D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[Tony Vargas]

I agree with all you said. I guess in 4e I was more conscious of the fact that because short rests refreshed Encounter Powers, something which was new to me

Nod. Encounter powers gave PCs something that was dramatic/limited (a little better than an at will, 1/encounter each), like daily spells had been in prior eds, but less extreme. They could be used to paint the character's style or concept in combat, since they'd be available enough to for each to see use in most combats, while still standing out a little more than at-wills.

I'm not sure why some folks had a problem with casting a generally useful spell 1/encounter instead of memorizing it several times. I mean, it represents an obvious pulling back from 3.x 'Tier 1' levels of flexibility/power, but aside from that (an objection to balance rather than a given mechanic).

so I as DM saw the same special moves being done over and over during combat. I don't know if you can relate, but it felt same old same old and the fact that short rests were short compounded the matter for me.

I really can't relate, no, because the difference between getting to do something cool maybe 1/encounter (as you level up 2 or even 4 /different/ things) vs either never (pre-3e) or every round (most 3.x feats) seems like more variety, not less.

the evolutionary process which occurred with the design of 4e due to (perceived) problems areas in 3e, do you not think 5e is therefore naturally evolved due to (perceived) problems with 4e?

In a sense, sure. Using 'perceived' the way you do wrongly implies that the problems were similar in nature and validity. The class balance issues that 3e had were very real, mechanical problems, there was no pretending they didn't exist. OTOH, the 'static combat' issue in 3e was something that might or might not happen at every table, and might or might not be seen as a problem even where it occurred. 4e, none the less, addressed both issues (among others) with vigor.

4e had very real issues with encounter (but not class) balance when you varied encounters/day. It also had an issue with 'long' combats that, like the 3e static-combat issues, was neither consistent in happening nor from being seen as a problem from table to table. In addition, the edition war spawned many 'perceived problems' with 4e that were absolutely, demonstrably false if taken at face value, but mostly boiled down to either to a desire for nostalgia, or a rejection of class balance.

5e did not address all the 'perceived problems' with 4e. It couldn't, because many of them were outright edition-war lies, and also because certain of them required mutually-exclusive solutions. It did, however, address the core issues behind the edition war, and rolled back class balance and feel to pre-3e benchmarks.

So, no, you can't say that 3e->4e and 4e->5e both represent 'evolution' of the game. Evolution is slow, incremental change. The 1e->2e->'Complete' books-> w/'____:Option' books was an evolutionary change, so was 3e->3.5->Pathfinder. 2e->3e and 3e->4e were revolutionary changes, they introduced completely new elements to the game each time. 4e->5e was atavistic, it re-introduced or rolled back aspects of older versions that had been abandoned or improved in the prior two editions.

Of course, that's only on balance. You can point to evolutionary changes, spells from 2e->3e, feats from 3e->4e, combat advantage -> advantage in 4e->5e, etc...

This implies that the people who designed the system did not 'grok' it, yet they expected the playerbase to 'grok' it. So they designed a system with more mileage than they actually knew?

The party line, as I recall it, was that KotSf was designed in parallel, and sent to the printers first, so it ended up using unfinished guidelines to create it's encounters. It also reads a bit like a 3e module, and you can see bits here and there where it clearly harkens back to 3.5, even as the game tries to evolve. Irontooth, for instance, has a power that re-introduces the dynamic (or 'static combat' lack there of) of the full attack. That encounter, and the final one, both 'broke' the encounter guidelines from the DMG - that is, they were deadly and frustrating, just as the guidelines would have suggested they would be.

We saw the exact same problem for the exact same reason in HotDQ. Kobold Press didn't get the final encounter guidelines before it went to the printers, and many of the semi-random combats, especially in the first 'Seek the Keep' challenge could end up deadly when they should have been moderate.

3.0 might not have been perfect out the gate, but at least Sunless Citadel wasn't so messed up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As for 'level appropriate check', that's not exactly true. It will require a check appropriate to the level of the challenge. If you wish to run a sandbox in which parties can run up against challenges that are of widely varying levels 4e isn't going to stand in your way, the mechanics are perfectly capable of handling this. Of course PCs will mostly fail challenges more than 5 levels beyond them, but that's what you WANT if you have a sandbox presumably...

