D&D 4E Edition Experience - Did/Do You Play 4th Edition D&D? How Was/Is it?

[Argyle King]

"The actual difficulty chart for L17 is 16/23/31"

Assuming standard array at 1st level:

16 (+3), 14 (+2), 13 (+1), 13 (+1), 11 (+0), 10 (+0) to start
(though, most often, an 18 somewhere and a lower stat somewhere else was normal)

At this point -with nothing else added- a level 0 character would need to roll 13/20/28 with their best stat to overcome a level 17 challenge or 16/23/31 with their worst stat.

Most races give +2 to two stats (Humans are the exception)

So, most likely, that means an 18 in the best stat for a +4 bonus. This changes the numbers needed to 12/19/27. (Again, this is before adding anything else.)

17th level was mentioned, so I'll stick with that as a comparison.

4th, 8th, 14th, 18th, 24th, and 28th level all give +1 to 2 scores

11th and 21st give +1 to all

From a glance, that looks like 4 stat boosts. a 22 is +6, so we're at 10/17/25

Half level at level 17 would be +8, so we're now at 2/9/17

Training means +5, so a trained character would need -3/4/12 respectively.

If you have a +2 bonus from race or some other source, it becomes -5/2/10

If you started with an 18 (as your example did,) it becomes -7/0/8 (but that makes your worse stat even worse).

Most likely, by level 17, you also have a power and/or items which give a bonus, but I'll assume you don't.

versus DC 35, add 4 to roll requirements listed above

...vs 16/23/31(35)

Lvl 17 Astral Hulk (randomly chosen) has +18 for their best check and needs to roll
-2/6/13 (17)

(note: according to DMG 2, DCs are lower, but that benefits both monsters and PCs.)

To be fair, if you're using something which you've never put points into or improved it's far worse:

12 would be the lowest, so +1. Half level is still 8.

+9 vs 16/23/31 means a character who is completely inept at the task needs to roll 7/14/22

This is roughly comparable to the worst stats of the Astral Hulk.


It's not as bad as I remember. I'll need to look for my old notes so that I can remember what the issues were.

From where are you getting the DCs? The numbers you've listed don't match either of the DMGs.

Edit:What I remember rewriting the most was skill challenges. As written, they were far too binary for what I wanted. In many cases, instead of doing X successes before Y failures, I would allow X number of rolls, and the amount of success or failure would determine how good or bad the result was.

I vaguely remember that the default way DMG 1 recommended doing skill challenges while in combat being rather poor; trying to disable a trap was usually a far worse option than simply breaking it. With the Rogue being a damage dealer, having them effectively not contribute to damage for a few rounds (while also taking the risk of making the situation worse) was less preferable than just smashing whatever the device was.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you're underselling rituals here, and also the use of the Arcana skill. In my 4e play experience the wizard/invoker (started as wizard multi-classed invoker; around 15th/16th level came back to life as an invoker multi-classed wizard) was a "Swiss army knife". Not in combat - but for me that's never been the main focus of wizard versatility (AD&D wizards in combat were Magic Missile, Fireball and Lightning Bolt with a few bells and whistles around that). But because of (i) his ritual book, and (ii) his ability to bring Arcana skill to bear in a very wide range of skill challenges.

I can say, I built a character that was a 'Utility Wizard' as well. It compared very favorably to my old 1e/2e super-wizard PC. IIRC Mine was an Eladrin, had Wizard Apprentice for a theme, was a straight up PHB1 wizard, with the Tome implement mastery option, and expanded spellbook feat. From there I just loaded up on rituals, learned Alchemy, and created a crazy amount of expendables and cast rituals constantly.
He was pretty nasty in combat too, quite capable of holding his own as a controller for sure. By that time in the game Essentials was out, so he got all the advantage of the crazy updated "does damage on a miss" encounter powers, 100% accurate magic missile, etc.
I would argue that, if you played it right, even in 4e wizards were border-line broken powerful, at least in terms of the sorts of plot-level shennanigans they could get up to.

 

[pemerton]

4E did one particular style of play very well. But if it wasn't clear before, the reception to D&D among long-time players demonstrated that there are many ways D&D is played out in the wild, and 4E was a bad fit for some of those styles.

And there are styles of D&D for which other editions don't fit well. I'm a long time D&D player (first games: 1992 1982). I have a lot of AD&D on my shelves, and a lot of 4e. I don't have any 5e and don't anticipate that changing.

If we're talking about commercial strategy, then obviously 4e wasn't as commercially successful as 5e has turned out to be. If we're talking about the traditiona or aesthetics of D&D, though, then I'm not convinced I have to concede that I don't count.

EDIT: Corrected typo in year of first game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

4E is just as versatile as any edition of D&D.

You can do a lot of things with 4E, but you can't seriously try to interpret it as a physics engine, the way you could with 2E or 3E.

