D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[dave2008]

I really never read a 3e book. 3.5e's problem is its an eye killer. I mean, I'm kinda old! That sucker was harder than heck to read! The fonts are too small, the contrast with the non-white page is less, etc.

Yes! I completely skipped 3.5e primarily for this reason. I hated the presentation and graphic design (I had a similar problem with 2e).

4e again takes the cake here, it uses larger/easier to read fonts, and doesn't try to play games with colors where it shouldn't.

Yep, totally a big reason why I came back to D&D. That being said I do also enjoy 5e's middle of the road approach. I find it more pleasing the eye than 4e if not as clear. I do miss the icons too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Its like reading through the spells sections in any other editions of D&D, but included with the section on class description itself. In 3.5 spells went from page 197 to 303, so 107 pages.

Not a perfect analogy as rituals are broken out separately in their own chapter the way spells used to be.

Most classes in the 4e PH have about 10-11 pages of powers. That is still a bit much to read through straight in a go. Then replicate that for the seven other classes. Still less than reading straight through the 3.5 PH spells.

You know, I GMed 4e for 10 years straight, game after game, and I have never read through the list of powers of any class in order, not once. Skimmed, perhaps. Definitely read specific slots worth of powers, all of a PP or ED, etc. Classes I have not played or GMed, I have some notion of what their powers are like, sure, but I have probably never read 80% of them.

So, if you play a class 1-30, yes, you probably will read all that, but otherwise there's little point in doing so, unless you find it interesting.

 

[Voadam]

Nerds

I've read Moldvay Basic, the 1e PH, the 3.0 PH, the 4e PH, and the 5e PH cover to cover.

I expect I am an outlier though.

When I deeply get into a new system I really like to read the core book all the way so I at least have a sense of it RAW as opposed to just overlaying some of it on my own experience with D&D. With variant systems of ones I am familiar with (2e, 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, etc.) I am comfortable with just skimming for changes and new stuff and jumping around to pick up stuff. In games where I am just a player I am comfortable just reading some stuff relevant to building my character.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The one thing I think that worked in Essentials favor was that it split the difference in usefulness vs presentation to appeal to both sides of the equation. @Laurefindel is right in that the presentation of the original 4E PHB was such a move away from the faux-medieval style of book presentation that it rubbed some people the wrong way. The fact that all the powers in the original 4E PHB were also written in that "game card" power card style with the green, red, and black borders was also a large jump away from faux-medieval immersion and into more of a "game", with those cards able to be printed out as used as though they were for a customizable card game (for better or worse). For some people it didn't bother them or even were a boon... but for others it was a leap too far.

Essentials removed the "game card" style of power description and went back to more of the classic "spell listing" for better or worse. Had the game originally started that way... I do wonder if there wouldn't have been as much of a blowback? There would be some still obviously (because there always is some)... but I do think a lot of people would have had less of a reflexive reaction against it had the Essentials style been used from the get go.

But let's also not forget that any one of us could turn a whole heap of 5E martial maneuvers and magic spells right now back nto the 4E green/red/black power card style if we wanted to, as most of the abilities are really not much different. You can re-write the 5E Fireball spell into the 4E power card style to match if that is your preference. And all the cantrips into green at-will cards? Easy-peasy. Sure a number of spells won't match exactly between the 4E and 5E counterparts (because not all 5E spells would fall into the Burst/Blast effect areas that 4E used)... but with a subtle addition to standard 4E verbiage you could get most combat spells at the very least formulated in a similar way. A lot of the mechanics at a baseline between 4E and 5E abilities/features/powers really aren't as different as people go on about, it's really just how they are presented that makes them seem widely disparate.

 

[Pedantic]

The one thing I think that worked in Essentials favor was that it split the difference in usefulness vs presentation to appeal to both sides of the equation. @Laurefindel is right in that the presentation of the original 4E PHB was such a move away from the faux-medieval style of book presentation that it rubbed some people the wrong way. The fact that all the powers in the original 4E PHB were also written in that "game card" power card style with the green, red, and black borders was also a large jump away from faux-medieval immersion and into more of a "game", with those cards able to be printed out as used as though they were for a customizable card game (for better or worse). For some people it didn't bother them or even were a boon... but for others it was a leap too far.

I've always thought it was more the unified resource schedule than the presentation that was so initially off-putting, but I don't think there's any way to tease that apart after the fact now.

 

[Undrave]

You know, I GMed 4e for 10 years straight, game after game, and I have never read through the list of powers of any class in order, not once. Skimmed, perhaps. Definitely read specific slots worth of powers, all of a PP or ED, etc. Classes I have not played or GMed, I have some notion of what their powers are like, sure, but I have probably never read 80% of them.

