D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[Belen]

This doesn't make much sense, to be honest.

I mean, if I build my DEX wizard using a bow who ignores spell-casting, I'll be doing a bad job in 5e D&D. My character will be pretty ineffectual. But basically no one will build that PC. People who build wizards in 5e take it for granted that they will be using spells, but not healing spells because - for purely legacy reasons - D&D wizardly magic doesn't include healing.

If I build my STR rogue and try to go toe-to-toe without using sneak attack, I'll be doing the fighter's job poorly - too few attacks, too little damage, too few hp. But again, almost no one builds and plays PCs like that. If I want to play a tank-y PC in 5e D&D, I don't build a rogue. I build a fighter, or a paladin, or maybe a barbarian or (if I'm more adventurous and rules-savvy) a cleric.

In 5e, if I want to play a DEX bow wielder I build a ranger. The rules are clear about that. There's no confusion, and no failure to convey what sort of character particular build elements are suited to.

I never choose a character based on combat role. I choose based on the type of character I want to play.

A DEX-based fighter is easily viable in 5e. They can be a much better archer than a ranger.

I never, ever think about the combat role I play when picking a character. The concept of defender, controller, leader, or striker is so foreign to how I go about choosing what to play.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The problem from where I am sitting is that 5e doesn't allow characters to fulfill roles without making very specific choices – at least not the Leader or Defender roles. The only way to do meaningful combat healing is as a Life cleric, and the only way to prevent a foe from ignoring you and running all around the battlefield is to take the Sentinel feat (which for non-humans means you delay that until level 4 at the earliest, and more likely level 6 or 8).

I could quibble a bit around what the minimum requirements for certain roles are, but ultimately, I think people who want better healing and defending mechanics in 5e deserve to be served. It'd be great to have those options, and it'd be really great if the designers added them. I said 5e's implementation wasn't perfect, and this is one of the areas that I think it could easily be better in (without going back to defining classes by role).

This doesn't make much sense, to be honest.

I mean, if I build my DEX wizard using a bow who ignores spell-casting, I'll be doing a bad job in 5e D&D. My character will be pretty ineffectual. But basically no one will build that PC. People who build wizards in 5e take it for granted that they will be using spells, but not healing spells because - for purely legacy reasons - D&D wizardly magic doesn't include healing.

If I build my STR rogue and try to go toe-to-toe without using sneak attack, I'll be doing the fighter's job poorly - too few attacks, too little damage, too few hp. But again, almost no one builds and plays PCs like that. If I want to play a tank-y PC in 5e D&D, I don't build a rogue. I build a fighter, or a paladin, or maybe a barbarian or (if I'm more adventurous and rules-savvy) a cleric.

In 5e, if I want to play a DEX bow wielder I build a ranger. The rules are clear about that. There's no confusion, and no failure to convey what sort of character particular build elements are suited to.

Sure, no one really builds wizards who don't cast spells and rogues who don't use sneak attack and no one really in 4e built a fighter who didn't engage with marking.

The sense to be made here is that marking - or even DEFENDING - was not something that a big portion of the player base associated with fighters in the narrative of what a fighter was.

So the reaction of a lot of players to the strict "A fighter's job is to be a Defender" was something along the lines of "I never applied for that job!"

And for the record, a bow-using wizard, a tank-y rogue, and a bow-using fighter are all relatively viable builds in 5e. ESPECIALLY that last one. Not that you wouldn't engage with the spells or sneak attacks in the others, though, just that these might not define your take on the class.

 

[niklinna]

I never choose a character based on combat role. I choose based on the type of character I want to play.

A DEX-based fighter is easily viable in 5e. They can be a much better archer than a ranger.

I never, ever think about the combat role I play when picking a character. The concept of defender, controller, leader, or striker is so foreign to how I go about choosing what to play.

This is a very good point, but it's also a bit of a problem, because D&D in every edition has defined its character classes 90% in relation to combat (or getting around obstacles). Roles may not have been explicitly named, nor match those 4e used, but they've been there all along.

