Well for analysis reasons I cracked open my 4e books. D&D 4e was the first tabletop RPG I ever played, but I have no nostalgia for it. After reading some discussions online, I refreshed my memory of the books.
And...I get it. Its not my thing, and if you dislike what it is, its elements become pure flaws, but I generally get what its idea is, and what the people who like it see in it.
Its not a MMO. While it has designated combat roles, its combat isn't MMO like, and it is not nearly as restrictive as a MMO. Its still very videogamey, but Its more a CRPG. In videogame terms, oldschool D&D is more a Rougelike (akin to streets of rogue or unexplored), while this is a CRPG (akin to Shadowrun Returns). And I can sorta see why some people that actually like D&D basic see it as more a direct successor.
The combat sub-game of D&D is more disconnected then ever within it, and thats where the most amount of character option based sacrifices happen. In addition the powers make no fucking goddam sense at all from the perspective of relating to the 'real world'. The character roles are boiled down to specific combat sub-groups for the sole purpose of making the combat sub-game fun (for the people that like this sort of thing). There is no 'Sniper' role, or 'Illusionist'. But striker and controller. Which is making huge player option sacrifices for the purposes of making generally everybody at the same level during most scenarious, in combat or out of combat. There are 'magic' options for stuff, but its almost always costly. Creating a temporary illusionary guy will cost you a few hundred gold.
To the people that are OK with it, they see the D&D combat sub-game as having always been largely disconnected from the 'real world', with the way hit points work only tangentially relating to the characters themselves. To them, they are more happy leaving anything outside of the specific sub-game elements to the GMs hands, and if a combat encounter is to happen, then have it be as mechanically engaging as possible. Its generally way more GM facing then something like 5e.
Now this isn't my thing, but years later I get it. And I respect it (though not the marketting campaign and presentation of materials). And I may play it over 5e if that ever becomes a choice for me.
Board gamers absolutely love 4e because it is predominantly a skirmish wargame pretending to be an RPG.
If you want to see 4e as a more D&D-ish RPG have a glance at 4e D&D Gamma World. Alot of folk hold that up as what 4e could have been. Its still a really bad RPG because WOTC wanted to glue on a CCG to it and it is so disconnected from what the designers say and whats actually in the book. It nearly succeeds in being less Gamma World than WW's d20m Gamma World. An accomplishment no one should strive for.
The problem is that 4e is not D&D the RPG. It is some board game with D&D elements glued on. And sprinkled with MMO idiot terms. The reason it gets called an MMO. That and it is tied closely to the Neverwinter MMO right down to introducing the Astral Diamond currency which is a variant on Cryptics premium MMO currency Questionite.
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 11:33:23 AM
Board gamers absolutely love 4e because it is predominantly a skirmish wargame pretending to be an RPG.
Well employing that hyperoble, D&D has always been a tactical wargame with some other trappings stapled on (and grognards take the most wargamiest of D&D as an example of the truest roleplay experience because they ignore everything they didn't like and houseruled the rest - as equally applicable to 4e).
4e is not my thing, but Im having to play devils advocate here, because it gets problems levied are not exclusive to it as D&D let alone a RPG.
I have to disagree with those who say it's an MMO.
Everything and anything that I could get from previous versions and later version of D&D I can get in 4E. I am going to be that person and ask if people actually played 4E who call it an MMO. Or did the open the PHB see something like the " healing power XYZ at will " then jump to the assumption that it was an MMO. Or worse some person on the Internet or one of the buddies claimed it was an MMO and that is all it takes. Because their buddy can't ever be wrong.
4E tried to fix the many flaws of the 3.5. Engine yet like many players who play RPGs they want to bitch and mosn incessantly about Linear Fighter & Quadratic Wizard yet the damn designers better not do a dam thing about it. Just let them bitch about for the 10000th how broken Wizards are. The irony is for 5E they too many elements of 4E and put them in 5E. So imo if they would have written 4E like 5E most would not be claiming that 4E is an MMO. Which goes to show their is a sucker born every minute.
BTW 2005 called it wants 4E is an MMO fallacy back.
I don't play 4E any longer it's not my cup of tea so to speak.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on June 20, 2021, 11:41:58 AM
Well employing that hyperoble, D&D has always been a tactical wargame with some other trappings stapled on (and grognards take the most wargamiest of D&D as an example of the truest roleplay experience because they ignore everything they didn't like and houseruled the rest - as equally applicable to 4e).
4e is not my thing, but Im having to play devils advocate here, because it gets problems levied are not exclusive to it as D&D let alone a RPG.
Don't you know every edition except their favored version of D&D has always been a tactical wargame with some other trappings stapled on. Their favored versions have always been and always will be pure 100% roleplaying editions.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on June 20, 2021, 11:41:58 AM
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 11:33:23 AM
Board gamers absolutely love 4e because it is predominantly a skirmish wargame pretending to be an RPG.
Well employing that hyperoble, D&D has always been a tactical wargame with some other trappings stapled on (and grognards take the most wargamiest of D&D as an example of the truest roleplay experience because they ignore everything they didn't like and houseruled the rest - as equally applicable to 4e).
4e is not my thing, but Im having to play devils advocate here, because it gets problems levied are not exclusive to it as D&D let alone a RPG.
Older D&D rarely used in normal play an actual board and it was alot more freeform. Keep in mind minis were rarely used despite TSR advocating them now and then. When real combats were in the offing the early advice for D&D was to pause and break out one of TSR's wargames like Chainmail or Battlesystem. BECMI even packed in a rather nice little condensed version. And of course Birthright.
4e Flips that around and really emphasizes the board game part.
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 11:52:10 AM
Older D&D rarely used in normal play an actual board and it was alot more freeform. Keep in mind minis were rarely used despite TSR advocating them now and then. When real combats were in the offing the early advice for D&D was to pause and break out one of TSR's wargames like Chainmail or Battlesystem. BECMI even packed in a rather nice little condensed version. And of course Birthright.
4e Flips that around and really emphasizes the board game part.
You can actually play 4E without Minis and a battlemap. Do both help yes neither was every mandatory for 4E.
The 3.5 PHB does mention minis and grids among the things "you need to play".
The 4e PHB, on the other hand, explicitly says minis and grids are useful, but not necessary.
The 5e PHB says lists "playing on a grid", with "miniatures or other tokens", is a variant (i.e, an optional rule).
The other thing board gamers tout about 4e is how Balanced it is.
But how balanced is it really? Anyone actually played it extensively know?
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 12:24:28 PM
The other thing board gamers tout about 4e is how Balanced it is.
But how balanced is it really? Anyone actually played it extensively know?
I know that many later versions of feats were added specifically to address imbalance, and they became viewed as must-haves. However, IIRC, the degree of imbalance they addressed was rather small.
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 12:24:28 PM
The other thing board gamers tout about 4e is how Balanced it is.
The fuck is this? The spanish inquisition? You looking for other people to find faults in the game so you can complain about it?
If you need to know, some of the monster maths where borked earlier on.
Using a tactical board for easy movement reference is so anti-rpg. But busting out a wargame for tactical resolution puts the R in the RPG everyday!
Quote from: sureshot on June 20, 2021, 11:46:10 AM
I have to disagree with those who say it's an MMO.
Everything and anything that I could get from previous versions and later version of D&D I can get in 4E. I am going to be that person and ask if people actually played 4E who call it an MMO. Or did the open the PHB see something like the " healing power XYZ at will " then jump to the assumption that it was an MMO. Or worse some person on the Internet or one of the buddies claimed it was an MMO and that is all it takes. Because their buddy can't ever be wrong.
I have the 4e PHB but I never played it. For the most part, I followed a crowd of folks that went from 3.5 to Pathfinder then back for 5e. It obviously isn't an MMO. I have played plenty of MMOs and still play one since 2007.
However there was no mistaking the changes in language in the PHB to appeal to the World of Warcraft generation. While some of the mechanical changes of 4e seemingly persist in 5e, that to me didn't 'ruin' it for me (though I think dying is a little too easy to avoid).
What was relevant to me was that WotC wasn't interested enough in its legacy customer base and went ahead and re-framed the presentation of the game for the MMO crowd, without considering how it would offend that legacy customer base. They learned that lesson before launching 5e fortunately.
Quote from: Lynn on June 20, 2021, 02:00:07 PM
I have the 4e PHB but I never played it. For the most part, I followed a crowd of folks that went from 3.5 to Pathfinder then back for 5e. It obviously isn't an MMO. I have played plenty of MMOs and still play one since 2007.
However there was no mistaking the changes in language in the PHB to appeal to the World of Warcraft generation. While some of the mechanical changes of 4e seemingly persist in 5e, that to me didn't 'ruin' it for me (though I think dying is a little too easy to avoid).
What was relevant to me was that WotC wasn't interested enough in its legacy customer base and went ahead and re-framed the presentation of the game for the MMO crowd, without considering how it would offend that legacy customer base. They learned that lesson before launching 5e fortunately.
I agree about them trying to present the PHB with language geared more towards the MMO generation though I don't think it makes 4E an MMO. Even then it's something that Wotc and to tap into given the popularity of MMOs. Lets be honest the legacy crowd really dislikes change for the most part. They rather complain about the flaws of an rpg then see any of the same flaws fixed. Wizards are broken in 3.5. just don't change anything about them in later editions. Which as you said thankfully they fixed in 5E. Even though it does showcase how much tabletop gamers can because they hated 4E yet write it as a traditional rpg and suddenly they love 5E. Even when 5E borrows many elements from 4E.
Quote from: sureshot on June 20, 2021, 02:09:07 PMI agree about them trying to present the PHB with language geared more towards the MMO generation though I don't think it makes 4E an MMO. Even then it's something that Wotc and to tap into given the popularity of MMOs. Lets be honest the legacy crowd really dislikes change for the most part. They rather complain about the flaws of an rpg then see any of the same flaws fixed. Wizards are broken in 3.5. just don't change anything about them in later editions. Which as you said thankfully they fixed in 5E. Even though it does showcase how much tabletop gamers can because they hated 4E yet write it as a traditional rpg and suddenly they love 5E. Even when 5E borrows many elements from 4E.
It does have a long history of being a niche hobby, and long time players are in so many ways 'early adopter' types. The more you invest in something, the more likely you will take radical change as a negative.
Quote from: sureshot on June 20, 2021, 02:09:07 PMWhich as you said thankfully they fixed in 5E.
Not really. Maybe they can't outperform dedicated builds, but a endless bag of utility options > hit stuff better with a sword. Magic is still king in 5e, its just back to being king like in the 2e days, after being the god emperor in the 3e days.
Quote from: sureshot on June 20, 2021, 11:46:10 AM
I have to disagree with those who say it's an MMO.
I would not call 4e an MMO.
Thats not being fair to MMOs.
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 11:33:23 AM
Board gamers absolutely love 4e because it is predominantly a skirmish wargame pretending to be an RPG.
If 4e came out in a big box set with a bunch of minis and dungeon tiles like a modern day version of Warhammer Quest, I might have loved it. As a pure rpg, it was an abomination.
My impression of 4e is that it is a well-designed game. However, it's not the game I'm looking for when I want to play D&D.
What's left to say? I liked 4th edition as a game, but it didn't scratch my D&D itch, so I moved on.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on June 20, 2021, 08:09:44 PM
What's left to say?
That 4E was the version of D&D that convinced me not to spend any more money on WotC products.
I remember the 4vengers flooding this board back in the day. We were all wrong and they were going to prove it!...except the game was tossed out 4 years later. Possibly my favorite moment in 4e fanboyism though was when Goons were crying, freaking the fuck out, and one of them said he couldn't believe WotC would overhaul what was "objectively" the best version of D&D ever. God that was sweet.
I ran a successful 4E campaign for the better part of 18 months. Despite the flaws of the system. We rarely used minis. There was a lot of role playing. From my perspective, almost all of the typical criticisms of 4E completely miss the mark. Quite a few of the typical criticisms are sheer laziness on the part of the critic. Some of the most vocal 3.5 fans were the worst in this respect. It's true that the 4E fans at the launch of 5E were no better, but they were certainly no worse. (That's damning with faint praise, I know.) It's an RPG and you can run some (but not all) very D&D type games with it.
4E plays nothing like a MMO--of which I've also played a few for considerable time. There is a lot of tactical focus in the rules. No one who has seriously played both 4E and any MMO would make the, "Is an MMO" criticism stick, and if honest wouldn't even try it.
However, the biggest problem with the typical criticisms of 4E is not that the they are incorrect but that they crowded out the more legit criticism. Not least because some of these criticisms applied more or less equally to things that came before or after. There is the noted lack of imagination from WotC--the "design by committee" aspect. Even when they had a good idea (e.g. some of the reworking of the default cosmology), they managed to half-ass the implementation.
There is the excessive drive to put rules into place as a way to fill page count. By any measurement, 4E is by far the most bloated WotC edition, but this is merely an extension of what is an institutional problem there. Never mind the general drive to let marketing concerns get into the way of good design. The various 4E "powers" are of course the shining example of the problem. (With 5E they "solved" this problem by getting better at hiding it and often shunting it out to other locations. Which is why the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide has almost nothing but bloat in it.)
There is the repeated failure to understand how their own design is supposed to work (also a pinnacle in 4E), failure to communicate that design to the rest of the team, failure to explain that design in the various advice articles supporting it, and in some cases, writing advice that is directly contrary to running a good game with the rules.
It's funny, because of all the silly Forge theory stuff and how often it has been wrong, 4E managed to provide a great example of one of the classic Forge bits, "the impossible thing before breakfast"--when it tried to be both a Forge narrative game and not a Forge narrative game at the same time. In exactly the way that Edwards explains the concept while dinging White Wolf. So one of his "stopped clock is right twice a day" moments was illustrated most clearly in a game that tried to listen to him. Of course, one of the reasons that 4E can be made to work to play D&D is that all the "Narrative" bits don't actually do anything because they are all in advice written that is contrary to how the mechanics actually work. With the possible exception of the "Skill Challenge" rules that may or may not have worked in some cases but were impossible for anyone at WotC to explain to your average GM--or apparently even each other.
From a "It's not D&D" focus, the biggest sin of 4E is to completely throw the "operational" aspect of the game away. Given that 3E and 5E pay a lot of lip service to "operational" play without supporting it very well in truth, this is not as big a sin as others would have you believe, however. It is, perhaps, far enough across the line that it is more notable--which tells me that quite a few people don't actually play any WotC in operational mode, but like to pretend to themselves that they do. In that same vein, it was a considerably more difficult for a GM to fudge and pretend that the players didn't know, which is probably related. That is, 4E stepped across several lines that caused people who had been playing quite blissfully ignoring the man behind the curtain to suddenly see the shabby "wizard" for what he was. This is the legit aspect of the criticism that the game would have succeeded better without the baggage of D&D. It's not merely that it stepped across the lines and that made itself suspect and that the marketing was a fiasco. Though those are true. It also cast suspicion on what had been "D&D" right before it. (This is not unlike how the Episodes 1 -3 of Star Wars not only suck, but also for some people make Episodes 4 - 6 not as enjoyable as they were previously.)
You might gather that I don't play 4E now. To me, it's a a highly ambitious, gem of a design with a few key flaws, that couldn't climb out from under the greed, incompetence, incoherence, and sheer fuzzy-headed silliness of its implementation, direction, and support. Any GM worth their salt that doesn't mind the sacrifice of operational play can run a great game with it--but you could do the same with other systems with less work.
Please define what "operational" play is.
What do you mean by "impossible thing before breakfast"?
Quote from: Hakdov on June 20, 2021, 06:15:22 PM
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 11:33:23 AM
Board gamers absolutely love 4e because it is predominantly a skirmish wargame pretending to be an RPG.
If 4e came out in a big box set with a bunch of minis and dungeon tiles like a modern day version of Warhammer Quest, I might have loved it. As a pure rpg, it was an abomination.
They did come out with Castle Ravenloft boardgames and sequels.
There's nothing wrong with 4e you couldn't fix with a gallon of kerosene and a match.
I'm not going to claim other people can't and haven't done awesome things with 4e. But I ran a campaign for 12 - 18 months, and ended up giving up because the whole thing just felt hollow to me.
The strength of the system was the excellent tactical combat system, but I found myself designing sessions to make the most of that system, which mean a series of set-piece battles. The way wealth was so closely tied into PC power was incredibly limiting; spending cash on anything other than the expected upgrades put you behind the curve, getting amounts of wealth outside the expected range also upset this.
I had far more horrid failures than successes trying to use the skill challenge system.
It could just be my own failures as a 4e DM influencing the group experience, but most of my players ended up feeling the same way about it as I did.
Again, I'm not going to argue with anyone whose experience was different. But, for me, it was an utter diappointment.
It's also worth noting that I went into the campaign really excited about its potential. I'd experienced some DM burnout about 6 months earlier, and it was 4e that helped get me excited about the idea of DMing again.
On the up side, it was people claiming you could run old school D&D with 4e that got me interested in OSR-type stuff, which led to a really awesome 1E AD&D game after we ditched 4e.
I'm not a fan of 4E at all. As a disclaimer, I read the books but never got to actually play it - I've been told that it played a lot better than it read. My biggest immediate turn off was that all of the classes looked very similar and bland. It got a bit better once I read the specific powers but it was hard to overcome that initial impression. Also, as someone who played WoW for years, there really were a lot of elements that looked like they came from MMOs. The character types of "striker," "defender," etc are a standout example. I kind of struggled to define what it was that I disliked so much about it for quite a while, but then I read the Alexandrian's essay on "disassociated mechanics" (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer)) and that was it. 4E's full of them. Bottom line, 4E is a nice game in many ways and there are specific things I like about it quite a lot, but it doesn't provide what I consider to be a D&D experience.
Quote from: Omega on June 20, 2021, 12:24:28 PM
The other thing board gamers tout about 4e is how Balanced it is.
But how balanced is it really? Anyone actually played it extensively know?
Ehhh, balance wise it's ok. It's not that great really, an optimised PC will clearly be more effective and there were some big flaws that were never addressed. The biggest one was multi-attacks which proved to be far more effective than what they were supposed to be. The biggest issue was the Ranger with Twin Strike. But generally anyone who knew to go for options which gave them extra attacks was going to be more effective.
The usual reply to this kind of criticism was that it was more balanced than 3e, which is true, but for fucks sake that's nothing to crow about.
The biggest thing that 4e has going for it balance wise is the 4 roles. This means that if someone is already playing a Striker than you play a Defender and pretend you're job is locking people down rather than damage (which is, I think, tactically a bit of sleight of hand; you feel so effective at doing the thing the game tells you is your job that you may not notice that what you're doing isn't usually all that important tactically, when you could just be playing another Ranger and then the thing you're locking down would just be dead).
The board game aspect of it can be fun, but it's neither as perfectly balanced or as deep tactically as is often claimed.
Quote from: jeff37923 on June 20, 2021, 10:41:11 PM
Please define what "operational" play is.
I'm not the OP, but I think they're referring to the strategic/logistic aspects (cumulative attrition-based combat, counting arrows/torches/rations, strict encumbrance, specific spells prepared pre-adventure as a strategic resource vs. the 3e Sorcerer/Bard approach of a fixed list of spells known that are cast without preparation, henchmen/hireling and domain management, etc.) that were a core part of TSR-era D&D, but fell further and further to the wayside as 3e matured, played little role in 4E and got enough lip service to pretend they were restored somewhat in 5e.
4E was definitely more focused on the tactical level with limited resources in a single battle, but the majority of which would be regained before the next battle. This last bit was also easy to exacerbate if the GM opted for fewer big battles over the attritional effect of multiple smaller battles (4E is actually THE most restrictive in terms of hit point attrition as even healing potions and magic consumed the finite daily resource of healing surges... a cache of a million healing potions won't help you if you have no surges left... but unless the GM was hitting the party with enough encounters between rests to burn through the majority of their surges, it would feel like "unlimited" healing).
The solution is the same one many 5e DMs have with short and long rests; change the timeframe for recovery so a long rest is a week or the 13th Age approach of regaining recoveries only after X number of encounters no matter how many days it's been.
As to the 4E is an MMO argument; it's cardinal sin seems to be the decision to use technical writing standards instead of natural language which makes rule interpretations clearer, but also pulls back the curtain and makes it plain you're playing a game and not telling a story.
The use of technical language also created a sense of sameness in that the focus on clarity led to every class ability being laid out in the same format and with the same keyword jargon (thus, instead of the 5e Fighter's Second Wind "class ability" and the 5e Cleric's "healing spell" both were labeled as "powers" in 4E).
Similarly, they opted for using layout choices focused on clear interpretation vs. looking more like an archaic encyclopedia. A prime example being the use of color headlines to indicate at-will, encounter and daily abilities instead of via saying "once per day" as part of the ability's description. The colors added clarity at a glance, but robbed from the organic feel.
In terms of roles; they were mostly attempting to codify what was already a thing in the iconic party being a cleric (buffer/healer), fighter (damage sponge, locks down opponents), thief (big damage and mobility) and wizard (battlefield control/AoE) and using those aspects as guidelines for other classes to keep disasters like the 3e Monk (who had tons of thematic abilities, but whose core features clashed with basic 3e game mechanics and so had no good role within a party).
Basically, it was establishing performance benchmarks for class design. If you're designing a Striker then it needs tools for dealing extra damage (the rogue has sneak attacks, the warlock has curses, the monk has flurry of blows, the avenger has increased accuracy for higher damage over time) and mobility.
That said, they weren't all identical. One of the things they designed towards was each power source (ex. martial, arcane, divine, primal) having certain specialties that bled into the primary roles.
The martial classes for example all did exceptional damage for their class; the Fighter, nominally a Martial Defender, with the right ability choices could dish out almost as much damage as a Striker from one of the other power sources.
