D&D 5E Does anyone else run 5th Edition from a 4th edition perspective?

[aco175]

I mostly 4e monsters and a little on items. I think some of the rule books even started making monsters more 4e than 1e. I have more than goblin with max hp as the leader. I made hero goblin, caster goblin, brute goblin, archer goblin, etc.. I like to add powers to NPCs as well. I made a 5th level fighter-type for an adventure and gave him a close burst 1 attack instead of other minor powers that I would need to track. It gave him a bit of fun and power without taking from the fighters powers.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Does anyone else run 5th Edition from a 4th edition perspective?

It's profoundly ill-suited for it, since the foundation of 4e was comparatively balanced class designs, and 5e pendulum-swung away from that pretty dramatically. 5e is ideal for, and naturally lends itself to being run from, a classic perspective (for me that's 1e AD&D, but I hear favorable comparisons to 2e all the time, as well). 5e-as-3e requires flipping a few switches on - feats, MCing - but is only a veneer, the kind of depth of character-creation freedom, rewards for system mastery, and solid underpinning of 'RAW' just isn't there - I think that's why we get certain complaints about 5e being too easy or 'lacking' certain specifics, like item complaints, because the 3e-style experience requires some solidity in those areas that 5e leaves to the DM.

That said, I have seen DMs successfully lift whole chunks of 4e (or 3e) into 5e just by ruling in accord with the earlier edition. 5e players often hardly notice. In 5e, the rules constantly require rulings, if a DM very familiar with a prior edition just rules as he would have run it (RAW or otherwise) in that edition...

I make my monsters operate with the assumptions of 4th edition: solos have multiple actions; monsters spell-like abilities do not reference spells; tradition and textbook text have no bearing on their powers or extraordinary abilities.

Opportunity attacks; movement; surprise; magical treasure; experience points; rests; encounters; cosmology; alignment; Eberron; movement... so much stuff gets adjudicated according to my experience and love for 4th edition.

Yep, that'd all work fine, I'm sure.
It's not going to end up feeling much like 4e, on the player side of the screen, because of all the missing and/or imbalanced classes &c, but if, like you, they're familiar with details of play that you adopt as rulings, it should be comfortable enough for them as a process.

Is there something in 5th Edition akin to (the 4th Edition) Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies?

No. 3e-style PrCs would probably be the most-nearly-compatible thing along those lines you might add to 5e, since it can use 3e-style MCing.

I pretty much play 5e like I played 4e; but, I played 4e pretty much how I played 1e.

That I could see.

 

[Ristamar]

I co-opted some of the planar changes, though I don't use any of the Primordial/Dawn War material.

 

[Gradine]

I also lean heavily on 4e monster design, though I was doing that when I was still running 3.5 also. I haven't enough opportunities to run 5e to have a handle on the math yet but I'm sure that'll come when I get back to DMing.

 

[iserith]

Nah, I run each edition of D&D as individual, different games each with their own play experiences. D&D 4e does D&D 4e better than D&D 5e can and I still have access to both games (including the Character Builder). So I run both.

Of course, that doesn't stop me from forgetting the rules of the edition I play the least (D&D 4e, in this case). It comes back to me though plus the players are helpful in this regard.

 

[The_Gneech]

Another one who uses 4E to inspire monster tweaking and design. I want my creatures to do so much more than "multiattack until they die."

Beyond that, I don't really go beyond the 4E legacy that's already there.

-The Gneech

 

[MoonSong]

I have some houserules to make 5e more 4e-like. Who has time to wrestle with the arcane daily xp budgets(ughh math....*)? Better to have everybody on a short rest schedule and be able to improvise encounters on the fly. And 4e monsters are more fun and less meaty -mathy*?-

*Yeah maybe picking a degree on applied math wasn't a good idea

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

4e lover who plays 5e reporting in, I have a revised item system that fits the notion of player empowerment with things like magic items to 5e's balance assumptions. Character Creation is point buy only, we use 4e crit rules (max out the damage from the initial damage die).

 

[cbwjm]

For casters in 5e I will tend to give 1 spell/spell level and write that out so that I have all I need to run it. I don't bother with a list of spells which might require me to check through the book to confirm what the spell does. Makes it much easier to run.

 

[Tallifer]

4e lover who plays 5e reporting in, I have a revised item system that fits the notion of player empowerment with things like magic items to 5e's balance assumptions. Character Creation is point buy only, we use 4e crit rules (max out the damage from the initial damage die).

Would you mind giving details? I loved the treasure parcel system and the expected wealth per level. Made life far simpler as a dungeon master, and more enjoyable for certain of my players.