That's one way to sandbox with 4e, certainly. You could also present challenges from different angles or with different perspectives. For instance, if a low-level party finds themselves needing to get to the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, they might face a series of fairly complex, lower-level skill challenges to find a cavern system and make their way through it (and some encounters) to find an exit nearer the top. For a much higher level party, it's barely a speed bump: an overland flight ritual or a group climb check (the daunting sheer cliffs being nothing more than light exercise to a party who has had to climb a Pillar of Creation in the Elemental Chaos) and they continue on their way. Both options exist in both cases, the climb would just be suicidally difficult for the lower level party, even if approached as a meticulous process with ropes and pitons (skill challenge) rather than a casual free climb (group skill check), and the cavern complex pointlessly time-consuming for the higher level one.

In any case, I don't consider it 'illusionism' in any way shape or form. The players are QUITE AWARE of how 4e works. The narrative will reflect the mechanics of the challenge and its just a matter of proper framing to see to it that it 'makes sense'. It may not conform to your notion of process-sim, but that's an entirely different topic.

Assuming you do frame an SC (or present a choice of several) and run it above board, it's the opposite of illusionism.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have always said that. However given your acceptance of the evolutionary process which occurred with the design of 4e due to (perceived) problems areas in 3e, do you not think 5e is therefore naturally evolved due to (perceived) problems with 4e? It does seem you excuse the one, but not the other based on your own biases for the system you prefer.

5e is more regression than evolution.

This implies that the people who designed the system did not 'grok' it, yet they expected the playerbase to 'grok' it. So they designed a system with more mileage than they actually knew? It sounds like you knew more about 4e than the designers.

The people who published the HPE series of modules definitely did NOT understand 4e, or they deliberately published a bunch of adventures greatly at variance with their understanding, assuming they did understand it. You can put it how you want, but the evidence still stands there. Those modules were terrible examples of how to run 4e, just terrible. What evidence do you have that they DID understand how to write for 4e and consequently what kind of play it was suited for?

So WoTC were right to design 4e.
They designed a good system with many strengths.
They didn't understand those strengths.
You understood those strengths.
Essentials was designed by those who didn't get 4e.
Even though you were not aware of all the going-on's in the company, you believe going ahead with 5e was premature.
Earlier you wrote its wrong to blame WoTC for fracturing the community with 4e, but according to you its right to blame them for the premature design of 5e.

Your argument is a huge excluded-middle. Nothing is so simple. 3e mechanically had become moribund and vastly difficult to write for. Its classes didn't work well at all, it had myriad issues. If they were going to go on and continue to publish, then yeah, a new edition made good sense. It gave them a chance to internalize the lessons of 3e and try to build on what worked and change what didn't.

Whenever you design something complex, you never know exactly what you will get. Certainly not in any kind of creative field. So I can't say what WotC AIMED FOR with 4e, I can only say what they did get. What they got has some great strengths which I, and many others, have been able to leverage into some great games.

Many more things could be done with 4e, yes. I think many of the issues that people had were perceptual and presentation issues, and that there was beyond that plenty of room to adjust and improve elements of the game to address objections people had, without requiring a large rewrite. Essentials in and of itself isn't bad, but it was just a distraction. It didn't really address what needed addressing. It was an attempt to make a less 4e-like 4e. Instead what should have happened was to bring the system's real strengths more to the front.

And yet you can read how many gamers thought the system was too codified, too closed for their style of play. Just because you don't want to accept it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

No, I'm saying that a lot of those things can be addressed within the context of 4e, starting over and regressing back to a game that has an only goal of emulating 2e wasn't my idea of the best answer.

What do you think Chris Perkins was describing here when he was discussing 5e “A great deal of my time and effort was spent to inject the fun that had been sucked out of D&D." Do you think he too didn't realise the potential, mileage or 'grok' the strengths of 4e?

