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

[overgeeked]

Well, yes, that's certainly true.

All you have to do is track damage totals between classes over the course of an adventuring day to realize that fighters are MILES behind anything with access to magic. As in, not even close. A single fireball from a wizard will easily do as much total damage as a fighter can do in a day.

It's part and parcel to the D&D experience for many though. And it will not change.

I get hyperbole, but that's a bit much.

A fireball only deals 8d6 damage, which averages 28 on a failed save or 14 on a successful save. Its 20-foot radius covers up to 44 squares, which is a lot, but the chances of those all being filled are basically zero. Considering 5E's default is one monster against a four-person party of adventurers, AoE spells are really only useful when the DM intentionally sets up encounters to make them useful. But sure, let's set up a very generous what if. You get a DM who's all about the AoE and hands you an encounter with 22 enemies...enough to fill half the AoE of a fireball...and hands you all of them perfectly lined up in your AoE. Assuming half fail their save and half succeed, you're talking about (28 x 11) + (14 x 11) = 462 average damage. Which is a lot. But a more reasonable encounter would be 4-10 monsters at most. And unless the DM gives you those on a silver platter, they're not going to bunch up for a fireball. So between 2-6 get hit at most, really, for a total of 126 damage. A 5th-level wizard gets to do that once per day.

A 5th-level fighter gets two attacks per round, assuming half hit and half miss, and assuming a decent weapon choice, say 1d10 or better, for an average of 10.5 damage, it's only...44 rounds of fighter attacks. Rounds are only 6 seconds long, so in 4.4 minutes the fighter has matched the wizard's damage from that one fireball enconter perfectly served up by the DM. For the more realistic encounter with only 4-10 monsters and 126 damage from a fireball, the fighter only has to attack for a little more than 12 rounds to match that...and has the rest of the day to beat it.

So, really, the fighter's not that far behind.

If you really want the fighter to cry, just tell them how all the casters' cantrips scale better than the fighter's attacks. LOL. Poor fighters. WotC must really...really hate fighters.

 

[Nefermandias]

I get hyperbole, but that's a bit much.

A fireball only deals 8d6 damage, which averages 28 on a failed save or 14 on a successful save. Its 20-foot radius covers up to 44 squares, which is a lot, but the chances of those all being filled are basically zero. Considering 5E's default is one monster against a four-person party of adventurers, AoE spells are really only useful when the DM intentionally sets up encounters to make them useful. But sure, let's set up a very generous what if. You get a DM who's all about the AoE and hands you an encounter with 22 enemies...enough to fill half the AoE of a fireball...and hands you all of them perfectly lined up in your AoE. Assuming half fail their save and half succeed, you're talking about (28 x 11) + (14 x 11) = 462 average damage. Which is a lot. But a more reasonable encounter would be 4-10 monsters at most. And unless the DM gives you those on a silver platter, they're not going to bunch up for a fireball. So between 2-6 get hit at most, really, for a total of 126 damage. A 5th-level wizard gets to do that once per day.

A 5th-level fighter gets two attacks per round, assuming half hit and half miss, and assuming a decent weapon choice, say 1d10 or better, for an average of 10.5 damage, it's only...44 rounds of fighter attacks. Rounds are only 6 seconds long, so in 4.4 minutes the fighter has matched the wizard's damage from that one fireball enconter perfectly served up by the DM. For the more realistic encounter with only 4-10 monsters and 126 damage from a fireball, the fighter only has to attack for a little more than 12 rounds to match that...and has the rest of the day to beat it.

So, really, the fighter's not that far behind.

If you really want the fighter to cry, just tell them how all the casters' cantrips scale better than the fighter's attacks. LOL. Poor fighters. WotC must really...really hate fighters.

You are right. The problem with casters vs martials was never a matter of damage output. I have finished a lvl 20 campaign last year and both fighters and barbarian were dishing tons of damage more than the bard and wizard.

This is especially true if you have the decency of running at least 6 encounters a day.

And by "encounter" I mean honest to God violent interactions with initiative being rolled and people exchanging blows.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Clearly shows ability has Less impact because you do not outclass obstacles in 5e AND its a known intended effect.

How so? Say a 5e fighter has no ability in picking locks, and this stays the same through levels. This represents the 5e fighter's ability. A 4e Fighter has the same level of investment into picking locks, which is to say none. Yet this fighter will learn how to pick locks, and do so better at 20th than a 1st level rogue that has spent effort into being good at picking locks. This ability is just due to level, and the DCs for appropriate challenges automatically deduct this from the equation, keeping that actual odds the 4e fighter has in picking a lock in an adventure the same.

