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4e design in 5.5e ?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 8412545" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>There's a lot I could say about the whole dissociated mechanics thing, but it mostly boils down to "The D&D ruleset has never mapped perfectly onto the fiction. 4E's mistake was that they stopped pretending it did."</p><p></p><p>(And I'm not being snarky, I mean it; it was a real failure of design. D&D is a game of illusions. The rules don't need to model reality, but they need to help you <em>pretend</em> that they're modeling reality. [USER=18646]@lkj[/USER]'s observation that "the innards are too visible" is spot on.)</p><p></p><p>Anyway, to the OP's question: What 4E truly excelled at was framing a great set-piece battle. There were other things it did well, but that was its supreme gift. Powers refreshing on a short rest meant you could count on the party entering combat with a decent but not overwhelming amount of firepower. Monsters were designed with specific jobs to do in combat, and their stats were tuned to let them do those jobs well. The precisely calibrated power curve ensured that you could reliably estimate encounter difficulty. And with this rock-solid mechanical foundation, I as DM could turn my full attention to spicing up the encounter with terrain hazards, secondary objectives, custom monsters, and the like.</p><p></p><p>5E carried forward some of this stuff, albeit in diluted form. The short rest was nerfed but not removed. Most of the monster design "technology" was discarded, but solo monsters survived as legendary creatures. And while 5E's power curve is a lot fuzzier than 4E's, it is still much better defined than in any previous edition.</p><p></p><p>Myself, I would like to see those elements strengthened in 50AE*. Bring back the old 5-minute short rest, maybe with a limited number per day to prevent abuse. Do a wholesale overhaul of the Monster Manual along 4E principles. Tighten up class balance where possible. (But keep classes mechanically distinct; I don't want to see a return of the one-size-fits-all AEDU framework. The two-sizes-fit-all Warrior/Caster framework is bad enough as it is. At least we have warlocks and rogues.)</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">*Stealing this from [USER=6779196]@Charlaquin[/USER]: "50AE" = 50th Anniversary Edition.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 8412545, member: 58197"] There's a lot I could say about the whole dissociated mechanics thing, but it mostly boils down to "The D&D ruleset has never mapped perfectly onto the fiction. 4E's mistake was that they stopped pretending it did." (And I'm not being snarky, I mean it; it was a real failure of design. D&D is a game of illusions. The rules don't need to model reality, but they need to help you [I]pretend[/I] that they're modeling reality. [USER=18646]@lkj[/USER]'s observation that "the innards are too visible" is spot on.) Anyway, to the OP's question: What 4E truly excelled at was framing a great set-piece battle. There were other things it did well, but that was its supreme gift. Powers refreshing on a short rest meant you could count on the party entering combat with a decent but not overwhelming amount of firepower. Monsters were designed with specific jobs to do in combat, and their stats were tuned to let them do those jobs well. The precisely calibrated power curve ensured that you could reliably estimate encounter difficulty. And with this rock-solid mechanical foundation, I as DM could turn my full attention to spicing up the encounter with terrain hazards, secondary objectives, custom monsters, and the like. 5E carried forward some of this stuff, albeit in diluted form. The short rest was nerfed but not removed. Most of the monster design "technology" was discarded, but solo monsters survived as legendary creatures. And while 5E's power curve is a lot fuzzier than 4E's, it is still much better defined than in any previous edition. Myself, I would like to see those elements strengthened in 50AE*. Bring back the old 5-minute short rest, maybe with a limited number per day to prevent abuse. Do a wholesale overhaul of the Monster Manual along 4E principles. Tighten up class balance where possible. (But keep classes mechanically distinct; I don't want to see a return of the one-size-fits-all AEDU framework. The two-sizes-fit-all Warrior/Caster framework is bad enough as it is. At least we have warlocks and rogues.) [SIZE=3]*Stealing this from [USER=6779196]@Charlaquin[/USER]: "50AE" = 50th Anniversary Edition.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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