Similarly the arcane classes all had above par battlefield control options that bled into their other abilities (the warlocks didn't just deal damage with their curses they also inflicted harmful conditions) and the divine classes had better healing/buffing (the Paladin is a Divine Defender, so in theory kin to the Fighter in role, but their party buffs and lay on hands made them quite different in practice from the Fighter who was adding more damage to the mix).
The result was that the classes were more a "primary/secondary" focus with a few (those whose role and power source focus aligned) being exceptionally good at their primary with almost no secondary focus.
Another element that contributed to the MMO feel I suspect was that the majority of the rules were focused on combat while leaving non-combat aspects to largely free from roleplaying. This was a stark contrast to 3e's "everything has a rule" approach, but was actually fairly in keeping with earlier iterations of D&D where the majority of non-combat elements were handled ad hoc by the DM and were tacked onto the more robust war gaming rules D&D grew out of (which is why I've seen certain grognards feel that 4E, particularly Essentials that really stripped back options and made an effort to have classes built on different frameworks, felt more like early D&D than 3e ever did).
A final point on 4E and a huge part of its appeal to the people in my circles after 3e, was that it put a much greater emphasis on your character vs. the magic item Christmas Tree they were carrying. A Fighter in 4E was defined by their combat style and the maneuvers they knew, not the magic items they carried. The need for magic items was first reduced to just needing three items (weapon/implement, armor and non-armor defense booster) to meet the mechanical benchmarks and then removed entirely with the addition of the inherent bonuses options (and I don't know a 4E group who didn't use that option).
Frankly, by the time Essentials was released two years in, 4E had largely fixed the majority of its issues, but unlike 3e which had time to get through those growing pains without serious competition, the existence of Pathfinder gave an alternate to waiting that out.
Ironically, WotC's own greed in pulling Dragon and Dungeon magazines away from Paizo and the switch to the GSL instead of continuing the OGL is perhaps the biggest cause of its failure as Golaron and the Pathfinder setting were originally designed to be Paizo's entry into the 4E market as the official campaign world used in Dragon and Dungeon magazines. Instead WotC basically created their own competition and the rest is history.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 21, 2021, 10:03:08 AM
Quote from: jeff37923 on June 20, 2021, 10:41:11 PM
Please define what "operational" play is.
I'm not the OP, but I think they're referring to the strategic/logistic aspects (cumulative attrition-based combat, counting arrows/torches/rations, strict encumbrance, specific spells prepared pre-adventure as a strategic resource vs. the 3e Sorcerer/Bard approach of a fixed list of spells known that are cast without preparation, henchmen/hireling and domain management, etc.) that were a core part of TSR-era D&D, but fell further and further to the wayside as 3e matured, played little role in 4E and got enough lip service to pretend they were restored somewhat in 5e.
4E was definitely more focused on the tactical level with limited resources in a single battle, but the majority of which would be regained before the next battle. This last bit was also easy to exacerbate if the GM opted for fewer big battles over the attritional effect of multiple smaller battles (4E is actually THE most restrictive in terms of hit point attrition as even healing potions and magic consumed the finite daily resource of healing surges... a cache of a million healing potions won't help you if you have no surges left... but unless the GM was hitting the party with enough encounters between rests to burn through the majority of their surges, it would feel like "unlimited" healing).
The solution is the same one many 5e DMs have with short and long rests; change the timeframe for recovery so a long rest is a week or the 13th Age approach of regaining recoveries only after X number of encounters no matter how many days it's been...
Exactly. I also agree with everything else Chris said. Operational play doesn't really work very well in
any WotC ruleset until you start tinkering with it heavily. But 3E and 5E at least throw you a few bones. They are well-gnawed, broken shards that don't have much of anything useful left on them or pieces you could just as easily crib from any fantasy game, but at least they do throw them to you.
The one thing that 4E does supply that works well for operational play is the healing surges, as he said. However, these are so divorced form the sensibilities of the type of person that enjoys operational play, that it's like giving a complete Bose sound system and a full collection of the world's greatest opera to an exclusively heavy metal fan. Not entirely useless, but really missing the target in a major way.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 21, 2021, 12:10:23 AM
What do you mean by "impossible thing before breakfast"?
I'm going to rip out all of the Forge jargon and put what I think is the nugget of the truth in the idea into my own words. (Maybe this will avoid bringing a lot of baggage and useless nonsense.) I only reference it at all under the Forge jargon because of how hilarious it is in this context of what 4E tried to do.
I prefer to think of it more broadly as "design pretense"--which happens in a lot of games and isn't even necessarily bad if kept under control. This is basically when a game's mechanics strongly encourage one type of play but the designers think, for whatever reason, that is strongly focused on some other type of play. Usually, because if you bend it just right, and ignore whole sections of the mechanics, and substitute a few other GM things, and the players don't peek under the curtain--the game might be an OK platform for satisfying that pretense. If you know what you are doing, you might even get a fun game out of it. If the designers aren't drinking their own Kool-Aid, they might even give you some solid optional rules to square that circle.
Broadly, the "impossible thing before breakfast" is when a person--say a GM that just bought those rules and doesn't necessarily have an idea of this disconnect--naively accept the pretense and assumes that is they just follow the rules they will get that kind of play. In a game that is so chock full of "design pretense" that even the designers have started to believe their own nonsense. The new GM will likely get upset sooner or later because what they are trying to do is impossible.
Of course, it can get tricky in a lot of situations, because a large amount of pretense is necessary to that whole RPG activity. Consider something like the idea that "undead are scary".
Assuming that is the goal, it would be best if the mechanics and pretense align--that even skeletons and zombie have their own kind of horror to both characters and players alike, backed up by descriptions, tactics, etc. Wights draining your levels is a good example. Whereas, if you for example decide that "wights are scary" but have nothing to back it up but some undead moaning, it might come across as pretty hollow. A GM can skillfully use mood and description and circumstance to make anything a little scary. And the player can choose to let it spook them a little, but that is something they bring to the game, not something the game automatically provides to our new GM. It's not necessary that wights specifically drain levels for undead to be scary, but it is necessary that the pretense be backed up with a little more than "the game says they are"
if you really want them to be scary.4E drops the pretense almost entirely (which annoy the hell out of a lot of gamers)
and doesn't replace it with mechanics in many cases
and tries to make a virtue of this with a a marketing campaign and GM advice that basically consists of "the game does X just fine and you really don't need or want X anyway." Which is a big (but not all) part of the "sameness" complaint of 4E.
It's almost like 4E is a blank canvas--even more extreme than the Hero System "effects-based" design, where it is really bland until you put your stamp on it. Which is one way deeper example in which 3E and 4E are more alike than most fans of either like to admit--a failure to make D&D work like Hero (albeit admittedly in radically different ways in 3E and 4E). It might be more accurate to say that 3E wants to be "GURPS D&D" and 4E wants to be "Hero D&D"--as built by a group of designers that don't really understand why GURPS or Hero work the way they do, why they are similar in some ways, and why they are also different from each other. You can run a very good game of 3E or 4E, but the GM has to start with the idea that the designer's own advice on how to do it should be looked at with a gimlet eye--and in some cases not only ignored but do the exact opposite of what they seem to be implying. Or more often, ignore their waffling and do what you obviously need to do.
I believe you've mentioned elsewhere that you are a running an old-school type game using 5E. What you've had to tweak and consider to make that happen probably parallels some of the above.
Well, now I can see why Pundit routinely makes fun of forge design.
It's not exactly a revelation to say 4th edition was announced during the tail of end 3rd edition, but I think it helps (me at least) to remember what that was like. Third edition can be pretty demanding, especially on the DM. There are lots of rules, lots of bits of pieces, and they interact in complex ways. It requires a high degree of sustained dedication and mastery, especially at higher levels. We'd had a lot of fun with it, but it had started to get... tiresome, maybe? Or exhausting.
Fourth edition sounded like a reaction to that. They were doing things like paring down the insane monster stat blocks, focusing more on gamist elements, and even bringing in some influences from things like video games (not an insult, and I'm not saying the game played like a video game; I'm just discussing how it was viewed before release). Those intrigued me. It's not always my favorite style of game, but I like many styles, as long as they're well done. And in contrast to Pathfinder, which doubled down on all the problems of 3.5, 4e was trying to address them. I was favorably inclined.
But I got turned off on the game before it was even published, and turned off hard. So hard, I never even cracked open the books, much less played the game. What happened started with skill challenges. I found the idea fascinating, so I dug a bit into the examples they published. And I realized the math didn't work. It wasn't just off, or suboptimal, it appeared to be completely broken.
I dug around the web a bit, trying to see if anyone else was coming to the same conclusions. I didn't know if I had made a mistake, so I wanted to find either a concrete confirmation, or a concrete refutation. I found a couple hints here and there that I was right, but I wanted something stronger. Eventually I stumbled across a discussion somewhere. I have no idea where it was, or the details. But it was Keith Baker showing off the new skill challenge system with an example.
Someone in the comments pointed out the same flaws I had noticed. The math didn't work. And the response? Keith Baker, and I believe Ari Marmell, got into a discussion about how to handle the issue. Their response wasn't to correct flaws in the person's reasoning, or to point out how it really did work as intended, or even just a polite comment saying they'd pass on the issue. No, they immediately starting talking about how to ban the person for wrongthink.
While it's a single example, it embodied the general impression I was getting of how Wizards of the Coast was handling the roll out. They were violently adverse to any criticism, even people pointing out real problems. This appeared in the fan base as well, because anyone who suggested anything might be wrong was hounded out of threads and forums as a hater. And I know I wasn't deluded or completely off-kilter, because the skill challenge thing became an issue later on, with WotC finally acknowledging and trying to address the problems. But by then, I was gone. They'd lost me.
I did occasionally dip my head into those threads later because, as I said, the game intrigued me. But every time I did, I'd notice someone being jumped for asking the kind of questions I wanted to ask. Not trolling, or drive-by sniping from, just innocent questions about how it worked from someone who was interested in the game, but found a few stumbling blocks. That happened every single time I poked my head into a thread. I never did find a place where I could ask any of those questions.
It's also probably why I never really looked at 5th edition.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on June 21, 2021, 06:45:23 AM
...
I will say that video gets off to an awful start. He's talking about older editions, and clearly has little idea what he's talking about. But once he gets into the parts he knows (4th edition), it seems pretty solid. His critiques match my impressions, and give them a lot more substance. He's also coming from the right place. He has fond memories of the edition, so it's not a hate rant. Fourth edition was his first experience with RPGs, so they played it by the book, and played it for years, so they really shook it down. And he recently re-read the books after years playing with other games, so he's talking from a vantage of both time and much greater experience.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 21, 2021, 11:34:52 AM
I believe you've mentioned elsewhere that you are a running an old-school type game using 5E. What you've had to tweak and consider to make that happen probably parallels some of the above.
That was actually exactly what I was thinking of. And yeah, I did make a lot of changes -- this prompts a lot of complaining by a few players who don't really get the concept and think I'm just making the changes randomly instead of them being necessary to promote the kind of game it's supposed to be (for example, I got rid of limitless cantrips and gave them spell slots for them so they'd be resources to ration, brought back encumbrance, and gold for XP). Otherwise it's like having a horror movie where nothing is trying to be scary.
Frankly for 5e though, I like how easy it is to put your stamp on it and consider that a strength of it, much like how old school D&D is considered easily homebrewed.
Also I did run 4e for ten or so sessions to see what all the fuss was about.
From the DM screen, it didn't feel THAT different from running 5e, and I see a lot of the logical principles and paths laid down by 3e in 4e, simply brought to their conclusion. (The char-op mini-game first and foremost, the strict emphasis on math and balance, etc)
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 21, 2021, 10:03:08 AM
Quote from: jeff37923 on June 20, 2021, 10:41:11 PM
Please define what "operational" play is.
4E was definitely more focused on the tactical level with limited resources in a single battle, but the majority of which would be regained before the next battle. This last bit was also easy to exacerbate if the GM opted for fewer big battles over the attritional effect of multiple smaller battles (4E is actually THE most restrictive in terms of hit point attrition as even healing potions and magic consumed the finite daily resource of healing surges... a cache of a million healing potions won't help you if you have no surges left... but unless the GM was hitting the party with enough encounters between rests to burn through the majority of their surges, it would feel like "unlimited" healing).
The solution is the same one many 5e DMs have with short and long rests; change the timeframe for recovery so a long rest is a week or the 13th Age approach of regaining recoveries only after X number of encounters no matter how many days it's been.
Regaining all your hit points is good for predictability. If you're trying to balance encounters you basically need to do that. Because otherwise it's no point calling an encounter 'balanced' if the party only have a third of their hit points.
One of the often unnaddressed issues was the predictability on the player side. If you get all your encounter powers back for the next battle then you don't need to preserve them so it's in your best interest to basically "Nova" use your best abilities first to put out as much damage as you can and thin the enemy.
Both 5e and 13th Age recognised this problem and addressed it in different ways. 13th Age adds the escalation die so it incentivises you to save your best ability until you're more likely to hit. 5e used short rests. Short rests mean that you don't know for sure you will have an Action Surge in the next combat, so it prompts you to wait a bit and scout out the combat. If Action Surge was once every combat, your incentive would be to almost always use it in the first round. - which makes it more predictable and boring.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 21, 2021, 11:34:52 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 21, 2021, 12:10:23 AM
What do you mean by "impossible thing before breakfast"?
Of course, it can get tricky in a lot of situations, because a large amount of pretense is necessary to that whole RPG activity. Consider something like the idea that "undead are scary". Assuming that is the goal, it would be best if the mechanics and pretense align--that even skeletons and zombie have their own kind of horror to both characters and players alike, backed up by descriptions, tactics, etc. Wights draining your levels is a good example. Whereas, if you for example decide that "wights are scary" but have nothing to back it up but some undead moaning, it might come across as pretty hollow. A GM can skillfully use mood and description and circumstance to make anything a little scary. And the player can choose to let it spook them a little, but that is something they bring to the game, not something the game automatically provides to our new GM. It's not necessary that wights specifically drain levels for undead to be scary, but it is necessary that the pretense be backed up with a little more than "the game says they are" if you really want them to be scary.
This is in a way the problem with 4e D&D Gamma World. The designers say its a slapstick comedy. The Rules say (overall) Its a bog standard Post Rifts-like setting. And the monster art says its a horror freak show. It is so disconnected from itself that you have to jettison something to get the remaining pieces together. Or several somethings because the text in the book barely backs up the comedy claims at all. The two novels for it by Kidd probably cleave to that ideal a little or alot. But the game itself. No.
Good rules set dragged down by poor decisions.
Gamma World: another game that recognised the 4e had a problem with predictability. Solved it by letting you randomly changed mutations so you got to try out new powers regularly.
Failed, because it didn't give a shit about the fictional justification for doing that.
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 12:30:30 PMWhile it's a single example, it embodied the general impression I was getting of how Wizards of the Coast was handling the roll out. They were violently adverse to any criticism, even people pointing out real problems. This appeared in the fan base as well, because anyone who suggested anything might be wrong was hounded out of threads and forums as a hater. And I know I wasn't deluded or completely off-kilter, because the skill challenge thing became an issue later on, with WotC finally acknowledging and trying to address the problems. But by then, I was gone. They'd lost me.
I did occasionally dip my head into those threads later because, as I said, the game intrigued me. But every time I did, I'd notice someone being jumped for asking the kind of questions I wanted to ask. Not trolling, or drive-by sniping from, just innocent questions about how it worked from someone who was interested in the game, but found a few stumbling blocks. That happened every single time I poked my head into a thread. I never did find a place where I could ask any of those questions.
It's also probably why I never really looked at 5th edition.
1: 4vengers as some used to call them. Fanatics and Cultists would be another for the worst of the lot.
2: Hilariously. Karma hit the 4e fanbase like a freight train as eventually WOTC realized their fuckups late. Got advice and was show just how wretched the 4e fans were, and how wretched RPG.net was. And the WOTC forums stated to get "downsized". And 5e was initiated. And Jesus the 4e nuts tried their damnest to sabotage 5e!
3: 5e has some notable flaws. But it cleaves closer to pre 3e D&D in alot of ways and the problems it has can be fixed with the in game optional rules or just ignoring some of the idiot rules the designers seem obsessed with forcing into the game. The most vexing being the pretty much total inability to break a long rest short of killing the resters. No really. They have actually clarified that no, you cant interrupt a long rest, when asked. (Well yes technically you can. If you can keep the PCs continuously in combat for a whole hour.) That and they continue to deliberately fuck up falling damage just to make a little dig at Gygax. And other irks.
If you want to see 4e in a better light, try looking at 4e D&D Gamma Worlds approach. Just ignore the non-game parts. And even that has some issues. But mainly with not being clear how to do certain things.
Quote from: Omega on June 21, 2021, 08:09:27 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 12:30:30 PMWhile it's a single example, it embodied the general impression I was getting of how Wizards of the Coast was handling the roll out. They were violently adverse to any criticism, even people pointing out real problems. This appeared in the fan base as well, because anyone who suggested anything might be wrong was hounded out of threads and forums as a hater. And I know I wasn't deluded or completely off-kilter, because the skill challenge thing became an issue later on, with WotC finally acknowledging and trying to address the problems. But by then, I was gone. They'd lost me.
I did occasionally dip my head into those threads later because, as I said, the game intrigued me. But every time I did, I'd notice someone being jumped for asking the kind of questions I wanted to ask. Not trolling, or drive-by sniping from, just innocent questions about how it worked from someone who was interested in the game, but found a few stumbling blocks. That happened every single time I poked my head into a thread. I never did find a place where I could ask any of those questions.
It's also probably why I never really looked at 5th edition.
1: 4vengers as some used to call them. Fanatics and Cultists would be another for the worst of the lot.
2: Hilariously. Karma hit the 4e fanbase like a freight train as eventually WOTC realized their fuckups late. Got advice and was show just how wretched the 4e fans were, and how wretched RPG.net was. And the WOTC forums stated to get "downsized". And 5e was initiated. And Jesus the 4e nuts tried their damnest to sabotage 5e!
3: 5e has some notable flaws. But it cleaves closer to pre 3e D&D in alot of ways and the problems it has can be fixed with the in game optional rules or just ignoring some of the idiot rules the designers seem obsessed with forcing into the game. The most vexing being the pretty much total inability to break a long rest short of killing the resters. No really. They have actually clarified that no, you cant interrupt a long rest, when asked. (Well yes technically you can. If you can keep the PCs continuously in combat for a whole hour.) That and they continue to deliberately fuck up falling damage just to make a little dig at Gygax. And other irks.
If you want to see 4e in a better light, try looking at 4e D&D Gamma Worlds approach. Just ignore the non-game parts. And even that has some issues. But mainly with not being clear how to do certain things.
What's weird is the 4e fanbase seemed like that from the start, even before the game was released. It wasn't a response to endless criticism, or some other natural reaction. They just appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be persecuted, and jumped on everyone else preemptively. In retrospect, it feels a lot like an early breakout of wokism, where any dissent simply isn't tolerated. And as I mentioned, WotC seemed to be on board. It was coming from them, too. It must have been something in the water.
I forgot to mention, but I'm a big fan of Gamma World, and picked up a copy of the 4e/7e version (depending on whether you count D&D editions or GW editions), and read through it. But this was very late, years afterwards, when the boxes started showing up on clearance. What's funny is a lot of 4e fans were saying that GW was the best intro version of 4e. But when I read it, with no experience with 4e, a lot of things didn't make sense. It seemed to assume the readers were already familiar with 4e, so key elements weren't explained, or weren't explained well. It may have appealed to 4e fans who want a simpler or cleaner version of the game they already know, but the people who were saying it would be great for newbies clearly weren't newbies. I was, and found it a poor intro.
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 09:30:36 PM
Quote from: Omega on June 21, 2021, 08:09:27 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 12:30:30 PMWhile it's a single example, it embodied the general impression I was getting of how Wizards of the Coast was handling the roll out. They were violently adverse to any criticism, even people pointing out real problems. This appeared in the fan base as well, because anyone who suggested anything might be wrong was hounded out of threads and forums as a hater. And I know I wasn't deluded or completely off-kilter, because the skill challenge thing became an issue later on, with WotC finally acknowledging and trying to address the problems. But by then, I was gone. They'd lost me.
I did occasionally dip my head into those threads later because, as I said, the game intrigued me. But every time I did, I'd notice someone being jumped for asking the kind of questions I wanted to ask. Not trolling, or drive-by sniping from, just innocent questions about how it worked from someone who was interested in the game, but found a few stumbling blocks. That happened every single time I poked my head into a thread. I never did find a place where I could ask any of those questions.
It's also probably why I never really looked at 5th edition.
1: 4vengers as some used to call them. Fanatics and Cultists would be another for the worst of the lot.
2: Hilariously. Karma hit the 4e fanbase like a freight train as eventually WOTC realized their fuckups late. Got advice and was show just how wretched the 4e fans were, and how wretched RPG.net was. And the WOTC forums stated to get "downsized". And 5e was initiated. And Jesus the 4e nuts tried their damnest to sabotage 5e!
3: 5e has some notable flaws. But it cleaves closer to pre 3e D&D in alot of ways and the problems it has can be fixed with the in game optional rules or just ignoring some of the idiot rules the designers seem obsessed with forcing into the game. The most vexing being the pretty much total inability to break a long rest short of killing the resters. No really. They have actually clarified that no, you cant interrupt a long rest, when asked. (Well yes technically you can. If you can keep the PCs continuously in combat for a whole hour.) That and they continue to deliberately fuck up falling damage just to make a little dig at Gygax. And other irks.
If you want to see 4e in a better light, try looking at 4e D&D Gamma Worlds approach. Just ignore the non-game parts. And even that has some issues. But mainly with not being clear how to do certain things.
