4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[pemerton]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], I think I've seen you say that before!

 

[TerraDave]

Could you elaborate on this?

what I mean is assuming people would play campaigns that would not only get to levels 10+ but 20+. And would do things like kill Tiamat.

Historically, this has been a rarity, (the high level part, I am not sure about the Tiamat part) both because campaigns tend to end before getting that far and because higher levels can be tough to run and play.

Turns out, that was also the case in 4e, even though it did stretch the "sweet spot" over more levels. When the designers realized this, high level support mostly dried up, especially epic (there is some good paragon stuff), making very high play even less likely.

 

[Hussar]

You are really barking up the wrong tree. Advantage and Disadvantage are neither more or less metagame nor disassociated than rolling an attack die in the first place. They're just alternative methods of accomplishing the exact same thing with a complexly skewed probability distribution. One action occurs, one resolution is conducted - it's just done with two dice and a comparison. And the in-game translation is that a character with advantage is more likely to succeed than one without and one with disadvantage is less likely to succeed than one without. End of story.

Like I said, anything that doesn't have the 4e tag gets the pass...

 

[Remathilis]

Well, I have a similar opinion, even today 4e feels incomplete. So many things I wished to see happen will never materialize. (The "Intermix variants" feats and hybrid versions for the rest of the essential classes for example).

So many little changes at early stages could have gone a long way to improve it. (Like having a perform skill based on cha and base Bard rituals on it, having musical instruments become true implements that scaled, a more subtle arcane origin for sorcerers, allowing all rogues use of rapiers, bows and whips, have a ranged build for fighters, more mundane equipment on the phb, off-grid support...)

Hence why WotC should have embraced the 4.5 moniker and ran with it. A sorcerer that didn't use ADEU. More essentialized classes. More domains, schools, virtues, etc. Just say "The fighter from Essentials IS the new 4e fighter. You can still use the PHB one just fine, but we're not building things with him in mind." But they were so afraid of that 4.5 name, they stopped short and made Essentials a half-measure, which pretty much killed any chance of it bringing back old players or slim-lining 4e into a easier or more attractive package.

The werey so close...

 

[pemerton]

A sorcerer that didn't use ADEU.

We got that eventually, in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.

 

[Remathilis]

We got that eventually, in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.

SEE!? Too bad WotC didn't put it in with the original Essentials (perhaps replacing the lackluster hexblade with that?).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Hence why WotC should have embraced the 4.5 moniker and ran with it. A sorcerer that didn't use ADEU. More essentialized classes. More domains, schools, virtues, etc. Just say "The fighter from Essentials IS the new 4e fighter. You can still use the PHB one just fine, but we're not building things with him in mind." But they were so afraid of that 4.5 name, they stopped short and made Essentials a half-measure, which pretty much killed any chance of it bringing back old players or slim-lining 4e into a easier or more attractive package.

The werey so close...

You mean they were so scared of 4e replicating the edition that haemoherraged interest (seriously, check the google search metrics) that they took the perfectly sensible step to not fire their fanbase for the few that might possibly come back if Wizards of the Coast stopped getting money from the people that were actually playing 4e?

They might have been close - but they made the perfectly sensible decision not to blow their own leg off and have everyone who was happy that the fighter actually got some love and almost as much versatility as the wizard drop the game in disgust.

And the genuinely simple sorceror appears in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. The game is richer for it and it was something I'd been advocating ever since HoFL.

And [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], Advantage and Disadvantage is little different to Combat Advantage or a vanilla +2. No one is advocating the removal of vanilla +2 bonusses.

 

[Hussar]

And @Hussar , Advantage and Disadvantage is little different to Combat Advantage or a vanilla +2. No one is advocating the removal of vanilla +2 bonusses.

Oh, I agree 100%. I know that. But, the presentation is different. And presentation is EVERYTHING. It's not a simple +2 bonus. It's extra die rolls. Sure, the end result is exactly the same, but, since when did that matter? The end result of healing mechanics in 4e were pretty much the same as 3e, but, look at the pixels murdered complaining about that. Like I said, had this appeared under 4e, there is a very vocal segment who right now likes the mechanic, that would hate it.

I mean, fighters get DICE POOLS. Where are the complaints that we're getting Dungeon: The Dragoning? D&D has never, ever had dice pools. Yet, dice pools are perfectly acceptable, despite never appearing in D&D before. Had this been done in 4e, it would be constantly lambasted.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hence why WotC should have embraced the 4.5 moniker and ran with it.

IMO, this wouldn't have worked very well.

In the first case, it would've created another rift. 4e fans would be even MORE up in arms than some were about the thing.

It also wouldn't have brought back many who had written off 4e. Many of the core elements that defined 4e (and that prevented some folks from embracing it) weren't changed, and couldn't be with mere additions.

NEXT, FWIW, seems like it might be designed in such a way that its stripped-down core NEVER needs an edition change, .5 or otherwise. Which would be interesting, to say the least.

 

[pemerton]

the genuinely simple sorceror appears in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. The game is richer for it

I built a Dragonborn Fire Elementalist recently - reskinned as a Duergar Diabolic Servitor (using some sort of item to get the necessary poison resistance), it served as a easy-to-play drop-in PC for a friend who was visiting from England.

I'm not sure it was quite competitive with the group's regular chaos sorcerer/Demonskin Adept, who has feat support to get his at-will Blazing Starfall up to burst 2 for 1d4 + 1d10 + 28, plus the ever-impressive Demonsoul Bolts, but it was perfectly capable of holding its own and making a contribution.