Quote from: Omega on July 07, 2021, 07:52:40 AM
With some it makes sense in a RL way. Like Action Surge. This is that moment of adrenaline boost sort of thing. Not something you can do all day. Or more aptly you could say the character IS action surging all day. But the encounter version is that really big one.

Why mix a RL thing like adrenaline to a non-RL thing like only being able to use it once a day?

Quote from: Shasarak on July 07, 2021, 04:53:10 PM

Quote from: Omega on July 07, 2021, 07:52:40 AM
With some it makes sense in a RL way. Like Action Surge. This is that moment of adrenaline boost sort of thing. Not something you can do all day. Or more aptly you could say the character IS action surging all day. But the encounter version is that really big one.

Why mix a RL thing like adrenaline to a non-RL thing like only being able to use it once a day?

Probably because some people feel there needs to be in-game explanations to any/all effects related to mechanics. I don't necessarily get it myself, hence half this thread, but verisimilitude and dissociated mechanics are things people draw lines in the sand about. Adrenaline, to me, doesn't exactly make sense because you just don't *will* adrenaline to activate, your body doesn't normally do that (and here's where someone interjects that one guy -somewhere- who had some odd physiology that did indeed allow them to 'power up' on adrenaline), and what we can do - at best- is control how we react when our adrenaline turns on.

Personally, I prefer Stamina as we can control that. We can work to increase it, to hold onto it, even take drugs to prolong it. So to use any real-world gimmick to facilitate D&D-esque nonmagical effects, stamina is something that at least is in the same ballpark. I also have toyed with the idea of using Hit Points, Constitution scores, Hit Die, and Healing Surges and the forced depletion of them to continue greater effects. For example, a Stamina system might let you do something grand 1/encounter (be it 5 mintues, an hour, whatever) and it's effects are either instantaneous or maybe it's prolonged but once it's used, it's gone until you take a breather. BUT you could spend [insert controlled mechanical application of Stamina here] to do the effect again or prolong an effect. In 3.5, maybe you have to make a Fortitude save and if you fail, the effect happens but you take 1 point of Con damage. In 4E, maybe you MUST spend a Healing Surge, where as in 5E you might spend a Hit Die or something like that.

In retrospect to 4E, this might have been a better approach to some elements.

4e really could have used further development.

4e Fighters could have been made much more palatable without that much work.

If for example the daily effects required a healing surge to use.  Encounter powers shouldn't have worked like Vancian magic.  If you have three encounter powers you should have been able to use the same one three times like 5e Battlemaster maneuvers.  That would not exactly have been associated but it would have felt less arbritrary, which was a big part of the problem, and have made the game more interesting tactically.

Part of the reason for not doing that was probably balance.  If you have one encounter power and it's better than all of the others then you will always use that three times (like certain spells in 5e).  This reveals the big flaw at the heart of 4e's vaunted balance.  It's balance does not come from careful playtesting and good mathematical analysis, it came from arbritrary restrictions and limits to make imbalance unlikely and minimised.

It's clear in hindsight how rushed it was.  Not just in terms of it's flaws, but in terms of it's whole design, which enabled it be workable at all as such a rushed job.

Quote from: Batman on July 08, 2021, 03:54:21 PM
In retrospect to 4E, this might have been a better approach to some elements.

Undoubtedly.

4E was a shot across the bow to the Quadratic Wizard, Linear Fighter issue.
However, what we got was basically applying the exact same structure and formulas to every power used by every class. A lot of people didn't care for that. It definitely made the game more balanced, but also much more same-y.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM
4e really could have used further development.

4e Fighters could have been made much more palatable without that much work.

If for example the daily effects required a healing surge to use.  Encounter powers shouldn't have worked like Vancian magic.  If you have three encounter powers you should have been able to use the same one three times like 5e Battlemaster maneuvers.  That would not exactly have been associated but it would have felt less arbritrary, which was a big part of the problem, and have made the game more interesting tactically.

