D&D 4E What Aspects of 4E Made It into 5E?

[The Crimson Binome]

I still just call it "bloodied". There aren't any in-game effects, but it's a handy term.

It's useful if you stick to that one way of describing hit point damage. It's less useful when you're fighting sharks.

 

[Caliban]

It's useful if you stick to that one way of describing hit point damage. It's less useful when you're fighting sharks.

Well, "bloodied" is just the generic term carried over from 4e. Personally, I try to tailor it to the situation.

If they are fighting stone golems, I describe it as becoming visibly cracked and bits breaking off as they hit it now.

If they are fighting oozes and slimes - it starts leaking cytoplasm or losing cohesion

If they are fighting wraiths and spectres - they begin showing tears and rents in their manifested form, and/or leak ectoplasm.

Or I just say "it looks "bloodied" now" - with finger quotes because I'm not feeling that creative.

 

[jgsugden]

Death saves.

 

[Tony Vargas]

They didn't need us to *forget* 4e. They needed to show the player base that they had learned from the worst of 4e's mistakes, and that playing a 5e character could feel somewhat different from playing a deck of Magic cards.

They didn't need the player base to 'forget' 4e, they just needed them to get out of the habit of telling outright lies about the latest edition.

I'm surprised it didn't take longer. ;P

There is a difference between publishing some written-during-4e material as a splatbook, as an optional supplement to the core rules of 5e, and publishing that material directly in the 5e PHB

Y'know, there /was/ stuff in the PH lifted directly from 4e. It wasn't very important stuff, but it did happen here & there.

5e supports the option of 4e-style play. That's a fine thing. *Requiring* 4e-style play would have been a mistake.

I guess it depends by what you mean by '4e style play.' If you mean the way h4ters mischaracterized play in a clearer/more consistent, better-balanced RPG as a 'style' comparable to a board game or MMO, yeah, it would be cruel to force that on anyone, and 5e does give you the option of going there, sorta.
If you mean the range of ways 4e could be played, yeah, 5e can also be played in ways similar to some of them, but, definitely not all, and often not /well/. It's limited, that way, by it's resurrection of sacred cows, by the continued absence of a few significant options, and, ironically by the emphasis on DM Empowerment, which makes it much harder to run casually.

If you ever run a campaign based on the sequel movies to "Highlander", run it in 4e.

Ironically, the only good, internally-consistent, rationalization I ever heard around here for hps /not/ working the way they did in 4e (and to an extent 5e) was the 'quickening' model.
That hps were actually magical life-energy that PCs built up, absorbed from their enemies as exp, and that could only be directly restored, quickly, by magic.

 

[Riley37]

It's useful if you stick to that one way of describing hit point damage. It's less useful when you're fighting sharks.

Two sessions ago, my PC was in a fight against a deep-sea aquatic vampire, and one of the PCs was polymorphed into a shark. There was blood in the water even before it summoned three swarms of quippers. The shark found biting the vampire dissatisfying, until the vampire had fed from a PC, then the vampire tasted... oddly familiar.

 

[MoonSong]

sorcerers with a spell point system was in 2e as well.

This is a point were it depends on how you define a sorcerer. From my perspective, these spell point users were still explicitly mage/wizards with all of the wizard trappings and tropes. Sorcerers as a thing originated in 3e -later ports to 2e via Baldur's Gate notwithstanding-. (I define a sorcerer as: spontaneous, charisma based, and with innate magi; spell point users still lack two of these)

 

[pemerton]

A deck of magic cards is (i) a compilation of game moves that is (ii) compiled from a larger pool of game moves subject to certain constraints with (iii) the goal of optimising the moves across a range of circumstances not fully knowable in advance.

A classic D&D caster's spell load out is (i) a compilation of game moves that is (ii) compiled from a larger pool of game moves subject to certain constraints with (iii) the goal of optimising the moves across a range of circumstances not fully knowable in advance.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the best players of classic MUs (in the tournament module sense of "best") I ever knew were also excellent wargamers, tended to win the PbP games they participated in, and were reginal and national champion M:tG players!

 

[Riley37]

A classic D&D caster's spell load out is (i) a compilation of game moves that is (ii) compiled from a larger pool of game moves subject to certain constraints with (iii) the goal of optimising the moves across a range of circumstances not fully knowable in advance.

True. In 1E, players who enjoy those choices can play primary spellcasters, and those who don't can play other classes. In 5E, many classes have that dynamic, to varying extents and on varying scales - for example, spell-learning classes versus spell-preparing classes, warlocks synergizing spells known with Invocations - and if you don't want to deal with that dynamic, then you can play a frenzy barbarian, a champion fighter, a thief, etc.

In 4E, to the best of my understanding, if you like RP and exploration and rolling dice and defeating foes, but you don't enjoy (i) a compilation of game moves that is (ii) compiled from a larger pool of game moves subject to certain constraints with (iii) the goal of optimising the moves across a range of circumstances not fully knowable in advance, then you are hosed. If you're not playing that way, then you're not carrying your weight in the party.

"New and improved! Now ALL of our pizzas have two or more meat toppings!" is not good news for vegetarians.

 

[pemerton]

In 5E, many classes have that dynamic, to varying extents and on varying scales

I think less so than in classic D&D because the constraints are more relaxed (the combo of cantrips, and Arcana Unearthed-style slot use).

In 4E, to the best of my understanding, if you like RP and exploration and rolling dice and defeating foes, but you don't enjoy (i) a compilation of game moves that is (ii) compiled from a larger pool of game moves subject to certain constraints with (iii) the goal of optimising the moves across a range of circumstances not fully knowable in advance, then you are hosed. If you're not playing that way, then you're not carrying your weight in the party.

That's not really my experience. I find that PC build in 4e is more like choosing to be a light cleric or an oath paladin or whatever - you are choosing some mechanical stuff that you think (i) will be fun, and (ii) will express your PC in the way that you want.

Playing the PC is a curious mix of gameplay optimisation (like playing a hand of bridge, or being one side in a fairly stylised wargame scenario) and playing the fiction (as in, say, Dungeon World). Other RPGs I know that draw on a somewhat similar skillset are Rolemaster and Burning Wheel. (Cf, for example, Runequest or Classic Traveller, which are fairly mechanically crunchy but don't have the same optimisation element.)

Here's a self-quote from 7 years ago:

I can only assume that WotC thought that there were many players like my group, who want a crunchier/more tactical play experience than a game like HeroQuest is going to deliver (half of us are ex-Rolemaster, after all) but who also were looking for a much less simulationist approach to world design, scenario design, scene framing, and action resolution.

So it's not just that they agreed with Ron Edwards, but also that they thought that the players who would flock to a narrativist-leaning game would be drawn from the ranks of those who love Runequest, Rolemaster and collectable card games.

And OK, when I put it that way, it looks like a pretty implausible hypothesis from the start!

I don't think my view has changed that much.

 

[Ogre Mage]

At-will powers. They call them cantrips in 5E, but I recognized immediately cantrips were nothing like they were in 3.X.