I've never seen such a quote. I am simply presenting the evidence of what you can do with 4e, and when I did it, in a way somewhat similar to how Chris did it, I didn't find it to be some huge amount of work. My experience was that the system HELPED ME vastly, it was on my side, making my life easy. What I'd like to say to Chris would simply be "well, you couldn't have created that campaign using any other edition, could you?" And that's kind of a final word on that, 4e brings something unique to the game, something 5e does not bring to the table.

Do not get me wrong, I'm not knocking 4e there are plenty aspects of it I like. I think they could have done away with the bajillion powers and instead focused on page 42 of the DMG but included it in the PHB and provided examples. But in saying that they could have improved 4e in a particular direction that was closer to its base instead of going 5e - the same can be said for 3e and 2e.

The problem with 3e is that its whole class-system is its problem. So you have to go back and totally rework that, at which point you're stripped down to the core of a d20 engine. 4e then made a couple nice, but relatively minor, tweaks on that engine and built a whole new class structure etc on top of that. The skill system has to go too, BTW. So, yeah, you could start with 3e and do it, but you'd have to end up with essentially something pretty close to 4e if you were going to capture what 4e was good for, and 5e doesn't do that. I don't really have a big issue with 5e either, for what it is, but what it is is a rehash of 2e, straight up.

Agreed, 4e can be customised but its start base was very different to the other iterations of the game, and for some playstyles it required more effort than it was worth leading to the fracture in the playerbase (not saying it was the only reason).

How about Musical Instruments?

Well, clearly it has some quite different mechanics. Most of them were tried out in 3.5 at some point, but...

I would just like to say about 3.5 though, that IME its even HARDER to make it work. You really have to have a group that expends significant effort on avoiding the bad issues of 3.5 and it too is not exactly easy to get many playstyles out of. While its mechanics resemble those of 'classic' D&D to a greater degree, it really is a VERY different game, once you get past about level 3.

But you did?
Another way of putting it is, the designers simply didn't see the weaknesses of 4e right off.

I don't think that's really the same thing. They might well have understood that Orcus was an uninteresting brick, but if they didn't know what the system was good for they didn't know how to make something better, say MM3's Lolth, which is vastly superior to Orcus. Even Lolth still misses the boat by a little bit though. What Chris 'got' was the action part of the equation. The game is really great when you take the restraints off and think big and crazy. Its a system for doing larger-than-life fantasy, with lots of action and high stakes.

Proficiency in Tap dancing is not nearly as important as Proficiency in Musical Instruments

Thanks, now I have a line of tap dancing skeletons on my mind... lol.

Despite all the grief I have given you, I agree with this statement, BUT I feel the same way about 2e and 3.5e
I'm not convinced "4.5" would have been the right move for WoTC.

I think WotC's problem is that there's no 'right move' for them at this point. They committed errors at multiple levels across a span of years and now they're sleeping in the bed of their own making.

This might sound familiar, but I think it applies...

Yeah, I'm quite clear about the things that make 4e suitable for my preferred style of DMing. I've played 5e, it isn't 4e and it isn't doing what 4e does. If I wanted to go back in time and pretend I was me circa 1992 and run my old 2e campaign? 5e would be perfect for that! To run my current 4e campaign? No amount of house ruling that didn't amount to a near-total rewrite would get me there. I'd have to write new classes, a new magic system, a new healing system, etc. I'd still not have the 4e monsters and such things, I'd have to port every monster or rewrite many of them. I can't see the point.

 

[Imaro]

You know I'm struck by a thought as I read some of @Tony Vargas and @Abdulalhazred 's posts... 4e has alot of assumptions built into it's mechanics and playstyles... I wonder if it's the fact that some/many didn't necessarily play with these assumptions in place... I wonder if this is perhaps part of the rigidity people felt with 4e. I have to desire effect vs. process driven resolution... by default PC level designates difficulty.... Always push towards conflict... Anything not focused on conflict is unimportant... and so on. For people who ascribed to these principles 4e was probably a great version of D&D... but for the many others who run and play differently it probably felt both alien and restrictive.

