D&D 4E How To Clone 4E Using 5E Rules

This seems like a lotta work for precious little gain, IMO.

I think if I wanted to rehash 4e, I'd look at Strike! first.

But then I'm a big fan of lighter rules.

Tony Vargas said:

Yeah, don't make the mistake the "tactical module" did and create something for the 4e fans, based on how the game's detractors painted it.

Click to expand...

Given my love of 4e, if I ever did make such a thing, you can be sure the "tactical module" fiasco would not be repeated. I was among those openly incensed by the way WotC handled that (and most other 4e-related things during the playtest).

Skill Challenges are a plenty robust sub-system, what they lacked was da flavah. The best SCs I ran or played in where the ones that had been added to, creating a sort of game-within-a-game, that had the success and failure map to something more concrete, in the fiction, that could be readily tracked by all players at the table.

Click to expand...

I disagree. They have nowhere near the level of support that combat encounters have. That's what I want. Skill Challenges are good for generic skill-related stuff, or as a template for off-the-cuff skill-based problem solving. They are nowhere near good enough to be even a shadow of the strategic depth of combat. I would like there to be legitimate social combat, and legitimate player-versus-environment challenges that only limitedly interact with the combat powers and features characters possess (e.g. environment encounters might cost healing surges).

'Silo'ingPC abilities by Pillar seems like it'd be fairly workable.
The extreme would be to give every player choice an application in each pillar.

Click to expand...

That was the intent, yeah.

Meh, the choice of a jargon term or two...was never the great heresy AEDU committed against D&D.

Click to expand...

I disagree. Make the pill easier to swallow in every way you can, and people might just accept it. Certainly neither of us has more than a gut feeling on the matter, but I strongly think that the hump of "it's too different, I won't even try it," or worse, "it's Just Wrong and I don't have to play to know that," would never have happened if 4e went out of its way to embrace older-ed "feel" as 5e did.

It was just that it came intolerably close to delivering class balance - sometimes even in the face of modestly different levels of system mastery.

Click to expand...

That was a factor, to be sure, but you cannot change that part of 4e without it...becoming some other game. Any game worthy of the name "clone" or "rebuild" etc. of 4e has to refuse to make gods and mundanes. Since that part is 110% non-negotiable for pretty much every 4e fan I know, and 110% non-negotiable for the people who like their god-tier high-level casters, there's no point in even trying to touch that. Instead, address the things that can be fixed and hope it helps, since there's definitionally no hope in the other direction.

dave2008 said:

However, 4e actually already did that. The "powers" where actually called spells (arcane), prayers (divine), and exploits (martial)

Click to expand...

Missing the point. Having the term "powers" at all, anywhere in the game, was (apparently) HUGELY off-putting to a lot of people. It was a key reason why people referred to 4e as a supers game. People don't mind starting with relatively competent, durable characters--otherwise you'd never see higher-than-first-level starts. But a lot of people hear "power" and immediately think Superman and his suite of powers, and that immediately poisons the experience, regardless of anything else they may experience. That's an error that can be corrected. Whether it's enough, well, who can say? We can't see alternate history.

Tony Vargas said:

Traditional D&D design principles put at least some value on the 14,400 uses of an at-will action you could hypothetically squeeze into a really busy 24hr day.

Click to expand...

That's...completely ridiculous. Who would have the patience to work through that? Just...why????

Ratskinner said:

This seems like a lotta work for precious little gain, IMO.

I think if I wanted to rehash 4e, I'd look at Strike! first.

But then I'm a big fan of lighter rules.

Click to expand...

Whereas I find lighter rules almost always infuriatingly constraining. I never know what's possible, because "possible" is purely in the DM's head. I have to meticulously pick apart their brain, trying to understand how they think, what they like. It's basically learning a new system, except I have to do it every time I join a new group. With robust, extensible rules, I can relax. I can trust that "cold" means "cold." I can trust that "reliable" means "reliable." I don't have to worry about whether the dictionary in my head exactly matches the one in the DM's head.

EzekielRaiden said:

I disagree. They have nowhere near the level of support that combat encounters have. That's what I want. Skill Challenges are good for generic skill-related stuff, or as a template for off-the-cuff skill-based problem solving. They are nowhere near good enough to be even a shadow of the strategic depth of combat.

Click to expand...

I don't actually disagree, it's just that, mechanically, SCs in their final form were a robust subsystem. Just like d20 skill systems in general, not a very evocative one - since they're all essentially pass/fail.

I would like there to be legitimate social combat, and legitimate player-versus-environment challenges

Click to expand...

On the topic of bad names for things, I'd think twice about 'social /combat/'

Missing the point. Having the term "powers" at all, anywhere in the game, was (apparently) HUGELY off-putting to a lot of people. It was a key reason why people referred to 4e as a supers game.

Click to expand...

I think it was just a convient, pithy play on words. If they'd've picked something else, something else would have been picked on. The salvos if the edition war started scatter-gun (it's dumbed down! It's too complicated! wizards are nerfed! Fighters cast spells!), and just focused in on and repeated /ad nauseum/ whatever created negative buz.

That's...completely ridiculous. Who would have the patience to work through that? Just...why????

Click to expand...

You're not supposed to work through it, just accept "but the fighter can swing his sword all day" as a reason the wizard should be able to cast everything from sleep to teleport to wish.

dave2008 said:

However, 4e actually already did that. The "powers" where actually called spells (arcane), prayers (divine), and exploits (martial)

Click to expand...

