D&D 4E 4e's Equivalent to Pathfinder

[Tequila Sunrise]

The "self-loathing" comments surprise me. Personally, I've REALLY enjoyed the stuff that's come out for 4e since the Essentials books, with the only exception being Heroes of Shadow. I love the Monster Vault, I love Madness at Gardmore Abbey, I love Heroes of the Feywild, and I love Reavers of Harkenwold. I really like the new class options we got it Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms.

I don't think I'm an exception to the rule among 4e fans here. Sure, some folks didn't like a perceived "half edition" with Essentials, and I agree that Heroes of Shadow has taken some hits. But what about all of those other products?

Don't get me wrong; I'm quite interested in D&D Next. But in the mean time, I'm enjoying 4e tremendously.

No, I don't think you're an exception to the rule either. Most players I know don't have any strong feelings about recent 4e materials.

Personally I don't like the Essentials class paradigm. Partly because 'Essentials' is a gross misnomer, partly because I don't like the retro attitude and partly because deep down I just don't trust them to be balanced. (I've seen some of them in play and I know they're not 3e-crazy-unbalanced, but still.)

So I mostly stopped paying attention to new releases after it became clear that WotC's romance with retro design is more than a fling. I do like the MV though.

 

[The Halfling]

Add another one to the pile of someone who didn't like Essentials, as a whole.

A couple of the subclasses were interesting, at least thematically, like the hexblade and skald, for example. Subclasses should have been done as alternate class abilities, like was done in Martial Power 1 and 2.

I look at some of the latest subclasses released, and I see lazy design work. Like the Witch. Flavor-wise, she screams warlock but for some reason they wussed out and made her another wizard.

I'd be in to provide any assistance in keeping 4e alive. I love the system, but even I think it could use a revision and definitely a clean up.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Monster Vaults are great. I like Heroes of the Feywild and the Neverwinter book. I like the Rules Compendium as a reference, but there are changes in the tone that I don't like. Here's the main one:

PHB, p 8
When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and
adjudicate the story.

RC, p
The DM decides how to apply the rules and guide the story. If the rules don't cover a situation, the DM determines what to do. A times, the DM might alter or even ignore the result of a die roll if doing so benefits the story.
​

In its presentation of how the game is meant to be played, the distinct roles of GM and players and the balance of power between them, etc, I think Essentials is a retrograde step. That last sentence in the quote from the RC is a killer - introducing Storyteller's so-called Golden Rule into a game well-enough designed not to need it. And the description of the GM as a guide rather than an adjudicator of the storyteller also reminds me of approaches to RPGing that I'd rather forget.

Likewise, while I appreciate that there are players out there who don't want to be bothered with martial dailies, I think the dropping of them in Essentials is also consistent with that retrograde step. It verges on a concession that metagame mechanics are undesirable, and that the designers have given up on the distinction between player resource and PC resource.

I'm disappointed that, at least in their public pronouncements, the WotC designers are renouncing this great game that they created. (Skill challenges dying in a fire is the latest example.)

OTOH one of the biggest stumbling blocks people seem to have with 4e is the perception that the game is intended to be some sort of hard box that describes everyone's actions within a gamist box that the DM is not supposed to color outside of the lines of.

I know you've held that narrative should adapt to rules and there's not a need to have rules adapt to circumstance, but I think from the standpoint of the overall acceptance of 4e that it was a monstrous mistake on WotC's part to encourage this mode of thinking. The VAST majority of "I hate 4e" complaints have basically centered around BS like "Prone Gelatinous Cube" and other such nonsense. When the philosophy the game promotes is "just explain it somehow" a huge amount of the fan base is lost and can't accept that, and simply rejects the game entire instead of simply using their own judgment and say not using prone with an ooze.

It isn't that I GENERALLY think the sentiment of what you're saying is wrong, but it was simply a horrible choice of presentation that hurt the acceptance of the game a LOT, regardless of what we might personally think is the best way to play. MUCH stronger statements should have been made right from the start in the core books telling DMs to simply hack effects and things in whatever way they felt like right from the start. 4e might still be a viable game instead of a dead product, and you (or I) could go ahead and happily just let prone represent whatever we feel like in our games and not worry about it.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], in terms of market perceptions I'm sure you're right.

But I wish they had tried to articulate the other strategy clearly - instead of being coy about it, I wish they'd around said (in the way that eg HeroWars does) that players/GMs are expected to narrate around results, and to build the story that follows on the narration that preceded. I feel that they didn't quite give their ruleset a fair shake.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred , in terms of market perceptions I'm sure you're right.

But I wish they had tried to articulate the other strategy clearly - instead of being coy about it, I wish they'd around said (in the way that eg HeroWars does) that players/GMs are expected to narrate around results, and to build the story that follows on the narration that preceded. I feel that they didn't quite give their ruleset a fair shake.

Oh, yeah, well, there was a real lack of understanding of how to present things going on there. Which is why it is a shame they now feel like there has to be a whole new game and nobody is apparently saying "wait... we already have this game...", but heck, what is good is often thrown under the bus for what is mediocre, and some things would have to be fixed anyway. So here we are 5e, yippy yippy yippy yay! lol. I guess it will be an interesting show to watch.

 

[Ikalos]

Well, I'd like a 4e version of Pathfinder.