I certainly didn't pick star pact warlock because I wanted to be a striker (and in fact the star pact warlock wasn't a terribly good striker in my experience). But, as far as I was concerned, those role labels were just conveniences—I looked at the class flavor and catalogue of powers to decide what I wanted to play. For those who did think in terms of combat role, having labels was probably a big help. For those who thought in terms of combat role, but the roles 4e used didn't match what they wanted, well, that was another problem.

 

[Clint_L]

But I think abandoning roles altogether, the way 5e does, is a mistake (at least if you like tactical fights). Having a role communicates both what you are supposed to be doing in a fight, and lets the designers make sure you have access to the tools to do that. For example, all Leaders have some ability to let others use healing surges mid-fight. That's what makes it so the Warlord can replace a Cleric in the traditional party in a way a druid or bard couldn't really do in 3e, and would be hard-pressed to do in 5e.

Here I really strongly disagree. In WoW, every fight looks basically the same for each player, and it is determined 100% by their role. In our raid group, I was typically melee DPS, and my job was to manage my cooldowns to absolutely maximize my DPS, while making sure to hit a few, very specifically prescribed mechanics (typically something like an interrupt, or moving to the right spot at exactly the right time).

And then we would run the fight over and over until we could execute well enough to finally get down a tough boss. For Lich King 25, we literally spent months getting it right.

That would be incredibly boring for a TTRPG. The fun of a cooperative tabletop game is that you have the freedom of imagination. Trapping everyone within a narrowly defined role is the antithesis of what makes games like D&D so fun, IMO. The best combats are where things go completely sideways and everyone is improvising. In WoW, that is a guaranteed wipe. In D&D, it is where the magic happens.

Trying to restrict players to MMORPG roles, complete with encounter powers that echo cooldowns, and so on, is my biggest single beef with 4e's design.

 

[niklinna]

The D&D 4 rules presentation worked pretty great at the game table, in my opinion. Everything was pretty well layouted, even without physical power cards it was easy to look up your abilites, and overall the rules were organized well.

But a good organization is not neccessarily something that makes an inspiring read. The class description is pretty bland to read, only having a few unique things. The rest is all in the suite of powers, and reading that isn't all that evocative.
I think D&D isn't the only D&D or D&D derivative rule system with that problem, but most limit this problem to its spellcasters. If you don't know the Wizard spell list, you don't really know what a wizard might be able to do in game, how they play and feel.
I have that problem with Pathfinder (2e), for example, because I really don't know their divine, arcane, occult and primal spell lists, though I can guesstimate some stuff from my D&D experience.

I think a stronger D&D 4 could probably have benefitted from some more abilities for each class not described in the form of powers. With some clever "trickery", maybe it could have been done that still most of the combat abilities were described in powers, but the "narrative" abilities and their story place would be in the class body, not its power appendix, so to speak.
In D&D 4, a lot of the story stuff is between the lines, or linked to Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies, but that doesn't help you when choosing a class, and it doesn't affect the early game much.

Hm, I had the opposite problem. I found the class descriptions pretty flavorful, but the mechanical bits at the end of that section, just before the power catalogue, were mushy and ill-defined as far as I was concerned. As has been pointed out before, though, so much of that stuff is all about combat. Blades in the Dark, for all its faults in organization, really won me over with its playbooks and special abilities that could be about so many more things than whacking somebody.

 

[niklinna]

I disagree entirely with the quoted claim.

4e’s system was its biggest turnoff by a mile for the vast majority of those who took issue with that edition at all (which, yes, was many) - like, in most cases, the only significant turnoff.

Such a radical overhaul on nearly every level, but also in ways that were very much on the nose - again, for many DMs and players anyway.

It no longer looked like D&D, or indeed, played like it either. And that is what did the damage.

