D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked

[Parmandur]

And likewise for 4e, except replace the number 30 with 50. So how is this meant to be a contrast with 4e?

(1) I don't think anything less strenuous will play terribly much in the favour of the player of the champion or thief, compared to (say) the player of the wizard or cleric.

(2) This is why I think 5e is not very flexible at all. The game's balance depens upon the GM managing pacing and unfolding events in a very controlling fashion. 4e's extreme flexibility in this respect is one of the things that I find very appealing about it.

I've just been reading through my copy of Dungeon of the Mad Mage, the new high level Megadungeon. No spoilers, but the Tier IV Level 23 where the Mad Mage lives has Skill DCs of 15 or 20, still. No treadmill.

5E is balanced around a maximum challenge: anything less will work fine.

 

[Parmandur]

I may have to ask him more details for us to know. I do know that the games designers including 4e I believe assumed more encounters per day than is really typical and assumes as many at the table as organized play which is more than typical in the wild.

Does a Vengeance Paladin have some spike mechanics which would be altered by number of encounters or is it just his hit points limiting his work day?

Amusingly, to me, the super-spike nature of the Paladin was the main topic of Mearls Happy Fun Hour this week, where he had diverged into 4E. The Paladin can choose, when hitting with ab attack, to burn spell slots to add damage dice. If the Paladin Nova's...they SUPERNOVA in damage. Mearls had a Paladin player in a recent Livestream land 300+ damage in one round.

This is significantly less overpowering when the Paladin has to consider their daily usage of spell slots carefully. But if the game isn't being played as intensely, they get to shine.

 

[Sadras]

I fall somewhere between D & C... with much stronger leanings towards C. Truth be told I started out fairly positive about 4e but the more I ran it the less I liked it (won't get into the why's because I'm not trying to edition war). I think right now I'm at a point where I would probably never run 4e game again but would have no issues playing in someone else's campaign if they invited me. 5e however is my D&D of choice for both running games and playing by a pretty wide margin.

I feel the same as Imaro. I will though add I do pilfer ideas from 4e for my 5e games.

 

[Umbran]

Thor did not craft his own magical axe, he went to get Peter Dinklage to craft a new magical axe because of course you would. He was not Thor crafter of magical axes after all. Although in the end we find out that Thor does not actually need a magical axe because, like the power of love, the magic was inside of him all this time.

Aside from the main argument...

Um, not quite.

We learn that Thor is not the God of Hammers in Thor: Ragnarok. It is *AFTER* that, in the next Avengers movie, that he learns that for some things he does still need a weapon, and gets one made.

 

[Hussar]

There are assertions to the contrary in some canonical D&D materials (eg Gygax's DMG).

And in this thread there have also been assertions about genre - that fighters should be Conan rather than Achilles rather than Beowulf rather than Hercules.

I don't think that 4e does a good job of modelling the pacing experience of fiction, because 6 seconds of sword play takes much more time than it would in a film (even allowing for some slo-mo etc, in a film it wouldn't be more than 10 to 20 seconds) and more time than it would in a literary recount (a few sentences will do the job in both REH and JRRT).

But I think it does a reasonable job of modelling the in-fiction events of fiction. When the 1st level PCs in my game defended a homestead against goblin attack, there was the right mix of one-shots (vs minions) and back-and-forth (vs standard gobllins). At mid-heroic, the fighter leaping over a pack of hyenas (swarm) evading their bits (opportunity attack for moving within an adjacent square) to fight the gnoll on the other side seemed right. At mid-paragon, the paladin and fighter cutting their ways through phalanxes of hobgoblins (swarms again) seemed right. At mid-epic, the fighter leaping off the PCs' flying tower to land on a great white dragon and drive it to the ground (mehcanicaly, by knocking it prone) seemed right.

I could easily envisage running a LotR-flavoured game in 4e (Gandalf would be a warlord with wizard multi-class to gain Scorching Burst as an encounter power). Probably Conan also, although that does push some boundaries a bit harder (eg the way 4e healing works - being inspired by a friend's words of encouragement or blessing - fits JRRT better than REH) - I think a Conan game would need to use predominantly minion and swarm opponents, and really emphasise skill challenges as the main focus of play, even moreso than LotR.

Only if you squint REALLY hard.

How many casters in JRRT can blow a spell every six seconds all day long? While the PHB does have a nice selection of Martial Powers classes, you have to chuck out about 80% of the game in order to do any genre very well. The fact that Gandalf - the archetypical fantasy wizard - isn't even a wizard in your example speaks volumes.