EDIT: I think the problem is when you start assuming these are "improvements" for everyone over what has come before as opposed to preferences that you like.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You know I'm struck by a thought as I read some of @Tony Vargas and @Abdulalhazred 's posts... 4e has alot of assumptions built into it's mechanics and playstyles... I wonder if it's the fact that some/many didn't necessarily play with these assumptions in place... I wonder if this is perhaps part of the rigidity people felt with 4e. I have to desire effect vs. process driven resolution... by default PC level designates difficulty.... Always push towards conflict... Anything not focused on conflict is unimportant... and so on. For people who ascribed to these principles 4e was probably a great version of D&D... but for the many others who run and play differently it probably felt both alien and restrictive.

EDIT: I think the problem is when you start assuming these are "improvements" for everyone over what has come before as opposed to preferences that you like.

Sure, far be it from me to say what floats anyone else's boat. What frustrated me was the perception that if people could internalize what it was about they could garner some real advantages, even if their style of play was more 'old-fashioned' (not meaning that pejoratively, but I think its safe to say that most of the things you mention and that others mention hew closely to older forms of the game). I think there were presentation issues, cultural issues, and an unfortunate tendency for many of the 4e crew to make changes to flavor that weren't really necessary. If everyone could have sat down and cooled off and given it a chance and been able to calmly work through what would be good for everyone we should have been able to do that. While the whole 5e process was initially BILLED as that, what it seems (IMHO) to have turned out to be was a bunch of empty promises to one camp while just turning the clock back to please the other camp without really discovering what was at the core of all this. I know people are going to reply with a list of "the things they hated about 4e" in response like its gospel, but I don't think it is. I think a lot of it wasn't really germane to the issue, it was often misapprehension.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I assume you're familiar with the various manoeuvres described in medieval combat manuals. There's an extensive library of surviving material, and the one thing you can learn from it is that there's a variety of techniques which serve different purposes, some intended to momentarily stun an opponent, some to put/keep them off balance, some to force them to move, and some merely intended to give yourself some space to recover.

Fair enough. I'll assume that the in-game reality corresponding to "can't make opportunity attacks" is sufficiently distinct from the in-game reality corresponding to "dazed" or "-2 on attacks" that it would make sense that the fighter can attempt specific maneuvers to inflict such conditions.

 

[D'karr]

The game mechanics for the conditions work almost like building blocks. Each progressive condition gets a better payoff for the attacker and a worse penalty for the target.

I believe [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] even modified the pg. 42 table to include conditions on it. Using it you could ad-hoc those effects as part of an improvised attack. This goes a long way in demonstrating the flexibility and robustness of the base system.

 

[innerdude]

Sure, far be it from me to say what floats anyone else's boat. What frustrated me was the perception that if people could internalize what it was about they could garner some real advantages, even if their style of play was more 'old-fashioned' (not meaning that pejoratively, but I think its safe to say that most of the things you mention and that others mention hew closely to older forms of the game). I think there were presentation issues, cultural issues, and an unfortunate tendency for many of the 4e crew to make changes to flavor that weren't really necessary. If everyone could have sat down and cooled off and given it a chance and been able to calmly work through what would be good for everyone we should have been able to do that. While the whole 5e process was initially BILLED as that, what it seems (IMHO) to have turned out to be was a bunch of empty promises to one camp while just turning the clock back to please the other camp without really discovering what was at the core of all this. I know people are going to reply with a list of "the things they hated about 4e" in response like its gospel, but I don't think it is. I think a lot of it wasn't really germane to the issue, it was often misapprehension.

My response to this would be as well, in retrospect the initial 4e release was a botched, over-hyped rush job. Why in the world did it take three--THREE!!!!!!--monster manuals (the Essentials Monster Vault being the final result) to get the encounter math right? To this day, can anyone but die-hard 4e GMs point out what the "real" or "correct" math is for skill challenges? This would be the equivalent of buying a new board game and unwrapping the box, only to find a giant announcement saying, "DON'T USE THE RULES IN THIS BOX. GO ONLINE AND DOWNLOAD THE 84-PAGE SUPPLEMENT AT http://wedidntplaytest/ourgameenough/soyouget/tofixityourself.com to properly play this game."

