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

[EzekielRaiden]

But we do live in a time of unprescedented access and availability to an entire playerbase, so I'd like to think that there are 4E games out there to be run and played on portals like Foundry, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds etc.

I tried. Over a year of trying. Discord, forums, VTTs, Reddit. I tried.

This "unprecedented access and availability" got me diddly-squat.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In 1E and 3E and 5E you can organically move in and out of combat. Both 4E and PF2 presents combat as set pieces (especially if you run printed modules; what you do in the comfort of your own home isn't my business), things that are meant to create an initial feeling of dread ("we're doomed") and then building towards that Rocky-like moment of victory beyond all odds.

If I only were to rate the combat system, both games get high grades.

I just can't use them for my role-playing campaigns. In 1E or 3E or 5E you can just have some monsters appear, and possible the fight is over before it even started, possibly you have an epic showdown. But the games doesn't try very hard to make that happen.

Which isn't so much that it's "great". It's essential for my DMing style.

I...genuinely have no idea what you mean by this.

Why is combat "unavoidable" in 4e? My best experiences with it did that frequently, and (explicitly per the rules, unlike 3e and 5e) rewarded exactly the same amount of experience no matter how you progressed. Why can't you "move organically in and out of combat"? That's literally a thing that happened three times only in four levels in the last long-runner 4e game I played (back in 2014...god I miss that game.) Why can't a fight be over before it starts (e.g. minions, or creatures well below party level), or incredibly risky (elites and/or very high level monsters and/or a "puzzle" to solve) or just end up weird due to the vagaries of the dice? Again I've seen all of those repeatedly despite having played far less 4e than I would like.

Like, you're saying it's somehow impossible or against the rules to do things I saw all the time, even from outright new (to 4e) DMs who did not have any prior experience running it.

 

[Oofta]

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).

Wow. I try to say something positive about 4E and you have to crap all over it? Oh well. At will spells, short rests, recharge abilities for monsters, skill challenge concept with chase scenes used as an example, battle master fighter maneuvers, marking for cavaliers are a few. They didn't take a lot because the design was fundamentally different.

I'm glad they didn't bring over more, if they had I wouldn't be playing that game and I don't think it would have been nearly as successful as 5E.

 

[Oofta]

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

I never used the book, I looked at it and rejected it's basic approach because it was too different from the rest of the game.

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

Stating your opinion as fact does not make it so.

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

Right. Blame everything but the game itself. People still play games during a recession, in many ways they're more likely to play games because it's relatively cheap entertainment. A VTT would not have saved 4E.

 

[Bitbrain]

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.

In fairness to Salvatore (I’ve never read anything by Greenwood, so can’t comment on him), it did result in the Companions, which is my favorite book of his.

It’s so somber and sad and yet joyous all at the same time.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wow. I try to say something positive about 4E and you have to crap all over it? Oh well. At will spells, short rests, recharge abilities for monsters, skill challenge concept with chase scenes used as an example, battle master fighter maneuvers, marking for cavaliers are a few. They didn't take a lot because the design was fundamentally different.

I'm glad they didn't bring over more, if they had I wouldn't be playing that game and I don't think it would have been nearly as successful as 5E.

At-will SPELLS, yes. Not at-wills.

Hour-long short rests.

You'll have to point me to the skill challenge rules. I had been under the impression those were entirely excised, based on the number of folks who gleefully celebrate their absolute deletion.

BM maneuvers are a joke and always have been. Sadly, burying an actual mark (albeit with an utterly trash punishment, seriously, Str mod per day??) in a subclass otherwise exclusively bound to mounted combat...in a system like 5e...just xoesnr cut it. But this would be a great example of taking a good idea, hobbling it intentionally, and hiding it away so it can't offend the delicate sensibilities of folks gatekeeping what playstyles are allowed in the so-called "big tent."

And, being perfectly honest? You easily could have fooled me on the "trying to be complimentary" front. It sounded like a string of backhanded compliments.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I really don't get this. You could use 4e monsters any way you want, just like 5e. Let's also be realistic, even in 5e,90 percent of the rules are about combat. Ime people decided 4e was only about combat, even though it still had all the same classes and monsters. Even though there were literally rules for skill challenges, which weren't combat.... Not that those rules were perfect.... But what other DnD had that?

This is part of the divergence.

"Here's an amazing combat toy."
"Well, that's not really what I'm looking for."
"What are you talking about, you can use it for more than just combat if you want, and most of the important rules are about combat anyway!"

The fluff was never just fluff. It was part of the rules. For many tables, more important than the combat stats.

 

[Zaukrie]

This is part of the divergence.

"Here's an amazing combat toy."
"Well, that's not really what I'm looking for."
"What are you talking about, you can use it for more than just combat if you want, and most of the important rules are about combat anyway!"

The fluff was never just fluff. It was part of the rules. For many tables, more important than the combat stats.

Outside pages of 2e fluff, on a per word basis, people have shown 4e had more than 5e....

 

[Retreater]

I tried. Over a year of trying. Discord, forums, VTTs, Reddit. I tried.

This "unprecedented access and availability" got me diddly-squat.

Yeah. 4e didn't work for me in the "modern era" until I gave up trying to play it online and played it in-person. Real dice and pencils. Miniatures on a grid.
Granted, I'm having my own headaches with it (largely because it's not gelling with the players) - but the system works fine.

 

[Kurotowa]

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.

That's a good point I'd never quite verbalized before. You can see this focus just in the fact that 4e has Encounter based recharge powers and 5e has Short Rest based recharge powers. We can quibble over the ideal length of a Short Rest, or point out that they're functionally fairly similar to each other, but the difference in how the two measure time is telling.