D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[Raith5]

When I play 5e I really miss the four static defenses. I think the attacker rolling is more elegant and intuitive - one of those things where 4e was ahead of the curve.

I also love the tactical depth of 4e because it rewarded synergistic play where you had to cooperate as a team. I liked the way there were mechanics for things like quarrying and markings - things that made narrative sense in the sense that the actions of rangers doing damage and fighters defending has been part of party style adventuring. Sure it all had the clear potential to make combats drag (especially with the hp of some monsters in 4e).

I also voted for healing surges, for the way it made healing proportional which just makes sense to me but especially because that second winding made clerics and magical healing non-essential.

I did not vote for the edition war point. But yes the debates around 4e concepts in 4e (and 5e for that matter) have clarified my thoughts in respect to what counts as an innovation in RPGs and what I look for in a game. Even debates about hp and alignment where , lets face it, people rarely change their minds I have learnt things. I have been playing D&D for over 30 and 4e challenged my thinking about gaming and I think 4e was the edition that D&D needed to have, in terms of bring some fresh air and new concepts into the game , even if some of these were not fully thought out or gained much traction.

 

[messy]

other: attackers roll all the dice.

 

[fjw70]

It's been almost a year since I played 4e and I miss it. In the future however I will probably stick to the heroic tier. In general I like lower to mid-level play better tyan high level play, especially in 4e where you can be pretty heroic from 1st level on.

 

[pemerton]

Wow. A whole lot of "other" here. Poll fail!

I'm another "other" - and I clicked it before realising I could make multiple choices!

My "other" is inspired by the session I ran yesterday, where the PCs: (i) fought off a corrupted angel (Discord Incarnate) and then defeated a still-born godling created around a shard of the Rod of Seven Parts that resulted from the slaying of Miska the Wolf-Spider; (ii) took control of a portal to the Abyss; (iii) rode their Thundercloud Tower into and through the Demonweb Pits to directly confront Lolth.

The "best thing" here is the support the game gives for the full spectrum of D&D play, from saving villagers from goblins at low levels, to taking the fight to the gods and the Abyss at epic levels.

If I had to choose 3 from the list, they would be (in no particular order):

* skill challenges;

* consistent/transparent maths;

* encounter/daily structure for all classes;

* and as a lucky 4th, NPS and monsters that are simplified in presentation but that play better than in any other version of D&D (and better than most other fantasy RPGs I've played).

"Consistent math"

...do you mean that it was consistently off whack? MM3 monster stat revisions. Feat taxes to meet expected to-hit numbers. Item taxes (iron armbands etc) to maintain expected character damage. Reduction of magic items from a treasured bonus to a necessity and the belated introduction of IB's in an attempt to avoid this.

I agree that the MM3 damage fix for NPCs/monsters was needed.

But I don't agree with the rest of this. My game doesn't use Expertise feats and the PCs have no trouble hitting, including in a session yesterday when 28th level PCs (without Expertise) successfully inflicted 700 hp of damage on Lolth (AC 51, lowest defence Fort 46) in one round.

While magic item bonuses (or the inherent bonus alternative) are necessary (but not item bonuses to damage - the fighter in my game doesn't have any, and is plenty effective), I haven't found that that has reduced the feel of magic items in my game.

I've used more artefacts in 4e than in any other D&D-style game I've run - the Rod of Seven Parts, Whelm/Overwhelm, the Eye of Vecna, the Crystal of the Ebon Flame, the Sword of Kas. The clear maths and power system of the game has made these artefacts usable in play rather than the game-breakers of yore. And many items - not just these ones, but the Corellon-worshipper's power jewel ("Jewel of Corellon"), the tieflling paladin's khopesh of bonus damage vs bloodied enemies, and others - have been core elements in PCs' identities, which for me is the classic role of magic items in D&D.

 

[TwoSix]

While magic item bonuses (or the inherent bonus alternative) are necessary (but not item bonuses to damage - the fighter in my game doesn't have any, and is plenty effective), I haven't found that that has reduced the feel of magic items in my game.

Yea, I agree with this. My personal opinion is that the introduction of the "hit tax" feats was a reactionary patch to a theoretical problem. I think the greater ability to apply more severe conditions at higher tiers, along with the scaling bonuses to hit provided by most leader classes, was more than enough to balance the greater delta between higher-tier PC attack bonuses and higher-tier monster defenses.

And I think the "necessity" of damage bonus items like the Iron Armbands (which I banned in my 4e games to absolutely zero consternation) is similar to the "necessity" of +Stat items in 3.X, such as Gloves of Dexterity. It confuses "necessary" with "most efficient". You could completely remove those items without impacting the characters abilities to defeat CR equivalent encounters. All those items do is allow characters to face much greater than CR equivalent challenges.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I have to agree with Pemerton, the whole 'bad maths' meme in 4e was this bizarro-world nonsensical community mind-warp. Someone with a huge obsession with exact ordered progressions of numbers somehow got that ball rolling and the whole thing just would not die. The maths of 4e were basically dead on to start with, there was no issue except in people's heads. WotC made a major mistake by not just having one of the designers come out early on and clearly say "NO, we aren't 'fixing maths' because they aren't broken and we made the game this way because that's how we wanted it to be!" instead of releasing ill-conceived patches for non-existent problems.