I remember quite well liking 4e (in spite of its weak points), but saying to my fellow players that it was Dungeons & Dragons in name only. Sure, it has races & classes & six ability scores, and some of the powers were inspired by earlier spells and such, but it definitely never felt like D&D to me. The designers blew well past the MAYA point.

I would still probably play it if I stumbled upon a group...although now there are so many cool-looking games begging for attention, it's tough!

 

[Clint_L]

This doesn't make much sense, to be honest.

I mean, if I build my DEX wizard using a bow who ignores spell-casting, I'll be doing a bad job in 5e D&D. My character will be pretty ineffectual. But basically no one will build that PC. People who build wizards in 5e take it for granted that they will be using spells, but not healing spells because - for purely legacy reasons - D&D wizardly magic doesn't include healing.

I don't think it's for purely legacy reasons. I think it is mostly for class identity and balance reasons. Wizards can do lots of stuff, but if you want to be a healer, pick a different class. There are tons of options. My Mercy monk is a capable healer in a clutch situation, which is really the only time healing matters in 5e anyway.

If I build my STR rogue and try to go toe-to-toe without using sneak attack, I'll be doing the fighter's job poorly - too few attacks, too little damage, too few hp. But again, almost no one builds and plays PCs like that. If I want to play a tank-y PC in 5e D&D, I don't build a rogue. I build a fighter, or a paladin, or maybe a barbarian or (if I'm more adventurous and rules-savvy) a cleric.

Or the new monk. Or a moon druid. You can make a surprisingly tanky wizard or bard if you really want to commit, though you give up a lot of the utility that normally makes those classes appealing, IMO.

In 5e, if I want to play a DEX bow wielder I build a ranger. The rules are clear about that. There's no confusion, and no failure to convey what sort of character particular build elements are suited to.

Or a rogue, or a dex-based fighter. I would argue that a battlemaster fighter can be the most effective bow-wielder in 5e. Again, options. A great strength of 5e is that it opens up a lot of design space for players to figure out how to solve problems.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I just don't get why you work so hard to take offense if anyone mentions 4E in anything but glowing terms.

I don't.

Why the **** would they? Why would they ever declare where a concept came from? It's not relevant to the rule in any way whatsoever.

Because they repeatedly did so all throughout the D&D Next playtest, talking about how past games had influenced future games, about how they were staying true to what was great about what came before.

Except 4e.

 

[Oofta]

I don't.

Right. Just that you take things as negative even when I'm saying it had some good idea that influenced 5E and other game.

Because they repeatedly did so all throughout the D&D Next playtest, talking about how past games had influenced future games, about how they were staying true to what was great about what came before.

Except 4e.

I don't remember them ever mentioning specific versions, they said they looked back at all versions of the game. They may have taken more influence from 2E in the sense of less prescribed gameplay, doesn't mean they didn't look at others. It's not like they're going to put footnotes in the PHB discussing the history of a feature. Even if it would be an interesting addition.

EDIT: I did find one interview in my notes that I happened to remember, but the comment that addressed previous editions lumped together both 3 and 4. That those tried to control the experience that all tables played the same. So I guess they hated 3E as well?

 

[niklinna]

As a 4e player my role was whatever I made it. 4e's defined roles ensured that at a minimum everyone was functional within at least one combat role (no 1e or 3.X monks here) and ensured that no one was best at everything (no 3.x CoDzilla).

But two fighters could easily be more different in combat than two melee fighters in previous editions even if it took from memory six feats for a 3.X fighter to approximate a basic attacking first level fighter in 4e who had chosen no feats and no powers. And no one was confined to just one role unless they wanted it.

For that matter I at one point made a second level human fighter that made fourth level 3.x human rogues turn green with envy about how skilled and flexible they were. And I found the 4e out of combat experience to be far more flexible than "spells uber alles" in the way that crippled 3.x and harms 5e.

As much as I dreaded combat in my big 4e campaign (because I find round-by-round HP attrition generally dreadful, and my character class had problems relative to others), it's the only edition in which I found combat remotely engaging. The few times I got to play other classes in combat, I had a blast.