D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[EzekielRaiden]

What is a D&D monster for?

To be seen in play. That is what we are doing, yes? Playing a game?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But your ranger couldn't be a trucker or tank

YES. THEY. COULD.

I am so sick of hearing this claim. They could! Feats, powers, themes, PPs, and EDs could all make that entirely functional. Paladin, for example, got tons of support for being a Leader or Striker, and all Defenders were already adjacent to the Controller role (plus, the two-marks thing actually made some Paladins surprisingly good at minion-clearing.)

Having a role meant you would definitely have the basic tools to fill that role. It didn't mean you couldn't do anything else ever. It just meant you wouldn't have the tools to do it right away. You'd have to seek them out. They were there. More and more were offered with time.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think 4E had some good ideas, some of which were used to inspire features in several games, including 5E.

No good idea bigger than individual spells made it from 4e into 5e. They were butchered beyond recognition or, more commonly, flayed and disposed of, with a completely opposite mechanic parading around in the grotesque skin thereof.

The one, and only, meaningful subsystem brought from 4e to 5e was the idea that feats should be powerful, impactful, and kept on (at most) very short chains, 2 in almost all cases, 3 in rare exceptional ones.

In every other way, if it came from 4e, it was either disguised (rare but it happens), disfigured (common), or outright disjointed (extremely common).

 

[DarkCrisis]

When it comes to 4e and the Forgotten Realms specifically, they nuked the setting. NEVER nuke the setting.

I don’t even like the Forgotten Realms, but I do remember my old DM showing me two maps, one of 3e FR, the other of 4e FR.

Just seeing the scale of damage from the Spellplague made me feel incredibly sad for both him and other fans of the setting, because it kinda looked like someone had taken a map of the old Forgotten Realms out behind a building and taken a shotgun to it.

Salvatore tells a tale of how he and Greenwood got together and went to WotC HQ to beg them not to blow up Faerun.

And after they were dismissed they spoke about how they could begin to fix it. More or less.

Sad to hear him tell it.

 

[Shardstone]

Which is extremely frustrating, because that is like saying that having departments in a university makes a person "pigeon-holed" because they start off with physics classes and math classes and why can't they just take universal classes that are whatever subject they feel like?!?

...because you can do that. They're called electives, and every student is expected to take a lot of them. Some enterprising students even double major.

Acting like the existence of a physics department is somehow bad for learning or makes learning impossible is just...wrong. Flat out wrong.

And roles are exactly the same on that front. They do not, and never did, "pigeonhole" anything. Ever.

The 4E PHB does a bad job of communicating the same game you talk about 4E as being.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But don't slap a D&D label on it and pretend it was just an evolution of the game because it wasn't.

Yes, it absolutely was. Just as the Book of Nine Swords was.

Don't blame factors other than the books themselves for the lack of success.

I will absolutely continue stating facts to that effect. If you dislike them, that's your prerogative.

A good set of rules would have overcome those obstacles, 4E simply didn't have the broad appeal and staying power that 5E does.

Ah, yes, because good rules can overcome a generation-defining recession and a team murder-suicide. I'd love to see how that works.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The 4E PHB does a bad job of communicating the same game you talk about 4E as being.

Have I not said repeatedly that the presentation is poor and that the books needed another year of work?

 

[Shardstone]

Have I not said repeatedly that the presentation is poor and that the books needed another year of work?

Indeed.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Nope. The mechanics were so bad and the feel of the game was so bad that I would have kept playing 3.5 or found a new game. If I wanted to play a miniature game or tabletop MMO, then I would play a miniature game or tabletop MMO.

4e was not a tabletop MMO, but the fact you must resort to such tired, false edition war rhetoric tells me there is nothing further worth discussing with you.

 

[billd91]

This is a pretty nice example of the divergence I'm talking about.

4e monsters were great as elements of combat on a minis grid.

4e monsters were not so great as, say, world-building props. 2e's monsters are probably the best example of that.

What is a D&D monster for? Well, ultimately, for both of those things. Focusing only on one is not really making a "good D&D monster." I wouldn't pretend that a lot of 2e monsters were any fun in an actual fight, but they were interesting encounters. I also wouldn't pretend that I'd treat 4e's monsters as much more than combat toys, but they are dang fine combat toys.

If you make a D&D monster just about one of those things, it's not actually doing a very good job of being a D&D monster, for all people who play D&D.

I definitely get what you're saying here. In the 4e MM, to use an example, the efreet has a variety of combat abilities - but pretty much nothing else. The flavor text says that efreet hate servitude but are often called upon by mortals to do favors. OK, great. That's similar to other editions. But they're called on by mortals to do... what? Given how they're statted up, apparently beat people up?
Contrast with AD&D, 3e, and even 5e where the efreet have other things they can do that aren't focused on combat. And the efreet isn't the only critter affected this way.

And I found the same with much of the adventuring rules that are out there compared to AD&D, 3e, and 5e. The 4e ones always seem more fixated on encounter-level involvement than other editions. But that's 4e's particular myopia - it's THE edition focused most tightly on providing a particular combat encounter experience.

And, ultimately, another reason Rob Heinsoo's analysis about the disapproval aimed at 4e falls short.