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

[Ruin Explorer]

One huge difference being that the Satanic Panic influence that drove a lot of 2e design (and led to a lot of "it's pandering to the 'moral majority'" reactions) wasn't really an issue with the 3e-4e transition.

Was it really a lot, though? I feel like this something I've heard people who played 1E in the US say, but I was in the UK, where the Satanic Panic wasn't really "a thing" (outside of a few poorly-regarded tabloids and the like), and none of the many 1E grognards I played with believed this. The had a lot of mean things to say about 2E, but literally the only "oh that's because of the Satanic Panic" thing any of them ever pointed out was the re-naming of the Demons/Devils/Daemons. Which with respect were dumb names anyway, because those aren't even different things! That's like having classes called Fighter, Warrior, and Soldier! Or Cleric, Priest, and Monk (oh wait... ).

What other stuff was there? I mean, 2E definitely has a massively more upbeat and less goth-y/metal-y tone than 1E, but was that "Satanic Panic", or was that because they wanted a broader appeal and/or D&D had changed?

Getting rid of roll-under was one of the worst design decisions they've made - and given some of what's been done over the editions, that's saying something.

Yeaaaah no. I don't think that's a point many people will agree with you on, and it's possible to scientifically demonstrate that people can work out whether they succeeded on more easily, and do the math associated with roll-over stuff significantly faster than roll-under stuff.

 

[Lanefan]

(The level-up thing alone made a huge difference. Back in 3E and very early 4E we lost so much time to players turning up to a session and needing to do leveling at the table - not because they they forgot, but rather because they needed the books and stuff to do it, which they didn't all have. Often that was 20-60 minutes, especially if the whole group hadn't done it. Getting that much extra session time every few sessions was amazing.)

Any game where level-up takes that long is not a game for me.

Assuming efficiency on the parts of both the player and the DM (a big assumption, I know!) level-up shouldn't take more 3-5 minutes for a non-caster or 5-8 minutes for a caster. DM takes a minute to assign training costs and determine how long said training takes (might go longer if training is for some reason hard to find). Anything requiring more than that is IMO too complicated to be worth bothering with.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Any game where level-up takes that long is not a game for me.

Assuming efficiency on the parts of both the player and the DM (a big assumption, I know!) level-up shouldn't take more 3-5 minutes for a non-caster or 5-8 minutes for a caster. DM takes a minute to assign training costs and determine how long said training takes (might go longer if training is for some reason hard to find). Anything requiring more than that is IMO too complicated to be worth bothering with.

Feats were the main hold-up in both 3E and 4E, in my experience. There were too many of them, you got a lot of them, and it was often quite difficult to decide which one to pick, even once you narrowed it down to a list of best candidates.

 

[Lanefan]

I actually like combat. Is it bad that I liked combat? Sometimes it feels like you're not supposed to enjoy DnD combat, that's it bad and gauche to enjoy bashing the monsters: you should love the social play and the ROLEPLAYING not the ROLLPLAYING (augh)... but I really enjoy a GOOD cinematic fight in an interesting environment, on either side of the screen.

I like combat too.

But I also like exploration and I also like roleplay.

Spending an average of about 1/3 of the session on each seems just fine.

From all I can see from a non-player's viewpoint (i.e. going by what I read here from those who played 4e) however, the breakdown in time wasn't 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess I never in my life conceived of studying physics through gaming, even when I played earlier editions.

I don't so much want to study and learn physics through gaming, I want to apply the physics I already know to gaming.

There's a difference.

 

[Lanefan]

Was it really a lot, though? I feel like this something I've heard people who played 1E in the US say, but I was in the UK, where the Satanic Panic wasn't really "a thing" (outside of a few poorly-regarded tabloids and the like), and none of the many 1E grognards I played with believed this. The had a lot of mean things to say about 2E, but literally the only "oh that's because of the Satanic Panic" thing any of them ever pointed out was the re-naming of the Demons/Devils/Daemons. Which with respect were dumb names anyway, because those aren't even different things! That's like having classes called Fighter, Warrior, and Soldier! Or Cleric, Priest, and Monk (oh wait... ).

What other stuff was there? I mean, 2E definitely has a massively more upbeat and less goth-y/metal-y tone than 1E, but was that "Satanic Panic", or was that because they wanted a broader appeal and/or D&D had changed?

Removal of Demons etc. was one. Removal of Half-Orcs and Assassins was another, and anything else that even hinted that PCs could be anything other than Good. Removal of various occult-like summoning and banishing spells and effects was another, along with making good and sure there wasn't an occult symbol (or anything that could be construed as one) within miles of any 2e artwork.

During 2e's lifespan much of this was mitigated or reversed, but on initial release it was very noticeable.

Yeaaaah no. I don't think that's a point many people will agree with you on, and it's possible to scientifically demonstrate that people can work out whether they succeeded on more easily, and do the math associated with roll-over stuff significantly faster than roll-under stuff.

You're confusing roll-under with subtraction, wich for some reason does confuse people a bit more than addition.

