D&D 4E More reflections on 4e and 5e.

Warbringer · Oct 6, 2012

GreyICE said:
Yay lets start an edition war! Those go well.

It's not an edition war when is ..

A) admittance its fun
B) comparative

Less of the knee jerk reactions would be really helpful

GreyICE · Oct 6, 2012

Hmmm. So would it be fair to say that in my experience 3E is a rather wordy exercise in building ridiculous characters and demonstrating system mastery, and is not a proper edition of D&D?

4E is the proper successor to AD&D, 3E was an aberration.

Manbearcat · Oct 6, 2012

I don't know what ever possessed me to post that poll. Clearly, it was a momentary lapse of sanity on my end.

Warbringer · Oct 6, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Not just fighter. Most martial classes. Flexible Melee Attacks - you pick them in Char Gen, then roll a normal to hit roll, and see which of the flexible melee attacks you have access to are triggered by the roll.

"I like roleplaying. The rules should be there to support that."

so does that mean that dependent on the outcome of the roll you then describe the impact? Does a high roll has more outcomes?

Neonchameleon · Oct 7, 2012

Warbringer said:
so does that mean that dependent on the outcome of the roll you then describe the impact? Does a high roll has more outcomes?

Not necessarily a high roll - it depends what options you picked. Some of them say "any even roll", some "any even roll that hits", some even say a roll of 1-5 and mitigate a miss IIRC.

Johnny3D3D said:
Doesn't that still require learning the rules?

Slowly. And she'd do better with a lighter game.

Argyle King · Oct 7, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Slowly. And she'd do better with a lighter game.

I'm not trying to knock anybody. I apologize ahead of time if I'm coming across elitist or anything like that. For me, I find 4E to be mostly straight forward as far as pure mechanics go.

However, I think something I said in a previous post might be relevant here. Personally, I do not believe lighter games are necessarily more engaging or easier to learn. From a mechanical perspective, I view 4E as being fairly easy compared to the other games I play. However, as I said in my previous post, I've found that learning and understanding aren't always the same thing. I've had an easier time teaching some of the more complex games I play because they are structured in a way which allowed me to more easily relate what was going on in the game to the player. I would also venture to say that the one I have in mind as I post this is -while mechanically more heavy- more consistent at its base. Consistency can help; it's possible to know how one aspect of D&D works and yet have virtually no idea how a different aspect works.

Obviously, that isn't going to be true for everybody, but it's something I've found interesting at the very least.

Overall, the point I was trying to get at with my more recent posts is that a little bit of effort can sometimes go a long way. As always, different people are going to have an easier or a harder time with different things. What's easy for me might be difficult for someone else, and the reverse is also often true. Still, I've seen a lot of posts here (as well as on other fora) which seem to find the idea of just writing something down (i.e. making a note of a rule which you have trouble remembering) to be an undue amount of burden to place on a player. That view is somewhat alien to me.

Steely_Dan · Oct 7, 2012

GreyICE said:
4E is the proper successor to AD&D, 3E was an aberration.

3rd and 4th Ed can both go take a hike for me at this point (though they do have concepts/mechanics I dig: incarnum, etc), that's why I'm digging 5th Ed so far, looks like a proper successor to Basic and 1st Ed.

I'm A Banana · Oct 8, 2012

Oh, I see that nearly everyone has decided that bickering about how their favorite version of Play Make-Believe is beyond reproach and/or how bad the other one sucks (and in at least one case, both) is more interesting than talking about the topic at hand.

More than ten pages in, and BT's original post is long done being talked about, so I'm gonna close this rodeo down. I'm tempted to hand out infractions like candy, but lets just try starting fresh.