D&D 4E Edition Experience - Did/Do You Play 4th Edition D&D? How Was/Is it?

[Harzel]

I chose "Never played but would like to". "Never played" is just a fact". I'd like to because, from various descriptions, it sounds like it had a number of interesting features that I would like to experience first-hand. OTOH, from those same descriptions, it doesn't sound like a game that is likely to supplant 5e in terms of personal favor for me. Indeed, it sounds rather like some of the things that I rather dislike about 5e (nothing is perfect) have their origins in 4e. So I think I kind of want a fling, not a long-term relationship.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Say hello to my little friend. This is Chillreaver, an Exarch of Tiamat who appeared in the Scales of War adventure path for 4th edition in Dungeon magazine. He lived in a floating ice palace, served by arctic sahuagin and I forget the rest because the campaign was a long, convoluted mess sprinkled with some real memorable spots. In a way, it was not unlike the edition itself, which I enjoyed so much despite the obvious faults and problematic issues. Please feel free to use him for whatever game or edition you are running!

Here's the thing. We know how these threads usually go. Nobody can like their favorite thing without someone else making a point about them not liking it because of whatever reasons, and those reasons must be validated, cited, and documented for further evaluations on their merits before they can be accepted as valid arguments, etc.

I've said my peace on the matter many times before. I will not contribute to another predictable discussion by saying the same things. 4e was my favorite edition to date, even as I now turn to run 5e games online. Just like every other edition before, I take my favorite bits with me. This time, it is a two-headed white dragon for my roll20 games. And I'm really hoping that none of my players will notice or care what edition it came from.

But I have to wonder how many players miss an experience fighting Chillreaver because someone refused so stubbornly and vehemently to look at an entire edition because they decided "it's like an MMO" or "it's not D&D"? What does that have to do with anything about a game that has been evolving and finding its place for decades? It seems to me the game has finally settled down and grown up. We, however, are still trying to catch up.

At least Chillreaver will be able to make it into a few more virtual game tables.

 

[Hussar]

On the MMO comparison.

I can see why people make the MMO comparison, but, IMO, it kinda misses a few key points.

4e wasn't designed for the MMO crowd; it was designed for the Online Play crowd - RPGA being the breeding ground. When you look at the actual mechanics of 4e, virtually none of them translate into a real time video game. There are so many undo, counter, and counter counters that it would be impossible to put them in an MMO.

But, in virtual table top play, over an X-box (which was the original plan), oh, yeah. They would be FANTASTIC. The VTT can track all those fiddly modifiers, and all those other bits and let you just play. If you played with a healthy, long lasting group, then sure, 4e would be something of a turn off. Particularly in the opening days. Because, 4e wasn't really meant for that. It was meant so that five strangers could get together, at a moments notice, and play D&D without any real hiccups.

Which is where the similarities to MMO play comes in. It's the same sort of idea - you take your character, log on, and start playing. Next time you log in, you can log in with completely different people and know that you're going to have a pretty decent time. It's the model that RPGA aspired to taken to the next level.

Which, of course, ran into some serious snags. The VTT never happened being the big one. So, now you have an audience that is MUCH smaller than was expected, being told to play in a way that they don't need to be told to do. Add to that some blindingly stupid marketing choices.

It's not really that 4e "feels like an MMO". It's 4e feels like organized play, which in turn feels like an MMO. It's a totally understandable feeling, particularly if you've never really played with strangers, which, at the tail end of 3e, most D&D gamers probably hadn't. VTT's at the time were miniscule and largely looked down on. The RPGA was also a pretty small slice of active gamers. Most existing gamers didn't need mechanics to prevent a bag of rats situation because, well, they had healthy tables with friends they could just pelt with dice in a good natured way until the offending player stopped being an ass hat.

But, if you're expecting large percentages of the players of your game to be playing with strangers, and routinely playing with strangers, then you need a game that is FAR more idiot proof than something like 3e. There's a reason the RPGA play document at the tail end of 3e was many, many pages long.

Like a lot of the criticisms of 4e, they are valid, but, generally aren't digging deeply enough to work as actual criticisms. "Plays like an MMO" doesn't really mean very much and, as has been shown in this thread, is really debatable. "Plays like it was meant for organized play" can be supported with actual evidence, both in the text of the game, and the events of the time.

 

[happyhermit]

Nooo! This is the kind of reasonable post that got me to invest so much time and energy in 4e! Thankfully I am definitely older and hopefully wiser, at least in this very particular area, or maybe it's just that I have given my S.O permission to slap me if I ever try 4e again. I will try not to dispute everything I disagree with now, but just a couple;

.... Still, it is VERY true that they are nothing alike in their details. I think 4e designers looked at WoW and other online games and then went back and had that information in their minds when they came up with goals and processes for the design of 4e, but they didn't carry over any of the particulars. As others have said, 4e's roles are NOTHING like their WoW equivalents, but 4e clarifies how classes and parties work by leveraging the role concept into an explicit framework.

