What is the essence of 4E?

darkbard said:

I'm not sure how you can make such a claim when the entire noncombat components of the game are built upon the skill system, most notably (though controversially) in the instance of Skill Challenges, and even combat stunting integrates skills into mechanical resolution (see p. 42).

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The skill system in 4e was haphazard at best.
They spent very minimal design time on the skills, the skill DCs, and the entire Skill Challenge system. That aspect of the game was broken at launch and did not work until it had been hastily errated, both the base DCs but even the number of successes/ failures. And the skill sections of the PHB included a lot of weird vestigial elements like set DCs.
The base math of the system was pulled right from Star Wars Saga, which was launched a year prior to 4e, showing very little work was done on skills in the intervening time.
And with all the powers in 4e, only a small fraction affect skills, and only one or two in the entire game actually impact Skill Challenges.

Skills and the skill system were simply not a priority for 4e.

As for "page 42", that was an example of how not to handle improvisation.
The rules there were effectively "make a skill check and an attack roll to deal damage by design less than your powers". So you were basically making an attack with disadvantage—and thus two points of failure—to deal average damage and not gain any of the baked-in mechanical bonuses of your powers. You were subtly incentivized NOT to make improvised actions.
It also gave no advice on handing out conditions, imposing improvised effects, or improvised actions that didn't deal damage.

To me, 4e was a tactical game.

What it really felt like to me was that they layered RPG elements on top of their Miniatures game (which would make it the first D&D game to do so sincethe first D&D game)

. . . And now I see [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] was saying the same thing.

Jester David said:

I'm definitely getting a 4e vibe from a lot of the Pathfinder 2 design. Both are expanding and building off of 3e and trying to fix the problems with that ruleset. And for some reasons, the Pathfinder people never once stopped to look at and play 5e to figure out how 5e moved away from the designs of 4e, so they can avoid making the mistakes of 4e....

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Well, there's a whole quagmire THERE! I mean, why would they want to base their work on PF2 on a close reading of 5e? The last thing they want is to try to compete with it on the basis of being pretty much the same thing, just published by a different publisher. If they wanted to do 5e stuff, they can just do 5e stuff using the OGL or on some sort of licensed basis.

By looking at, and working from, what 4e did, they instead tap into an area which CLEARLY had a lot of traction, but which WotC seemingly wasn't capable of, or didn't have the stomach to, follow through on. The fact that there are other successful games out there which clearly riff on elements of 4e (13a, Strike!, Radiance RPG, etc.) indicates there's potential.

Now, I have no idea if PF2 is actually moving in that direction, but what I would say is they could profit a LOT by learning from the STRENGTHS of 4e. Many of the things 4e did were done because 3.x had some serious issues that needed to be addressed, and Paizo finds itself in the same boat.

Both games seem to be very gamist RPGs that use many jargon terms, keywords, and symbols rather than natural language. They both seem to be games that focus heavily on tactical miniature play with regular character choices every level (or twice at some levels) and a heavy focus on building characters, with the differentiation of characters being built into modular rules elements. And both seem to employ a Red Queen's Race element to levelling, where the numbers increase regularly so you need to continually increase in power and cannot fight foes too far above or below you.

I'm getting some serious déjà vu from the launch of Pathfinder 2.

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I would say all these things you mention are defining for D&D generally, and pretty much equally true of 5e, except maybe the 'modular rules sets' part, though 5e has any number of subsystems that are uniform across all classes.

4e is a mixture of D&D elements in a dynamic adventure game with a heavy story-telling element. That is the essence of it. You move to the action, resolve conflicts with Skill Challenges, only roll dice and describe action when there is something interesting at stake, etc.

Mechanically the whole game is built around the skill system, which is actually more of a 'knacks' or 'propensities' system, reminiscent of things like the Fate Accelerated approaches, but in more concrete terms (which provides more of a callback to 3.x's skill system, not an unreasonable design decision since you want to produce an edition of an existing game, not something utterly new). Between Training and Attributes (and maybe other bonuses) you define which types of problems you're good at solving and what your approach is (the guy with high Athletics bonus performs physical tasks and uses his body to solve problems, the guy with Acrobatics bonus substitutes grace and physical dexterity, the guy with History has a lesson from the past for every occasion, etc.).

