D&D 4E What's so bad about 4th edition? What's so good about other systems?

[Matt James]

The OGL was an absolute masterstroke. It gave a huge swath of fans, many of whom had been alienated by TSR's actions, a sense of ownership of the game, and the ability to (try to) realise that secret fantasy many of them had harboured: to publish their own stuff for the game.

Two quick points.

(1) I agree with you about the OGL. To a point. We are also experienced a flooding of completely horrible products. Normally, the market would sort this out, and to a point it did, however there were so many D20 products out there that it was very overwhelming. I still look through some of it scratching my head. So, there are two ways of looking at that era

(2) There is very little that gaming companies can protect. Rules being one of them. As long as you do not trample over terms such as Mind Flayer and Orcus, you can do as you please. There is a very prominent 3PP that publishes 4e content without challenging WotC's IP, nor do they subscribe to the GSL. The only thing that the GSL does, is approve use of certain things that are covered by their IP. You also get to slap a cool 4e logo on your product--which may or may not benefit you.

LONG LIVE SUCRO! (Orcus spelled backwards)

 

[delericho]

(1) I agree with you about the OGL. To a point. We are also experienced a flooding of completely horrible products. Normally, the market would sort this out, and to a point it did, however there were so many D20 products out there that it was very overwhelming. I still look through some of it scratching my head. So, there are two ways of looking at that era

There's no denying there was a lot of horrible product. But that was, quite simply, the price that we had to pay to get the "good stuff". We could not have had the one without the other.

(2) There is very little that gaming companies can protect. Rules being one of them. As long as you do not trample over terms such as Mind Flayer and Orcus, you can do as you please.

I'm not sure if you recall the days when TSR ran the show. They absolutely did claim absolute ownership of everything related to D&D, they did sent out C&Ds to people running fan sites (even if they only published homebrew rules materials), and they even tried to assert ownership of any campaign that people posted online.

Legally, they probably had no case, but they also had a very big stick, and appeared to have the will to use it.

In that environment, nobody would have published compatible materials. They would have been mad to try. (Hell, it's fairly mad even to go into the RPG market. Doing so in that environment...?)

Heck, even the OGL was met with huge scepticism. Lots of people believed that this was all a bid on the part of WotC to lay claim to their homebrew IP, which WotC would then 'steal' and incorporate into D&D without having to pay for it!

It really was a completely different world then. The OGL massively changed things.

There is a very prominent 3PP that publishes 4e content without challenging WotC's IP, nor do they subscribe to the GSL. The only thing that the GSL does, is approve use of certain things that are covered by their IP. You also get to slap a cool 4e logo on your product--which may or may not benefit you.

They can do that now, and in part do so having been emboldened by the very permissive years of the OGL. Nobody would have tried it while TSR were running the game, because even if they were legally absolutely right, TSR still had a habit of using lawyers to destroy their competition, or 'settling' by buying out their opponents and the burying their work.

 

[Lordhawkins9]

I like that a 20th-level fighter is as much a force to be feared as a 20th-level wizard, but I know that this was VERY different in the earlier editions of the game.

20th level fighter may have not been as powerful as 20th level wizards, but that doesn't mean they were nothing to fear. They were still very useful in higher level play. If they were not...that was on the DM.

If you read all the hype about old school wizards, you might think a group of 5 high level wizards would clean house...that they wouldn't need any other class help. However, there were many creatures back then immune or highly resistant to magic. A few skeletal warriors would really ruin an otherwise nice wizard party.

Wizards would also get a lot of their reputation for being able to go "nova" and blow all their big stuff in one fight...this helped lead to the "15 minute workday". But again, that was on the DM. My group "worked" for 8 hours a day. If the wizard shot his load in the first 15 minutes...I hope he held onto that crossbow he had at 1st...he's going to need it for the next 7 hours and 45 minutes. Fighter stayed at full combat capacity all day long.

That was where the balance was. You "could" be unstopable for 15 minutes, but then what do you do after that? It was all about resource management. Many people liked that aspect, although I know it doesn't fit everyones taste. Nothing ever will. That's why it's nice to have so many versions of the game to choose from.

 

[catastrophic]

So you are telling me that Pazio, who is full of ex-WotC guys and gals plus quite a few of their freelance crew that has worked directly for WotC or freelanced for them, couldn't work magic in the 4e design space?

Based on their design work for pathfinder, and the new classes?

No. I don't think they could. I think they're good at maknig modules and acessories, but I see nothing to suggest that they could handle 4e, even if they wanted to.

Again, really really good designers from outside of the D&D norm got really excited about 4e when it came out, many of them took a shot at designing for it, and at least one of them came away saying 'whew, this is hard!'

