D&D 4E Where was 4e headed before it was canned?

[Parmandur]

I do not get anyone liking those old modules (never really used them then either) I like as much as possible for adventures to target the player characters and their goals.

Useful for running a game with less prep work. The old modules have serious pulp style, too.

Most players goals in my experience are fame & fortune through Sword & Sorcery bloodshed, which those modules deliver on with panache.

 

[Parmandur]

Sorry I thought using the emotion laden words "boring bags of hit points" and the personal context implied it.

Yeah, I just slide over that sort of rhetoric, usually. If one views standard 5E monsters as merely "boring bags of HP" as if that were a drawback of some sort, then I guess it might take some work to get something else. It would also take some work to remove all the cruft from a overly complicated 4E monster, too, though, which might not be fair to the system as an assumed baseline.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah, I don't understand this at all; but I also don't get the a priori assumption of the adversarial relationship with the DM.

This isn't about hostility. It is about consistency, and having a shared understanding about what the odds for and impact of success are. You know - what we have rules for in general.

 

[Ratskinner]

Sorry I thought using the emotion laden words "boring bags of hit points" and the personal context implied it.

I do agree here. I do wish 5e had kept more of the 4e monster design ethic, even if the base mechanics can't support the technical details of all the individual powers, etc..

 

[Parmandur]

This isn't about hostility. It is about consistency, and having a shared understanding about what the odds for and impact of success are. You know - what we have rules for in general.

Phrased that way, how is 5E, or 1E, any different? There is a consistent system of rules, with room for a shared understanding of the odds and impact.

 

[Parmandur]

I do agree here. I do wish 5e had kept more of the 4e monster design ethic, even if the base mechanics can't support the technical details of all the individual powers, etc..

Eh, I think they retained a lot of that, really. Enough for most purposes.

 

[Garthanos]

Okay, trying to get you to focus on this issue here.

We were discussing (before that whole "5e nerfs martials" Tony Vargas channeling) whether 4e or 5e was particularly suited for freeform play.

Not sure either are

Fate points ARE like 4e action points, 4e healing surges they are available to every character... ie its a universal resource. Significant in that Free form games tend to provide universal resources.

I think 4e via page 42 rules provide a basis of how awesome results can be by level (and existing skill and utility powers also provide guidelines about that). When improvising or coloring outside the lines it can help if you know where the lines are?

Is that the kind of observation

 

[Ratskinner]

Eh, I think they retained a lot of that, really. Enough for most purposes.

Its not that it's absent, but I could have lived with more. I ran both editions (every edition, really) and I found 4e to be far easier on the GM side of the table. (Not as easy as Fate or Dungeon World, but easier).

 

[Garthanos]

This isn't about hostility. It is about consistency, and having a shared understanding about what the odds for and impact of success are. You know - what we have rules for in general.

That is it. And it actually means list of stuff is perhaps why D&D is more popular than the more free form games.

 

[lowkey13]

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