So, if you play a class 1-30, yes, you probably will read all that, but otherwise there's little point in doing so, unless you find it interesting.

And as a GM you really didn't have to. As long as the power/feat was official I was fairly confident I didn't need to micromanage what the players picked. If they they use a power they can just tell you what it does.

Essentials removed the "game card" style of power description and went back to more of the classic "spell listing" for better or worse. Had the game originally started that way... I do wonder if there wouldn't have been as much of a blowback? There would be some still obviously (because there always is some)... but I do think a lot of people would have had less of a reflexive reaction against it had the Essentials style been used from the get go.

Essentials still had power blocks, but in addition to the description in italics in the box they added this superfluous block of text before each one of them that just really made the whole thing feel MORE tedious to me. Lot of those additional text blocks ended up being repetitive.

But let's also not forget that any one of us could turn a whole heap of 5E martial maneuvers and magic spells right now back nto the 4E green/red/black power card style if we wanted to, as most of the abilities are really not much different. You can re-write the 5E Fireball spell into the 4E power card style to match if that is your preference. And all the cantrips into green at-will cards? Easy-peasy. Sure a number of spells won't match exactly between the 4E and 5E counterparts (because not all 5E spells would fall into the Burst/Blast effect areas that 4E used)... but with a subtle addition to standard 4E verbiage you could get most combat spells at the very least formulated in a similar way. A lot of the mechanics at a baseline between 4E and 5E abilities/features/powers really aren't as different as people go on about, it's really just how they are presented that makes them seem widely disparate.

We DO have spell cards in 5e... I bought the ones for the Druid and the Xanathar one (so I didn't have to buy the book ).

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've always thought it was more the unified resource schedule than the presentation that was so initially off-putting, but I don't think there's any way to tease that apart after the fact now.

The resource schedules themselves I'd say no, because they pretty much all map to the schedules of like 3E except worded differently. An "encounter power" is just nothing more than a 3E resource that lasts 1/round per level and you have enough of them per day that you can use them every fight (unless you're running the prototypical crawl where the expectation is 6-8 encounters per day, but which we all know people don't ever run).

Now if we're talking that every class had the same resource schedule... that does have some merit. But I do think the 4E presentation made that sameness more evident and feel like a bigger thing than it might otherwise have felt if the powers were presented differently. But there is something to be said that had the power sources each had their own resource schedule (either different numbers of green/red/black powers or acquired at different levels) and made the classes themselves feel more different, it certainly wouldn't have hurt.

 

[James Gasik]

The resource schedules themselves I'd say no, because they pretty much all map to the schedules of like 3E except worded differently. An "encounter power" is just nothing more than a 3E resource that lasts 1/round per level and you have enough of them per day that you can use them every fight (unless you're running the prototypical crawl where the expectation is 6-8 encounters per day, but which we all know people don't ever run).

Now if we're talking that every class had the same resource schedule... that does have some merit. But I do think the 4E presentation made that sameness more evident and feel like a bigger thing than it might otherwise have felt if the powers were presented differently. But there is something to be said that had the power sources each had their own resource schedule (either different numbers of green/red/black powers or acquired at different levels) and made the classes themselves feel more different, it certainly wouldn't have hurt.

I don't know about that; 5e has several classes on different resource schedules and that just seems to cause more problems than it solves, IMO.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Essentials still had power blocks, but in addition to the description in italics in the box they added this superfluous block of text before each one of them that just really made the whole thing feel MORE tedious to me. Lot of those additional text blocks ended up being repetitive.

We DO have spell cards in 5e... I bought the ones for the Druid and the Xanathar one (so I didn't have to buy the book ).

Like I said... some people thought the power card style of 4E was a boon. I don't fault you for preferring it. It just made it harder to widen the game's reach is all.

And yeah, the game does have spell cards, indeed... but they've never been brought up by almost anyone as being at all an important part of the game. I suspect most of us never even think they exist, LOL.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't know about that; 5e has several classes on different resource schedules and that just seems to cause more problems than it solves, IMO.

How do you mean? All the spellcasters have resource schedules for their spells that are completely different than any schedules the Fighters, Rogues, Monks, and Barbarians have... and that truly makes the martial classes appear and feel different than the casters. And that's never seemed to be a real problem.

If you're talking about specific class features like on the Short Rest / Long Rest axis, then sure some DMs won't be able to balance them. But I don't think people have bounced off of 5E for the Short Rest / Long Rest issues in nearly the same number as people bounced off of 4E due to every class being AEDU in the exact same level format.

But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong.