D&D 4E Am I crazy? I've just gotten a hankering to play 4e again...

[Bacon Bits]

I'd love to play 4e again, but I'd rather it looked more like Gloomhaven, Warhammer Quest, or LotR: Journeys in Middle-earth than a TTRPG. Just make it a dungeon spelunking game. The best bits of the game are the tabletop skirmish combat. Just focus on that.

Eliminate levels (or have far fewer levels) and scaling. Give players 2A/2E/1D/2U, then 2A/3E/2D/3U, then 2A/4E/3D/4U. Eliminate skill choices and make skill proficiency fixed to class. And so on. Make a dungeon a single map that you play through.

 

[DragonBelow]

totally bonkers

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'd love to play 4e again, but I'd rather it looked more like Gloomhaven, Warhammer Quest, or LotR: Journeys in Middle-earth than a TTRPG. Just make a dungeon spelunking game. .... Make a dungeon a single map that you play through.

Your thinking of the...
D&D® Adventure System Board Games

• Castle Ravenloft™
• Wrath of Ashardalon™
• The Legend of Drizzt™
• Temple of Elemental Evil™
• Tomb of Annihilation™
• Dungeon of the Mad Mage™

...the first three were contemporaries of Essentials, rather than 4e, and the last three have come out since 5e, and show influences from that edition.

Enjoy.

 

[Undrave]

Man, I miss clear and quick to understand power... this whole ‘natural language’ bs is just full of vague ruling and unclear cases...

I miss the transparent design intent. A class was designed to do X and it told you up front.

And I miss the way you could use INT for AC. Meant you could have a smart character and not also be hit by everything all the time... and I think NADs were better than the ‘six’ saving throws we have that are really just three... it was sometimes a problem when your two best stats were on the same NAD pairing but otherwise it meant your choice of stats couldn’t leave you completely defenseless.

 

[Don Durito]

Bringing saving throws back was like returning to THACO.

 

[Undrave]

Bringing saving throws back was like returning to THACO.

I think it makes way more sense that the person trying to affect another is always the one rolling. The current method feels arbitrary and just a way to make magic automatically better since weapon attacks can no longer target NADs like you could with some powers.

Also Impliment Mastery are cooler than plain School specialisation

 

[Horwath]

Not crazy. 4E is really fun.
Just divide all enemy HP by 1/2, and increase their damage by their proficiency bonus.
Everything becomes fast, smooth, and deadly.

also when you remove +1/2 from everything you get much broader pool of enemies to choose from.

1st level orcs can still be a threat to 10th level characters in numbers.

 

[Oofta]

Short answer: yes, but do it anyway if you enjoy it and can find a group.

Slightly longer answer: I think 4E was a valid attempt at a new gaming structure that was simply pushed out the door before it was fully baked. If I were to play 4E again, I'd probably just limit it to the Essentials books, which were supposedly what the devs really wanted to do but were not given enough time. For me there was just too much to track and it slowed to a crawl at lower levels along with other issues.

So I could go on but it would be beating a dead horse/edition. Suffice to say I gave it the old college try but I wouldn't want to play more than a handful of games myself any more. On the other hand some people love Sushi/Sashimi and to me it's just gross raw fish with green colored horse radish.

Good luck.

 

[Tony Vargas]

also when you remove +1/2 from everything you get much broader pool of enemies to choose from.
1st level orcs can still be a threat to 10th level characters in numbers.

Oh, they could be, anyway. You just changed secondary roles. To a 1st level character, an orc was a standard monster (worth 100xp). To a 10th level PC, a minion (technically, a 9th level minion, worth the same 100xp).

 

[Zaukrie]

Big fan of 4e, but that could have been because I ran a long term campaign and really enjoyed the guys I played with. That said, I really liked the system, and miss some aspects a lot in 5e.