D&D 3E/3.5 Play Board Games Review: "5e really feels like the best from 2e, 3e and 4e."

Sunseeker · Aug 29, 2014

Dausuul said:
Death saves.

Tightly controlled attack and defense values.

At-will cantrips.

Ritual spellcasting.

Recharging monster abilities.

Binary skills ("trained/untrained" rather than skill points).

Dragonborn and "devil pact" tieflings.

Full healing with a night's rest, and a nonmagical "self-healing" resource.

Warlock pacts and a lot of the warlock spells.

Passive skills.

Legendary/solo monsters.

Floating stat bonus for humans.

The Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Elemental Chaos.

Dex bonus to damage on ranged and finesse weapons.

Str bonus to hit on thrown weapons.

Two types of rests (short and long).

Option to knock creatures unconscious at 0 rather than killing.

I could probably find more if I kept looking. 5E takes its broad shape from 3E, there's certainly no question about that; but it adopted a slew of 4E's mechanical innovations.

Yeah but only a few of these things are expressly 4E innovations. Even fewer of them are things people would look at and go "Oh! That's a 4E thing." But as the rest of my post goes on to note, that's exactly what I found as well. The 4E takes are largely mathematical, systemic fixes and a few tweaks to what 3.X had played with but never really implemented as standard. It's a 3X pig roasted in a light 4E glaze, which means it's going to look and smell like 3X, and you're only going to notice the 4E-isms when you take a bite. Wizards wasn't going to turn a blind eye to good math and good game science over the dislike for 4E, but I feel that largely they've made strong efforts to bury anything distinctly 4E.

Fion · Aug 29, 2014

Actually it plays a lot more like AD&D (2nd ed) than 3rd or 4th. It's say it has about as much of 3rd edition 'baked in' as it has 4th or even AD&D. It's very much an amalgamation and simplification. I think that's why it feels like AD&D at the table.

Jester David · Aug 29, 2014

I've said before that 5e is a bit of a Rorschach test. This thread is a great example.

People who like 4e but hate 5e aren't likely to see much 4th Edition in the game.
People who hate 4e and hate 5e are going to see lots of 4th edition in the game.
People who like 4e and like 5e are going to see lots of 4th edition in the game.

Andor · Aug 29, 2014

I think it's a sign of just how harmful the 4e edition war was to D&D that we are even having this discussion. When 3e came out no one went through it with a fine toothed comb calling out what came from BECMI/AD&D/2e.

5e is it's own edition. It is informed by all that came before it, but it is not a pastiche, or a chimera. It is a new edition of D&D. It does have deliberate design features that invoke play elements of different editions. For example a fan of encounter abilities will be more attracted to the Battle Master than the Eldritch Knight or Champion. A fan of the AEDU power schema will prefer the Warlock to the Wizard. And that's fine, 5e has goals beyond being a fine game. It's also an attempt to reunite a split fanbase. But it is not the reincarnation of 3e, 4e, 2e or even Men & Magic.

For my money the only legacy feature of 5e that really disappoints is the reincarnation table. What? No Centaurs? No badgers? No elf ranger with favored enemy Orcs waking up as an Orc? :.-(

Ratskinner · Aug 29, 2014

Fion said:
Actually it plays a lot more like AD&D (2nd ed) than 3rd or 4th. It's say it has about as much of 3rd edition 'baked in' as it has 4th or even AD&D. It's very much an amalgamation and simplification. I think that's why it feels like AD&D at the table.

Jester Canuck said:
I've said before that 5e is a bit of a Rorschach test. This thread is a great example.

People who like 4e but hate 5e aren't likely to see much 4th Edition in the game.
People who hate 4e and hate 5e are going to see lots of 4th edition in the game.
People who like 4e and like 5e are going to see lots of 4th edition in the game.

I'll reserve my final opinion until after I've managed to play a few sessions with the whole triad of core books, but so far I'd agree with both of these comments. The PHB visually reminds me of some strange amalgam of 2e and 3e, and when I peruse the mechanics, I can see the ghost of a lot of 4e's player-side architecture*. Although, what I really want to see is more 4e-like DM-side mechanics. 4e was by far the easiest-to-prep edition, IME.