Part of the reason for not doing that was probably balance.  If you have one encounter power and it's better than all of the others then you will always use that three times (like certain spells in 5e).  This reveals the big flaw at the heart of 4e's vaunted balance.  It's balance does not come from careful playtesting and good mathematical analysis, it came from arbritrary restrictions and limits to make imbalance unlikely and minimised.

It's clear in hindsight how rushed it was.  Not just in terms of it's flaws, but in terms of it's whole design, which enabled it be workable at all as such a rushed job.

In terms of getting rushed, they've admitted on the record that they basically ended up running out of time and had to start finishing the plane while it was still in the air... with playtesting and coordination between writers being the first thing going out the window.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM
4e really could have used further development.

I agree that some of the elements were shortsighted. The Math was off, monster AC was too high and their damage was too low which often led to longer than usual fights. Probably why I never saw this in play was because I wouldn't let it get crazy and often would just signal "next hit kills it." and used Morale options for bigger fights.

Skill challenges being another. When I run them, the PCs shouldn't have a feeling they're IN a Skill Challenge, it should work out organically using their abilities, skills, and role-play but initially that's not how it was presented.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM4e Fighters could have been made much more palatable without that much work.

Eh, I dunno? When they tried that, with the addition of the Slayer and Knight sub-classes they certainly had a higher baseline of abilities early on (Heroic Tier) but sharply fell away when your Weaponmaster was using Daily powers. The biggest issue I heard about - back in the day - was their limited capacity on Ranged attacks, they had no Ranged powers to speak of and that irked a lot of people. Honestly, I go 50/50 here, and that's mainly because there's a lot of classes that already do Ranged combat much better - but people have it in their head that the Fighter should be the "best". Thing is, you can do that in 4E (Core even) simply by taking multiclass feats (which is just access to other exploits). Funny thing is you needed just as many feats in 3.5 to be a good Archer Fighter (Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot) so I don't see what the big huff was about. OR just play a Slayer and double-dip on Dex to damage rolls. A wood elf slayer that used a Bow was pretty damn potent, if one dimensional.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PMIf for example the daily effects required a healing surge to use.  Encounter powers shouldn't have worked like Vancian magic.  If you have three encounter powers you should have been able to use the same one three times like 5e Battlemaster maneuvers.  That would not exactly have been associated but it would have felt less arbritrary, which was a big part of the problem, and have made the game more interesting tactically.

Part of the reason for not doing that was probably balance.  If you have one encounter power and it's better than all of the others then you will always use that three times (like certain spells in 5e).  This reveals the big flaw at the heart of 4e's vaunted balance.  It's balance does not come from careful playtesting and good mathematical analysis, it came from arbritrary restrictions and limits to make imbalance unlikely and minimised.

It's clear in hindsight how rushed it was.  Not just in terms of it's flaws, but in terms of it's whole design, which enabled it be workable at all as such a rushed job.

Well, the restrictions weren't necessarily arbitrary, they were just gamist. Much like any other gamist elements we've ever see (and something I've brought up). People just didn't like that it was forced across the board on every class. I wonder, however, how things would've been different had they released the initial Essential Classes (Knight and Slayer for the Fighter, Thief for the Rogue, etc) and most martials without Daily powers and then incorporated the PHB-styled classes we initially saw later as "advanced" classes - sort of how the Warblade, Crusader, and Swordsage are just better implemented Fighter, Paladin, and Monk classes respectively? People probably would have called it OP and a money grab but it might have kept people interested longer  than 2011 (when Paizo took over the #1 spot).

Quote from: Zelen on July 08, 2021, 11:27:59 PM

Quote from: Batman on July 08, 2021, 03:54:21 PM
In retrospect to 4E, this might have been a better approach to some elements.

Undoubtedly.

4E was a shot across the bow to the Quadratic Wizard, Linear Fighter issue.
However, what we got was basically applying the exact same structure and formulas to every power used by every class. A lot of people didn't care for that. It definitely made the game more balanced, but also much more same-y.

Fixing it by making everyone use the same quadratic equation was certainly one way to fix it.

