D&D General Maybe I was ALWAYs playing 4e... even in 2e

[teitan]

Oh. My mistake.

If writing how to run the game is so unappealing to you; you could operate under the assumption that everyone who buys your game already understands the basic principles. It worked for Gary Gygax!

Let's be fair to Gary, he was writing for an established audience who understand wargames. The nature of the game just evolved very quickly after release!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They doubled down on the miniature aspect. I know some people argue that you can play 4e without miniatures and I do not doubt that but as designed it was designed to be fully integrated with miniatures to help sell what was then the extremely popular D&D Miniatures blind boxes. The rules are very clearly intended to take full advantage of miniatures and this implied an investment beyond just the books.

For some that was not a big deal but it's a barrier, especially when the miniatures were discontinued in January 2011, which was probably the beginning of the end of 4e and just after Essentials launched. While Essentials launched with an extensive collection of counters included in the DM set and the Monster Vault, it was not enough because the product line was confusing with the original core books on the shelves still and it being marketed as "not a revision or new edition".

The miniatures/grid aspect is often mentioned, but it actually is a bigger deal than just having to use them. The battles need to be designed differently. 4e has a ton of powers that rely on movement and positioning. And if the GM designs an interesting battlemap with all sorts of different terrains and uses various enemies with different capabilities the resulting combats will be very tactical and engaging. But designing such battles is also a lot of work, and if you don't do that, a lot of the powers simply are pretty pointless.

I played a Whirlwind Barbarian (I think that's what it was called, I'm not sure) for quite a while and the character had a ton of all sorts of movement powers and powers that let attack several foes etc. But the GM I was playing with often just had us fight a single tough foe on relatively featureless area, so most my powers were just useless. Sometimes there were more foes, or there were minions, but my effectiveness massively depended on the setup of the battle. I eventually just redid the character as Essentials Slayer, which was in theory way less interesting but in context of how the GM ran the game way more useful.

And when I myself ran 4e, I tried to avoid such a situation, and painstakingly designed the combat encounters. But frankly, I came to the conclusion that it really is not fun for me and not the sort of thing I want to spend so much time on when building adventures, and I feel 5e works better for my style even though I usually use the grid with it too.

 

[Mannahnin]

I played a Whirlwind Barbarian (I think that's what it was called, I'm not sure) for quite a while and the character had a ton of all sorts of movement powers and powers that let attack several foes etc. But the GM I was playing with often just had us fight a single tough foe on relatively featureless area, so most my powers were just useless. Sometimes there were more foes, or there were minions, but my effectiveness massively depended on the setup of the battle. I eventually just redid the character as Essentials Slayer, which was in theory way less interesting but in context of how the GM ran the game way more useful.

And when I myself ran 4e, I tried to avoid such a situation, and painstakingly designed the combat encounters. But frankly, I came to the conclusion that it really is not fun for me and not the sort of thing I want to spend so much time on when building adventures, and I feel 5e works better for my style even though I usually use the grid with it too.

That's unfortunate. I tended to find that even in an open/plain battlefield, movement powers still mattered because of the way they could reduce the effectiveness of enemy bursts, blasts and auras, and enhance the effectiveness of friendly bursts, blasts, and auras. Plus creating or negating flanking for Combat Advantage. Just using normal encounters with a group of synergistic foes, having multiple roles, and/or trying to maximize how well your party's powers worked on the battlefield, would inherently create tactical opportunities.

A DM just defaulting to a single tough monster on an open battlefield seems to be ignoring 90% of the cool bits of 4E combat.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But the GM I was playing with often just had us fight a single tough foe on relatively featureless area, so most my powers were just useless. Sometimes there were more foes, or there were minions, but my effectiveness massively depended on the setup of the battle. I eventually just redid the character as Essentials Slayer, which was in theory way less interesting but in context of how the GM ran the game way more useful.

now I don't know you... but I had a player make a similar complaint at my 2nd 4e campaign (it was a rogue build not a barbarian but also all about moving around) and I did run some numbers...

at the time I was running at home at a table, but I had just started about 1/2 way through 1st campaign using my laptop to run, so I had my encounter notes saved... just under 1/2 (but way over 1/3) of my encounters had what I would call dynamic terrain... meaning terrain that could be used for an advantage, or for damage, and that most (about 2/3) of the other encounters either had regular difficult terrain, or multi non minion enemies. So I ran a kind of experiment and for 3 weeks put dynamic AND difficult AND multi enemies in every encounter (at the time we were still trying to fine tune the hp problem we had identified with 4e by upping monster damage and lower monster hp so we were starting to get 3-5 encounters per night in combat zones) and I noted each time a PC in general (but player in particular) used the terrain or grouped enemies for AOEs... I found less then 1/3 of the combats did it happen. So then I brought all of this up with the players and went over my notes (we had an entire game night spent figuring out how to improve) and what we came up with was we all needed to communicate intent better.

we made a joke about video games and parts of walls being different colors, and another about a superhero RPG that let you just add to scenes... but in general it was pretty much both.

we found that often I would put a book case in a room, or stairs, or a bunch of barrels... and being used to 3e that would be glossed over by PCs as fluff (including a chocolate gyser that I can't believe they didn't use) mean while they would WANT to use things and not see things to use.

something we do even to this day is players will stop and ask "What can I use around here?" from time to time (and even if I don't have something premade I will normally come up with something), and some times after the first round of a fight I will pause at the top of round 2 to say "Just FYI here are some key features I put in this fight"

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I’ll add that this barbarian type had several powers that relied on attacking one foe and then getting to move and attack another foe, so you literally couldn’t use them if there was just one enemy. So in such a battle you were effectively missing a big chunk of your encounter powers. I feel this is one thing that 5e’s battle master fighter does better and 4e encounter powers could have worked similarly; instead of independent one use powers you have a pool of uses you can use on any powers. The slayer kinda worked that way… except it only had one power!

 

[billd91]

Yeah. Much like how, when 4e was being previewed, people cheered at the removal of Vancian casting.

Guess how long that lasted.

Were they the same people? Or did one subset cheer and then another criticize? This is an issue that comes up repeatedly in discussions about these topics and it does little good to conflate the two groups together.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The mistake is using just one enemy.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The mistake is using just one enemy.

Fighting one tough big monster should be a valid encounter type and shouldn’t make you lose most of your powers. And it is not just that, similar issue exists with any situational power without a shared usage pool.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Were they the same people? Or did one subset cheer and then another criticize? This is an issue that comes up repeatedly in discussions about these topics and it does little good to conflate the two groups together.

At least some of them were the same people...

My group was right at the breaking point when 4e was announced and we had over a dozen players in my group... by the mid point of my 2nd campaign several of them went to PF because they wanted 3.5 back. 5e regroupsed some of us... but not all (some have stopped RPGs, some don't play D20/D&D some still just play PF) but over all there were people in both groups

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Fighting one tough big monster should be a valid encounter type and shouldn’t make you lose most of your powers. And it is not just that, similar issue exists with any situational power without a shared usage pool.

yes, but it shouldn't be anywere NEAR the majority of encounters