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

[Dausuul]

It has the same issues there always are. A single encouter doesn't really feel particularly dangerous unless it's truly epic, loss of healing surges doesn't raise any tension if it feels like you never use them up, an encounter with bandits while travelling through the wilderness is more epic than the final boss fight at the end of the dungeon because it's the only combat the DM has planned for the today and once the players twig to that they'll blow all their dailies in the one fight.

Well... I mean... yeah, I suppose all that is true, but how could it be otherwise in a game with daily attrition mechanics? These seem like criticisms of D&D generally rather than 4E specifically. All these problems are way worse in every other edition, 5E included.

Not that the criticisms aren't valid, but it seems strange to level them at the edition that did the most to address them.

 

[billd91]

It's a mistake to think that you're the target demographic. 4e was a commercial success. I know that's not the preferred story told.

Depends on how you measure success. For a typical RPG, it was extremely successful. For D&D, not so much. For Hasbro's benchmarks, definitely not.

 

[Jaeger]

Exactly. And these are the customers WotC are writing the game for. Therefore, their goals are misplaced.

They need to design the game the way that people want to play. Not try and get people to play the game they want to design.

But we also have examples of design changes effecting the way people play the game, because players will adapt their play to the rules.

The designers then interpret that change in player behavior to be the way players wanted to play the game, and then compounding that effect by continuing to change the game in a direction that was just a player reaction to a rules change...

There can be lots of unintended consequences with rule changes that many do not pause to consider.

Leading to Self-Perpetuating Development Loops:

How D&D Was Engineered Away from Old-School Play.

How the development loop in Dungeons & Dragons moved it away from its original play experience via a distorted feedback loop of surveys & rule changes

deathtrap-games.blogspot.com

"This self-perpetuating loop, where developers created a change in the game's structure that changed how it was played, then heard that the game was being played differently, and so then reinforced that structural change, believing they were following a trend, has appeared in a number of ways as the game advanced. It is reminiscent of the Andria Paradox on a number of levels."

I think there was a distinct change in WotC with 3.5, at one point it was supposed to be backwards compatible, but then somewhere they decided it wasn't going to be. I hope they know of the lesson it taught.

It's not really about learning from the past.

It is the inevitable direction balancing the integration of 7 years of different errata and 'improved' rules back into the core books will demand.

This guy gets it:

When you think about it, even a fairly backwards compatible thing like rewriting the Ranger class is going to make lots of subclasses incompatible.

Which means that those subclasses then need to be looked at, etc...

The exponential effect of making many small changes is inevitable. Visually it will look pretty much like the same game. But the devil will be in the details.

Just think of the words: "Fully Compatible" as more of a guideline...

Well... I mean... yeah, I suppose all that is true, but how could it be otherwise in a game with daily attrition mechanics? These seem like criticisms of D&D generally rather than 4E specifically. All these problems are way worse in every other edition, 5E included.

Not that the criticisms aren't valid, but it seems strange to level them at the edition that did the most to address them.

If you meant: "Post 3e edition", then yes: Bounded accuracy was a solid step in the right direction.

But 5e defiantly has its share of HP bloat, which counteracts the effects of much of that good work.

 

[Hussar]

I think there was a distinct change in WotC with 3.5, at one point it was supposed to be backwards compatible, but then somewhere they decided it wasn't going to be. I hope they know of the lesson it taught.

I don't recall them ever actually stating it was supposed to be backwards compatible. But, it is entirely possible I missed that part. The fact that they not only rereleased all the core books, largely rewritten, plus then rereleased all the splats as well, pretty much put paid to the notion of compatibility. The intent was certainly that everyone was supposed to rebuy all the material.

Essentials was backward compatible with 4e. You could have an Essentials fighter and a vanilla 4e fighter in the same group without any problems. I do think that 5e's much more standardized class design will make compatibility easier to maintain. One of the strengths of 5e design is that, despite years of play, there aren't really any stand out examples of class imbalance. Yeah, yeah, there is some talk about caster/non-caster, but, largely, the classes are pretty darn close in play.

