3E to 4E Gripes (Was: What Did You Want Fourth Edition to be Like?)

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I switched games from 3.5 to HARP before the new edition came out. I'm a fan of 3.5 because it's very good at handling the kinds of games I like to run with fairly minimal modifications, and I only switched because HARP was better at handling those kinds of games and was even easier to modify.

I was excited by the prospect of 4e, because it sounded like they were taking a lot of the things I really liked about late-supplement 3.5 and making them core rules, thoroughly integrated into the system. Things like class powers and combat maneuvers and at-will casting and ritual magic intrigued me-- and these are things that, regretfully, I cannot easily use in HARP.

Ultimately, I think where 4e disappointed me is that there is just too much. Thirty levels of character development is great, but thirty levels of powers across four categories is too much. Twelve pages of powers per class with no overlap and severely curtailed multiclassing is both too much and too confining.

So yeah, I would have been happier with a 4e that was closer to 3.5, not as originally launched, but as it was developing into late in the cycle. A game where each class had both unique class features and access to partially overlapping lists of at-will and encounter powers, with greater ability for characters to have diverse (but lower level) abilities from outside their class.

On the other hand, it isn't as though there was much chance of me switching back in the first case.

 

[ferratus]

@Ferratus
What I do mind is that I'll get no more "compatible fluff". Sure I can convert the old stuff and play the old forgotten realms with new 4e rules. What I can't do is continue to play the old forgotten realms with new fluff added. I would have to play a very different realms. This is true for the planes, certain races added or changed, the whole demons, devils, paragon elementals, etc.

I'm not sure why you want to import the 4e fluff in the first place. If that was the case, why use the old Grey Box? However, I'll play along.

I don't really see how the cosmology affects anything. FR already had the realm of Faerie and Myrkul's Hades (The Feywilde and Shadowfell respectively). Some evil gods were always Demon Lords and some Evil Gods still use devils (such as Bane's Zhentarim) so that doesn't need changing either. The elemental planes are not important to the flavour of the realms except as a source for the genies of Calimshan, and the Elemental Chaos can do that just as well. The Astral Dominions are fine as Faerun's upper planes.

Other than that, the only thing 4e really changes story-wise for the Realms from prior editions is the inclusion of new races. I'd just chuck out the Dragonborn and the Tiefling (I've banned them in my own "2e feel" 4e game because the races are overly monstrous and I like a strong divide between "monstrous" and "civilized" realms. If you wanted to include all races in the PHB 1 & 2 though, and you are using the old FR gray box, Maztica doesn't yet exist. So you can have a continent to the west that is returned Abeir (calling it perhaps just "Abeir") giving the dragonborn a non-intrusive homeland in the setting. The tieflings of course would come from old Narfell, or another place where people commonly consort with devils such as Hellgate Keep, Zhentil Keep, Thay, or Myth Drannor.

I don't see anything else I need to do to make 1e, 2e, and 3e compatible with 4e fluff. It is much easier than converting Dragonlance or Dark Sun for example, though not as easy as converting Greyhawk.

What defines D&D? Is it the rules or the story or both? If you change both, is it still D&D? (This is a philosophical argument, not a claim that 4e isn't D&D. It's akin to the Ship of Theseus, wherein the boards of the ship gradually rot and are replaced over time. Eventually, the boards are all new. The question becomes, is it the same ship?

As long as it can sink Persian supply ships and enforce the Delian League, does it really matter? If you enjoy the 4e mechanics and can run the same adventures without changing the descriptive text of those adventures, then I'm not sure what differences I'm supposed to be noticing in the stories I'm telling.

 

[rounser]

Why not spin it off as an additional revenue stream, rather than replacing what has been a proven flagship product for so long?

Because without the D&D name grafted on it would likely be a dead duck. Even calling it "D&D Miniatures" would perhaps be insufficient, given that a product with this name was discontinued.

 

[Ariosto]

It does not seem to me that 4E would be a dead duck; it seems to have plenty of appeal (and the opposite) on its own merits.

