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

[Henadic Theologian]

There’s a fair amount already in 5E.

This thread is helpful.

What should be brought forward...

4E skill challenges...though looser and better presented.

4E monster design.

4E clarity of the math behind the game.

4E monster types: minions, standard, elite, solo; monster roles: skirmisher, brute, soldier, etc; and the bloodied condition.

4E monster lore checks listed with the monsters.

4E encounter design.

4E classes like the warlord and the swordmage.

4E bonuses and scaling. Your level and training mattered more than your d20 roll after a certain point. That was nice.

4E World Axis cosmology.

4E Dawn War.

4E Nentir Vale and Points of Light.

4E split between rituals and combat magic.

4E residuum.

I loved almost everything about 4E except how clunky it played, how long it took to resolve combats, and near pure focus on combat.

The Dawn War I believe gets mentioned in the SCAG and DMG, but maybe it will come up more.

While Rituals are in the game, they didn't apply it to nearly enough spells, hence why a ton of utility spells never see use so more spells getting ritual caster is something I 100% support.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, this is unwarranted and a problem. You've hit the nail on the head.

Except I don't see it as a problem. My expectation is that D&D's design be kitbashable by intent, and designed to be flexible and robust enough to handle some changes or tweaks.

Or, you expected something that the systems weren't offering, and instead of figuring it's you, you're blaming the system for not anticipating what you wanted. Start from the point that you don't own D&D, just what you do at your table. That way, a given edition isn't something that fails because it doesn't anticipate you, it just doesn't align with what you want at your table and you shouldn't be a customer.

I'm not sure it's in a business' best interests to tell people not to be its customers.

That said, I haven't adopted 5e (or 4e, or 3e) largely because there would be so much kitbashing required to make them play how I want that it's just not worth the effort.

 

[Campbell]

At the end of the day designers have to make actual design decisions. How much to weigh attrition, what resource recovery looks like, roughly how long it takes to reach an attrition threshold where players feel the pressure and are making life and death decisions. In any game there are going to be choke points. Game design is about making tradeoffs.

 

[Aldarc]

Except I don't see it as a problem. My expectation is that D&D's design be kitbashable by intent, and designed to be flexible and robust enough to handle some changes or tweaks.

A lot of games can handle changes here and there, but (1) you need to know where the game can handle said changes without breaking it, and (2) the game may still not be designed for your gaming preferences or style. Dungeon World, for example, is kitbashable and flexible enough to handle changes and tweaks. There is a ton of fan content designed for it and tweaks made to it, but PbtA is definitely not a system for you to turn into his next version of your heavily houseruled 1e game.

I'm not sure it's in a business' best interests to tell people not to be its customers.

You may want to read that again. Nowhere does Ovinomancer say that businesses should tell people not to be its customers. He's saying that customers should sometimes realize that a product is not designed specfically with them in mind and adjust their expectations accordingly. Lamborgini may want me to buy their sports car, but that doesn't mean that they are to blame if my self-created failed expectations are that I can drive it like an off-road vehicle.

Spoiler

The same could be said for TTRPGs.

That said, I haven't adopted 5e (or 4e, or 3e) largely because there would be so much kitbashing required to make them play how I want that it's just not worth the effort.

Then why spend your time complaining about WotC era D&D when you have a houseruled version of an edition that you enjoy, very likely aren't going to move on from, and doesn't affect your table in any way?

 

[CubicsRube]

I'm nastier as a DM and thus much prefer to get it over with. Even a three-save system could be concatenated into rolling a single save with double-advantage (i.e. roll 3d20 and take the best).

You just made me realise how interesting doing death saves like this could be.

1st death save you roll 3d20 and if any is over 10 you live.

2nd death save you roll 2d20.

After that 1d20.

Hmm... i think i like it!

 

[CubicsRube]

I never played 4e, but everything I read about monster design (except hit point bloat) sounds like much more how I like to run my games (and play in them).

Especially for a game that is as combat focused as D&D, it seems a shame to me that monsters don't have more distinctive abilities to help give individual fights a more unique feel.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Thinking about it, I wouldn't mind more updates of the spells, prayers and other powers from 4e, most of 5e spells came 3.5e or earlier, with some new ones, only a small handful came from 4e. Having more unique class spells for Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, Paladin, etc, borrow from 4e and updated for 5.5e would
be great.

