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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sanglorian" data-source="post: 9230904" data-attributes="member: 83822">This has been a really interesting discussion to catch up on. Obviously there's a lot that I like about 4E, and I think modern gaming owes a lot to the innovations that 4E introduced - 4E in some ways paid the price for breaking from 3E/3.5, which let 5E and Pathfinder 2E do so to a lesser degree without opprobrium.But if we're going to talk about 4E "on its own terms", as the thread topic very interestingly asks us to do, I think you have to look at 3E/3.5 as well. Just as 5E was in part a reaction to 4E, 4E was in part a reaction to 3.5.Paragon paths are a reaction to the weird, contrived prerequisites that prestige classes had. Instead of requiring planning several levels in advance (or sometimes from character creation) as prestige classes did, paragon paths had few if any requirements other than level. And while there were many, many prestige classes that have at most one feat's worth of good ideas in them, every paragon path is significant, and many are worth taking.3E monster design is a mess. It's extremely complicated, with lots of mathematical calculations, but often resulted in no mechanical difference at the end of the process. Flicking through a book of monsters from the era shows this up: many monsters had no distinct mechanical hook. That's fine for less complicated games like Basic D&D and AD&D, where the variety comes from tactics, lair, morale and attitude. 3E fell between two stools: monsters were complicated but not distinctive. 4E solves this problem. While there had always been "min-maxing", the rise of Internet forums drew much more attention to it. There are far fewer "trash" options in 4E than there were in 3E. Half of 4E's feats may be trap options - but by the standards of 2008 that's actually pretty good! Powers are much more tightly balanced than the numerous character customisation options 3E had.Despite being criticised as putting the game on easy mode or allowing for unlimited healing, 4E's healing surges are actually a much more grounded and limited version of what already existed. In 3E, the magic item rules meant after a few levels magical healing became ubiquitous. PCs could enter every battle fully healed. So why not allow natural healing to get PCs into that position, as 4E does? In fact, the d20 Star Wars RPG was celebrated for having vitality points and hit points, to reflect the difference between glancing blows and lasting injuries. Hit points and healing surges in 4E effectively play the same role: it's the depletion of your healing surges that reflects true body blows. Everything else is scrapes, near misses, running out of luck, etc.The game balance of 3E depended on "the Big Six" magic items. 4E tried a lot harder to get PCs a balanced mix of magic items, and remove a lot of magic item dependency.You wouldn't know about the Big Six from reading the 3E rulebooks, because these mechanical underpinnings were obfuscated. 4E refused to obfuscate its expectations around encounter design, magic item distribution and so on - much to its detriment, as it opened it up to criticism. I actually think many of the criticisms of 4E identify real problems, but I would argue that most of these problems were present, but hidden, in 3E.Outside of 3E's long shadow, another distinctive feature of the first decade of the 2000s is the rise of story games. These games often focused on producing a particular experience, over simulating a world and anything in it as 3E and both Pathfinder editions try to do. I think of 4E as a story game of Dungeons & Dragons: laser-focused on producing a particular play experience. That's why I always find it funny when people say 4E didn't feel like D&D - I think it tried too hard to feel like D&D!I hope this doesn't come across as unfair criticism of 3E. I found 3E very exciting and expansive at the time, and its innovations are felt 20+ years on. Nor should 4E be left off the hook: I think it made many missteps, in part because it was too focused on reacting to 3E.</blockquote>

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