What's weird is the 4e fanbase seemed like that from the start, even before the game was released. It wasn't a response to endless criticism, or some other natural reaction. They just appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be persecuted, and jumped on everyone else preemptively. In retrospect, it feels a lot like an early breakout of wokism, where any dissent simply isn't tolerated. And as I mentioned, WotC seemed to be on board. It was coming from them, too. It must have been something in the water.
I forgot to mention, but I'm a big fan of Gamma World, and picked up a copy of the 4e/7e version (depending on whether you count D&D editions or GW editions), and read through it. But this was very late, years afterwards, when the boxes started showing up on clearance. What's funny is a lot of 4e fans were saying that GW was the best intro version of 4e. But when I read it, with no experience with 4e, a lot of things didn't make sense. It seemed to assume the readers were already familiar with 4e, so key elements weren't explained, or weren't explained well. It may have appealed to 4e fans who want a simpler or cleaner version of the game they already know, but the people who were saying it would be great for newbies clearly weren't newbies. I was, and found it a poor intro.
Well, it was getting shot down by 3.5 players right out of the gate, so that's the persecution probably. However, that's mostly WOTC's fault for how they marketed which set the tone as it promoted itself by crapping all over all the other D&D editions.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 21, 2021, 09:50:48 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 09:30:36 PM
Quote from: Omega on June 21, 2021, 08:09:27 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 12:30:30 PMWhile it's a single example, it embodied the general impression I was getting of how Wizards of the Coast was handling the roll out. They were violently adverse to any criticism, even people pointing out real problems. This appeared in the fan base as well, because anyone who suggested anything might be wrong was hounded out of threads and forums as a hater. And I know I wasn't deluded or completely off-kilter, because the skill challenge thing became an issue later on, with WotC finally acknowledging and trying to address the problems. But by then, I was gone. They'd lost me.
I did occasionally dip my head into those threads later because, as I said, the game intrigued me. But every time I did, I'd notice someone being jumped for asking the kind of questions I wanted to ask. Not trolling, or drive-by sniping from, just innocent questions about how it worked from someone who was interested in the game, but found a few stumbling blocks. That happened every single time I poked my head into a thread. I never did find a place where I could ask any of those questions.
It's also probably why I never really looked at 5th edition.
1: 4vengers as some used to call them. Fanatics and Cultists would be another for the worst of the lot.
2: Hilariously. Karma hit the 4e fanbase like a freight train as eventually WOTC realized their fuckups late. Got advice and was show just how wretched the 4e fans were, and how wretched RPG.net was. And the WOTC forums stated to get "downsized". And 5e was initiated. And Jesus the 4e nuts tried their damnest to sabotage 5e!
3: 5e has some notable flaws. But it cleaves closer to pre 3e D&D in alot of ways and the problems it has can be fixed with the in game optional rules or just ignoring some of the idiot rules the designers seem obsessed with forcing into the game. The most vexing being the pretty much total inability to break a long rest short of killing the resters. No really. They have actually clarified that no, you cant interrupt a long rest, when asked. (Well yes technically you can. If you can keep the PCs continuously in combat for a whole hour.) That and they continue to deliberately fuck up falling damage just to make a little dig at Gygax. And other irks.
If you want to see 4e in a better light, try looking at 4e D&D Gamma Worlds approach. Just ignore the non-game parts. And even that has some issues. But mainly with not being clear how to do certain things.
What's weird is the 4e fanbase seemed like that from the start, even before the game was released. It wasn't a response to endless criticism, or some other natural reaction. They just appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be persecuted, and jumped on everyone else preemptively. In retrospect, it feels a lot like an early breakout of wokism, where any dissent simply isn't tolerated. And as I mentioned, WotC seemed to be on board. It was coming from them, too. It must have been something in the water.
I forgot to mention, but I'm a big fan of Gamma World, and picked up a copy of the 4e/7e version (depending on whether you count D&D editions or GW editions), and read through it. But this was very late, years afterwards, when the boxes started showing up on clearance. What's funny is a lot of 4e fans were saying that GW was the best intro version of 4e. But when I read it, with no experience with 4e, a lot of things didn't make sense. It seemed to assume the readers were already familiar with 4e, so key elements weren't explained, or weren't explained well. It may have appealed to 4e fans who want a simpler or cleaner version of the game they already know, but the people who were saying it would be great for newbies clearly weren't newbies. I was, and found it a poor intro.
Well, it was getting shot down by 3.5 players right out of the gate, so that's the persecution probably. However, that's mostly WOTC's fault for how they marketed which set the tone as it promoted itself by crapping all over all the other D&D editions.
I followed 4e closely, as it came out. I watched a lot of those threads. There was endless talk about how they were being persecuted, but I don't think I ever saw a single example. There were no trolls jumping into their threads to just bash the game. Instead, what I did see, was someone new would come in, ask a few innocent questions, and then get dogpiled because they did something like compare 4e to a video game. A lot of them were exactly the questions I, as someone who was interested in the game but knew little about it, wanted to ask. None of comments I saw came from malice. At worst, they might be based on a mild misunderstanding. But the posters were savaged for even bringing it up.
That's why I compared it to wokism. It reminds me a lot of dissecting everything for hidden dogwhistles, and the crusade against non-existent Nazis. I think it was an early example of the kind of thinking that poisoned everything.
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 09:30:36 PM
What's weird is the 4e fanbase seemed like that from the start, even before the game was released. It wasn't a response to endless criticism, or some other natural reaction. They just appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be persecuted, and jumped on everyone else preemptively. In retrospect, it feels a lot like an early breakout of wokism, where any dissent simply isn't tolerated. And as I mentioned, WotC seemed to be on board. It was coming from them, too. It must have been something in the water.
I'm pretty convinced it was coordinated. WotC knew they were slaying a bunch of sacred cows, so they preemptively encouraged the whole "persecution" narrative to immunize themselves from the backlash from traditionalists. I'm not sure it was as much proto-woke as it was proto-outrage marketing...
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 21, 2021, 09:50:48 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 09:30:36 PM
Quote from: Omega on June 21, 2021, 08:09:27 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 12:30:30 PMWhile it's a single example, it embodied the general impression I was getting of how Wizards of the Coast was handling the roll out. They were violently adverse to any criticism, even people pointing out real problems. This appeared in the fan base as well, because anyone who suggested anything might be wrong was hounded out of threads and forums as a hater. And I know I wasn't deluded or completely off-kilter, because the skill challenge thing became an issue later on, with WotC finally acknowledging and trying to address the problems. But by then, I was gone. They'd lost me.
I did occasionally dip my head into those threads later because, as I said, the game intrigued me. But every time I did, I'd notice someone being jumped for asking the kind of questions I wanted to ask. Not trolling, or drive-by sniping from, just innocent questions about how it worked from someone who was interested in the game, but found a few stumbling blocks. That happened every single time I poked my head into a thread. I never did find a place where I could ask any of those questions.
It's also probably why I never really looked at 5th edition.
1: 4vengers as some used to call them. Fanatics and Cultists would be another for the worst of the lot.
2: Hilariously. Karma hit the 4e fanbase like a freight train as eventually WOTC realized their fuckups late. Got advice and was show just how wretched the 4e fans were, and how wretched RPG.net was. And the WOTC forums stated to get "downsized". And 5e was initiated. And Jesus the 4e nuts tried their damnest to sabotage 5e!
3: 5e has some notable flaws. But it cleaves closer to pre 3e D&D in alot of ways and the problems it has can be fixed with the in game optional rules or just ignoring some of the idiot rules the designers seem obsessed with forcing into the game. The most vexing being the pretty much total inability to break a long rest short of killing the resters. No really. They have actually clarified that no, you cant interrupt a long rest, when asked. (Well yes technically you can. If you can keep the PCs continuously in combat for a whole hour.) That and they continue to deliberately fuck up falling damage just to make a little dig at Gygax. And other irks.
If you want to see 4e in a better light, try looking at 4e D&D Gamma Worlds approach. Just ignore the non-game parts. And even that has some issues. But mainly with not being clear how to do certain things.
What's weird is the 4e fanbase seemed like that from the start, even before the game was released. It wasn't a response to endless criticism, or some other natural reaction. They just appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be persecuted, and jumped on everyone else preemptively. In retrospect, it feels a lot like an early breakout of wokism, where any dissent simply isn't tolerated. And as I mentioned, WotC seemed to be on board. It was coming from them, too. It must have been something in the water.
I forgot to mention, but I'm a big fan of Gamma World, and picked up a copy of the 4e/7e version (depending on whether you count D&D editions or GW editions), and read through it. But this was very late, years afterwards, when the boxes started showing up on clearance. What's funny is a lot of 4e fans were saying that GW was the best intro version of 4e. But when I read it, with no experience with 4e, a lot of things didn't make sense. It seemed to assume the readers were already familiar with 4e, so key elements weren't explained, or weren't explained well. It may have appealed to 4e fans who want a simpler or cleaner version of the game they already know, but the people who were saying it would be great for newbies clearly weren't newbies. I was, and found it a poor intro.
Well, it was getting shot down by 3.5 players right out of the gate, so that's the persecution probably. However, that's mostly WOTC's fault for how they marketed which set the tone as it promoted itself by crapping all over all the other D&D editions.
The biggest and most toxic ingredient in the edition war over 4e was the same as that over many storygames and the same as that over culture.
It's the idea that certain approaches are inherently 'progress' and that others are hidebound and ignorant.
Once this enters the discussion it's dead (and from what I've noticed on forums it's almost always the same identical people in each case).
The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful. Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war." In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times. In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point. Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important. As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style. I unequivocally prefer the latter.
Quote from: Mishihari on June 22, 2021, 04:50:43 AM
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful. Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war." In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times. In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point. Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important. As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style. I unequivocally prefer the latter.
Wow that is a great way to characterize it. I'd argue even D&D 5E is still closer to the sport category (maybe 60% sport to 40% war). But yeah, I think for me a major "oh crap" moment was realizing that there were no longer any long term consequences in 4E, which essentially killed a nontrivial chunk of my scenario plotting expectations. It was the first edition where the wound that Frodo took could never happen mechanically, so to speak.
Quote from: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 11:54:19 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on June 22, 2021, 04:50:43 AM
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful. Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war." In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times. In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point. Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important. As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style. I unequivocally prefer the latter.
Wow that is a great way to characterize it. I'd argue even D&D 5E is still closer to the sport category (maybe 60% sport to 40% war). But yeah, I think for me a major "oh crap" moment was realizing that there were no longer any long term consequences in 4E, which essentially killed a nontrivial chunk of my scenario plotting expectations. It was the first edition where the wound that Frodo took could never happen mechanically, so to speak.
Sure it could. I'd represent it as a Disease so that it could have different stages and be delayed somewhat. A big watershed moment for me was when I realized that PC's Hit Points weren't their hit points but that Healing Surges were the measure of how long they could last. Once I started plotting encounters around that it became easier.
But yeah I wish they'd gone full Earthdawn with the Wound Threshold on top of your hit points.
Quote from: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 11:54:19 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on June 22, 2021, 04:50:43 AM
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful. Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war." In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times. In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point. Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important. As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style. I unequivocally prefer the latter.
Wow that is a great way to characterize it. I'd argue even D&D 5E is still closer to the sport category (maybe 60% sport to 40% war). But yeah, I think for me a major "oh crap" moment was realizing that there were no longer any long term consequences in 4E, which essentially killed a nontrivial chunk of my scenario plotting expectations. It was the first edition where the wound that Frodo took could never happen mechanically, so to speak.
I think it would be more accurate to say that long term consequences are not the defaults and are not explained well and do not usually relate directly to something in the game world (at least not at first glance). Which, in fairness, at many tables will devolve to exactly what you said. Even in 5E, with some fairly clear optional rules to make it much easier to do, there is no clear guidance in the books on
why you would choose to do that. In other words, it's easy for an old school GM to run a 5E (mostly) old-school style game, and more or less follow the rules in doing so. But the game doesn't help you much except providing an incomplete toolbox.
Run well as more than a tactical skirmish game, 4E requires the GM to make a lot of rulings on effect--sometimes directly counter to the asinine, so-called "sage advice" from WotC. It is akin to the way Hero System works, where an "8d6 Blast" with the "explosion advantage and some flavor limitations, might be how a fireball is described. It's up to the GM to decide what the inherent limitations are on a fireball are and how much those are worth as mechanical limitations, often in consultation with the player. The big difference is that in Hero, this largely gets decided when the power is built, it is a necessary part of developing the power, and because it is central to running Hero, the rules usually do a fairly decent job of explaining how that process works--and then you get a lot of practice. In 4E, the GM needs that same conceptual skill, but you take the power they give you, without the rationale beyond kind of reading between the lines, and then you need to make those rulings as the thing gets used. Much more difficult ask for your average GM selected at random--and not something that previous play in D&D has much prepared you to do (except insomuch as all RPGs require you to make rulings about things in general, but that is a much broader activity).
I have not notice combat taking much longer in 4e than it does in 5e. 4e has 30 levels and most of them work. We're up to level 21 in a campaign and we have rituals equivalent to any magic you can do in 5e. The combats take way too long. Like 3+ hours for important fights and 1.5+ hours for anything else. Which is the same for 5e at that level.
It's not worse than 5e, I just hate sitting in initiative and it's no better at that than 5e.
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...
A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).
B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).
C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 04:22:57 PM
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...
A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).
B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).
C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.
Essentials seems like the lost step child of 4e. The diehard 4e fans love pre-Essentials complexity, so for them it's not a fix, it's ruining what they liked about 4e in the first place. And everyone else already moved on.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 06:08:04 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 04:22:57 PM
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...
A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).
B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).
C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.
Essentials seems like the lost step child of 4e. The diehard 4e fans love pre-Essentials complexity, so for them it's not a fix, it's ruining what they liked about 4e in the first place. And everyone else already moved on.
The problem for non-4e fans with Essentials is that it's missing some of the expected class options and some of the key rules that would help it feel more like D&D. A big one being Rituals, without which there's not really much in the way of utility magic.
But in terms of the what Chris24601 was talking about, the monster design and also the adventures post Essentials are much much better. Even if you wanted to stick with the original two PHB, I would agree about using that material from Essentials (Although Monster Manual 3 and the Dark Sun monster book which came at the end of the core line are also good).
Quote from: TJS on June 22, 2021, 06:41:13 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 06:08:04 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 04:22:57 PM
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...
A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).
B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).
C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.
Essentials seems like the lost step child of 4e. The diehard 4e fans love pre-Essentials complexity, so for them it's not a fix, it's ruining what they liked about 4e in the first place. And everyone else already moved on.
The problem for non-4e fans with Essentials is that it's missing some of the expected class options and some of the key rules that would help it feel more like D&D. A big one being Rituals, without which there's not really much in the way of utility magic.
But in terms of the what Chris24601 was talking about, the monster design and also the adventures post Essentials are much much better. Even if you wanted to stick with the original two PHB, I would agree about using that material from Essentials (Although Monster Manual 3 and the Dark Sun monster book which came at the end of the core line are also good).
I'm glad our group decided not to use essentials. Without ritual magic the entire 4e system falls apart.
Take most of the impactful out of combat actions and just remove it? So you can spend more time in combat?
Dumb.
Quote from: Rhedyn on June 22, 2021, 03:24:33 PM
I have not notice combat taking much longer in 4e than it does in 5e. 4e has 30 levels and most of them work. We're up to level 21 in a campaign and we have rituals equivalent to any magic you can do in 5e. The combats take way too long. Like 3+ hours for important fights and 1.5+ hours for anything else. Which is the same for 5e at that level.
It's not worse than 5e, I just hate sitting in initiative and it's no better at that than 5e.
As a player, I've had a single combat encounter in 4th edition take multiple, 4 hour sessions to complete. It got a bit better when I was DMing Dark Sun, where the creatures used the revised stats. But it took noticeably longer than the 5e I've played.
The dull part of 5e is that I'm not convinced it's faster than 4e round to round in any greatly significant way. It's just takes less rounds.
As opposed to 13th Age, which takes the same amount of rounds as 4e, but makes them play out much faster.
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
In my experience, Combat was not just the number of rounds but the interactivity between each individual turn. Interrupt reactions made turns last much longer then a normal DnD turn.
This was particularly noticeable if you had a Warlord player but any Defender type was a pain.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
5 rounds is right. - Although there was often the paradox with 4e that is tends to reward complex combat, and this tends to make combat longer. A bog standard combat in 4e is faster, but it's not the fun part of 4e combat.
13th Age shaved a lot of time off combat by:
- greatly reducing access to interrupts
- having very few multi-attack abilities
- having fixed damage for monsters
- not really having much in the way of minor/swift/action powers.
- reducing analysis paralysis across most classes
- reducing a lot of fiddly bonuses
5e shaved time mostly by:
- reducing the number of rounds
- greatly reducing access to interrupts
- almost entirely limiting fiddly bonuses
- reducing analysis paralysis across some classes
(It still has bonus actions and multi-attacks which slow the game down on a round to round basis and cast analysis paralysis can be a thing.)
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
I know where you are getting that, but I read somewhere -- and I can't remember now, but it was a 4e designer like Mike Mearls -- who said that they ended up aiming for 10 rounds... and based on everyone's experience it seems like that's what got born out. It makes sense since 4e has so many "damage over time" options that aren't that good when combat is less rounds.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 23, 2021, 12:23:22 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
I know where you are getting that, but I read somewhere -- and I can't remember now, but it was a 4e designer like Mike Mearls -- who said that they ended up aiming for 10 rounds... and based on everyone's experience it seems like that's what got born out. It makes sense since 4e has so many "damage over time" options that aren't that good when combat is less rounds.
One thing I remember was that the optimisation board always based their calculation around a median of 5 rounds.
And to be honest, experience has shown that posters on optimisation boards usually understand the rules of D&D a lot better than Mike Mearls.
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 12:52:27 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 23, 2021, 12:23:22 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
I know where you are getting that, but I read somewhere -- and I can't remember now, but it was a 4e designer like Mike Mearls -- who said that they ended up aiming for 10 rounds... and based on everyone's experience it seems like that's what got born out. It makes sense since 4e has so many "damage over time" options that aren't that good when combat is less rounds.
One thing I remember was that the optimisation board always based their calculation around a median of 5 rounds.
And to be honest, experience has shown that posters on optimisation boards usually understand the rules of D&D a lot better than Mike Mearls.
Well, that unearths a distinction between the -effective- combat length and what they were gunning for when they made it.
I'm a 4e fan but I didn't start out as one when the game was first released. It took about a year and the second round of books, plus finally sitting down to actually watch it being played that got me to get passed my initial hate reaction I had felt when 4e first came out.
I saw the merits of the game and after playing it I realized that the game designers had no clue what kind of game they designed. It's not an MMO. It's more like Final Fantasy Tactics. You get some really cool powers, you fight and do some ass-kicking, get some treasure, gain power, sell stupid unwanted equipment looted from dead bodies and... hey, that's D&D. ;)
The designers had a lot of nice ideas that they obviously wanted in the game, but it seems like they were throwing darts at a dart board and while they were putting these ideas into the game, they couldn't figure out a way to implement them well. Skill Challenges are the biggest example of this.
Skill Challenges are Circles from Blades in the Dark. Skill Challenges are a Downtime system. Skill Challenges were being forced to use the same gamist approach as the rest of the game, and that's where they fell apart. It was the wrong approach, which is why all the math felt awful. Blades in the Dark perfected what Skill Challenges were wanting to be.
One thing I think that also makes 4e distinctly different isn't just presentation but its design focus on the Team over the Individual. The main consideration when making a character isn't just what class to play but what Role a person chooses. You are no longer restricted to needing a Fighter, Mage, Thief, and Cleric. You can now make a part with a Paladin, Warlock, Ranger, and Warlord, and you are still filling the exact same roles. To me, this is one of its strengths, because you are picking Defenders, Controllers, Strikers and Leaders and as long as you filled this party, you're going to be fine.
4e was a design offshoot of Star Wars Saga Edition as well. A lot of how 4e's defenses worked came from Star Wars Saga, as well as how Saga's classes were designed around Feats and Talents, and how each class had Talent Trees (which was modified from d20 Modern). 4e just mashed up all the Talents from all the Talent Trees into just Class Powers and given a focused tactical treatment.
4e had all the tools to be a really cool rpg, and it is a lot of fun to play for what it is. Most of its real problem, IMO, is its Presentation.
The Presentation differences between 4e and 5e would make a great case study of human psychological perception and how perception of presentation influences a person's decisions. Considering that a person could, if he or she wanted to, rewrite all the 4e class powers to appear like 5e class abilities and vice versa does put the main problem of 4e being its presentation of class powers. It was the Presentation that caused me to not even look at the books for a year. It was just that jarringly different. I'm guessing the majority of people who hate 4e took one look at the game, saw that presentation, shut the book and said "Hell No," and never went back. So most of the hate against it come from people who have never even tried to play it I'd say.
Other rpgs have come out and adapted 4e to be more traditional in presentation and game play. 13th Age has already been mentioned, but it's not the only one. The one I think that's taken 4e and refit it to be truly more D&Dish in presentation is a game called Radiance (core rulebook free on drivethrurpg). It's a lot more like 3.5/Star Wars Saga than 13th Age is.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 23, 2021, 12:23:22 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
I know where you are getting that, but I read somewhere -- and I can't remember now, but it was a 4e designer like Mike Mearls -- who said that they ended up aiming for 10 rounds... and based on everyone's experience it seems like that's what got born out. It makes sense since 4e has so many "damage over time" options that aren't that good when combat is less rounds.
As someone with extensive experience with 4E, for the groups I was in THREE rounds was more common than five; but five was the standard assumption. The degree to which Charop could affect the combat length was quite insane; there were certain nova combinations that could dish out over a thousand points of damage in a single turn by the early 20's.