Roll under simply means to roll lower than a target. Target's 13. Roll 8. You're good.

 

[Aldarc]

If somebody says "It felt video-gamey to me." why don't you just take them at their word?
Of course YOU don't see/feel it.
And it's not how I'd describe it.
But maybe that person is describing it the best they can.

Honestly, it's not because of my experiences discussing 4e with strangers on an internet web forum, but my experiences from discussing 4e with friends. One of my friends was clearly, as per what Hussar mentions, parroting internet talking points about 4e feeling "video-gamey." I asked what about it felt "video-gamey." He couldn't answer. When I asked if he played the game, he said that he didn't, but that he read the rules. When I asked his opinion about basic rules, he looked at me funny, because - as it turns out - he hadn't actually read the rules. There was a lot of ignorance about the Year 1 basics of the game. My friend was far from the only person I personally talked to where I had to go through a similar song and dance. Hating on 4e was a cool thing to do and expressing a like of 4e was NOT the hip thing, and so there was a lot of parroting of internet talking points from positions of ignorance out there. Everyone? No. But was it out there? Most definitely.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Removal of Demons etc. was one. Removal of Half-Orcs and Assassins was another, and anything else that even hinted that PCs could be anything other than Good. Removal of various occult-like summoning and banishing spells and effects was another, along with making good and sure there wasn't an occult symbol (or anything that could be construed as one) within miles of any 2e artwork.

During 2e's lifespan much of this was mitigated or reversed, but on initial release it was very noticeable.

I mean, I wouldn't say any of that was "a lot of 2E's design", though. I mean, obviously my perspective is biased because I started with 2E, and even later I played a lot more RC D&D than 1E, but I'm not really seeing removing one unpopular race (1E was pretty much human and elf-town in my experience and by all accounts I've heard), and one unpopular class (I remember the same 1E grogs I played with sneering at assassins a lot and I've never heard a good word about them online from other 1E vets) being a big deal. And 2E certainly seemed to allow for non-Good PCs. Indeed, if it was so against it, why were so many of our early 2E PCs Neutral rather than Good? A lust for gold, power, or were we just born with hearts full of neutrality?

Not sure what spells/rituals are being referred to. I'm not aware of any spells/rituals that are in 1E corebooks but not 2E ones. Can you give any examples? Looking the subject of 1E-2E changes up I can't see a single "evil" spell being removed.

You're confusing roll-under with subtraction, wich for some reason does confuse people a bit more than addition.

Roll under simply means to roll lower than a target. Target's 13. Roll 8. You're good.

Yup, but in most roll-under systems, you need to use subtraction to do bonuses (which is inherently counter-intuitive). Humans are simply, as a matter of scientifically demonstrable fact, less good at subtraction than addition. There's probably away around that, but I suspect that will also be counter-intuitive.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Earlier I was thinking about the subject of 4E trash-talking previous editions, and it did, albeit in a clearly "jokey" way, which doesn't remove the sting entirely, but it didn't "throw them under the bus", it just mocked them. More than it should have, and it backfired, but that's what it did.

But I think what people maybe forget a little conveniently, is that the 5E team actually threw 4E "under the bus", as it were. I mean, is that hyperbole? Yeah a little, but a lot the early messaging on 5E was pretty keen to say "Yeah 4E sucked, we know!" and very keen to stress how they weren't taking stuff from 4E, and they often clearly intentionally avoided drawing attention to the actually quite-large number of elements that they were drawing from 4E, describing them in terms that disconnected them from 4E, changing terminology, and so on.

This isn't a point of edition war. I'm a dual-citizen of 4E and 5E. I mean, or a naturalized immigrant to the great country of 5E or whatever. Neither edition is "better" or "worse", because of it, but I think it is worth remembering in the context of the broadly-agreed point that 4E insulted previous editions and this was a mistake. 5E insulted 4E, and it clearly worked out for it. So we can dispose of the notion that insulting previous editions is automatically a stupid tactic in all circumstances. It was a stupid tactic when 4E did it, because it was ill-judged and all it could do was harm (D&D already dominated the market). Whereas 5E used it more intelligently, specifically to win back people who had gone over to Pathfinder, to OSR games, or just stopped playing D&D (and it seems like it was very effective).

 

[BrokenTwin]

I still wish they kept healing surges from 4E. The hit die recovery mechanic serves a similar function, but without (to me) the most important factor of it: because healing spells used the target's healing surges, they both dodged the problem of the spells healing proportionally 'more' of a fragile character's hit points, and provided a relatively hard cap on daily healing. Casting a healing spell on a front liner always felt good, because you knew you were giving them enough health to actually matter. And tanky classes having more healing surges directly represented their ability to recover from harm and keep going without requiring more total hit points. Plus, being able to burn my players' healing surges from environmental hazards was a great way to show the characters were exposed to risk without directly damaging them. It functioned as a nice exhaustion track in that way as well.

But MAN healing surges were misunderstood by the anti-4E crowd.