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

[payn]

I think the 4E art direction was all pouches and no soul.

I will expect your formal invitation to a duel at sundown promptly.

I am laundering my finest cravat in anticipation.

I literally do not know what that means LOL

I'm not much of an art guy. Other than mocking Wayne Reynolds' inability to draw feet, that is.



I shall prepare my justaucorps for the occasion.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Yeah can't stand Reynold's dungeon punk thing. Which is too bad, back in the day he drew a 40K comic that was pretty cool.

Unrelated 5E art thing I can't stand. Nobody is ever looking at each other. Seriously. Go look at Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and explain those sight lines to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

Are you for real right now? OK let's do this.

• Post #15: Tigris mentions that sales of 4e --> Essentials may have dropped more than 3e --> 3.5. However he mentioned it in a neutral way and it's relatively noncontroversial. He very importantly does NOT say "and you are a fool if you like 4e because it sold poorly".

Tigris has posts very supportive of 4e. The side supporting 4e was the one that brought up sales.

• Post #41: Staffan says 4e was a failure and "everyone" agrees on this. -- this includes financial failure, of course: "a game with those sales would have been a roaring success for any other company, but not for Wizards". So here we start to link finances to whether it's OK for someone to enjoy 4e as a game.

Staffan was just talking about financial failure. In that same post he goes on to talk about things that were good about 4e. He clearly wasn't saying it was not okay for someone to enjoy 4e.

• #53: mamba would like to reiterate that 4e sales dropped before Essentials. Cool? I don't think that was ever being debated?

Mamba did that directly in response to Tigris, someone that as far as I can tell is very supportive of 4e.

• #75: in response to Ezekiel's claim that 4e didn't fail, mamba drops the hammer with, "it was the worst selling edition with sales falling off a cliff pretty soon [...] Did 4e have some fans, clearly, we still have them lamenting the fact that it failed and even claiming that it did not fail, that WotC was just unreasonable and shelved it."

As you can see. All these claims you are complaining about, they were all kicked off not by 4e haters, but by 4e fans.

Like if 4e fans are going to talk sales don't be surprised if others do as well. If you are going to say it didn't fail, don't be surprised when someone disagrees.

• and on and on from there

So if you think you tricked me into showing that >I< was the one who brought up sales? Nope.
That >I< was the one who tried to tie a game's financial performance to how fun it is? Nope. (In fact I specifically mocked this.)

No, the point was that 4e haters aren't the ones here right now bringing up all this stuff.

 

[Tigris]

I ignore (once again) the try of people completly sidetracking the discussion. So instead I want to answer the question about what I would do different in a 4E revised:

4E Revised part 1: Streamlining:

I know some people will not like some of these things but they make the game easier to understand.