Admittedly, that one took a couple of stacking leader/controller effect bonuses before the striker went, but that just highlighted another important aspect of 4E design... synergies weren't just what a single player could do, its what the party could do by working together. When the leader is buffing, the controller debuffing and the defender keeping the path clear for the striker to get in and hit the party as a whole would be far more effective than any given members numbers actually suggested.
When your leader throws out a buff that allows each attack to do X extra damage onto a multi-attack ranger with a paragon path and or items that allow them to take extra attacks and they target a monster that's been debuffed by the controller so its got Vulnerable Y to a type of damage the ranger's weapon can do; all of those things stack up into bursts of destructive output that far exceed the numbers even many of the char-oppers even considered (frankly, some of the early stuff they labeled as problems with the system math were solely because they were basing their math on the vacuum of one PC and one target when in actual play those shortfalls would be overcome by party teamwork and synergy.
One of my very first posts on the WotC 4E boards was to contradict many of the complaints about said shortfalls in hit and damage output by pitting a group of 5 PCs against the Level 30 Red Dragon and demonstrating how the syngeries made it work with the dragon dead by, I believe, round four and this was in the days of "padded sumo." It just required the cleric using buffs to increase accuracy, the wizard dazing the dragon (which grants combat advantage making the dragon easier to hit and allowed the rogue to add sneak attack damage without any special tricks) and the fighter, ranger and rogue to just go to town with their attacks.
But, after Heinsoo was ousted, Mearls (who never grokked 4E) and his people listened to the loud screams of the Char-ops boards that the math was deficient and started adding the "math fix" feats which ended up just skewing things further.
Let us not forget that with all of its design flaws, bad presentation, etc. that 4E was also reportedly rushed out before even the inadequate play testing was complete. That certainly did not help matters at all. That's the one caveat I would have to "if it had been presented as a new game, not D&D, it would have more success." I think that's probably true had it been released 18 months later with even half the (flawed) play testing that 5E got.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2021, 09:05:20 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 23, 2021, 12:23:22 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
I know where you are getting that, but I read somewhere -- and I can't remember now, but it was a 4e designer like Mike Mearls -- who said that they ended up aiming for 10 rounds... and based on everyone's experience it seems like that's what got born out. It makes sense since 4e has so many "damage over time" options that aren't that good when combat is less rounds.
As someone with extensive experience with 4E, for the groups I was in THREE rounds was more common than five; but five was the standard assumption. The degree to which Charop could affect the combat length was quite insane; there were certain nova combinations that could dish out over a thousand points of damage in a single turn by the early 20's.
Admittedly, that one took a couple of stacking leader/controller effect bonuses before the striker went, but that just highlighted another important aspect of 4E design... synergies weren't just what a single player could do, its what the party could do by working together. When the leader is buffing, the controller debuffing and the defender keeping the path clear for the striker to get in and hit the party as a whole would be far more effective than any given members numbers actually suggested.
When your leader throws out a buff that allows each attack to do X extra damage onto a multi-attack ranger with a paragon path and or items that allow them to take extra attacks and they target a monster that's been debuffed by the controller so its got Vulnerable Y to a type of damage the ranger's weapon can do; all of those things stack up into bursts of destructive output that far exceed the numbers even many of the char-oppers even considered (frankly, some of the early stuff they labeled as problems with the system math were solely because they were basing their math on the vacuum of one PC and one target when in actual play those shortfalls would be overcome by party teamwork and synergy.
One of my very first posts on the WotC 4E boards was to contradict many of the complaints about said shortfalls in hit and damage output by pitting a group of 5 PCs against the Level 30 Red Dragon and demonstrating how the syngeries made it work with the dragon dead by, I believe, round four and this was in the days of "padded sumo." It just required the cleric using buffs to increase accuracy, the wizard dazing the dragon (which grants combat advantage making the dragon easier to hit and allowed the rogue to add sneak attack damage without any special tricks) and the fighter, ranger and rogue to just go to town with their attacks.
But, after Heinsoo was ousted, Mearls (who never grokked 4E) and his people listened to the loud screams of the Char-ops boards that the math was deficient and started adding the "math fix" feats which ended up just skewing things further.
I'll defer to that experience. Party comp probably makes a much bigger difference; I ran a 4e campaign a few years back just to see what all the fuss was about as a 5e player -- every battle took about one session each, about 4 hours. Not bad, but I was also deliberately looking for ways to streamline it and make it move faster thanks to the reputation of the game. I noticed that the game's ability to stack synergy on top of synergy made mistakes a lot more punishing in 4e.
In 5e when you mess up, a goblin just attacks you. In 4e when you mess up, you get hit by 15 different powers skewing the mistake into a huge disadvantage.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 23, 2021, 10:23:15 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2021, 09:05:20 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 23, 2021, 12:23:22 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.
4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.
Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.
I know where you are getting that, but I read somewhere -- and I can't remember now, but it was a 4e designer like Mike Mearls -- who said that they ended up aiming for 10 rounds... and based on everyone's experience it seems like that's what got born out. It makes sense since 4e has so many "damage over time" options that aren't that good when combat is less rounds.
As someone with extensive experience with 4E, for the groups I was in THREE rounds was more common than five; but five was the standard assumption. The degree to which Charop could affect the combat length was quite insane; there were certain nova combinations that could dish out over a thousand points of damage in a single turn by the early 20's.
Admittedly, that one took a couple of stacking leader/controller effect bonuses before the striker went, but that just highlighted another important aspect of 4E design... synergies weren't just what a single player could do, its what the party could do by working together. When the leader is buffing, the controller debuffing and the defender keeping the path clear for the striker to get in and hit the party as a whole would be far more effective than any given members numbers actually suggested.
When your leader throws out a buff that allows each attack to do X extra damage onto a multi-attack ranger with a paragon path and or items that allow them to take extra attacks and they target a monster that's been debuffed by the controller so its got Vulnerable Y to a type of damage the ranger's weapon can do; all of those things stack up into bursts of destructive output that far exceed the numbers even many of the char-oppers even considered (frankly, some of the early stuff they labeled as problems with the system math were solely because they were basing their math on the vacuum of one PC and one target when in actual play those shortfalls would be overcome by party teamwork and synergy.
One of my very first posts on the WotC 4E boards was to contradict many of the complaints about said shortfalls in hit and damage output by pitting a group of 5 PCs against the Level 30 Red Dragon and demonstrating how the syngeries made it work with the dragon dead by, I believe, round four and this was in the days of "padded sumo." It just required the cleric using buffs to increase accuracy, the wizard dazing the dragon (which grants combat advantage making the dragon easier to hit and allowed the rogue to add sneak attack damage without any special tricks) and the fighter, ranger and rogue to just go to town with their attacks.
But, after Heinsoo was ousted, Mearls (who never grokked 4E) and his people listened to the loud screams of the Char-ops boards that the math was deficient and started adding the "math fix" feats which ended up just skewing things further.
I'll defer to that experience. Party comp probably makes a much bigger difference; I ran a 4e campaign a few years back just to see what all the fuss was about as a 5e player -- every battle took about one session each, about 4 hours. Not bad, but I was also deliberately looking for ways to streamline it and make it move faster thanks to the reputation of the game. I noticed that the game's ability to stack synergy on top of synergy made mistakes a lot more punishing in 4e.
In 5e when you mess up, a goblin just attacks you. In 4e when you mess up, you get hit by 15 different powers skewing the mistake into a huge disadvantage.
The vast majority of enemy powers were just what 5e would call attacks though. For example, the goblin sniper had four "powers";
- Sniper (if the goblin is hidden and misses with a ranged attack, it remains hidden)
- Short Sword (a melee weapon attack that just dealt damage)
- Shortbow (a ranged weapon attack that just did damage)
- Goblin Tactics (if missed with an attack the goblin could shift 5' as a reaction)
That's it.
The 5e goblin has the following;
- Scimitar (a melee weapon attack that just deals damage)
- Shortbow (a ranged weapon attack that just deals damage)
- Nimble Escape (can use Disengage or Hide actions as a bonus action during its turn).
Not much difference at really other than learning the lesson of cutting down on off-turn actions for the 5e Goblin.
The big difference was that the 4E goblin was laid out in a technical looking stat block using technical language/keywords so it looked more complex than it was;
Here's the 5e goblin's attack...
Scimitar. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) slashing damage.
Here's the 4E goblin sniper's attack;
Short Sword (weapon) • At-WillAttack: Melee 1 (one creature); +8 vs. AC
Hit: 4 damage.
Other than being laid out in three lines with each element getting its own line in 4E while the 5e entry just places all the information into a single sentence that took up two lines; its the exact same sort of effect and information.
The idea that 4E was loaded down with conditions is rather overblown. At low levels they're pretty minor, often 1/encounter things found on stronger monsters or player encounter/daily powers and, as is typical of D&D, the complexity of effects ramps up as the levels do.
None of the 4E effects result in the amount of bookkeeping that a 3e or TSR-era level drain inflicted.
In terms of complexity at higher levels; here's the 5e Balor's special traits and attacks and the 4E one for comparison;
*5e Balor Traits and Actions*- Damage Resistances cold, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non magical weapons
- Damage Immunities fire, poison
- Condition Immunities poisoned
- Senses truesight 120ft., passive Perception 13
- Languages Abyssal, telepathy 120ft.
- Death Throes. When the balor dies, it explodes, and each creature within 30 feet of it must make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw, taking 70 (20d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The explosion ignites flammable objects in that area that aren't being worn or
carried, and it destroys the balor's weapons.
- Fire Aura. At the start of each of the balor's turns , each creature within 5 feet of it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage, and flammable objects in the aura that aren't being worn or carried ignite. A creature that touches the balor or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage.
- Magic Resistance. The balor has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
- Magic Weapons. The balor's weapon attacks are magical.
ACTIONS
- Multiattack. The balor makes two attacks: one with its longsword and one with its whip.
- Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack:+ 14 to hit, reach 10ft., one target. Hit: 21 (3d8 + 8) slashing damage plus 13 (3d8) lightning damage. If the balor scores a critical hit, it rolls damage dice three times, instead of twice.
- Whip. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 30ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d6 + 8) slashing damage plus 10 (3d6) fire damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 20 Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 25 feet toward the balor.
- Teleport. The balor magically teleports, along with any equipment it is wearing or carrying, up to 120 feet to an unoccupied space it can see.
*4E Balor Traits and Actions*- Resist 20 fire
- Blindsight 6, darkvision
- Flaming Body (fire) • Aura 2, or 3 while the balor is bloodied; Any enemy that starts its turn in the aura takes 10 fire damage or 20 fire damage while the balor is bloodied
- Fire and Lightning • At-Will
Effect: The balor uses lightning sword once and flaming whip once.
- Lightning Sword (lightning, weapon) • At-Will
Attack: Melee 3 (one creature); +32 vs. AC
Hit: 6d10 + 11 lightning damage, or3d10 + 71 lightning damage if the balor scores a critical hit.
- Flaming Whip (fire) • At-Will
Attack: Melee 5 (one creature); +30 vs. Reflex
Hit: 2d10 + 10 fire damage, and ongoing 15 fire damage (save ends). The balor pulls the target up to 5 squares to a square adjacent to it.
- Beheading Blade (lightning, weapon) • Recharge when first bloodied
Attack: Close blast 3 (enemies in the blast); +32 vs. AC. The attack can score a critical hit on a roll of 15-20.
Hit: 5d12 + 14 lightning damage, or 3d12 + 74 lightning damage if the balor scores a critical hit.
- Death Burst (fire)
Trigger: The balor drops to 0 hit points.
Attack (No Action): Close burst 10 (creatures in the burst); +30 vs. Reflex
Hit: 6d10 fire damage.
Miss: Half damage.
Effect: The balor is destroyed.
- Variable Resistance • 3/Encounter
Trigger: The balor takes acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage.
Effect (Free Action): The balor gains resist 20 to the triggering damage type until the end of the encounter or until it uses variable resistance again.
* * * *
So, other than laying it out in more technical language, there's NOT that much difference between the 5e and 4E Balors. Variable resistance is slightly more complex than just listing specific resistances and the 4E version gets an 2/encounter AoE attack, but there aren't any special conditioned applied to the targets that take special tracking... its just a couple of big damage hits.
Both are infinitely less complex and frustrating than the 3.5e variety; which I'm just going to link to; https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#balor (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#balor).
Quote from: RebelSky on June 23, 2021, 07:39:42 AM
The designers had a lot of nice ideas that they obviously wanted in the game, but it seems like they were throwing darts at a dart board and while they were putting these ideas into the game, they couldn't figure out a way to implement them well. Skill Challenges are the biggest example of this.
Skill Challenges are Circles from Blades in the Dark. Skill Challenges are a Downtime system. Skill Challenges were being forced to use the same gamist approach as the rest of the game, and that's where they fell apart. It was the wrong approach, which is why all the math felt awful. Blades in the Dark perfected what Skill Challenges were wanting to be.
Savage Worlds Adventure Edition takes the basic Skill Challenge idea and turns it into Dramatic Tasks which are a much stronger iteration of the same idea.
It turns out that if you're not restricted to a simple binary pass/fail die system but can incorporate degrees of success, and you make the choice to aid another person rather do something directly into something meaningful rather have it feel like a waste of your turn, then it can actually work quite well. But the 4e version tried to do to much, with too little flesh on the bone.
(It also doesn't help that the game seems to assume you will use skill challenges to do non-dungeon stuff, but then gives you a set of skills that are focused on dungeon stuff. If I'm supposed to use a skill challenge to handle defending a city under siege then there really needs to be
some skills that feel like they are actually applicable without being overly stretched.)
Quote from: Pat on June 21, 2021, 09:30:36 PM
I forgot to mention, but I'm a big fan of Gamma World, and picked up a copy of the 4e/7e version (depending on whether you count D&D editions or GW editions), and read through it. But this was very late, years afterwards, when the boxes started showing up on clearance. What's funny is a lot of 4e fans were saying that GW was the best intro version of 4e. But when I read it, with no experience with 4e, a lot of things didn't make sense. It seemed to assume the readers were already familiar with 4e, so key elements weren't explained, or weren't explained well. It may have appealed to 4e fans who want a simpler or cleaner version of the game they already know, but the people who were saying it would be great for newbies clearly weren't newbies. I was, and found it a poor intro.
Im one of the mods for the remnants of the original Gamma World mailing list, eesh has it really been 30 years???
So it was not just me. 4e D&D GW was also my first and till recently only exposure to 4e. So I still have no idea if anything essential was left out. Its just that the rules are arranged in a non-linear manner and its a nuisance figuring out where the hell some of the rules are squirreled away. I just assume its the haphazard placement of rules buried in odd paragraphs thats the problem. But you are probably right that somethings missing.
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 06:23:31 PM
(It also doesn't help that the game seems to assume you will use skill challenges to do non-dungeon stuff, but then gives you a set of skills that are focused on dungeon stuff. If I'm supposed to use a skill challenge to handle defending a city under siege then there really needs to be some skills that feel like they are actually applicable without being overly stretched.)
Which edition handled this well?
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 21, 2021, 09:50:48 PM
Well, it was getting shot down by 3.5 players right out of the gate, so that's the persecution probably. However, that's mostly WOTC's fault for how they marketed which set the tone as it promoted itself by crapping all over all the other D&D editions.
[/quote]
Very much this. Every damn advert and promotional for 4e I saw was so condescending or outright mocking older editions I gave it a hard pass till Gamma World came out.
Really if theyd trotted 4e out and named it instead New Alternity or something else it probably would have gone over better. Well that and not mocked the players of older editions.
Quote from: KingCheops on June 23, 2021, 06:33:59 PM
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 06:23:31 PM
(It also doesn't help that the game seems to assume you will use skill challenges to do non-dungeon stuff, but then gives you a set of skills that are focused on dungeon stuff. If I'm supposed to use a skill challenge to handle defending a city under siege then there really needs to be some skills that feel like they are actually applicable without being overly stretched.)
Which edition handled this well?
Well only D&D actually has skill challenges, so it's not all that relevant for others.
The issue is a skill challenge one, because the system tends toward the broad narration. Rather than doing lots of things in discrete steps you sort take a broad sweep and then abstract that into a roll.
If you're not using skill challenges the Fighter might just describe what they are doing to improve the defences of the city and the GM might take it into consideration (it may not be as satisfying as having a proper subsystem, but it's not a problem either.) The skill challenge system basically means that all of that is basically abstracted into a skill roll. If you succeed on a skill roll then the bolstered defences help lead to victory, if you fail they don't mean anything*. This means that what skill you roll is important here. What skill do you roll for this? Looking at the list, the only one that seems vaguely appropriate is History. But did the Fighter take History? Why would the player of the Fighter have thought they would use History for things like this? And then there's also going to be the issue that Wizard probably has History and a higher Int, so if it's History maybe he should be the one to bolster the defences of the city.
If you had something like 13th Age style backgrounds you wouldn't have the same gaps. If the Fighter has "Student of the College of War" then it's clear what to roll. Even Profession (Soldier) would be better here. The Profession skills were taken out of 4e because they were regarded as extraneous, but actually they would have given players quite a lot of opportunity to leverage them in skill challenges.
*You can start to see why the basic approach works better in Savage Worlds where you have more of a bell curve to your roll and a metacurrency that you can bring into play if you really want to do this - the D20 roll is just too random here - too often the player describes something cool, which they
should be able to do, and the result is completely anti-climactic.
Quote from: Sable Wyvern on June 22, 2021, 03:56:31 AM
The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"
They tried that over on BGG with 5e as well. "If I play a cleric then there MUST be Undead in the campaign for me to turn!" and "If my Ranger takes Giants as their foe then there MUST be giants in the campaign!!!"
Quote from: Rhedyn on June 22, 2021, 03:24:33 PM
I have not notice combat taking much longer in 4e than it does in 5e. 4e has 30 levels and most of them work. We're up to level 21 in a campaign and we have rituals equivalent to any magic you can do in 5e. The combats take way too long. Like 3+ hours for important fights and 1.5+ hours for anything else. Which is the same for 5e at that level.
It's not worse than 5e, I just hate sitting in initiative and it's no better at that than 5e.
From what I saw of the GW version of 4e combat seems to whizz along pretty fast. Possibly quicker than 5e which is pretty wham-bam-thank-you-mam prompt as well.
The only time either bog down is when you have players trying to either overanalyze a move, or trying to 'optimize' an attack, oft needlessly. Sometimes both at once. And even then it tends not to bog down too heavily.
Combat-wise 5e is unusually balanced in its timeframe for how long an encounter lasts. About 5 or so min give or take from my experience. Without any loss of a sense of danger or action overall unless the players were really strategizing. Which with my group happened with any big showdown they had any chance to plan for.
4e seems to have a similar sort of flow. But is it just me or does using the board game part of 4e slow it down notably?
Quote from: Sable Wyvern on June 22, 2021, 03:56:31 AM
The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"
The funniest thing is that every actual ooze monster (a lot of them became terrain in 4E) actually had "
immune trip, flanking" in their statblock (I think one didn't, but got fixed in errata) so those arguments were entirely academic.
What it really spoke to was that 4E defined a lot of things using keywords rather than natural language and making sure a monster had appropriate keywords for what it could do was an important part of monster design.
That said, 4E also included and encouraged "refluffing" of effects to fit thematically. So IF an ooze could be "tripped" you'd instead look at the effects of that (i.e. you fall prone - which means you grant combat advantage to adjacent foes, are -2 to your own attacks and move at half speed until you spend a move action to end the prone condition) and just refluff the description based on that... ex. "The ooze is splattered across its space by the attack and can't defend, attack or move as effectively until it takes a moment or two to reform."
This was actually something I can to consider in my own game where players could choose to play anything from a tiny sprite to a large dragon. How a sprite, human and dragon use the Trip action is very different, but the effect of falling prone is the same so my own system reflects that in allowing players to define their own fluff for their actions rather than predefining it as happening a specific way.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2021, 08:34:21 PM
Quote from: Sable Wyvern on June 22, 2021, 03:56:31 AM
The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"
The funniest thing is that every actual ooze monster (a lot of them became terrain in 4E) actually had "immune trip, flanking" in their statblock (I think one didn't, but got fixed in errata) so those arguments were entirely academic.
What it really spoke to was that 4E defined a lot of things using keywords rather than natural language and making sure a monster had appropriate keywords for what it could do was an important part of monster design.
That said, 4E also included and encouraged "refluffing" of effects to fit thematically. So IF an ooze could be "tripped" you'd instead look at the effects of that (i.e. you fall prone - which means you grant combat advantage to adjacent foes, are -2 to your own attacks and move at half speed until you spend a move action to end the prone condition) and just refluff the description based on that... ex. "The ooze is splattered across its space by the attack and can't defend, attack or move as effectively until it takes a moment or two to reform."
This was actually something I can to consider in my own game where players could choose to play anything from a tiny sprite to a large dragon. How a sprite, human and dragon use the Trip action is very different, but the effect of falling prone is the same so my own system reflects that in allowing players to define their own fluff for their actions rather than predefining it as happening a specific way.
Yeah, I have no problem with someone that wants to allow trip to be used, just with different fluff. It was the raging OneTrueWayism of "You MUST allow all things to be tripped or you're a horrible human being and a horrible DM," that got me.
Quote from: Omega on June 23, 2021, 07:17:12 PM
Quote from: Sable Wyvern on June 22, 2021, 03:56:31 AM
The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"
They tried that over on BGG with 5e as well. "If I play a cleric then there MUST be Undead in the campaign for me to turn!" and "If my Ranger takes Giants as their foe then there MUST be giants in the campaign!!!"
I'm ok with a milder version of that -- I think it's fair for a player considering a cleric to know up-front how likely it will be that they get to turn things. And if player picks Giants as favoured enemy, and the GM knows there is no way the character will ever face giants, I'd expect the GM to point this out and give them the opportunity to pick something they will be able to use.
