D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[Warpiglet-7]

So, classes are all the same, but are also completely different and that is also a problem?


4e is the enemy. As long as you are criticising it, you are signalling to the world (or yourself) that you are on the "right" side. Whether those criticisms are factually accurate or even self-consistent is beside the point.


That first point is debatable. The second is so clearly nonsense that I wish I could say it was surprising, but of course it isn't.

_
glass.

Respectfully, this is maybe true of some people but I bought tons of 4e stuff including modules and boxed sets.

I did not like the game. My friends did not like it. We didn’t hang out at game stores and during those years I was not talking about it online. I did not know it was trendy to dislike it.

I am not going to tear 4e down in order to prove 5e is special.

There are people like me who sincerely did not like it. I am not signaling anything and don’t think ill of people who liked it.

To assume people that wanted something other than 4e are just posturing does not seem very realistic.

 

[clearstream]

I am not going to tear 4e down in order to prove 5e is special.

4e's courageous direction - built out from ideas in 3.5e's Book of Nine Swords - explored design space and was of importance to 5e's success. I don't think we'd have a D&D version as successful as 5e, were it not for 4e.

 

[Nightfly]

4e's courageous direction - built out from ideas in 3.5e's Book of Nine Swords - explored design space and was of importance to 5e's success. I don't think we'd have a D&D version as successful as 5e, were it not for 4e.

Absolutely true. 4e taught the 5e designers that fighters could be complex, for example. The Battlemaster fighter is very mechanically different than the 4e fighter, but they're clearly trying to scratch the same itch. 5e also kept the "laser cleric" concept, the idea that wizards should be strong right at first level, that Vancian casting is awful and needs to die, that hard-coded alignment effects aren't necessary... I could go on. 5e looks nothing like 4e, but it managed to bring along many of 4e's best ideas.

One of my hopes for the 50th anniversary edition is that they lean even further into that. Now that the 4e haters aren't foaming at the mouth any more, I think they can salvage even more from 4e's design. Starting with the monsters, please! 4e monsters were great.

 

[Parmandur]

Absolutely true. 4e taught the 5e designers that fighters could be complex, for example. The Battlemaster fighter is very mechanically different than the 4e fighter, but they're clearly trying to scratch the same itch. 5e also kept the "laser cleric" concept, the idea that wizards should be strong right at first level, that Vancian casting is awful and needs to die, that hard-coded alignment effects aren't necessary... I could go on. 5e looks nothing like 4e, but it managed to bring along many of 4e's best ideas.

One of my hopes for the 50th anniversary edition is that they lean even further into that. Now that the 4e haters aren't foaming at the mouth any more, I think they can salvage even more from 4e's design. Starting with the monsters, please! 4e monsters were great.

Well, we already have a huge dose of revised monster examples, between Ravenloft, Witchlight, Fizban's, Strixhaven, Monsters of the Multiverse, and Spelljammer. They seem to have that part mapped out for the future.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, I absolutely am. Why wouldn't those "count"...? Usable game material is usable game material.

Because that's not supplements...adventures are almost entirely DM-only content. Plenty of people do not count adventures as part of the stuff specifically because of that reason.

This is not weird. People have been speaking of it that way long before 5e existed.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

4e's courageous direction - built out from ideas in 3.5e's Book of Nine Swords - explored design space and was of importance to 5e's success. I don't think we'd have a D&D version as successful as 5e, were it not for 4e.

There you go. Maybe I like parts of it!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Absolutely true. 4e taught the 5e designers that fighters could be complex, for example. The Battlemaster fighter is very mechanically different than the 4e fighter, but they're clearly trying to scratch the same itch. 5e also kept the "laser cleric" concept, the idea that wizards should be strong right at first level, that Vancian casting is awful and needs to die, that hard-coded alignment effects aren't necessary... I could go on. 5e looks nothing like 4e, but it managed to bring along many of 4e's best ideas.

One of my hopes for the 50th anniversary edition is that they lean even further into that. Now that the 4e haters aren't foaming at the mouth any more, I think they can salvage even more from 4e's design. Starting with the monsters, please! 4e monsters were great.

I have a post you may wish to read (now my second-most up voted post after the one about toxicity in the fandom, a milestone I am actually rather proud of) which goes into rather deep detail on this subject, that is, how 5e is (and, mostly, is not) like 4e.

Suffice it to say, if you only wish a high-level overview, that IMO more the lion's share of the things supposedly kept from 4e have in fact been turned into the exact opposite of what they were before while keeping only a surface veneer of similarity. This is one of the three main reasons so many 4e fans feel very snubbed by 5e. (The other two being, firstly, the designers themselves, particularly Mearls, openly using anti-4e edition war rhetoric, and secondly the absolute excision of all classes 4e added to the game: no Warlord, Avenger, Invoker, Shaman, Warden, nothing Psionic, etc. That they had the gall to call certain flavors of Paladin "avengers" and "wardens" was particularly bothersome, at least to me: it made clear they knew what they were doing, that this wasn't just ignorance or apathy but an intentional expunging of 4e-related concepts and structures while still trying to pay lip service to the idea that 4e had been included in the so-called "big tent.")

 

[Parmandur]

Because that's not supplements...adventures are almost entirely DM-only content. Plenty of people do not count adventures as part of the stuff specifically because of that reason.

This is not weird. People have been speaking of it that way long before 5e existed.

Dude, I've been buying multiple D&D books a year for 8 years. It has never fallen to "1 or no vooms a year." Adventure books are full of usable material, it's an artifical distinction to say that they don't "count" as "real" D&D books.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Dude, I've been buying multiple D&D books a year for 8 years. It has never fallen to "1 or no vooms a year." Adventure books are full of usable material, it's an artifical distinction to say that they don't "count" as "real" D&D books.

Hell I might buy the spelljammer stuff just to read.

I am also mining the saltmarsh stuff for nautical material not knowing where it will go

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Dude, I've been buying multiple D&D books a year for 8 years. It has never fallen to "1 or no vooms a year." Adventure books are full of usable material, it's an artifical distinction to say that they don't "count" as "real" D&D books.

All discussions of book types are artificially limited. They've published novels, no one counts those.