Quote from: Batman on July 09, 2021, 02:10:07 PM

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM
4e really could have used further development.

I agree that some of the elements were shortsighted. The Math was off, monster AC was too high and their damage was too low which often led to longer than usual fights. Probably why I never saw this in play was because I wouldn't let it get crazy and often would just signal "next hit kills it." and used Morale options for bigger fights.

Skill challenges being another. When I run them, the PCs shouldn't have a feeling they're IN a Skill Challenge, it should work out organically using their abilities, skills, and role-play but initially that's not how it was presented.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM4e Fighters could have been made much more palatable without that much work.

Eh, I dunno? When they tried that, with the addition of the Slayer and Knight sub-classes they certainly had a higher baseline of abilities early on (Heroic Tier) but sharply fell away when your Weaponmaster was using Daily powers. The biggest issue I heard about - back in the day - was their limited capacity on Ranged attacks, they had no Ranged powers to speak of and that irked a lot of people. Honestly, I go 50/50 here, and that's mainly because there's a lot of classes that already do Ranged combat much better - but people have it in their head that the Fighter should be the "best". Thing is, you can do that in 4E (Core even) simply by taking multiclass feats (which is just access to other exploits). Funny thing is you needed just as many feats in 3.5 to be a good Archer Fighter (Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot) so I don't see what the big huff was about. OR just play a Slayer and double-dip on Dex to damage rolls. A wood elf slayer that used a Bow was pretty damn potent, if one dimensional.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PMIf for example the daily effects required a healing surge to use.  Encounter powers shouldn't have worked like Vancian magic.  If you have three encounter powers you should have been able to use the same one three times like 5e Battlemaster maneuvers.  That would not exactly have been associated but it would have felt less arbritrary, which was a big part of the problem, and have made the game more interesting tactically.

Part of the reason for not doing that was probably balance.  If you have one encounter power and it's better than all of the others then you will always use that three times (like certain spells in 5e).  This reveals the big flaw at the heart of 4e's vaunted balance.  It's balance does not come from careful playtesting and good mathematical analysis, it came from arbritrary restrictions and limits to make imbalance unlikely and minimised.

It's clear in hindsight how rushed it was.  Not just in terms of it's flaws, but in terms of it's whole design, which enabled it be workable at all as such a rushed job.

Well, the restrictions weren't necessarily arbitrary, they were just gamist. Much like any other gamist elements we've ever see (and something I've brought up). People just didn't like that it was forced across the board on every class. I wonder, however, how things would've been different had they released the initial Essential Classes (Knight and Slayer for the Fighter, Thief for the Rogue, etc) and most martials without Daily powers and then incorporated the PHB-styled classes we initially saw later as "advanced" classes - sort of how the Warblade, Crusader, and Swordsage are just better implemented Fighter, Paladin, and Monk classes respectively? People probably would have called it OP and a money grab but it might have kept people interested longer  than 2011 (when Paizo took over the #1 spot).

Gamist restrictions are arbritrary by their very nature.  When I play chess I don't worry about the fact that I can't try and defeat the other side by getting the enemy pawns to rise up in insurrection against their king.  In a rpg game I can do this.  That's not to say that there should never be any arbritrary restrictions, but if you don't make some effort to minimise them or have them make sense within the narrative you will piss people off.

And the Essentials classes weren't really trying to do anything like what I suggested - they were a deliberate method to simplify because Mearls was on an OSR kick.  The 13th Age class design (with Rob Heinsoo at the wheel rather than Mearls) is a better example - although there as well simplification is a goal.

I do think that if 4E had come out-of-the-gate with some of the class designs that came later on in its lifecycle, it would've been better received. I'd also point out a couple of other issues:

1. Class design, while relatively easy to understand mechanically, was just too much work for homebrewing. No one wants to create ~50 powers to create a custom class. Homebrewing is a core feature of D&D and needs to be approachable.
2. Ties into point 1. 30 levels is probably too much range.
3. Multiclassing in 4E was also not great, and while I generally don't like multiclassing I think multiclassing is essential for the theoycrafters who want to find the most broken combos (which is part of the game even if it's not something you should allow at your table)
4. This may be heavily personal preference, but 4th Edition's default assumption was gonzo high magic. I don't think most people really want to play in high magic settings, because high magic settings are hard to understand and depend on idiosyncratic rules (often unstated) to work. Starting out from a lower magic point is easier to relate to. High magic people can start at level 10 or some other point.

