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

[Staffan]

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.

I see the problem here. Previous editions often gave monsters (particularly planar monsters) a whole bunch of special abilities that were either flavor or downtime stuff – often in the form of a laundry list of spell-like abilities. For example, in 2e a marilith could cast animate dead, cause serious wounds (reverse of cure serious wounds), cloudkill, comprehend languages, curse (reverse of bless), detect evil, detect magic, detect invisibility, polymorph self (7 times per day), project image, pyrotechnics, and telekinesis in addition to the common tanar'ri spell-like abilities of darkness 15' radius, infravision, and teleport without error. 3.5e cut down a lot on these in favor of combat-relevant abilities, but not completely – the 3.5e list is align weapon, blade barrier (DC 23), magic weapon, project image (DC 23), see invisibility, telekinesis (DC 22), greater teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), unholy aura (DC 25). And 4e went even further with turning everything into a distinct Power.

The reasoning here is that the marilith is one of the most powerful non-unique monsters in the MM, and very much an endgame monster (in 3.5e it is CR 17). Things like animate dead, cloudkill, cause serious wounds, curse, and pyrotechnics are kinda useless at those levels, so off they go. But those abilities could still be useful off-screen in the proper circumstances – perhaps they used cloudkill to murder off a whole orc tribe and then animate their shambling corpses and set them on nearby tribes – that's flavorful, even if it's not something that's relevant to level 15+ characters and thus shouldn't take up space in their stat block. But it could still be part of their lore, perhaps in the form of 4e rituals?

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I see the problem here. Previous editions often gave monsters (particularly planar monsters) a whole bunch of special abilities that were either flavor or downtime stuff – often in the form of a laundry list of spell-like abilities. For example, in 2e a marilith could cast animate dead, cause serious wounds (reverse of cure serious wounds), cloudkill, comprehend languages, curse (reverse of bless), detect evil, detect magic, detect invisibility, polymorph self (7 times per day), project image, pyrotechnics, and telekinesis in addition to the common tanar'ri spell-like abilities of darkness 15' radius, infravision, and teleport without error. 3.5e cut down a lot on these in favor of combat-relevant abilities, but not completely – the 3.5e list is align weapon, blade barrier (DC 23), magic weapon, project image (DC 23), see invisibility, telekinesis (DC 22), greater teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), unholy aura (DC 25). And 4e went even further with turning everything into a distinct Power.

The reasoning here is that the marilith is one of the most powerful non-unique monsters in the MM, and very much an endgame monster (in 3.5e it is CR 17). Things like animate dead, cloudkill, cause serious wounds, curse, and pyrotechnics are kinda useless at those levels, so off they go. But those abilities could still be useful off-screen in the proper circumstances – perhaps they used cloudkill to murder off a whole orc tribe and then animate their shambling corpses and set them on nearby tribes – that's flavorful, even if it's not something that's relevant to level 15+ characters and thus shouldn't take up space in their stat block. But it could still be part of their lore, perhaps in the form of 4e rituals?

I know the 4E couatl's entry had a small sidebar stating that it could shift between the material plane and the Astral Sea with a short ritual, but it wasn't part of the statblock for the monster itself. In general the non-combat capabilities of 4E monsters were left up to DM fiat. I'll admit I would have preferred more explicitl details of a monster's non-combat abilities, even if they were not part of the statblock itself.

Regarding the marilith example in particular, I somehow didn't mind their magical abilities being removed in 4E, I guess because they had their own new unique abilities, but their absence in 5E is a bit more noticeable.

 

[Undrave]

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

In 4e you could use backgrounds to grab Streetwise as a skill.

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.

I think 4e actually focused the classes on a more narrow archetype and that was probably part of the problem. The 4e Fighter doesn't try to be EVERY guy who is 'good at weapon'. He ws the knight who protects his allies, the other concepts were shunted off to other expression of the Martial power source.

