D&D 4E Disguising 4e as 5e/5.5e

[vagabundo]

Lots of good perspectives here, thanks everyone:

• 13th Age would be a goer. I even got the humble bundle recently. And I think it would be a good fit for my Temple of Elemental Evil (Pulp Action Style).
• I might have put too much on the trick part of the story. I'd be more reskinning 4e to fit better with this players sense of current DND. He is excited for 5.5e but doesn't pay a huge amount of attention to game mechanics, more so he just like a new edition and that's cool when most of my players are pretty mechanics agnostic mostly.
• I think I probably should give 5.5e a fair shake and maybe tweak things on the go to be more my liking - like pretty much every edition I run. I prefer to run RAW and use the game itself to solve its own problems. Having encounter budgets and stating out encounters was too good in 4e. 5e felt way more like the hit and miss methods of 3e for my liking.
• It was just a mad idea that I could come up with a 5e hack that ran on a 4e engine, kitbashing some of the 5e stuff into 4e class structure, and then just running 4e monsters.

I might try 13th age closer to the campaign, if we manage to wrap up Masks before 2025!

 

[Tigris]

Lots of good perspectives here, thanks everyone:

• 13th Age would be a goer. I even got the humble bundle recently. And I think it would be a good fit for my Temple of Elemental Evil (Pulp Action Style).
• I might have put too much on the trick part of the story. I'd be more reskinning 4e to fit better with this players sense of current DND. He is excited for 5.5e but doesn't pay a huge amount of attention to game mechanics, more so he just like a new edition and that's cool when most of my players are pretty mechanics agnostic mostly.
• I think I probably should give 5.5e a fair shake and maybe tweak things on the go to be more my liking - like pretty much every edition I run. I prefer to run RAW and use the game itself to solve its own problems. Having encounter budgets and stating out encounters was too good in 4e. 5e felt way more like the hit and miss methods of 3e for my liking.
• It was just a mad idea that I could come up with a 5e hack that ran on a 4e engine, kitbashing some of the 5e stuff into 4e class structure, and then just running 4e monsters.

I might try 13th age closer to the campaign, if we manage to wrap up Masks before 2025!

You could also just try to do a one shot with them with a "homebrew" and play 4E with them. And then if they like it tell them its 4E.

 

[Voadam]

I would not suggest trying to trick anybody that 4e is 5e.

I would also not want to try to alter 4e player stuff to look like 5e. I go the other direction and I would start with 5e and make it more 4e.

I enjoyed 4e a lot and I incorporate a bunch in my 5e games, the 5e DMG has a heavy focus on do it your own way and DM rulings so incorporating 4e stuff into 5e is fairly easy.

I do 4e solo and elite and minion style modifications to 5e monsters. Double hp and attacks for an elite. Give solos area attacks instead of single target ones, multiply hp by number of players, and give them some reaction action economy and defenses against stunning and one shot magic. Minions are fewer powers and 1 hp, use four or five of them for each standard you would otherwise use.

4e monster powers can be fairly easy to throw onto 5e monsters for mechanically interesting 5e fights. Some numbers will change for attack bonus and damage, but sliding people around as part of an attack works in 5e.

I have run a number of 4e style skill challenges using 5e skills in my 5e game. It is easy.

I do 4e action movie cut scene five minute breather short rests instead of the default 5e 1 hour short rest. 5e DMG suggests different rest times for different feels.

If you want to mess with PC stuff feats allow an option to bring in 4e powers like defender mechanics if you want to put in the work.

 

[Tigris]

I would not suggest trying to trick anybody that 4e is 5e.

I would also not want to try to alter 4e player stuff to look like 5e. I go the other direction and I would start with 5e and make it more 4e.

I enjoyed 4e a lot and I incorporate a bunch in my 5e games, the 5e DMG has a heavy focus on do it your own way and DM rulings so incorporating 4e stuff into 5e is fairly easy.

I do 4e solo and elite and minion style modifications to 5e monsters. Double hp and attacks for an elite. Give solos area attacks instead of single target ones, multiply hp by number of players, and give them some reaction action economy and defenses against stunning and one shot magic. Minions are fewer powers and 1 hp, use four or five of them for each standard you would otherwise use.

4e monster powers can be fairly easy to throw onto 5e monsters for mechanically interesting 5e fights. Some numbers will change for attack bonus and damage, but sliding people around as part of an attack works in 5e.

I have run a number of 4e style skill challenges using 5e skills in my 5e game. It is easy.

I do 4e action movie cut scene five minute breather short rests instead of the default 5e 1 hour short rest. 5e DMG suggests different rest times for different feels.

If you want to mess with PC stuff feats allow an option to bring in 4e powers like defender mechanics if you want to put in the work.

The problem is if you play 5E you still have to deal with the bad balance, bad encounter building, way too deadly levels 1-2, unclear rules, boring default monsters etc.

For someone who likes 4E having to play 5E and making it what you want is way too much work and frustrating. In 4E you can just take random monsters from a book make a balanced encounter and it works.


