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

[Thomas Shey]

Not every adventure- I remember Under the Dark Fist having a section where you may need to do spell research in order to bypass a thick asteroid field. But yes, you're not wrong, typically adventure writers don't know what players have access to. It just surprised me that a core feature of some classes, who got Ritual casting for free (like Wizard or Bards) was effectively ignored.

I'd have liked a little troubleshooting section for things like this "hey what if players can skip to the end?".

Well, the serious answer is most adventures can be kneecapped that way unless there are steps along the way. Anything where most of the adventure is travel-based otherwise suffers from it, and there's little in the way of non-hamfisted solutions.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, but it doesn't do to underestimate the number of people who consider a game "dead" without ongoing support. In practice, PF1e supplied that for 3.5 players.

They did, but given the number of people who still talk about playing AD&D versions, I think it's not unreasonable to imagine a lot of the PF converts might have just continued to play 3.5 for a few years. I do think that the number of players who stayed behind and continued to play D&D may have declined had Paizo and PF not existed. But shrinkage of that group doesn't necessarily mean growth of the 4e group...

 

[Thomas Shey]

They did, but given the number of people who still talk about playing AD&D versions, I think it's not unreasonable to imagine a lot of the PF converts might have just continued to play 3.5 for a few years. I do think that the number of players who stayed behind and continued to play D&D may have declined had Paizo and PF not existed. But shrinkage of that group doesn't necessarily mean growth of the 4e group...

I think its easy to extrapolate the Old School types you see online as representing bigger numbers than they are, though; and note for some years now the OSR has supplied, effectively, additional material usable with AD&D1.

 

[Lanefan]

Good point!

While I think we have been careful to note the parallels between the pushback to 3e (with the OSR movement) and 4e, there was also a significant pushback to 2e as well. Which, from today's perspective, might seem insane given that 2e was completely interoperable with 1e.

Nevertheless, there were a lot of people that absolutely despised 2e, whether it was because of lingering bad feelings toward the ouster of Gygax, a pushback against the simplification/standardization of the rules (and the belief that it no longer had the "magic" or, depending on your POV, the impenetrability, of Gygaxian prose), a desire not give in to the kid-ification of the game (removal of demons and devils and assassins, making the material and art more all-ages friendly), or because they believed it reflected an ongoing move away from the "roots" of the game and toward the Hickman-style narrative games.

Ancedotally, the anti-2e pushback that I recall almost all came from the philosophical side: that TSR had caved to the Satanic panic crowd (bad) and in so doing neutered the game (worse).

The game-mechanics that drew pushback were invariably those that had been changed to suit that change in philosophy.

 

[Lanefan]

4e books sold quite well too, certainly the 3 core books did. I think WotC made a number of PR, business, and product line decisions that were sub-optimal.

Understatement of the day, that is.

 

[pemerton]

Regardless, it's hard for me to imagine that any person who joined ENWorld in early 2007 and participated in the forums would or should be surprised by 4e.

Fair.

@Imaro, here's a skill challenge thread from the first half of 2008 that you were posting in:https://www.enworld.org/threads/two-example-skill-challenges.224889/

Regarding the preview books, a lot of people aren't willing to spend money on game books that have no game mechanics and in fact exist solely as advertisement the target has to pay for to read. I know I wasn't.

Worlds and Monsters is not an ad (mostly). It's design notes and accompanying GM advice. In my view a lot of it should have been in the DMG.

 

[pemerton]

I think popular belief tends to become a sort of pastiche of reality. I won't mention real-world examples, but they abound. In terms of 4e the myths are things like there being some drastic change in 'monster math' (or that the 4e 'math' was 'wrong' in general, which I find untenable). Late 4e 'MM3-grade' monsters ARE considerably better designed in many respects. Low level humanoids and such don't really tend to be much different between MM1 and MV, as you point out. In other respects, even for those, there are design changes that are almost always real improvements. Like the removal of the Hobgoblin's Phalanx Soldier trait, which pretty much jacks their AC to 22 practically all the time. Its replacement, Share Shield can be bypassed in a number of ways, making fighting this monster more interesting (the MV Hobgoblin also has 1 less point of AC, so the +2 from Share Shield is actually slightly compensating for a minor weakness).

