D&D 4E A question for 4e players and DMs (about 5e)

[UnknownAtThisTime]

If you are looking to do a Heroic Level campaign with limited time for prep, I would recommend you look at the Neverwinter Campaign Setting for 4e.

It is a crunched/compressed Heroic/Paragon level campaign all to be played in the heroic level. Except for some FR specifics, it should be rather easy to port to most campaign settings, but be aware that the campaign is using the tropes of 4e FR for a lot of it's background (Thayan Wizards, Netherese, Spellplague, Eruption of Mt. Hotenow, etc.) I've had no trouble looking at those as inspiration and using them, but you need to be aware in case you want to convert it to a homebrew setting.

Timely. I decided a few hours ago exactly that which you suggest above: Neverwinter as the base start point. I have another 'mega location' or two in mind. I plan to zip them together and remove much/some/TBD of the FR specific stuff.

Neverwinter will be at my door in 48 hours. Impulse purchase.

 

[MoutonRustique]

If your group would like "faster meaner" combats than what most official products offer for 4e - there are a few methods that are very easy to implement on-the-fly that can give that angle in 4e. This bit is the main attraction I see of 5e over 4e for many (other than presentation of rules and such - which is non-issue for your group seeing as you already know the rules.)

I would suggest :
- have a look at the Skill Challenge variants and options. Pick the one you find the most engaging and leverage it to the max during your games. Make it as dynamic as possible - no need to get bogged-downed. The "hidden" goal : you can save a good deal of prep-time if you leverage SCs for collaborative story/adventure construction. i.e. you don't really need to plan out how to accomplish X or Y, as the group will create the how through the SC.
- use lots of minions and/or super-minions to have a few "normal" battles, they can still be very threating, but they'll last only a few rounds. Don't hesitate to focus-fire during the first ones : get the point across that these battles are fast, but still very much have the capacity to affect players (not to TPK-level of menace, but one of them might get a fairly scary woopin').
- have the big combats be as dynamic as possible by using a lot of one-shot terrain things and offering options to control the battle other than total hp destruction (ex: traps that can stop a foe for 2* rounds, something that can block an access point, hazards that give warning (forcing movement or consequence), etc.)

*I never actually track time for these kinds of things, I say I do, but I just check the pulse of the battle and the critter gets free when he needs to get free - while taking into consideration the feeling of player agency. Don't make the player feel he made a bad investment by using the terrain or XYZ thing you put there - else they'll learn to ignore all the cool-fun things and just go after the hp.

Well, turns out my 2cp was more along the lines of 2sp...

Also - unless important to the synergy of battle stay AWAY from SOLDIERS!. Or, you know, reduce their defense by 2-3 points and up their damage by 2-3 points.

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

Thanks for your feedback MR, but as I said in the OP, "There is, in a general sense, no dis-satisfaction with 4e. We tend to keep toward the heroic tier and enforce some simplification to combat". We are pretty well versed in streamlining 4e and use the well known tweaks to combat as needed.

The question was more about 5e, and I think we have our answer!

 

[MoutonRustique]

Then ignore what ever I said - and keep on having a blast

 

[AverageCitizen]

I am fitting the topic here because I suppose it is general enough, but specifically the perspective I am looking for is from those "familiar with" & "with an affinity to" 4e anyway.

Please and please, I don't want to start in on an argument about which is superior, "just some facts and opinions" that I would like to gather.

Brief background:

• The group has played 4e since 2009 ish. For half the group, it is the only RPG they know. Some of the group was raised on AD&D etc.
• The group does not get to play that often. A few times a year frankly, albeit a few days of concentrated gaming when they are together.
• Learning a new system will cut in to the limited time available to the group, especially for the DM. And ....
• It is my rotation as DM now. It is time for me to build a world/campaign/etc. My time is far more limited than I would like.
• To be blunt, SOME amount of tactical/miniatures is desired for this group.
• The group played what I think was the very first "Next" alpha (a couple encounters as I recall) that was released years ago. Rules were limited at the time.
• There is, in a general sense, no dis-satisfaction with 4e. We tend to keep toward the heroic tier and enforce some simplification to combat. It is enjoyed by all. But, in a general sense, we also have nothing against trying something new!

My word, that is all a very long winded way of asking this: "Should we fire up 4e again, or should I bite the bullet and invest my time and money in 5e. And specifically, Is it somewhat clear how much miniature/tactical play you can introduce to 5e? Abstracting movement of miniatures around a battle map is probably not quite enough to scratch the tactical itch of these guys."

Any assistance /opinion/guidance is appreciated. I hope my question is even clear at this point.

Why don't you just use Basic 5e for a night and see how it goes?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

5e CAN be tactical, it just isn't really aimed there so much by default. You can play on the grid, and the rules give you enough dimensions and whatnot to allow for it to work. We play on a Chessex mat with minis and wet-erase markers, same way we play 4e. Some things are less convenient, stuff is all in feet, and there are weirdly shaped AoEs instead of the nice square zones and walls of 4e. OTOH there's somewhat less stuff to track, and most of it stays around for a whole fight, so it gains and it loses.

Overall I found 4e more interesting than 5e, but what 5e has going for it is things like a certain simplicity of character builds. You want to be the big axe wielding dwarf, thats a dwarf fighter with an axe and probably the Champion option (though Battle Master works fine for this too, honestly I'm not sure why Champion exists except to say "see there's a simple fighter"). You don't need to pick the right feats and weapons and powers to all synergize together and work with the correct ability score setup, you just pick 'dwarf' and 'fighter' and at level 3 'Champion', and maybe decide to take a feat instead of an ASI, if you care to.