This is my point -- you're complaining that 5e doesn't represent ability, but it does, 100%. The difference between the systems isn't this, it's that 4e assumes that all characters are effectively proficient in everything, and learn all things equally well and at an equal pace. They can specialize, sure, but that adds a one time bonus (upped with a few feats, but not much) that sticks. You focus on picking locks in 4e? Cool, you will always be +5 better at it than someone that hasn't (barring further investment with feats). So, your character that has focused on lockpicking will be +5 better than the one that hasn't at 1st level and at 20th level. It's a treadmill.

Now, I'm not knocking 4e, at all. I very much like it, more now that I did when it was current, and I liked it when it was current. I have no problem with the treadmill -- it serves a very useful game function. But it's absolutely not the pinnacle of modelling PC ability compared to 5e. They're just using different models.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Here are five 4e PCs, at 30th level, spoiler-blocked because it's a fairly long table:

Spoiler

	Derrik	Jett	Malstaph	Ravian	Tillen
AC	45	46	43	47	47
Fort	41	42	33	39	42
Ref	39	43	39	45	36
Will	40	48	45	44	45
hp	224	171	139	173	222
Initiative	+21	+28	+21	+24	+19
Passive Insight	29	27 (29)	44	33	37
Passive Perception	29 (32)	27	39	42	30
STR	26 (+23)	10 (+15)	12 (+16)	12 (+16)	14 (+17)
CON	20 (+20)	14 (+17)	13 (+16)	16 (+18)	18 (+19)
DEX	18 (+19)	26 (+23)	10 (+15)	28 (+24)	14 (+17)
INT	10 (+15)	12 (+16)	24 (+22)	10 (+15)	12 (+16)
WIS	19 (+19)	14 (+17)	28 (+24)	26 (+23)	20 (+20)
CHA	12 (+16)	28 (+24)	12 (+16)	15 (+17)	28 (+24)
Athletics	+28	+15	+15	+20	+18
Endurance	+35	+17	+15	+19	+17
Acrobatics	+19	+28	+14	+33	+13
Stealth	+19	+30	+14	+23	+15
Thievery	+19	+23	+14	+23	+13
Arcana	+15	+21	+43 (45)	+15	+16
History	+15	+16	+43	+15	+16
Religion	+20	+16	+41 (43)	+20	+21
Dungeoneering	+21	+17	+35	+23	+20
Heal	+24	+17	+24 (26)	+23	+20
Insight	+19	+17 (19)	+34	+23	+27
Nature	+19	+17	+35 (37)	+30	+20
Perception	+19 (22)	+17	+29	+32	+20
Bluff	+16	+29 (33)	+18	+17	+26
Diplomacy	+16	+35 (37)	+29 (33)	+22	+35
Intimidate	+16	+37 (41)	+20	+17	+37
Streetwise	+16	+24 (26)	+16	+17	+24

There is a significant spread there in character abilities, that follows from proficiency and stat as the main considerations and feats, various other build features (race, theme, paragon path, epic destiny), and magic items having a lesser though still meaningful effect.

At 1st level feats and items aren't such a big consideration, but an untrained PC with a low stat will have -1 or 0 in a skill, while a trained character with a good stat and/or a race bonus can be +9 or better. So the gap opens up from about 10 between best and worst, to about 20.

At 1st level, the Easy/Medium/Hard DCs are 8/12/19, while at 30th level they are 24/32/42 (Rule Compendium p 126). So Easy DCs gradually become trivial for a PC oriented towards that skill (because the growth in difficulty corresponds to nothing but the +16 gained from a +15 level bonus and the +1 stat increase at 11th and 21st level, meaning that all growth above that is a net increase in success chance), and for a PC's best skill Medium and even Hard DCs still become gradually easier to attain.

This actually shows what I'm saying. The 4e character that doesn't spend any effort on a skill is at the same chance to succeed at an easy take at 1st and at 30th. They have nearly no chance to succeed at any other tasks at 30th, but can at 1st. Meanwhile, the 4e character that specializes in a skill succeeds at a hard task roughly at 50/50 at 1st, and, given your best bonus above, about 50/50 at a hard task at 30th (ignoring the one character above that has check values in the 40s for a set of skills, which is apparently due to some massive outside the PC bonus, I'm guessing, it looks like non-outside pumped scores top at around 30). These characters are not going to be facing DCs outside their level range very often, so whatever DCs are at 1st level are meaningless at 30th, because you do not see them.

