D&D 4E D&D Fluff Wars: 4e vs 5e

[QuietBrowser]

Honestly, all this talk about alignment really makes me appreciate what 4e did with it more, as I found most of the races benefited from the new definitions of it.

Metallic Dragons, for example. But then, I just really liked the 4e metallics a lot. The Bronze and Brass Dragons have never been my favorites; they're just too visually interchangeable with Copper Dragons. 4e made them a lot more interesting, although I still vastly prefer the Adamantine and Iron Dragons taking their place in the "default metallic quintet".

It's not that Bronze and Brass Dragons are bad, it's just that the lineup of Gold/Silver/Copper/Brass/Bronze seems so... jarring compared to the smoother fit of Red/Blue/Green/Black/White on the Chromatics side. Adamantine/Gold/Silver/Copper/Iron really fits well together, and for added bonus, the new dragons are great additions in their own right!

Adamantine Dragons finally give us a more dedicated "Underdark Dragon", and their Thunder elemental focus was unique. Whilst Iron Dragons actually complete the symmetry between Metallics and Chromatics by being the true Metallic equivalent to the White Dragon - they're the savage, feral brute, the dragon who makes the rest of their type shuffle in embarrassment and try to disavow kinship because they're not what a dragon "should be". I'm not normally a huge fan of grid-filling, but the symmetry between the Red/Blue/Green/Black/White lineup and the Adamantine/Gold/Silver/Copper/Iron lineup really does look better as a whole.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The Metallic dragons can get away with being not as well done as the Chromatics simply by dint of not turning up that much. Let's be honest, unless you are running Dragonlance or Tyranny of Dragons, you'll likely have 0-1 Metallic turn up in your campaign. At that point, having them be a bit overlappy isn't that big a deal.

I don't disagree that the Chromatics are more thematically strong, to be clear - whereas I have a pretty clear idea in my head of what the difference between White, Red, Blue, Black and Green is, I tend to think of Metallics as Silvers, Golds, Others. I just suggest that it's more of a background detail than you'd think.

I guess that this is also why they felt able to only give us three Angels in the edition so far, despite 2e having whole swarms of them.


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[QuietBrowser]

That's where one of 4e's strengths was: it took a good long look at all of the "Always/Usually Good" races like Angels and Metallic Dragons, and asked themselves just how much use these would actually be to a DM and, if the answer was "not much", then why they should devote MM pages to them. The result was a single "Angel" race that filled the role of godly servitors throughout the heavens, and Metallic Dragons you could actually use as interesting, justified opponents. And for deeper reasons than "they're arrogant, self-righteous jerks".

 

[Sunsword]

After spending the last 5 years running DnD Next and 5th Edition in and around the Realms, I've turned my attention to the Nentir Vale and am using it to run the Sunless Citadel. I find it has refreshing ideas and yet squarely looks back and includes classic elements.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

After spending the last 5 years running DnD Next and 5th Edition in and around the Realms, I've turned my attention to the Nentir Vale and am using it to run the Sunless Citadel. I find it has refreshing ideas and yet squarely looks back and includes classic elements.

As a Dm who likes running in the Nentir vale, I also love the fact that the setting kind of makes sense. Your players have no reason to ask ''why is the army from large metropolis X isnt helping us'', just because the largest city in the vale has a standing guard of 60 men and can muster a hundred more militia men if needed, there's no other power than the party that can stop the current menace. The setting also give the other planes a big role: the elemental plane isnt perfectly classified by elemental type, its pure chaos trying to undo the stable creation of the gods.

 

[QuietBrowser]

I think they didn't do enough to really sell people on the new setting material as a new setting, people may have responded differently if it was an option next to the Great Wheel (like the 3.x MotP...).

I know that this is an old comment, but I saw nobody replied to it: thing is, the Manual of Planes for 4e does have a huge sidebar that takes up almost the entirety of page 15 talking about how to convert the Great Wheel to run under 4e assumptions. The details on the outer planes are bare bones, but, if you know the Great Wheel enough to want it back, do you really need more than "Hades (Evil): A gloomy plane of despair and disease, like the worst parts of the Shadowfell" or "The Abyss (Chaotic Evil): As described in Chapter 4, although in this cosmology the Abyss consists of layered infinite planes. The Abyss is an Outer Plane in this cosmology and is not part of the elemental planes. Demons should be treated as immortals rather than elementals"?

