D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[James Gasik]

That particular example was also printed in the DMG2.

Was it? I didn't recall, it's been awhile, but yeah, it was a huge inspiration for me. Once I realized the mechanics were the important part, the amount of available traps, characters, enemies, powers, and magic items seemed endless! Though some people did take things a bit far, like the time we had to fight a "Fire Priest" who was actually using the stat block of some kind of ooze, and we couldn't figure out how to hell to fight the jerk!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There's a paragraph in the PHB that talks about reflavoring stuff and changing keywords, and the Adventurers Vault touches on these themes WRT magic items and such. Obviously it's a big theme on the GM side of things but if I had to guess, the more editorial side of the 4e team gave frowny faces. No prize for guessing which WotC figure lead that side of the house! 4e was virtually in the hands of it's own enemies it feels like.

Yeah. 4e had almost unequivocally the worst possible situation it could ever have had:

• Massive economic crisis/downturn right at the start, which led to...
• A major collapse in the publishing industry that killed one of the leading bookstore chains
• Deeply flawed marketing that alienated almost as many people as it pleased
• Both active and passive/subconscious resistance within the dev teams against the concept and spirit of the project
• The horrible bonehead maneuver called the GSL, which literally created...
• Pathfinder, a direct competitor
• A legit actual murder-suicide on the digital tools team, depriving them of their best development minds at a critical point and effectively ensuring the digital tools would fail
• Insufficient word-of-mouth and internet-culture efforts to get the word out, though not totally for lack of trying (Acquisitions Inc. was 4e originally, after all)

Like...fate stacked the deck against 4e even if you don't count the errors made during its run. If you do, it's a tragedy in three acts.

By comparison, things couldn't have been more favorable to 5e if you tried. The playtest hit right as the podcast and YouTube boom arrived, spurring massive attention, especially since Pathfinder had become long in the tooth and people had (finally...) started to realize "oh, hey, y'know...I kinda don't like how some of these rules actually PLAY..." As much consternation as it causes me, their focus on popularity, game design be damned, meant they created something a lot of people could find something they liked inside, and many found few dealbreakers. Further, the economic malaise of the Great Recession finally cleared up around the time of release, and international shipping and other such things became cheaper and easier, bootstrapping the already (coincidentally) well-timed launch into the stratosphere; the natural marketing then kept it there, feeding on its own hype.

I genuinely believe that if you swapped the rules of the two editions, what we call 5e in OTL would have struggled immensely and 4e would have been much better-received.

 

[pemerton]

There was an amazing article during the 4e era (I think on the online Dragon Magazine), "My Son is a Fire Archon" all about refluffing.

It's in the DMG2, p 21.

 

[pemerton]

I genuinely believe that if you swapped the rules of the two editions, what we call 5e in OTL would have struggled immensely and 4e would have been much better-received.

4e D&D and 5e D&D are quite different games.

Obviously 5e D&D borrows many of its core mechanical techniques from 4e, but it is very different in its assumptions about both GM and player roles.

On the player side, 5e has much simpler PC building, and no expectation that players will drive the action (eg there is nothing analogous to the player-authored quests discussed in the 4e PHB).

The correlative on the GM side is that the GM is given almost total authority over how play unfolds. There is no skill challenge framework for non-combat resolution. There is no analogue of treasure parcels - which, in 4e, largely divorce the magic item element of PC build from the GM's specific decisions about encounter building.

I think there is a lot of evidence that the 5e approach to RPGing is more popular, among a wider player base, than the 4e approach.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Was it? I didn't recall, it's been awhile, but yeah, it was a huge inspiration for me. Once I realized the mechanics were the important part, the amount of available traps, characters, enemies, powers, and magic items seemed endless! Though some people did take things a bit far, like the time we had to fight a "Fire Priest" who was actually using the stat block of some kind of ooze, and we couldn't figure out how to hell to fight the jerk!

One of the most fun reskins I remember doing was taking a Juvenile White Dragon (IIRC, the PCs were in the range of maybe 7th level or so) and reskinning it as this giant spirit wolf monster. The breath weapon was a howl, etc. It didn't actually require ANY changes to the mechanics aside from the breath weapon being thunder damage with a stun condition instead of cold damage. Sometimes I would just flip open the book and grab a monster of the right level and just start describing it as 'whatever will be cool here'. lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah. 4e had almost unequivocally the worst possible situation it could ever have had:

• Massive economic crisis/downturn right at the start, which led to...
• A major collapse in the publishing industry that killed one of the leading bookstore chains
• Deeply flawed marketing that alienated almost as many people as it pleased
• Both active and passive/subconscious resistance within the dev teams against the concept and spirit of the project
• The horrible bonehead maneuver called the GSL, which literally created...
• Pathfinder, a direct competitor
• A legit actual murder-suicide on the digital tools team, depriving them of their best development minds at a critical point and effectively ensuring the digital tools would fail
• Insufficient word-of-mouth and internet-culture efforts to get the word out, though not totally for lack of trying (Acquisitions Inc. was 4e originally, after all)

Like...fate stacked the deck against 4e even if you don't count the errors made during its run. If you do, it's a tragedy in three acts.

By comparison, things couldn't have been more favorable to 5e if you tried. The playtest hit right as the podcast and YouTube boom arrived, spurring massive attention, especially since Pathfinder had become long in the tooth and people had (finally...) started to realize "oh, hey, y'know...I kinda don't like how some of these rules actually PLAY..." As much consternation as it causes me, their focus on popularity, game design be damned, meant they created something a lot of people could find something they liked inside, and many found few dealbreakers. Further, the economic malaise of the Great Recession finally cleared up around the time of release, and international shipping and other such things became cheaper and easier, bootstrapping the already (coincidentally) well-timed launch into the stratosphere; the natural marketing then kept it there, feeding on its own hype.

I genuinely believe that if you swapped the rules of the two editions, what we call 5e in OTL would have struggled immensely and 4e would have been much better-received.

I'm pretty skeptical that the demise of some of the more fanciful software stuff had much to do with one guy going bonkers, but yeah, there were some pretty boneheaded things that happened when 4e was coming out, and some just poor overall timing. I feel like the GSL, coupled with WotC not really understanding the whole online thing very well, plus the weird way half the dev team seemed to be actively going against the other half was most of it. Pathfinder only existed because Paiso existed, which existed because WotC CREATED IT, and gave it access to all their customers! (by handing Dragon publication to them).

I think they DID publicize the game plenty, and it actually sold really well for a while. Then they flooded the market with books, people got burned out, there was a bad economy, and they published a lot of crap adventures. 5e has a less problematic online business model, a better license, good PR, and yeah, it was just at the right time in the up/down cycle of RPGs. The PR was pretty key though, they were able to spin it very well, and as you say jump into the new social media space in a way that 4e kind of just barely missed (not quite, but it sure is bigger now). For anyone who's been around RPGs long enough these kind of things are familiar. White Wolf pulled off the early '90s version of the same thing. Heck, Tunnels & Trolls pulled off the '70s version too, that game was a huge craze, almost bigger than D&D, for a while.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also the persistent sabotage campaign that's literally still going.

 

[Bagpuss]

Slap a sticker on it "D&D Tactics"

Job done.

 

[Red Castle]

Slap a sticker on it "D&D Tactics"

Job done.

This would just reinforce the idea that 4th edition focused on combat and didn’t care about roleplay, which is just not true.

 

[Bagpuss]

This would just reinforce the idea that 4th edition focused on combat and didn’t care about roleplay, which is just not true.

It cares about roleplay about as much as any other edition, but tactically it is far superior to every other edition.