D&D (2024) 4e design in 5.5e ?

[NaturalZero]

It made me wonder what was the point of releasing new volcano favour barbarian path was when one could just pick the best barbarian path and reskin it as volcano flavoured.

I tend to feel the same about 5e subclasses though.

Definitely feel this with 5e. I've never ever, ever, ever seen a hexblade use the fluff from the book. It's always an old one hexblade, or a celestial hexblade, or a mechanical hexblade, or a guy with an intelligent weapon. If I hadn't read the book, I never would have known that the default hexblade relates to the Shadowfell.

 

[Krachek]

There is already enough 4ed in the 5ed.
Advantage, portent of divination wizard, shield spell, lucky feat, all those mechanics feel 4Ed to me. and they are very popular!

One other thing that 4ed done right, is to refresh classes in 4ed essentials. they keep the core game, but redesign the gameplay with new and fresh classes design. That should be an inspiration for the 50th, and it’s what I expect for the 50th printout.

 

[Aldarc]

Definitely feel this with 5e. I've never ever, ever, ever seen a hexblade use the fluff from the book. It's always an old one hexblade, or a celestial hexblade, or a mechanical hexblade, or a guy with an intelligent weapon. If I hadn't read the book, I never would have known that the default hexblade relates to the Shadowfell.

No surprise considering that the Hexblade is clearly a patch for Pact of the Blade. So I think most people gloss the standard origin in favor of a Patron that they otherwise would have picked.

 

[clearstream]

Definitely feel this with 5e. I've never ever, ever, ever seen a hexblade use the fluff from the book. It's always an old one hexblade, or a celestial hexblade, or a mechanical hexblade, or a guy with an intelligent weapon. If I hadn't read the book, I never would have known that the default hexblade relates to the Shadowfell.

I feel like one might make sense of the notion of dissociation by thinking through the implications of your and @Mordhau's comments. You can see that it would most meaningfully matter to be volcano barbarian or hexblade warlock if there were mechanics that connected to the driving in-world fictions. That would be narratable, and not easily covered by refluffing.

For example, if volcano-barb gains Con when standing on a volcano, then crunch and fluff are chained together. (I'm not saying that would be a great subclass feature! It's just to illustrate the idea.) So 'dissociative' might be meaningfully redefined as lacking valency to the fiction that it's intended to have valency to. In the case of 4th edition, the 'problem' is that for much of the audience, the intended fiction is taken to be centred on European-mythic-medieval-fantasy-light - bearskin-clad barbarians, bookish wizards, scaley dragons, and all that - as remolded through the cycles of D&D IP development. 4th edition mechanics were superficially, but not deeply chained to that expected genre. They were deeply chained to a quite different genre.

That produces jarring issues like that @UngeheuerLich encountered. A lack of language to narrate what the mechanics were doing. I think if you read back over some of the (quite lengthy) discourses on this subject, such as @Lyxen's, you can see this as the underlying problem. Many posters frame it as an objective problem, when it is principally a subjective problem: a problem of what has been normalised for them. The objective aspect is limited to the problem of what they might reasonably expect, based on what the game designers have said they intended (including via the game-as-product positioning).

 

[Hussar]

I always love watching people try to justify why they don't like 4e but do like 5e. The whiff of irony is just too delicious.

Thing is, if they had written 4e like 5e is written virtually none of the problems 4e had would have happened. 5e has so much 4e DNA buried into it, but, people just gloss over that because of how it's presented.

The issue with 4e was never substantive. It was always based on presentation.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's when reading threads like this that I really feel so much more relaxed about how I enjoy the game. Because I am so over ANY concern about game mechanics that the idea of adding or not adding 4E-style ones to 5E doesn't matter to me one bit. And I sympathize with all of you who actually really, really care if this rule is added or that rule isn't. To be that tied to how the rules play out just seems exhausting (especially when your rule desires do not actually appear in the game.)

I played 4E when it was out... I enjoyed it when it started... eventually I grew bored with the specific mechanical representation... and then 5E came out and I moved on. Now with 5E I also enjoyed it... and thus far am not getting to my boredom quotient as quickly because mechanically 5E is lighter and also designed to throw out the rules when unsatisfactory and make "rulings" instead... but I presume I am going to eventually want to move on from 5E too (and pick up 6E if/when it comes out.) But in both cases... neither rule set matters so much to me that I am unwilling to play either one (nor would I be unwilling to play 3E, 2E, AD&D, Basic or whatever) if there was someone who really enjoyed it and ran it to the best of its functionality. If I had someone who really loved 4E and was going to run a game? Count me in! Same with Pathfinder, same with 13th Age, same with BECMI. Because for me, it's all about the story... and whatever funny dice I roll in whatever combinations the rulebook tells me to is such an unimportant part of it that I could rarely ever get upset about them.

And it's the same reason why I'm happy to play other RPGs, and have no need to see the 5E rules ported into other styles/genres of games when I could just use the rules for other games in those genres already. The game mechanics just aren't that important to me, so why bend over backwards twisting 5E rules (or any systems for that matter) into pretzels in order for them to "work" for the genre / style I am going to be playing?

 

[Vaalingrade]

If I could only have one thing from 4e (because I'd really rather just jump back to 4e development pre-Essentials and refine from there, ignoring everything Essentials did), I'd like encounter-centric design back. I'm tired of the adventuring day being the parasite sapping the energy and fun out of the game. 4e still had daily abilities, but we were so close to being free!

Any now we're going back to daily everything.

Also a bit off topic, but I want to go back to 3e feats. 4 and 5e feats are too underwhelming and too rare respectively and shouldn't be connected to ASIs at all.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

snip (due to moderation)

The issue with 4e was never substantive. It was always based on presentation.

Exactly. But presentation is important.

 

[NaturalZero]

A lack of language to narrate what the mechanics were doing. I think if you read back over some of the (quite lengthy) discourses on this subject, such as @Lyxen's, you can see this as the underlying problem. Many posters frame it as an objective problem, when it is principally a subjective problem: a problem of what has been normalised for them. The objective aspect is limited to the problem of what they might reasonably expect, based on what the game designers have said they intended (including via the game-as-product positioning).

Yeah. It's definitely a subjective aspect of how much you expect the game to provide as far as fluff.

Personally, I reflavor a bunch of stuff with every character, often renaming and refluffing class and race abilities to fit the narrative I've come up with. This is the whole reason I play tabletop games instead of just playing video games all of the time; I get to make up the fluff, aesthetic, and narrative of a character instead of have a developer tell me about the powers/appearance/race of my character. For me, there is zero difference regarding dissociative mechanics in 4e and 5e because I'm authoring every aspect of the character regardless of how much or how little the developers provide. Other people want to read the book and an engage in the narrative provided by default though, so having paragraphs of text instead of the mechanics are important to them.

 

[Lyxen]

The issue with 4e was never substantive. It was always based on presentation.

No, it really was not. The design intent and philosophy are completely different, and you feel it in the way you play the game. It's all about balance (which is fine, but not necessary, at least to that extent) and control, which is fine except when it restricts what you can do. Some people like it, even want it in their game, and it's fine. But some people want more freedom in their game, 4e never gave it and 5e really opened the door back to before 3e.