So, yeah, they went with their own thing for 4th edition, and I personally loved it for that, but they did tell you that if you wanted to bring back the old cosmology, you can do it pretty easily and here's how you can reshape the entire multiverse to fit that old model. About the only thing they left out was the Para- and Quasielemental Planes, saying that there's "only" Six Inner Elemental Planes.

 

[QuietBrowser]

Actually, it is a shame that 4E got dropped when it did. I thought the World Axis model they presented was perfect for Planescape adventures. The fluidness of the realms and how they flowed together really made for real dynamic environment. Also with the introduction of the archipelago's that swarmed around different realms in the Astral Sea, one could have easily set up specific campaign adventure guides in each of the realms in both the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos.

One thing I'm thinking about doing one of my players hit the right levels, is used to Dark Sun campaign guide to set up the atmosphere and the layout for the first level of the Abyss since from what I read in the Manual of the Planes, they're almost identical in atmosphere and vastness of size.

Lots of potential........

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Actually, looking back on this, it makes me wonder: really, what about the World Axis cosmology prevents you from playing a Planescape adventure? What does this particular array of planes and creatures actively inhibit being done to make use of the "feel" of adventuring across the planes, or whatever the defining nature of a Planescape adventure/campaign was?

 

[Mephista]

Call it what you want, but I do like 4e's Points of Light setting more than I like the renewed Great Wheel* setting. I think the cosmology flowed better. I think that 4e did a good job of expanding out the Far Realm, creating a meaningful division between devils and demons, and more. Yes, 5e did a lot on the nostalgia train. That's fine. I really don't like the resurgence of "evil races." While there's a bit of a nod to the idea that its the culture, its really not that prevalent in my opinion.

 

[thanson02]

Actually, looking back on this, it makes me wonder: really, what about the World Axis cosmology prevents you from playing a Planescape adventure? What does this particular array of planes and creatures actively inhibit being done to make use of the "feel" of adventuring across the planes, or whatever the defining nature of a Planescape adventure/campaign was?

There really isn't given the material already released with 2nd Edition. However, depending on how deep you want to go with it, you could almost create complete adventure lines per area in the Astral sea and the Elemental Chaos that range from heroic up through epic, character themes specialized for each area of the outer planes, new builds and powers, racial variations, and region specific monsters. Not to mention those wandering events with the Gith and various other planer creatures.

For as much as I love 4E, I don't have the time and resources to go that deep. But I would have loved it if WotC would have before they dropped the line.

 

[QuietBrowser]

You know, one of the little things I like about 4e Lore is that it can still surprise me what there is to see by delving into the 4e Dragon & Dungeon Magazines, particularly the new spins on many old classics.

For example, a Channel Divinity: Nerull reveals that there's quite a difference in the Dawn War version of this classic evil reaper. Now, I never really followed Greyhawk - before my time - so I don't know what Nerull's deal really was there; as far as I know, he was just a generic "kill 'em all!" evil death deity.

In the Dawn War Pantheon, Nerull was a human who was one of Corellon's first students. Desperate to help the gods win the Dawn War, and driven to help his fellow mortals be free from the fear of dying in battle, he invented necromancy. However, when he presented this new weapon to the gods, Aurom, the God of Life & Death, rejected it as a blasphemy against himself/herself, and the other gods, even those who thought Nerull's idea had merit, submitted to Aurom's judgment. Incensed, a vengeful Nerull decided to prove the superiority of his new weapon, killing Aurom and stealing his portfolios. When the other gods, previously allied to Aurom, readily overlooked this when Nerull willingly gave away all of Aurom's portfolios bar those relating to death, it convinced Nerull that the other gods were hypocrites. This led him down the path to become arrogant, cruel and corrupt as he disdained the other gods to be; still a villain, but one who actually might not have been so bad, if things had just gone differently so long ago.