However, a player saying to a GM, "I'm selecting giants, so you must include giants for me to fight," I would not consider reasonable, unless that sort of player control over the setting is already agreed upon.
Quote from: Sable Wyvern on June 24, 2021, 12:40:52 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2021, 08:34:21 PM
Quote from: Sable Wyvern on June 22, 2021, 03:56:31 AM
The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"
The funniest thing is that every actual ooze monster (a lot of them became terrain in 4E) actually had "immune trip, flanking" in their statblock (I think one didn't, but got fixed in errata) so those arguments were entirely academic.
What it really spoke to was that 4E defined a lot of things using keywords rather than natural language and making sure a monster had appropriate keywords for what it could do was an important part of monster design.
That said, 4E also included and encouraged "refluffing" of effects to fit thematically. So IF an ooze could be "tripped" you'd instead look at the effects of that (i.e. you fall prone - which means you grant combat advantage to adjacent foes, are -2 to your own attacks and move at half speed until you spend a move action to end the prone condition) and just refluff the description based on that... ex. "The ooze is splattered across its space by the attack and can't defend, attack or move as effectively until it takes a moment or two to reform."
This was actually something I can to consider in my own game where players could choose to play anything from a tiny sprite to a large dragon. How a sprite, human and dragon use the Trip action is very different, but the effect of falling prone is the same so my own system reflects that in allowing players to define their own fluff for their actions rather than predefining it as happening a specific way.
Yeah, I have no problem with someone that wants to allow trip to be used, just with different fluff. It was the raging OneTrueWayism of "You MUST allow all things to be tripped or you're a horrible human being and a horrible DM," that got me.
This is probably an internet thing in many ways. Not that I blame anyone for being soured on the game by 4e. God knows it soured me on the game, when I discovered I couldn't actually discuss solutions to issues with the rules online without some raging fanboy moron accusing me of carrying water for 3e.
But online discourse always has this weird thing where a lot of people just have serious hangups about the fact the game generally expects one player to be in a leadership position. Even now there's a lot of posters on Enworld who think the GM is being dictatorial if they won't allow them to play a Tabaxi or they want to say that a certain bit of lore from the books doesn't apply in their setting and therefore they can't build a character around it.
Part of it is just the nature of fandom. It comes from being fan first - gamer second. What's the point of having all that canonical knowledge if it can be contradicted? In any case, I'm sure most of these people wouldn't actually say squat if an actual GM in an actual game made a ruling.
My favourite Trip action is when you use it on Flying creatures.
Aside from the 3e Basic Game (the one with 16 miniatures), my first D&D purchases were 4e. I got the starter set, then the core 3 books, then the Essentials sets and books. I have both printed copies and digital copies. I really like the system.
I afterward began investigating, and collecting, the "Basic" edition rule sets—B/X, BECMI, the Rules Cyclopedia, which I also really like. While fans of "Basic" D&D may not be particularly fond of 4e, I suspect that fans of 4e would prefer the "Basic" editions over other editions (excepting, perhaps, 5e, which has a lot of 4e built into it).
As an aside, Basic D&D, in my opinion, is not "theater of the mind", even if the players never use minis or tokens for combat, because a major element of the RAW is mapping out the dungeon.
With regard to the statement that 4e doesn't "feel" like D&D, I think it is due to something mentioned by an earlier poster in this thread: the characters have inherent abilities to deal with their adventures, rather than relying on their equippage.
Basic D&D has strong elements of exploration and resource management. Players are supposed to keep account, for example, of how many rations and torches they have. They draw out the map, as described by the DM, which they must use to succeed. They do better if they are clever with their gear. The need to count torches and draw maps adds an element of the mundane to the characters, even with fantasy magic available to them. They can die from starvation or thirst, or from carelessness. It makes the characters seem more "real", and so, possibly, more relatable to the players.
4e characters are superheroes. Their power is within. If they lose a magic sword, they can still be very effective by picking up a rock or tree branch. They can afford to be somewhat careless, and they definitely don't need to keep track of light sources and food stocks. I mean, the rules include food and torches and such, but the main thrust of the game is being Big Damn Heroes, busting down the door and putting the dragon in a headlock. Fighting Orcs amidst the falling rubble in the depths of an abyss, jumping from rock to rock. Not cautiously inching down the corridor, keeping the shutter on the lantern nearly closed in hopes that monsters won't see them, unsure if this is the way out, because the guy with the map fell into a spike trap. 4e adventurers aren't, I think, directly relatable, to most people, anyways. They can't have the same outlook on life than a normal person does, because their inherent abilities and powers insulate them from most mundane concerns.
Both styles of play are fun, but each scratches a different itch.
The thing I like most about 4e is the core setting of the Nentir Vale/Points of Light. A world created by the primordials and the gods, working at cross purposes, and so rife with built-in metaphysical conflict. An empire that collapsed from its own hubris, but also from an unbeatable, demonic foe and his remorseless armies. Abandoned strongholds and manor houses that had been built during the good times. Mirror worlds of fey and shadow that can be accidentally stumbled into. Petty nobles and warlords scrambling to gain power and influence in the desolate ruins of civilization.
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 06:48:10 PM
Quote from: KingCheops on June 23, 2021, 06:33:59 PM
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 06:23:31 PM
(It also doesn't help that the game seems to assume you will use skill challenges to do non-dungeon stuff, but then gives you a set of skills that are focused on dungeon stuff. If I'm supposed to use a skill challenge to handle defending a city under siege then there really needs to be some skills that feel like they are actually applicable without being overly stretched.)
Which edition handled this well?
Well only D&D actually has skill challenges, so it's not all that relevant for others.
The issue is a skill challenge one, because the system tends toward the broad narration. Rather than doing lots of things in discrete steps you sort take a broad sweep and then abstract that into a roll.
If you're not using skill challenges the Fighter might just describe what they are doing to improve the defences of the city and the GM might take it into consideration (it may not be as satisfying as having a proper subsystem, but it's not a problem either.) The skill challenge system basically means that all of that is basically abstracted into a skill roll. If you succeed on a skill roll then the bolstered defences help lead to victory, if you fail they don't mean anything*. This means that what skill you roll is important here. What skill do you roll for this? Looking at the list, the only one that seems vaguely appropriate is History. But did the Fighter take History? Why would the player of the Fighter have thought they would use History for things like this? And then there's also going to be the issue that Wizard probably has History and a higher Int, so if it's History maybe he should be the one to bolster the defences of the city.
If you had something like 13th Age style backgrounds you wouldn't have the same gaps. If the Fighter has "Student of the College of War" then it's clear what to roll. Even Profession (Soldier) would be better here. The Profession skills were taken out of 4e because they were regarded as extraneous, but actually they would have given players quite a lot of opportunity to leverage them in skill challenges.
*You can start to see why the basic approach works better in Savage Worlds where you have more of a bell curve to your roll and a metacurrency that you can bring into play if you really want to do this - the D20 roll is just too random here - too often the player describes something cool, which they should be able to do, and the result is completely anti-climactic.
Well I mean the Fighter might take the History skill because the History skill explicitly states that it covers wars.
So in all the other rule sets you'd just say "okay you upgrade the defenses"? If it's that easy why are you running it as a Skill Challenge in 4e? What are the stakes and consequences? Is there a time limit? In other systems you'd probably make some sort of skill roll to see how many berms you can build in the 2 days before the orc horde appears. You might also make some sort of Teaching skill to instruct the peasants of the town how to hold a spear and stick it in an orc. Perhaps an Arcana skill to place some wards or a Religion check to bless some ground? I'd guess that in other game systems you as DM would probably also make some sort of ruling about the success/failure of these attempts?
I'm more than willing to admit that Skill Challenges were clunky, hard to understand, and difficult to use. But the 1 or 2 times I did manage to successfully run a skill challenge it was a ton of fun. My 5e DM is using skill challenges in his game after watching Matt Colville recommend their use.
I think 4e did a good job calling out that this is a tool to use and at least attempted to codify such situations in the game but unfortunately they came up with 3 failures before gaining enough successes.
I wouldn't say "superhero", just "hero."
And I actually mean that in the D&D sense of "4th Level Fighter." A starting PC in 4E is about as survivable as a 4th level PC in prior editions. They have enough hit points to take 3-4 good hits before dying, solid mundane gear, a couple of reliable mainstay abilities, and a handful of limited use ones.
For example, if you used the expected 3-4 encounters per day a 4E wizard would start with at-will cantrips (their at-wills, with the attack ones about on par with the crossbow or darts they'd have in previous editions), 3-4 "level one" (their encounter power) spells, and 1 "level two" (their daily power) spell and the capacity to use a few rituals). The cleric is in pretty much the same boat with a couple extra healing spells and 3-4 turning attempts per day.
Meanwhile the starting knight or slayer (i.e. Essentials Fighters) have plate armor, know a couple of combat stances and can smack a target really hard once per encounter). The thief (Essentials Rogue) has their sneak attack for a couple extra dice, a couple of movement based stunts and once per encounter can backstab to add more damage to their sneak attack.
The even more interesting aspect in relation to this is that, based on all the campaigns I tracked while researching for my own system, the vast majority of them considered the 1-10 game to be the best part... so basically the same 4-14 game that just about every edition of D&D shines in.
From the people I interviewed when developing my own "inspired by" system, level 16 (when the paragon path grants its big feature that's often a gamechanger) is the point where even the complexity lovers tend to hit "peak complexity."
A 4E character typically starts with 2 at-will attacks, 1 encounter attack, 1 daily attack, 1 feat and a couple of class/race features to keep track of.
At level 10 you're up to 3 encounter attacks, 3 daily attacks, 3 utility powers and 6 feats (plus the 2 at-wills and couple of race/class features).
By level 16 you've added 1 more encounter attack power and replaced another, replaced one of your daily attacks, added another utility, two paragon path features and 4 more feats onto your PC, not counting any powers added by magic items. You've basically quadrupled the number of things you're tracking relative to a starting PC.
And it goes up from there.
There's a reason why, by the time Dark Sun/year two rolled around, the design paradigm had switched to powers that scaled up instead of needing to be replaced and why Essentials took a hatchet to the fiddly feats and created a consolidated list of about a hundred general feats without prereqs or level requirements and why almost nothing was done with the epic tier (levels 21-30) after the first year beyond the perfunctory.
It's also the reason the system I built coming out of 4E settled on just 15 levels and an expectation that most campaigns would wrap up by the early teens.
Quote from: KingCheops on June 24, 2021, 10:47:17 AM
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 06:48:10 PM
Quote from: KingCheops on June 23, 2021, 06:33:59 PM
Quote from: TJS on June 23, 2021, 06:23:31 PM
(It also doesn't help that the game seems to assume you will use skill challenges to do non-dungeon stuff, but then gives you a set of skills that are focused on dungeon stuff. If I'm supposed to use a skill challenge to handle defending a city under siege then there really needs to be some skills that feel like they are actually applicable without being overly stretched.)
Which edition handled this well?
Well only D&D actually has skill challenges, so it's not all that relevant for others.
The issue is a skill challenge one, because the system tends toward the broad narration. Rather than doing lots of things in discrete steps you sort take a broad sweep and then abstract that into a roll.
If you're not using skill challenges the Fighter might just describe what they are doing to improve the defences of the city and the GM might take it into consideration (it may not be as satisfying as having a proper subsystem, but it's not a problem either.) The skill challenge system basically means that all of that is basically abstracted into a skill roll. If you succeed on a skill roll then the bolstered defences help lead to victory, if you fail they don't mean anything*. This means that what skill you roll is important here. What skill do you roll for this? Looking at the list, the only one that seems vaguely appropriate is History. But did the Fighter take History? Why would the player of the Fighter have thought they would use History for things like this? And then there's also going to be the issue that Wizard probably has History and a higher Int, so if it's History maybe he should be the one to bolster the defences of the city.
If you had something like 13th Age style backgrounds you wouldn't have the same gaps. If the Fighter has "Student of the College of War" then it's clear what to roll. Even Profession (Soldier) would be better here. The Profession skills were taken out of 4e because they were regarded as extraneous, but actually they would have given players quite a lot of opportunity to leverage them in skill challenges.
*You can start to see why the basic approach works better in Savage Worlds where you have more of a bell curve to your roll and a metacurrency that you can bring into play if you really want to do this - the D20 roll is just too random here - too often the player describes something cool, which they should be able to do, and the result is completely anti-climactic.
Well I mean the Fighter might take the History skill because the History skill explicitly states that it covers wars.
So in all the other rule sets you'd just say "okay you upgrade the defenses"? If it's that easy why are you running it as a Skill Challenge in 4e? What are the stakes and consequences? Is there a time limit? In other systems you'd probably make some sort of skill roll to see how many berms you can build in the 2 days before the orc horde appears. You might also make some sort of Teaching skill to instruct the peasants of the town how to hold a spear and stick it in an orc. Perhaps an Arcana skill to place some wards or a Religion check to bless some ground? I'd guess that in other game systems you as DM would probably also make some sort of ruling about the success/failure of these attempts?
I'm more than willing to admit that Skill Challenges were clunky, hard to understand, and difficult to use. But the 1 or 2 times I did manage to successfully run a skill challenge it was a ton of fun. My 5e DM is using skill challenges in his game after watching Matt Colville recommend their use.
I think 4e did a good job calling out that this is a tool to use and at least attempted to codify such situations in the game but unfortunately they came up with 3 failures before gaining enough successes.
The thing is, in a less abstract approach if the defences were upgraded that would be a fact to take into consideration. Just like the city has a wall and a gate, it now has different defences. Now this may not be ideal (there's nothing worse in a game then everyone describing what they are doing to prepare and the GM obviously just running through the scenario without taking any of that into consideration). Ideally you want some mechanical tracking, although a good GM can find a way to make it significant.
Basically D&D's skill system has issues and skill challenges have a tendency to really compound those issues by making it impossible to get around them. So if History covers war, then the best person to strategise is the Wizard; if Persuasion or Diplomacy governs teaching peasants how to hold a spear than the Bard should do it. Basically, because everything you do is a justification for a skill roll, and you need to roll successes to have an impact, the pull is to choose a skill first and then look for a justification to roll it and this has a distorting effect; the Fighter obviously always wants to roll Athletics "Can I impress the King by flexing my massive guns?"
It also doesn't matter what you do, as long as it is not so ridiculous the GM won't let you roll it. There isn't any tactical trade off here. Putting arcane sigils on the wall, bolstering the defences, training the peasants, inspiring the peasants with a jaunty ditty, all of these have exactly the same impact and value.
It's also very abritrary thanks to the D20's wide range. This becomes more apparent the more you zoom out. In a combat a single attack roll is seconds so it doesn't feel so arbitrary and the combat as a whole is a bell curve. But in a zoomed out skill challenge you could spend a week to complete a single action and on that level a D20 roll with no player recourse feels extremely arbritrary.
I think the only way to run a skill challenge is to just use it as guidance in the background secretly, and not actually tell the players they're in a skill challenge. Just run it as an RP scene.
Ah, Skill Challenges.
I am surprised that there are still people who recommend them. Sounds like an epic Troll move to me.
Resident 4E Fan here, so I'm biased as fuck....
RE: MMO's - Eh, Class roles have always been prevalent in D&D, Hit Die, Armor and weapon proficiency, differences in spells, ALL point characters into a particular role. Wizards don't heal, Fighters don't drop Fireball, Clerics fight the Undead, etc. These are roles. ALL 4E did was give more people access to roles AND push that role to the fore front of your character's design. Jumping from the Lego's Brand / Build-A-PC concept that 3e/3.5/Pathfinder enforced where you could do almost everything by "dipping" to a class-formed style that pushed Role Narratives. And even this concept was diluted through 4E's lifespan where options came out in terms of both class design (there were several dual-role classes) and add-ons like Themes. By the end of 4E's cycle, you could make a Paladin a "strike" (heavy damage dealing) and stealthy simply by Hybrid-Classing, taking the appropriate Theme and Background, and Race. Not only that but there were other options pushed such as level-by-level Multiclassing that we saw in 3.5 (you didn't get access to class features, but you could swap powers per level) that was introduced with Dragon magazine.
RE: RPG-ness - Overall, this is pretty damn dumb. 4E didn't take away any role-playing game elements that were exclusively in other editions. I think the designers went into the game design of the system saying "You don't need rules if you want to play a Blacksmith / Tradesman / Entertainer / etc" because these are covered with simply role-playing at the table and possible some skills. No 'need' for extensive sub-systems to facilitate how difficult it is to craft a sword, or wow a crowed with your song (this is best described via Diplomacy or just a Charisma check), or taking steps to build your own castle. Exactly WHAT do people mean when they say it lacks elements of a "true" RPG and what rules were lacking in the Dungeon Master's Guide to help a DM facilitate that in their games?
RE: Realistic Abilities - Pretty hilarious, honestly. What I find very confusing is why weren't these conversations EVER brought up before 4E? Why doesn't a Barbarian's Rage 1/day break Verisimilitude? Why doesn't the Monk's 'Stunning Fist' X/Day break people's Verisimilitude? How does it makse sense that someone falls 45-ft. off a cliff and simply get up and keep fighting??? Realism is a BS concept when it comes to D&D and always has been. Also, why were people OK with a Fighter being limited to 1 attack if he moved more than 5-ft BUT upset that he can only attack everyone in a 5-ft area once per 5-mintue (encounter power)?
ALL of these are common elements in the 3e/3.5 Player's Handbook and absolutely make zero sense in any sense of Realism. People can only get Mad once a day? People can only punch really hard a few times a day? Please.... And what makes this complaint absolutely hilarious is how - currently - people practically gush about 5th Edition and have zero, none, nada, qualms about Short Rest abilities. The ONLY difference I can see in people's anger over how "different" 4E was is the simple fact that 4E's interior design used Colored Boxes. That's it. The only reason people shrill "video game!" is because 4E uses boxes to deliver their exploits instead of plain text (nevermind that the Tome of Battle used the exact same method).
RE: Balance - 4E is often cited as the "most balanced" version of D&D and while I agree that 4E does a bit better job of maintaining a better balance amongst the different classes, I think it's only balanced against it's previous version. If anything, 3e and 3.5 were SO overly UNBALANVCED that anything trying to reign things in would look starkly different. 3.5 is really the culprit here, as it completely took ALL of the balanced elements from 1e and 2e and practically chucked them out of the nearest window. Remember when Spellcasters had to spend an hour per level per SPELL?? Memorizing three 1st level and two 2nd level spells would take SEVEN hours of time. This right here - alone - makes casters REALLY weigh how important a spells is needed in any given situation to cast. In 3.5, an hour and BOOM all of your spells - literally dozens upon dozens - are up and available to use. Casting a spell took time AND was dangerous if you got interrupted. Not in 3.5, where 90% or more of the spells took one standard action on your turn. Unless someone readied an action to hit you (and why would they, until turn 2?) then you're basically free to cast whatever you want without any interruption. Not to mention the 5-ft step rule that basically meant you just side-stepped an cast as your leisure.
Now 4E might have taken things to the extreme. Yes, a Wizard dropping Fireball in 4E isn't special or mesmerizing and it certainly isn't going to kill a lot of monsters, but in a game like 4E, it makes sense because of how much Teamwork is emphasized. That is another element that I loved about 4E, no one Character was going to hog the spotlight and kill EVERY enemy on the board in 1 turn, making my character pointless.
RE: Combat Time - Early on, 4E combats took longer at the earlier levels. This was because my concept of fighting monsters was rooted in previous editions. Monster "roles" were unnecessary because a Goblin was a goblin as any other goblin, with small exceptions to their weapons or armored used. They generally have less than 10 HP, low to middle armor, and hit kind of weak for anyone past 2nd level. Not in 4E. Nope, goblins are kinda scary - especially the soldiers - for low level parties. A group of 5-6 standard goblins against a 4-5 1st level Group was a very difficult, easily fatal encounter for some. And this threw off people's expectations. More likely the DM needed to read the rules about combat encounter construction more thoroughly. This is kind of why I love Minions. See I can throw literally DOZENS of them at low-level parties and they can wade through them like they're in some Lord of the Rings scene. But I make the stronger ones stand out more. Maybe they're colored different, or they have a bigger weapon or better armor. These are going to be tougher to bring down. Things like that. Minions needed to be used FAR more often early on 4E's pre-made adventures to keep combat time minimal.
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 05:03:29 PM
Remember when Spellcasters had to spend an hour per level per SPELL?? Memorizing three 1st level and two 2nd level spells would take SEVEN hours of time. This right here - alone - makes casters REALLY weigh how important a spells is needed in any given situation to cast. In 3.5, an hour and BOOM all of your spells - literally dozens upon dozens - are up and available to use.
AD&D spells took 15 minutes/level to memorize, not 1 hour. Basic D&D was 1 hour, same as v.3.5.
You're also missing some of the other major limiters that were removed between AD&D and third edition. Flat saves became opposed saves. Restrictions like aging were removed or nerfed (XP). Spellcasters, especially those relying on save or die spells, became vastly more powerful.
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 05:03:29 PM
The only reason people shrill "video game!" is because 4E uses boxes to deliver their exploits instead of plain text (nevermind that the Tome of Battle used the exact same method).
That's not a very good argument. Tome of Battle was called video gamey from the instant it was released. When 4e came out, they called ToB:TBoNS its precursor.
Quote from: Pat on July 01, 2021, 06:19:27 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 05:03:29 PM
Remember when Spellcasters had to spend an hour per level per SPELL?? Memorizing three 1st level and two 2nd level spells would take SEVEN hours of time. This right here - alone - makes casters REALLY weigh how important a spells is needed in any given situation to cast. In 3.5, an hour and BOOM all of your spells - literally dozens upon dozens - are up and available to use.
AD&D spells took 15 minutes/level to memorize, not 1 hour. Basic D&D was 1 hour, same as v.3.5.
