D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how D&D 4E could have looked

OK on this "I would’ve much preferred the ability to adopt any role within the core 4 by giving players a big choice at level 1, an option that placed an overlay on every power you used or that gave you a new way to use them."
Basically have Source Specific Powers and less class powers. But I think combining that with having BIG differing stances to dynamically switch role might be a better idea so that your hero can adjust role to circumstance. I have to defend this NPC right now vs I have to take down the big bad right now vs I have to do minion cleaning right now, I am inspiring allies in my interesting way, who need it right now.

and the obligatory
Argghhhh on this. " I wanted classes to have different power acquisition schedules"

And thematic differences seemed to have been carried fine.

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, WotC seems really obsessed with the "work day" idea, but I think it's a chimera in many ways. Ultimately who really cares how long the "work day" is? I suppose it matters if there's a lot of kicking in the door dungeon grind expected. What you're really trying to avoid is the party totally going nova in the one fight they have. The real balancing is done by the action economy. Characters who can do too much in a round or, vice versa, too little, are the real problem IMO. For the most part, 5E got the action economy right (unlike some really notable bad examples in 4E... I'm looking at you bard, barbarian, and avenger).


There are encounter designs that really stress a character in one encounter and some characters are markedly more short rest dependent than others. Compare a party with a fighter, warlock, and monk to one with a paladin, sorcerer, and cleric. The latter benefits very little from short rests while the former is highly dependent on them and a big nasty fight is going to exhaust the resources of that party first. In a mixed party you can end up with some strange interactions and often pointless friction between character types. Of course, the issue of short rests in 5E has been an evergreen topic, so I won't go forward with it.

Gygax talked bout it honestly it isnt a new thing to pay attention to the workday it is introduced by having different characters having different scaled resources. (long rest - dailies whatever)

In 4e it hardly mattered what workday you had Wizards were still the best Dailies but only by a small amount everyone if the day was known to be short could pull out bigger guns. In 5e its back.

This was a fixed problem in my eyes... and why it gets brought up for 5e is because it can now make some classes shine a lot more than others especially if you have consistently shorter workdays which polls do indicate many people do.

(unlike some really notable bad examples in 4E... I'm looking at you bard, barbarian, and avenger).

I am curious about this. Those are really sound like they might be corner cases - we have a lot of character classes out now and none of those were phb.

Are you sure you are identifying the problem right? Avengers lack sufficient Nova and while that is definitely bad it isn't exactly/necessarily an action economy thing.

Barbarians can be regular whirling dervishes. It's almost the point.(are you sure its a problem) - The ranger is I think still king of strikers and he is from the PHB.

Bards can be so incredibly variable could you elaborate?

 

[Jester David]

I'll invite you to read the adventure I co-wrote for Living Forgotten Realms, NETH4-1:
http://www.livingforgottenrealms.com
http://www.livingforgottenrealms.com/adventures/NETH0401LFR.zip

Direct link 2nd, but you can click on the 1st link if you don't want to direct download. So, there's an entire encounter interacting with NPCs for the point of thinking about what is a moral decision and what are their character's values. All roleplaying. No real dice used.

And then each table gets to make a decision as to what they think is more important. And that decision leads to two different combats and each table only fights one of them. And the outcome based across various tables then strongly influenced what direction the campaign would go.

At the 2 tables I ran at its introduction, I had religious PC of deity important to the adventure at both tables. And at one table, a PC argued for the route of personal sacrifice, because that's what their deity would want. And at another table, a PC argued that they had to do the opposite, because that's what their deity would want. And literally, one person at a table said decision X was the emotional decision, but Y was intellectual and at the other table, decision Y was the emotional decision and X the intellectual.

The adventure got one of the highest ratings from both a DM and player side in LFR, both values over 4 out of 5. Didn't have any problems getting it approved from the higher ups and I wrote that part of the adventure in its entirety. Bonus points for people who played 2e heavily is that Moontassel details are actually from Volo's Guides and one of the major NPCs is related to Danilo Thann.

i.e. you might think that Organized Play is not about options, but it really depends on the writer and editor of the adventure, and the player base was perfectly happy to see such options available for them.

Would you say that adventure was normal for organized play? That adventures like that were commonplace?

 

[Garthanos]

From the get go in 4e in the PHB you were exposed to a Paragon path and Epic Destiny and players may think of their characters in terms of that. Quite honestly the most basic Epic Destiny is the Demi-god (and arguably a very sound choice in the game too - recommended by the handbooks). The game at that point help establish some shared fiction. In some sense even ignoring the mechanics became narratively part of how you defeat the Demogorgon in high level and the like.

I can pick a background like Auspicious Birth or even create descriptions of the prophecy that affected his early life alah Cu Cuhlaine or Lancelot. Some of these can be just part of that story without having more than flavor impact especially if say you want that fighter to have Detective Skills because he was trying to find out how his mother died in his childhood instead of taking the stories for granted or have mechanical teeth - on the order of a feat even.

Now player input has set the stage with encouragement from the game and shared fiction very early on....

So when the player has his character hallucinate seeing death early on and in paragon and maybe even takes an ability to do battlefield medic but pictures it as him barring death from the injured.

And later mid paragon when this fairly Herakles like hero says I want to save the life of my friends dying wife by Wrestling death perhaps I can just roll with that seeing death idea and get drunk on fancy wines to see death himself I want to challenge him for her soul, exactly 3 days after her death. Perhaps this becomes more balanced when it is gatewayed just like the raise dead ritual - Note late heroic is when the Cleric can plop down expensive incense and raise someone who has been dead for quite a while 100 percent reliably.

