D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[tomBitonti]

You mean like insisting that the fighter can't move outside of a 5' x 5' area when making a melee attack, because their token is not being moved from the square it occupies?

In 3.5E, that is definitely the case. There is reach, so the area which may be affected is closer to a 15dia circle. A character cannot make a melee attack against a target which is out of reach. A character with spring attack can move, attack, then move back. Other characters must move then attack, or attack then move.

I can go along with extra movement for 1 minute rounds. Not moving in that amount of time is implausible.

Also, I’ll grant that limiting actions to where a character is when they stop moving is artificial. Really, a character’s reach should be all along the path of its movement. What can I say? We give up a lot to have sequential initiative.

TomB

 

[pemerton]

What can I say? We give up a lot to have sequential initiative.

That must be because you're bending the fiction to fit the rules!

 

[Voadam]

Its enough for me. I want combat over quickly, so I can get back to exploration and social activities.

Its enough for me. I want combat to be quick paced and sometimes you are just wolverine slashing quickly.

 

[payn]

After a decade of writing up 3E style NPCs, getting your plots bypassed by the right spell at the right time, and recalculating stats on your turn, I would rewrite 3E too.

NPC Codex solved all that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not asking people to see anything. I'm asking them to stop using the second or third person ("Your game makes no sense" or "The game makes no sense") when what they should be using is the first person ("My narration makes no sense" or "I don't care to imagine what is going on").

In this respect, see my reply just above to @Micah Sweet.

Given how you're framing that, I'm back to "fool's errand" if you think that will work.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You know, going back to my Rogue comment, no version of Evasion has ever explained how it works, beyond (it just does) leaving it up to the table to figure it out. Not even what I believe to be it's original version, all the way back in Oriental Adventures.
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So how come this one has gotten a pass for 39 years but Come and Get It is still a subject of ire?

Antiquity.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This reminds me... is there something more boring than a player that just say 'I attack' during his turn?... Please, at least give me a little description... something...

'I attack... with my sword!'...

On one level I agree; on another, if its going to make no practical difference what I narrate (or at least none other than whatever the GM decides arbitrarily) don't expect me to put in the effort to do that attack after attack.

 

[MichaelSomething]

NPC Codex solved all that. [emoji2369]

And it only took 15(ish) years for it to come out! Counting from the start of 3E.

 

[payn]

And it only took 15(ish) years for it to come out! Counting from the start of 3E.

Better late than never.

 

[Hussar]

For now.

Sooner or later there'll be a straw that yet again breaks the back of that long-suffering camel.

The only question is whether that "straw" will hit for many people all at once leading to a mass desertion of 5e or whether it'll hit for different people at different times, leading to a slow bleed-off.

Swimming upthread a bit. Considering we've now had ten years of constant growth, I'm not sure that's actually true. It's more like the frog pot. They keep adding a bit more hot water and no one notices. There won't be another straw for a LOOONG time so long as they keep doing these UA things to prime the pump.