You can have level 7+ and casters and martials feel balanced, even if you only have 1 fight per day. You can read a power/spell and know how it works, and dont have to search on twitter for clarification. You can even run some of the later adventures directly from the book without much preparation and have good and balanced encounters and a fun game without difficulty spikes among often boring fights.



The reason why one want to sell 4E as 5E is because many people either just dont want to play anything besides 5E or even worse, they heard some of the 4E hate, and have some prejudice against it. The only reason OP or I would play 5E is because other people want that for the named reasons, but for me there is not a single part of the design, which I like better in 5E except the simpler/lower bonuses.

 

[Voadam]

For someone who likes 4E having to play 5E and making it what you want is way too much work and frustrating. In 4E you can just take random monsters from a book make a balanced encounter and it works.

I wouldn't speak in such absolutes about adjusting 5e being too much work for people who like 4e, particularly when you are quoting me saying I like 4e and adjusted 5e to incorporate 4e elements to my liking.

I added a bunch of 4e isms like elite monster design into my 3.5 and pathfinder games, adding them into 5e was easy, the concepts are elegant and mechanically simple to implement in different versions of D&D.

The balance is not as tight as 4e and won't be, but 5e is also fairly forgiving in fights with death saves and 4e style overnight healing and 4e style nonmagical healing at short rests so that tight balance is less important than it would have been in say B/X where things can turn deadly very quickly even through mid levels with easy fights and can always turn deadly in an instant with save or die effects. Also I'd say in general 5e is second to 4e in class balance overall. I find the 5e rogue better than the 3e one for balance and power against other classes and leaps and bounds better than any thief from AD&D or Basic or OD&D.

 

[Voadam]

I was a big 4e fan and with the way 5e turned out decided to nope out for the first time since b/x. 5.5e looks more of the same. So I was wondering how much work it might be to use the 4e core systems an reskin it to look like 5e to the naked eye.

Obviously it will look like a hack or homebrew to some extent, and I will have to pull in some of the iconic 5e stuff - and I don't mind it all that much. But I want to use 4e monsters and math in the background and I prefer having a power structure more similar for character classes and have them interact with short/long rest in the 4e way.

I also prefer having the three defenses but I might be okay with having these are saving throws - my players low rolling dice - and it pretty each to rejig 4e monster attacks as DCs instead.

I'd say the two biggest mechanical differences for players would be:

1 vancian casting versus daily and encounter spells.

2 healing surges for healing instead of HD being a short rest healing resource only.

Most of the races are the same in the PHs (gnomes and half-orcs being the exceptions).

Most of the PH classes are the same, sorcerer and monk come in later 4e PHs.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The thing I'd be curious about in terms of your players not embracing 4E would be whether its presentation is what causes all the commotion? The green, red, black, and orange boxes with only the tiniest line of italicized fluff?

If you were to instead use 4E Essentials... where the powers are all written out in lines with headers and things like your standard 5E class features are... whether that appearance of class abilities would be more tolerable and not cause a reflexive "do not want!" in your players? Basically keep everything in the 4E game pretty much the same... but just make the text LOOK like 3E or 5E in terms of presentation. That might very well be all you need to get your players to think of the game as nothing more than a highly houseruled version of 3E/5E.

(And if you can, just tell them that in this house-ruled version of the game their "Proficiency Bonus" is half their class level rather than the standard +2 to +6... and if you end up re-typing stuff out anyway, just replace every use of the phrase "Healing Surge" with the term "Hit Dice". Basically just couch many 4E-isms with 5E terminology. That'll perhaps make things even more palatable for them, even if the game works exactly the same as 4E does.)

 

[timbannock]

Don't lie about what you're playing.

But if you want the closest to 4E that 5E can get, use the following:

• Level Up Adventurer's Guide
• Tome of Heroes (Kobold Press)
• Flee Mortals
• 4E DMG 1 and DMG 2 (primarily for Skill Challenge ideas and terrain effects)
• Make up magic items as-needed, using 4E items for inspiration but 5E for mechanics (i.e. advantage instead of bonuses, etc.)
• A battle map or VTT

As the DM, you could honestly get away with ignoring/not caring about what the players use for their races/classes, but I still recommend making it clear Tome of Heroes is in play, because that gives you some great equipment and most importantly weapon maneuvers.

Finally, run characters from about levels 3 or 5 to about 10 or 12, and then just give them some means of picking up higher level class abilities via some in-world mechanism of advancement, or via magic items, or some other means other than leveling up. After about 12 (maybe 15 tops), additional hit points and ability score bumps and all of that are just pointless other than for bloat, and by being able to curate what higher-level stuff they can access, you and they can have a little more opportunity for customization without having to go all-in on all the high-level spells and abilities that are just bloated and complex.

In other words, after about level 12, you and they have a conversation about what other stuff they get (and how they get it), rather than following the linear level progression and getting the exact abilities they would pick up past those levels.

 

[ruemere]

Those are my favorite two editions too!

I don't think "disguising"/re-skinning will work, but I second the suggestions of using the Flee Mortals! monster book or using 13th Age or PF2.

Would you be so kind and elaborate a bit on Flee Mortals! monster book?

 

[CleverNickName]

@vagabundo, have your players given any reasons why they don't want to play 4th Edition?