And while I know you weren't making any points about 5e, the reality is that the above holds true for the unskilled player -- you're about 50/50 at 1st for an easy task and about 50/50 at 20th for an easy task. DCs in 5e are mostly set by approach and the challenge according to the rules of the game (published adventures ignore this, which I find maddening). So it holds up. Meanwhile a proficient character goes from a +2 to a +6, but the DC range never changes, so they actually see improvement against relevant challenges. The examples of 4e characters above, the invested characters that don't have large outside boosts don't really improve against expectations. This is a design goal of 4e, though, so it's not a problem -- the game works exceedingly well this way. The problem comes when people complain that 4e represents PC ability, but 5e doesn't. It's a flawed analysis based on a flawed premise -- you aren't actually comparing the same things, but, even so, the math still checks out as pretty damn close.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Are you suggesting the DM arbitrarily give the same obstacle a mayors intimidation a higher/lower difficulty based on level. Sounds like something which has been complained about somewhere.

Well, NPCs cannot intimidate PCs in 5e, so it's rather moot point. I don't actually recall if this was possible in 4e.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is my point -- you're complaining that 5e doesn't represent ability, but it does, 100%. The difference between the systems isn't this, it's that 4e assumes that all characters are effectively proficient in everything, and learn all things equally well and at an equal pace.

4e makes no more assumption than 5e that all characters are equally proficient. As for learning things equally well at an equal pace how much effort do you think it would take an average overweight D&D player to cut 1s off their 100m time? And how much time and effort do you think it would take Usain Bolt when his body is already razor-honed to 100m races? Beginners should be improving faster than experts.

The difference between the systems is that it assumes in 4e that every single character to some extent is learning a bit of almost all skills - and in 5e it assumes they aren't. And with the exception of tool proficiencies 4e is right.

Picture a bookish wizard. Trained in Arcana, History, Religion, and Medicine. Pasty-faced and never sees the sun at level 1.

At level 10 the 5e wizard is just as pasty-faced a bookworm. It doesn't matter where they have been or what they have done. They are still pasty-faced and haven't learned anything outside the library.

Meanwhile the level 10 4e wizard has toughened up from general adventuring; their endurance has improved. They've been helped up cliffs and over walls by the fighter and the rogue; they still aren't as good at this as the first level 4e fighter and rogue (+5 for level vs +5 for trained and lower physical stats) but they are more able to climb and jump. They've been camping with a ranger and know how to pitch a camp. Again they aren't a match for the first level ranger - but they've probably seen more than the ranger had at level 1. The rogue's yelled at them not to be such a gormless twit and their streetwise has improved although nowhere near the first level rogue's. They're naturally more intimidating. They know what to look out for and are used to danger rather than used to library stacks so their perception has improved.

There are some things they probably haven't got better at (almost all of which are tool proficiencies), but the vast majority of adventuring skills are things that the pasty faced 5e wizard is looking ridiculous having seemingly walked round in a daze all their adventuring career and never got any stronger or tougher.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, NPCs cannot intimidate PCs in 5e, so it's rather moot point. I don't actually recall if this was possible in 4e.

Ok the demigod cannot intimidate the mayor because he didnt put specific effort into CHA and the like, same dif = same problem.

 

[Garthanos]

Ignoring 5e characters lack of general adventuring capability we actually seem to agree with that and how much you can specialize neither was the topic.

The die roll is 95 percentiles of impact for both the 5e and 4e character its how much random swing you get.
Not random factors are like this.
5e
ability at beginning game +2 (or +5 with 16 attribute ) going up to +6(or +11 with 20 attribute) 25 percentiles upto 55 percentiles of impact
compare that to the die roll... the die has more impact on your results than your ability

4e
ability goes from +5 (+9 assume an 18) going up to 20 (37 assume an 26) starts at 45 percentiles up to 130 percentiles of impact vs the same 95 percentiles of impact.

Note in 4e you can take other things like a skill focus feat skill powers and a few other minor sources, and in 5e you can take expertise (its twice as expensive as a 4e feat effectively)

The attributes and skill are greater impact than your die roll when skill bonus to the roll reaches values of 20 or more

 

[Ovinomancer]

4e makes no more assumption than 5e that all characters are equally proficient. As for learning things equally well at an equal pace how much effort do you think it would take an average overweight D&D player to cut 1s off their 100m time? And how much time and effort do you think it would take Usain Bolt when his body is already razor-honed to 100m races? Beginners should be improving faster than experts.

