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

[Umbran]

Mearls does not get to redefine reality here. His list is laughably self-serving.
Mearls never understood nor liked 4e and ACTIVELY WORKED to destroy it.

That's certainly an opinion.
You probably ought to bring evidence when you accuse someone of stuff, though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Right. It's a bit of a narrative mechanic, reflecting the conceit that heroes in action stories can't constantly spam their cool moves like MMO or Street Fighter characters. But it's under the control of the player to pick the spot when the hero finds the opening to pull off that special maneuver. Which rubs some players the wrong way. Still, it feels awesome in play to set your fellow party members up for combos and vice-versa. And of course, as Gary made perfectly clear and explicit in 1E, hit points are a heroic narrative mechanic too. So IMO this is really a question of taste in terms of HOW MUCH rather than KIND of play.

Didn't one of the successor games, 13th Age or one of those, randomize when you could use your cool abilities? Similar to how the Tome of Battle: Book of 9 Swords Crusader class did?

I can't even remember right now if we actually played it or were just discussing it, but someone in my gaming group at the time mentioned that this unfortunately felt to them more like the game playing them then them playing the game. The "if you roll an odd/even number thing" sounded like an interesting mechanic, but it makes things too random. A control power you don't actually have control over when you use it isn't much of a control power anymore. And that's the strength of 4E encounter and dailies - you decide when you're trying to go for your special trick - you can still fail, but you decide when and where to go for it.
I understand why some thing this is a more "immersive" mechanic or something, but it's just not as fun in play.

 

[Joshua Randall]

There are some players who really, really enjoy "chaos magic" (chaos... fighter-ing?) and some who really, really hate it.

So the "roll a die, see what happens!" crowd probably (?) loved the 13th Age powers like that.

There's also something to be said regarding the quality of the chaos. If the power is fire damage on even and cold damage on odd, and either way the target is dazed -- MOST of the time that's a good power, regardless. (Sure, it's not as good when you keep randomly rolling even/fire vs. fire-resistant enemies, but at least you still dazed them.)

But if the power is "push 1 and slowed on even" and "prone and dazed on odd", now the power is vastly qualitatively different and in 90% of cases you are really, really hoping you roll odd otherwise this power does extremely weak control.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Yeah, 13th Age's fighter and bard have what are referred to as "flexible attacks," where the abilities you can use are determined by whether your attack roll came up odd or even.

It's worth noting that this approach was generally hated, and the 13A fighter was frequently called a letdown even by those who enjoyed the game otherwise. The upcoming Second Edition does away with flexible attacks entirely and just lets fighters choose when to use their abilities.

Which is a shame, because the flexible attacks system was one of my favorite additions of 13th Age.

 

[Pedantic]

Yeah, that's what I remember.

It makes sense to me that it would be disliked, as it seems to me that it's a mechanic appealing to the players who didn't enjoy 4E in the first place, whereas 13th Age would be a game primarily checked out by players who DID like 4E. Their actual market would want the ability to pick their spots to use their moves. The people who were turned off by the player being able to choose wouldn't be looking to play a 4E-successor in the first place.

That game is a good example of the broader knock-on effects of 4e's unique status. You get hit both for being not 4e enough or for drawing from it as a design well at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That game is a good example of the broader knock-on effects of 4e's unique status. You get hit both for being not 4e enough or for drawing from it as a design well at all.

It does seem that the only 4e that people will accept is...4e.

 

[Tigris]

It does seem that the only 4e that people will accept is...4e.

13th age gets actually quite a bit of love. I also like it just less than 4E because I really like the grid.


Also there are several 4E inspired games I like and I feel there is more positivity around such games than in the past:

 

[TheHand]

I backed the original 13th Kickstarter hoping it would be the successor to 4e, but I ultimately gave it a pass because it had 3 bit flaws for me:

• The flexible attacks and “dumbing down” of martial classes
• The massive hit point and damage inflation as you leveled. I didn’t like such extreme scaling.
• The lack of grid and battle map support for combat. I’m someone who wants the maps and the miniatures and the tactical maneuvering.

I went back and tinkered with 4e for a while, trying to hone it more to my group’s sensibilities. My biggest tweak was to flatten the math more; not as much as 5e did, but we never really liked how huge the attack bonuses and defenses scaled up with level.

We play 5e now but as GM I always tried to sneak in some 4e style monster abilities, and I’ve run a few games where I gave fighters and rogues a couple 4e Encounter powers. Fortunately, A5e has the Marshal class that does a decent job of giving us a Warlord. I had to home brew a Sword Mage though out of a Warlock chassis though.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I’m curious: what is about big numbers that you dislike? Because one of the complaints about 4e is that it’s a treadmill and you never get anywhere: you have a +20 attack bonus, monsters have a 30 AC. OK, fine, I think that’s a fairly blah complaint, but… so what? +10 is OK but +20 isn’t? +30? +40? Why does it matter?

 

[Tigris]

I’m curious: what is about big numbers that you dislike? Because one of the complaints about 4e is that it’s a treadmill and you never get anywhere: you have a +20 attack bonus, monsters have a 30 AC. OK, fine, I think that’s a fairly blah complaint, but… so what? +10 is OK but +20 isn’t? +30? +40? Why does it matter?

Not the one you asked, but I dont like big numbers because they make calculations slower in average. Yes some people might be as fast, but most people are slower when adding two 2-digit numbers together than if they add a single digit number to a 2 digit number (dice result). And even between 12 and 22 ou see people being slower again, since 1X just means increasing the higher digit by 1, so the next number +2 is already bit more like calculation.


Thats also something I dont like in Pathfinder 2.


Also you dont need a "treadmill", you just need something to compare to lower and higher levle monsters and there the level is enough. Thats why I would just adapt monster defenses and attack depending on level difference. This way players can keep low bonuses like +5 while still being able to easy kill lower level enemies which are a problem some levels ago.