D&D 5E Sell 5th edition to a 4th edition fan...

[parhadokzal]

Disclaimer:
While many people disliked 4th edition for many valid reasons, I'll ask that you bear with me on this. My group and I really loved it, in fact it was our best edition ever. We play together since 1st edition mostly. For us, we did not care that the game encourages combat, because we can do roleplay by our own. By comparison, it seems to us that all other editions (including Pathfinder, which we played for a couple of years) is just boring or broken in some ways (control magic arg!). The inclusion of solos, elites and minions, of Action Points, of Essentials-type classes and powers (which we played much more than standard classes), etc made the game and the fights much more interesting to us.
I understand not everyone feels the same way, but my group is really attached to 4th edition for these reasons and others.

So, with that out of the way, can people who really got to play 5th edition help me get enthused by this edition??
In our eyes, 5th is simply going back to older editions that we clearly banned from the table as soon as we really got into 4th edition.
I read the 5th books quickly and I cannot seem to sell it to my group.
We're concerned about the lack of support to 4th edition and the coming disappearance of Compendium and Character Builder (they cannot keep it up for long now that they promote 5th, I guess), and we worry that we won't be able to switch to 5th edition and still have the same fun...

Please tell me we're wrong. Explain to me why we don't see the 5th edition in the right way, what we can find satisfactory, keeping in mind what we loved about 4th edition.

Again, my point is not to start a troll fight about editions. Real genuine concern about the eventual inevitability of switching editions.

Thanks!

 

[GameOgre]

Don't try.

Really if you are happy with 4E,play it.

I can't ever seem to get my guys interested in a new rpg till they are done with the last one. Why should they change games? They are happy!

ANY set of rules has issues,even 4E! Remember when you first started playing it and something came up and you guys went %$%$% the heck? Then you either figured it out or got used to it and learned to at least tolerate it.

5E is the same way. Really people don't get excited over rules, they get excited over adventurers! If I'm wanting to change games for whatever reason I don't even approach my players with "do you guys want to learn a whole new set of rules and debate and argue things out again?". Heck no! I tell them "5E has this new adventure path where you go up against Tiamat! You guys up for giving her a go?"

Even then, if I am really wanting to change I end our current game first.

Rules are a backdrop to our fun we don't really care what rules we use as long as our games are fun.

if you guys are having fun and you don't feel a overwhelming desire for change...Don't change.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

I'm going to be blunt: There is only one true way to sell it or any other RPG.

Sit down and actually play a game of it. Just one session. And, you can do that for free! The basic rules are available for free on the WotC website and can be downloaded at any time. It's simple enough to read them, let people make characters while you make a quick series of encounters, and then sit down and play.

And, if you don't like it? Well, you didn't spend any money on it, so you're out nothing but one single evening's time.

 

[Henry]

I have bad news for you: You're not wrong.

Revel in the new proliferation of cheap rulebooks for the group; enjoy the enthusiasm you both have for 4e and can infect new gamers with, so they'll either game with your group, or decide to move on to other games and add to the pool of gamers in the world.

If you want to try the new edition - download the base rules for free; try it out; there's really no substitute for trying it yourself and seeing what's fun and whats not.

But not all editions are right for all. To me, there are lots of similarities in 4 and 5; the healing between battles, the spellcaster cantrips, the battlemaster tricks, monsters with stats that are easy to run or make on the fly and still keep up with PCs of equivalent level, the bounded accuracy to where there isnt insane difference between the numbers for a wizard and a barbarian. To that there are improvements -- truly flavorful magic items; numbers that don't climb to the stratosphere. In the end, if your group is happy with 4e, theres no reason to convince yourselves that you're wrong.

 

[techno]

I personally like both 4E and 5E. My group eventually grew tired of long, grindy combats taking up most of our limited gaming time and decided to switch to 5E. We basically exchanged tactical richness/complexity for shorter combats and this worked for our group. For someone who loves the tactical elements of combat, I don't think making the switch to 5E would be beneficial or satisfying.