• Using straight ability modifiers. +4 not 18 etc.
  • You get simple ability arrays to choose from (as if you had 23 points instead of 22)
  • Classes just get more health no more con to health just depending on normal con you would have.
  • Each class has a main modifier (or choose one).
  • And on level X4 a non main stat is increased
  • On level X8 your main stat is increased.
  • Level 21 all stats will be increased
• You dont get any + hit at all when leveling up (except if there are class features or +3 weapon / advanced implement)
  • So increased stats only increase damage etc.
  • Item bonus give only damage
  • There are no feat bonus to hit
• Monsters also dont increase in hit.
  • However GMs adapt defenses and attack of monsters by 1 for each difference of level to players. (This is done automatically in adventurs. And monster manual pdf etc. can do this adaption
  • This makes the "math fix feats" unneeded as well as the alternative rule for less magical items
• When you deal several types of damage at the same time only highest weakness of enemy counts no stacking.
• Most bonuses will get a type. No more huge stacking of untyped bonuses.
  • The bonuses from expertise feats are however baked into the weapon types / implement types directly.
• Unifying effects:
  • Everything which does +2 to an attacks against an enemy or -2 on defenses on enemies just gives combat advantage instead.
    • Combat advantage stacks 2 times
  • Enemies/players cant be damaged more often than once from an effect per round
  • (Almost?) all damaging areas deal damage deals damage "If you start your turn inside or enter the first time in your turn this deals x damage to you". All the same way to simplify.
  • (Almost?) All effects are either "until the end of your next turn" or "save ends". Again simplifying.
• Having all monsters in MM3+ math.
  • In additional for all monsters average and crit damage are written down for attacks. (In case DMs dont want to roll damage and to know what crit damage is).
• Getting rid of small things taking time which is unneded
  • Brutal is changed to no rerolls but things below x (with bigger number) get to X instead
  • Writing up for attack how high crit damage is.
• Have a simpler encounter building/XP table
  • For party level X a level X enemy gives 200 XP
  • A X-4 enemy gives 100 XP
    • And linear scaling between
  • A X+4 enemy gives 400 XP
    • and linear scaling between
  • 4 Minions (5 in paragon, 6 in epic) are worth the same as a normal enemy
  • 1 elite = 2 normal enemies
  • 1 boss = 4 normal enemies
  • Traps/Dangerous terrain also have Minion/normal (elite) label and same XP
  • Normal encounter = 200-250 xp per player
  • Easy encounter = 150-175 XP
  • Hard encounter 300-400 XP
  • 2000 XP per levelup
    • Non combat XP higher /better explained
  • (This is almost identical to 4E but constant for all levels)
• (potentially would need more testing): Initiative goes in turn order around table
  • Players who beat average enemy initiative with roll, get extra turn before enemies
  • Else always enemies first than players
  • (This is mathematically relative similar to normal initiative just less chaotic which helps better turn planing in advance and speeds things up)
• Backgrounds all just give 2 skills and one can choose +1 in one skill and as class skill or +2 to both skills
• Getting rid of all redundant/unnecessary feats and powers (ones which are just worse than others).
• Rattling, Invigorating and Reliable are no longer tags. They are keyword with explanation text in the normal text.
• Same elements ALWAYS attack same defense. (And add element description somewhere explaining that)

There are other things like making class differences more obvious but I will talk about that another time

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Ok, I re-listened and yes, I was mistaken. This is a GenCon panel on 4E, the 3E panel was the day before, and the play sessions were in the weeks leading up to GenCon. So yes, the designers in the 4E panel/play session did already deny that a couple of weeks before this panel and Jon should certainly have been aware of it.

Can you point me at the part where Jon says what you're claiming? Are you talking about 32 minutes in, where he says "people have connected" the 4E roles to different character types in MMORPGS? Because earlier, for example at 20:51, he's talking about the technologies in WoW and understanding its analog roots- ie: the ideas WoW took from TTRPGs. Saying that people have made that comparison isn't quite the same thing as asserting that one is based on the other.

At 31:00 he's connecting dailies vs. encounters to MMO cooldowns, and Rob actually says something affirmative to that comparison, although I agree with folks earlier in this thread that I don't think that's really a good comparison. Are there MMOs which have powers which don't reset until the next day?

The basic problem is that MMOs don't have the same conception of the adventuring day, but use a faster, more abstract version of the same thing-- lets say in current WOW, a big cooldown would be something like Time Warp which is nominally a five minute cooldown, but is actually a 10 minute cooldown because of the immunity effect (don't ask me what the usage case is for the lower five minute cooldown.)

But where 10 minutes is pretty much "every encounter unless you're doing a very niche, very specific, gauntlet, no-rest style challenge" in DND (especially with what Snarf pointed out about encounter recharge being a firm dividing line for encounters in 4e) it's at least a handful of 'pulls' in the context of WOW, which means you won't do it in every fight, especially in the context of modern WOW's endgame dungeons, which are timed challenges where deaths draw against the timer, and there are lesser cooldown abilities with a similar dynamic of "I won't get this back for a handful of pulls."

So you get the dynamic similar to a daily power, which is 'you'll have this once for every X fights' where X can easily be 6 pulls (which when possible, are combined in 2s or 3s, but sometimes have to be single pulled, routing through the dungeon is a skill for tanks, and a matter of knowing what your party can handle) that people will save for boss monsters or for rough pulls, but there's no 'long rest' that the cooldown keys off of, and its ticking down in real time, similarly something that has a cool down like '45 seconds' or '1 minute' is liable to feel an awful lot like an encounter power.