I'm not impresed by paizo design wise, it's as simple as that. And by any analisis, they are the most successful potential creators of 3pp. Where does that leave everyone else?

You must have had your head in the sand in the lead up to 4E then. Even the first intro youtube video trashed earlier editions. In 2007 and early 2008, 4E "marketing" was little more than bashing earlier editions of D&D and certain playstyles.

This is exactly what i'm talking about. You're talking rubbish. Bashing playstyles? Please.

20th level fighter may have not been as powerful as 20th level wizards, but that doesn't mean they were nothing to fear. They were still very useful in higher level play. If they were not...that was on the DM.

No, it was on the poor design. Throw a will save at a high level fighter, and they scream and run, or worse yet, drop dead on the spot.

Move out of melee range and they're helpless unless they have the right kind of magical movement. And no matter what they can do with weapons, a properly buffed cleric can do more, better, for longer, and do it all day long with substitution feats.

A lot of people make excuses for the old editions. Most of these excuses are not legit. It doesn't matter how many bookworkms and late night ambushes you throw at a high level spellcaster in 3e, they're still going to come out ahead of the fighter and most other classes, every, single time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think OGL did at least one positive thing, it created a large amount of mindshare for D&D.

I also agree that 4e is a tough act. It IS a great system with a lot of flexibility and potential, but it is not easy to write for, the standards are quite high. Even simply DMing I see that. I came from running AD&D for what, 25 years? 4e presented an immediate "you gotta up your game" to me. I had the sense right from the start that it is a system that really heavily rewards excellent design and GMing, but also shows up mistakes quite clearly. I know running 4e campaigns has advanced my skills vastly and not to brag, but I am a pretty capable GM.

You just can't hack together any old thing in 4e and expect it to look good. I think WotC expected that by making an excellent mechanical system they would make things easier on everyone. Ironically it just doesn't work that way. It is like driving a high performance race car, you may be a pretty good driver, but you're not going to handle that thing without stepping up your game, every little mistake shows. Instead of being a friendly inclusive game it is really more of an expert tool. Coupled with a somewhat non-traditional design and cutting back on the permissiveness of the license has definitely broken off a segment of the audience.

All that being said there's no going back people. There's not going to be some kind of 5e regression back towards the old days. Things don't work that way. There's already so much in that design space it would just not make sense. Why would anyone play such a game when PF and a multitude of OSR games already exist? Sure, some people would pick it up, but WotC long ago clearly stated their goal was a wider audience, not just "lets sell some more stuff to the same old people."

They're going to want to recapture mindshare and really lower bars to entry, and those would be reasons to produce a 5e, but my guess is it will be another forward movement from 4e, not some kind of regression to the old days. That would simply be defeat. I think Hasbro would just sell the game before that would happen.

 

[Mr. Patient]

Fireball was ALWAYS bland. It just did damage. On the other hand, with no coherent concepts for forced movement, ongoing damage, or status effects, pretty much everything just did damage (or it had 6 column-inches describing what was effectively a whole new subsystem for this spell's special effects.)

Sure, that made fireball simple, so everyone knew the rules for it, and effective, so it was worth knowing them; so yeah, it got re-used a lot, and that made it ICONIC. Now, there are still lots of powers that are big area burst fire damage, but with the coherent system for powers in 4e there's no gain in referring the DM to "fireball" when you can just concisely describe a new big area burst fire power. But fireball is still as simple and bland as it always was, it's just that everything else a wizard can do is cooler and JUST AS EASY to use now. (Not to mention that it's no longer a wizard's job to just do damage, so fireball is kinda out of scope now anyway; they should've kept the name "fireball" for sorcerers, but can you IMAGINE the internet-whining if there were no fireball in PHB1?)

Fireball used to do more than damage; the old versions would melt soft metals and do a host of other things that were flavorful but sometimes annoying to actually work out at the table. 1e had rather detailed (some would say crazy) rules for determining a fireball's area of effect, with the result that casting one could be very dangerous if you weren't careful. It has over time become bland, but didn't used to be.

But more to what I think Lordhawkins9 was getting at, you just didn't have a large set of area burst powers (fire or otherwise) back in the day, and certainly few classes had them at all. Now, most classes have some approximation of one, and the names and effects tend to blur, because there are so many of them. On the one hand, you gain balance and flexibility in party composition, which are great. On the other, you lose some distinctiveness. It's certainly true that a fighter and a wizard play quite differently at a 4e table, but they're less different than they used to be. How much you value balance vs. distinctiveness is going to inform how you feel about this.

