get a feel for this, all you need to do is scan chapter one of the 4E DMG and take a look at a top end Dragon or Demon. Soulless is right.
The only weird cases are the at-will powers, and if you want to call them not-castable, fine - Magic Missile is not ‘castable’. But every class gets Encounter and Daily powers, and that makes them Caster Classes.
A basic attack is not on a cooldown or resource limitation. You can only do it once per round in 4E and several times in 3E, but that’s simply because it’s how often you get to act. It’s not a property of the ability, in other words, it’s a property of the game’s model of time.
All those other maneuvers your post refers to are modifications you can apply, ad hoc, to your basic attack - in other words, disqualifying basic attack as a castable ability because it is not pre-packaged. A basic attack can be an attack, a trip, a disarm attempt, et cetera.
Mechanics and rules. Which is what the crux of the discussion is.
Oh, I see. Spontaneous definition revision! NOW it MUST be restricted in some fashion.
So? Encounters are also a property of how the game models time. So are days.
Also, it’s generally not how often you get to act, it’s how often you can do THAT KIND of act.
Nonsense. Trip/Sunder/Blah/Etc are not “modifiers”; They completely re-route the process. The only thing they share is an attack roll.
That would be the terminology, yes.
Now that I’m done disposing of this ridiculous argument, I can safely agree with Hamster and Alien King; The game was clearly designed as a combat sim game, not as a world-simulation exercise. That’s a design choice, though, not a design failure. It’s fine to not like the game for that. It’s like saying “I don’t like soccer because you can’t use your hands.” That’s perfectly okay - you’re allowed to dislike the game because of what it is. What’s silly is making claims like “I don’t like soccer because everyone is a midfielder.”
On top of the combat focus, I mostly dislike the at-will/encounter/daily thing for everyone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased that fighters and rogues have more to do and whatnot, but I would have much preferred giving it to them in a different way. One easy way to do this would be to give them different resources like WoW did. Obviously something like energy wouldn’t work in DnD land, but combo points might! A restructuring of a warrior’s rage might work for fighters, monks could have something like “combat discipline.” The first two simply don’t work like mana (especially combo points), they’re pretty unique acting since they have to be built up. I’m not saying actually take these, they’re WoW ideas, I’m just giving examples. A bunch of competent systems designers could come up with at least one idea for each class, even if they decided that to make every archetype share resource models it would be better than the near copy-paste of mechanics they did.
Though even if most of the powers are combat based, I do recall either the DM’s manual or the player’s handbook defining “encounter” as “challenge” and specifically stating it didn’t need to be combat. I think the example they gave was scaling a wall.
Yes, it’s very focused on modeling combat, to the point of requiring a battlemat and figures (or some kind of markers). Range matters in the mechanics of the system.
Some people really like that, some don’t. Even within my play group, I have some people that have a good time working with the system, and others who wish the system would get out of the way and let them roleplay. We all manage to have a good time anyway.
Really, whatever system you choose is less important than the decision to play a game at all. If you find yourself arguing about the specifics of the system, and such arguing is not itself enjoyable, then you’re probably playing the wrong system - or possibly playing with the wrong group.
For what it’s worth, there are variations on the standard at-will/encounter/daily mechanic. For example, the psionic classes don’t get encounter powers at all, instead they get a pool of points that they can use to improve their at-will abilities.
Also, the new Essentials books provide an across-the-board tweak to the formula, such as offering powers that don’t activate until you’ve already hit with an at-will, so you don’t waste them on a bad roll.
So, it’s not even really true that everyone’s stuck with the exact same mechanics.
Not at all. I made the point about resources/cooldowns originally. Maybe you’re just not reading before you reply.
You’re claiming not to see a difference between “You can do this every time you act” and “you can do this only once between rest periods”? You don’t see how one is a limit and the other isn’t? You may be beyond help.
I suggest you check the rules again. Sunder, particularly. And the distinction is quite clear in Third Edition - with a full attack action, you get multiple attacks, each of which may be customized on the fly with a variety of options.