To me this is kind of like how someone can correctly argue "This cat is nothing like that one, it's a different breed and colour entirely." when in the context of the larger cat family they are nearly identical, let alone among mammals or animals in general.

For example; 4e classes having discrete powers on AEDU, everybody getting new powers on leveling up. From a game design point of view you can draw a lot of parallels to WOW (and other games including non-D&D ttrpgs).

In contrast, you can look at other editions; Vancian casting, very asymmetric classes, different recharge rates, different abilities gained on lvl up, etc. There are simply few parallels to draw with a game like WOW.

This is, frankly, the main reason to like 4e. Whenever it does something, the design is intentionally organized around "what will play well?".

That's a very good reason, however I'm sorry to say that my conclusion after much effort is that certainly for myself the answer to that question is unfortunately "no". I have coalesced a lot of reason for why that is IMO, probably not too productive to bring them all up here. However after watching and listening to a fair bit of 4e LP (including Critical Hit, a podcast I referenced that love 4e and still play it like 10 years later) I can't help but come to the conclusion that it doesn't always work that well for people who still love it. If anyone had some recorded examples of fun 4e where they stick to the rules I would be interested in looking at it. This group, despite much effort, still has troubles remembering powers/feats/abilities/temporary bonuses, niche rules, etc. and they encounter/skill challenge guidelines still fail to provide the expected outcomes routinely.

Think about teleportation. In previous editions this ability is practically game-breaking at higher levels. ...

At this point I feel like 4e eliminated many of the strategic uses for magic by putting a lot of arbitrary stipulations on things "essentially not-in-combat" for example, but then by higher level many of these things could become "problematic" again. The podcast I mentioned is currently at epic tier and scrying/sending and such is very much in the "problematic" area if it weren't for a good GM and players. I have been more impressed by the 5e approach in general ie; Knock lets you pick a lock, but at a cost and with a complication. Or the way resurrection magic uses diamonds so I can easily vary their availability in-fiction to achieve the desired level. It could be better, I still don't like divination magic in general, but I thing they were on the right track.

But far beyond that, the very processes of the game are friendly to telling a story. Skill Challenges allow measured progress that lets the players know objectively what the value of a given tactic is, whereas in a game like 5e who knows? You make a skill check in 5e, how much progress did that represent towards your goal? As much as the DM felt like it being. So how can you know if it was worth the cost? You cannot. In 4e I'm in a Complexity 1 SC, that success is 25% of me achieving my goal.

Skill Challenges are one of the things I was very excited for but at this point I actively dislike. There are many different ways of running them, and the math was all over the place, but I have just been disappointed with them so many times. Now, I must say that in the podcast I keep mentioning there were some very memorable skill challenges. However, they don't run them strictly by the book and almost all of those are due to the party failing, often epically, (which seems to have gotten progressively less fun for everyone each time it happens) or players trying to shoehorn hilarious things into skills that don't belong or "abusing" narrative power.

This sounds really negative, I know, but I have thought about it quite a bit, and that's the one thing I can thank 4e for. It really made me consider what I do and don't like in games, specifically ttrpgs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, my conception of what was "typical" for 4e was the adventures and reported experiences (say on forums like these). When I read the published modules, I realized immediately they would not fit how I constructed my adventures as written and they certainly didn't match how my group played. There was a lot of combat encounters, and like I said, I dispensed with any "throw-away combats" meant to drain resources like dailies or healing surges. Instead, I mined adventures for cool encounter ideas, used "Battle Challenges" (a free form type of skill challenge) for attrition combats and tweaked short/long rests.

IIRC, there was a common complaint about combat taking too long. I didn't have that concern myself but I did see the reason for it. First and foremost, I tried to switch things up. Some sessions were pure role-playing with a skill challenge or two. Other sessions (like a dungeon crawl) was a sessions of combat encounters. Generally speaking though, I liked having one set-piece battle and a separate skill challenge each session. Playing Dark Sun (and its generally higher damage levels and cool monster abilities) also helped make the combats memorable.