You're also missing some of the other major limiters that were removed between AD&D and third edition. Flat saves became opposed saves. Restrictions like aging were removed or nerfed (XP). Spellcasters, especially those relying on save or die spells, became vastly more powerful.
My mistake. it's been decades since I've played pre-WotC D&D, my memory is fuzzy as to that particular. I simply remember thinking how crazy easy it was to prep spells in 3e as opposed to earlier versions. Also, this wasn't an exhaustive list, many other elements went into the balance of 1e and 2e that 3e stopped, not to mention how nerfed Fighters were with their lack or Multiattack per round.
Quote from: Pat on July 01, 2021, 06:19:27 PMQuote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 05:03:29 PM
The only reason people shrill "video game!" is because 4E uses boxes to deliver their exploits instead of plain text (nevermind that the Tome of Battle used the exact same method).
That's not a very good argument. Tome of Battle was called video gamey from the instant it was released. When 4e came out, they called ToB:TBoNS its precursor.
I can only speak for myself and my experiences but the ToB is often regarded as one of the BEST 3.5 books in the library. Sure, some don't like it but - again from my experience- these are also the same ones who think terrible feats like Monkey Grip and Vow of Poverty are broken, or the Warlock's unlimited power is crazy good (none of that is true).
Also, what is "video gamey"? Is the Fast Healing ability of the Combat Forms video gamey? No one complained about that. Wht about all the Extraordinary abilities that are limited by daily restrictions? Point is, 3.5 is rife with them but it wasn't an issue until it was more common.
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 06:43:50 PM
I can only speak for myself and my experiences but the ToB is often regarded as one of the BEST 3.5 books in the library. Sure, some don't like it but - again from my experience- these are also the same ones who think terrible feats like Monkey Grip and Vow of Poverty are broken, or the Warlock's unlimited power is crazy good (none of that is true).
You brought up ToB in an attempt to argue that fans of 3.5 were hypocrites for disliking certain elements of 4e, because they had already appeared in ToB.
That's an awful argument, because ToB was highly divisive when it came out. The people who liked it seemed to be the people who went on to love 4e. The people who hated were the ones who went on to... well, Pathfinder or something. They hated 4e. ToB is not a good example of people contradicting themselves. In fact, it's a very good example that what people liked and disliked was pretty damn consistent, regardless of the edition number.
Quote from: Pat on July 01, 2021, 06:52:45 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 06:43:50 PM
I can only speak for myself and my experiences but the ToB is often regarded as one of the BEST 3.5 books in the library. Sure, some don't like it but - again from my experience- these are also the same ones who think terrible feats like Monkey Grip and Vow of Poverty are broken, or the Warlock's unlimited power is crazy good (none of that is true).
You brought up ToB in an attempt to argue that fans of 3.5 were hypocrites for disliking certain elements of 4e, because they had already appeared in ToB.
That's an awful argument, because ToB was highly divisive when it came out. The people who liked it seemed to be the people who went on to love 4e. The people who hated were the ones who went on to... well, Pathfinder or something. They hated 4e. ToB is not a good example of people contradicting themselves. In fact, it's a very good example that what people liked and disliked was pretty damn consistent, regardless of the edition number.
That hasn't been my experience, especially when talking to people in the 3.5 FB groups. Usually 4e is reviled by 3.5 proponents and fans, and they seem to be perfectly fine with Tome of Battle as a supplement all these years later. Not to mention that even beloved Pathfinder 1e has their own Tome of Battle supplement (
Path of War by Dreamscarred Press) that appears to be widely accepted.
I used the Tome of Battle because, despite its controversial aspect, it was still heavily used by 3.5 fans and remains one of the better made and balanced books in that line.
Tob to 4e comparisons is kinda baffling to me.
They are wildly different animals.
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 07:05:23 PM
Quote from: Pat on July 01, 2021, 06:52:45 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 01, 2021, 06:43:50 PM
I can only speak for myself and my experiences but the ToB is often regarded as one of the BEST 3.5 books in the library. Sure, some don't like it but - again from my experience- these are also the same ones who think terrible feats like Monkey Grip and Vow of Poverty are broken, or the Warlock's unlimited power is crazy good (none of that is true).
You brought up ToB in an attempt to argue that fans of 3.5 were hypocrites for disliking certain elements of 4e, because they had already appeared in ToB.
That's an awful argument, because ToB was highly divisive when it came out. The people who liked it seemed to be the people who went on to love 4e. The people who hated were the ones who went on to... well, Pathfinder or something. They hated 4e. ToB is not a good example of people contradicting themselves. In fact, it's a very good example that what people liked and disliked was pretty damn consistent, regardless of the edition number.
That hasn't been my experience, especially when talking to people in the 3.5 FB groups. Usually 4e is reviled by 3.5 proponents and fans, and they seem to be perfectly fine with Tome of Battle as a supplement all these years later. Not to mention that even beloved Pathfinder 1e has their own Tome of Battle supplement (Path of War by Dreamscarred Press) that appears to be widely accepted.
I used the Tome of Battle because, despite its controversial aspect, it was still heavily used by 3.5 fans and remains one of the better made and balanced books in that line.
All the boards I was on exploded in hate and fervent defense when the Tome of Battle came out. I think your experience is very much an outlier.
Quote from: Pat on July 01, 2021, 08:10:31 PM
All the boards I was on exploded in hate and fervent defense when the Tome of Battle came out. I think your experience is very much an outlier.
Back in 06', I was mostly on the WotC, GitP, and Paizo boards and initially I saw some people saying they hated it because it gave a tiny bit of parity to non-casters and it was very much like Legend of the 5 ring? (I never played that game). But the other half would simply bring up the Druid from the PHB, Cleric Persistent shenanigans, the Cheater of Mystra, etc all as fine examples of stupidly broken crap that never got complained about.
And now, 15 years later, the people I talk to about the supplement is that it's generally one of the better ones made towards the end. But it's purely anecdotal, so I doubt there's any actual way to justify its popularity this far out.
Yet, putting the Tome of Battle aside, why don't people complain about 3.5's heavily (and I mean, it's very gamist) mindset towards the usage of minis, Ex abilities recharging on the day or x/day? And why not NOW, as 5e heavily steals ideas and concepts from a system so hated? Literally, the Warlock lore is pure 4e. Short Rest mechanics ARE encounter powers. Hit Die healing ARE healing surges. Not a peep of "too gamist / WoW" buuuuut all the same ground work and implementation.
Yep, no one ever complained about the Druid from the PHB, Cleric Persistent shenanigans, the Cheater of Mystra, etc.
:o
I really can't say, I've never played 4e. I just commented on the reception to ToB.
But I can say that treating suspension of belief using litmus test mechanics is the wrong approach. It's the accumulation of straw that breaks the camel's back, not that straw dares to exist. And from what I've seen, 4e makes it far more central and explicit. I'm not at all surprised it triggered many people's verisimilitudar.
I enjoy 4e.
It's a skirmish-RPG-boardgame. I like that a lot because I didn't own one of those until 4e came along. Unfortunately, 4e was named Dungeons & Dragons and not DungeonStorm or DragonStrike. If it had been, there wouldn't have been such upset among the fans.
I didn't need 4e to be D&D because I had 0e and now a gazillion OSR games, all of which do "D&D" just fine for my needs.
As others have pointed out, the best 4e version is Gamma World minus the retard bits. If I play 4e at a con in the future, that's what I'd run.
Quote from: Batman on July 02, 2021, 12:52:12 AMwhy don't people complain about 3.5's heavily (and I mean, it's very gamist) mindset towards the usage of minis, Ex abilities recharging on the day or x/day? And why not NOW, as 5e heavily steals ideas and concepts from a system so hated? Literally, the Warlock lore is pure 4e. Short Rest mechanics ARE encounter powers. Hit Die healing ARE healing surges. Not a peep of "too gamist / WoW" buuuuut all the same ground work and implementation.
Presentation mostly. 4E took pains to present abilities in a way that was highly encapsulated, using keywords to explicitly define the game-relevant powers. 5E explicitly doesn't do this, instead basically everything is expressed in a natural language style.
Quote from: Spinachcat on July 02, 2021, 01:21:51 AM
I enjoy 4e.
It's a skirmish-RPG-boardgame. I like that a lot because I didn't own one of those until 4e came along. Unfortunately, 4e was named Dungeons & Dragons and not DungeonStorm or DragonStrike. If it had been, there wouldn't have been such upset among the fans.
a
It's funny, because the most I played of 4E rules was in the actual boardgames "Castle Ravenloft" and "Wrath of Ashardalon" - which use 4E rules in a cooperative boardgame beating different scenarios. I tried them out of interest through D&D, but I came to find that I really didn't like them as board games. To be fair, many of my annoyances were with aspects that weren't from the RPG, like the tile-laying and monster-behavior rules - and it was at least good enough (plus the D&D brand) to keep me trying through many sessions. Still, it doesn't give a good impression of their board game design.
As for using it as an RPG, I played a few sessions once with my nephews. Mainly, I had a problem with verisimilitude. Batman says "
Why doesn't a Barbarian's Rage 1/day break Verisimilitude? Why doesn't the Monk's 'Stunning Fist' X/Day break people's Verisimilitude?" And I'd say that it's not all-or-nothing. I think those rules did break verisimilitude, but since they were the odd exception, they weren't that much of a problem.
In 5e rage and stunning strike have naturalistic in-world explanations.
Rage isn't just getting angry but a kind of full body berserker fury trance state that your body can only sustain so often before you need to recover. Stunning strike is done using a monk's ki, so just like spell slots you can only channel it to manipulate the opponent's body so many times.
This is different than a fighter just being able to cleave once a day.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 01:10:04 PM
In 5e rage and stunning strike have naturalistic in-world explanations.
Mildly so. I feel 4e has much more blatant offenders then the 1/day cleave, but the 1/day rage (which has a separate exsaustion cooldown from its 1/day limit).
The sort of suspension of disbelief that can be stretched on the rage, or spell slots can be stretched onto the 1/day fighter technique about the same way.
I think its more to do with presentation. And 4e is a gameplay type I don't even like outside of its Boardgame spinoffs.
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
Note that Cleave specifically was a Fighter level 1 At-Will so you could literally do it all day long. But your general intention with your statement is understood.
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
This explanation goes back to the original 4E preview books, but was rejected by at least some of the audience as overly narrative or disassociated from the character.
I think an endurance point system
might have squared the circle, but 4E took a while to break out of the AEDU structure and the sense of symmetry among all classes. Going further ... well, spell points would have further distanced the game from classic D&D.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on July 02, 2021, 05:04:10 PM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
This explanation goes back to the original 4E preview books, but was rejected by at least some of the audience as overly narrative or disassociated from the character.
I think an endurance point system might have squared the circle, but 4E took a while to break out of the AEDU structure and the sense of symmetry among all classes. Going further ... well, spell points would have further distanced the game from classic D&D.
Ah that explains it. I'd given up on D&D because I hated 3rd edition so I missed the marketing/preview.
Endurance points would be an easy thing to implement. Healing Surges are already a thing. This is part of why I liked 4e -- I felt like it was really easy for me to bend and warp the system. 3rd always felt like it was hard to build off of whereas 5e feels like a happy medium between them.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PMBut a martial technique is just about skill.
Skill takes effort to execute. Its a technique so awesome, your just as winded as a barbarian after doing it.
But again, I myself hate daily system resource tracking management, so Im playing devils advocate.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 03, 2021, 07:10:43 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PMBut a martial technique is just about skill.
Skill takes effort to execute. Its a technique so awesome, your just as winded as a barbarian after doing it.
But again, I myself hate daily system resource tracking management, so Im playing devils advocate.
There's a reason why in my own system that got its start as a 4E retroclone, but grew into its own thing the PCs used Focus points for the equivalent of encounter powers (Focus recovered with a minute or so outside of a fight to refocus) and Heroic Surges for the equivalent of 4E daily powers + action points + healing surges + death saves (basically all the deep endurance reserves type things that recovered at 1-2 points per hour of rest depending on your Endurance attribute and since they're used for everything above they couldn't just be spammed without serious risk... each extra attack or daily power type use is one less recovery you can take or death save you can fail until you're able to actually stop and rest).
To top it off, both Focus and Heroic Surges were used to push your at-will techniques rather than powering unique combat techniques, so both were more about pushing past your normal limits.
To use, say, "Iron Tide" as an example, at-will its just an attack and a 5' push... with varying amounts of Focus you could knock them back further, knock them down and/or even stagger them for a round or so... with a surge you treat any hit like a critical, stagger them for multiple rounds and will even do some damage on a miss.
In general, I got almost no pushback on that arrangement from my playtesters who preferred verisimilitude.
The ones who didn't like the meta-currency element of 4E encounter/daily powers also generally thought it was acceptable since choosing a moment to put more effort into an action is something a character could actually choose to do rather than "by using this ability, circumstances align for me to use my encounter/daily exploit... which takes you a bit outside the character to have happen).
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
Note that Cleave specifically was a Fighter level 1 At-Will so you could literally do it all day long. But your general intention with your statement is understood.
The problem comes when an int 4 bear suddenly sees through your technique.
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 11:57:13 AM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
Note that Cleave specifically was a Fighter level 1 At-Will so you could literally do it all day long. But your general intention with your statement is understood.
The problem comes when an int 4 bear suddenly sees through your technique.
Lol you have no idea how the real world fucking works is your problem.
Quote from: KingCheops on July 03, 2021, 04:51:01 PM
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 11:57:13 AM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
Note that Cleave specifically was a Fighter level 1 At-Will so you could literally do it all day long. But your general intention with your statement is understood.
The problem comes when an int 4 bear suddenly sees through your technique.
Lol you have no idea how the real world fucking works is your problem.
What, because i think bears don't consult fencing manuals.
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 06:17:59 PM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 03, 2021, 04:51:01 PM
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 11:57:13 AM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
Note that Cleave specifically was a Fighter level 1 At-Will so you could literally do it all day long. But your general intention with your statement is understood.
The problem comes when an int 4 bear suddenly sees through your technique.
Lol you have no idea how the real world fucking works is your problem.
What, because i think bears don't consult fencing manuals.
Believe it or not bears are generally smart enough to try different attacks, defend themselves, and maneuver for different positions. Just because they're Int 4 doesn't mean they're not predators or they don't compete for mates/territory. So you pull off your Daily Exploit and whatever that Exploit happens to be the bear is cunning enough to know not to create the same circumstances that got it in such a bad position the last time.
No fencing manual needed. Also why are you fighting regular bears and why are they attacking fully armed humanoid parties? This isn't WoW despite what you think.
Quote from: KingCheops on July 03, 2021, 07:52:05 PM
Also why are you fighting regular bears and why are they attacking fully armed humanoid parties? This isn't WoW despite what you think.
Because real world bears are dangerous.
Quote from: Shasarak on July 03, 2021, 09:17:36 PM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 03, 2021, 07:52:05 PM
Also why are you fighting regular bears and why are they attacking fully armed humanoid parties? This isn't WoW despite what you think.
Because real world bears are dangerous.
ROAR!
Quote from: KingCheops on July 03, 2021, 07:52:05 PM
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 06:17:59 PM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 03, 2021, 04:51:01 PM
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 11:57:13 AM
Quote from: KingCheops on July 02, 2021, 04:49:50 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
The typical explanation that I saw on the forums and I rather liked was that your Daily powers represent combos/circumstances that were fairly unique/rare so you couldn't just spam them all day long. Encounter powers would be things that once your opponents see it they know how to defend against it so they don't present the opportunity anymore.
Martial Powers were called Exploits. Make of that definition what you will.
Note that Cleave specifically was a Fighter level 1 At-Will so you could literally do it all day long. But your general intention with your statement is understood.
The problem comes when an int 4 bear suddenly sees through your technique.
Lol you have no idea how the real world fucking works is your problem.
What, because i think bears don't consult fencing manuals.
No fencing manual needed. Also why are you fighting regular bears and why are they attacking fully armed humanoid parties? This isn't WoW despite what you think.
Because they're an easy example of a low int creature ubiquitous across almost every game, appear on encounter charts, and "he fought a bear" is a common indicator of some kinda great fighter in a lot of stories that come up.
Anyway, its remarkable you could understand cleave was a generic use for fighter skill but not that bear was a stand in for fumb monster. How about you get out your feelings and pull your head out your ass.
And how does this explaination even work for daily powers, oh i pulled it off once and now even if they never saw it i can't do it. Thankfully the exact circumstance and position i needed came up this one time today so i could use it and the same condition will reliably happen tommorow.
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 10:40:30 PM
And how does this explaination even work for daily powers, oh i pulled it off once and now even if they never saw it i can't do it. Thankfully the exact corcumsgance and position i needed came up this one time today so i could use it and will reliably happen tommorow.
I don't see why this is such a weird thing to conceive of. In sports lots of exceptional things happen due to in-the-moment circumstances that aren't easily repeatable. A soccer player may only score a goal on a bicycle kick rarely, but this doesn't mean that soccer players only have a 1/day bicycle kick maneuver. The circumstances where such a thing actually arises and can work are just rare.*
Quote from: Zelen on July 02, 2021, 02:08:17 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 02, 2021, 12:52:12 AMwhy don't people complain about 3.5's heavily (and I mean, it's very gamist) mindset towards the usage of minis, Ex abilities recharging on the day or x/day? And why not NOW, as 5e heavily steals ideas and concepts from a system so hated? Literally, the Warlock lore is pure 4e. Short Rest mechanics ARE encounter powers. Hit Die healing ARE healing surges. Not a peep of "too gamist / WoW" buuuuut all the same ground work and implementation.
Presentation mostly. 4E took pains to present abilities in a way that was highly encapsulated, using keywords to explicitly define the game-relevant powers. 5E explicitly doesn't do this, instead basically everything is expressed in a natural language style.
Yes, this is something that I really felt was one of the crux issues people had initially when even looking at 4E. The color-coded boxes of "power" and the nice, crisp way in which it was detailed. Compared to the aged old look of 3e books (which I prefer aesthetically anyways) and how things were written in more plain english and less mechanical jargon. For example, this is what 4E looked like:
Cleave; Fighter Attack 1
flavor text hereAt-Will * Martial, WeaponStandard ActionTarget: One creature
Attack Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1 (W) + Str mod damage, and an enemy adjacent to you takes damage equal to your strength modifier.
21st Level Increase damage to 2(W).
Hell, it
LOOKS like a spell from pretty much any other edition of D&D. Not surprising when people complained that all characters were "spellcasters" as it's certainly presented that way. Instead, it could've looked much more organic. Like this:
Cleave [Martial, Weapon]. With a great swing, you smash your weapon into your opponent and the momentum carries into his ally. When you hit a creature with an attack, deal 1(W) + your Strength modifier and an adjacent enemy takes damage equal to your Strength modifier. At 21st level, this increases to 2(W).
Not only does this look cleaner and easier to read, it's a lot shorter and takes up less page space. It still has keywords and mechanics jargon, but if flows better. This could've been done with nearly ALL the Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Warlord Powers as they're Martial in nature. It would have also allowed them to add some additional classes that weren't added, which pissed people off even more. I'd say that a significant amount could've been done with Cleric and Paladin weapon-based powers and just put the Implement spells/prayers into their own category. Had they done this and made it at least appear more like traditional D&D books, it might have gotten more people to at least play it before blatant criticizing it as "WoW on Paper".
I'm not saying that this is whole WHOLE reason why people were dismissive of 4E, but I think initial impressions are worth a LOT and it certainly didn't help itself when people were thumbing through the book and gave them an impression of Video-Game TTRPG.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 02, 2021, 02:27:09 PM
I just mean that, explanation wise, both rage and stunning strike depend on something like endurance -- there's only so much adrenaline bursts you can have, so to speak.
But a martial technique is just about skill. You don't forget how to cleave after you cleave. There's no extra resource you're spending like ki, which exists in-game as well. (It's not some meta-currency.) Logically it should be more like Sneak Attack where you can always just do it when the conditions come up.
TBH I'm fine with that, for things like battlemaster in 5e.
But there are limitations on the 5E Fighter. Why can he only Action Surge 1/rest? He.....can't swing that many times ad-infinitum? Why? Same with the Battle Master. He can use Commander's Strike X/Rest. Do people just stop listening to him after his 4th command? "Gee, Gerrick is getting real uppity with his commands. You know what, I'm
NOT going to make another attack just because he wants me to. I don't care what the bonus is OR that I can sneak attack again." It's just as jarring. Or even the Indomitable feature of the Fighter. What about the Cavalier in Xanathar's Guide? He can only use the Unwavering Mark ability a number of times equal to his Strength mod....that's really weird.
I know this is sort of beating a dead horse. Let me say that I accept and am fine with the mechanical limitations that these features have. They give a player a sense of resource-management that fuel drama and reward good decision making. They don't need to all have 100% naturalistic in-game reasoning to exist or function, much like the same way Hit Points don't make up a lot of sense, it's game-ist to a large degree. That's not terrible. And obviously the way 5E has been accepted and loved, people apparently easily overlook these limitations, why, and hows because in the end it's still fun to play. "Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
Quote from: Zelen on July 03, 2021, 11:49:56 PM
Quote from: Slambo on July 03, 2021, 10:40:30 PM
And how does this explaination even work for daily powers, oh i pulled it off once and now even if they never saw it i can't do it. Thankfully the exact corcumsgance and position i needed came up this one time today so i could use it and will reliably happen tommorow.
