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

[Hussar]

Any game where level-up takes that long is not a game for me.

Assuming efficiency on the parts of both the player and the DM (a big assumption, I know!) level-up shouldn't take more 3-5 minutes for a non-caster or 5-8 minutes for a caster. DM takes a minute to assign training costs and determine how long said training takes (might go longer if training is for some reason hard to find). Anything requiring more than that is IMO too complicated to be worth bothering with.

That has not really been true since AD&D 1e. Even 2e takes a lot longer to level up than this.

The addition of options means that it takes longer to level up. 1e has pretty much zero options. Of course you can level up in 3 minutes. But, anything published in this century will take longer.

 

[BrokenTwin]

@Hussar: Anything published by WotC, maybe. There's plenty of RPGs (D20 RPGs, even) that you can level up in a few minutes. Granted, I still agree with your overall point. Any system that provides options beyond a bare minimum can cause leveling to take time if the players don't already know what direction they want to take their characters.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Any edition as unpopular as 4E must be outstanding.

I’ve been playing and running D&D since 1981. (Not a big deal; just simply providing context.) Like @Oldtimer and @Ruin Explorer, 4E was the first edition that delivered for me the experience I was looking for when I was first told about it back in my first year at high school. And I only gave 4E a go because I was reading the session reports by @Piratecat and it sounded like it was 90% less work than 3.5E which I was running, loving, and getting burnt out from having it as what felt like a part-time job. Grabbed the books, ran some sessions, and fell in love with the idea of big damned heroes going on big damned adventures. Still love it.

I’m also heavily indebted to @pemerton for his session reports – all of which I have saved as a PDF and refer to regularly – and certain elements of 13th Age, both of which have informed how I DM 4E and make it work for me and my group. It’s simply the best edition for DMs (IMO, IME, YMMV).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I still wish they kept healing surges from 4E. The hit die recovery mechanic serves a similar function, but without (to me) the most important factor of it: because healing spells used the target's healing surges, they both dodged the problem of the spells healing proportionally 'more' of a fragile character's hit points, and provided a relatively hard cap on daily healing. Casting a healing spell on a front liner always felt good, because you knew you were giving them enough health to actually matter. And tanky classes having more healing surges directly represented their ability to recover from harm and keep going without requiring more total hit points. Plus, being able to burn my players' healing surges from environmental hazards was a great way to show the characters were exposed to risk without directly damaging them. It functioned as a nice exhaustion track in that way as well.

But MAN healing surges were misunderstood by the anti-4E crowd.

I go back and forth a bit on this, myself.

I do think there should be ways to lose HD without, y'know, using them at rests. It feels to me that this was a mechanic that was changed late in 5E testing, and never "fully-integrated" into 5E's rules. I think in early Next testing, weren't they more like Healing Surges? I suspect they got removed in some internal or NDA'd test, then added back in to the final design.

They just feel a bit disconnected.

I also agree re: healing spells, though I dunno if them burning HD is the right way to go, because I felt like in 4E, that was an ineffective mechanic. I suppose thought that it does a good job of keeping things balanced, and it makes healing spells less central because you're kind of borrowing from your future self (and whilst you probably get a bonus, you also lose out on a spell slot). I do think healing stuff which is based on d8s or multiples of 2d4 should pretty much universally actually be rolling appropriate number of the class HD in place of that (and some d10 healing stuff too). If a spell heals for 2d8+WIS, it should probably actually heal for 2HD+WIS.

With 4E I think the biggest issue was that you got too many, like kinda way too many. CON mod shouldn't have been involved (it's double-dipping because you're also going off a fixed HP value modified by CON), and the numbers should have been a bit lower (like maybe 4-8 instead of 6-10 base).

The problem in using them for anything in 5E, though, is that they're linear, instead of a fixed number. In 5E, you get 1/level. If instead of that, it maybe started that way, then capped out at a certain point, they could be used for environmental damage or the like. But capping them out doesn't work well with burning them for healing spells, balance-wise.

I think the main integration they could have for a 5.5E or a close-to-5E 6E would be to use class HDs in healing spells wherever possible. It's fine to have some spells not do that, especially wacky ones like Healing Spirit, but I think the "basic" healing array should all be based on multiples of your actual hit point die (as should healing potions).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That has not really been true since AD&D 1e. Even 2e takes a lot longer to level up than this.

The addition of options means that it takes longer to level up. 1e has pretty much zero options. Of course you can level up in 3 minutes. But, anything published in this century will take longer.

To be fair 5E doesn't take much longer for non-casters and Divine casters with set spell lists. I mean, we managed to level up mid-combat using D&D Beyond and we didn't even have to wait on anyone as we went through initiative, a few sessions back (the DM was like "Oooops you guys are supposed to be L2 you might die if not, can you fix that?" - We totally would have died too haha). I mean that's obviously a pretty low level, but for a lot of classes in 5E, you don't make a choice on level-up, you just get what your subclass says it gets. Even pen and paper, it probably takes 5 minutes or so to write down the changes.

Casters who choose spells, or leveling up ASI levels can take longer, though the latter is usually just "I take +2 to my primary stat" (or +1 to primary and secondary, if they're uneven) at levels 4 and 8. Casters can take potentially ages, especially "permanent choice" casters like Sorcerers and Bards, but we've already seen the new "change out a spell on long rest" allowing people to waste less time on that.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I go back and forth a bit on this, myself.

