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

[Undrave]

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.

I'd say that's a good thing then.

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.

I wish there was a game with more of 4e's philosophy and depth to combat, but with simpler characters.

 

[Helldritch]

I wish there was a game with more of 4e's philosophy and depth to combat, but with simpler characters.

5ed?

 

[Undrave]

nd most DMs want combat scenes to take less than an hour to run, and the two ideals don't seem compatible.

I actually like combat. Is it bad that I liked combat? Sometimes it feels like you're not supposed to enjoy DnD combat, that's it bad and gauche to enjoy bashing the monsters: you should love the social play and the ROLEPLAYING not the ROLLPLAYING (augh)... but I really enjoy a GOOD cinematic fight in an interesting environment, on either side of the screen.

5e fights are okay I guess...

 

[Helldritch]

I actually like combat. Is it bad that I liked combat? Sometimes it feels like you're not supposed to enjoy DnD combat, that's it bad and gauche to enjoy bashing the monsters: you should love the social play and the ROLEPLAYING not the ROLLPLAYING (augh)... but I really enjoy a GOOD cinematic fight in an interesting environment, on either side of the screen.

5e fights are okay I guess...

Both of these aspects go hand in hand. You might have one without the other but it would make for a pretty boring game because most of the fun comes from the risks of failures. Without failures, no stress, no expectation and no feeling of reward for beating the odds. A sense of accomplishment is necessary to keep your player entertain. When they do something that they feel was risky and that the lives of their characters were at stake, they get a rush that is hard to forget. Talking for hours without going anywhere is not the cup of tea of everyone. Once in a while, it is quite ok (and dare I say expected) as the Roleplay aspect is necessary. But it is not the end of all thing in an RPG. Both aspects must come into play. This brings up a much more balanced and fun game.

 

[Undrave]

5ed?

Yeah right... not with that Fighter it ain't. Or the attrition day. 5e has more 4e mechanics in its DNA than most people realize, but its got its philosophy deeply planted in the pre-4e era, even if for some people it isn't actually there enough.

Both of these aspects go hand in hand. You might have one without the other but it would make for a pretty boring game because most of the fun comes from the risks of failures. Without failures, no stress, no expectation and no feeling of reward for beating the odds. A sense of accomplishment is necessary to keep your player entertain. When they do something that they feel was risky and that the lives of their characters were at stake, they get a rush that is hard to forget. Talking for hours without going anywhere is not the cup of tea of everyone. Once in a while, it is quite ok (and dare I say expected) as the Roleplay aspect is necessary. But it is not the end of all thing in an RPG. Both aspects must come into play. This brings up a much more balanced and fun game.

I just see peope complaining about long fights, but if they're well done it doesn't rally matter that much if they last an hour.

 

[pemerton]

I was devoting all of my gaming energies to High Adventure Role Playing.

HARP has a few significant departures from its Rolemaster ancestry - especially Fate points as a core mechanic, and its XP rules.

But at it's heart it is still RM-style sim-oriented PC building and ultra-sim action resolution. So very different from 4e!

When our group started 4e, it was actually a merger of two groups: one had just fiished a 10+ year RM campaign (which itself had been proceeded by an 8+ year RM campaign) and the other had just finished a 3E campaign. I had actually been expecting to move from RM to HARP as our next campaign, but 4e intervened: I was excited during the lead-up, and very keen to give it a go once it came out and our other campaigns finished.

Before the 4e game started I sent around an email which included the following description of the difference in ethos between (on the one hand) RM and (much of) 3E, and (on the other hand) 4e:

Relationship Between Game Mechanics and Gameworld
Unlike 3E or Rolemaster, a lot of the 4e mechanics work best if they are not treated as a literal model of what is going on in the gameworld. So keep in mind that the main thing the mechanics tell you is what, mechanically, you can have your PC do. What your PC’s actions actually mean in the gameworld is up to you to decide (in collaboration with the GM and the other players at the table).

Some corollaries of this:

Character Levels
Levels for PCs, for NPCs and for monsters set the mechanical parameters for encounters. They don’t necessarily have any determinate meaning in the gameworld (eg in some encounters a given NPC might be implemented as an elite monster, and in other encounters – when the PCs are higher level – as a minion). As your PC gains levels, you certainly open up more character build space (more options for powers, more feats, etc). The only definite effect in the gameworld, however, is taking your paragon path and realising your epic destiny. How to handle the rest of it – is your PC becoming tougher, or more lucky, or not changing much at all in power level relative to the rest of the gameworld – is something that will have to come out in the course of play as the story of your PC unfolds.

PC Rebuilding
The rules for retraining, swapping in new powers, background feats etc, don’t have to be interpreted as literally meaning that your PC has forgotten how to do things or suddenly learned something new. Feel free to treat this as just emphasising a different aspect of your PC that was always there, but hadn’t yet come up in the course of play.

Skill Checks and Power Usage
When you make a skill check (especially in a skill challenge), use a feature or power, take the second wind action, etc, the onus is on you to explain how what you are attempting works in the gameworld. (Where a feature or power has flavour text you may use that flavour text or come up with your own.) Feel free to be dramatic.

Inadequate explanation which leaves everyone at the table scratching their heads as to what is going on in the gameworld may lead to a -2 penalty, or even automatic failure of the attempted action, depending on the circumstances.​

 

[Helldritch]

Long fights can be shortened with discipline at the table. A round lasts about 3 minutes at my tables but we do have some fights (the important ones) that goes beyond the 10 rounds mark. But most of the time, a fight is about 15 to 20 minutes maximum.

 

[happyhermit]

... Once you gave it a true try it was an ok, if not downright good edition. ...

Once you gave it a "true try" sure, but sometimes people don't actually like a thing even after giving it the benefit of the doubt. It's no different than other games or music/TV/movies, fandom has this bad habit of assuming anyone who doesn't like a thing must have not given it a fair chance, or "weren't playing it right" or some other nonsense. Maybe it's because I have always had such niche preferences but I will never understand why people struggle so much to avoid the reality that rational, decent human beings "understand" something but just don't like it or find it to be particularly good.

 

[Tallifer]

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.

I guess I never in my life conceived of studying physics through gaming, even when I played earlier editions. Therefore, I have nothing serious to say either way.

 

[Helldritch]

No one was ever forced to play 4ed. At least at my table. I guess it really depends on your experience at the time. Not liking 4ed is not a flaw nor is it a crime. The same is true for liking it.

I did have a player that swore only by 3.xed. He came at my gaming table we had a lot of fun but it did not change his mind. He still prefered 4ed. He is still not allowed to put a foot in my house...

No that is a joke he is welcome and always have been. Funny thing he now sits at my table for my 1st group of 5ed (I have two groups going) and he really likes 5ed. But I never mention 4ed with him as it might bring an endless rhetoric about how bad it was. To each his own I guess.

Edit: Forgot to say that I did make some people going from hate to like 4ed.