Yes, but purely tactical. Not roleplaying, not storytelling, not anything that you can consistently explain in terms of the way things work in the world.
I have totally explained it in terms of how the world works. That it is a combat technique and largely functions as such doesn't lessen it or somehow make it less a roleplaying game.
A board, tokens on the board, power "cards" and precise tactical rules.
WOTC literally sells tokens and power cards for 5E. BEHOLD A BOARD GAME!
Again, it's not a question of being kind or experienced, it's ONLY in the attitude. 4e specifies first and foremost a referee, there to apply the rules of the game. Other editions insist more on the (lead) storyteller part. Nothing prevents the reverse, it's just that it's consistent with the design of the game and its rules.
... Are you serious? Look, the DMG says first that they control the pace of the story, and referee the action. It also says they wear many hats in the story. It's similarly written in 5E, including the usage of "refereeing". I don't see hyper-parsing words to be particularly convincing.
They are only linked because some players seem to be scared of the DM's power and the way a DM could "sabotage" them, so they feel the need to litigate. Do you realise how adversarial this attitude is on the part of the players ?
Take a DM and players with the right (and yes, I'm sorry, but in this there is right and wrong) attitude of full collaboration and there is no need to limit the DM's power, as the players know that it will only be used for their own benefit, i.e. their fun.
That's great, because 4E's DMG says that D&D is a cooperative game! In fact, it leads off with that in the first sentence.
You know what doesn't? The 3E and 5E DMGs.
But to be more serious, I feel like rules don't really block that. In fact, I think they can be helpful in structuring the cooperation, where you need to have a GM decision and where the players will have enough info to know what they are doing beforehand. It cuts down on litigating how a situation should go by allowing the players to get a reasonable idea of what they can do and the possible outcomes beforehand, rather than having to figure out all that stuff on the fly.
That is because the more rules you have, the more you need to invent. Take it from the other direction, which is that there are almost no rules, and people will start playing in the game world rather than through the rules. I really recommend playing a few much more free form games to see the other side of the coin.
I dunno, are Free League games freeform? I've played my share of those. But I find this to be meaningless when we are talking about 4E and 5E. In this case, I think having more rules to grant better structure are actually more helpful than having some rules rules because you have to adjudicate many more. If we were talking about freeform games, sure, but we're not: 5E is fairly crunchy, but to me not enough to really get the benefit of the crunch. It's like just under the threshold, where it could use a bit more structure to actually get more out of the system.
No, it has rules for improvising damage (where, strangely, you find that a simple torch fire in a chimney does more damage when in high level game than a low level one
). I'm teasing here, but only a bit actually, because the (in)famous page 42 of the 4e DMG which is cited so often is mostly about giving a +2 circumstance bonus, using a check to resolve an action that might fail and improvising damage. And that's it for the "actions the rules don't cover".
I mean, that covers a whole lot with just a little. The mistake you are making is thinking that I want everything to have rules, but I don't: rather, I want the system to give me a good idea of how to create rules on the fly rather than just going in blind. That's useful to me. Similarly, having actual skill uses rather than vague ideas is informative because it gives players the shape of what the skills should be used for.
See above how extremely limited those are. But the main reason for which 4e limits actions is the segmenting of the game. It's impossible to blend social, exploration and combat in a smooth way, because as soon as there is a hint of a power use, you need to go tactical, pull out a grid and count squares. We've tried it for years, medium+ level intrigue where people sneak in using stealth or social powers and spells is impossible, it's either extremely long rituals, or combat powers on a grid, or a ritualised skill challenge because 4e insists on codifying everything.
Of course, you can drop all that as some people say they do on these forums, but then what's the point of having all these formal trappings ? You might as well play a much more free form edition.
The thing is that the "freeform edition" is anything
but. Like, it's a system that has
skills, so it's definitely not as freeform as some of the previous editions. Rather, to me it sits just
outside the sweet spot of rules crunch for what it has: the lack of rules in places comes off like blindspots more than anything.
And you avoided my question of what a 5E fighter can do that a 4E can't.
But only within the system, and that is all that I need.
While not everything needs to be within the system, it's nice to have the characters be able to interact with what their characters can do in tangible ways rather than just relying on GM fiat. If you want to do that, fine, but I don't think not relying on that makes a game less of an RPG.
Actually it does, because there is no DC per level (bounded accuracy), it's the same chart whatever the level. Which is sort of normal, if you ask me, I don't see why climbing a ladder should be harder at level 30 than at level 1...
Bounded accuracy doesn't meant there isn't DC per level, because monsters
absolutely work on that principle. It's even in the DMG when creating monsters. That it isn't outlined for you suddenly doesn't mean it doesn't exist; rather, it exists, but you just don't know what the designers themselves use.
Like, a ladder at 30th level won't be a higher DC, but if I wanted to set a DC for something that I think will be a challenging climb for them (like scaling a volcanic cliff during an eruption), I have a starting point to look at for difficulty and damage. That's the point: with a level-appropriate challenge I actually have guidance rather than haphazardly trying to slap numbers together.
This just shows that you have not really read the 5e rules. DCs (adn "world damage") are not dependent on level and, in terms of monster damage, there are clear guidelines about the damage that a monster of a certain DC does.
This is not really a reason not to give guidance on what DC a hazard should be or how much damage it should do. In fact, the fact that they give an idea of how much a monster should at a given CR really goes against your point. The whole idea is that you have a rough idea of the difficulty and how it relates to your player's level, whether it be at, above, or below it. Not having such guidance just makes things more difficult because you have to guess at how this might affect your players now or later.
It's a much simpler game in terms of rules, much less tactical in terms of fights (but I can run a very exciting fight in 30 minutes max, leaving a lot of time in an evening for social, exploration and other fights, and actually blending that fight with all the other aspects of the game) - as this is clearly a strength of 4e - but most of the elements are there and a DM is encouraged to build on this rather than discouraged by a very large and closed ruleset which in turn encourages players to follow it rather than building on their imagination and view of the world.
Different game for different players if you wish, just wanted to point out that this very simple ruleset is one of the major factors of the success of 5e outside of the usual "fans/specialists/geeks" circles of historical D&D. But that's another topic.
Here's the thing: having less rules can make things
more complex, particularly when rules aren't linked to any sort of universal system. 5E has a ton of spells and rules that are only used for one spell, action, monster, etc... that means adjudicating edge cases can be a headache. That's not to say having
more rules is always the answer, but having
efficient rules is better. And 4E rules are fairly efficient compared to 5E, at least in my opinion.
More than that, the lack of things certain characters can do is just stunning. You talk about lack of imagination, but the lack of mechanical interaction for, say, a fighter is just bad. I don't care what a GM can make up for them to do, the fact that they basically
have to is a flaw with the rules. And I feel like there's a lot of that with 5E: there's enough rules to be fiddly, but not enough to be clear. Rather than focusing on making an efficient ruleset, they were more concerned with getting a certain aesthetic, and I think that's nice but doesn't make up for some of the simpler mistakes they made.