Side note, in our home games we've got to the point where we call Skill Powers, Expertise. Seem fitting given the skill focus.

EzekielRaiden said:

Missing the point. Having the term "powers" at all, anywhere in the game, was (apparently) HUGELY off-putting to a lot of people. It was a key reason why people referred to 4e as a supers game. People don't mind starting with relatively competent, durable characters--otherwise you'd never see higher-than-first-level starts. But a lot of people hear "power" and immediately think Superman and his suite of powers, and that immediately poisons the experience, regardless of anything else they may experience. That's an error that can be corrected. Whether it's enough, well, who can say? We can't see alternate history.

Click to expand...

I'm not trying to disagree with you, my point was the terms are already in the game. Just drop "powers" and use the terms already provided.

EzekielRaiden said:

Whereas I find lighter rules almost always infuriatingly constraining. I never know what's possible, because "possible" is purely in the DM's head. I have to meticulously pick apart their brain, trying to understand how they think, what they like. It's basically learning a new system, except I have to do it every time I join a new group. With robust, extensible rules, I can relax. I can trust that "cold" means "cold." I can trust that "reliable" means "reliable." I don't have to worry about whether the dictionary in my head exactly matches the one in the DM's head.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree with you, but I have had the opposite experience. When I played 4e with a new group (a group new to D&D) they only ever did or tried to do what was on their character sheet of clearly in the "rules." We didn't have the free-flow of ideas and creative play I was used to with my group that started with 1e (that group was also playing 4e).

Eventually, when they where about level 8-9, I decided to do a one shot adventure with new characters. For this adventure I removed all "powers" and improvised almost everything based on DMG42. If they wanted to do something (attack, cast a spell, etc.) I simple asked them to describe the action they wanted to attempt and adjudicated it. It was only partially successful. When we went back to our regular game they mostly went back to relying on the crutch of their powers and the rules. I few started to improvise more, but we didn't get to the level I wanted to until we switched to 5e.

dave2008 said:

I don't disagree with you, but I have had the opposite experience. When I played 4e with a new group (a group new to D&D) they only ever did or tried to do what was on their character sheet of clearly in the "rules." We didn't have the free-flow of ideas and creative play I was used to with my group that started with 1e (that group was also playing 4e).

Eventually, when they where about level 8-9, I decided to do a one shot adventure with new characters. For this adventure I removed all "powers" and improvised almost everything based on DMG42. If they wanted to do something (attack, cast a spell, etc.) I simple asked them to describe the action they wanted to attempt and adjudicated it. It was only partially successful. When we went back to our regular game they mostly went back to relying on the crutch of their powers and the rules. I few started to improvise more, but we didn't get to the level I wanted to until we switched to 5e.

Click to expand...

If I may, I'd like to test a theory. So I'd like to ask two questions:
1. How long had you been playing, prior to the attempted 4e game?
2. How long did you attempt to play 4e?

I of course have a hypothesis, and this is a rather meager attempt to test it, but it's what I have.

Isn't all we need to know, what about 4e needs to be changed?

personally I liked 4e and all I would like to see is a revamp of feats. Pretty much a total revamp. A lot of the feats were worthless compared to other feats.

My players actually hated 4e for some reason. The cited reason was in general they disliked the superman feel. I now run 5e but am currently running 4e adventures. Out of the abyss transitioned to against the aboleths in FR using lfr modules. Assault on Myth Nantar currently which seems amusingly about to be a 5e product soon.


My players aren't very good at skill challenges either for some reason. They will role play and interact with towns and NPC's fine in the old style which is I guess because that is what we are used to we started in about 1980 ish. It may just be I am useless at running skill challenges in fact. I am not sure they really need to be part of any new 4e, you can always run the non combat like other editions, but they seem to be a good idea if you can run them properly.

EzekielRaiden said:

If I may, I'd like to test a theory. So I'd like to ask two questions:
1. How long had you been playing, prior to the attempted 4e game?
2. How long did you attempt to play 4e?

I of course have a hypothesis, and this is a rather meager attempt to test it, but it's what I have.

Click to expand...

1. Group 1 started in the 80's with 1e/basic; group 2 started with 4e)
2. Both groups played 4e from the beginning (maybe a few months after release) until the start of 5e. We transitioned to 5e a few months after its release.

To clarify, we didn't "attempt" to play 4e, we played it for its entire run. We really enjoyed it. It is the edition that brought us back to, or for some started, our love for D&D. I really like the edition, but I did notice a difference in the type of play it seemed to create between my new players and my veterans. The new group played 4e for 5 years or so, but I could never get them into the creative play that my veterans found so easy. I believe some of the issue, but definitely not all, was the rules for everything nature of the game. In hindsight, I can see ways I could have introduced the game that might have mitigated that, but I just didn't realize it would be an issue until too late.

Zardnaar said:

The Warlock also has a very 4E feel to it at least in terms of a template. It would not be hard to turn its invocations and spells into 4E powers or even stick with 5Es approach. You could also use it as a template to rewrite into other classes. After that you just need to plug in whatever it is from 4E that you miss, micro feats its weapon system etc.

Click to expand...

The Warlock would probably provide one of the best "templates" for developing a 4e approach to 5e classes. It has a Build-Your-Own-Class feel to it, with a nice mix of 1/day, at-will, and other circumstantial powers.