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

[TrippyHippy]

5e is not and does not cover what 4e does. What it tries to do is the things 4e does badly. More accurately, 5e is aimed at being everyone’s second favourite version of D&D (and the favourite of a number of 2E fans).

I don’t care, quite frankly. And your post indicates why people shouldn’t bother caring - it’s a waste of effort trying to debate anything with fanatics. There are millions of fans, new and old, buying into 5th Edition now which gives me all the people I need to game with. 4E is yesterday’s news, no matter how a shrinking minority of blowhard gamers try to argue otherwise. And in saying that, I’ll not perpetuate this ‘debate’ any longer - I’m outtie.

EDIT: For the record, looking at online reviews it is clear that 5E isn’t ‘everyone’s second favourite edition’ - in most cases it’s their favourite.

 

[Paraxis]

I for one am glad to be free of the constraints of 4th edition. I'm glad 5th edition allows me to choose my role for myself in the party no matter which class I choose.

How?
How do you fill the role of healer if you are a rogue? The healer feat doesn't work for in combat heals, resurrections, or condition removal.
How do you control the battlefield as a warlock?
How do you defend as wizard?

Eh?

You're not making any sense.

I don't know how I could be clearer. You said you could be any role no matter what class you choose, and I was asking how you plan to accomplish this.

Just in case some of posters are confused about what role is so just to clarify, since we are talking about 4e here, role is your place in the party combat dynamic like in an MMO, you have.
Defenders, who keep enemies from getting to the softer targets or at least do significant damage mitigation when enemies attack those targets.
Leaders, who heal, buff and remove conditions. It has nothing to do with leading the party.
Controllers, who control the battlefield (as in the encounter map) with zones, area effect spells, walls and movement mitigation or push effects.
Strikers, damage dealers pure and simple usually single target for killing the big tough enemies leave the scrubs to the other roles.

So trying to be high damage striker as say a bard in 5e is very hard to do, trying to be a leader as a barbarian or rogue is basically impossible, trying to be a controller as melee type is only slightly possible with polearm builds.

 

[SirAntoine]

When you make a character, it goes without saying that you want someone who can be a part of the team, and when you pick abilities and spells you want someone who can be effective and helpful. The party roles were just more tools to get you there, and with such a plethora of options available, they could help guide you to effective team work when otherwise you would be staring into the dark caring only about the choices you were making in character creation. The presence and vitality of the team is an oft unspoken part of the game, central to it being a positive social experience, and the lack of willingness to work as a team or direct yourself chiefly to be of help, are more serious indications of cultural decay than most realize. D&D is a rare game that demonstrates the freedom and commitment to each other and to doing good in one's world, unbridled to the extent of the players' imaginations.

I hope players of the new game will still ask how they can help the team, whether they have someone who can be a defender or a striker or a leader or a controller, and that they will still sit down to create characters together so there is a well-rounded blend of professions. That is for the fun of the game, but you get the rest (I hope).

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don’t care, quite frankly. And your post indicates why people shouldn’t bother caring - it’s a waste of effort trying to debate anything with fanatics.

Given the sheer amount of factual inaccuracies you made that I corrected I'm not surprised you find arguing with actually informed people about things you misrepresent to be a waste of time. Going ad hominem and calling informed fans "fanatics" is not going to win anyone over to your point of view.

I'm glad you've found a version of D&D that suits you. Please try and not spout insulting untruths about other editions. Especially about editions that are peoples' favourites if you are trying to win them over - it never helps.

 

[Staffan]

A major problem in 4e is that there is no way to build a big, tough guy who focuses on hitting things. You can build a melee striker, but you're shockingly squishy, or you can build a defender who has to constantly think about controlling the battlefield. Nobody fills the role of, "I wanna hit some dudes." The barbarian, for instance, just doesn't make much sense as a striker. The barb is supposed to be tough, not squishy. There should have really been a bruiser role.

All the barbarians I've seen in 3e have been built on the concept of raging, running into a fight, doing butt-loads of damage, and then going down because their AC sucks. Sure, they have lots of hp (particularly when raging), but 3e barbarians only get medium armor, generally don't use shields (because DAMAGE), and then get an additional AC penalty in a rage. That's a striker if I ever saw one, although one with a somewhat different approach than the precision-oriented rangers and rogues.