Other cooldowns can be much shorter, and mainly affect the sequence of buttons you click by being higher priority than other things but coming up slightly less often so the player can 'optimize' by hitting the right thing instead of the wrong thing in that instant they have the option to click both as many times as possible.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Using straight ability modifiers. +4 not 18 etc.
You dont get any + hit at all when leveling up (except if there are class features or +3 weapon / advanced implement)

• So increased stats only increase damage etc.
• Item bonus give only damage
• There are no feat bonus to hit

We could simplify this even further if you want. Not fully worked out in my mind, but something like:

Your ability score, weapon/implement (and whether it's magic), etc. etc. etc. are all irrelevant for attack bonus purposes.

Your attack bonus vs. AC = character level +5
vs. NACD = character level +3

If you are a fighter or rogue(*), you gain an additional +1 on attacks with weapons.

(*) These are party of those specific class's identities, but if you want, could easily drop this. Or, could extend it to say it's per Role, or maybe differentiate it so some roles get +1 vs. AC, others +1 vs. NACD, etc.

When you deal several types of damage at the same time only highest weakness of enemy counts no stacking.

On that note. I'd like to get rid of fluffy bunny damage altogether, but it is part of the game and sometimes really evocative (fire/necrotic! lightning/cold!) So maybe something like "if you (PC or monster) would deal more than two types of damage with an attack, pick two; ignore the others."

Most bonuses will get a type.

ALL bonuses get a type. It's the only way to kill this problem dead.
Feats grant a feat bonus.

• The bonuses from expertise feats are however baked into the weapon types / implement types directly.

I'm not convinced the expertise feats are even needed. If you can't scrounge up a +3 attack by level 30 from various temporary buffs and party synergy, you're in the wrong game.

• In additional for all monsters average and crit damage are written down for attacks. (In case DMs dont want to roll damage and to know what crit damage is).

I have played this way for years. Drastically speeds play.
I keep threatening to make the players do the same. I do already have a house rule: "If you crit, and you cannot tell me within seconds you BASE crit damage (i.e, before rolling the +XdY weapon crit dice), it's not a crit and I take your average damage instead."

• Getting rid of small things taking time which is unneded
  • Brutal is changed to no rerolls but things below x (with bigger number) get to X instead

Yes. Rolling dice is the most time consuming physical action at the table, so eliminate it when it does something dumb like +X damage and just give out +X damage.

(potentially would need more testing): Initiative goes in turn order around table

Already my house rule for years. Works fine.

 

[Zeromaru X]

if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - folks are gonna call it a duck.

But it can be a goose. Not because people believe something, that something is real.

 

[Umbran]

Dude. DUDE.

Have you READ this thread? It's ALL WE TALKED ABOUT for like 5 pages.

Mod Note:
I note that you say it is all WE talked about. Like, you are part of the "we". So, maybe look at your own activity here.

This is a common problem with positions that simply cannot tolerate a differing statement to stand - folks taking that position cannot disengage. If you insist that you have the last word, so that your truth stands finally unchallenged, the conversation gets hijacked.

In the future, if you want a topic to stop, maybe, you know, stop yourself?

 

[TheSword]

But it can be a goose. Not because people believe something, that something is real.

Geese don’t quack like ducks. They are also much bigger than ducks and have longer necks.

You can’t say for sure that nobody involved in production was influenced by something. I think it’s also worth saying that people can forget or also just cover the truth.

 

[Joshua Randall]

What would happen if the 4e designers said, “Yup, we were totally influenced by WOW.”

So what?

Would those who enjoy 4e still enjoy it?
Would those who don’t enjoy 4e, start enjoying it?
Would it change ANYTHING?

This is what is frustrating about these endless wars. Even if one were to concede every single argument leveled towards 4e, it would never matter and never stop. We would still be subjected to ceaseless badgering.

I would also like to note that in the past, “it’s like [WOW/videogame]” was considered blatant edition warring. is that still the case?