I don't see why this is such a weird thing to conceive of. In sports lots of exceptional things happen due to in-the-moment circumstances that aren't easily repeatable. A soccer player may only score a goal on a bicycle kick rarely, but this doesn't mean that soccer players only have a 1/day bicycle kick maneuver. The circumstances where such a thing actually arises and can work are just rare.*
I Always likened Fighter (or more appropriately, Martial) limitations of Exploits to that of weight-lifting. When you're lifting weights you exhaust your muscles of a particular group - depending on what you're lifting. So a person starts off at the Bench Press and reps out 3 sets of 10 at 275-lbs, but the last 3-4 reps of his last set he definitely needed a spotter, otherwise he could've hurt himself. Now, that same guy - same day - hits up incline DB chest press at 75 lbs (total of 150-lbs). It's not as much as 275 so he can still get his 3 sets of 10 but it's a LOT harder. To link this back to D&D, a Fighter Daily power is similar to his main bench press. Once he's exhausted the power necessary to pull off that attack, he's going to need time to recoup. The level of the Exploit determines JUST how difficult a stunt like that was. He just doesn't have the energy to pull something like that today. Lower-level attacks act, similarly, to other lifts at lesser weight. HE can't put up 275 again, but he can hit the decline bench at 200 because it's a different movement and targets different parts of the same muscle. He can then hit up DB Chest Fly at 35-lbs because, again, same muscle group but less weight.
At least, thats how I looked at it. The situational rationale can work, but I feel it's too forced as a organic mechanical to explain why someone can't Villain's Menace more than 1/day. Also, it's a damn game and not a Real-Life Simulator. We have a 1,000s lb dragon spewing breath from it's face while it flies 3 miles in the sky and the dude next to me literally melted someone with a ball of fire and the issue is me pulling off a crazy sword stunt???
An explanation for martial dailies that I liked was they are narrative-based powers.
If you've ever watched Voltron, you know that when the big fight occurs, Voltron will spend some time shooting rockets and lasers, and wrestling around with the monster robot of the day, but that eventually Voltron is going to be pushed into a corner, so to speak, at which point he pulls out the big honkin' sword and slices the monster in half. Every single time.
The 4ighter has a similar situation. He only pulls off this amazing daily-use power when it makes sense narratively. Maybe that is at the first of the fight, to put the fear into the enemy. Maybe it is in the middle of the fight, to allow the team to back up and refresh. Maybe it is when the fighter is the last one standing. Maybe the team has had a curb stomp battle, and the fighter wants to perform an over-the-top maneuver to end the fight. The story is emergent, and all that jazz.
The fighter doesn't keep spamming brutal strike because he can't, but because the narrative dictates that this is his big trick, to wow the observer and cause the team to cheer. Something like that.
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 02:42:56 PM
An explanation for martial dailies that I liked was they are narrative-based powers.
If you've ever watched Voltron, you know that when the big fight occurs, Voltron will spend some time shooting rockets and lasers, and wrestling around with the monster robot of the day, but that eventually Voltron is going to be pushed into a corner, so to speak, at which point he pulls out the big honkin' sword and slices the monster in half. Every single time.
The 4ighter has a similar situation. He only pulls off this amazing daily-use power when it makes sense narratively. Maybe that is at the first of the fight, to put the fear into the enemy. Maybe it is in the middle of the fight, to allow the team to back up and refresh. Maybe it is when the fighter is the last one standing. Maybe the team has had a curb stomp battle, and the fighter wants to perform an over-the-top maneuver to end the fight. The story is emergent, and all that jazz.
The fighter doesn't keep spamming brutal strike because he can't, but because the narrative dictates that this is his big trick, to wow the observer and cause the team to cheer. Something like that.
As much as I generally like 4E (it's by far my favorite edition of D&D) the "narrative" element was something I always hated. "Narrative" is the story you tell AFTER the adventure is over. Sometimes it's heroic, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy and sometimes it's a "day in the life" documentary.
Basically... Games are not stories, but stories can be told about games. Trying to force narrative-based abilities (unless you're running a genre-savy PC in a Discworld game) into a game doesn't actually make the resulting stories any better, it just forces you out of your character's head in terms of your choices and, in a sense, reinforces the bad writing tropes like saving your best weapon (that doesn't even have unlimited shots) until the end of a fight in order to produce drama (instead of "why didn't they just bring out the sword to begin with?").
Which was why in my "question everything"* approach to building a 4E spiritual successor the narrative aspect of power use was one of the first cows slaughtered. I'll take a "gas tank" approach to limited ability use any time; it's far easier to justify without meta-mechanics and so doesn't result in stepping out of character to use them.
* one thing that really struck me in reading about the development of 4E was their insistence that they "question everything" about D&D's mechanics and not be afraid to slaughter sacred cows if you could find a better way to do something.
I have no way of knowing how true it actually was or if it was just promotional rhetoric, but the sentiment was close enough to Thomas Jefferson's
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear" that I made it my mantra in starting from 4E and asking whether every mechanic was the best it could be.
Some were. Many weren't. Others had approaches that were neither better nor worse just different and is why I ended up with a rather section on optional rules in my game.
I see 4E as a product that would've succeeded if:
(a) They had kept a more traditional presentation format
(b) The game did more to distinguish between different classes/power sources.
In terms of actual rules changes I think Essentials kind of tries to tackle (b) but I'm pretty fuzzy on all of 4E and by the time Essentials rolled out my attention had already waned.
It wouldn't be hard to make some meaningful differences between different power sources, like a Martial character could attempt to use an expended Daily power again at the cost of Healing Surge(s), recharge with other mechanics, or otherwise distinguish between a Fighter & Wizard.
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 02:42:56 PM
An explanation for martial dailies that I liked was they are narrative-based powers.
If you've ever watched Voltron, you know that when the big fight occurs, Voltron will spend some time shooting rockets and lasers, and wrestling around with the monster robot of the day, but that eventually Voltron is going to be pushed into a corner, so to speak, at which point he pulls out the big honkin' sword and slices the monster in half. Every single time.
The 4ighter has a similar situation. He only pulls off this amazing daily-use power when it makes sense narratively. Maybe that is at the first of the fight, to put the fear into the enemy. Maybe it is in the middle of the fight, to allow the team to back up and refresh. Maybe it is when the fighter is the last one standing. Maybe the team has had a curb stomp battle, and the fighter wants to perform an over-the-top maneuver to end the fight. The story is emergent, and all that jazz.
The fighter doesn't keep spamming brutal strike because he can't, but because the narrative dictates that this is his big trick, to wow the observer and cause the team to cheer. Something like that.
It does make sense to me as a narrative thing
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 02:42:56 PM
An explanation for martial dailies that I liked was they are narrative-based powers.
If you've ever watched Voltron, you know that when the big fight occurs, Voltron will spend some time shooting rockets and lasers, and wrestling around with the monster robot of the day, but that eventually Voltron is going to be pushed into a corner, so to speak, at which point he pulls out the big honkin' sword and slices the monster in half. Every single time.
The 4ighter has a similar situation. He only pulls off this amazing daily-use power when it makes sense narratively. Maybe that is at the first of the fight, to put the fear into the enemy. Maybe it is in the middle of the fight, to allow the team to back up and refresh. Maybe it is when the fighter is the last one standing. Maybe the team has had a curb stomp battle, and the fighter wants to perform an over-the-top maneuver to end the fight. The story is emergent, and all that jazz.
The fighter doesn't keep spamming brutal strike because he can't, but because the narrative dictates that this is his big trick, to wow the observer and cause the team to cheer. Something like that.
And it's become a joke where people ask why Voltron doesn't lead with the Sword attack.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 04, 2021, 05:39:17 PM
And it's become a joke where people ask why Voltron doesn't lead with the Sword attack.
And all kinds of RPGs in the 90s and aughts had mechanisms to emulate something like that, often a meter blatantly stolen from video games. Thrash is one example.
But while I know very little about 4e, that doesn't sound much like their encounter powers.
Quote"Narrative" is the story you tell AFTER the adventure is over.
That is kind of what I was trying to say. The player whips out Brutal Strike because of game reasons. The *character* says, after the battle, that he used that technique at that time because he thought the wizard was about to bite it, or that he wanted to show the goblin chief what sort of threat he was facing, or whatever.
There are powers in 4e that change the story after the fact. The Staff of Defense feature for core wizards allows the player to tell the DM that the attack, as it turns out, didn't succeed. The wizard character's player can do this after the damage has been announced.
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 08:18:36 PM
There are powers in 4e that change the story after the fact. The Staff of Defense feature for core wizards allows the player to tell the DM that the attack, as it turns out, didn't succeed. The wizard character's player can do this after the damage has been announced.
Man I used to hate those reverse time reactions in 4e
Quote from: Shasarak on July 04, 2021, 08:51:46 PM
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 08:18:36 PM
There are powers in 4e that change the story after the fact. The Staff of Defense feature for core wizards allows the player to tell the DM that the attack, as it turns out, didn't succeed. The wizard character's player can do this after the damage has been announced.
Man I used to hate those reverse time reactions in 4e
Definitely a "Only players should have this" feature.
Quote from: Shasarak on July 04, 2021, 08:51:46 PM
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 08:18:36 PM
There are powers in 4e that change the story after the fact. The Staff of Defense feature for core wizards allows the player to tell the DM that the attack, as it turns out, didn't succeed. The wizard character's player can do this after the damage has been announced.
Man I used to hate those reverse time reactions in 4e
Aren't all reactions timed?? A 5E's shield spell function AFTER being hit by an attack, so a when damage is rolled simultaneously with attack roll, it functions the same.
Or 3.5's Immediate Magic feature where the Conjurer can use Abrupt Jaunt, teleporting 10-ft away when attacked or the Abjurer's Urgent Shield (functions like the 5e shield spell).
These are issues too?
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 09:06:56 PM
Quote from: Shasarak on July 04, 2021, 08:51:46 PM
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 08:18:36 PM
There are powers in 4e that change the story after the fact. The Staff of Defense feature for core wizards allows the player to tell the DM that the attack, as it turns out, didn't succeed. The wizard character's player can do this after the damage has been announced.
Man I used to hate those reverse time reactions in 4e
Aren't all reactions timed?? A 5E's shield spell function AFTER being hit by an attack, so a when damage is rolled simultaneously with attack roll, it functions the same.
Or 3.5's Immediate Magic feature where the Conjurer can use Abrupt Jaunt, teleporting 10-ft away when attacked or the Abjurer's Urgent Shield (functions like the 5e shield spell).
These are issues too?
Yeah but technically you don't roll damage at the same time. The order goes:
Roll attack -> determine roll total -> announce success/failure -> roll result occurs.
Shield happens in step 2 at some tables (open rolling), and at step 3 at some other tables (secret rolling).
Only after ALL that do you roll damage.
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Yes, this.
It makes 5e Shield look like childs play.
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
So, then all of WotC versions of D&D?
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Eh, can it do that...sure, but I don't think it's very common in play. Not all monsters have loads of immediate reactions, and the ones that do are still pretty limited. But I do get the gist. In my games, I narrate things after the turn so when something is crazy like that it at least paints a pretty cool picture.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 05, 2021, 12:34:36 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 09:06:56 PM
Quote from: Shasarak on July 04, 2021, 08:51:46 PM
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 04, 2021, 08:18:36 PM
There are powers in 4e that change the story after the fact. The Staff of Defense feature for core wizards allows the player to tell the DM that the attack, as it turns out, didn't succeed. The wizard character's player can do this after the damage has been announced.
Man I used to hate those reverse time reactions in 4e
Aren't all reactions timed?? A 5E's shield spell function AFTER being hit by an attack, so a when damage is rolled simultaneously with attack roll, it functions the same.
Or 3.5's Immediate Magic feature where the Conjurer can use Abrupt Jaunt, teleporting 10-ft away when attacked or the Abjurer's Urgent Shield (functions like the 5e shield spell).
These are issues too?
Yeah but technically you don't roll damage at the same time. The order goes:
Roll attack -> determine roll total -> announce success/failure -> roll result occurs.
Shield happens in step 2 at some tables (open rolling), and at step 3 at some other tables (secret rolling).
Only after ALL that do you roll damage.
We did a lot of 3.5, so to cut down on time I often would roll both simultaneously and just color code the dice to modifiers: blue d20 and d8 was 1st at +17; red d20 and d8 was 2nd at +12, white d20 and d8 was 3rd at +7, etc. It's something that sot if just continued
I do that in roll20 too to speed things up; I just accept that as an acceptable loss (the fact the player sees the damage when he declares Shield) to move things along.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 05, 2021, 12:32:54 PM
I do that in roll20 too to speed things up; I just accept that as an acceptable loss (the fact the player sees the damage when he declares Shield) to move things along.
I'm OK with it because hit/damage is simultaneously happening in the narrative.
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:08:21 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
So, then all of WotC versions of D&D?
Yep.
I have noticed that most arguments I see promoting 4e in comparison to other editions focus on comparisons with 3e or 5e. I don't know if it is based on recency-bias, the age of the comparer, or the fact that the comparisons tend to be more favorable vs WotC editions as opposed to TSR editions. But it's definitely noticeable.
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:08:21 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
So, then all of WotC versions of D&D?
Nope. Just 4E.
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:14:37 AM
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Eh, can it do that...sure, but I don't think it's very common in play. Not all monsters have loads of immediate reactions, and the ones that do are still pretty limited. But I do get the gist. In my games, I narrate things after the turn so when something is crazy like that it at least paints a pretty cool picture.
Sure. I'm joking, but I also kind of like that kind of complexity. The unfortunate thing is the game's relentless about it, so by hour 3 of a fight your brain is fried.
I'd love to take (or see) a fresh look at 4E's chassis and try to address some of its as discussed in this thread.
Quote from: Zelen on July 06, 2021, 06:43:44 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:14:37 AM
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Eh, can it do that...sure, but I don't think it's very common in play. Not all monsters have loads of immediate reactions, and the ones that do are still pretty limited. But I do get the gist. In my games, I narrate things after the turn so when something is crazy like that it at least paints a pretty cool picture.
Sure. I'm joking, but I also kind of like that kind of complexity. The unfortunate thing is the game's relentless about it, so by hour 3 of a fight your brain is fried.
I'd love to take (or see) a fresh look at 4E's chassis and try to address some of its as discussed in this thread.
I've been doing that for several years now in building my own system. If you're interested I can share.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 05, 2021, 06:54:31 PM
Yep.
I have noticed that most arguments I see promoting 4e in comparison to other editions focus on comparisons with 3e or 5e. I don't know if it is based on recency-bias, the age of the comparer, or the fact that the comparisons tend to be more favorable vs WotC editions as opposed to TSR editions. But it's definitely noticeable.
Mostly because the WotC editions are - in part - reactionary to each other in the changes they made. The design philosophies that are their basic principles have altered to degrees, but concepts and mechanicisms have been pretty constant. The idea of martial abilities really started in "core" with 3e's Extraordinary Abilities (Ex, as its simplified) and are often based on a rest mechanic to recover. B/X, 1e, and 2e (minus, maybe, Skills and Powers?) are devoid of this, so it doesn't make sense to compare to things other systems never really used. "Taunt" mechanics back in the day were simply a player role-playing to get a monster to attack him, in 3e we got the Goad feat, Challenges from the Knight, Stances from the Crusader, and Skill Tricks too. In 4e, defenders got a whole class gimmick. In 5e, we have maneuvers from the Battle Master, a spell specifically called Compelled Duel. So when comparing editions, it seems to make sense to compare the ones who have mechanical applications vs. Ones in which are based on what the DM allowed.
Quote from: Mishihari on July 06, 2021, 12:07:15 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:08:21 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
So, then all of WotC versions of D&D?
Nope. Just 4E.
Ah, the hypocritical approach. Bold move 😄
Quote from: Zelen on July 06, 2021, 06:43:44 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:14:37 AM
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Eh, can it do that...sure, but I don't think it's very common in play. Not all monsters have loads of immediate reactions, and the ones that do are still pretty limited. But I do get the gist. In my games, I narrate things after the turn so when something is crazy like that it at least paints a pretty cool picture.
Sure. I'm joking, but I also kind of like that kind of complexity. The unfortunate thing is the game's relentless about it, so by hour 3 of a fight your brain is fried.
I'd love to take (or see) a fresh look at 4E's chassis and try to address some of its as discussed in this thread.
Of all the years I played 4e, I think we only had one session where only one battle took that long to complete. It was sort of thr BBEG one involving a lot of moving parts and side things to accomplish. Most of our battles take 45 minutes to finish.
For changes, certainly 4e needed some. Even as I'm a fan, I'm not blind to the myriad of issues it had - especially early on. Monsters HP bloat was an issue as was their initial damage expressions (far too low). I love minions but don't think it should have been 1 HP (I'm thinking more like 20% of the standard monster HP value). So a Soldier Demon (lv. 12 Dretch lackey minion) might have something like 28 hp instead of 1.
Math would've been better too and a greater emphasis on Roles
outside of class schematics. A Wizard defender would be pretty cool as is a Sneaky cleric. It's possible in 4e, just not optimal.
Edit: also, maneuvers / Exploits / at-will would be universal. A Ranger can know Cleave, a Fighter can know Deft Strike, a Cleric can use a smite or a paladin blast away with Sacred Flame. Open up the power construct more and more cross germination among classes so they're not so....Boxy.
This sort of leads down the options like 3e where classes Don't really matter and you cobble together effects into a whole.
Quote from: Batman on July 06, 2021, 07:45:21 PM
Quote from: Zelen on July 06, 2021, 06:43:44 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:14:37 AM
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Eh, can it do that...sure, but I don't think it's very common in play. Not all monsters have loads of immediate reactions, and the ones that do are still pretty limited. But I do get the gist. In my games, I narrate things after the turn so when something is crazy like that it at least paints a pretty cool picture.
Sure. I'm joking, but I also kind of like that kind of complexity. The unfortunate thing is the game's relentless about it, so by hour 3 of a fight your brain is fried.
I'd love to take (or see) a fresh look at 4E's chassis and try to address some of its as discussed in this thread.
Of all the years I played 4e, I think we only had one session where only one battle took that long to complete. It was sort of thr BBEG one involving a lot of moving parts and side things to accomplish. Most of our battles take 45 minutes to finish.
For changes, certainly 4e needed some. Even as I'm a fan, I'm not blind to the myriad of issues it had - especially early on. Monsters HP bloat was an issue as was their initial damage expressions (far too low). I love minions but don't think it should have been 1 HP (I'm thinking more like 20% of the standard monster HP value). So a Soldier Demon (lv. 12 Dretch lackey minion) might have something like 28 hp instead of 1.
I've tinkered with the idea of a damage threshold. Do less than the creature's damage threshold and they're "wounded". A wounded creature that's wounded again is killed. (Defeated, whatever)
So you only have to track whether a minion is wounded or not.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 06, 2021, 07:53:53 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 06, 2021, 07:45:21 PM
Quote from: Zelen on July 06, 2021, 06:43:44 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:14:37 AM
Quote from: Zelen on July 05, 2021, 01:10:49 AM
4E has a lot of conditional effects to the point where action #1 occurs, you trigger a reaction #2, the enemy has an effect that happens based on your reaction #3, your ally can interrupt the enemy #4, which triggers a mark #5...
All of a sudden you're 10 levels deep and you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice in Mexico wondering whose turn it is.
Eh, can it do that...sure, but I don't think it's very common in play. Not all monsters have loads of immediate reactions, and the ones that do are still pretty limited. But I do get the gist. In my games, I narrate things after the turn so when something is crazy like that it at least paints a pretty cool picture.
Sure. I'm joking, but I also kind of like that kind of complexity. The unfortunate thing is the game's relentless about it, so by hour 3 of a fight your brain is fried.
I'd love to take (or see) a fresh look at 4E's chassis and try to address some of its as discussed in this thread.
Of all the years I played 4e, I think we only had one session where only one battle took that long to complete. It was sort of thr BBEG one involving a lot of moving parts and side things to accomplish. Most of our battles take 45 minutes to finish.
For changes, certainly 4e needed some. Even as I'm a fan, I'm not blind to the myriad of issues it had - especially early on. Monsters HP bloat was an issue as was their initial damage expressions (far too low). I love minions but don't think it should have been 1 HP (I'm thinking more like 20% of the standard monster HP value). So a Soldier Demon (lv. 12 Dretch lackey minion) might have something like 28 hp instead of 1.
I've tinkered with the idea of a damage threshold. Do less than the creature's damage threshold and they're "wounded". A wounded creature that's wounded again is killed. (Defeated, whatever)
So you only have to track whether a minion is wounded or not.
It's not much of a stretch to go from there to the Savage Worlds damage/health system.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 06, 2021, 07:53:53 PM
I've tinkered with the idea of a damage threshold. Do less than the creature's damage threshold and they're "wounded". A wounded creature that's wounded again is killed. (Defeated, whatever)
So you only have to track whether a minion is wounded or not.
That's pretty common in wargames. For instance, in Battlesystem (1e), taking at least 1/4 but less than the figure's HD (hp) in damage results in a wound, and you put a wound counter on the figure. A second wound, and the figure is killed.
You can also integrate that with a morale system. Games like B/X handle morale at the unit level, i.e. whether the band of goblin stands or flees. But in real life gunfights, most people who are wounded go down, and are out of the fight. Even when highly trained. So having monsters drop when wounded, and basing that on morale, is quite reasonable, and brings back the terror when fighting creatures who don't check morale (like undead).
I also agree on the minions needing at least *some* adjustment. I personally DMed with minions having more than 1 HP too. A strict 1 HP thing makes them paper-thin and also feels too game-y, especially as levels advance. Some of the alternatives presented are promising.
Quote from: Batman on July 06, 2021, 07:33:28 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on July 06, 2021, 12:07:15 PM
Quote from: Batman on July 05, 2021, 06:08:21 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
So, then all of WotC versions of D&D?
Nope. Just 4E.
Ah, the hypocritical approach. Bold move 😄
Anyone with half a brain can see the difference. I've been through this discussion before, multiple time. Back in the day when it looked like the 4E approach was going to dominate it was worth arguing in detail. Today, your game is pretty much dead and few care about it anymore. I don't care to spend energy arguing the obvious anymore.
