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

[Eyes of Nine]

You really have to understand the problem that rarity was intended to solve:

In the original design of 4e you had limited uses of item powers per day. The idea was to allow players to have quite a variety of items with powers, but for that to not result in an endless parade of power uses. It wasn't a bad thought but it was fatally flawed. The problem being every player hoarded their 3 daily power uses. Designers COULD have made more items with Surge powers, but they didn't (AFAIK only a few potions have this). Even if they did, nobody can afford to pay that price very much. So the upshot is, any item power which is too good to allow to be encounter or at-will, but not exciting enough to burn one of your 3 hoarded uses on (or a surge) is effectively non-existent.

The result of this is that a lot of items are simply trivial, because their powers are weak enough to use constantly, or because they are simply never used since their powers are too weak to be worth a use slot. It was however, impossible to get rid of these slots because some items are lower level (and thus you could make tons of them) and yet their daily powers are pretty good. For near-level items it isn't a problem, treasure parcel availability restricts abuse, but it is a problem in a slotless game for these certain items (there are actually quite a few).

So, the solution was to do away with slots, but also to restrict item creation. This actually works fine if you have a GM who is a bit flexible. PCs can easily find/research/quest for/buy formulas for specific 'rare' or even 'very rare' items and then craft them. This does allow the GM to put a foot down on abuse though. Items that would break the game if used over and over just don't have formulas you can get, others do.

I also found Daily powers rarely used :-( It is one of the fatal flaws of 4e, and if I ran again I would adjust the AED power economy somewhat.

 

[DnD Warlord]

I also found Daily powers rarely used :-( It is one of the fatal flaws of 4e, and if I ran again I would adjust the AED power economy somewhat.

I may be misremembering but I think you (might have been optional) that every milestone gave you another daily magic item use.

 

[pemerton]

I may be misremembering but I think you (might have been optional) that every milestone gave you another daily magic item use.

It wasn't optional, and was one of the elements of the system that creates incentives to keep going - a response to "5-min day" experiences in other systems.

But I think there's a lot of evidence that it didn't work for many groups. (Our group did use it, and never used the rarity system, but I can acknowledge the design logic that @AbdulAlhazred has described.)

 

[Horwath]

I wish there was a 4e continued. I wish 5e took most of 4e and made it better

they took at-will cantrips and made them better.

they took universal proficiency bonus and went from +1/2 per level to 2+1/4 per level. And made it better.

they took healing surges and turn them into HD healing. And made it worse. haha!

They took + full dex for light armors and no dex for heavy armors and somehow made it worse by reintroducing medium armor that no one wanted.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

they took at-will cantrips and made them better.

they took universal proficiency bonus and went from +1/2 per level to 2+1/4 per level. And made it better.

they took healing surges and turn them into HD healing. And made it worse. haha!

They took + full dex for light armors and no dex for heavy armors and somehow made it worse by reintroducing medium armor that no one wanted.

The BIGGEST single flaw in 5e's engine, and it is a core flaw that cannot simply be fixed with an optional rule, is the stupidity of saves vs attack rolls. EVERY SINGLE TIME we play 5e and someone casts a spell we now have to go look the damned thing up and figure out which rules it uses. This is dumb, bad game design, and just adds nothing to 5e. It was clearly added to the game as a "well, it existed in AD&D so we sorta gotta emulate what was there", which doesn't impress me in the least. This is why my own game play, which is pretty divergent from stock 4e, is still essentially based on 4e and is not a variant of 5e.

The other problem is defenses. The 5e version of defenses, IMHO, is a bad implementation. I'm not sure why they did it, except maybe to get rid of a 3e/4e ism (the three 'combo' defenses/saves). It makes no sense. It is hair-splitting to say if an attack should target WIS or CHA, WILL would have worked fine there. Also you can at least have a go at an "I have even defenses" or "I have a monster WILL but little FORT" as a choice, but with 6 numbers, you just have to be stuck with where they fall, so you have kind of lost a bit of characterization territory. I don't see what was gained with this change either.

