With 5e here, what will 4e be remembered for?

[Remathilis]

Sadly, it will probably be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

If I have to say something nice at its eulogy, it would be that it will be remembered to for trying to do the impossible: bring D&D to a new style of gamer. It tried to remove the image of D&D as that game played in the late 70's by college kids and that had weird books with cartoony-art and 20 different polearms. It tried to remove the "nerd" stereotype by appealing to card-players, board gamers, and video-gamers. It tried to make the rules emulate the best new ideas in table-top, miniature, ccg, and mmo games. It tried to take back the success of Warcraft and other games IT grandfathered. It really tried to make itself "new", "improved" and "not your father's D&D".

It just lost a little too much of itself in the process.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Encounters.

4E is all about complex interactive environments where traps, skills, and creatures all combine to create memorable and challenging encounters. It probably does large, set piece encounter design better than any prior edition, and the mechanics are optimized via AEDU to enable exciting encounters where PCs can do something exciting every round.

 

[Henry]

4. "In my game, there's this cool encounter..." to follow the OP's structure and setup. Olgar has it best here. There were all sorts of components designed to help DM's craft cool encounters, and listening to people like Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, it seems this aspect inspired new players the most.

 

[Ratskinner]

Encounters.

4E is all about complex interactive environments where traps, skills, and creatures all combine to create memorable and challenging encounters. It probably does large, set piece encounter design better than any prior edition, and the mechanics are optimized via AEDU to enable exciting encounters where PCs can do something exciting every round.

This.

 

[Dungeoneer]

4. "In my game, there's this cool encounter..." to follow the OP's structure and setup. Olgar has it best here. There were all sorts of components designed to help DM's craft cool encounters, and listening to people like Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, it seems this aspect inspired new players the most.

Yup, this.

 

[thewok]

Fourth Edition will be remembered for many things, and whether these are positives or negatives depends entirely on your personal point of view. For me, these are all positives:

* Bringing non-magical characters up to the level of magical characters.
* At-will spells so a wizard is never reduced to using a crossbow or throwing darts (unless he really wants to do so).
* A focus on ease of DM preparation and improvisation. I wanted to DM in 3E, but I was always too overwhelmed by the CRs and what not that I was afraid I'd never be able to challenge the party without killing them.
* Universality of skills and amounts of skills between classes, especially the lack of any restricted skills. (This is one of my major problems with 3E and Pathfinder).
* Removal of class-based attack bonuses.
* A focus on making interesting encounters not just with monsters, but also with different terrain types, hazards and traps as integral parts of those encounters.
* Removal of mechanical implications of alignment, which is a very subjective thing, as evidenced by numerous threads on numerous message boards and newsgroups over the years.
* Addition of the Dragonborn and Tiefling. Yes, I know these aren't the originals, but, for me, these are the iconic versions of the races.
* A version of the Bard that I not only found not useless, but that I'd actually play. Then the Skald came, and I liked that one even more.
* A cosmology that I liked and will be keeping, regardless of 5E's return to the Great Wheel.
* Introduction of other great classes (and new takes on older classes): Warlock (and the Hexblade subclass), Invoker, Bladesinger, Swordmage, Warlord, and all the Druid types.
* No level adjustments on races.
* No penalties on Racial ability score adjustments.

There are others, and I'm sure that, given enough time to properly think about it, I could come up with a dozen more or so good points from 4E. These are the big ones for me, though. The one thing that I really didn't care for in 4E was the need for more and more magic items. That was easily fixed with inherent bonuses, though.

Oh. Also the apparent need to set up a map and minis for every encounter. This was not actually a thing, but enough people thought it was a necessity that it became a thing. 4E worked well without maps, but the presentation of the powers made it appears as if maps were required for everything.

 

[Raith5]

Agree with the tone of this thread, but I have never got the idea that 4e is all about the grid and miniatures. I have used them ever since basic D&D for most encounters.

But 4e is certainly for me about mechanics for everything and everyone. In particular, the way 4e gave PCs powers and mechanics to really shape combats really empowered players compared to other editions. I just loved seeing my DM's monsters being pushed over cliffs, monsters being stopped in their tracks by the fighter, stunning Vecna, being successful in difficult skill challenges.

 

[billd91]

Some people will remember 4e for positive reasons, but some will also remember it as the New Coke of D&D - a major investment in a new direction by the company that misread the market.

 

[Michael Morris]

I'll remember 4e as the edition where everyone was effectively a spell caster, the edition of non-sensical purely "gamist" rules (fighters have techniques that can only be used once a day? How in the world does that make sense), the edition where simply swinging a weapon was never the right choice - instead it was better to use the twisted lotus ninja decapitaiton strike power.

The world will remember 4e as the edition that did so poorly it was cancelled a full year before its replacement was released. No other edition of D&D has that black eye, and hopefully it will never happen again.

let's refrain from the edition warring please - Plane Sailing, ENWorld Admin

 

[was]

Healing Surges, Encounter Powers and the Mega-Edition Wars