They went all in and fully realized the Defender Fighter and figured people would pick other classes for the other version, underestimating how much people cared about the label. I don't really get it but it doesn't make it less true for them I guess.

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.

I wouldn't put it past Wizard fans to complain their guy isn't a God anymore

 

[Minigiant]

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

I never said that.

I said the push back on 4e was that it was different.

Fans wanted the same input with a different outcome. For example they wanted Vancian casters with tons of spells and slots but the game to not break once the casters got a ton of slots

 

[Kaiyanwang]

There was a significant change of Spell-likes in high-level outsiders between 3.0 and 3.5, too - in fact, I think that the 3.0 outsiders were close to 2e in Spell likes (which from my point of view is good) but had obsolete and too few HDs - too close, and this time was not a good thing, to the 2e counterparts.

The spell-like changes were not trivial and went well beyond the "it's too low level to matter".
3.5 Mariliths lost stuff like Polymorph. Lost detect spells which gave great flexibility in a pre-combat situation even against PCs or at least their lower level allies. No Darkness spam. Yeah you can counter it easily but guess what? You have to expend resources for that.
Some low-level Spell-like still has interesting uses like Shatter. At least they kept that one.
Additionally, in the correct place/lair stuff like Cloudkill can still rule. Yes, is not a SoD for high-HD PCs, but lasts minutes, can still force save vs Con damage, so in the hands of a teleporting enemy that knows her lair is great being also another visibility reducer.

All of this, ignoring that a single demon being able to slay entire villages and reanimate them can be a massive plot point - and once the PCs know how this specific demon work, can act, plan (and IRL have fun with that) accordingly. When the out-of-combat is "whatever" it can decrease a bit the immersion.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Fans wanted the same input with a different outcome. For example they wanted Vancian casters with tons of spells and slots but the game to not break once the casters got a ton of slots

Which is possible if the spells themselves are better written, point that you keep ignoring.
Sometimes 5e went backwards. Compare 3ed Hut vs 5e Hut.

I wouldn't put it past Wizard fans to complain their guy isn't a God anymore

That sounds like a convenient strawman tho.

 

[SteveC]

I wouldn't put it past Wizard fans to complain their guy isn't a God anymore

There was a lot of gnashing of teeth over the 4E wizard. I almost always play wizards, and I played a ton of 4E. Never played a wizard there because I had so much fun with the martial. 5E? I play all spellcasting characters.

 

[Undrave]

I never said that.

I said the push back on 4e was that it was different.

Fans wanted the same input with a different outcome. For example they wanted Vancian casters with tons of spells and slots but the game to not break once the casters got a ton of slots

Sometimes I wonder if anything short of a 3.75e would have ever gone over properly with the fans back then? I feel like 4e was bound to be controversial no matter what as long as it changed fundamental rules.

I wonder if DnD needed to go through this turmoil to come out stronger? Would 5e have been this popular if it hadn't been for 4e being such an iconoclastic edition before it? Challenging sacred cows and opening a ton of discussion about game designs. Would we just be up to 3.95 at this point without it?

 

[Minigiant]

Which is possible if the spells themselves are better written, point that you keep ignoring.
Sometimes 5e went backwards. Compare 3ed Hut vs 5e Hut.

Sure. But many decried any solution.

You have people loudling whining about 5e's Concentration mechanics.

"I can't have 4 lingering self buffs!"
Or attunement
"I can chain 5 magic wands to clean up junk battles"

Really writing better spells only scratches the surface. The problem was usually a quantity issue. That's why it usually appears when the slots or scrolls get numerous.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

I wonder if DnD needed to go through this turmoil to come out stronger? Would 5e have been this popular if it hadn't been for 4e being such an iconoclastic edition before it? Challenging sacred cows and opening a ton of discussion about game designs. Would we just be up to 3.95 at this point without it?

Sorry for being so direct but this sounds like cope of some sort. 5e saved D&D miraculously after 4e and the reasons why are not related to 4ed design, let alone in some case even 5e design. 4e almost destroyed D&D.