D&D 4E Am I crazy? I've just gotten a hankering to play 4e again...

[Jacob Lewis]

4e is unlike any other edition. And yet, it embraces the very essence of the core Dungeons & Dragons experience, succinctly and unapologetically. Build your characters, fight the monsters, get lots of treasures. That is the heart of every edition and derived game. The layout and format of this edition made it especially delightful to run and organize as both as DM and a player.

Though character classes and options grew numerous and overwhelming at times, the system maintained an equilibrium between player effectiveness and activity. No character consistently outshined the others, which meant no player felt their role was somehow diminished by their choices.

It was my favorite edition to run, of course. Designing an encounter was easy, and much more dynamic than simply picking your monsters from a book. The map grid became a set piece you could fill with points of interest during a battle, creating a unique and memorable challenge for the players even against a monster they had encountered before. Throw in a skill challenge during a fight and it becomes something epic!

Regardless, if you can find others to play with you, have fun with it! Gather your party and venture fo(u)rth!

 

[JeffB]

My favorite version of the game from WOTC (in particular-Essentials), despite the warts. My 4E books are about 5 feet away from me as I type this.

I don't blame you at all.

 

[jasper]

Yes You are Crazy. But we like you any way.
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Psst Psst I will keep his attention while y'all get the straight jacket.

 

[TwoSix]

Makes sense to me. 4E has everything I want out of D&D; crunchy, dynamic battles as the focus of the game, with freeform, skill and concept driven roleplay outside of the battles.

 

[Delazar]

Not crazy. 4E is really fun.
Just divide all enemy HP by 1/2, and increase their damage by their proficiency bonus.
Everything becomes fast, smooth, and deadly.

After level 11, I halved all monsters' HP, and doubled their damage. Worked like a charm!

 

[Retreater]

I tried two 4e campaigns within the past year. Even though we liked the tactical depth and balance of the game, combats ended taking up too much time. The other issue I faced was irregular attendance, which upset the party dynamics by missing out on critical party roles.
In the end, some of the players enjoyed it. It wasn't terrible, but I just couldn't make it work. We're now trying Pathfinder 2e as a "happy medium" between 4e and 5e. We'll see how that goes.
But I don't fault anyone for wanting to give it a try. It's a solid system in many regards. Of all its issues, I think the biggest weakness was bad adventure design. In particular the H1-E3 adventure series (which I did try to run in the past year) was a big downfall. It was written with the design paradigms of previous editions - a bunch of meaningless fights designed to chip away at party resources. This is fine in editions in which combats are over in a matter of minutes, but when a combat can take 1-2 hours (or longer in the case of paragon or epic tiers), you can't reasonably make it through the adventures.
In my experience, for 4e to be successful the DM should cut down significantly the number of combat encounters faced, speed up the encounters that are there (using some of the tips in this thread), then rely on Skill Challenges and Roleplay to fill in the gaps.

 

[dave2008]

In my experience, for 4e to be successful the DM should cut down significantly the number of combat encounters faced, speed up the encounters that are there (using some of the tips in this thread), then rely on Skill Challenges and Roleplay to fill in the gaps.

I ran 4e for 4 years and developed a bunch of tricks to speed combat. By the end I was able to run a level 30 epic adventure for 6 PCs that featured:

a massive battle on a elemental flying ship plunging through the abyss being attacked by hoards of demons, crash landing onto an earthmoat protected by 2 ancient dragons, travel through the floating island to Ashalardon's lair, a battle with Ashalardon and then teleporting to the underdark into the lair of Torog.

We played this half of the adventure in about 5 hours while riding in a minivan. On the way back home (another 5 hour drive) they:

tracked down Torog through a hall of chains guarded by his spawn, battled an avatar of tiamat and then torog himself , before teleporting to the roots of the World Tree and battling a fully realized Tiamat (custom design - much tougher than the official one).

So, we got quite fast at 4e combat and I could run a more mundane battle in 15-30 minutes.

EDIT: I still use some of the tricks I learned in 4e in my 5e games.

 

[Anoth]

You are completely insane. But insane people can have fun. Enjoy it. Even though it is badwrongfun

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I ran 4e for 4 years and developed a bunch of tricks to speed combat.

what are some of those tricks?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I found 4e to be vastly frustrating to run, but I enjoyed the campaign I ran and the story we told together. I had briefly lapsed as a gamer prior and 4e was where I hopped back on and stayed on.

It had its own aesthetic, probably unique to all D&D iterations. I liked the built-in setting with all its fallen empires like Bael Turath.

Buuut... I ended up starting my campaign with everyone at 8th level. The group began when another friend ran a one-shot and everyone made characters at that level. We all decided to keep it going as a campaign, and I ended up DMing it. So I never got to play low-level 4e.

So I sometimes think about running a few sessions starting at first level, to see how it handles at low levels.