To me, that means they got the underlying math pretty good in 5e. So, building on that chassis becomes a lot easier.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure. That's not the flavor of magic I would personally choose (I like casters to be fairly limited),

I do too, but I prefer those limitations come via different means; mostly that they be much easier to interrupt while casting (and there be no such thing as "combat casting") and that being interrupted can sometimes have consequences e.g. a wild magic effect.

but I can't argue with it as a valid preference of taste.

Fair enough.

 

[Lanefan]

So in a nutshell:

1) All Encounter Power returned with a very short rest.... ensures that the strength and tempo of fights stays consistent regardless of fights per day.

2) Heavy resource drain model.... ensures that the players are expected to use their abilities in each fight but then withdraw to recover. Aka the strength of the party is still consistent under the assumption that fights are rare and resting frequent.

I think both have their merits. It generally means that on average, the expected party's "power level" is roughly consistent regardless of encounter type. The first one allows the players to repeat that multiple times a day (unless the DM intervenes through some mechanical tool used on rest). In the second, players are assumed to fight and then rest....with the notion that continuing to push forward constitutes a strong reduction in overall party strength and would represent "special circumstances".

Yeah, that's about it; with the main differences being:
--- with 2) the DM now has encounter frequency as a tool in the box with which to raise or lower the drain on resources
--- with 2) the players/PCs can choose to press on while weakened if they so desire and-or the situation demands it; a choice that 1) doesn't really offer.

 

[Lanefan]

No, they're not aligned with your goals. This doesn't mean they are misplaced. Part of the problem with D&D editions is that people don't bother to try to learn how the new edition works and is intended to play because they already know how to play D&D.

Ideally the design is such that it aligns with the goals of as many players/DMs as possible, under the big-tent theory.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Depends on how you measure success. For a typical RPG, it was extremely successful. For D&D, not so much. For Hasbro's benchmarks, definitely not.

That's very interesting news, who's your source?

 

[Mordhau]

It's a mistake to think that you're the target demographic.

I'm not. You're making unjustified inferences.

I've said nothing about my own preferences.

 

[Nefermandias]

So, first of all, 4e fully embraced the abstract nature of hit points. Most hit point damage was assumed to be luck/morale/energy/divine favor/whatever rather than actual physical injury. The only thresholds that mattered were Bloodied (which meant showing visible but largely superficial signs of wear like cuts and bruises), and 0 HP which meant unconscious and possibly dying - technically this is how 5e says to narrate hit point loss as well, but in 4e, many mechanics actually relied on this narrative. Which incidentally is one of the reasons I say it is objectively not true that the fluff didn’t matter - it very much did matter, to the point that some fluff couldn’t be ignored… which was a problem for folks who prefer “HP as meat.”

Now, keeping in mind this model of narrating HP loss, this means healing magic doesn’t fuse broken bones and knit open wounds. It restores your stamina, energy, resolve, will to fight, etc. And once we accept that, it’s pretty trivial to accept that you have a limited reserve of such willpower, and that past a certain point, no amount of magic is going to help. You’re just plain tapped out for the day.

It is definitely transparent. To me, that’s an unambiguously good thing.I want to understand what the rules are doing and why they’re doing it, and in 4e, that was always abundantly clear. And personally I think that’s the true source behind all this “dissociated mechanics” nonsense. 4e pulled back the curtain and showed the gameplay purpose the rules served, rather than pretending the rules existed primarily to model the fiction. A lot of folks didn’t like that (though for the life of me I’ll never understand why), and “dissociative mechanics” is what came out of their attempts to articulate that.

I would just like to add that in general, magical healing in 4e was strangely "weaker" from a narrative perspective. For example, removing curses and diseases were not guaranteed and the ritual could actually kill the victim if the ritualist rolled low enough with their Religion/Nature/Arcana check.