What strikes me is that it is a notably different game that appeals strongly to a notably different demographic. All the sales of Labyrinth Lord and the Pathfinder Beta to people not interested in 4E attest to that, I think. Conversely, the sales of 4E from shelves stocked with Palladium, Warhammer, Dragon Warriors, and so on (yea, even 3E books) seem evidence of a market for what it offers.

 

[rounser]

It does not seem to me that 4E would be a dead duck; it seems to have plenty of appeal (and the opposite) on its own merits.

The sales would simply be nowhere near as high. The loyalty to D&D and the "check out the new edition" factor would be gone, as would the majority of sales (to the extent that it would probably be unviable for hasbro to produce), so far as I can see, making it a "dead duck". But I guess we'll never know.

 

[Ariosto]

Sales may in the long run tell the story. This seems to be a time of heightened awareness of a distinction between the trademark and the game culture. If both 4E and "old-school" products prosper, rather than one decisively wiping out the other, then that should be notable. Marketing certainly can make a difference regardless of the product's actual qualities, but I don't think it makes other factors moot.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Forked from: What Did You Want Fourth Edition to be Like?



Actually I'd have been one person that wouldn't have griped. What about the rest of you that have since stayed with 3E? Would you be griping about money woes or that it wasn't 'new enough'?

I personally know for a fact that I would have been happier with a 4E that would have stayed as true to 3E as possible, but while fixing everything that was causing problems and the bog down of higher level play.

Megaditto.

 

[Kerrick]

Hmm... would I have complained? Probably not. I was looking forward to 3.5; in fact, I hiked a mile down the road to the local bookstore (and back) to buy the books when they came in. If 4E had been an even better version of 3.5, with cleaned-up rules, new material, a workable high-level system, etc., I'd have been ecstatic.

I'm not liking how Pathfinder is shaping up. The Beta is practically a new system (like the classes, I see much of the changes as uneccessary). I'm liking what Kerrick is doing with his Project Phoenix redo.

To be fair, Project Phoenix changes at least as much as Pathfinder. The "essentialness" of the changes made are really in the eye of the beholder, both with my system and theirs. They decided to stick closer to 3.5 to hook that audience, while I struck out on my own and went for fixing the problems of the system, no matter how far out I needed to go (which, as it turns out, wasn't that far).

Personally, if 4e was just a much improved 3.5 ... I might have checked it out, but likely I would have just stuck with 3.5. No matter what it was, it would still have suffered from some of the problems 4e had. Namely, it would be comparing a ton of character options to a single PHB worth of race and class combinations.

Not necessarily. WotC has a huge pool to draw from - they could've taken the best of their material, repackaged it along with errata, rules fixes, etc., and made a 4E that would've been a noticeably "new" edition - an improvement on d20, but not as far as 4E is now.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

WotC has a huge pool to draw from - they could've taken the best of their material, repackaged it along with errata, rules fixes, etc., and made a 4E that would've been a noticeably "new" edition - an improvement on d20, but not as far as 4E is now.

In addition, they could have used some of the better ideas from 3PPs- there are a lot of very good innovations and alterations in Iron Heroes, AU/AE, Midnight, etc.- to both clarify and improve the new edition as well as adding things 3.5 never had.

Even if it required a license or some kind of joint business venture (LP, LLP, a new wholly owned subsidiary, whatever) of some kind, it REALLY could have been something.

 

[delericho]

Personally, I felt the time was right for 4e. I was also convinced that fixing the big issues in the game would require taking it apart and redesigning it from the ground up. I think WotC took the right approach in doing so. However, what has failed to impress me are the results.

While I feel 4e is a good game, I do feel that it has several significant shortcomings, some of which are systematic in nature (and so cannot simply be patched with future releases). But most importantly, I don't consider it an improvement on 3e. At best, they stand level.

For me, the most damning result of that is that 4e does not represent a step forward in terms of game design, but rather a step back. The Star Wars Saga Edition rules now represent the best implementation of the underlying ruleset found in both 3e and 4e. 4e could have been much better, and represents a missed opportunity.