All of these issues compound each other, and it's not hard to see how 4E acquired a bad reputation out of the gate.

That being said I think the problems are solvable and an ambitious person could really polish the gem and come out with something that would hit a crunchy sweet spot that is currently unfulfilled in the TTRPG space.

I think the success of 5e shows that people really don't mind gonzo high magic.

Quote from: cavalier973 on July 07, 2021, 10:43:41 AMI guess it's obvious that there need be no reason for liking or not liking something. I like 4e. I really want to like 5e, and purchased the starter set a couple of years ago, and downloaded the basic rules of the game. I just can't get into it, and I don't know why. *shrug*

It is a very popular version of the game, and I am glad so many people get so much enjoyment from it. I have played the 4e Essentials starter set with my kids, and began the "Kobold Hall" adventure from the DM Guide with them, but every time I start the "Lost Mine of Phandelver", I read through it a while, then pack everything back in the box and return it to the shelf. Don't know why. Maybe I just don't like Forgotten Realms, or something silly like that.

What I play most with my kids is Mentzer Basic. Not that we play all that much, though.

1: I think part of the problem with the 5e starter set is, it does a pretty poor job of being a starter set. Essentials does it by and far better. The Start is like Basic 1/4 really. If even that. I was rather disapointed in it. The Basic PDF is not bad. Just lacks that little element it feels.

2: You arent the only one thats felt something was a little off with Phandelver. To me it felt like some of the encounters were too ham-handed, bordering on outright railroady. Easy enough to ignore. But not what a starting DM should be getting as example. One that sprang to mind was the goblin encounter.
And yeah, Forgotten Realms, ugh! I converted it all to BXs Known World, same as did for Tyranny of Dragons and Tomb of Annihilation.

3: I run a little BX campaign on the side every few weeks online for friends with limited online time.

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM
...
It's clear in hindsight how rushed it was.  Not just in terms of it's flaws, but in terms of it's whole design, which enabled it be workable at all as such a rushed job.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 08, 2021, 11:52:24 PM
4e really could have used further development.
...
In terms of getting rushed, they've admitted on the record that they basically ended up running out of time and had to start finishing the plane while it was still in the air... with playtesting and coordination between writers being the first thing going out the window.

This is an issue I am very curious about.

RPG's are not like other companies where if you spend too much time on development your product could be outdated before it even hits the shelves.

And pathfinder showed that 3.x still had some legs left in it to keep the ship afloat while they ironed out the kinks in the new hotness...

I am largely ignorant of what else WOTC was doing at the time that drove them to kick 4e out the door like a AAA video game. What was going on over there? Was it due to the digital initiatives they were trying to do a simultaneous release on?

Quote from: Jaeger on July 10, 2021, 06:20:48 AM

Quote from: TJS on July 08, 2021, 10:46:19 PM
...
It's clear in hindsight how rushed it was.  Not just in terms of it's flaws, but in terms of it's whole design, which enabled it be workable at all as such a rushed job.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 08, 2021, 11:52:24 PM
4e really could have used further development.
...
In terms of getting rushed, they've admitted on the record that they basically ended up running out of time and had to start finishing the plane while it was still in the air... with playtesting and coordination between writers being the first thing going out the window.

This is an issue I am very curious about.

RPG's are not like other companies where if you spend too much time on development your product could be outdated before it even hits the shelves.

And pathfinder showed that 3.x still had some legs left in it to keep the ship afloat while they ironed out the kinks in the new hotness...

I am largely ignorant of what else WOTC was doing at the time that drove them to kick 4e out the door like a AAA video game. What was going on over there? Was it due to the digital initiatives they were trying to do a simultaneous release on?