Powers clearly provide a framework for the specific 'shtick' that each character has in combat (I think they could have tied closer to skills and that would have been a stronger design, but whatever). You can also use terrain powers and page 42 in order to introduce situational tactics and tricks. Utilities provide some stuff that isn't direct damage-dealing attacks, and rituals/practices allow characters to operate at a more strategic level, preparing ahead, negating obstacles, etc.

I do think there are some design flaws, but overall its a solid game, and all the elements of it DO work 'out of the box' in the core 3 books. There are some things that were altered later, but that was more based on a better understanding of how people USED the game rather than how it was intended to work. Given the tricky nature of making a game that was both close in tone and genre to existing editions of D&D as well as introducing a more story-driven and player-centered paradigm to the game it was pretty successful.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Well, there's a whole quagmire THERE! I mean, why would they want to base their work on PF2 on a close reading of 5e? The last thing they want is to try to compete with it on the basis of being pretty much the same thing, just published by a different publisher. If they wanted to do 5e stuff, they can just do 5e stuff using the OGL or on some sort of licensed basis.

By looking at, and working from, what 4e did, they instead tap into an area which CLEARLY had a lot of traction, but which WotC seemingly wasn't capable of, or didn't have the stomach to, follow through on. The fact that there are other successful games out there which clearly riff on elements of 4e (13a, Strike!, Radiance RPG, etc.) indicates there's potential.

Now, I have no idea if PF2 is actually moving in that direction, but what I would say is they could profit a LOT by learning from the STRENGTHS of 4e. Many of the things 4e did were done because 3.x had some serious issues that needed to be addressed, and Paizo finds itself in the same boat.

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Right. They seem to be designing PF2 in a vacuum, overlooking 5e, 13th Age, Dungeon World, and even completely different games like Fate or Cypher.
Games have evolved dramatically since Pathfinder was released, let alone 3e and they seem to be just focusing on evolving the game.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I would say all these things you mention are defining for D&D generally, and pretty much equally true of 5e, except maybe the 'modular rules sets' part, though 5e has any number of subsystems that are uniform across all classes.

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The natural language is the big part for me.
While 5e might say “As an action, you magically do something awesome. Once you do so, you can’t do so again until you complete a short or long rest.”
Meanwhile, 4e and PF2 has a keyword that denotes the action, recharge, and magical nature. You need to know the gaming terms to parse the powers. Looking at PF2 feats reminds me of looking at 4e powers before we knew the context or looking at the 13th Age SRD. I have no idea what they feats actually do, and I cannot decode the content...

The Red Queen’s Race is something 5e also avoids, as bonus to attacks and skills are an actual bonus. 3e/ PF/ and 4e has assumed bonuses, so you had to keep pace with the default expectations of AC, skills DCs, and the like or you fell behind. So bonuses didn’t actually increase your odds of success but just allowed you to keep pace. It’s basically just number porn. (And PF2 seems to be doubling down in that regard.)
1e and 2e also had increasing odds of success, so they’re more like 5e in that regard. Bonuses for the illusion of progress is very much a 3e/4e thing.

Umbran said:

To me, the essence of 4e is really the structure of character powers, and the universal application of that structure to *all* characters.

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Yep, what he said. The power system is the essence of 4E.

Jester David said:

Right. They seem to be designing PF2 in a vacuum, overlooking 5e, 13th Age, Dungeon World, and even completely different games like Fate or Cypher.
Games have evolved dramatically since Pathfinder was released, let alone 3e and they seem to be just focusing on evolving the game.

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I'm not sure what 5e has to say about it, because, TBH, 5e could have been written in 1992 and it would hardly have been remarkable! DW and FATE are a LOT more like 4e than they are like 5e, so I would say that, if you think PF2 is paying attention to 4e, then it would likely be paying attention to those games as well, at least by my reckoning. I consider 4e to be a heavily story oriented game, although its exposition of that was somewhat poor.

The natural language is the big part for me.
While 5e might say “As an action, you magically do something awesome. Once you do so, you can’t do so again until you complete a short or long rest.”
Meanwhile, 4e and PF2 has a keyword that denotes the action, recharge, and magical nature. You need to know the gaming terms to parse the powers. Looking at PF2 feats reminds me of looking at 4e powers before we knew the context or looking at the 13th Age SRD. I have no idea what they feats actually do, and I cannot decode the content...