At higher levels things definitely diverge more, but its STILL not really about 'math', the hit point formula doesn't change, but damage increases! Frankly MANY MM1 paragon/epic monsters do far less than the recommended damage as well, so this is where things actually change the most, by far. Taking a creature that is doing 5 or even 10 less damage than it is supposed to, and giving it back that damage PLUS the increase built into MV's monster build rules can make a huge difference. Whereas epic standards were basically just tough minions in MM they become real threats in MV!

I was conflating advice I saw for dealing with the slog of large number of combat rounds with the more modest changes to Monster Math that mostly did not affect lower heroic play. It has been a while and I do not have the monster math changes at hand.

I do remember the solos going from x5 to x4 and I think the recommended number of minions per PC changed, but I am surprised if there was no lowering of monster hp, that seemed something that was suggested more than once early on as a fix to late fight slogging. Wasn't there also a lowering of ACs so the hp could be chewed up faster? I seem to recall that with soldier monster roles in particular being an early sticking point.

I did play in a 4e game (different group from the other one that dropped 4e after the beholder solo fight) where the DM generally was cutting monster hp by half from that listed and 50-100% increase in damage was used and the combats sang.

As @AbdulAlhazred says, monster/NPC power design got better over time. And the ACs were shaved in a few cases. (Though the DMG from the start warned the GM about the pitfalls of using above-level soldiers, so it's not as if the designers were originally unaware of AC as an issue.)

But this idea that there was some large-scale change to hp numbers is just wrong.

Another example:

MM Pit Fiend (level 26 elite solider) AC 44, 486 hp, damage of mace 2d10+11 +OG 5

MV Pit Fiend (level 26 elite soldier) AC 42, 486 hp, damage of mace 2d19+11 + OG 10​

Same hp, slight reduction in AC, improved damage.

 

[Imaro]

Fair.

@Imaro, here's a skill challenge thread from the first half of 2008 that you were posting in:https://www.enworld.org/threads/two-example-skill-challenges.224889/

[/QUOTE]

I read through the 1st couple of posts and what I'm reading is alot of conjecture as opposed to a solid description of how SC work. That thread presented them as much more flexible than the end product was in the 1st phb.

EDIT: Just so you know where I'm coming from I think the SC's as presented in SW SAGA are much better than what was in 4e and even use them in my 5e games.

 

[tomBitonti]

Completely agree. After all, most of us are here for interminable debates over the tiniest things. It comes with the territory; whether it's disintegrate v. wildshape, or what's going on with orcs, or alignment, or hit points, or edge cases involving stealth, if you ask three people, you'll get four opinions.

Isn’t interminable debate the essence of scientific and academic discovery? Also, the ongoing discussion shows that folks still care about this stuff. And, the discussion does seem to have mellowed. Perhaps allowing a few more details to be settled without the heat of the discussion obliterating the new structures.

I see the discussion as showing multiple perspectives that matter, and with folks who have an interest in the discussion that also matter.

Anyways, happy holidays all!

TomB

 

[Hussar]

My two cp about how 4e played out.

WotC was working its way towards a new edition. That was pretty obvious with books like Bo9S and the like. That was as always going to happen.

Then that 50 mil core brands bomb dropped. Imagine you’re WotC. You’ve just been told that you must double (or more) the entire RPG market with your new product. Something no one had ever achieved.

And you have six months to do it.

No wonder 4e was a hot mess. I’d point out that as successful as Pathfinder became, from the same 50mil criteria, it failed every bit as hard as 4e. It didn’t grow the market at all.

But all that aside. How would you go about doubling your market? Marketing to current customers won’t work. If it was going to work it already would have.

So WotC is in a massive panic trying to achieve the impossible.

4e’s failure, all of it. The abysmal marketing. The “abandoning” of current players. The huge outreach. All of it was slaved to that goal.

Had that Core Brands thing not been an issue, it really is my belief that 4e would have been rolled out much more gently, getting lots more people on board.

4e’s failure was that it had zero chance to succeed in the first place. And exactly what Hasbro said was going to happen, happened. DnD was put out to pasture with 5e.

It’s just that somehow, the perfect Storm happened and no one could have predicted the response and success of 5e.