 

[Herschel]

So you are telling me that Pazio, who is full of ex-WotC guys and gals plus quite a few of their freelance crew that has worked directly for WotC or freelanced for them, couldn't work magic in the 4e design space?

Why do you think they're ex-WotC employees? just kidding. Seriously though, not can't, but won't. It is harder to design for and Paizo has their direction so why waste resources on it. But there's a lot of indies a singles/partnerships out there that will have a tought time designing for 4E so when you're stretched already, why take the harder path.

 

[Halloween Jack]

You must have had your head in the sand in the lead up to 4E then. Even the first intro youtube video trashed earlier editions. In 2007 and early 2008, 4E "marketing" was little more than bashing earlier editions of D&D and certain playstyles.

Got any links?

I wasn't paying attention to the lead-up to 4e because I was taking a long break from D&D at the time.

The OGL was an absolute masterstroke. It gave a huge swath of fans, many of whom had been alienated by TSR's actions, a sense of ownership of the game, and the ability to (try to) realise that secret fantasy many of them had harboured: to publish their own stuff for the game.

While there were a lot of stinkers, there was also an awful lot of good stuff came out of the OGL: Mutants & Masterminds, Ptolus, Freeport... and, of course, Pathfinder. Also, the entire retro-clone approach is only (legally) possible because of the OGL.

The problem with the OGL was that most of the best stuff to come out of it was standalone and largely proprietary. You don't need a 3e PHB in order to play Mutants and Masterminds, Spycraft, or Star Wars, and there's enough rules incompatibility between them that buying something like a Monster Manual to incorporate its contents into your game (if you even want to) is not going to be a simple plug-and-play job, which kinda defeats the point of a universal system "reducing demand for other systems to zero."

What you eventually got from the OGL was in fact the same problem with late-TSR era AD&D: A bunch of different properties that have their own rules and brand loyalty and can't honestly be described as one big fanbase.

The fact of the matter is that a game system built to service D&D is going to do a poor job of being a universal system and need a lot of rules hacking to adapt it from genre to genre. This is why forum debates about D20 were always a farce; in defending D20 you can always point out that D20 games don't necessarily have to have classes, levels, ability scores, hit points, spells, armor class, saves, or really anything at all except rolling a D20 and adding a number to it.

I'm not surprised that WotC didn't repeat the OGL with 4e. They're neither allergic to nor incapable of making money; if they thought a 4e OGL would be good for their brand or their revenue flow they'd have done it.

 

[Ajar]

But more to what I think Lordhawkins9 was getting at, you just didn't have a large set of area burst powers (fire or otherwise) back in the day, and certainly few classes had them at all. Now, most classes have some approximation of one, and the names and effects tend to blur, because there are so many of them.

Really? How many classes in 4E have an area burst 2 within 20 power like Fireball? This is still a situation where the Wizard dominates, particularly at low levels.

On the one hand, you gain balance and flexibility in party composition, which are great. On the other, you lose some distinctiveness. It's certainly true that a fighter and a wizard play quite differently at a 4e table, but they're less different than they used to be. How much you value balance vs. distinctiveness is going to inform how you feel about this.

I agree that they're less different, but I disagree on how. The AEDU framework is the key point of similarity; there are no ranged area burst 2 Fighter powers, and very little overlap between what the Fighter and Wizard do in the party -- just like it always was. The similarity is in structure, not role.

 

[Lordhawkins9]

No, it was on the poor design. Throw a will save at a high level fighter, and they scream and run, or worse yet, drop dead on the spot.

Move out of melee range and they're helpless unless they have the right kind of magical movement. And no matter what they can do with weapons, a properly buffed cleric can do more, better, for longer, and do it all day long with substitution feats.

A lot of people make excuses for the old editions. Most of these excuses are not legit. It doesn't matter how many bookworkms and late night ambushes you throw at a high level spellcaster in 3e, they're still going to come out ahead of the fighter and most other classes, every, single time.

You talk about making excuses for the "old editions" and then seem to focus on 3e. When I'm talking about "old editions" I'm talking about 1e & 2e.

3e introduced feats to the game which ultimately killed any form of balance. Take out feats and the fighter stands up much better.

Now, I'm not saying at high levels the fighter will ever stand up to a mage, but they are not obsolete either (unless of course your fighter has any form of anti-magic barrier...then the wizard is hosed). Fighters were stronger at lower levels, then bowed out to the wizards at high level. They were balanced for a campaign...not per level. Also, keep in mind that at equal amounts of experience (1e & 2e) fighters were higher level. Wizards needed more exp to go up in level. They needed to pay more for their power, per say. 3e stopped that and lost some measure of balance there as well.