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

[payn]

It was a snarky comment in intention, mostly referring to the fact that to anyone outside the D&D sphere, the game with character classes, levels, level elevating hit points and to-hit modified by armor sure had an awful lot of D&Disms for something that didn't feel like D&D.

To be fair, that sounds like the apathy of an outsider making an observation. Or in other words, Star Trek and Star Wars are essentially the same to any outsider. Which is probably true, but a really odd thing to say inside a conversation about one or the other.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm trying to answer the judicial question "why did people respond in this specific, negative way" not making a case for how the world could or should be.

Part of it was people who were always going to react negatively to Encounter or Daily powers on non-spellcasters because it just never felt like that's how a fighting technique should work. There was precedent in some 3e era (and maybe earlier) design in some areas, but it could feel very gamey, and for people who responded badly to gamey design, that was just going to be an issue.

 

[Voadam]

I think because of the rock solid monster framework. Coupled with some decent at-launch encounter building guidelines

I think 4e monster design with monster roles (brute, soldier, skirmisher, lurker, etc.) combined with the monster type (solo, elite, standard, minion) and different levels allowed a huge interesting variety of opposition that felt varied and allowed different powers and tactics to interact interestingly without a lot of customizing and judgment required by the DM.

Another part that fed into it a lot IMO though was the PC combat roles allowing different thematic interactions with the monsters as well. Everybody was not just trying to pump in damage however they could, there was a lot more role themed interaction in combat that came through in the experience for players more than an AD&D thief just throwing daggers.

The fact that PCs were actually well balanced for combat did not hurt either, everybody was participating and effectively.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be fair, that sounds like the apathy of an outsider making an observation. Or in other words, Star Trek and Star Wars are essentially the same to any outsider. Which is probably true, but a really odd thing to say inside a conversation about one or the other.

The problem is it was usually done by people who were at least partly in the D&D sphere or they wouldn't have known to pick those out. It was more a comment about what seemed often like special pleading ("it doesn't have these particular things that seem important to me so its not D&D even though it includes almost all of D&D's more distinct design elements") that never made any sense outside that special pleading. Its fundamentally a parallax problem; if you're too deep into something, small changes seem really really critical, but once you zoom out at at all anyone's response can't be but "If you say so."

(I'm ignoring the lore element critiques here because I don't feel qualified to have an opinion there, as I never thought of D&D as being primarily about its lore).

 

[TwoSix]

I'm trying to answer the judicial question "why did people respond in this specific, negative way" not making a case for how the world could or should be.

And it was a good answer! Wanting to have the “mundane” classes gain abilities that specifically leveraged the general resolution system was not a perspective I had considered.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'm trying to answer the judicial question "why did people respond in this specific, negative way" not making a case for how the world could or should be.

Fair enough.

It's super sad to me that "people" ("the community" / "the market" / "they" / whomever) shouted down the innovative edition, and so WOTC perhaps understandably undid all the innovation with 5e, and set back the growth of D&D as a game by 10+ years.

But oh well. "The people" have spoken. :-(

 

[payn]

Part of it was people who were always going to react negatively to Encounter or Daily powers on non-spellcasters because it just never felt like that's how a fighting technique should work. There was precedent in some 3e era (and maybe earlier) design in some areas, but it could feel very gamey, and for people who responded badly to gamey design, that was just going to be an issue.

Yeap, and that sort of pacing fight continues today in 5E. 3E was set in the idea of adventuring day with resource attrition which was an old D&D paradigm. However, it was completely borked by spell in a can in 3E so you could easily bust out of the design expectations. Putting everyone on the same resource path in 4E did seem very gamey, but was trying to walk back the busted open spell in can idea and hold closer to the adventuring day. 5E walked it back and unevenly distributed the resources among classes again, but also left in some semblance of encounter abilities. Which is why there are weird expectations like 6-8 encounters in a day to make sure everybody uses their resources in a seemingly even way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And it was a good answer! Wanting to have the “mundane” classes gain abilities that specifically leveraged the general resolution system was not a perspective I had considered.

The 3e Feat system was probably what people more expected (though that always ran up against the problem of people perceiving some of them as gates to things they thought anyone should be able to do).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeap, and that sort of pacing fight continues today in 5E. 3E was set in the idea of adventuring day with resource attrition which was an old D&D paradigm. However, it was completely borked by spell in a can in 3E so you could easily bust out of the design expectations. Putting everyone on the same resource path in 4E did seem very gamey, but was trying to walk back the busted open spell in can idea and hold closer to the adventuring day. 5E walked it back and unevenly distributed the resources among classes again, but also left in some semblance of encounter abilities. Which is why there are weird expectations like 6-8 encounters in a day to make sure everybody uses their resources in a seemingly even way.

Yeah, the moment you want to limit usage of abilities temporally, there are only a limited number of approaches. I suspect something like an "Extra Effort Pool" everyone had that fueled some special techniques would have gone over well with some, but it also would have felt fiddly to people in the D&D sphere (you saw things like it outside it halfway often) and making the recovery cycle work the way you wanted might not have been trivial. Encounters and Dailies had the advantage they made their design fairly easy.

 

[SteveC]

If you're interested in seeing what 4E could have become, I would check out the Strike! game. With a huge caveat: the production on the game is likely to put a lot of people off.

It uses a lot of 4E with AEDU powers, but also uses a D6 to resolve actions, similar to the Blades in the Dark system. What I really like about it is that it has three combat modes: the one with maps, minis and tactical options is one of them. It also has a single roll combat, and a short "challenge" combat that offers some tactics but is very quick. It has a rule for "strikes" that have significant effects on a character so there are long-term effects.

But: it's sort of a shell in terms of actual character options and powers, and the production values are ... well, they are a choice. If you are looking to take some of 4E and broaden it significantly, Strike might be for you.

Knights of Last Call did a first look at it that's really extensive if you're interested.