 

[Aldarc]

I never played 4e, but everything I read about monster design (except hit point bloat) sounds like much more how I like to run my games (and play in them).

Especially for a game that is as combat focused as D&D, it seems a shame to me that monsters don't have more distinctive abilities to help give individual fights a more unique feel.

The development for 4e was rushed with a lot of problems (even aside from the horrendous marketing strategy). A lot of the math, subsystems, and mechanical interactions were incredibly unpolished. By the time that WotC got the math and such right, and once they finally began learning how to write good adventures for their own system, instead of going back to improve their prior line, they moved on to Essentials as a gamble to win people back. This alienated some people who liked the prior class set-up, and too little too late for those who moved on to other games (e.g., Pathfinder, OSR, etc.). So Essentials further divided the fanbase.

There were a lot of incredible things about 4e that made it an incredibly easy game to GM and engaging game to play (IMHO), but we lost a lot of its more amazing innovations (e.g., monster design, defenses, healing surges, etc.) in the knee-jerk reaction to all the negative reactions for what WotC bungled.

This is one reason why - and I don't really care how many times I repeat myself - I would love to see 4e opened to OGL so 4e fans could make a polished retroclone version of the games (i.e., both Core and Essentials) the same way that the OSR has done with their retroclones of B/X, BECMI, and 1e.

 

[Lyxen]

This IMO is where both 3e and 4e failed (and maybe 5e also?); they tried to hard-code too much detail into the system, rather than simply designing a framework and stopping there, and failed to leave enough flexibility for kitbashers. Result: changing those systems to suit your table and have it still work well isn't easy at all; yet in the tradition of D&D it's something that should be.

I can't agree enough about this, I'm just pointing out that for me, 5e did not fail because it's indeed just a framework / guidelines, and this was exactly the intent of the designers, for the reasons that you point out. Of course, there are always people who want more than this, and most of the complaints about 5e are from people who want a more rigid system but, again as pointed out by the 5e designers, doing this results in tons of rules. Lots of rules plus rigidity is I think really the reasons for 3e and 4e failing to be as successful as 5e with a much wider audience, they were and remain mostly geeks/technical gamers products.

This is why, from the beginning of 5e, the designers have strongly resisted the demand to make additional rules about specific cases, just providing their opinion as to how they handle it in their game. They have added very few hard coded rules, mostly some intent and clarifications, and I don't think that you will see many more rules in the upcoming revision, it would betray the spirit of what they've done very successfully so far.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The development for 4e was rushed with a lot of problems (even aside from the horrendous marketing strategy). A lot of the math, subsystems, and mechanical interactions were incredibly unpolished. By the time that WotC got the math and such right, and once they finally began learning how to write good adventures for their own system, instead of going back to improve their prior line, they moved on to Essentials as a gamble to win people back. This alienated some people who liked the prior class set-up, and too little too late for those who moved on to other games (e.g., Pathfinder, OSR, etc.). So Essentials further divided the fanbase.

There were a lot of incredible things about 4e that made it an incredibly easy game to GM and engaging game to play (IMHO), but we lost a lot of its more amazing innovations (e.g., monster design, defenses, healing surges, etc.) in the knee-jerk reaction to all the negative reactions for what WotC bungled.

This is one reason why - and I don't really care how many times I repeat myself - I would love to see 4e opened to OGL so 4e fans could make a polished retroclone version of the games (i.e., both Core and Essentials) the same way that the OSR has done with their retroclones of B/X, BECMI, and 1e.

If essentials came before standard 4e, a lot less people would have been alienated. Essentials was a lot closer in feel to what came before than standard and also there would have never been any claims that wizards and fighters are too samey (which they have never been in actual play in original 4e).

Another problem with 4e was, that the books before essentials were not worth the paper they were printed on, as the rules were constantly updated and the first printings had so many glaring errors (I think there was a monster showcase were chris perkins himself was baffled by the fact that the ogre (brute) did more damage in ranged combat than in melee... which was later updated.