Regular adventure paths, varied settings, tons of background support...with the 4e rules I know and love.

I always loved 4e for it's abstractness. Meant I could tweak it so much easier, without ignoring it 100%.

Plus I love the classes and power structures. People say that all the classes are the same; admittedly, they are very similar, but the similarities make it easier to notice the differences between the classes and it makes each class easy to play and enjoy.

I never liked how the wizard had all the goodies while the fighter missed out. Or if you wanted to play one class, you were bound to take the one race that matched because of the negatives.

In 4e, I created a long tooth shifter invoker that wasn't complete crap! That wouldn't be possible with the older rules. The shifter would probably take negatives to it's wisdom because, i dunno, they're too wild or what have you.

 

[gyor]

There were thousands of complaints by players of the Third Edition about broken builds, useless classes, complicated monsters, et cetera. That was why the Wizards thought they could appeal to the majority with a Fourth Edition. Unfortunately the Wizards misread the complaints to be more universal. It turned out that a larger portion of Thirders had no problems.

I think the same is true of the Fourth Edition. There are many complaints, but again the majority are happy. However the difference is the existence of Pathfinder to maintain a large crowd which the Wizards still want back.

I think it is folly to abandon us Fourthers for a section of players who already have their preferred games. The Wizards will simply kill off the Fourth to create an even less popular Fifth. The Pathfinder players whom I know told me that they will stick with Pathfinder. We shall see what happens in eighteen months.

Your example about third edition complainers leading to 4th edition and not repersenting the majority of 3rd edition players reminds me of how the designers listened to the realms haters and nuked the realms and destroyed a massive chuck of the fan base in the process, costing them money.

Also two things killed 4e, the GSL forced 3pp suppliers to become competitiers, so instead of having other rpg companies supporting your game leaving you the dominate force in the rpg market, instead you forced them into foes after your customer base just to survive and one or more found a vulneriblity leading to wizards problems.

The other thing was the stubborn pride and inflexiblity of the essentials haters, who I believe delivered the killing blow to 4e ironically, murdering its potential salvation.

Looking back liked elements of all the editions I experienced, never tried 1e, and I have to say my edition as it were wasn't any of 1e to pure 4e, it was essentials milking the best of 4e, followed by pathfinder.

So I'm looking forward to 5e, which hopefully will be refined.

But do not fear 4e fans for I feel certain that there will be a retro clone of 4e, it'll just be the tactical moduals of 5e, with the seeds for it in the core books of 5e itself. From what I heard so far it won't even be hard to put such a tactical modual expansions together, because the core books provide the seeds. Maybe they'll even provide a 4e to 5e conversion guide out so you'll be able to use 4e books to play 5e. I do believe I heard that you be able to use the character builder to convert 4e characters to 5e which should be interesting and worth a try for curiousity sake if no other reason.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I'll believe THAT when I see it. All WotC has said is a casual comment from Mike Mearls saying that there wasn't a plan RIGHT NOW to stop supporting 4e in DDI. Which means basically squat.

I don't doubt there will be some rules for playing 5e battles 'tactically' in some way, but that doesn't mean it will be a decent tactical combat system or that 5e will adequately translate the strong points of 4e. I don't even see anywhere that the people working on 5e are even aware of what the strong points of 4e are. In fact I'd argue that the people who LEAST understand 4e are and always have been the people at WotC. They have yet for instance to release an adventure or setting that even touches on the actual cool things you can do in 4e IMHO.

5e will probably be an interesting game. I'm not at all sure it will allow for anything even close to 4e. Honestly, without DDI/CB/MB/Compendium how interesting is 4e really? Its still a fun game, but will it even be worth bothering with? Especially with WotC's attitude towards previous editions, it will just be a pain in the ass recruiting people to play.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The more I see WotC people publicly bashing their own current game just to hear the cheers of the h4ters, the more I see them distancing themselves from what they'd wrought with 4e (including its good, or even best points), the more I begin to doubt that 5e is going to be something I am interested in.

The signs are already there - not the least of which is Monte Cook being onboard - that they're going to create something that throws out the baby of 4e with its more bathwatery elements. I already hear things about 5e that are confirming this. Don't get me wrong - I'm reserving judgment until I see at least a playtest version of the mechanics myself - but I've gone from hopeful to skeptical.

I've been following this thread from the start, and at first, I was of the opinion that it was unnecessary and hopefully irrelevant. Now, I'm not so sure. If the talk out of WotC these days is any indication of the direction things are heading, then I'd be all about a 'p4thfinder' or OGL'd 4e.

I just can't help but think they'd be really missing out on an opportunity to tweak and improve 4th edition by releasing an actual 4.5. I'd like to interpret Mearls' comment about the 4e tools not going away yet to read that they are actually going to do just that - and support both (or even ALL) architectures simultaneously. But I doubt it.

 

[Mirtek]

The more I see WotC people publicly bashing their own current game just to hear the cheers of the h4ters, the more I see them distancing themselves from what they'd wrought with 4e (including its good, or even best points), the more I begin to doubt that 5e is going to be something I am interested in.

Well, the upside is that some def4ders might now better understand how the 3.x grognards felt back in the days and they're still far away from the level of bashing their own current game the unloaded on 3.x and earlier during the transition period