I do think there should be ways to lose HD without, y'know, using them at rests. It feels to me that this was a mechanic that was changed late in 5E testing, and never "fully-integrated" into 5E's rules. I think in early Next testing, weren't they more like Healing Surges? I suspect they got removed in some internal or NDA'd test, then added back in to the final design.

They just feel a bit disconnected.

I also agree re: healing spells, though I dunno if them burning HD is the right way to go, because I felt like in 4E, that was an ineffective mechanic. I suppose thought that it does a good job of keeping things balanced, and it makes healing spells less central because you're kind of borrowing from your future self (and whilst you probably get a bonus, you also lose out on a spell slot). I do think healing stuff which is based on d8s or multiples of 2d4 should pretty much universally actually be rolling appropriate number of the class HD in place of that (and some d10 healing stuff too). If a spell heals for 2d8+WIS, it should probably actually heal for 2HD+WIS.

With 4E I think the biggest issue was that you got too many, like kinda way too many. CON mod shouldn't have been involved (it's double-dipping because you're also going off a fixed HP value modified by CON), and the numbers should have been a bit lower (like maybe 4-8 instead of 6-10 base).

The problem in using them for anything in 5E, though, is that they're linear, instead of a fixed number. In 5E, you get 1/level. If instead of that, it maybe started that way, then capped out at a certain point, they could be used for environmental damage or the like. But capping them out doesn't work well with burning them for healing spells, balance-wise.

I think the main integration they could have for a 5.5E or a close-to-5E 6E would be to use class HDs in healing spells wherever possible. It's fine to have some spells not do that, especially wacky ones like Healing Spirit, but I think the "basic" healing array should all be based on multiples of your actual hit point die (as should healing potions).

I think the number of hit dice issue could be fixed by adding your Con bonus as an additional number of dice in the pool, but no longer including the Con bonus in the healing roll. And give the tankier classes and subclasses bonus hit dice in the pool. The larger number in the pool compared to 4E would be offset by the fact that each individual die is worth less than a healing surge was. Then rework healing spells to spend the target's hit die plus spell bonus. Maybe increase the spell level of regen-style spells to offset the fact that they're "free healing" with these changes system.

 

[atanakar]

Yes, and no. As I said, just reading the rules of the Paranoia game did not make me want to play it (even DMing it). And yet we gave it a try and we liked it. Sometimes the presentation is not to your liking. You might have missed something that would've make you like it. Maybe you were simply not in the mood to appreciate it.

Just like the movie Dances with wolves. My first watch of the movie got me almost sleeping with disinterest. It was the worst movie ever made even though it won Oscars. I gave it an other run two years ago and I absolutely loved it. Maybe my perspective changed. Maybe it was my mood. I do not know. But sometimes, not the first try but the second will make you like something you had dismissed as bad. The same goes for RPG.

You can read about Roller Coasters all you want. You'll know everything there is to know about them. But until you try it a few times, you won't know if you like it or not.

I have an open mind and I do try many RPGs I think I won't like upon reading the rules. Turns out I don't like them 99.9% of the time. Not because I try them in bad faith but because the system doesn't push the right buttons.

Just looking at a Roller Coaster ride I know I will not like the experience. I really don't need to get on board one of the cars to know I will get motion sickness and regurgitate !!!

4e is not a misunderstood edition. On the contrary. It is very well understood and many players decided to play another system instead.

 

[pemerton]

With 4E I think the biggest issue was that you got too many, like kinda way too many.

I don't agree with this. WIth fewer healing surges, for the game to be playable there have to be more frequent extended rests. Which means more frequent recovery of daily powers. Which then tends to make these dominate play more.

I'm not going to say that there's a precisely perfect point that the 4e developers arrived at! But I've never felt there were too many healing surges.

That all said: I don't know if I've ever actually seen this said by anyone, but I get the impression that some groups treat the end of every session as a long/extended rest. If that's how you do things, then I think the pacing in 4e - given how long it takes to play out combats - would suck.

Our game was closer to one or two extended rests per level. At the end of each session we'd make sure there was a record of the current resource expenditure status of each PC.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Actually, in the interests of it being a "soft cap", healing spells spending the target's hit die might work best as a "spends a hit die if they have one" model. So casting a spell that heals, say, [ 1HD + 1d6 ] would heal the barbarian for [ 1d12 + 1d6 ] if they had any hit die left (spending one), or just [ 1d6 ] if they didn't. That way healing magic on characters out of hit die is still possible, but sub-optimal.

Edit: Arg. I don't prefer 5E at all anymore, but I just know I'm going to flesh this out into a proper house rule.

 

[BryonD]

Jokes aside, 4ed was way better than what most naysayers are saying.

Well, unless you are one of the naysayers.
Seriously, 4E was an extremely well designed game and if you were in the niche that loved the style of game that 4E optimized, then it wasn't simply "better than what most naysayers are saying" it was outstanding.
But if you wanted something out of your game that went against the grain of the system, it was not one tiny bit better than what the naysayers said.

Both of these statements are true at the same time and presenting either as the generally correct evaluation is wrong.