D&D 5E How is 5E like 4E?

[Rabulias]

and with no Healing Surge you can't have simple environmental encounters or traps.

Like, in 4e you could say "The weather takes a turn for the worse! Everybody give me an Endurance check, if you don't get X, you lose a Healing Surge" boom, minor encounter for the day, ticks one more HS down and now the party realize they NEED to find shelter, quick! Do they press on and hope they find something before having to roll endurance again? Or maybe they try to build a make shift shelter which might take too long if they roll poorly on Survival and might result in them losing another Healing Surge! Traps that trigger can just take a healing surge, no need to calculate damage or anything. It's super easy to homebrew stuff that work like this.

Couldn't you do the same thing to Hit Dice in 5e (caveat: I don't know how Healing Surges worked in 4e)? It's a resource that players would not like to lose, and would simulate conditions wearing on them and their resilience. Though it might just prompt them to hunker down and Long Rest to recover HD...

 

[billd91]

Couldn't you do the same thing to Hit Dice in 5e (caveat: I don't know how Healing Surges worked in 4e)? It's a resource that players would not like to lose, and would simulate conditions wearing on them and their resilience. Though it might just prompt them to hunker down and Long Rest to recover HD...

You could also slap them with a level of exhaustion. They’re really useful.

 

[overgeeked]

Couldn't you do the same thing to Hit Dice in 5e (caveat: I don't know how Healing Surges worked in 4e)? It's a resource that players would not like to lose, and would simulate conditions wearing on them and their resilience. Though it might just prompt them to hunker down and Long Rest to recover HD...

It's really bizarre how wildly risk adverse most players are. You're down one of a spendable resource that you probably forgot was even on your sheet, that's how nothing and useless they are...but nope, you're going to let the nearby village die because you're down one hit dice. Gods forbid their characters are actually down a few spell slots or have less than max hit points when a fight breaks out. The way most players actually play their characters they shouldn't be adventurers. They're so afraid of their own shadows they should stay at home where it's relatively warm and safe.

 

[Undrave]

Couldn't you do the same thing to Hit Dice in 5e (caveat: I don't know how Healing Surges worked in 4e)? It's a resource that players would not like to lose, and would simulate conditions wearing on them and their resilience. Though it might just prompt them to hunker down and Long Rest to recover HD...

Hit dice are worth peanuts. A Healing Surge is always worth 1/4 of your max HP, regardless of level, AND you can’t compensate for it’s loss with a spell or a potion of healing, because all (most) of them rely on you spending a healing surge.

You could also slap them with a level of exhaustion. They’re really useful.

Exhaustion ramps up too agressively. You take one level of it and suddenly you suck at everything and makes it more likely you’ll slip into another level. It’s too unforgiving.

it also doesn’t work for traps.

 

[Rabulias]

Hit dice are worth peanuts. A Healing Surge is always worth 1/4 of your max HP, regardless of level, AND you can’t compensate for it’s loss with a spell or a potion of healing, because all (most) of them rely on you spending a healing surge.

I think players who use Short Rests (especially for healing), would give pause at the loss of a single Hit Die. If Healing Surges were worth 1/4 of your Hit Points, how about losing 1/4 of your Hit Dice instead of single one? That should make them take notice! Though it's harder to get granular with it until the PCs are 4th level...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think players who use Short Rests (especially for healing), would give pause at the loss of a single Hit Die. If Healing Surges were worth 1/4 of your Hit Points, how about losing 1/4 of your Hit Dice instead of single one? That should make them take notice! Though it's harder to get granular with it until the PCs are 4th level...

The first part loops us back into the problem of "short rests aren't as common in actual play as they're supposed to be." The second makes the rule fiddly and complicated.