 

[Raith5]

I really like 4e, and I agree with your premise: there are plenty of opportunities for roleplaying in that edition. But I also enjoy 5e. I play in a 4e campaign which has a group that has zero interest in 5e and no intention of switching but I have also played 5e with another group.

There are some great things about 5e from 4e perspective - PC design is still fun with lots of options. But briefer more deadly combat is a welcome change. I have also been surprised how interesting it is being removed from the encounter framework of 4e. While I liked the focus on the encounter or scene (which helped give 4e its cinematic feel) it makes exploration more of an organic part of the game than in 4e.

I also think that the way that 5e does not really need an online character builder and can be more easily house-ruled is an important selling point for 5e.

There are some things I miss from 4e in 5e. I think the rolling against static defenses in 4e is far more elegant than 5e mixture of rolling spell attacks, saves and doing hp worth of effects. I also liked the way 4e had cleric healing separate from its other spells (rather than in competition with each other). I think 5e monsters are less interesting than their 4e colleagues, but this may be a function of my low level.

When I think about 4e and 5e in abstract/analytical terms, I feel that I fall between both editions: 4e is too much and 5e not enough. But when I sit down and play I enjoy 5e. Obviously, giving it a try is the only way to find out for you and your group.

 

[fjw70]

I love 4e and 5e, but I also really liked pre-3e D&D also. For me 5e is an updated version of pre-3e D&D. 4e is still in my rotation since it is a different style than 5e.

That said I say stick with 4e. If you really like 4e then 5e is not a replacement for it.

As far as the electronic tools for 4e I say try it without. I eventually did and 4e is very manageable without the tools.

 

[dream66_]

We're concerned about the lack of support to 4th edition and the coming disappearance of Compendium and Character Builder (they cannot keep it up for long now that they promote 5th, I guess), and we worry that we won't be able to switch to 5th edition and still have the same fun...

They have claimed multiple times that they'll keep ddi up as long as people pay for it, it's really not that expensive to keep it running when nothing is changing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For me, 4e was my favorite e, and remains so at the moment. I've got some experience with 5e, and I really love a lot of what 5e is bringing to the table, but it hasn't entirely converted me yet (its challenge math is arcane to me at the moment). I'm also really critical of a lot of 4e's choices, but this doesn't diminish my overall love for it. I'm currently playing in one 4e game and one 5e game.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that there's no known sunset for WotC's support of 4e. My DDI sub is still getting charged every month.

All of which I say to put into context all I am about to say about what I see as big gains in 5e.

So, with that out of the way, can people who really got to play 5th edition help me get enthused by this edition??

• A Focus On The Entire Adventure: 4e's tight focus on individually balanced encounters can lead to a sort of myopia: you aren't allowed to "skip" encounters, it's important in 4e that there's no "encounter-breaking" abilities, every ability needs to be analyzed in terms of its use in (especially combat) encounters, etc. 5e takes a broader view, which allows you to just sort of set a stage, and let the players wreak havoc. You don't need to guide them into your encounters, you don't need to limit their ability to out-sneak, out-diplomacy, out-smart, and out-maneuver their enemies. You don't need to carefully balance a specific quantity of monsters of a specific level sprinkled with terrain, or worry about letting someone fly, or be too concerned about dropping a critter of an "inappropriate" level into the game or about giving PC's ways around encounters. 5e is less fragile and precious about its individual encounters.
• Faster Combat: Sweet Gygax's Neckbeard, this is one of 5e's HUGE selling-points for me. It works in tandem with the above: because encounters are less load-bearing weights in the game, combat can afford to be fast and dynamic. It's not as bad as 3e's "rocket tag," but it supports the "combat as war" viewpoint that an encounter is not always a gradual balanced back-and-forth of peers -- killing a few goblins doesn't take an hour, and you can fit many more encounters (and, perhaps just as important, "time between encounters for narration and activity") into a single session. A story can be told using many more scenes, which gives a lot more breathing room for a narrative.
• Big Decisions As part of the above two things, but worth enough to mention on its own: 5e is the only edition in the last 20 years to not get bogged too much down in calculation and fiddly fobs. Decisions made in 5e are big decisions, with a big impact (advantage/disadvantage is not a small thing!), which means the effects are more clearly telegraphed and don't need to hide behind arcane and obtuse distinctions in the rules. They've dealt quite well with the paradox of choice that 3e and 4e (and late 2e) had in abundance. You're not adding up +2's and +1's and +4's to get one big effect -- you're just getting that effect. The cost for this -- and it's one that might not strike a 4e fan quite right -- is that there are fewer minor decision points, and that there's not as much value placed on a lot of character options. Like, the equivalent of tide of iron is the 5e battle master's pushing attack, which hurls a creature some 15 ft. back...but can't really be done on every attack. And is available for characters who aren't using shields, which might disappoint someone who wants exclusivity on that. It's absolutely a win for me, but some people find a lot of fun in those fine-grained bits, I suppose.
• Flexibility in DMing. Power-up treasure, bounded accuracy, flexible NPC design, and a general "don't sweat it" approach to introducing new things means it's not hard to make a 5e campaign your own. 4e's assumptions were sometimes hard to shake out of the adventure design, but 5e is OK with a large diversity of kinds of adventures.

