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

[Kaiyanwang]

I have added the psionics problem to the quoted post.

People in general want a psionics class. This is demonstrable and backed up by WotC's own statements and efforts.

WotC wants to give people a psionics class. They tried at least three times. They don't repeatedly try to do something if they don't actually want it to happen.

But the factionalism within the psionics fan community is so fierce, a generally acceptable solution is impossible. Nothing can clear the 70% threshold because nothing will ever be perfect for 70% of fans.

Rationality fails at the group level.

Isn't this more cowardice on wotc part? If you (wotc) believe in it, make a splat about it like you did for 3.0, 3.5 and 4th. 3.5 had two of them, 4th at least one I am sure.

 

[Oofta]

IMHO, 5e did throw the baby out out of the bathwater when it came to many of the things that 4e did well. There was a real sense in playtesting, IME, that everything that remotely looked, sniffed, or sounded like 4e had to be discarded regardless of their merits.

Meanwhile there are very few things I would want copied verbatim. We did get some ideas from 4E, just like we got ideas from every edition.

 

[Retreater]

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?

Oh, I was so ready to be done with 3.x at that time (I still can't go back to 3.x/PF1 - it's the one edition I won't play). I tried so many variations hoping to salvage it - WotC's Arcana Unearthed, Malhavoc's Book of Eldritch Might, even my own homebrew systems. In an attempt to find a "simpler" game, I even turned to GURPS.
If my group would've accepted OSR design back then, I'd have gone with that. (I remember bringing Castles & Crusades to the table and getting shot down.)
While I had fun with 4e, it did manage to kill what I liked about the D&D experience.
5e has also managed to kill what I liked about the 4e experience.

 

[billd91]

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.

Is it really irrelevant? Isn't relevancy dependent on the purpose you intend to put them to? If you're excising abilities based just on their relevance to a combat encounter with 15th level characters - that's pretty much the myopia I was talking about with 4e. And it's not like 5e has completely recovered from that mindset - though I would still argue the patient has much improved.
And sure, I could ad hoc up whatever I want, but at some point I'm fighting too much against the grain of the edition and it's a bad fit. I'm doing that a lot less in 5e than I'd have had to in 4e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

First and foremost there are games with at least 5 variants. Classic, 5e style, 3e Sorcerer style, power points and at-wills. Pick your poison.
Secondly, the analogy works because from fish to human we all have a spine. Some fundamental elements are there because that's what makes us - vertebrates. Without it we wouldn't be recognizable.
If you catch my drift.

Not even one of those changes is significantly different in the way fish are different from humans.

Isn't this more cowardice on wotc part? If you (wotc) believe in it, make a splat about it like you did for 3.0, 3.5 and 4th. 3.5 had two of them, 4th at least one I am sure.

It reflects the fundamental flaw of their approach, a flaw that was always there to begin with, and one that shows how the response to a change can be negative even when that change is something the voting base explicitly wants.

 

[Staffan]

See, to me? This is exactly what I mean. Ok, you don't like the 4e marilith because it cuts out all those low level spells. Fine, I get that.

But, the 5e Marilith is virtually identical to the 4e one. It has no spells. None.

Huh. I had it in my head that the 5e Marilith was similar to the 3.5e one, but apparently not.

But, in 4e this was a HUGE deal. To the point where ten years later, it gets brought up as a reason to not like 4e. Again, totally get that. But, if it was a huge deal then, why is it totally kosher now? I've not heard so much as a peep about this in 5e. Where is all the anger and rage over how they are ruining the game by cutting out all this role playing stuff?

Like I said, I don't get it. I understand not liking 4e. But, if you really didn'T like 4e, why in heck do you like 5e?

You must be mistaking me for someone with a bigger axe to grind against 4e. I'm in the "4e overall didn't work for me but it had some good ideas that I wish had been incorporated in 5e" camp. And I'm not a super-fan of 5e either – it's fine, but I miss some crunch and character options stuff, plus the good 4e ideas that got memory-holed.

In this case, I was mainly pointing out that X (the abilities of out-of-combat monsters) is an issue people have/had with 4e, explaining why I think the issue exists (combat streamlining), and suggesting a fix that wouldn't undo the intentions that caused the issue in the first place (give monsters rituals).

 

[SteveC]

This discussion makes me again lament how 4E didn't have the OGL behind it. The solution to pretty much all of the problems, which I heard many times while playing it, would have come from companies filling that niche.

For an example, you had people talking about how every combat in 4E was time to bring out the maps and minis. Those combats were a selling point for a fun session, but they also meant it was hard to abstract fights that should be throwaway. The solution? Take a look at the game Strike! Strike! was clearly inspired by 4E, but it has three levels of combat, each of which had increasing complexity. The simplest one was resolved with a single die roll. At the time I made something quite primitive similar to what they did, but I strongly suspect people would have been interested in that as a fully-integrated part of 4E. I'm sure we would have had a ton of supplements for other issues people had. But that didn't happen.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Meanwhile there are very few things I would want copied verbatim. We did get some ideas from 4E, just like we got ideas from every edition.

No one asks for verbatim copies. I certainly don't, I've said as much to you personally multiple times over the years.

Nearly every single thing so-called "copied" from 4e was butchered beyond recognition, or pretended to be something entirely new ("what I like to call 'passive perception'"), or actively made to work the opposite way that 4e did. E.g. rituals; in 4e they were accessible to anyone and could do a huge amount of cool things totally separate from combat concerns, with all sorts of potential costs and benefits. In 5e, they're literally just a way to make already powerful spellcasters even more powerful, because now they don't even need to expend spell slots to warp reality to their needs, they just need ten minutes, and by far the only people who should ever consider it are actual spellcasters.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Not even one of those changes is significantly different in the way fish are different from humans.

The second fish comment is more on the fact that many consider Vancian essential.

It reflects the fundamental flaw of their approach, a flaw that was always there to begin with, and one that shows how the response to a change can be negative even when that change is something the voting base explicitly wants.

So it is a wotc problem, not a democracy/userbase one? Not trying to put words in your mouth, just to understand this passage.

Huh. I had it in my head that the 5e Marilith was similar to the 3.5e one, but apparently not.

The only thing that the 5e one has above the 3e one is the in-built more explicit parry mechanic, which could be still done in 3e adding 1-2 levels to the marilith and using either Dragon Magazine or ToB.

 

[Oofta]

That analogy would be rather more relevant if any of the component parts of Vancian casting had remotely evolved since their inception. They have not. The one and only meaningful change is that you don't prepare individual slots anymore...which is a pure buff to casters.

They haven't? In addition I don't need to specifically memorize a spell for wizards, we've gotten casting spells at higher level, bonus action spells including healing at a distance, at will spells, rituals, consolidated spell lists. But other than that, no change at all.

It may not be the changes you desire or enough change, but it has changed over the years.