D&D 4E 5E Through a 4E Lens

A few years back, Rob Schwalb did an experiment on his blog: he took bits of the 4e cleric and reformatted them to match the visual look of previous editions of D&D. Since a couple of my players were coming from long-running 4e games (even though they played 3e before that), I decided to do the opposite: take bits of a 5e class, and reformat it to match the visual cues of 5e. I did this mainly to explain the current spellcasting system, where you prepare (or simply know) spells, and power them through spell slots (without losing the prepared spell).

The major breakthrough was turning the actual Spell Slot into the "daily power" (or "encounter", in the case of a warlock), with the effect being left to the spell the caster chooses to invest the slot into. Cantrips, on the other hand, match the 4e at-will structure as-is (with the actual cantrip being the "at-will power").

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[Klaus]

I am keeping bloodied in every campaign of any rule set ever... and I also like save ends

Despite not being codified, "bloodied" and "save ends" still show up in the 5e ruleset. For instance, high level Champion Fighters heal hp every time they begin their turn below half their maximum hp. And carrion crawler poison paralyzes its victim for 1 minute if it fails the initial save (the victim can repeat the save every turn to end the effect early).

 

[ingeloak]

Every time I heard people complain about the way 4E handled powers and how it was this huge break from previous editions, this is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about and why 4E to me never seemed really all that different as people made it out to be. Yeah, a whole crapload of fluff and handwritten description was left out of the power blocks themselves compared to other editions (especially in the case of spells)... but the actual effects when statted out in 4E style were all very similar. And you're proving that even 5E stuff can stat out formattically like 4E too.

being an old school gamer, i started at the late stages of 1st edition in the mid-1980s and have been playing ever since. i understand that 4E powers are just barebones mechanics of those old-edition spells. i love what 4E did to make casters viable beyond "i cast 2 spells, then i am done for the day!" At-will powers rock, and so do encounter powers.

that said, it was the fluff descriptions that made it fun and "magical" to players. reading how a fireball spell "shoots a pea-sized ball of flame that detonates with a low roar" made it feel real in our minds. simply reading "Fireball is a burst-3 power that centers on a square within 120 feet" is pretty lame by comparison. the whole edition felt "dumbed-down" and mechanical. Wizards of the Coast was trying to bring in new players who grew up with MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft, so they made it feel more like a video game. the problem was, that decision cost them a lot of players like me who preferred it as it was, maybe with a few improvements.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Despite not being codified, "bloodied" and "save ends" still show up in the 5e ruleset...

That's where it hurts for me (but feels very good for a lot of people, evidently) - "hiding" the mechanics...

 

[aramis erak]

The 4E formatting was one of it's major turn-offs for me. Yeah, it's clear. Yeah, it looks great in the book. But boy, howdy, it was a freaking nightmare to copy by hand.

 

[Klaus]

that said, it was the fluff descriptions that made it fun and "magical" to players. reading how a fireball spell "shoots a pea-sized ball of flame that detonates with a low roar" made it feel real in our minds. simply reading "Fireball is a burst-3 power that centers on a square within 120 feet" is pretty lame by comparison. the whole edition felt "dumbed-down" and mechanical. Wizards of the Coast was trying to bring in new players who grew up with MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft, so they made it feel more like a video game. the problem was, that decision cost them a lot of players like me who preferred it as it was, maybe with a few improvements.

To be fair, 4e powers *did* have descriptions. Here's Fireball, from Heroes of the Fallen Lands:

A globe of orange flame coalesces in your hand. You hurl it at your enemies, and it explodes on impact.

 

[Mercule]

I am keeping bloodied in every campaign of any rule set ever... and I also like save ends

I liked "save ends". My players, however, hated it.

 

[Pauper]

I don't really see that the examples provided are a valid 'reformatting' of the 5e power into 4e -- they still use 5e terminology (components, casting time, range in feet rather than squares).

A better re-flavoring of the Fire Bolt cantrip would look something like this:

Fire Bolt -- Wizard Attack 1
"You hurl a mote of fire at your target."
At-Will * Arcane, Implement, Fire
Standard Action - Range 24
Target: One creature
Attack: Intelligence vs. AC
Hit: 1d10 fire damage
(level 5 = 2d10 fire damage)
(level 11 = 3d10 fire damage)
(level 17 = 4d10 fire damage)

Special: An inflammable object hit by this power ignites unless it is being worn or carried.

Also, the 'cast a spell' actions are weird -- better to reformat each spell as a 4e power:

Thunderwave -- Wizard Attack 1
"A wave of thunderous force sweeps out from you."
Daily - Arcane, Implement, Thunder
Standard Action - Close Blast 3
Target: Creatures in burst
Attack: Intelligence vs AC
Hit: 2d8 thunder damage, and the target is pushed 2 squares
Special: Unsecured objects fully in the burst are pushed 2 squares. The power emits an audible boom of thunder which can be heard out to 60 squares.

