D&D 4E 4E WotC Tools dead?

[dave2008]

4E was heavily reliant on the grid just based on the powers. Could you play without it? Sure but the default expectation was a grid and the language of squares vs say feet/ft. It was basically to get you to buy the D&DM which if you read the credits on the rule books was developed by the same people who did 4E (Heinsoo etc).

They basically wanted everyone playing and paying online VTT, and buying the minis IRL. Some people compared 4E to WoW presumably because encounter powers are like cooldowns (IDK I didn't play WoW), but WoW took a chunk of the D&D playerbase its one reason 3.5 died so quick (in print 4 years, + d20 crash of 2004). Felt more like Advanced D&D Minis to me than WoW or a video game- AD&DM. Combat length in early 4E was also similar to a game of D&DM- 30-45 minutes. Kind of meant you could only get in 2 or 3 fights in a typical session of 3-4 hours (unless combat was all you did) vs 4+. Long fights are all right on occasion not the default. Our longest was 2 hours in 2E but it involved hundreds of beings in a 27 hour session.

You can't really plausibly claim there was not a heavy emphasis on minis over even 3.x. AD&D if you read it these days says something like "you can even use minis if you want". Playing 4E without minis would not work that well in most cases except maybe for certain classes who picked certain powers that avoided push/pull effects and things like that. You would have to go out of your way to build PCs avoiding things like that which would be difficult using just the 4E PHB. Technically you could play without minis (well more a grid), would not call it a good idea most of the time.

I disagree, but it is probably because I came from playing 1e so I already knew how to do it TotM style. For me, there is nothing that makes a close blast 6 more difficult to visualize than a 30-foot cone. But maybe that is just me and my group. If there was an emphasis on grids and minis, it was easy to ignore.

 

[Teemu]

You can't really plausibly claim there was not a heavy emphasis on minis over even 3.x.

3.5 rules assumed the use of minis and a grid. Says right there in the rules. First page of PHB I think.

 

[GreyLord]

4E was heavily reliant on the grid just based on the powers. Could you play without it? Sure but the default expectation was a grid and the language of squares vs say feet/ft. It was basically to get you to buy the D&DM which if you read the credits on the rule books was developed by the same people who did 4E (Heinsoo etc).

They basically wanted everyone playing and paying online VTT, and buying the minis IRL. Some people compared 4E to WoW presumably because encounter powers are like cooldowns (IDK I didn't play WoW), but WoW took a chunk of the D&D playerbase its one reason 3.5 died so quick (in print 4 years, + d20 crash of 2004). Felt more like Advanced D&D Minis to me than WoW or a video game- AD&DM. Combat length in early 4E was also similar to a game of D&DM- 30-45 minutes. Kind of meant you could only get in 2 or 3 fights in a typical session of 3-4 hours (unless combat was all you did) vs 4+. Long fights are all right on occasion not the default. Our longest was 2 hours in 2E but it involved hundreds of beings in a 27 hour session.

You can't really plausibly claim there was not a heavy emphasis on minis over even 3.x. AD&D if you read it these days says something like "you can even use minis if you want". Playing 4E without minis would not work that well in most cases except maybe for certain classes who picked certain powers that avoided push/pull effects and things like that. You would have to go out of your way to build PCs avoiding things like that which would be difficult using just the 4E PHB. Technically you could play without minis (well more a grid), would not call it a good idea most of the time.

It's all about your playstyle.

4e was very easy to play without miniatures. Just like you could figure out how far someone was compared to others regarding the range of missile weapons, how big a corridor was, how great a reach of a weapon was, and various other factors in other versions of D&D, you could do the same in figuring out the areas and dimensions of 4e.

For those who wanted it to be more formal and more specific positioning, they didn't have to play with miniatures either if they were trained in how to do it in the theater of the mind. If you can play chess without a chess board (a thing I mastered how to do in High School while on the Chess team) you can play 4e without a board and minis and still have total comprehension of where everything and anything is if you wish to play that way.

D&D has always had distance and areas to consider, it is a matter of how you do it that determines how you play.

To me, 3.5 emphasized this just as much if not moreso, and during the time of 3.5 I actually used miniatures far more than any other version of D&D that I played. Far more than I did with 4e.

However, I did include my comments to say that there are many that felt as if they had to use Minis to play, and admittedly it was partially a focus on it. That said, I did not use them mostly, and know that there are many others who felt no need to do so.

I imagine many of these like me were veterans of older editions where the use of minis was not a determining factor on whether you could play or not. They could be nice to look at and paint, but we never felt an obligation to own them or mandatory to use them.

 

[Garthanos]

That said, I did not use them mostly, and know that there are many others who felt no need to do so. .

I tried them and might try them again but yes I kind of find them cumbersome.

 

[Zardnaar]

3.5 rules assumed the use of minis and a grid. Says right there in the rules. First page of PHB I think.

So I am not a 3.5 fan lol.

 

[Jhaelen]

AD&D if you read it these days says something like "you can even use minis if you want".

then why did the rules measure movement and spell ranges in inches? It's quite clear there was an underlying assumption, players would be using miniatures.

