D&D 4E The Indispensable 4e

[Tallifer]

I agree with almost all of the above points in favour of the Fourth Edition.

I will also add that the Fourth Edition created terrific new classes or made far better versions of some older classes:

The Warden, Warlord, Avenger, Invoker, Ardent, Runepriest and Seeker are all great ideas which I hope to see again in every subsequent edition.

The psionic Monk, the hard-hitting Sorcerer, the cursing and sneaking Warlock and the marking Fighter and Paladin are all much better than previous iterations.

I also like Hybrid characters as one of the best methods of giving a character multiple classes. The multi-class feats in the Fourth Edition were equally elegant, but I hope to see future power-swap feats to be less restrictive.

 

[Shadeydm]

1st level survivability
Healing without using your standard action
Fighter/defender marking (stickiness)
Gonzo rogue damage (didn't play it but played along side it and wow)
Swordmages
Ardents
Revised warlord (revise the healing mechanic)
Second wind (no surges please)
Wizard at will (haven't played a 4E wizard but played one in every other edition)

I will resist the urge to write a big honking list of 4E assumptions which I hope are not core mechanics for 5e

 

[Neonchameleon]

I suppose it's pointless to ask for people to refrain from flaming or trolling, but what the hell, I've always enjoyed tilting at windmills.

NO FLAMING OR TROLLING!

With that out of the way, nobody's going to get everything they want in a compromise, gestalt edition like 5e. Therefore, I'm asking 4e enthusiasts what they feel are the key, essential elements of that edition that ought to be ported to 5e, at least in some form. Why do you pick those elements? And, if you have familiarity with previous editions as well, what problems do those elements solve? I look forward to your responses.

Ease of prep and transparency of math are essential.

Healing surges - they justify hit points and mean that there's a difference between a bandaged wound and an unbandaged one. (Changing the name 'healing surges' to something more like 'physical resilliance' would help).

Options for the fighter as much as the wizard. And an end to Linear Fighter/Quadratic Wizard. This ties in with (almost) every class being the best there is at what they do in 4e. (That said, simple fighters should definitely be possible and it took until Essentials to get them).

Marking/Defender Aura/some means of stickiness and threat for the fighter to make sure that even if you are next to both fighter and wizard, taking your eye off the fighter is still a bad plan.

Forced movement if you are going to use a battlemat (if you don't then I don't care - but the easy ability to push monsters into their own pit traps, or into latrines is just fun).

The healbot being a tiny niche, not the default. (Some people like to play them - it takes all sorts).

Warlords. (Can be rolled up into the fighter class as an alternative for the marking mechanic for all I care, but the martial leader needs to be there).

Rituals. I want the option to run a game where wizards are people with dribbly candlewax who need to set up magic circles. And anyone in their senses uses a sword (or other weapon) in combat because magic takes too long. This fits more of the myths I am familiar with than the D&D wizard.

At Will spells and cantrips you can cast until you get bored. It makes the wizard class magical.

Forgive my ignorance, because it's just that and not a troll. What makes it easy to prep, specifically?

1: Everything is in front of you in the MM. No "And casts like a seventh level sorceror" nonsense that means you need to prepare an entire list of spells. Equally if I need the NPCs to have set out of combat abilities, I can trivially just give them to them - I don't need to look up the Detect Thoughts spell and the like for the Succubus. (And MM3, MV, MV:NV, and DSCS monster fights are entertaining).

2: Balance. If I want a simple fight the post-MM3 XP budget system works (more or less). I can pick my monsters just by spending an XP budget without needing to check the PCs weapons for damage or working out whether the party's a Wizard, a Cleric, a Druid, and an Artificer, or a Fighter, a Rogue, a Ranger, and a Bard. The PCs will be approximately as powerful in either case.

3: Ease of levelling/transparent math. It's easy to shift a monster a few levels. You just add certain static constants - the only one that really varies by monster type is hit points. You don't need to recalculate surges.