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4e keywords, IMHO, don't tell you how to parse a power, aside from a few obvious things like damage type (all of which are pretty self-explanatory). Most of what keywords are for is to provide the 'hooks' that you can use to hang other stuff from (IE I can have a feat that interacts with things with the 'necromantic' keyword). 5e, by eschewing this, is a big step backwards in clarity and ease of use in play and for designers. It is actually a considerable turn off in my book. When I play (which I do much more often than I read a book) I want CLARITY and brevity, so I can quickly and reliably understand what the thing is getting at.

The Red Queen’s Race is something 5e also avoids, as bonus to attacks and skills are an actual bonus. 3e/ PF/ and 4e has assumed bonuses, so you had to keep pace with the default expectations of AC, skills DCs, and the like or you fell behind. So bonuses didn’t actually increase your odds of success but just allowed you to keep pace. It’s basically just number porn. (And PF2 seems to be doubling down in that regard.)
1e and 2e also had increasing odds of success, so they’re more like 5e in that regard. Bonuses for the illusion of progress is very much a 3e/4e thing.

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I disagree, all editions of D&D assume increasing adds to the die roll (or in the case of AD&D decreasing THAC0 scores and saves, which is the same thing). You fall behind in 5e just as you would in any other E, or tread water. That's the whole D&D paradigm. Now, the differences in levels is not a difference in MATH, there's no reason to change working math, its a change in thematics, tone, and play. In 1e and 2e the game becomes crazier and more dominated by powerful spells and items, with monster lore graduating from your foes being 'an orc' to 'Demogorgon Prince of Demons'.

In 4e there is the same sorts of progressions, but the powers are more tightly controlled and its the thematics of the characters that goes crazy (you become Rachitoff the Daggermaster, Thief of Legend). I like the way 4e handles this.

3.x basically just had "its broken at level 12" (assuming your players were polite enough to wait that long, or that the DM heavily restricted play and/or some combination of these things). Most games which operated at double-digit levels simply had an unwritten set of 'rules' that players went by. Nominally it tried to do what 4e actually did successfully, by having things like PrCs and such.

5e is mostly like AD&D in this regard, EXCEPT, its attempt to 'make bonuses not matter' actually messed up the part that worked well in AD&D! That is the thematic progression from orcs to demons. Now its unclear exactly when each creature really IS thematically appropriate, although orcs are still basically not a threat to higher level PCs. It seems like a 'worst of all worlds' solution to me.

I think the precise language, coupled with transparent math, and remarkable distribution of thematic weight and plot power over all classes are a hallmark of 4e. Epic works. It is still crazy in good ways, and more challenging to run well, but it hangs together.

Jester David said:

And both seem to employ a Red Queen's Race element to levelling, where the numbers increase regularly so you need to continually increase in power and cannot fight foes too far above or below you.

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The reason why you couldn't fight lower-level enemies in 4E was tied directly to the HP-recovery mechanics. The assumption is that you would recover to full HP after every encounter, which meant that every encounter had to be potentially lethal; a low-level encounter that only ate through a small portion of your HP would have been pointless.

I'm not certain that it will be the same in PF2. I know that there's a limit in place to prevent over-use of low-level cure wands, but I can't say for certain whether the assumption is for everyone to heal up to full between encounters, or even every day. If healing isn't trivial, then low-level enemies might still be useful for attrition purposes (even if they need a 16+ in order to hit).

AbdulAlhazred said:

I disagree, all editions of D&D assume increasing adds to the die roll (or in the case of AD&D decreasing THAC0 scores and saves, which is the same thing). You fall behind in 5e just as you would in any other E, or tread water. That's the whole D&D paradigm.

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... you are familiar with bounded accuracy yes?

5e is mostly like AD&D in this regard, EXCEPT, its attempt to 'make bonuses not matter' actually messed up the part that worked well in AD&D! That is the thematic progression from orcs to demons. Now its unclear exactly when each creature really IS thematically appropriate, although orcs are still basically not a threat to higher level PCs. It seems like a 'worst of all worlds' solution to me.

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I was very dubious about bounded accuracy when I started playing 5e... and now I love it. As a GM it's fantastic. There is no DC treadmill, a crazy race to increase your AC (or become hugely vulnerable) etc etc