Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[Rejuvenator]

What are the alternatives, though? You have old D&D, where you could never reliably do anything special. You could do a Fatigue Point system, which mostly rewards just spamming your one best move over and over. Or you have this AEDU structure, which imposes an artificial limit on how often you can do each move.

How about 5E?

 

[Imaro]

How about 5E?

Was just thinking this... haven't seen the spamming problem yet with the battle master in our campaign.

 

[Wicht]

The license structure for 5E has a clear separation from the 3E license structure.

5e has a license structure?

 

[Bedrockgames]

What are the alternatives, though? You have old D&D, where you could never reliably do anything special. You could do a Fatigue Point system, which mostly rewards just spamming your one best move over and over. Or you have this AEDU structure, which imposes an artificial limit on how often you can do each move.

At the very least, the AEDU system provides the variety that you would get out of a system that more closely measured the exact circumstances required to set up each move - it emulates the result of a system that would tell you why you can't just spam your best move over and over.

Keep in mind not everyone felt that fighters needed these things in the first place. But I think 5E seems like a decent approach (though I haven't taken too close a look at it). Really i think what I would have preferred honestly was a flat damage bonus for fighters that kept them ahead of the other classes in combat (except perhaps the odd spell here or there). I mean beefy though and without a trade off to your attack. I don't need a lot of moving parts in my D&D fighter, I just want reliable damage output, maybe some basic combat options for things like tripping and what not. Options for hitting multiple foes, that sort of thing. Also the power attack that I mentioned earlier where you can trade in con or something for extra damage or damage dice on a melee attack.


For stuff like thieves I actually would have gone in reverse toward 2E and 1E, with them really being less about combat and more about non-combat stuff.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You could do a Fatigue Point system, which mostly rewards just spamming your one best move over and over. .

I think in any system this boils down to how the fatigue points (or their equivalent) are done. It is pretty easy to make it so people can't spam the technique all day. One thing I did in my own game (and this was for wuxia and a high magic fantasy setting so my goals were not what I would employ for D&D) was tier each ability so it had a light and heavy use. Light use is less effective but you can use it all day long, every day, no problem. If you use the heavy use, you get more out of it but create greater risk for yourself. In the fantasy setting it was magic, so the risk was losing control and being warped. In the wuxia setting it was Qi energy so the risk was imbalancing your Qi. Essentially each heavy use you acquire points that bring you toward something bad. This isn't a solution that would work for everyone, not something I would see fitting D&D, but the point is, I think spamming can be contained in a number of ways.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

How about 5E?

That's kind of a cross between all three. There's an artificial limit, since superiority dice don't correspond to fatigue or anything else really tangible; you can't really do anything consistently, since you only have so few dice to spend over a number of encounters; and you are rewarded for spamming your best move as much as you can, with the caveat that they all do the same amount of extra damage so none is clearly better for the majority of situations.

By diffusing the weirdness around in different directions, it avoids triggering anyone who has a strong reaction against any single one of those issues (although I understand that 4E fans who really liked doing something cool every round are still somewhat put off by how seldom the battle master can do one of these cool things).

 

[Bedrockgames]

That's kind of a cross between all three. There's an artificial limit, since superiority dice don't correspond to fatigue or anything else really tangible; you can't really do anything consistently, since you only have so few dice to spend over a number of encounters; and you are rewarded for spamming your best move as much as you can, with the caveat that they all do the same amount of extra damage so none is clearly better for the majority of situations.

By diffusing the weirdness around in different directions, it avoids triggering anyone who has a strong reaction against any single one of those issues (although I understand that 4E fans who really liked doing something cool every round are still somewhat put off by how seldom the battle master can do one of these cool things).

5E feels like a compromise, which I think D&D has always been and this is why it has always faced criticism from its own fans. There are things I would change about 1-3E but can live with those editions. 4E is just too much in a direction that doesn't appeal to me. 5E feels more like 1-3E in respect to being a bit of a compromise. I don't like everything in it, but on reading through it, seems like stuff I can live with.

 

[tomBitonti]

5e has a license structure?

Haha, well, not as such. But, I was trying to be flexible by saying "license structure" instead of just "license".

A different phrasing is: A point of 4E was to remove the 3E type open license from the brand. That was successful: 5E has little trace (none, I suppose) of an open license.

Thx!

TomB

Edit: The definition of "success" here is admittedly narrow. One could argue that the success in removing the open license has crippled the brand, with the larger view that the effort was entirely unsuccessful. I don't want to dance too much over this distinction, rather, I'm wanting to offer an alternative view of the question.

 

[tomBitonti]

To followup, a direct consequence of having the removal of the 3E open type license from the brand be a major goal of 4E is to preclude 4E from being branded as anything but D&D. Branding 4E as something else makes the major goal unachievable.

I don't think 4E would have been created at all if it weren't to be branded as the D&D.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Wicht]

I suppose that nothing is different than something.