Quote from: Mishihari on July 06, 2021, 11:55:27 PM
Anyone with half a brain can see the difference. I've been through this discussion before, multiple time. Back in the day when it looked like the 4E approach was going to dominate it was worth arguing in detail. Today, your game is pretty much dead and few care about it anymore. I don't care to spend energy arguing the obvious anymore.
There's literally hundreds of non-magical (Ex) abilities rife through 3e, 3.5, and Pathfinder 1e. This isn't a bad thing. There's lots (don't know exactly how many off the top of my head) of the same thing in 5E, even in the Core classes - like the Fighter - that have the exact same application to the narrative of the game AND the exact same reason why it's "depleted". Because "balance" or "Gameist". The Fighter uses Action Surge 1/short or long rest. Why? The have Maneuvers that use a rest-action to replenish, why? All I wanted to know is why the 3.5 Barbarian's extraordinary Rage feature 1/day gets a pass, why the 3.5 Monk's stunning fist x/day (no ties to Ki) gets a pass, why the 5E Fighter's Action Surge 1/rest gets a pass, why the Battle Master's maneuvers X/rest get a pass BUT because it's in a color-coded box that
LOOKS like a spell.....well shit there's a giant NOPE on it?
IF you don't like arbitrary game-ist narrative concepts that have no "real life" logical reason for limitation, that's all find and dandy. Eirikrautha said as much, which makes sense. ALL 4E did was give more people access to them and make them colorful. That's it. I wonder though, if people would've lost their absolute
shit if we saw this in the 5E player's Handbook.
Action Surge; Fighter FeatureYou push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment, surging you on to fight even longerFree Action; PersonalEffect: On your turn, you can take on additional action on top of our regular action and a possible bonus action
•
Recharge: You regain the use of this effect when you complete a short or long rest.
Lastly, yeah I know the game is "dead", but funny enough we're
still talking about and discussing it 13 years after it debuted and 7 years after it "died".
Quote from: Batman on July 07, 2021, 01:28:09 AM
There's literally hundreds of non-magical (Ex) abilities rife through 3e, 3.5, and Pathfinder 1e. This isn't a bad thing. There's lots (don't know exactly how many off the top of my head) of the same thing in 5E, even in the Core classes - like the Fighter - that have the exact same application to the narrative of the game AND the exact same reason why it's "depleted". Because "balance" or "Gameist". The Fighter uses Action Surge 1/short or long rest. Why? The have Maneuvers that use a rest-action to replenish, why? All I wanted to know is why the 3.5 Barbarian's extraordinary Rage feature 1/day gets a pass, why the 3.5 Monk's stunning fist x/day (no ties to Ki) gets a pass, why the 5E Fighter's Action Surge 1/rest gets a pass, why the Battle Master's maneuvers X/rest get a pass BUT because it's in a color-coded box that LOOKS like a spell.....well shit there's a giant NOPE on it?
This is about suspension of disbelief, which is highly idiosyncratic and personal. At least 5 people have explained to you why the 4e abilities shatter their suspension of disbelief, while the 3.5 abilities do not. It's kind of presumptuous to angrily demand they repeat themselves again and again, because you're under the mistaken impression that your own subjective preferences are objective truths. They're not.
Just accept that people draw the line in different places. What works for you doesn't work for a lot of people. This isn't about being right or wrong, it's about what breaks immersion for each individual. If you're really interested in what other people think, go back and read the several pages where it was covered in this thread. Don't just dismiss them as wrong, because that's a silly thing to do. They're opinions. It's like saying someone is wrong for liking the color blue, when you like orange.
Quote from: Batman on July 07, 2021, 01:28:09 AM
Recharge: You regain the use of this effect when you complete a short or long rest.
For some of us, the difference between this and "once per Encounter" is significant. I appreciate that you don't find it so, but repeatedly asserting that it's equivalent isn't convincing.
(And Pat seems to be saying the same thing at the same time.)
Quote from: Naburimannu on July 07, 2021, 02:04:47 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 07, 2021, 01:28:09 AM
Recharge: You regain the use of this effect when you complete a short or long rest.
For some of us, the difference between this and "once per Encounter" is significant. I appreciate that you don't find it so, but repeatedly asserting that it's equivalent isn't convincing.
(And Pat seems to be saying the same thing at the same time.)
Maybe I don't understand why they're significant?
Quote from: Batman on July 07, 2021, 02:08:40 AM
Quote from: Naburimannu on July 07, 2021, 02:04:47 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 07, 2021, 01:28:09 AM
Recharge: You regain the use of this effect when you complete a short or long rest.
For some of us, the difference between this and "once per Encounter" is significant. I appreciate that you don't find it so, but repeatedly asserting that it's equivalent isn't convincing.
(And Pat seems to be saying the same thing at the same time.)
Maybe I don't understand why they're significant?
Possibly the assumption is that having a rest makes some kind of narrative sense (I don't see it personally).
It works better, because not having it happen every encounter reliably means that the Fighter has the strategic decision about whether it's worth using in any individual encounter which means waiting and scoping out the combat, whereas if it was every encounter you'd be pretty much always better using it straight away in the first round (which drained a lot of the tactical interest from 4e after awhile).
But it could mean that calling it per rest lets it slip past without people really paying attention to it's unreality.
But well...if that works, then it works.
Quote from: TJS on July 07, 2021, 02:32:47 AM
Possibly the assumption is that having a rest makes some kind of narrative sense (I don't see it personally).
It works better, because not having it happen every encounter reliably means that the Fighter has the strategic decision about whether it's worth using in any individual encounter which means waiting and scoping out the combat, whereas if it was every encounter you'd be pretty much always better using it straight away in the first round (which drained a lot of the tactical interest from 4e after awhile).
But it could mean that calling it per rest lets it slip past without people really paying attention to it's unreality.
But well...if that works, then it works.
That's a fair assessment
If it's tied to a rest at least there's a narrative, in-game reason why you're able to do it again. Breaking it out into "encounters" is imposing a metagame concept onto the action that makes it feel more artificial.
Quote from: TJS on July 07, 2021, 02:32:47 AM
Possibly the assumption is that having a rest makes some kind of narrative sense (I don't see it personally).
It works better, because not having it happen every encounter reliably means that the Fighter has the strategic decision about whether it's worth using in any individual encounter which means waiting and scoping out the combat, whereas if it was every encounter you'd be pretty much always better using it straight away in the first round (which drained a lot of the tactical interest from 4e after awhile).
But it could mean that calling it per rest lets it slip past without people really paying attention to it's unreality.
But well...if that works, then it works.
It is a very thin veneer that adds a little pretense that it is different. Objectively, that's all it is. Subjectively, apparently the thin veneer is a lot more useful to many people. Me, I don't really connect to that in RPG. I can get it intellectually, but for me a thin veneer that doesn't do anything else is just a thin veneer that I see through immediately. However, I'm used to playing Hero System, where there is no veneer at all except what you apply yourself.
Where I can kind of connect is in board and computer games. There are a lot of games that have a similar divide, but for those I typically fall on the side that the veneer matters. People who are really good at, say, the Civilization computer games apparently all but ignore the veneer and play the game as a giant puzzle spreadsheet. That would bore me to death. I can objectively see how playing the spreadsheet is the way to win, but its only fun if I'm paying some attention to the eye candy, thinking alternate history, etc. Then there is the Waterdeep board game. The veneer on that is so tacked on that it actively gets in my way of the enjoyment--the way many people talk about D&D 4E.
I think there is an uncanny valley of pretense, where it is enough that people see it for pretense but not enough to accept it an play. You get the same thing with labels in the game. There are some where a class is just a mechanical widget with the veneer of an archetype which can be ignored when it becomes inconvenient. They don't mind if the way to have a great archer is to always pick the "ranger" mechanical widget and then flavor as needed. What you call it in game could be anything. There are others that the "ranger" is an archetype and the "fighter" is an archetype, and both better be capable of being outstanding archers or they don't like it.
In the parlance of the 4E backlash, and a word that I find ill-chosen and frequently misused, for me all RPG mechanics are "disassociated". Any association is provided by the user.
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
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.
Same possibly with alot of other "use per day" sorts of things. These could be anything from exploiting a moment in combat to a reserve of energy called upon. One of the strengths of D&D and RPGs is that you can say its whatever and that works. As a DM I've seen players describe these things all sorts of ways in use. Sometimes different ways each time because thats how it fit the moment.
Others make a little less sense but overall those tend to be few and far between.
This goes way back to O and A D&D where a combat round took a full minute. But only one attack is made? Thats because the round is taken up with the general parry-thrust-block-dodge back and fourth between opponents and the attack roll represents that moment of opening where damage might be done, or that big lunge that makes the opponent scramble to avoid and wears them down that much more.
I have softened on encounter powers over the years because I realized I really could not be bothered as a GM to keep track of exact minutes for effect durations. And I highly doubt any GM that isn't a secret robot does either.
I found effect durations only really matter for PC plans or specific time periods, and as long as some semblance of measure of that exists outside of stuff like combat, thats OK.
But I get the talk about Veneers. I liked Endless Legend more then Endless Space 2 because I felt more 'There'.
The funniest part is that all the critics of 4E don't seem to know that encounter powers DO require a short rest to recover them. It's right there in the rules for encounter powers.
But because the 4E designers actually systematized things using keywords it didn't need to be restated in every single power; the "encounter" keyword literally means "regained after a short or long rest." Likewise, the 4E daily keyword means "regained after a long rest."
Basically, the only difference between 4E's "encounter" keyword and 5e's "recharges after a short or long rest" is that 4E takes 3x fewer letters to write out.
Quote from: Omega on July 07, 2021, 07:52:40 AM
Quote from: Mishihari on July 05, 2021, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: Batman on July 04, 2021, 10:12:48 AM"Why can't my Fighter action surge at-will? Because it would break the game." IS a viable reason why it's not something they can do all the time. It doesn't make RL sense, but then D&D isn't supposed to mirror or mimic real life. What my issue is, that people are fine to overlook the dozens of ways in which non-magic classes have daily/rest limitations on their abilities BUT weren't able to do that with 4E.
I couldn't get past the arbitrary limits on daily powers. If something is what it is for gamist or narrative reasons, but there isn't any in-setting explanation for why it should be so, then the game just gets a "no" from me.
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.
Same possibly with alot of other "use per day" sorts of things. These could be anything from exploiting a moment in combat to a reserve of energy called upon. One of the strengths of D&D and RPGs is that you can say its whatever and that works. As a DM I've seen players describe these things all sorts of ways in use. Sometimes different ways each time because thats how it fit the moment.
Others make a little less sense but overall those tend to be few and far between.
This goes way back to O and A D&D where a combat round took a full minute. But only one attack is made? Thats because the round is taken up with the general parry-thrust-block-dodge back and fourth between opponents and the attack roll represents that moment of opening where damage might be done, or that big lunge that makes the opponent scramble to avoid and wears them down that much more.
As an example of describing powers differently, the 7th level 4ighter encounter power "Come and Get It" is presented as the fighter pointing at his enemies as if saying, "You. Me. Right here, right now." And, all the monsters obediently plod over to get whacked. A player who does not like that idea might, instead, describe his character as stumbling and fumbling, and the enemies rush in, seeing what they think is an opportunity, only to get mighty-stabbed.
I 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.
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 07, 2021, 10:43:41 AM
As an example of describing powers differently, the 7th level 4ighter encounter power "Come and Get It" is presented as the fighter pointing at his enemies as if saying, "You. Me. Right here, right now." And, all the monsters obediently plod over to get whacked. A player who does not like that idea might, instead, describe his character as stumbling and fumbling, and the enemies rush in, seeing what they think is an opportunity, only to get mighty-stabbed.
Worth noting too is that "Come and Get It" isn't automatic. You have to make the equivalent to a successful 3e feint check vs. each target to actually draw the targets in. The only difference is that instead of the feint making the target flat-footed it makes them close with you.
Quote from: Chris24601 on July 07, 2021, 11:24:30 AM
Quote from: cavalier973 on July 07, 2021, 10:43:41 AM
As an example of describing powers differently, the 7th level 4ighter encounter power "Come and Get It" is presented as the fighter pointing at his enemies as if saying, "You. Me. Right here, right now." And, all the monsters obediently plod over to get whacked. A player who does not like that idea might, instead, describe his character as stumbling and fumbling, and the enemies rush in, seeing what they think is an opportunity, only to get mighty-stabbed.
Worth noting too is that "Come and Get It" isn't automatic. You have to make the equivalent to a successful 3e feint check vs. each target to actually draw the targets in. The only difference is that instead of the feint making the target flat-footed it makes them close with you.
The System Mastery guys talked about a fighter power that began with a "Push"; the target of the power was "one creature" instead of "one enemy", so they interpreted as the fighter throwing the halfling ranger to the enemies' back line.
I totally agree that these are all basically the same thing and that it comes down to an immersive taste.
I will say there's one way this can impact it: a lot of people like to pretend as they read their PHB's and other books that these are a window into the game world, that these might be actual tomes you're parting through, that sort of thing. The 3.5 book covers are a good example of this. With those it lets you drawn into the fantasy element just by reading it, but for 4e it feels like looking at a videogame menu (even though the information is the same and it actually is more clear).
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.
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.
Yeah but 5e is widely praised because everyone in the industry wanted it to suceed.
If anyone but WotC had released it and it had been anything but D&D it would have been raked over the coals.
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.
5e wasnt.
I was a playtester for it. And got some things changed for the better despite WOTCs best efforts to fuck it up. And it still came out with a plethora of problems we wold them WERE problems and needed fixing.
But rushed? No. They took a fair amount of time refining it and be glad of that as if they'd rushed out with what they originally planned it would have 95% likely crashed and burned.
In fact theres a fair amount of hang time between playtesting stuff and release to a book so far. The stuff they don't playtest on the other hand? Who knows. Most of that is just the usual spending alot of pages to say very little and having little to no new mechanics.
I am surprised they so far are maintaining the sedate pace they have done for 5e.
5e doesn't really playtest. They solicit opinions. There may be a long wait time between UA releases and publication, but there's only a short time between UA release and feedback survey. There's no way for class options to receive a thorough playtest in that time.
What they are doing is really more market testing. They probably also keep an eye on forums and the like to see if optimisers have noticed combos or interactions that they have not, which is not worthless, but I suspect the real playtesting, such as it is, happens in house.
What WotC try do to, as they did with 4e, is to design systems that are siloed enough that they don't really need playtesting, because the amount of things they could conceivably interact with is so limited.
Quote from: Omega on July 10, 2021, 07:17:10 PM
5e wasnt.
I was a playtester as well. They wanted to do a whole lot more with the system as written in articles now purged from their website.
5e is a rushjob in the same vein of 4e, it just is so forgiving, unfocused and lacking content (its not rules-lite) that people see what they want in it.
If they were rushing this stuff we'd see far more problems than we have.
Now the initial print run of 5e on the other hand very much was rushed on multiple levels. To the point it was not till about 11 or 12 print runs before they hammered out most of those. And STILL left in the stuff that causes problems like long and short rests and even re-inforced those problems.
Quote from: Omega on July 10, 2021, 09:05:42 PM
If they were rushing this stuff we'd see far more problems than we have.
Now the initial print run of 5e on the other hand very much was rushed on multiple levels. To the point it was not till about 11 or 12 print runs before they hammered out most of those. And STILL left in the stuff that causes problems like long and short rests and even re-inforced those problems.
Have a look at the current thread on ENworld about the Twilight Cleric.
But by and large there's very little that can go wrong. That's why balance is not being broken. Not because of rigorous playtesting. Most of the new content they produce is races and subclasses. Races are built to a formula and pretty much left to GM whim on being included anyway. Subclasses are...almost nothing really. Their mechanical impact on the game is generally pretty small - so in most cases there's not a lot of room for them to be overpowered.
If subclasses were something that could be taken independently of class like 3e Prestige Classes or 4e Paragon Paths, then the balance issues would be much greater, but they've designed themselves out of the need of playtesting to address that.
Quote from: Omega on July 10, 2021, 09:05:42 PM
If they were rushing this stuff we'd see far more problems than we have.
The core maths system is so utterly nothing there isn't much to break.
It fixed gangrenous fingers by means of amputating the entire arm.
And as pointed out, its by and large still poorly balanced. Character variance has just been severely lessened, so there is less stuff to fuck up.
But its not rules lite. Rules lite systems can make minimal changes be impactful, and have good improv suggestions or guidelines which 5e lacks.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 10, 2021, 09:41:40 PM
Quote from: Omega on July 10, 2021, 09:05:42 PM
If they were rushing this stuff we'd see far more problems than we have.
The core maths system is so utterly nothing there isn't much to break.
It fixed gangrenous fingers by means of amputating the entire arm.
And as pointed out, its by and large still poorly balanced. Character variance has just been severely lessened, so there is less stuff to fuck up.
But its not rules lite. Rules lite systems can make minimal changes be impactful, and have good improv suggestions or guidelines which 5e lacks.
It's definitely not rules lite. The idea that it even could be is based simply on the fact that it's D&D and people are expected to know it.
No game where you have to stop and have a discussion on why you can only cast a cantrip because you used a bonus action spell, or why you can't take an opportunity attack because you already used a reaction to do something completely different, or why you can't misty step and dual wield in the same turn would ever be held up as rule lite if it were held to the same standard as every game out there that is not D&D.
It's a simpler tactical board game than 4e was, but it's not less of a tactical boardgame.
As I said once somewhere else, 5E has enough of the trash produced in 4E left over in it to make me dislike it instinctively.
Filing off the serial numbers on 4E mechanics, and changing the presentation somewhat, does not erase their stink.
The only thing to "get" about 4E is rid of it.
Quote from: BronzeDragon on July 11, 2021, 09:25:40 AM
The only thing to "get" about 4E is rid of it.
Now show us on the doll where 4e hurt you....
Quote from: Batman on July 12, 2021, 02:24:22 PM
Quote from: BronzeDragon on July 11, 2021, 09:25:40 AM
The only thing to "get" about 4E is rid of it.
Now show us on the doll where 4e hurt you....
I know, right? Its not enough to say you don't like 4E, it must be memory-holed and erased with no one allowed to even play it in the privacy of their own home as if it never existed for some people to actually be happy.
There's a reason I say just because someone is anti-Woke it doesn't necessarily make them someone you want to be allies with; sometimes it feels like the only reason some are opposed to the SJWs is that THEY want to be the ones wielding the power of who is or isn't cancelled.
Quote from: TJS on July 10, 2021, 07:31:13 PM
5e doesn't really playtest. They solicit opinions. There may be a long wait time between UA releases and publication, but there's only a short time between UA release and feedback survey. There's no way for class options to receive a thorough playtest in that time.
What they are doing is really more market testing. They probably also keep an eye on forums and the like to see if optimisers have noticed combos or interactions that they have not, which is not worthless, but I suspect the real playtesting, such as it is, happens in house.
What WotC try do to, as they did with 4e, is to design systems that are siloed enough that they don't really need playtesting, because the amount of things they could conceivably interact with is so limited.
They do playtest, but as you said, it's in-house. Why leave balancing to reddit? The UA releases are for marketing.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 12, 2021, 03:11:22 PMThey do playtest, but as you said, it's in-house. Why leave balancing to reddit? The UA releases are for marketing.
Well then their playtesting and balancing sucks eggs in-house. The argument was that 5e was not rushed, using UA as evidence of that.
Quote from: Chris24601 on July 12, 2021, 02:40:52 PM
I know, right? Its not enough to say you don't like 4E, it must be memory-holed and erased with no one allowed to even play it in the privacy of their own home as if it never existed for some people to actually be happy.
That was why I wanted to make this thread. Me saying that 4e wasn't for me, but I felt I learned some of its merits. That there are worthwhile things to take from 4e from a educational standpoint at the very least.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 12, 2021, 03:47:22 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 12, 2021, 03:11:22 PMThey do playtest, but as you said, it's in-house. Why leave balancing to reddit? The UA releases are for marketing.
Well then their playtesting and balancing sucks eggs in-house. The argument was that 5e was not rushed, using UA as evidence of that.
Quote from: Chris24601 on July 12, 2021, 02:40:52 PM
I know, right? Its not enough to say you don't like 4E, it must be memory-holed and erased with no one allowed to even play it in the privacy of their own home as if it never existed for some people to actually be happy.
That was why I wanted to make this thread. Me saying that 4e wasn't for me, but I felt I learned some of its merits. That there are worthwhile things to take from 4e from a educational standpoint at the very least.
Absolutely. Here's a quote from myself over on ENWorld a long time ago
Quote
I voted "other" because none of the things I like about 4E were mentioned. I liked the cosmology, especially the fey and shadow planes, or whatever they were called. I liked the "bloodied" status. I liked the alignments. I liked minions and solos. There were some things I thought were good ideas but poorly implemented, like skill challenges and warlords. And most of the rest I really hated, but that's a topic for another thread.
People used to get so worked up about these discussions though, that it was easier to take an emotional, extreme position rather than a rational, nuanced one.
Greetings!
Indeed, cast 4E into the bonfires! 4E deserves to burn for being a terrible abomination! ;D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2021, 08:12:46 PM
Greetings!
Indeed, cast 4E into the bonfires! 4E deserves to burn for being a terrible abomination! ;D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Except, it wasn't. What must really stick in some craws is that 5E takes a LOT of mechanics and concepts of 4E (hilariously, much to BronzeDragons chagrin) and turned it into the best selling edition of all time. Mre than all previous editions combined, so it's said. And while 5e isn't my favorite, I can appreciate the avenues it took to get there. When I see a Feat, sub-path, or spell pop up that is intrinsically 4E inspired and people wax on about how fun or good or whatever, I just smile.