4th to 5th Edition Converters - What has been your experience?

[AbdulAlhazred]

You can definitely use weak foes at high level - but there should be dozens or hundreds,
not 12. My 5e group of 11th-14th level PCs just spent the last two sessions fighting
several hundred baseline skeletons; the Cleric's two Turn Undeads alone took out around 70.

Well, we killed 400 zombies a couple sessions ago. 95% of the damage was done by simply standing on the other side of an opening that they had to pass through and maintaining concentration on a Cloud of Daggers (IIRC I upleveled it a slot). It was tedious, as each zombie passed through the buzz saw we poked it with several attacks. 90% of them fell at the door, the other 10% required a little extra, but it wasn't exactly super hard. Still basically a wizard gig.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree with seeing the 2e stylings. 5e feels like 2e with cantrips to me. But I think 5e could be the foundation for a more elaborate, tactical, high fantasy game ala 4e. With regards to the topic of this thread I think it would be easier to add in 4e elements to 5e than strip down 4e.

Aside from some of the optional rules in 5e DMG, I think you would to increase the number of HD and enable them to be spent in combat, maybe start with a feat, enable inspiration to be determined by the player rather than the DM, etc. The biggest job would be developing at will combat attacks or stances and/or a more elaborate maneuver system for fighters and, on the other side, buffing up monsters. I think it could be done.

The main hurdle is the resource management system. 5e classes are just fundamentally stuck with a design where they perform at very different levels of performance depending on the number of encounters in a day. I don't know how to 'fix' that without basically retrofitting 4e classes. You could also retrofit 4e Healing Surges, but now you have to also retrofit at least a decent portion of 4e's tactical rules as well. You now have basically 4e, except you have the bizarre 5e thing where half the attacks have saves and half have attack rolls and weird stuff like that, so now you have to retrofit 4e's defenses and etc.

Honestly, its just easier to play 4e. There's not that much OF 5e that you want to keep! Its just fundamentally different. I do think that something closer to 5e's class architecture, in terms of how it parses up the design space and the way it incorporates heavy sub-classing, plus the much more granular feat setup, are nice. Building a bunch of classes based around that pattern, but using AEDU etc wouldn't be bad.

 

[MwaO]

The main hurdle is the resource management system. 5e classes are just fundamentally stuck with a design where they perform at very different levels of performance depending on the number of encounters in a day. I don't know how to 'fix' that without basically retrofitting 4e classes.

The way that I looked at is making the 1st use of X powerful and then the 2nd+ uses weaker. So as an example, let's say you have a trip attack. The 1st use acts normally, the 2nd use is at Disadvantage - basically, the first time you pull something on an opponent, they're not expecting. Keep using it and they won't be surprised.

Then create feats that hand out a boost to X, a utility, and a small bonus.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The way that I looked at is making the 1st use of X powerful and then the 2nd+ uses weaker. So as an example, let's say you have a trip attack. The 1st use acts normally, the 2nd use is at Disadvantage - basically, the first time you pull something on an opponent, they're not expecting. Keep using it and they won't be surprised.

Then create feats that hand out a boost to X, a utility, and a small bonus.

OK, but I'm not really sure how that limits my wizard when he's got one encounter in a day. Sure, it may have some very marginal impact in terms of I might not use Fireball 3x in a row, but given that I can uplevel other spells, or just pick something else from my book, I can probably live with that. Meanwhile the Battlemaster is kinda dicked by it, as he's only GOT maybe 4 maneuvers, and one is likely to be the best option several times in any given encounter.

In other words, the two characters are still working on different resource schedules. What you suggest doesn't HURT, but in the context of "revamping 5e to work like 4e" its not getting you much. Its obviously personal taste, but I like EVERYTHING pretty much about 4e better. I mean, there are some things that are fine in 5e, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't improve if they were more like what's in 4e! (at least for the purpose of playing 4e). I don't see ANY point where 5e advanced the art of 4e. A 5e-informed 4.5e could certainly gain, as I've said, but the small bits of 5e-isms I'd pull in wouldn't warrant basing it on 5e.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Converters how?