The awkwardness with armor class is not so great either, but then I'm not convinced AC was a great success of the 4e engine either. The whole mess with Barbarians and whatnot and light armor patch feats and such was a mess. The theory was OK, but it didn't hold up well. Still, 5e definitely didn't make the situation better, it just moved things back in the direction of AD&D, kinda, but really all it did was restate armor basic bonuses as a flat number instead of an offset from the base of 10. And yeah, medium armors kinda suck, although there are a few niches where you might want to use them (IE if you have a DEX between 12 and 15 and don't want to wear heavy armor).

In other ways I think 5e did OK, cutting the game to 20 levels of play was good. I'm OK with the range of bonuses and such. It isn't some amazing solution to anything as it is sometimes advertised, but for a 20 level game it kinda works. I don't think it ends up BETTER than 4e's approach though. The ditching of A/E/D/U I think was a bad choice as well though, but you COULD hack that back in if you were really determined. It is just that you might as well just use 4e and avoid the problems above to start with...

5e almost did most things OK, but then it fumbled. I don't like their class design much either, but that's a different story.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It wasn't optional, and was one of the elements of the system that creates incentives to keep going - a response to "5-min day" experiences in other systems.

But I think there's a lot of evidence that it didn't work for many groups. (Our group did use it, and never used the rarity system, but I can acknowledge the design logic that @AbdulAlhazred has described.)

Milestones are a decent thing. There could be other ways to accomplish the same thing, but it works. So the destruction of item daily use slots did degrade them slightly, but they still have other uses. I kind of liked the 'ring rule', but they never really leveraged it much.

 

[DnD Warlord]

Milestones are a decent thing. There could be other ways to accomplish the same thing, but it works. So the destruction of item daily use slots did degrade them slightly, but they still have other uses. I kind of liked the 'ring rule', but they never really leveraged it much.

Milestones and short rests I think could go well together.

 

[Oofta]

The BIGGEST single flaw in 5e's engine, and it is a core flaw that cannot simply be fixed with an optional rule, is the stupidity of saves vs attack rolls. EVERY SINGLE TIME we play 5e and someone casts a spell we now have to go look the damned thing up and figure out which rules it uses. This is dumb, bad game design, and just adds nothing to 5e. It was clearly added to the game as a "well, it existed in AD&D so we sorta gotta emulate what was there", which doesn't impress me in the least. This is why my own game play, which is pretty divergent from stock 4e, is still essentially based on 4e and is not a variant of 5e.

The other problem is defenses. The 5e version of defenses, IMHO, is a bad implementation. I'm not sure why they did it, except maybe to get rid of a 3e/4e ism (the three 'combo' defenses/saves). It makes no sense. It is hair-splitting to say if an attack should target WIS or CHA, WILL would have worked fine there. Also you can at least have a go at an "I have even defenses" or "I have a monster WILL but little FORT" as a choice, but with 6 numbers, you just have to be stuck with where they fall, so you have kind of lost a bit of characterization territory. I don't see what was gained with this change either.

The awkwardness with armor class is not so great either, but then I'm not convinced AC was a great success of the 4e engine either. The whole mess with Barbarians and whatnot and light armor patch feats and such was a mess. The theory was OK, but it didn't hold up well. Still, 5e definitely didn't make the situation better, it just moved things back in the direction of AD&D, kinda, but really all it did was restate armor basic bonuses as a flat number instead of an offset from the base of 10. And yeah, medium armors kinda suck, although there are a few niches where you might want to use them (IE if you have a DEX between 12 and 15 and don't want to wear heavy armor).

In other ways I think 5e did OK, cutting the game to 20 levels of play was good. I'm OK with the range of bonuses and such. It isn't some amazing solution to anything as it is sometimes advertised, but for a 20 level game it kinda works. I don't think it ends up BETTER than 4e's approach though. The ditching of A/E/D/U I think was a bad choice as well though, but you COULD hack that back in if you were really determined. It is just that you might as well just use 4e and avoid the problems above to start with...

5e almost did most things OK, but then it fumbled. I don't like their class design much either, but that's a different story.

What makes a game enjoyable, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see it as a horrible burden to understand how your PC works. Some people have to double check, but then again some people have to double check pretty much everything they do.

There are plenty of things things I would have done differently if they had asked, but one person's biggest flaw is another person's logical evolution of the game. I think having one number to compare when attacking and several numbers to use when defending (roll a saving throw for) makes sense. The fact that arrows bounce off that naked barbarian's chest because they're just so studly and the overall importance of dexterity? Yeah I could have done without it.

