The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

[Zardnaar]

Dude, WTF, seriously. Are you trying to insult 4e in the most old fashioned and least creative ways possible?

Just… just leave. Get out. Go to the “we hate 4e” thread which is thataway about 16 years ago.

It's right there look at the powers. Reread the 4E phb not to long ago. The level 29 powers are similar in power to 5th level 5E spells. The cantrip only deal 2 dice of damage.

Comparatively it's level 10 or so in 5E terms. With more HP.

Pro 4E poster earlier said there's 3000 odd powers. I suspect why you haven't seen a 4E clone is it's to much work to write it.

If it makes you feel better I have said D&Ds probably better off as a 10 level game. Hell 13th Age did that. 4E going to 30 would be level 15.

That's not a shot at 4E more high level games in general. You bloat the power level via higher level spells or the HP slowing things down (4E).

If you personally had to write a game what's easier? 5, 10, 14 or 30 levels?

My personal D&D I've only done 5 levels on 8 classes. Once I'm happy with that I'll add the next 5 levels. It's basic logistics when you write your own.

One universal with a 4E clone not many are willing to write it. It's a very odd comparison to OSR stuff where we wing it all the time.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Well gee thanks Zardnaar. With friends like you I’m sure 4e will live a long happy life.

And please continue to use neutral well intentioned words like “bloat” to describe about two-thirds of the game that some 4e fans really, really enjoy.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well gee thanks Zardnaar. With friends like you I’m sure 4e will live a long happy life.

And please continue to use neutral well intentioned words like “bloat” to describe about two-thirds of the game that some 4e fans really, really enjoy.

I regard most editions as bloated. 3.5 also had 3000 odd feats.

If you're not a hard core gamer how do you keep up with that?

You could replicate the 4E playstyle in 16 levels right? And if you like the full 30 no one's taken 4E away from you you can use the books.

OSR has essentially rallied behind 14 levels. It's the playstyle that's fun.

I'm saying you might inadvertently be naking it harder for yourself if you want a direct clone. Which is mostly pointless as you can use existing books.

If you want a direct clone you have to write the damn thing. There's various ways you could clone it. Orcus is one example. That applies to any edition btw.

 

[Umbran]

Just… just leave. Get out.

Mod Note:
Hey. That's not okay. You don't get to tell people what they can, or cannot, post.

It may be frustrating to have people persistently saying things you disagree with, but you'll have to find a better way to handle that.

 

[Umbran]

Also no we cant just let wrong information about 4E be standing, because then other people will believe it again. This misinformation spread is the reason why so many articles and videos get so much things about 4E factual wrong as this article showed once again.

(Credit to Randall Munroe)

 

[Tigris]

View attachment 394510
(Credit to Randall Munroe)

Wow so funny. Because it is so fun when people are just allowed to present facts which are knowlingly false.

Oh, did they ever! Cutting monsters' HP in half was a common houserule not long after the game was released. Which was hotly debated, but the debate was by how MUCH to reduce their HP, and how/if to compensate for it. I'm now feeling some VERY delayed vindication, haha!

Well this "common house rule" was originally coming from an article "how to play 4E during lunch break". And the "half monster HPs" was mostly brought up by people who did not play 4E to make fun of it.

Most people who play 4e did just adapt then to the later Monster Math from Monster Manual 3. Do you know how much this decreased monster HP?

The relevant quote (the ‘tripled’ bit might have been a failure of my memory, but the gist is there):

Well the "gist" is really really different. But I guess trippled sounds better if you want to make fun of 4E?


Do you know how much monster math was changed later in terms of HP with the introduction of Monster Manual 3?

• For monsters level 1-10 the HP was reduced by a whopping 0%
• For monsters level 11-30 it was reduced by 10-24%

So unless you played to a high level "which no one did" according to quotes here, you would not even remark the monster math changes.


Why did then everyone make such a big deal out of Monster Math 3? Well it was a placebo effect.

People mostly just became better at the game. Including the writers of modules (the early ones sucked). And with GMs and parties being actually good at playing the game combats suddenly did not take as much time anymore.


If you want to know details you can find it in this post:

 

[Staffan]

It's right there look at the powers. Reread the 4E phb not to long ago. The level 29 powers are similar in power to 5th level 5E spells. The cantrip only deal 2 dice of damage.

That's because the game-changing magic that characterizes high-level spells in other editions (long-range teleports, resurrection, contact other plane, etc.) aren't powers/spells in 4e. They're rituals.

 

[hairyscotsman2]

I loved 4e at the time, especially the addition of encounter powers and spells, but was fully ready to shift to 13th Age when I discovered it during its playtest. Each class having its own structure was a big plus and taking away the battle grid is something I didn't think I'd like initially, but have really come around to.
I've been writing a couple of 3pp classes for when 13A 2e comes out and there's a streamlining of play compared to 4e. A lot less conditions. The escalation die is a fun thing to design around (as are the skulls you get from dropping to zero HP in 2e). Here's an at-will from my 'simple' Emotive class. The interesting things you can do with at-will spells and powers is an excellent legacy for 4e to have passed on to other systems IMO.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Because of the mad-hit point proliferation my little experience with 4e saw me create a homebrew rule the capping of hit points dependent on size, which is a variation of the E6 rule but only for hit points.
So,
Small = max 4HD
Medium = max 6 HD
Large = max 10 HD
Huge = max 18 HD
Etc...

But one could use their own justification for HD caps per size.
It worked for our table I believe, at least for the little while we played the edition.

EDIT: So there is no confusion, I'm using "HD" in terms of levels.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's a very good summary and I agree that WotC's rollout of 4e could be taught in a business class as an example of how to do everything wrong about the rollout of a new product alongside something like 'New Coke'. But, you don't even mention what I would put as the major thing that turned me off the product, and that was the core of their marketing was around what a piece of garbage 3e was. Every article and announcement that they made about the product they spent time trashing their own existing product and decrying it as a bad product.

Now for me, 3e not only was the product that brought me back to D&D, but it was in my opinion the best edition of D&D and was in my opinion aside from some relatively minor bad design choices that mostly manifested themselves at higher level of play, the best designed RPG game system ever made. The core D20 mechanic was in my opinion was the best core fortune mechanic ever designed. IMO, D20 took over the gaming market for a reason. And so if you start telling me that you don't like 3e D&D, and that you are going to produce a system that very much isn't like 3e D&D, and you start telling me about a bunch of problems 3e D&D supposedly has which I don't have at my table and which you are going to 'fix' for me, then I start thinking you are making a product which isn't designed for me and isn't going to fix for me any of the problems I actually had. At some point, I got the impression from the marketing that the design team thought 3e D&D was "badwrongfun" and that they thought 3e and D20 taking over the market was inexplicable, and that if you enjoyed 3e there was something questionable about you.

This was their own product they were attacking. They were running down their own product, which some of them were involved in the creation of. It wasn't like they were attacking a competitor's product, because D20 had triumphed to a degree that it could hardly be said they had a competitor in the market.

Given your phrasing, would you say you have changed your opinion on 3e over the years?

Because...man oh man, saying that 3e is the best-designed RPG system ever made would be a spicy take today.