1 and 2 combine to make sure that unless preparing for a boss I can spend about ten minutes picking my monsters thematically and I'm done with the mechanical side of prep-work. 3 helps for elites if I want to hand-craft. And with 1 and 2 I'm quite capable of simply looking the monsters up at the table when the PCs do something that comes under the heading of 'insane PC plans'.

4: Strategic control. I can prepare for PCs with a decent range of options I can more or less forsee. There's no teleport spell that means I can't even tell which continent they will be on (unless I've given them a teleport circle - the ends are fixed there).

This adds to the above in that I need to prepare a lot less because the PCs can't trivially shatter my prep work. And when they break it, 1 and 2 come into play so I'm not scrambling to work out what spells that dragon has.

Healing as a minor action. No more healbots, please.

Agreed emphatically. Actually, I've no objection to healing as a standard as well. But there should be nothing that forces the party to heal as a minor action.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Dynamic fights. I dread going back to 3.x where combats stagnate for meleers because it's advantageous to full-round attack. That made combats boring to me.

Balance of classes. I like that magic doesn't sideline non-magic users at higher levels and even more importantly I like that magic users are magical and effective at lower levels.

More healer options, self healing, and minor action heals are wonderful for taking the burden off of someone "having" to play the cleric.

I enjoy the pared/combined skill list. Being as good at spotting, searching, and listening because you have a good Perception is wonderful. And I know many people like the Profession and Craft skills but I love 4E's approach that if you want to have professional or craftsman skills, you get it at whatever level of expertise that you want.

And 4E has pixie PCs. That's gold.

 

[ColoradoGuy]

In addition to all that's been mentioned above:

1. Team-based play: the party is a team with different roles that need to work together or you end up with probable TPK. No more of you need two specific classes and the rest are filler.
2. Interactive powers: you do something that someone else can take advantage of or you do something to make someone else's turn better.
3. Staying engaged during combat: you need to pay attention during other peoples' turns as you may want to act (defenders and leaders especially, strikers not so much) so no more "I'm gonna go get a drink, call me when it's my turn."
4. Powers for everyone: No more "I swing my sword, I swing my sword..."

 

[theuglyamerican]

Wow, thanks for the feedback! There's obviously a lot of good ideas in 4e that deserve to be carried forward (even if the terminology and details are changed to smooth the edges and avoid offending the sensibilities of the easily offended).

The reason I started this thread is that I'm a Pathfinder guy, but I'm not an edition warrior. I happen to like the way 3.x does most things and dislike certain features of 4e (which I won't name because this is a thread to celebrate 4e, not knock it), but a lot of people whose opinions I respect love 4e, so I knew there must be a lot of terrific things about the game even if it wasn't for me. This has given me a much clearer insight into the positives of the design, for which I thank you all. And it's absolutely clear that much of what's mentioned here is an improvement over previous editions, including my preferred one. Yeah, 3.x monster design and CR, I'm looking at you because you suck.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

There is a lot I like about 4E (and some that I don't), most of which was covered above. My personal top three to carry forward, in order:

1. Ease of prep
2. Rituals
3. Dynamic combats (which is actually a lot of little things)

That said, I'm going to give credit where credit is due, and say that I'd like to see 5E do the next iteration justice. The "ease of prep" thing was because they worked on it in 3E, tried again in 3.5 and some of the supplements, and kept going. It wasn't something 4E made up out of whole cloth. The 4E XP budget doesn't happen without the 3E CR system happening first. 5E might be able to do some minor tweaks here, but I'd say they've about got this one right.

OTOH, rituals are an outgrowth of various, disparate experiments, probably some third-party d20 stuff, coupled with a real reworking of parts of magic. They made a good start here, but there is room for improvement. On this one, they are circling around the target, getting closer, but haven't nailed it in the bulls eye yet.