No, those would be rules and mechanics. Terminology is word choice; Rules and mechanics are expressed in words, yes, but they are processes and ideas. To equate the two suggests willful ignorance on your part. By your logic, all roleplaying games are exactly the same because they’re all written in words.
No, I dislike the game because the rules are moronic. Why don’t you go read your own damn PHB4? You’ll quickly notice a number of abilkities, at least half a dozen in the first few classes. Some abilities cause Marks. Some do other things aliong with the Mark, abilities whicha re completely reliant on said Mark.
They exist for fighters and clerics just offhand, and those were just ones I happened to grab right off. Now, get this - only one Mark can exist, and it also gets rid of the associated ongoing effect, genius! I’m not exactly sure how I can cite rules you’re ignoring.
Your confusing the state Marked with the effects of abilities which Mark people, which may include a number of effects. Warpriest’s Challenge and Combat Challenge, for instance, cause other effects. It’s true that you do cause a -2 penalty if they attempt to attack other targets, etc. But that’s not the only thing they can cause, and if you dump the Mark you dump the other effect. This is why an AoE “Mark all my Friends” is so useful: if an enemy puts a very bad Mark, you can then remove it (preferably with counter-balancing bonuses). But the game designers definitely don’t want you coming up with new abilities or using them in intelligent ways.
And there’s no reason why for it, or for anything. “Why” is not a question they have an answer to, do there’s a very shallow limit for what a character accomplish. You can ONLY interact in the narrow ways the game permits, and anything outside of that involves dropping the rules entirely. In which case, why am I bothering with these rules?
Hell, this is the only game I’ve ever heard of which had, as an actual rule, that monsters shouldn’t attack downed (but not dead) characters, so that the healers can bring them back up. I don’t mind sometimes fudging things or having the enemy make mistakes, but that’s irritating.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I’m not at all clear what distinguishes a “basic attack” from a castable ability to you. It sounds like you want it to be a cool down issue, but if it is, you picked a bad example, because “basic attacks” in SCII do, effectively, have a cool down period – different units attack at different rates. Otherwise, the only distinction I can find is that in SCII, the default action is to attack. But by that definition, there are no basic attacks in D&D, since there are no default actions. If you don’t explicitly do something in a round, your fighter won’t swing his sword; he’ll sit on his hands.
It really sounds to me like you basic beef is that you don’t think fighters should get encounter or daily abilities.
smiling bandit, I think you’re being needlessly belligerent. Please stop taking out your anger on the rules on me. If you’re trying to be funny, it’s not coming across that way.
Anyway…
I can’t read PHB4 because it’s not out yet; I’m honestly not sure why you’re bringing it up.
I think you’re trying to get at the fact that Warpriest’s Challenge, for example, in addition to conferring the Mark effect (-2 to hit), also gives the Marking character an additional ability - in this case, the ability to perform an opportunity attack against the Marked target if it makes an attack or moves.
I can see why you’d find it annoying - why should the fighter grabbing my target’s attention away from me deprive me of my ability to hit him if he looks away? - but it’s not inconsistent with the explanation I offered earlier: the Mark represents having someone’s attention focused on you.
For game balance reasons, the designers chose to not let Marks stack. It’s not something that bugs me very much. I don’t look for a lot of realism in my fantasy roleplaying games.
You gave an explanation. That doesn’t mean your explanation makes sense.
In the scenario you describe, Cleric A gains the ability to hit Monster B if B looks away. And yet, when Fighter C makes it look away, your ability fails. It would make more sense for both Cleric A and Fighter C to have it Marked, giving Monster B a -2 to hit anyone and granting opportunity attacks to A if it attacks C, to C if it attacks A, and to both if it attacks anyone else.
I think we’re missing the elephant in the room. Some marks represent having someone’s attention focused on you.
I shall repeat. Marks represent having someone’s attention focused on you. What sort of attention is contained in combat? Aggressive attention.
FUCK THIS MMO CRAP. I wouldn’t be surprised if the tabletop aids for map play for 4.0 include a little floating target so you can hang it over the person who has the MARK. MARKY MARK MARK.
They should have a fucking ringer or buzzer-like device that the DM can slam whenever the player levels so you can have fucking SOUND EFFECTS with your slow mmo.