One thing I do like. I've recently taken the time to write up about 2 dozen 3rd level characters. If you look at things with a 4e-like eye towards "reskinning", there really isn't a whole awful lot of need for multiclassing. However, the multi-class rules look very functional should the remaining needs still come up.

I'm still wondering if or what sort of "prestige-thing" we'll see.

*Although its much more subtle than the original 4e presentation. Of course, I'm probably strange in feeling that AEDU wasn't really much of a departure from extant D&D mechanics.

Uchawi · Aug 30, 2014

I think the biggest issue with the best of 1E, 2E, 3E, or 4E, is that you have to cherry pick rules, classes, etc. to get there. There is no way to control the complexity at the table across the board, by making classes, spells, abilities, or monsters fit a certain mold or expectation. So that is why opinions are all over the board on what 5E is trying to emulate. My complaint, is 5E did not do enough to go in a new direction, versus just relying on tradition or feel from previous editions. Maybe because of 4E, or even competition like Pathfinder, they were not willing to take any big risks.

occam · Sep 3, 2014

shidaku said:
Yeah but only a few of these things are expressly 4E innovations. Even fewer of them are things people would look at and go "Oh! That's a 4E thing."

I think it's mostly a matter of presentation. Out of the (partial) list compiled by Dausuul, I'd say at least the following "scream" 4e to people who care about edition differences:

Dausuul said:
Death saves.

At-will cantrips.

Ritual spellcasting (especially by non-casters).

Recharging monster abilities.

Binary skills ("trained/untrained" rather than skill points).

Dragonborn and "devil pact" tieflings.

The Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Elemental Chaos.

Two types of rests (short and long).

However, at-will spells aren't presented with big green banners, formatted the same way as at-will fighter or rogue abilities. Ritual spells don't take up their own chapter. The 4e planes get only brief mentions in an appendix.

A lot of the 4e-ness has just been quietly assumed: trained/untrained skills, recharging monster abilities, death saves and the short/long rest dichotomy. Those are significant new things for, say, a 3e or Pathfinder player who had no exposure to 4e. There's still a lot of 4e there, but it's disguised by the 3e-style layout and 2e-style art direction, and it's mixed in with earlier-edition approaches to rules.

Andor said:
I think it's a sign of just how harmful the 4e edition war was to D&D that we are even having this discussion. When 3e came out no one went through it with a fine toothed comb calling out what came from BECMI/AD&D/2e.

Oh, yes they did.

Hussar · Sep 3, 2014

Andor said:
Off the top of my head:
Shove p195
Maneuvering Attack/Pushing Attack p75
Fist of Unbroken Air/Water Whip p81
Charger p165
Sentinal p169

Plus the spells, at the very least Thunderwave and Thornwhip. I'm not going to go through the whole list.

If you want to force movement in 5e you have options. In our very first session the Monk was using Shove to toss Gobilns off a bridge to their doom. It's not a cornerstone of the system like it was in 4e. As with most things in 5e it's there if you like it, and easily avoided if you don't.

Heh, you too huh? Our very first session of 5e featured throwing a table, throwing someone off of a raised dais, throwing two goblins out a window, and crushing two more goblins against a wall with a table. Really had it in for tables that session.

All of the actions were supported by the Basic Rules text and required virtually no DM interpretation - other than adding in damage for crushing goblins against the wall (by a minotaur, dwarf and human at the same time.)

I can honestly see a lot of 4e in 5e - mostly in how the rules work. Very simple rules, typically only requiring a single roll, maybe two, with broadly applicable results. There's definitely an evolution here.

Heck, i even got an out of turn action with my fighter granting disadvantage on attacks (Basic Fighter), and blocking attacks on allies with his shield. Exactly how 4e works. I have to actually pay attention to other people's turns because even at 1st level, my character might need to do something on someone else's turn.

That's the big innovation from 4e that I see.

D&D 3E/3.5 Play Board Games Review: "5e really feels like the best from 2e, 3e and 4e."

Sunseeker

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Fion

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Jester David

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Andor

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Uchawi

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