My main hold-out on 5e is currently that I can't get a close sense of how the math affects the game's pacing (or what the game considers a "baseline pace"). Like, how much time is a given "adventuring day" supposed to take up? How many rounds? How many hits for monsters / PC's? I think those numbers might be in there, but they're harder to tease out than they were for 4e, which makes me a little concerned about its long-term flexibility. The main reason I liked 4e was that I could make it do what I wanted, but even 4e wasn't always built to be comfortable with that.

 

[Authweight]

5e seems like a return to earlier editions, but if you really look at it deeply, it isn't. The wrapping is heavily retro, but what's inside is deeply innovative, and builds on 4e in important ways.

The balance in 5e is a good deal tighter than in any edition aside from 4e. Fighters are incredibly powerful across all levels and wizards are carefully controlled and limited. It is clear that the designers put a great deal of thought into the classes in 5e.

An important innovation from 4e is situational balancing. There is a high degree of niche protection in 5e, meaning that players are unlikely to step on each other's toes. 4e's roles were meant to do this, but ended up unnecessarily restricting design, leaving some obvious archetypes (like the bruiser) out of the game. Instead, the balance of 5e is built around the pillars. Each class is meant to have some way to participate in each of the three pillars of exploration, combat, and interaction. Some characters will shine a bit more in certain areas, but everyone should be able to do something. This was attempted in 4e's skill challenges, but most people found those to be unintuitive and not very useful. 5e handles it a lot better IMO.

5e also tackles 4e's combat length issues head-on. The paradigm in 5e is that not every fight has to be a huge production, which means routine fights can be handled much more quickly. There are fewer ways to recover between fights, meaning that DMs don't need to force as many encounters on the PCs just to challenge them. It also means that there is more emphasis on strategizing outside of combat rather than in combat. Assassin rogues auto-crit with surprise, encouraging stealthy play. Spells are given more naturalistic descriptions, encouraging creative usage. There is still a tactical game in 5e, but it is rooted more heavily in the fiction of the world than 4e's more mechanical approach.

4e's unified progression of +1 every other level is brought to a logical conclusion in 5e. Since the bonuses were a treadmill anyway, the scale is pulled down dramatically. Proficiency starts at +2 and goes up to +6. Stat boosts can get your stat up to 20, but no higher. Other than those two things, there are no standard improvements to your attack bonus. This means that enemies remain relevant far longer. It also removes the need for solo and elite enemies. You can simply use more powerful creatures, since their defenses increase hardly at all. The PCs will be able to hit them regardless. This means you get way more bang for your buck from the monster manual.

I understand the impression that 5e is just a return to lazy, crappy design, but in all honesty 5e is a very well considered system. Don't let the retro packaging fool you: 5e is a very modern design.