No game can work for everyone.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The BIGGEST single flaw in 5e's engine, and it is a core flaw that cannot simply be fixed with an optional rule, is the stupidity of saves vs attack rolls. EVERY SINGLE TIME we play 5e and someone casts a spell we now have to go look the damned thing up and figure out which rules it uses. This is dumb, bad game design, and just adds nothing to 5e. It was clearly added to the game as a "well, it existed in AD&D so we sorta gotta emulate what was there", which doesn't impress me in the least. This is why my own game play, which is pretty divergent from stock 4e, is still essentially based on 4e and is not a variant of 5e.

I don't get this - at least not from the PC side. This is because I consider any statblock that requires a pointer to anything not in the core rules to be quite literally incomplete. So if you have 28 spells available your statblock is incomplete unless all 28 of them are right there and to hand. I've also redesigned the character sheets of my newer players in a way that means they absolutely do have them right there - and look it up when they look the spell up.

That said I prefer the 4e NADs system, and I've house ruled a number of spells starting with Sacred Flame just because the person using them kept reaching for the dice to make an attack roll.

The other problem is defenses. The 5e version of defenses, IMHO, is a bad implementation. I'm not sure why they did it, except maybe to get rid of a 3e/4e ism (the three 'combo' defenses/saves). It makes no sense. It is hair-splitting to say if an attack should target WIS or CHA, WILL would have worked fine there. Also you can at least have a go at an "I have even defenses" or "I have a monster WILL but little FORT" as a choice, but with 6 numbers, you just have to be stuck with where they fall, so you have kind of lost a bit of characterization territory. I don't see what was gained with this change either.

Agreed. After playing it I'd have more happily gone back to the classic five saving throws (Death/Poison/Paralysis, Rod/Staff/Wand, Petrification or Polymorph, Breath Weapon, Spell) than I am with the 5e "each stat gets a save".

The awkwardness with armor class is not so great either, but then I'm not convinced AC was a great success of the 4e engine either.

I'm not convinced there is any edition where AC is a great success tbh.

5e almost did most things OK, but then it fumbled. I don't like their class design much either, but that's a different story.

My take on 5e is that it wasn't trying to be good. It was trying not to be bad - and succeeded at that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't get this - at least not from the PC side. This is because I consider any statblock that requires a pointer to anything not in the core rules to be quite literally incomplete. So if you have 28 spells available your statblock is incomplete unless all 28 of them are right there and to hand. I've also redesigned the character sheets of my newer players in a way that means they absolutely do have them right there - and look it up when they look the spell up.

That said I prefer the 4e NADs system, and I've house ruled a number of spells starting with Sacred Flame just because the person using them kept reaching for the dice to make an attack roll.

Yeah, it is just a giant PITA. In 4e you know exactly how every power works, you make an attack roll. Yeah, you have to know against which defense, and is it a weapon or implement attack, but this is all rolled into a single attack expression (and knowing the weapon vs implement part is trivial for most PCs). You really almost never need to look up powers, and because of their format it is not too big a deal to put them on your sheet if you do need to.
5e spells OTOH are just sucky. You have to go read through the thing to understand basic stuff about how it works, and because you have 30 or more of them at higher levels, you either have a 20 page character sheet to rummage through, or else you're fishing in the books. Often there are more obscure spells you use only now and then too, where powers mostly get used pretty often.
And weapon attacks? Ugh, that's even more thugly in 5e, although at least they don't randomly use saves instead of attacks half the time. But knowing what you can do on a given round (even at low levels) requires understanding several class features and how they interact. My 5e fighter fights with 2 weapons, so I have to interface the core '2 attacks' rule with the fighting style rule, and then soon I will have to fold in subclass mechanics as well. It would be a lot easier to just have 3-4 powers. My options are no less limited in 5e, but I have to piece them together out of several rules.

In the end, 4e's plethora of feats and class feature interactions gets pretty tedious as well, but it was a cleaner baseline, and my own game has jettisoned most of the complexities and replaced them with more story-focused elements, and now it is a really pretty cool game! WotC left a whole lot of really good ideas behind just to have saves and get rid of powers for fighters. It wasn't worth it.