As a GM I am not a converter in the slightest. 5e massively disempowers me compared to DMing 4e. It gives me a lot of makework in needing to vet what the players do. It almost unforgivably gives me an administrative faff in terms of cross-referencing monsters to spells (and it's ridiculously spellcaster heavy). To run 4e literally all the mechanical reference material I need is the MM3 on a Business Card and the Skill Challenge DCs on the other side; everything else is part of the world. Now that's DM empowerment - shifting the work off my shoulders (literally in the case of rulebooks I'd carry to sessions) and allowing me to let the players run while I can focus on everything else.

As a player? Ehh. There are only a few classes I actually like*. But even one would be enough as long as I have a good DM, and I'd far rather play it than 3.X or 2e. What I'm looking for is a character with broad competence and a few things they are outstanding at that they can do reliably and often, and part of the skill is bringing their strengths to bear on the current situation; the spell list of the wizard just feels both like a laundry list and too interchangeable and the spells are far too solution-like. (A Pathfinder Summoner should fit this category - but I think [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] still has PTSD from the one time I played one in a campaign.) So as player, 5e would never be my first choice but isn't a dealbreaker.

* Barbarian, Monk, Sorcerer, Warlock. (Rogues and battlemaster fighters should be in there but are nowhere near meaty enough).

 

[Tony Vargas]

As a GM I am not a converter in the slightest. 5e massively disempowers me compared to DMing 4e.

Empowerment doesn't mean making your job easier, it means making your job much bigger with no increase in pay, authority or benefits.

FREX: say you're a lumber jack, and you have to clear cut a acre of land, and your company gave you an ax and told you, 'you must use this ax, nothing else, to cut down all these trees.' If they were to Empower you, they'd give you a hectare of land to clear-cut, and take away the axe, but say "cut down these trees however you like."

Now, IRL, that'd often suck (depends on how crazy-resourceful you are), but as a DM, unlimited license to do what ever you want really is unlimited. You don't have to go out and buy a chainsaw, if you decide you have one, you do.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Empowerment doesn't mean making your job easier, it means making your job much bigger with no increase in pay, authority or benefits.

Nice!

The thing here is that 4e comes with sharper and more powerful tools than are available on the open market - in my experience rivalled only by the Cortex + family of games and the Apocalypse World family of games. They didn't take away my axe - they took away my Bear C6. Then told me I could cut down the trees however I wanted - as long as it wasn't with my Bear C6

 

[Balesir]

I actually find the 'Empowered DM' emphasis works well for improv, as well, just 'everything's a ruling' instead of 'everything's a house rule' and zero prep instead of tons. The only approach you have to worry about resolving is the one they actually take. It can be 'that worked, and this stuff happened' or 'that didn't work, and this other stuff happend' or 'roll DEX + Macramé DC 35' or whatever else seems like a good idea in the moment. You can riff off what the players are interested in and ask about instead of trying to fill the whole world in ahead of them.

I'm not really talking about improv, as such. If I run 4E or PrimeTime Adventures or 13th Age (or, I expect, Dungeon World and other AWE games that I haven't got around to running, yet), I don't need to house rule or make judgements 'on the hoof' - the rules work just fine as they are. As GM I get to "just play" and see what happens.

I find a big issue with "judgement GMing" is that, once they figure out that there's more mileage in leading the GM to judge your DCs softly and in reading what the GM thinks is a "good idea" than there is in making bold character decisions, intelligent players focus their play there, rather than on the character decisions. I'm not talking specifically about "immersion", here - the players might be making character decisions out of decidedly out-of-character impulses (like wanting to see what happens if they do this!) - but just driving play through the decisions of the character, not through trying to shape the game world through its embodiment via the GM. If the game world is genuinely shared, rather than provided by the GM, then everyone can play with it, rather than playing with the GM.

Not sure I'm communicating this well - it's a tough concept to put into words, I find. And there's nothing wrong with 'playing with the GM', by the way. It's just that not doing so is not a "style" supported by any system that is heavy on "GM judgement calls". Having played GM created worlds for many years (~40), I'm really intrigued and excited by the possibilities offered by the alternative of a 'shared world' for roleplaying.

 

[MwaO]

I think one of the other 'problems' that 4e has is that it is focused on resolving social problems with social tools rather than DM fiat. And there's kind of a tradition in D&D that the DM spent a lot of time on things and therefore, whatever the DM says, goes.

Which isn't contradicted actually by 4e, but some people took the 'set things up so you don't even have to put your foot down' as meaning the DM wasn't in control.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Whereas I for one think that if I actually need to put my foot down it's a sign I've lost control.