I'm not clear as to your point here -- neither system is attempting to model this, except by the fact that proficiency is on or off. In 4e, the top guy gets better at his ability at the same rate as the bottom guy -- +1 per 2 levels.

The difference between the systems is that it assumes in 4e that every single character to some extent is learning a bit of almost all skills - and in 5e it assumes they aren't. And with the exception of tool proficiencies 4e is right.

Picture a bookish wizard. Trained in Arcana, History, Religion, and Medicine. Pasty-faced and never sees the sun at level 1.

At level 10 the 5e wizard is just as pasty-faced a bookworm. It doesn't matter where they have been or what they have done. They are still pasty-faced and haven't learned anything outside the library.

Meanwhile the level 10 4e wizard has toughened up from general adventuring; their endurance has improved. They've been helped up cliffs and over walls by the fighter and the rogue; they still aren't as good at this as the first level 4e fighter and rogue (+5 for level vs +5 for trained and lower physical stats) but they are more able to climb and jump. They've been camping with a ranger and know how to pitch a camp. Again they aren't a match for the first level ranger - but they've probably seen more than the ranger had at level 1. The rogue's yelled at them not to be such a gormless twit and their streetwise has improved although nowhere near the first level rogue's. They're naturally more intimidating. They know what to look out for and are used to danger rather than used to library stacks so their perception has improved.

There are some things they probably haven't got better at (almost all of which are tool proficiencies), but the vast majority of adventuring skills are things that the pasty faced 5e wizard is looking ridiculous having seemingly walked round in a daze all their adventuring career and never got any stronger or tougher.

Sure. But, that 4e character faces a constant treadmill of increasing DCs, so their actual chance of success is the same as the 5e character, who doesn't just add numbers to their sheet to keep up with the rising DCs. A 4e character, your wizard, at 1st level, with a 0 stat and no proficiency in athletics, faces a DC 8 for an easy athletics challenge. That's a 65% chance of success! The same 5e wizard faces a DC 10, for a 55% chance of success. Now zoom to 20th. No build resources are put into either. The 4e wizard has picked up +10 for half level, the 5e character has not improved. They both now face an easy task. The 4e character's DC is 18, meaning they have a 65% chance of success. The 5e character's DC is 10, which has a 55% chance of success. Wait, neither actually improved!

But, let's look at a medium DC. At 1st, the 4e character faces a DC 12, for a 45% chance of success, and the 5e character faces a 15, for a 30% chance of success. At 20th, the 4e character faces a DC 25, and has a 30% chance of success. The 5e character faces a DC 15, for the same 30% chance of success. Huh. 4e lost a step.

Now, hard. DC 19 vs 20 at 1st, so a 5% difference with advantage to 4e. At 20th, the 5e character still only has a 5% chance of success, but the 4e character cannot succeed at all with a +10 vs a DC of 34.

This is the straight skill system. It's not like 4e characters actually improve at the things that they are actually doing. Sure, they improve against things they're not doing anymore, but, they're not doing those things. In play, the difference is not present, it's only in some white room conception where level 20 characters are doing level 1 stuff.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok the demigod cannot intimidate the mayor because he didnt put specific effort into CHA and the like, same dif = same problem.

I'm not sure, because this isn't the same problem, this is now an NPC intimidating an NPC. I wouldn't bother with this, or pick an outcome I liked.

Eh where did I use that phrase without qualifiers about what kind of ability? Adaptability, generalized adventuring ability? note in 5e level has zero impact for many things used all the time during adventuring seems fundamentally wrong.

Why doesn't it? DC is set by approach and task in 5e, according to the rules. The GM considers how hard they think a particular approach is to do a particular task, and is encouraged to pick easy, medium, or hard, with very hard or impossible being recommended as rare options. So, if a 20th level character wants to do something, and has a good approach, DC should reflect this. There's no reason you can't lean on things you've done for this, like "I try to start the fire, recalling what Bob the Ranger said about good firemaking." Sure, sounds easy, give it a roll. Meanwhile in 4e, the GM is expected to set the DC according to your level, which means you have about the same chance for unskilled easy tasks as the 5e guy, but you get shafted by moderate and hard taskings while the 5e guy does as well or better.

I feel like people are looking only at the numbers next to the skill/proficiency on the sheet and not at all considering how those are actually used in game.