To say nothing of forcing people to buy the Player's Handbook 2 just to get access to what should have been "base" classes; the ongoing debacle of the digital desktop and tools.......

All of this points to a business decision deemed necessary simply to get product on the shelves. If they'd spent another 6-9 months polishing 4e, really revising it, and THEN releasing it....I suspect it would have made a significant difference.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What frustrated me was the perception that if people could internalize what it was about they could garner some real advantages, even if their style of play was more 'old-fashioned' (not meaning that pejoratively, but I think its safe to say that most of the things you mention and that others mention hew closely to older forms of the game).

Prior forms of the game, sure. 3.x wasn't exactly old at 8 - if anything, it was 'too young to die' - provoking some outrage -and, of course didn't die (it's still going as Pathfinder).

Though 4e slaughtered all kinds of sacred cows, details that people freaked out about, the bottom line difference was that it was better balanced. The more robustly a game is balanced, the more different character concepts, play styles, campaign tone, pacing, sub-genres and other individual preferences it can handle. A reality that is exactly the opposite of what a certain range of complaints about it would imply. Now, it is plausible to think that a mere misperception could have been behind that blatant disconnect from reality.

Consider: D&D had never been a very balanced or flexible game as presented, but it was the first RPG, and a lot of us, back in the day (as I'm sure you remember) went ahead and heavily modified it to make it do something we wanted. Vancian didn't fit many genre or personal visions of magic, so we had lots of mana and spell-point systems floating around. Hp damage was a fairly bland count-down, so people spiced up combat with crits & fumbles. Fighters were meant to 'tank,' but outside of forming a 'fighter wall' in a 10x10 corridor, had no way of doing so, so attacking the 'biggest' PC became a standard 'dumb monster' tactic. Rules were vague, baroque, and/or contradictory, so DMs selectively ignored and modified them to suit. For 25 years we did that sort of thing, making the game our own through what amounted to herculean efforts spread out over 2 decades.

Come to a game that has clearly presented rules that have obviously been carefully balanced, and you (the indefinite, hypothetical 'you') think "I can't work with this!" Because any substantial mod is going to throw it out of whack. You've been modding D&D for years if not decades, and now you can't, so you figure you can't possibly run the campaign you want. Tragedy!

The irony is that you probably could run the campaign you want with no modification, or with just re-skinning, whole-class/source banning, and tweaks that wouldn't impact the overall (really rather nice to have) balance of the game.

And, of course, if you actually /want/ imbalance, then there's nothing stopping you (as a DM) from modding it in the first place. Imbalancing a neatly-balanced game is easy - probably easier than re-imbalancing an already imbalance one in a new direction. It's just going to be obvious to your players what you're doing.

I think there were presentation issues, cultural issues, and an unfortunate tendency for many of the 4e crew to make changes to flavor that weren't really necessary. If everyone could have sat down and cooled off and given it a chance and been able to calmly work through what would be good for everyone we should have been able to do that.

That's charitable. I'm not sure I agree. The edition war had a certain implacability as it played out - and continues to get re-ignited in pockets - over the years.

While the whole 5e process was initially BILLED as that, what it seems (IMHO) to have turned out to be was a bunch of empty promises to one camp while just turning the clock back to please the other camp without really discovering what was at the core of all this.

Heh. There were really three camps. 4vengers, old-school H4ters, and modern H4ters. It was the old-school H4ters - doubtless due to the current OSR fad - that essentially 'won' the edition war, and got a 5e something like they wanted (though they already had the old game, re-prints, and many OSR products). The modern H4ters still got what they wanted from Paizo (though d20 was always going to be there, whether much was published or not, even if Paizo hadn't been ready to go), and, really, 5e has little to offend them, just less reward for system mastery than Pathfinder.


