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

[Clint_L]

Level drain is brilliant because it perfectly represent the vital force draining ability that undead have. Additionally, since levels are very important for the player, a level draining monster instills a true sense of dread that is well justified in-universe and at the table. Is an absolutely great mechanic that ties universe and gameplay.

I've never liked level drain, because for me it seems like a game-ist solution to a narrative problem. Draining strength, health, intelligence, I get. Draining levels has always taken me out of the story universe and feels like a purely rules-based mechanic.

 

[Undrave]

That said, I recognize that hardcoding roles into classes caused some problems for the class fantasy. The typical example here is the archer fighter. The 4e fighter is bad at ranged combat. It is at best a backup option for them. The intent is that martial archers would be rangers, but this is poorly communicated, plus it automatically associates archers with nature stuff to some degree (even if the 4e ranger is much less wilderness-oriented than previous editions – they are very much "civilized person venturing into the wild" rather than a "native".

I just checked and the Ranger gets to choose between Nature or Dungeoneering. You can make a Ranger that doesn't have Nature as a skill. The Ranger was one of the few classes to get Perception as an option from the start so that was cool. You could go Dungeoneering, Athletics, Endurance, Perception, Stealth for your Ranger and they would have basically nothing to do with nature outside some power names.

 

[Cadence]

I just checked and the Ranger gets to choose between Nature or Dungeoneering. You can make a Ranger that doesn't have Nature as a skill. The Ranger was one of the few classes to get Perception as an option from the start so that was cool. You could go Dungeoneering, Athletics, Endurance, Perception, Stealth for your Ranger and they would have basically nothing to do with nature outside some power names.

3.5 and PF 1e has an urban ranger archetype/option.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

I've never liked level drain, because for me it seems like a game-ist solution to a narrative problem. Draining strength, health, intelligence, I get. Draining levels has always taken me out of the story universe and feels like a purely rules-based mechanic.

None calls "that" levels in the game universe, but the increase in resilience and vitality is measurable in-universe, from the ability to resist or avoid physical blows to the resistance to spells to much more. I mean, BECMI brought this to its extreme, because after 36 of these increases you could become an Immortal.

 

[Oofta]

Or maybe people just hated that the game had balance between classes as a design goal...


I mean, they also made the Wizard weaker. Heinsoo even said he had to fight his own team who wanted the Wizard to be the strongest class...

Or people just didn't like how they did it. They put game design and balance ahead of the archetypes the classes were initially based upon.

 

[Minigiant]

The "4E made it obvious it was a game" misses the mark IMHO. The issue was that it was designed similar to a card based board game that borrowed ideas heavily from MMOS. It had very clearly defined roles, actions (in combat and out of combat with skill challenges), limitations and controls on the DM for everything. The lore, the visuals, were all layered on top of the game that had one true way of being played.

Compare that to every other version of D&D. D&D grew out of games that simulated war. We have a wizard not because they're a controller but because wizards were a merger of iconic to fantasy tradition and war game artillery. Fighting men were just that, the standard front line fighters in the battle and so on. Everything had to be oversimplified and gamified. Various fantasy archetypes merged or created. But the starting point were those fantasy archetypes.

It was game rules and structure first vs crude fantasy world simulator where people played the protagonists of a novel or movie. Or at least that's how I see it.

It was more fans wanted the solution AND didn't want the solution.

No matter how you solved the problem, you would have to change the fundamentals.

Fans wanted the same rules but a different outcome.

This is why 5e breaks down at the tweens. The rules and structures and design paradigm are mostly the same. Just slower.

 

[Oofta]

It was more fans wanted the solution AND didn't want the solution.

No matter how you solved the problem, you would have to change the fundamentals.

Fans wanted the same rules but a different outcome.

There is no such thing as perfection, but the pushback against 4E was not because of the fact that things were balanced, it was how it was achieved for everyone I ever discussed it with in person.

This is why 5e breaks down at the tweens. The rules and structures and design paradigm are mostly the same. Just slower.

Having run multiple campaigns to level 20 now, I think there are ways to maintain balance in 5E at all levels even if there could be a better implementation. But that's a separate topic and one that people typically ignore the suggestions of how to make it happen.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Fans wanted the same rules but a different outcome.

Yep. Democracy is not required to be rational. (No method of determining what should be done is, so this isn't a special thing to democracy, but it has new ways of not being rational that don't apply to other approaches.)

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Yep. Democracy is not required to be rational. (No method of determining what should be done is, so this isn't a special thing to democracy, but it has new ways of not being rational that don't apply to other approaches.)

Sorry but we are going back to condescension here.
(1) Not everything that some considered a bug, or at least an unworkable issue, was actually one.
(2) the designers inability to address issues within a certain framework does not justify the change of the entire framework. If a specific spell does not work, change it.
I could make the same example with Pathfinder. Just because I think Magnificent Mansion should have a longer casting time and Natural Spell should immediately end Wild Shape, doesn't mean that the solution is PF2e.
And not liking a given edition is not "irrational".

 

[Kurotowa]

Or maybe people just hated that the game had balance between classes as a design goal...

Please, let's not stray into ascribing motives and putting words into the mouth of the people who disagree with you. No one has said that, no one even suggested that, so to put it forth is just building strawmen.

For many of us, we just didn't like how 4e played. It didn't feel satisfying or deliver the play experience we were looking for. If it did deliver for you, great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. But it's not a personal attack to say that lots of us didn't. I'm sympathetic that the market out voted you and 5e went in a very different direction, but given that 5e brought me back to D&D I'm not going to join you in condemning it.