That being said, I never thought the whole 'tax' of the 'feat tax' was that big a deal. You could take it or leave it. If you were really interested in optimizing your character you took it right away, otherwise you could just pick it up on that level where you weren't really sure what you wanted anyway. Again, the 'issue' here was more an issue in the minds of those fixated on minutia. With almost 20 feats to play with nobody really needed to miss one that much.

Honestly what mostly I like best about 4e are things that WotC apparently didn't care about, which is really annoying. I don't get what they thought 4e was all about, but it sure wasn't very well matched up with what the really successful 4e GMs were actually doing with it.

 

[billd91]

I didn't like most of what was in the poll so I checked Other.

I liked the expanded use of keywords to describe things - particularly the way they ended up leading us to 5e's use of them on the weapons table.

I liked starting healing at 0 hit points rather than counting negative hit points. So I guess I'm also kind of close to liking 4e's death saves (though I didn't happen to check it).

I like the idea of skill challenges but I think 4e's implementation of it was not very good.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I didn't like most of what was in the poll so I checked Other.

I liked the expanded use of keywords to describe things - particularly the way they ended up leading us to 5e's use of them on the weapons table.

I liked starting healing at 0 hit points rather than counting negative hit points. So I guess I'm also kind of close to liking 4e's death saves (though I didn't happen to check it).

I like the idea of skill challenges but I think 4e's implementation of it was not very good.

Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly the 5e weapon damage type keywords are attempting to accomplish. They're used in only a very small number of places AFAICT. Hardly seemed worth the trouble. OTOH keywords in general are awesome.

4e SCs are decent, the original DMG's write up clearly didn't sink in for most readers, and there were some aspects that got edited out in the first errata that were clearly not quite fully baked. The actual rules were pretty solid though, and just kept getting better with various tweaks. What never seemed to improve was WotC's ability to get that tool into the hands of competent adventure designers that understood how to use it effectively.

 

[Sethmaster]

Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly the 5e weapon damage type keywords are attempting to accomplish. They're used in only a very small number of places AFAICT. Hardly seemed worth the trouble. OTOH keywords in general are awesome.

4e SCs are decent, the original DMG's write up clearly didn't sink in for most readers, and there were some aspects that got edited out in the first errata that were clearly not quite fully baked. The actual rules were pretty solid though, and just kept getting better with various tweaks. What never seemed to improve was WotC's ability to get that tool into the hands of competent adventure designers that understood how to use it effectively.

Blame the overwhelming success of OGL.
Then again, blame Hasbro and their jealously of Pathfinder that make them use a restrictive licensing method that make it hard for creators to create their supplements full time.
With a lot of other tabletop choices for them to go for, it's not rocket science that the reason why 4E didn't get many supplements, especially in much needed fluff, such settings, books about classes, races, places, and adventures.
I blame Hasbro and the GSL.

 

[keterys]

The maths of 4e were basically dead on to start with, there was no issue except in people's heads. WotC made a major mistake by not just having one of the designers come out early on and clearly say "NO, we aren't 'fixing maths' because they aren't broken and we made the game this way because that's how we wanted it to be!" instead of releasing ill-conceived patches for non-existent problems.

Errm, this is actually just as wrong.

There is an actual mathematical problem in 4e, especially when you also factor in that higher level groups tend to face a higher range of opponents.

Part of that problem is that PCs fall somewhat behind, at higher levels, without extensive effort.This is particularly noteworthy in parties that don't focus on certain sets of powers that alter defenses or attacks. Extensive playtests showed the results were grim (one might even say grindy) for groups that neglected their accuracy, sometimes through choice of class rather than strictly power or tactical selection (Sentinel Druid vs Warlord, for instance).

Part of that problem is also that powers which add/subtract 5 or Stat to a d20 roll (let's say, attack here) completely throw the math off. And then, worse, also invariably stack. Cause maybe the system can withstand one +-5, sure, but +-15 or more? d20 only has so many sides. Worse, the folks who know about this most certainly took expertise, so hitting "all the time" becomes a standard event.

So, a typical low epic godhunt might start with "I need 20s to hit" and two characters later go "Well, with his +9 to hit for a round, and her -9 to defenses for a round, I now hit on 2s. Guess we better go through all 1200 hp in one round, guys." - Another group might look at that and go "Well, guess this is going to be a really damn slow and boring 8 hour combat."

Epic 4e is really malfed up by powers like Valorous Charge and Mantle of Unity, which are encounter powers (read: the party can figure out ways to do this 2-3 rounds every encounter), which make PCs effectively unhittable. It's similarly hindered by things that grossly alter ability to hit in either direction like the Warchanter's AP benefit.

There's a reason why the pendulum swung so sharply towards Bounded Accuracy in 5E.

Anyhow - there honestly is a math problem*. Expertise is not the fix for it, but it could have been _part_ of the fix for it.

* At least based on the # of tables of Epic 4e I played, DMed, managed the playtest data for, and saw the convention results for - which is many hundreds of tables.