Personally, I'd say do something like "spend two HD, get maxed HD value + twice your own Con modifier in healing + Warlord's leadership modifier." (Where that can be Int, Cha, or Wis depending on build choices.) By making it 2 HD, it's more costly than a single one--and since you only get back half your HD each long rest, it is a cost that you'll feel after a while, even at very high level. Granting 2x Con mod + Warlord's leader mod means it's more efficient than pure HD-based healing, but you're still limited to a maximum of, what, 12+14+5 = 31 HP, and that ONLY for a max-level mono-class Barbarian? (A Fighter would get 10+10+5 = 25, which for a max-level Con 20 Fighter is still good but not amazing, seeing as how you should have 229 HP, making this heal about equal to 1/9th of your HP (while consuming only 1/10th of your hit dice--a pretty good deal.) Having it lean heavily on the target's Con mod also emphasizes that this is an ability drawing out the target's innate strength, not any kind of "projecting" or whatever that might be interpreted as magic.

 

[Hussar]

These are all reasons why 4e fans didn't take it well when a bunch of straightforward 4e mechanics (like minor actions, at-wills, bloodied) got a kludgy or half-baked remake in 5e ("bonus actions," cantrips, literally doing the same thing but dancing around it without a name).

Well, I'm not sure I'd call them kludgy or half baked, but, let's be 100% honest here about the reason. You simply couldn't include anything with 4e cooties on it. It's that simple. To this day, there are people who look at 5e and swear up and down that it has no 4e DNA in it because of how it was written. If 4e had been written plain language the way 5e is, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd be talking about how it's time for a 5e becase it's been like 11 years since a new edition.

But, because WotC burned so much good will during 4e, and things got so acrimonious, something had to get sacrificed moving forward. And, well, 4e wasn't exactly ripping up the charts, so, everything 4e gets the axe and then quietly added back in on the QT all the while being very careful not to reference anything 4e too directly.

And, it worked spectacularly well.

 

[Yaarel]

I don't have evidence, but if you consider the flavor of the various Barbarian subclasses you can see that they seem to have a LOT more in common with the 4e Primal Barbarian than the 3e "Dumbass who gets angry" class. The 5e Barbarian owes a lot of its subclasses to the 4e Barbarian and Warden, not necessarily in terms of mechanic, but certainly in its lore. Even a bit of Shaman thrown in, too.

I don't think they would have been able to justify an entire class based solely on the 3.X version of the Barbarian. They probably would have had to plumb the depth of prestige classes and try to coble something together. I'm not versed in all the 3.X prestige class so I guess I can't really speak to that, but I do know the Primal Power Source, and the 5e Barbarian is Primal AF.

Obviously there is no way to know 100%, since in our reality 4e exist and a '5e' without 4e would have been WILDLY different without the lessons thought by 4e. For one thing, I think the way 4e basically burned brightly before crashing is responsible for the simpler design of 5e and its more sparse release schedule.

Personally, I believe that if the 4e Warlord was apprently did not have a 'strong enough identity' to exist as a class and was, supposedly, made into the Battlemaster Fighter, then there is no way in heck you can justify a 3.e Barbarian as a 5e class, aside from blind adherance to tradition.

Recently, designers mentioned the "primal power source". I expect to see the 5e Barbarian increasingly resemble the 4e Barbarian.

Personally, I hope the 5e primal uses the same mechanics as the 5e psionic, the difference being mainly thematic. Both sources are mainly innate magic, with primal focusing on elementalism and plants, and psionic focusing on humanoids and force, while beasts are a blurry border between both.

 

[Yaarel]

You could also slap them with a level of exhaustion. They’re really useful.

I find the Exhaustion mechanic even more useful when the DM picks which of the effects happen at each level. Some effects make more sense in a specific circumstance, and it is more helpful to lose the rigid sequence.

 

[Yaarel]

This thread conviced me to make all short rests 15 minutes. I will make a point to insert a short rest after every one or two combats.

15 minutes is enough time for a meaningful relaxation and a fast food. If the minimal 15 minutes for narrative reasons stretches to one or two hours, excellent.

Meanwhile, any time slot between 1 minute and 1 hour, including 10 minute rituals plus setup and cleanup afterward, will all become 15 minutes and doable during a short rest. 15 minutes feels more substantial than 10. I like how there are 100 units of about 15 minutes per day. It is a metric time unit.