Note I just rolled out raising the dead via something like an athletics application (or maybe an actual fight and have the whole party be guided by the one) because the help action on the magical forge is getting a bit boring OK the fact that it got rejected while being so basic does make it noteworthy example - @pemerton

EDIT : I actually had a player whose character had an ability which was mostly a flavor of seeing dead spirits as they died - long long ago when we were playing with DragonQuest I think actually. (not really more than a healing check might do)... He was an elven bard of the winds with very dark over tones and sort of anti-assassin characteristics. So the Herakles with combat medic who saw death would be entirely in line with that.

 

[Garthanos]

IMO 5e Master is not 4e Epic hence no Thor types in 5e. .

Coincidentally the throwing weapons in 4e by default had return to sender enchantments.

 

[Garthanos]

I'll invite you to read the adventure I co-wrote for Living Forgotten Realms, NETH4-1:
http://www.livingforgottenrealms.com
http://www.livingforgottenrealms.com/adventures/NETH0401LFR.zip

Direct link 2nd, but you can click on the 1st link if you don't want to direct download. So, there's an entire encounter interacting with NPCs for the point of thinking about what is a moral decision and what are their character's values. All roleplaying. No real dice used.

And then each table gets to make a decision as to what they think is more important. And that decision leads to two different combats and each table only fights one of them. And the outcome based across various tables then strongly influenced what direction the campaign would go.

At the 2 tables I ran at its introduction, I had religious PC of deity important to the adventure at both tables. And at one table, a PC argued for the route of personal sacrifice, because that's what their deity would want. And at another table, a PC argued that they had to do the opposite, because that's what their deity would want. And literally, one person at a table said decision X was the emotional decision, but Y was intellectual and at the other table, decision Y was the emotional decision and X the intellectual.

The adventure got one of the highest ratings from both a DM and player side in LFR, both values over 4 out of 5. Didn't have any problems getting it approved from the higher ups and I wrote that part of the adventure in its entirety. Bonus points for people who played 2e heavily is that Moontassel details are actually from Volo's Guides and one of the major NPCs is related to Danilo Thann.

i.e. you might think that Organized Play is not about options, but it really depends on the writer and editor of the adventure, and the player base was perfectly happy to see such options available for them.

oooooh wow

makes me wish there was something better than LiKE.

I had two players encountering an "adversary" ran it twice on one occasion one fell in love with the adversary and in the other the player decided the character needed stopped and punished / treated as very dangerous

 

[MwaO]

Would you say that adventure was normal for organized play? That adventures like that were commonplace?

Yes and no. Matrix adventures tend to be really hard to write for Organized Play. You have to present a meaningful choice and the outcome of a poorly written one is everyone ends up doing the same thing anyway — so a lot more work with no benefit. Some editors tended to promote them, other editors tended to go more linear.

Most LFR adventures tended to have roleplaying choices. But it was up to the DM how much time would get spent on them compared to the combats. And as noted, if you don't have a matrix choice to make, the outcome of those roleplaying decisions might not have real meaning. You can get a bad DM at a convention and they'll throw out even the appearance of choices.

 

[Shasarak]

And later mid paragon when this fairly Herakles like hero says I want to save the life of my friends dying wife by Wrestling death perhaps I can just roll with that seeing death idea and get drunk on fancy wines to see death himself I want to challenge him for her soul, exactly 3 days after her death. Perhaps this becomes more balanced when it is gatewayed just like the raise dead ritual - Note late heroic is when the Cleric can plop down expensive incense and raise someone who has been dead for quite a while 100 percent reliably.

I dont have any problem with someone wanting to wrassle Death to bring someone back to life. My problem would be making it equivalent to the Raise Dead ritual where you spend 1000gp on incense, make your Athletics check, spend an hour and done.

Personally I would much rather make a whole adventure of finding a cave that connects with the underworld, get past Cerberus, sail down the Styx and then challenging Death to a wrestling contest.

 

[Garthanos]

One thing of note perhaps IN 4E but NOT 5e Rituals are not hard coded in the class ie they and Boons and Martial Practices, Grandmaster Trainings (and my extrapolated Martial Techniques) are all like magic items ACQUIRED within the story in other words they go on wish lists rather than in level up choices and they are integrated into the story as they happen. if a DM like myself thinks a cleric ritual like Raise the Dead belongs at level 16 instead of 8, well in some sense that feels like its easily open to being defined by the game world.

Just as magic items you find may be different than this default the rituals you find might be different.

 

[Garthanos]

I dont have any problem with someone wanting to wrassle Death to bring someone back to life. My problem would be making it equivalent to the Raise Dead ritual where you spend 1000gp on incense, make your Athletics check, spend an hour and done.

Personally I would much rather make a whole adventure of finding a cave that connects with the underworld, get past Cerberus, sail down the Styx and then challenging Death to a wrestling contest.

The acquistion of rituals and practices both in 4e are in story like magic items and the first time you do it I think yes that binding it up in a quest is perfect The knights travel into the other world and recover the Grail is one version of this.... And in 4e since these things are less bound up like class features I actually recommend we do the same with the Cleric ritual as it stands it sucks.


And always has really

 

[Garthanos]

That is something I will be making even more obvious in my MPIII which I want to fill with flavor text like Heros of the Fae Wild and the not yet going anywhere my APII

The rituals of 4e were more open ended in what they might accomplish not as much as earlier edition but still quite a bit.