 

[Bacon Bits]

When I started 4e, I was very on board. We were all tired of how potent 3e casters were, and in particular I had had it with a la carte multiclassing and prestige classes. However, it just wasn't fun enough to play. Combats took forever, and if we played fast enough to keep the pace going then combat felt like a business meeting with everyone spending other people's turns planning and ignoring everyone else until it's their turn again.

I do still love several of my 4e characters. Loved my Dwarf Fighter to death. Still my favorite melee character in combat ever. Loved my Warlord as well. I don't feel like either character's style can really be played in any other edition, and that makes me sad. On the other hand I hated my Cleric and Warden.

I don't agree with the MMO criticism. I'm old enough to remember a lot of people calling 3e a Diablo clone. I do think that WotC developed 4e with digital tools in mind, and those tools made it a lot of fun to play the game. Unfortunately, I don't see how you could play the game once you got to 3-4 books per class of powers and 10-20 books for feats and items. The game essentially requires digital tools to run and play, IMX. Yes, I'm sure people manage without, but I know some people actually play Phoenix Command, too.

Ultimately the game was far too crunchy to be enjoyable for our table, which is something that I didn't think was possible.

There's so many ideas in 4e that are good, however. Skill challenges are a good idea, even if I think the published adventures for 4e used them consistently incorrectly. Minions are a great idea. 4e monster blocks could teach 5e monster blocks a thing or two, too. I also miss some (certainly not all) of the player choice in combat and depth of combat. I'd almost say that I wish WotC would release some advanced combat rules, but I don't think that would help very much nor do I think it's what the market is looking for.

It's like we're in the original Xbox era when console gaming really exploded, and suddenly a whole lot of fairly easy games were released. Not what the longtime fans wanted, but it opened the doors to a much brighter future. It's just a few years off, yet. The question is, will we get Hearthstone and LOL and PUBG, or will we get Dark Souls and Hollow Knight and Witcher 3.

 

[CleverNickName]

We were all tired of how potent 3e casters were, and in particular I had had it with a la carte multiclassing and prestige classes. However, it just wasn't fun enough to play. Combats took forever, and if we played fast enough to keep the pace going then combat felt like a business meeting with everyone spending other people's turns planning and ignoring everyone else until it's their turn again.

They are still problems, in my opinion. 4th and 5th Edition did what they could, but honestly, I don't know if much can be done about them. Most players want a smorgasbord of options and features available to their characters, and most DMs want combat scenes to take less than an hour to run, and the two ideals don't seem compatible.

I can't vouch for 4th Edition; I only played the one gaming session and we didn't spend much time thinking about how to fix it.

5th Edition made multiclassing, feats, and battle mats "optional," and that was a great idea in my book...but unfortunately it amounts to little more than lip service with the way the other rules and mechanics are written. In theory, not using a battle mat is a good way to speed up combat scenes. In practice, though, it's terrible: after about the fifth argument with That Player about why he doesn't have Advantage, again, you're going to reach for your battle mat just to shut them up. And then you're back to playing a tactical board game.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Currently:
Slightly over 56% positive
Slightly under 8% neutral
Slightly over 36% negative

 

[Helldritch]

If you put half the neutral to positive and negative you get a 60% in favor vs 40% negative. It's way better than some elected persons got voted for...

Jokes aside, 4ed was way better than what most naysayers are saying. Once you gave it a true try it was an ok, if not downright good edition. Very different from what was done previously and it might have been that people were not ready for that much change. But I did get a lot of fun from it.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

I like being as accurate as possible.

 

[DammitVictor]

I played it, and I didn't really like it.

I was an "early adopter" for Third Edition-- I literally bought the first copy of all three 3.0 core books from my bookstore-- and I played and ran 3.X almost exclusively until fairly late into the edition cycle... but I wasn't actually playing 3.X or any other version of D&D when Fourth Edition came out. I was curious, but not curious enough to invest in a new core set when I was devoting all of my gaming energies to High Adventure Role Playing.

When I finally got around to it, I didn't really give it a fair shot-- as I'm keen to point out, I've only played one single-class D&D in almost thirty years, and the #1 complaint I've had about all three editions of WotC D&D has been the multiclassing rules. This visual presentation of the classes and class powers was dense and samey and... it just didn't feel like a D&D book to me, so I thought it wasn't going to feel like a D&D game.

I still haven't really given it a fair shot. I joined a new 4e game years later... with a homebrew setting complete with very odd choices in allowable races and classes. The PHB3 was out by that time... so multiclassing was much more agreeable, and I figured out a couple of agreeable enough character archetypes. (The handling of Thri-Kreen was a major bonus; they've been my favorite PC race since Thri-Kreen of Athas.) The game folded after a few sessions, and I've never joined another one... but I got to try out a couple different characters in combat, and they felt different enough and they felt like D&D.

It's... not my favorite version of D&D. I reckon it's probably fourth (ha!) after the three I actually like-- the best of the ones I don't-- but it wouldn't take much persuading to get me to try it again. I really enjoyed my Bard|Warlock, and nobody ever actually let me play a Warforged Rocketfist, and Thri-Kreen are really good... and I feel like there were just so many really good ideas here that just barely missed on the execution.