Now we have 5e, and it is a game that demands, in the most basic explanation of how it's played, constant DM intervention, and is written with the assumption DMs will modify it - which means both openly encouraging that, and also not bothering to put much clarity or balance into it, either initially, or later via errata, because it's only a starting point, and doing so would only discourage tinkering.

I like to tinker at least as much as the next old-school DM, so I'm pretty happy with that, and I'm fine with supporting 5e, even though it failed completely to deliver any of the promised 'compromise' or 'best of 4e' that we heard in the early playtest. I've played the game for a long time, I can enjoy it returning to its roots (or at least stump, it hasn't gone all the way back to being a Chainmail reprint or anything), even as I regret it giving up so much progress to do so.


I guess that does suggest a 'favorite thing about 4e' that's also a mixed blessing: I like that it was robust enough that I could run sessions, scenarios, or even campaigns that:

- featured only 1 encounter per literal day, and not every day
- were decidedly 'low' magic, whether low-magic-item, or genuinely low magic
- features a party all using the same source, even all-martial
- let players choose the character concept they want rather than the one the party 'needed'
- keep everyone participating in both combat and non-combat
- featured challenging, playable battles with anything from a single, vastly superior foe, to hordes of lesser ones

Yet I missed tinkering with the system. I still did tinker, I just didn't /need/ to just to do all the above, and more.

 

[Balesir]

Maybe my issue with Skill Challenges is just that they're too abstract? Regardless of how you go about trying to save the kids, it will always take the designated number of successes before three failures. It doesn't matter what you do exactly, because any step will either be a success or a failure. You can't hit on some brilliant plan that bypasses the whole thing in one shot, and you can't make a single mistake so devastating that you fail the whole thing outright.

1) The 'three failures' is actually not the only (or even the best) way to run skill challenges, but it is probably the simplest for a GM inexperienced in skill challenges to run "safely". With experience you can make things much more varied.

2) This idea of a "brilliant plan"; hmm, I think we need to be clear just what it really means.

I have seldom, if ever come accross a situation where a sudden inspiration led to a complete bypass of a real problem. The world really doesn't work like that. Brilliant insights tend to happen in their own sweet time and take years or decades to mature.

More immediately, though, the claim is that the player is being "clever". Really? What have they actually achieved? Have they solved some objectively difficult puzzle? Have they grappled with a genuine mathematical or scientific problem the solution to which has eluded great minds for years? Or have they struck on some particular fant'sy that one individual (the GM) finds entertaining, convincing or cool?

In every case I know of it was far more the latter than any of the former. They tickled the GM's "plausibility/coolness/amusement bone". If you find that a fun pursuit, fine - I would be the last to stop you enjoying yourself. But (a) I don't find repeats of this over and over again to be satisfying any more and (b) I would be obliged if you didn't pretend that it's something other than a GM-judged beauty contest.

I don't see why conflict is important. Conflict is bad. Conflict is a potential point of failure. Conflict is something to be avoided wherever possible.

Conflict is also inevitable, interesting and implicit/essential in all forms of entertainment. And it does not need to be violent.

No story exists - no human interest exists - without conflict. Economics is a fertile field for conflict. So are politics, academic pursuits, sports and games, most hobbies and pastimes and raising a family. All involve conflict with adversity or competition of some form that must be overcome to achieve success. A roleplaying game without any conflict - just like any story without any conflict - would be a nonentity. The reason we only tell stories that involve conflict is that conflict is what engages our minds; it is, psychologically, what makes us tick.

My response to this would be as well, in retrospect the initial 4e release was a botched, over-hyped rush job. Why in the world did it take three--THREE!!!!!!--monster manuals (the Essentials Monster Vault being the final result) to get the encounter math right? <snip>

I actually agree in that I think 4E at first launch was rushed, over-hyped and under-tested. Given that I am amazed that a system with such huge potential came out of it. I expected a slight clean-up on 3.5E - which I was OK with at the time. It is a testament to 4E that, while I might play 5E or even AD&D/2e, I would not go back to 3.X now even for payment. The effort to return ratio is just so far out of scale that I couldn't face it.