Favourite D&D edition that’s not 5E

Hussar said:

Nope, never heard of them. Not surprising, I'm not really huge into video games, and was never into console games.

But, I think my point is, if you have to dredge back 25 years to find an example of how 4e would look as a video game, then, well, it probably wouldn't make a very good video game. Like I said, 3e works so much better. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, that Eberron MMO that they had. Those style mechanics work fantastic for a video game.

I mean, good grief, how hard would it be to make a 3e style Elder Scrolls game?

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I think the market for turn-based tactical gameplay is pretty high. The most recent games I can think of are the latest version of the X-Com games. 4-6 soldiers in skirmish battles. 4e would easily work similar to these games, I wouldn't try to emulate the old 3e or 2e style DnD games, rather I'd make it a game that uses 4e and the 4e systems. It believe it would work perfectly for this style of game.

I voted 2e, but I vacillate between 2e and 3e as my favorite. 2e I loved for the introduction of non-player proficiencies, number of settings, and the sheer amount of lore everything had. 3e I loved for the ability to cobble together pretty much any concept I could come up with.

cbwjm said:

I think the market for turn-based tactical gameplay is pretty high. The most recent games I can think of are the latest version of the X-Com games. 4-6 soldiers in skirmish battles. 4e would easily work similar to these games, I wouldn't try to emulate the old 3e or 2e style DnD games, rather I'd make it a game that uses 4e and the 4e systems. It believe it would work perfectly for this style of game.

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Played the 90s XCom and the first of the new ones. Another example of something that could be done for a 4E type game.

These type of games tend to be niche but they can be done.

Shining Force kind of had prestige classes and paragon paths circa 1994.

For example Sarah was basically a heal bot type priest. You could upgrade her to an archpriest or if you found mithril you could upgrade her to a monk.

Zardnaar said:

Played the 90s XCom and the first of the new ones. Another example of something that could be done for a 4E type game.

These type of games tend to be niche but they can be done.

Shining Force kind of had prestige classes and paragon paths circa 1994.

For example Sarah was basically a heal bot type priest. You could upgrade her to an archpriest or if you found mithril you could upgrade her to a monk.

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I'm a huge fan of X-Com. This wouldn't work at all for a 4e game. X-com doesn't have any "do-over" type mechanics. None. You can't turn a hit into a miss, you can't turn damage into non-damage, you cannot change the type of damage after the attack, so on and so forth.

The biggest change of 4e over earlier types of D&D is the addition of "do over" type mechanics. Stuff where the player could, quite literally, rewind the clock and change the outcome of actions. 5e has a lot of this as well - stuff that triggers "after you roll but before a hit has been declared" that wouldn't work in a video game, particularly a turn based one. Another major change for 4e was the breaking of the initiative order. Prior to 4e, you had your turn and, outside of some corner cases like Attacks of Opportunity (3e), you couldn't act on someone else's turn.

4e doesn't work like that at all. So many effects trigger on allies actions, allowing you to take actions when it's not your turn. Even simple things like Commander's Strike or, well, any Leader at all in 4e wouldn't translate at all in a turn based game unless you are going to somehow build in all these initiative breaking elements.

Prestige classes and paragon paths were nothing new. Ultima III had those kinds of things in the 80's. Final Fantasy too. That's not a 4e element.

Hussar said:

I'm a huge fan of X-Com. This wouldn't work at all for a 4e game. X-com doesn't have any "do-over" type mechanics. None. You can't turn a hit into a miss, you can't turn damage into non-damage, you cannot change the type of damage after the attack, so on and so forth.

The biggest change of 4e over earlier types of D&D is the addition of "do over" type mechanics. Stuff where the player could, quite literally, rewind the clock and change the outcome of actions. 5e has a lot of this as well - stuff that triggers "after you roll but before a hit has been declared" that wouldn't work in a video game, particularly a turn based one. Another major change for 4e was the breaking of the initiative order. Prior to 4e, you had your turn and, outside of some corner cases like Attacks of Opportunity (3e), you couldn't act on someone else's turn.

4e doesn't work like that at all. So many effects trigger on allies actions, allowing you to take actions when it's not your turn. Even simple things like Commander's Strike or, well, any Leader at all in 4e wouldn't translate at all in a turn based game unless you are going to somehow build in all these initiative breaking elements.

Prestige classes and paragon paths were nothing new. Ultima III had those kinds of things in the 80's. Final Fantasy too. That's not a 4e element.

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Those elements wouldn't translate well but you don't need them to have a 4E type game.

I would expect a truncated power list with perhaps limited options to pick powers. Hell they could even have no ability to pick your powers.

Is it a 4E type game yes. Is it 100% accurate to a phb no but neither was Eye of the Beholder, Baldurs Gate, or KoToR.

Zardnaar said:

Those elements wouldn't translate well but you don't need them to have a 4E type game.

I would expect a truncated power list with perhaps limited options to pick powers. Hell they could even have no ability to pick your powers.

Is it a 4E type game yes. Is it 100% accurate to a phb no but neither was Eye of the Beholder, Baldurs Gate, or KoToR.

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If you choose nothing but powers that are basically process sim - click the power and an effect occurs, you might as well be playing 3e. That's excising a LOT of how 4e worked. Particularly the initiative order breaking stuff. 4e is absolutely chock a block with that sort of thing. Funny thing is, people complained about powers like Come and Get it as being too "video gamey". And, really, they do kind of have a point. Something like CAGI is pretty much pulled straight from video games. Only thing is, things like CAGI are the tiny minority of powers. Leaders especially had so many powers that triggered other character's to perform actions. And, how exactly do you add in effects that rewrite history, like the 5e feat Lucky? 4e has a ton of stuff that allows the player to roll back the clock a bit and then change what happened.

That doesn't function in video games very well.

To me, it's really funny that the edition that got lambasted as the most "videogamey" was probably the hardest edition to translate onto a computer. 2e and 3e were comparatively simple to translate over. 5e is also proving to be pretty difficult to translate into a video game. For largely the same reasons - far too many player facing powers that allow the players to rewrite events. I mean, how exactly do you add in a paladin's smite into a video game? You only choose to smite after you roll your attack and you know that you hit.

I would assume you have a smite button on cool down or penalty to hit if it's at will.

Translations to video games don't have to be 100%.

Eye of the Beholder was easily based on 2E but I never thought I was playing 2E.

All the best D&D games were more accurately based on D&D. 4E was designed for VTT. People take things to literally if they're claiming it's to video game like they're probably complaining about 4Es power system as encounter powers are basically cool down powers.

My wife plays Fire Emblem and when she saw me bust out a Megadrive and play Shining Force 2 she recognized what type of game it was. Hell you could call it a D&D game. You just wouldn't put in any problematic to translate powers/spells.

4E is my second favorite because it brought so many good ideas into the mainstream, like minions, nonstandard monster creation, strange abilities, etc... while also stepping away from the insane rules crunch of 3E. 2E is probably my third favorite just from sheer sense of wonder and delight I experienced while playing it (even though I started with red box).

5E is a great step forward, stepping even further away from hard crunch. The biggest weakness of 5E for me is mostly boring monsters. But that’s something I can easily rectify.

I voted "AD&D 1E", not out of any fondness for the mechanics but just because of how much fun I had playing it back in the day.

Dragon Age: Inquisition reminded me a lit of 4e with all the cool down powers. That pretty much turned me off of that video game.