D&D 4E Anyone playing 4e at the moment?

[BigZebra]

If you'd like to test it out sometime before you present it to your group, I'd be happy to help you out, as a DM or player.

That's so nice of you. Perhaps I'll take you up on your word some day

 

[Retreater]

How do you compare it to PF2? If am not mistaken, you have written a bit about PF2, and both PF2 and 4e seems to lean towards doing tactical battle, having interesting monsters etc.

The primary difference I've noticed is in the balance. 4e is very well balanced. PF2 is swingy - and a character can drop in an instant on a failed save or a critical hit (which are very, very common). In 4e the monsters are designed with the role the DM needs them to play in the encounter. Like if you know you want an enemy to befuddle and confuse the opponents while his brutes smash away on the heroes, that is all clearly spelled out in the monster description, and they do it well. Monsters have a handful of useful, colorful abilities that are clearly listed on their stats sheet without you needing to look up spells, buffs, etc.
I could run 4e completely smashed (and often did after a few pints with my friends). PF2 requires utmost concentration, can't even have my dog in the room when I'm running it.
The tactics of 4e "just work." Movement and measurement of effects is simple. Spells/powers are straightforward. For PF2, it seems a grafted-on feature on the crumbling chassis of 3.x/PF.

 

[BigZebra]

Reavers of Harkenwald is really good, but starts at 2nd level.
The Scales of War series from Dungeon Magazine (if you can find them digitally) are some of the best for 4e. The 1st level intro is "Rescue at Rivenroar" from Dungeon 156.
The idea behind the 4e way of thinking (as I understand it) is to not present dungeons with a bunch of trivial encounters with rats and kobolds. Have smaller dungeons with memorable set piece encounters that actually mean something. You can take Keep on the Shadowfell, but cut out the trivial encounters and replace with Skill Challenges, roleplay, etc., but use the big important battles.

Thank's! I'll be sure to check them out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can you recommend a good beginner adventure that nicely introduces the 4e way of thinking?

HS1: The Slaying Stone is almost universally recommended as the introductory 1st-level adventure for 4e. I haven't played it myself, but if you go looking for good 4e adventures it's on everyone's lips (fingers?). The general path for Heroic-tier stuff tends to be your choice of The Chaos Scar, which is a collection of various adventures linked only by theme and location, not an over-arching metaplot, or:
HS1: The Slaying Stone (1st)
Reavers of Harkenwold (DM's Kit, 2nd-3rd)
Cairn of the Winter King (Monster Vault, 4th)
HS2: Orcs of Stonefang Pass (5th)
Madness at Gardmore Abbey (6th-11th)

Literally every single one of the list above comes up as An Excellent 4e Adventure, I've heard their names enough times to almost think they intentionally form a single plotline despite knowing they don't.

 

[loverdrive]

Never heard of it. Gonna take a look

Just try to ignore the artwork. And also it's kinda poorly structured.

But other than that, it uses similar power-bases approach to tactics, is setting-agnostic (it's expected that the players are gonna reskin classes, so it doesn't care whether, say, Magician is a Illusions School Wizard or a cyber-enhanced soldier armed with holographic projectors, as long as they control the battlefield through deception and illusions).

 

[loverdrive]

It already has. It provided a shining example of things not to do again if you want to sell another edition of D&D.

Yeah, D&D fanboys don't like when systems have an actual design and are well focused for some reason ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[NaturalZero]

Yeah, D&D fanboys don't like when systems have an actual design and are well focused for some reason ¯\(ツ)/¯

The most bizarre phenomenon I've seen over and over is people loving 5e for feature X while hating 4e for feature X. I've also seen podcasts where 5e is lauded for introducing a design feature that was actually introduced in 4e.

It's pretty clearly that the presentation of design in 4e was a much larger factor in its reception that the actual design itself.

 

[ccs]

The most bizarre phenomenon I've seen over and over is people loving 5e for feature X while hating 4e for feature X. I've also seen podcasts where 5e is lauded for introducing a design feature that was actually introduced in 4e.

It's pretty clearly that the presentation of design in 4e was a much larger factor in its reception that the actual design itself.

Could also be that its the cumulative effect of the features. Thid ones ok. That one seems ok. That other one.... but blend them altogether & bleh.

 

[Zardnaar]

The most bizarre phenomenon I've seen over and over is people loving 5e for feature X while hating 4e for feature X. I've also seen podcasts where 5e is lauded for introducing a design feature that was actually introduced in 4e.

It's pretty clearly that the presentation of design in 4e was a much larger factor in its reception that the actual design itself.

My main arguement was mostly the design was about the class/role structure that was really the big upset.

It was very rigid early on and the powers thing didn't go over to well.

 

[Charlaquin]

My main arguement was mostly the design was about the class/role structure that was really the big upset.

It was very rigid early on and the powers thing didn't go over to well.

The thing that power source/role did that a lost a lot of long-time fans but I think was really brilliant, was it made classes bottom-up design, where in every other edition of D&D, they had been top-down. What I mean by that is, in other editions of D&D, classes are primarily archetypes, and their mechanical design follows from that fictional concept. In 4e, classes are primarily game constructs, and their story concept follows the design.

I think a proper successor to the ideas 4e tried to explore might not even have classes. Classes were kind of vestigial in 4e, and I think freed of the baggage of being a successor to D&D, You could cut them lose and just have players pick a power source and a combat role role, each of which would grant access to a selection of Powers to choose from at the appropriate levels.

You almost start to see this happening in Essentials, where there were a lot of shared powers between different classes of the same power source; although it also introduced secondary power sources, and eventually even started playing around with stuff like the Berserker that shifted from Striker to Defender when raging. God, I loved Essentials.