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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[dream66_]

So I spent a lot of time thinking about this thread and and I totally get what you were doing with describing the spell slots as 4e powers, but I think you did a disservice by not reformatting the spells themselves.

Some of the 5e spells are overly hard to read due to damage and saves being hidden in the flavor text, even 3.x listed the save in a stat block.

I tried my hand at reformatting a 5e spell for readability in somewhat of a merge of 3.x and 4e styles.
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This would really make my life so much easier at the table I don't know why they didn't do this

I'm gonna do this for every spell, and if they make an OGL I'll share it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This would really make my life so much easier at the table I don't know why they didn't do this

I'm gonna do this for every spell, and if they make an OGL I'll share it.

They didn't do it because they knew you'd do it yourself. Just like even in 4E they had their power cards designed a certain way that might not have been particularly useful to many of us, and thus we had to re-write the power cards in a format and design that we found more useful.

They can't guess what works best for every player. They can only do something they think will be generally useful. And if it turns out not to be the best way for us... we spend the 15 minutes to make it best for ourselves.

 

[dream66_]

They didn't do it because they knew you'd do it yourself. Just like even in 4E they had their power cards designed a certain way that might not have been particularly useful to many of us, and thus we had to re-write the power cards in a format and design that we found more useful.

They can't guess what works best for every player. They can only do something they think will be generally useful. And if it turns out not to be the best way for us... we spend the 15 minutes to make it best for ourselves.

Never found myself reformatting 4e, and I admit that my style is not perfect for everyone it's just an opinion, but surely they didn't need to hide the saves and damage in the body text no matter what format they choose

 

[Blackbrrd]

Never found myself reformatting 4e, and I admit that my style is not perfect for everyone it's just an opinion, but surely they didn't need to hide the saves and damage in the body text no matter what format they choose

I reformatted the 4e powers so that instead of having a stack of cards I just had a single A4 page with all the powers and stuff for my level 15 wizard. It really helps to have all the information on one page instead of either spread over 5-6 pages or 12 power cards.

I think part of the reason that they chose the format they did was to keep the rulebooks good reads as opposed to the really sterile environment you got in the 4e books. It's one of the reasons I didn't like 4e - I could never get myself to read the books. I recently sat down with the 5e DMG and it's so full of inspiring information presented in a really good way, I am convinced that they chose wisely.

 

[dream66_]

I somewhat agree with this. While I enjoyed reading about the classes and the class abilities, when it came to actually reading the powers themselves I tended to skip them as I didn't find them interesting to read. Not to say I didn't enjoy 4e, I had some fun games with friends, but the powers were just so dull to read.

Having said that, I can see the benefits of having a spell written up in dream66's format when at the table, it has all the information you need when using the spell and even has some flavour text.

It litterally has the exact flavor text the 5e book does, I just took out the one line that describes what the spell does in mechanical terms and moved that to the stat block. Wound up looking about the same amount of flavor as a 4e spell. Did the same thing to 3e fireball it was still 80% flavor

 

[MoutonRustique]

Yeah, presentation is very powerful.

Different people will want different things, and, if we can base our analysis on the perceived reception of 4e and 5e, more people want the "wordy, hidden" version. The practicality of it is only one variable in this situation and the weight given to each will depend upon their preferences. You can probably figure mine out by this post.

 

[tuxgeo]

Another wording for "daily powers":

(first-level spell slot card):
Cast a wizard spell at the 1st level of arcane magic.
You cast a spell of 1st level that you have prepared.

(second-level spell slot card):
Cast a wizard spell at the 2nd level of arcane magic.
You cast a spell of 2nd level or lower that you have prepared.
Some lower-level spells have heightened effects when cast at higher levels of magic.

A player of a wizard character would need one such card per spell slot.
The cards could be rotated or turned over as each one was used.
(The wording of each card would be kept simple by not referring to multiple uses.)

The wording on Bard cards would refer to "a spell . . . that you know" instead of "have prepared."
This way, the players can compare the cards they would be using of one class with the cards of another class to see the differences more clearly.

 

[Authweight]

I really like your approach with thinking of the slot as the power and the spell as a potential effect of that power. That's a much clearer way of explaining how wizard casting works in 5e than the way they do it now, at least for me. Bravo.