D&D 4E Is there any D&D 4th computer game?

[Derren]

Come on now, the plate-clad warrior holding a shield and defending the back line was never a thing in D&D?

It was when you choose to play that way, but it was never hardcoded into the system before.

 

[Obryn]

It was when you choose to play that way, but it was never hardcoded into the system before.

Right, so it was finally fixed. The first similar implementations were in 3.5, with the Knight. And IIRC, Pathfinder has some "taunt" mechanics now, too.

3e's opportunity attacks were the first step towards an actual "protect the squishies" mechanic. It just didn't go quite far enough.

 

[keterys]

While they were called something else, fighters had the ability to either stop people cold from progressing people past them or getting free attacks in editions prior to 3e.

4E certainly attempted to make sure that every character had a useful function and tried to promote D&D has a team game, rather than as a game in which several people happened to be together with abilities that may or may not complement each other at all. Whether that's a problem you want solved probably decided a lot of things. I've seen people herald and complain about it, both.

I'll note that Slayers quite capably serve those who want an older style fighter whose role is only to be tough and hit things hard, without having any other special abilities. Having options is a good thing.

Personally, I think I'd have picked different roles. I also think I'd get lost trying to escape the baggage of the 4 core classes of dnd that are both too much (wizard, cleric) and too little (fighter) for people, so my tinkering would no doubt lead me to my own RPG instead of D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Please tell me a edition prior to 2004 where the job of the fighter was it to taunt enemies away from his companions.

It was when you choose to play that way, but it was never hardcoded into the system before.

It's not hardcoded into 4e either. If you want to play a different sort of warrior you can play a warlord, or a melee ranger (which doesn't carry any of the religious or wilderness baggage of earlier editions), straight out of the PHB. And as [MENTION=43019]keterys[/MENTION] has pointed out, you can now also play a slayer if you want a heavily-armoured non-defending warrior.

 

[Lokiare]

Note: There has only ever been one 4E computer game and that was the Neverwinter game on facebook. All the other games used 4E and D&D wording and IP, but were not based in any way on the 4E rule set. In fact DDO is closer to 4E than Neverwinter MMO is. So to answer the original threads question: No there weren't any good 4E electronic games...

 

[adamc]

Unfortunately anything WotC does in-house to do with software seems to automatically be crap. As much as I like the Character Builder and Monster Builder, they're still buggy, bloated and badly designed. And let's not even get into the website...

I agree, but then, software isn't one of their core competencies. What they _should_ do is sell subscriptions to the data and allow third-party developers to write tools that work against the data -- _if_ you have a subscription.

But I doubt they will. They don't seem very self-aware about what a wretched job they are doing there.

 

[Lokiare]

I agree, but then, software isn't one of their core competencies. What they _should_ do is sell subscriptions to the data and allow third-party developers to write tools that work against the data -- _if_ you have a subscription.

But I doubt they will. They don't seem very self-aware about what a wretched job they are doing there.

Well we are a few months out from the release of 5E and they haven't announced any plans for software tools, so maybe they learned their lesson.

Hopefully they'll license out the tools to a competent game company like Atari or whoever and contract in checks at each stage of design and development so they can make sure it works how its supposed to (Even the great game D&D:Tactics on PlayStation Portable had many errors and inadequacies in it).

This would be ideal and allow them to make a true online experience using a very customizable form of Neverwinter (not MMO) tool set with 3D mapping and a bestiary of monsters and all kinds of things like that. Character visualizers and animation software that makes the characters mouths move to match the voice coming over the voice software, possibly voice alteration so you could sound like an imposing dragon. Where the DM could change the view to force the players to look at things from the perspective of their characters. So they would be looking up at the imposing dragon with gouts of flame puffing out of its mouth as the DM speaks in a booming echoing voice.

This will never happen though unless some independent people come up with it. Anyone game?

 

[keterys]

Eh. The fact that they'd licensed out the rights to D&D computer games to Atari, who then got entangled in a legal battle over D&D Online is the primary reason we don't have a real 4E computer game.

So I'm not entirely sure that theory holds.

 

[Derren]

Hopefully they'll license out the tools to a competent game company like Atari or whoever and contract in checks at each stage of design and development so they can make sure it works how its supposed to (Even the great game D&D:Tactics on PlayStation Portable had many errors and inadequacies in it).

Atari is bankrupt, so no games from them.
And the other big studios/publishers already have fantasy RPGs on their own and likely no interest in creating in house competition.

 

[Lokiare]

Looking at how Fantasy Grounds works internally, it turns out you could automate NPC turns and create dialogs and things like that in an extension for the 4E rule set. So technically if someone wanted to, they could create a 4E game extension for a turn based game.