The leader role was clearly defined in its ability to heal, but IMO healing should not have been made such a crucial part of the game.

I think healers were probably the thing that lead to roles in the first place. A long-standing issue in D&D has been the need for a cleric, specifically, because of healing. In 3e, you could easily do with a barbarian or paladin instead of a fighter in the party, and a sorcerer can do a lot of the things a wizard can. But you really can't substitute a druid for a cleric, because the druid sucks at healing. This is aggravated somewhat by the cleric having a lot of baggage, what with the connection to religion and all. So in 4e, they decided that you should be able to substitute something else for a cleric and still do OK, and then they took that to its logical conclusion. And of course, WoW's division of classes/specs into DPS/tank/healer put things in focus.

Of course, the dependence on healers for hit point recovery in 3e was alleviated by wands of cure light wounds​, but they broke the game in other ways.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Given the sheer amount of factual inaccuracies you made that I corrected I'm not surprised you find arguing with actually informed people about things you misrepresent to be a waste of time. Going ad hominem and calling informed fans "fanatics" is not going to win anyone over to your point of view.

I'm glad you've found a version of D&D that suits you. Please try and not spout insulting untruths about other editions. Especially about editions that are peoples' favourites if you are trying to win them over - it never helps.

You haven’t made any factual corrections - indeed you’ve given the impression that you’ve not actually read the DMG in your comments (Healing surges - page 266, btw). Beyond this, you seem to consider your own opinion as fact, which is neither edifying or helpful.

I don’t want to win you over to the new edition, either. Quite the opposite….

 

[Will Doyle]

To the original poster:

I've found that house-rules are easily integrated into 5e to create a stronger 4e feel. You can shift short rests to 5 minutes, require certain types of healing to use hit dice (and maximize hit dice when spent), add action points and milestones, and so on. With monsters, it's criminally easy to grab 4e powers and apply them to a 5e template to make them a bit more dynamic in combat. For characters, it's much harder - your martial players will have to accept that powers as a concept is pretty much gone.

Overall, though, for that 4th edition feel, you can't beat 4th edition I'm playing both at the moment. My diehard 4th edition players call me a "Fifth Lord" and fear that I'm going to convert all their characters over, but it's not going to happen. Both games shine - but in entirely different ways.

 

[Henry]

Gentlemen (and Ladies, I'm not making assumptions on a messageboard), can we please withhold from all the sniping and character assassinations please? I hate when the mods come in and find people edition warring like it's 2008...

With that said, I am curious about the concern for losing the defender role and the built in "stickiness" of defenders in the various AEDU powers from 4e. I never noticed this as a concern on any of the message boards & forums over the past ten years, nor from newsgroups back in the 2nd edition era, or letters to the editor in Dragon magazine back in the day. Figthers prior to 4e never had any special powers that kept enemies in the front line back then, why is it an issue over the past 5 years? Maybe it's subconscious metagaming, but as both player and DM I've never noticed enemies ignoring front liners and moving right through to wizards in the back, they always take care of the "meat shields" while ranged attackers or spellcasters attacked the party casters - mainly because they would be smacked around mercilessly by the combo of fighters and rogues who played open season by allowing themselves to be flanked, while the casters backed into safer positions anyway and magiced them as usual. If a fighter does pretty strong damage, ignoring him and letting him get a free swipe is a hazard in itself.

Even in 5e with the whole "move/fight/move" thing, they still get op attacks, and casters have plenty of magic and opportunities to lock them down. If you add the marking mechanic back, this just adds to the reason opponents wouldn't want to be flanked behind enemy lines just to try and get hold of the casters. I don't mean to go all "appeal to ignorance" here, I just never saw the issue prior to the advent of the official Defender role.

 

[Eric V]

Nobody fills the role of, "I wanna hit some dudes." There should have really been a bruiser role.

The Slayer didn't do it for you?

 

[Eric V]

Utter myth.

No, no, it's really true.