Look, I loves me D&D. But, I'm under no illusions that D&D does anything other than D&D very well.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Sure, "I" am missing the point. The Fighter can jump 20 foot all day, every day and twice as much on Sundays while the Magic-User better damn well hope that they thought of prepping that Fly or Jump or whatever Piss off the Fighter spell in the morning instead of anything else more useful if the party gets jumped by gawd knows what monster. Because nothing says power like the ability to get past something that a grappling hook, a 50' rope and a Strength check can do just as well.
/snip

Nope, not all day long. That 5e fighter with a 15 strength (that was the example) cannot jump 20 feet EVER. Not unless the DM says so. And, what is the DC in 5e? How, as a player, do I judge the difficulty of that jump without consulting the DM? Answer is, I can't. The DC is entirely in the hands of the DM. And as ten different DM's and you'll get eleven different DC's because it's all about DM empowerment.

And, AGAIN, totally missing the point. If the caster can do something without needing to ask the DM, why can't the non-caster EVER do the same thing? My 20th level Champion fighter regenerates, but has no idea whether or not he can clear a Strength+1 distance by jumping until I get the approval of the DM.

 

[pemerton]

I've just been reading through my copy of Dungeon of the Mad Mage, the new high level Megadungeon. No spoilers, but the Tier IV Level 23 where the Mad Mage lives has Skill DCs of 15 or 20, still. No treadmill.

5E is balanced around a maximum challenge: anything less will work fine.

I'm puzzled as to which of the following is true:

(1) in 5e there can be stuff that is feasible for high level martial PCs, but gated against low level ones, by maths and/or the logic of the fiction (the latter producing "subjective" DCs)?

(2) in 5re bounded accuracy means that there is nothing gated against low level PCs?

As for anything less than maximum challenge working fine - I would expect that one combat per day, resolved on the standard rest schedule, is going to make a (say) smiting paladin more effective than (say) a champion in the same circumstance.

Likewise, if there is only one wall per day to be climbed over, then the ability of the fighter or thief to "jump all day long" isn't really going to come into play, is it? Won't the caster with fly, jump, spider climb etc be more effective under those conditions?

The two different issues I've raised in this post - balance of build effectivenes around a 6-to-8 encounters per adventuring day; and the lack of a systematic process for implementing "subjective" DCs - are two of the ways in which 5e differs from 4e that are especially salient for me.

 

[pemerton]

Only if you squint REALLY hard.

How many casters in JRRT can blow a spell every six seconds all day long? While the PHB does have a nice selection of Martial Powers classes, you have to chuck out about 80% of the game in order to do any genre very well. The fact that Gandalf - the archetypical fantasy wizard - isn't even a wizard in your example speaks volumes.

Well, I took it as obvious - given my mooted Gandalf build - that if we want to play LotR we're not playing a game with arcane classes. (STR clerics and paladins might well be fine.)

There are a few systems that I might try for LotR - 4e would be one, Burning Wheel another (its elves and dwarves are maximally Tolkienesque), Prince Valiant another as suggested by a poster on a different recent thread, maybe even The One Ring though I'm not so sure I would enjoy the play of that system.

 

[Garthanos]

Amusingly, to me, the super-spike nature of the Paladin was the main topic of Mearls Happy Fun Hour this week, where he had diverged into 4E.

Well there is the explanation when you toss that kind of spell burning ability in the mix with the possibility the encounter wasn't even a significant one and you do have deep resources even if they are basically the kind I personally find less interesting (I am not a striker type fan but.. that is more on me) .

Back in 1e spell casting was a stylistic capstone for the fighter sub types -> rangers and paladins - they weren't a part of the classes "power" in any real sense you had to be name class before getting them and as minor low level effects in small number they were not very useful.

 

[Garthanos]

Only if you squint REALLY hard.

How many casters in JRRT can blow a spell every six seconds all day long? While the PHB does have a nice selection of Martial Powers classes, you have to chuck out about 80% of the game in order to do any genre very well. The fact that Gandalf - the archetypical fantasy wizard - isn't even a wizard in your example speaks volumes.

Well the primary wizard feature i want for Gandalf is the cantrips and 4e just cordoned that off too much (should be accessible with a feat like the psionic ones), He was divine magic based in the stories though... so Invoker is a better fit and Inorder to make him a sword swinger I went with hybrid Avenger (another divine archetype), in Early D*D that mount of his called for Paladin multi.

He actually killed goblins in flashes of light that sound like lightning in the Hobbit before the one ring was discovered to be awakening (so I ended up building him as hybrid avenger and Invoker... he could choose to still do those lightning flashes - he just didnt -him dashing around on the battlefield seems Avengerish)
Its all divine power though.

It fits fairly well except for the grumble grumble cantrips.

I have seen him done as a hybrid between wizard and swordmage.... with a dabble of cleric to get a heal (but gandalfs heals were not very magic feeling so I see why warlord is tempting)