The upshot is that if you have players that are not too much on grasping rules, 5e helps you. Of course you could hand them a 4e Slayer or something like that too, so its not really a HUGE advantage. Other than that, 5e is really pretty much just as complex as 4e, though the system is a bit less straightforward in the sense that spell casting mechanics are more complicated than AEDU, and the non-casting classes each have their own entirely separate systems for regulating what they can do, and how often.

5e is a reasonably well-written game, it plays pretty much EXACTLY like 2e, but if you like 4e then you're all set, 4e is the best 4e.

 

[D'karr]

<snip>if you like 4e then you're all set, 4e is the best 4e.

QFT!

I have found that for my tastes 5e left me severely wanting. It espouses the philosophy of use "theater of the mind", but it gives the DM and players no solid tools to run the game that way, as for example 13th Age does solidly.

Combats go faster because monster HP ratio to character damage ratio is crunched down and defenses are absurdly easy to hit. Therefore characters hit more often. But at the same time monsters with spell-like abilities and NPC casters are a tremendous PITA to run, since the DM has to look their abilities and spells up to run them, or has to memorize them, or just make crap up as the game goes. This once again became work, and I don't like spending my time gaming doing uninteresting work. I'd rather spend time making fun adventures and situations. If I'm going to make crap up I might as well not buy the game to do that, I can do that with anything I already own.

If you want to achieve the same "fast" combat in 4e use Monster Manual 3 math, then decrease monster HP by 1/3 or 1/4 to taste, and drop monster defenses by 2. For theater of the mind combats I simply use a modified Skill Challenge structure, and that works well.

I have a lot more criticisms of the game but I really don't like spending time complaining about things I dislike. I'd rather talk about the things I really like. Like 4e.

 

[Raith5]

I have found that for my tastes 5e left me severely wanting. It espouses the philosophy of use "theater of the mind", but it gives the DM and players no solid tools to run the game that way, as for example 13th Age does solidly.

I agree with this. I once had a 3-4 round fight in 5e that started in TOTM, was then written down on paper, then finally someone brought out gridded white board.

I think TOTM was treated in the 5e design presence as an absence of something, rather than the presence of something - if that makes sense!

 

[Manbearcat]

It espouses the philosophy of use "theater of the mind", but it gives the DM and players no solid tools to run the game that way, as for example 13th Age does solidly.

Yup.

5e is a reasonably well-written game, it plays pretty much EXACTLY like 2e, but if you like 4e then you're all set, 4e is the best 4e.

Very much this but I'll go a little further. [MENTION=94582]UnknownAtThisTime[/MENTION], I'm uncertain of your gaming background or that of your group. However, it seems you like 4e. Did you guys like AD&D 2e? 5e is a very modernized, very much improved AD&D 2e with 3.x's (awful) saving throw paradigm and a la carte multiclassing, and 13th Age's noncombat resolution. If you guys loved AD&D 2e and you're looking for a better version of it, then 5e should be your favorite edition. If not, then stick with 4e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

QFT!

I have found that for my tastes 5e left me severely wanting. It espouses the philosophy of use "theater of the mind", but it gives the DM and players no solid tools to run the game that way, as for example 13th Age does solidly.

Combats go faster because monster HP ratio to character damage ratio is crunched down and defenses are absurdly easy to hit. Therefore characters hit more often. But at the same time monsters with spell-like abilities and NPC casters are a tremendous PITA to run, since the DM has to look their abilities and spells up to run them, or has to memorize them, or just make crap up as the game goes. This once again became work, and I don't like spending my time gaming doing uninteresting work. I'd rather spend time making fun adventures and situations. If I'm going to make crap up I might as well not buy the game to do that, I can do that with anything I already own.

If you want to achieve the same "fast" combat in 4e use Monster Manual 3 math, then decrease monster HP by 1/3 or 1/4 to taste, and drop monster defenses by 2. For theater of the mind combats I simply use a modified Skill Challenge structure, and that works well.

I have a lot more criticisms of the game but I really don't like spending time complaining about things I dislike. I'd rather talk about the things I really like. Like 4e.

Well, I never liked the 'reduce hit points' thing, I thought it missed the point, which was that the game, by default, mechanically puts the whole contest onto hit points. This frees up the GM to determine what other factors play into victory, so he can be sure that powers will give the players a certain toolset, and the rest is situational. If the plot calls for grabbing the McGuffin and running away, then its irrelevant how many hit points the monsters have, beyond enough to make running a more sensible option (or at least one of several). Likewise if the situation is highly dynamic, then control, clever use of powers, and creative problem solving are likely to trump or at least bypass a lot of the chewing down of hit points. In that context a soldier monster is a roadblock, not a boring trap, you WANT to get around him, and his hit points are part of the problem set, not something that forces the fight to become static. Likewise the modest per-round damage that monsters usually dish out means you can pick tactics like 'run past the monster and take a hit', which in older editions was pretty much suicide or at least a huge gamble (and even if you carried it off then you had super limited healing).

So I go for real action-sequence type combats, you may still wipe out the bad guys, but a lot of it will turn out to be pushing them into some bad place, using a terrain power, maneuvering so that the terrain forces half the monsters to fight you at a time, etc. Once you get into that mode then 4e fights work great.

I think the game COULD be tweaked, but what I would do is redesign it so terrain is a bit more significant, streamline the turn sequence a bit, and make somewhat fewer but weightier powers. 5e actually did some of that, but they also messed with a lot of the other areas in a negative way.