 

[Zardnaar]

then why did the rules measure movement and spell ranges in inches? It's quite clear there was an underlying assumption, players would be using miniatures.

Its what they used. DMG (1E) page 10 makes it very clear miniatures are optional. They are an aid or "might be".

Also early D&D is not consistent. BECMI for example uses feet and its generally what is used as an example of simplicity and its better for theatre of the mind. There is an A in AD&D for a reason. B/X IMHO is the superior ruleset, 1E is better in regards to the feel of it, its bloody awful trying to play as is. Not sure if anyone actually ran it 100% as is, from what I have seen in played its run more like B/X with more class and race options and more spells.

Never used minis well into the 3E era, I would like to say 3.5 but the 1st time I used them was in another group late 2002 with 3.0 and it was because they used them. With AD&D/BECMI we used graph/math paper or winged it. Its a bit disingenuous to claim 4E is not more reliant on minis than OSR D&D, 3.5 not so much. I don't recall to much of an emphasis on them in 3.0, we barely used them in any event except very briefly right near the end and then Harbinger landed with 3.5 and we liked the minis game.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Measuring in inches implies mini use just as much as squares, IMO.

My first experiences were with 1e, so seeing everything in inches, my first question was, "why?" Answer: It's based on a minis wargame where this is standard practice, and you can still do so, if desired. But, it was always clear that this was unnecessary.

However, the bulk of my play experience in my younger days was in 2e, where grids and minis were de-emphasized and TotM was always implied, that is, until the Player's Option stuff hit, and suddenly, everything is in inches again, minis are encouraged, etc. That was WotC's doing, to prepare the player base for what was planned in 3rd edition.

Now everything is in feet, but the "base unit" is 5-foot-SQUARES, and along with it, the strong suggestion to use minis. It has never been required, but 3.x certainly had a tighter integration with minis than 2e.

All 4e did was drop the "5-foot" part, shortening it to squares. They also sacrificed poor old Pythagoras on the altar of simplicity (a choice I agree with for speed of play). Again, having played every edition since 1e, I found the emphasis on minis no greater than any edition prior, and arguably less than, say Player's Option 2e, where the idea seemed to be, if you were buying into increased tactical depth, that you should probably use minis and a grid, or you were already interested in doing so (we weren't, but used the new rules anyway).

We currently play 4e, and used to break out the tokens, maps, dungeon tiles, etc, every fight, but lately have drifted more toward a TotM game, where maps & tokens come out only if the situation warrants. For my part, I use them if I think the fight will be more interesting that way. The game certainly plays fine without them. Going between square grid and feet is a matter of *very* simple math, easily done on the fly. Certainly no harder or more jarring than going between feet and grid inches.

So, if it's not more reliant on minis, it certainly isn't less either.

Not that this has ANYthing to do with the thread topic. Just the usual when people start talking about 4e.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Back to the topic of browsers...

Character Builder works for me in Internet Explorer(*), Firefox (even the updated versions), and Safari.

Compendium works for me in almost every browser including mobile Safari.

(*) If you have Edge, you effectively also have I.E. because one of the options is "Open in Internet Explorer" for any page you're on. So, go to the DDI launch page in Edge, do "Open in I.E.", and then launch the Character Builder.

 

[Zardnaar]

Measuring in inches implies mini use just as much as squares, IMO.

My first experiences were with 1e, so seeing everything in inches, my first question was, "why?" Answer: It's based on a minis wargame where this is standard practice, and you can still do so, if desired. But, it was always clear that this was unnecessary.

However, the bulk of my play experience in my younger days was in 2e, where grids and minis were de-emphasized and TotM was always implied, that is, until the Player's Option stuff hit, and suddenly, everything is in inches again, minis are encouraged, etc. That was WotC's doing, to prepare the player base for what was planned in 3rd edition.

Now everything is in feet, but the "base unit" is 5-foot-SQUARES, and along with it, the strong suggestion to use minis. It has never been required, but 3.x certainly had a tighter integration with minis than 2e.

All 4e did was drop the "5-foot" part, shortening it to squares. They also sacrificed poor old Pythagoras on the altar of simplicity (a choice I agree with for speed of play). Again, having played every edition since 1e, I found the emphasis on minis no greater than any edition prior, and arguably less than, say Player's Option 2e, where the idea seemed to be, if you were buying into increased tactical depth, that you should probably use minis and a grid, or you were already interested in doing so (we weren't, but used the new rules anyway).

We currently play 4e, and used to break out the tokens, maps, dungeon tiles, etc, every fight, but lately have drifted more toward a TotM game, where maps & tokens come out only if the situation warrants. For my part, I use them if I think the fight will be more interesting that way. The game certainly plays fine without them. Going between square grid and feet is a matter of *very* simple math, easily done on the fly. Certainly no harder or more jarring than going between feet and grid inches.

So, if it's not more reliant on minis, it certainly isn't less either.

Not that this has ANYthing to do with the thread topic. Just the usual when people start talking about 4e.

Players options stuff was TSR not WotC, it predates the buyout.

Its not just the measurements its all the powers that involve movement, push, pull slide XYZ squares.