D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[Voadam]

3e was a lot of stand still or five feet step so you could full attack. 5e is a lot of close then stay next to the enemy to avoid provoking attacks.

4e had a lot of movement powers for more maneuvering in combat in general.

 

[pemerton]

3e was a lot of stand still or five feet step so you could full attack. 5e is a lot of close then stay next to the enemy to avoid provoking attacks.

4e had a lot of movement powers for more maneuvering in combat in general.

4e combat is visceral all-round. Eg when a giant hits you, they knock you back or knock you over. When a dragon breathes on you, there are lingering flames and burning. When a terrible undead turns to look at you, you fall back in terror from its horrific visage. Etc.

 

[Staffan]

"Where there's a whip there's a will, my slugs. Hold up! I'd give you a nice freshener now, only you'll get as much lash as your skins will carry when you come in late to your camp. Do you good. Don't you know we're at war?"

Needs an orc choir.

 

[Zaukrie]

3e was a lot of stand still or five feet step so you could full attack. 5e is a lot of close then stay next to the enemy to avoid provoking attacks.

4e had a lot of movement powers for more maneuvering in combat in general.

This.
It's also why I love and hate opportunity attacks in 5e.

I miss all the movement of 4e

 

[Kannik]

3e was a lot of stand still or five feet step so you could full attack. 5e is a lot of close then stay next to the enemy to avoid provoking attacks.

4e had a lot of movement powers for more maneuvering in combat in general.

Yes, yes, and more YES! Dynamic encounters of moving participants and shifting situations that 'forced' you to be attentive and responsive. And the features of the location often also would play a role and could be used.

 

[cavalier973]

I like that the orc chieftain can order another orc that just got killed to make one more attack—and the dead orc does it!

I like that all the Monster Vault orcs already have the ability to make one last attack when dropping to zero hit points.

Edit: rereading the orc chieftain’s power, it says “ally”, so it doesn’t have to be an orc.

 

[Red Castle]

I love the first time a new player to 4e realise that kobolds have more than 4HP (minions excluded of course). I just love kobolds… sneaky bastards…

I remember as a DM instantly falling in love with the multiple role of monsters and the joy of building diverse encounters… it’s not just a kobold, it’s a kobold skirmisher, a kobold dragonshield, a wyrmpriest… so much flavor, and yet consistant with each other by giving them all the same shifty ability…

 

[Voadam]

4e combat is visceral all-round. Eg when a giant hits you, they knock you back or knock you over. When a dragon breathes on you, there are lingering flames and burning. When a terrible undead turns to look at you, you fall back in terror from its horrific visage. Etc.

At its best and usually more so than other editions of D&D. Often mechanics and narrative and visceral feel in the combat all worked well together.

I occasionally ran into instances where there are monsters with poorly done out descriptions so you are just going off the mechanics description and it placed a lot of weight on the DM to make things visceral and not just abstract game mechanics. How exactly are you slid in closer by the enemy 30 feet away? Does the undead death knight's terrible glance cause you to recoil or does he do a witcher force blast or shove you back with a shield bash?

 

[pemerton]

MM3 in particular has some monsters that are more challenging; some are also very interesting. Here are some old posts of mine:

There are some 4e monsters that I think can be tricky to bring to life in a story sense, but neither the OGre Warhulk nor the Goblin Blackblade seems to me to be an instance (the two instances that stick out in my mind of the many 4e monsters that I've used are the Pact Hag and the Chained Cambion - both from MM3, which of the various 4e monster books is the one that pushes hardest in linking mechanics to concepts, I think).

I think the Pact Hag is one of the trickier creatures I've used in this respect. The fiction associated with some of its powers is fairly obscure. But I also think that robust GMing can help a bit, and I think the rulebooks could do more to encourage it.

The two most complex creature powers I remember GMing are both from MM3: some of the ones on the Pact Hag; and the Chained Cambion. The Pact Hag has a range of dominating and similar control effects, but for some of them their "pactish" nature is really brought out.

On the other hand, the Chained Cambion has one of the best effects I've ever encountered, Mind Shackles. The text of the power is:

Two enemies [of the Chained Cambion] adjacent to each other in a close burst 5 are psychically shackled (save ends; each enemy makes a separate saving throw against this effect). While psychically shackled, an enemy takes 10 psychic damage at the start and the end of its turn if it isn't adjacent to the other creature that was affected by this power.​

When you read this power it may not be immediately obvious what it is getting at. Once you read the Chained Cambion description ("Wrapped in chains and masked with a gruesome iron visage, a chained cambion radiates pain, rage, and frustration") it starts to make more sense - the cambion, being the spiteful type, vents its frustration by making others endure it.

Then when you see it in play, it becomes absolutely awesome - or at least, it did for me. The two affected targets were a melee fighter and an archer - so already they weren't that keen on being shackled together. And then they were standing on the roof of a small shrine, and had to find a way to get down without becoming separated. So the frustration gradually increases. And then, when one of them saves but the other doesn't, the one who has saved has to decide whether to submit to further frustrating chaining so as to protect his ally from the psychic damage, or whether to callously move away and just let the other suffer alone.

I think some monsters have challenging powers - some MM3 ones especially (eg Chained Cambion, Pact Hag). But some of these abilities are also very worthwhile - the Chained Cambion played incredibly well when I used it, and it power (of psychically chaining two PCs together, therefore causing them to vicariously experience it's own suffering) was awesome. But these are precisely the sorts of abilities that you lose if you confine yourself to PHB abilities.

Another example from my latest session is the Flayed Wrackspawn's "broken loyalties" power. That's a nice integration of story elements and mechanics that you won't get if you stick to PHB material.

 

[Kannik]

Another awesome bit that I've noticed as we have started a new 4e game is 4e's skill list. Definitively compared to what was before, and still when compared to 5e's. Dungeoneering as an adventuring equivalent to Nature; Streetwise for ground-level interactions; Detect magic through the Arcana skill; Thievery to handle the gamut of scoundrels... skills that have a solid use in the adventuring life.

As to what's come in 5e, the re-introduction of Performance is nice. And Deception as a skill name might be better than Bluff, while I'm 50/50 of Diplomacy vs Persuasion. But Thievery as a clear thing is much better when compared to the tool proficiency vs skill proficiency weirdness that exists in 5e. Or what is Slight of Hand used for -- its seems like it'd just be a small subset of Thievery. Then there's the reintroduction of the Investigation vs Perception confusion from the 3e days.

On the other side of the coin, Endurance often ended up feeling anemic in 4e; that might be one that could be put aside.

(I would also bring in the decoupling of a particular skill to a particular attribute -- let the action determine the appropriate attribute and add the skill proficiency bonus if the skill applies to the skill. To use the Endurance sample above, have it be either a CON skill roll, adding Dungeoneering or Nature or Arcana or etc as appropriate depending on the environment you're in right now.)

[Edit to the above, the same could be done for Athletics/Acrobatics with a single skill, keyed off an attribute based on what you were doing.]