D&D 4E Should I play 4e?

Garthanos · Jun 5, 2019

I have bought brand new books very cheap too. 5 bucks for a repurchase of Martial Power recently

Garthanos · Jun 5, 2019

MechaPilot said:
the overnight full-healing reduces the amount of time the PCs spend recovering from combat

My experience this was always the case with two days being the most that was normal due to obligatory clerics === for me 4e means no obligatory classes

Garthanos · Jun 5, 2019

Lylandra said:
But there's a lack of utility (magical and non-magical), too much reliance on magic items that do too little in terms of fluff (feats suffer the same) and too little complexity outside of combat situations.

I found skills more important and more leveraged than in previous versions perhaps making them richer because of skill challenges (but that is a DM side thing) however it was indeed not presented complex ... and martial practices perhaps a source of some of that complexity which obviously were underdeveloped I have been working on myself. => though rituals and afflictions and other elements were also under done.

I have disliked most D&D magic items compared to those of myth and legend the Artifact rules in 4e I didnt use much but I have heard great praise for.

Guest 6801328 · Jun 5, 2019

No, you should play The One Ring.

...

Well, YOU ASKED.

Azzy · Jun 5, 2019

Elfcrusher said:
No, you should play The One Ring.

...

Well, YOU ASKED.

Screw that, play Cyberpunk 2020 instead.

Tony Vargas · Jun 5, 2019

Garthanos said:
I have disliked most D&D magic items compared to those of myth and legend the Artifact rules in 4e I didnt use much but I have heard great praise for.

4e magic items were as guilty of that kind if genre-inapropriateness as ever, but Artifacts were actually quite good. They actually impacted the story & character, managing to be interesting without just resorting to game-breaking overpoweredness.

happyhermit · Jun 5, 2019

I tried really hard to "get" 4e. In retrospect I am surprised how much thought and effort I invested compared to other games that didn't produce great results for me at the table (had no trouble walking away from 3.x for example). Part of it is probably because the first AP podcast I tuned into are big fans (Critical Hit), and people online kept saying stuff like; "It's no more dependent on the grid than any other D&D", "Classes aren't any more "samey" than other D&D", "It's so great for new players" etc which I now thoroughly disagree with.

In the end I did learn a bit about my preferences and the value asymmetry can have, so I try to look at it as a positive experience. In the end though, I play games to have fun and I can't help but regret the time spent having less fun than if I had just moved on like I usually do (or back to Basic). So, if I had a time machine I would probably tell myself not to try it, or at least to just let it go when it didn't work as well as a bunch of other games I could play.

Garthanos · Jun 5, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
4e magic items were as guilty of that kind if genre-inapropriateness as ever, but Artifacts were actually quite good. They actually impacted the story & character, managing to be interesting without just resorting to game-breaking overpoweredness.

To be honest I did find Artifacts highly tempting even in ADnD but that was for martial players when I started DMing

4e made it trivially easy to go virtually magic item less too... with support for Inherent bonus even in the Character Builder.

In some ways heroes not having item number dependence is also more legendary.

Monayuris · Jun 5, 2019

Give it a try.

I think you can get the books on PDF now.

Opinions are just that... they are really meaningless. Nothing is better than real experience and I'm pretty sure an evening trying it out won't be the end of the world. You may find a great game, or it could be a disaster. Invite good people to play and either way you win.

I had a disastrous attempt to try out The Black Hack. I dug the game and wanted to try it. The players I tried it with were way thumbs down on it. I was a little disappointed, but i wouldn't have considered it a wasted time.

Don't let anyone discourage you from trying something new or different. Go for it! Worst case you learn what doesn't work for you.

EzekielRaiden · Jun 5, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
To be fair - and I use that word almost ironically - Essentials paid a modest price in /increased/ overall complexity, in order to make certain classes feel a bit more "classic." (npi, irony, yes, but no pun)

Depends on how you slice it. The overall rules became "more complex" (and more like old-school "classic" D&D) because they had more exceptions, but the individual use cases became "less complex" because, with those exceptions, they individually had fewer moving parts (and thus less like classic 4e). Since the perspective on offer was intended to focus on the player-side experience, I answered with the latter

Um… Seeker, Vampire, Rune Priest, and ..er.. y'know, there wasn't really a complete crap defender, was there? … Knight, I guess.

Rune Priest wasn't bad, just seen as unnecessary (it probably should've just been a variant of Cleric). I have had far too many people tell me that Vampire was too serviceable to be "complete crap" etc., it just needed the charop tricks that for others were merely useful. Seeker rarely gets any praise, but it's also not the worst controller by a long shot. That was Binder, which I'm somewhat surprised you failed to mention, as it's the one (sub)class I've never, even once, heard praise for, and quite frequently heard derided as a dumpster fire.

So sure, the Seeker and (to a lesser extent) the Vampire are some "bad enough to maybe cause problems" classes. I'll grant that as a caveat. I figured they were sufficiently out-there and unlikely to be played, that going into the weeds with a new prospective player would be more than a little pointless (and possibly actively damaging).

Therefore, in the interests of clarity [MENTION=6789786]Lapasta[/MENTION] :
Any class from PHB1, PHB2, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, or Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms, will be more or less guaranteed to work out of the box. (Paladin can be a bit wonky without content fro Divine Power, but it's not bad.) Other than Monk, the PHB3 classes can be wonky/less-good, so keep that in mind, though Monk is just fine. Avoid Hybrids for your first character, many hybrid combos are weak. Heroes of Shadow is probably the only "not very good" book, and even then it's not all bad.

All races, regardless of source, are just fine. Likewise classes and other features from Dragon, or any other supplement book (like Swordmage from the FR book, or Artificer from Eberron), are also just fine. 95% or more of 4e's content is truly well-balanced, though there are a lot of overly-niche feats.

There were some post-Essentials bright spots and that was one. The Skald and Berserker were also pretty cool, in some ways - though the Berserker was the most cross-role sub-class ever, changing roles when it raged.

Yeah....I get what they wanted with the Berserker. But it would have made more sense as a Warden subclass that specialized in damage, getting rage-y stances/abilities instead of the usual ones.