Then create a separate power to use to 'recharge' your spell powers:

Spell Power -- Wizard Utility 2
At Will * Arcane
Free Action - Personal

Effect: Recharge a level 1 Wizard Arcane daily attack power

Special: You may use this power twice per day. At 3rd level or higher, you may use this power three times per day.

(The level 6 version of this utility would allow you to recharge a level 1 or 5 power, with a bonus of some kind if the wizard chooses to recharge a level 1 power.)

--
This reformatting points out a number of changes from 4e to 5e:

- 5e uses a lot of 'factors of 30' in spell ranges (30 feet, 60 feet, 120 feet, etc.); this is in contract to 4e which mainly used 'factors of 5'. My feeling is that 4e made more sense on a battlemap, since the basic unit (the square) was 5 feet and easily visible on the map. 5e's change appears mainly useful to put spell and weapon ranges into multiples of a character's expected move distance, which works better for 'theater of the mind'. ("Oh, that spell has 30 ft range? You need to move toward the monster before you can cast it.")

- 4e largely dismissed with 'flavor' effects such as the audible 'boom' effect of a thunderwave, or at least left it to the DM to determine how to adjudicate them. 5e seems to want to use a lot more 'rules as flavor', which can be a good or bad thing depending on your desire to use these effects.

- 4e's implements were an integral part of the spellcasting classes, since the implements provided necessary boosts to attack that were baked-in to the system (this is why the example spell above has an implement entry even though the actual spell in 5e doesn't require a material component/arcane focus). 5e returns to the 'component' system, where certain classes are restricted in needing to keep a hand free for spellcasting while others are not so restricted (check out the paladin spell list, for example, and see how many spells in that list have solely verbal components).

- 4e was a system focused less on damage and more on status effects (though especially at the end of 4e, it was certainly possible to create build that did massive damage); 5e has largely reversed this, returning damage to primacy and relegating status effects to specific types of attacks (poison, paralysis) and/or specific magic spells.

As for 'bloodied', it is such a useful tool for communicating hit point status without actually referencing hit points that our group has incorporated it into Pathfinder.

 

[DEFCON 1]

being an old school gamer, i started at the late stages of 1st edition in the mid-1980s and have been playing ever since. i understand that 4E powers are just barebones mechanics of those old-edition spells. i love what 4E did to make casters viable beyond "i cast 2 spells, then i am done for the day!" At-will powers rock, and so do encounter powers.

that said, it was the fluff descriptions that made it fun and "magical" to players. reading how a fireball spell "shoots a pea-sized ball of flame that detonates with a low roar" made it feel real in our minds. simply reading "Fireball is a burst-3 power that centers on a square within 120 feet" is pretty lame by comparison.

Well sure... but if you were truly an old school gamer, after you first learned how fireball worked, when did you ever actually re-read the description of the fireball spell after that? Did you re-read the fluff each and every time you cast it? My guess would be 'no' (because reall,y who ever does?). Once you knew the mechanics of the spell and had learned the visualization of what was happening from the description that first time or two casting it... you probably never re-read the spell's fluff again because you already knew what was happening.

And thus... the fact that the 4E fireball didn't include more description or fluff than what Klaus mentions above... really shouldn't be that much of an issue. You already knew what a fireball was, did, and looked like from all your years previous to 4E... so why did it matter than 4E didn't re-type several paragraphs of description for it? What purpose would it have served you? You probably would have ignored the description just as you did so many times before. I know I did. I knew what a fireball looked like. I knew what happened when one went off. All that was different were the mechanics to it that I had to adjudicate as a player and DM. So having those mechanics written out simply and clearly and without anything getting in their way was to me more of a boon than a hindrance.

 

[Joe Liker]

I don't really see that the examples provided are a valid 'reformatting' of the 5e power into 4e -- they still use 5e terminology (components, casting time, range in feet rather than squares).

A better re-flavoring of the Fire Bolt cantrip would look something like this:

...

Also, the 'cast a spell' actions are weird -- better to reformat each spell as a 4e power:

...

Then create a separate power to use to 'recharge' your spell powers:

...

(The level 6 version of this utility would allow you to recharge a level 1 or 5 power, with a bonus of some kind if the wizard chooses to recharge a level 1 power.)

Yeah, no matter how you slice it, retrofitting the Spellcasting feature is always going to be weird and convoluted and far more confusing than just explaining the 5e Spellcasting system as it was written.

It's a very elegant system, but 4e-ifying it makes it look like it was invented by slaadi.

 

[Klaus]

I don't really see that the examples provided are a valid 'reformatting' of the 5e power into 4e -- they still use 5e terminology (components, casting time, range in feet rather than squares).

That's the whole point: teaching the 5e Spellcasting system by framing it on 4e's AEDU structure. That's why the cantrips are powers of their own, and the higher-level spells aren't: in 5e, you can cast the same spell again and again, until you run out of slots, and you can cast a spell using a higher-level slot. The only way to explain that in a 4e structure is to -- as someone commented upthread -- frame it around something like Channel Divinity (one power that can have different effects).