For things like dynamic combats, this is one where they are partly circling around a target, but it's a moving target because it is so affected by the rest the surrounding sub systems. So on that one, they can pick and choose from previous designs, but ultimately have to do the fine-tuning for the 5E system itself. It's the design goal here that needs to be retained, instead of particular elements.

I'd say that D&D skills also falls mainly into this last bracket, because I don't think D&D has ever got skills nailed down perfectly. The 4E stuff works ok for 4E, the 3E stuff for 3E, and even the NWP and BECMI skills fit ok in their editions. But I don't see anything in any of them that you would adopt whole hog in a brand new system. Skills might even be a bit behind dynamic combats, because they still haven't articulated a clear vision for skills (at least not that they have shared with us).

 

[Somebloke]

Beyond what's already been said....

Progressive AC. Yes, the master swordsman can defend themselves as well.

Single attacks per round as the base.

Warlords. I know it's been mentioned before, but seriously- all of a sudden I can run low magic settings and not need to houserule!

Flattened BAB progression. Means I can keep certain foes as meaningful threats for longer. I hated the way you have to work, say, a longrunning campaign against an orc-king's invasion against the fact that 90% of orcs will have become a joke to players by 6th level.

 

[Wulfgar76]

From a post I intended to make, but never did, that addressed this exact question:

THE BIG FOUR OF 4TH
The four most important 4th Edtion concepts that should remain in D&D Next

The Action Economy: standard, move and minor actions
The minor action in particular opened up a huge swathe of design space. Never again did you have to waste your turn to drink a potion, open a door, draw a weapon, or even make a 'quick' attack. Perhaps most importantly, clerics could now heal and attack in the same turn, solving a problem that had plagued D&D since the beginning.

Casters Making Attack Rolls
By having casters making attack rolls to hit with some spells, players with magic characters now had the visceral excitement of rolling a d20, possibly critting, with their spells, rather than passively doing nothing on their turn, hoping the monster would fail its saving throw. Now finding a magical staff or wand meant something, just like a magic weapon it improved your chances to hit and damage. Instead of your new wand being a boring battery of stored spells, it was a real magical weapon, with cool effects just like your fighter companion's magic sword.

Hit Points & The Bloodied Condition
The increased starting hit points resulted in sturdier low level characters that didn't need to worry about getting dropped from full to zero HP by a single hit from a goblin.
Set hit points per level were a long overdue, no-brainer innovation. I've never heard of a DM who didn't house rule Hit Dice, for PCs at least, in some way.
Finally, the bloodied condition also opened up a large area of design space for mechanics, powers and effects.

No Condition Tracking
Tracking conditions with durations in rounds was never very fun, for neither DMs nor players. Checking off, round-by-round, how long your Ogre was paralyzed was bad. The PC fighter spending his next 7 rounds stunned was worse. Spending an hour of gaming time unable to attack or act is perhaps the most fun-killing experience in tabletop gaming. The end-of-turn saving throw in 4th edition was a brilliantly simple fix to all of this. The 4e-style saving throw need not exist in in D&D Next, but some mechanic which can end a conditions every turn should exist.

 

[Sunseeker]

My favorite thing about 4e is how easy it is to design monsters.

Yeah this 100%.

Minions too, love those things.

A clear delineation between fluff and crunch.

Non-rolled HP, or at least some system to get HP w/o rolling.

Limited multiclassing. I wouldn't mind it being more expansive than 4e had, but I like the idea of multiclassing through feats, and hybrid classing limiting the number of classes you were. I don't want to see a return to Fighter 1/Wizard 3/Ranger 2/Rogue 1/System Master 20.

Floating racial bonuses. It's not 100% free-form, but I like variety among races, and I think picking between one of two scores helps bring more races to the table while building characters.

Non-clerical, non-magical healing. Mostly I'm talking about Second Wind here. It's a great utility "power" that allows a character to recover slightly when the poop hits the fan. But I also want to see shaman, druid, and other classes have healing builds. Not necessarily right away, but eventually.

No alignment restrictions. Let those be table rules.

And everything Wulfgar said too!