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<blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8624787" data-attributes="member: 7025508">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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crimson Longinus, post: 8624787, member: 7025508"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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