Yeah, our combats were things like a running battle in a collapsing mine filled with old mine carts running on rails, or shooting down a log flume into a sawmill full of ghost werewolves to save a girl strapped to the saw table! A flying battle with gargoyles on the bottom side of a floating castle while the PCs attempt to leap from their hippogryphs onto a ledge leading to a door. Just take every action adventure movie you ever saw and roll it all into one giant sleigh ride!
Sure, there were downtimes, cut scenes, intellectual skill challenges, etc. The 4e rules covered those pretty darn well, once you pretty much forgot what they told you about how to run them. The SC rules in DMG2 are actually quite good, but I totally admit DMG1 did them no justice, and the early mechanics were definitely improved by the errata and rewrite in DMG2.
Still, this is such a solid game. The only thing it doesn't really do super well is exactly reproduce the old module format of maps full of rooms (or equivalent) filled with monsters where you basically fight them sequentially. It just doesn't work, and it shouldn't work, and the fact that MM wrote H1 has always boggled my mind. Even that module DOES have some high points. The nasty kobold lair fight was kinda wicked, although still a bit too setpiece for my tastes.
This game is what we always imagined we wanted when we played AD&D and we could never ever have possibly gotten it out of that system, even though Gary, and the authors of 2e, insisted it was there. To play 5e, to go back to the tired paradigm of grinding in the dirt through dungeons, clearing rooms. I am just not inspired by that very much. Its an OK game, better than AD&D, but it ain't, cannot be, 4e.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I never felt like 4e was heavily WoW influenced, so much as it was CRPG influence.

One general design trend that reminds me of CRPGs was making the defender classes "sticky". In the past versions of D&D it wasn't quite intrinsic to the design of abset of classes to have marks and stickiness, although some items or spells might allow you to achieve that (like sentinel in 5e does, but it's not a core concept of fighters).

Another very specific design change from previous editions that echos CRPGs was the fact that wizards no longer had a spellbook. Instead they got just a little versatility in some of their power choices, but it was nothing like the greedy "gotta catch em all" lure that every other edition has as for wizards to pursue during their career. The fact that existing spells would disappear from what was described as a spellbook was even greater a change in feel.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I never felt like 4e was heavily WoW influenced, so much as it was CRPG influence.

One general design trend that reminds me of CRPGs was making the defender classes "sticky". In the past versions of D&D it wasn't quite intrinsic to the design of abset of classes to have marks and stickiness, although some items or spells might allow you to achieve that (like sentinel in 5e does, but it's not a core concept of fighters).

It was inherent to the design though. Only fighters (and their ilk) could REALLY go into melee and duke it out toe to toe with the monsters. What was the rule of melee in AD&D? You CANNOT LEAVE. There is no realistic way to disengage from melee combat, so a fighter is utterly infinitely sticky. If you don't kill him, you're not leaving, so he can suck the monsters up like glue! Now, DMs will reinterpret and use various contradictory elements of the game to lessen that, but actually what 4e did was regulate it. 3E got rid of it, 4e put it back and made it work.

Another very specific design change from previous editions that echos CRPGs was the fact that wizards no longer had a spellbook. Instead they got just a little versatility in some of their power choices, but it was nothing like the greedy "gotta catch em all" lure that every other edition has as for wizards to pursue during their career. The fact that existing spells would disappear from what was described as a spellbook was even greater a change in feel.

4e's spellbook is definitely a bit more abstract. OTOH what if it was written so that spells did NOT disappear? It could have been, but it would have added little, as few are the cases where you would want to go back to most lower level dailies, and the few that are THAT GOOD, like Sleep, you can always just keep. In AD&D each spell was an entire plot element and capability that had potentially infinite applications, so it makes a lot more sense there. Most powers are just combat tricks in 4e, any of them is fairly applicable and you don't desperately need to go back and memorize Wall of Iron instead of Fireball, like you would in 1e.

 

[Tonguez]

I never played it, had a look but wasnt impressed

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I was attracted to D&D because of how it was described, which basically amounted to "a playable fantasy novel which goes on forever", and there was some truth in that, but even 2E, which I dearly loved, the realities of the actual rules of the game meant that the amount of truth was limited.

That's a weird way for someone to try and pitch it, especially in 2E. Up that point, that had never been an aim that the rules had tried to deliver on.

Personally, the game had been advertised to me as an alternate world, with natural ecosystems, that I could explore and manipulate in any way my character was capable of - like Ultima Online, if it was actually real.

 

[Minigiant]

I always felt 4e more console RPG influenced than MMO influenced?

It felt more like a late 90 to late 00s Western or Japanese RPG than a MMO. Those RPGs were influenced by D&D but narrowed down and reienforced was each class was supposed to do. Console RPGS had classes that were narrow in scope but rarely failed at their "job" (whether or not you wanted that job was a different story). There was customization of abilities but enough to hit mulitple "jobs" unless that was the point.

That way your party can go from killing slimes and rats, to bandists and zombies, to orcs and giants, to dragons and demons all the way to main villian's sky fortress. And everyone mattered as the way combat, exploration, and socialization neer changed. It just got bigger.