Ultimately, it came down to Hasbro demanding they hit various sales targets or get shelved.

3.5e splatbooks weren't reaching those targets so they made a pitch that they could increase sales with a new edition that had digital integration (which turned into an absolute debacle due to the lead digital developer sabotaging it before killing himself a month before launch).

So Hasbro gave them a deadline on getting a new edition out the door before they pulled the plug. So yeah, everyone was scrambling to get something out.

If I understand the politics right, one of the reasons Heinsoo got shown the door shortly after launch is that he wouldn't give up his original make each classes' mechanics unique (fighters were originally going to be a combo builder system for their powers, wizards more overtly Vancian, etc.; 13th Age classes are MUCH closer to what he wanted for 4E) and THAT was making the project take forever so at practically the last minute they nuked most of the classes and went with "all the classes use an identical framework" as a way to get the PHB out the door on time.

And frankly, even then they still hadn't worked out what precisely a controller was supposed to be which is why the Wizard was the only controller class and its powers were basically a grab bag and because they hadn't yet figured out the effects that various conditions had on the action economy, the Wizard had way more hard controls than any later controller would be given (basically it was overpowered early installment weirdness that the CharOps community assumed was the baseline and so never stopped bitching about how underpowered all the later controller powers and classes were... No, you were NOT supposed to be able keep the dragon from taking any actions at all for the entire combat with a single spell as your party hacked it into sausage).

And people bitched too about how some of the classic races and classes weren't in the PHB, but that's because with the complete scrapping of the different systems approach those just weren't done to any reasonable satisfaction by the time the PHB needed to go to print.

And part of that too was the insistence on building the epic levels into the core game because past experience showed that if it wasn't in the core only a small fraction of the player base would ever use it. Which meant each class needed 80 powers plus 4 paragon paths on top instead of, say only 40 powers and no paragon paths if they made the core only levels 1-10... which is why they had only 8 classes that went 1-30 instead of 16+ that went 1-10 or a dozen that went 1-20.

So, yeah, the whole thing was a rushed mess that ultimately needed at least another year of development (like 5e actually got) before it was released. And to be fair, by the time the PHB2 came out nine months later with all the missing races and classes from the 3e PHB they'd largely worked out the issues (and demonstrated what that extra year of development would have yielded)... the problem was that players were already bailing by then and when they tried an Author's Saving Throw with Essentials a year after that, not only did it fail, all the radical changes they needed to make ended up alienating a lot of their current fans too (the way they built the Knight and Slayer required them to nuke a particular feat that was the cornerstone of making many other melee classes functional and the move to make Magic Missile autohit out of pure nostalgia nuked a bunch of magic options that leveraged it being a basic attack with a hit and damage roll).

And to top it off, it got released right after a major economic downturn where a lot of people's discretionary funds dried up and that lasted the entire length of its run.

4E is basically a textbook example of a project where, if something could go wrong, it did.

The idea that 5e wasn't also a last minute rush job makes me laugh.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 10, 2021, 09:42:08 AM
The idea that 5e wasn't also a last minute rush job makes me laugh.

It was less of one than 4E was anyway.

Lord knows my own project has greatly benefited from not rushing it out the door even though several people looking at my original draft with all its problems probably could have gone out the door and been a reasonable 4E heartbreaker.

The real difference for my project was having the time to do iterative playtesting. Not just a "promotional beta" but ripping whole systems apart based on playtest feedback and then testing the revised systems again until they were actually solid. I can't even count the number of issues playtesting caught and I wasn't so egotistical as to think wouldn't actually be a problem.

Prior to them basically cutting the playtests in the name of expediency, just after everything that eventually got labeled as a major flaw and later fixed in 4E had been found by the testers, but were ignored because they had a vision and a deadline.

5e's playtests were more about promoting their concepts than actually getting feedback, but they at least pretended to listen rather than outright ignoring them as they did with 4E. 5e would have been a stronger product if they'd actually listened and there may not have even been a need for 5e after just three years if the 4E devs had actually listened to their playtesters.