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

[billd91]

We are all in agreement on that point, but it's really weird on 5e feels like a VERY selfish game. There's near zero occasion where spending your action improving an ally is more optimal than inflicting damage yourself. Adventurers work together but they very rarely feel like a team. It almost feels purposefully designed to enable single PC games.

I'm guessing this is more of a table thing since it doesn't work out that way in the groups I play with. Buffs of fellow PCs usually get deployed at the start of every combat.
But there is some truth to the idea that PCs aren't designed to have powers that are too dependent on each other - it's because you can't tell what classes a group will come to the table with. And so you don't end up with a group crippled by lack of a defender (as people seem to be indicating about Retreater's players). Fuzzy roles and more self-sufficient individual classes = more flexibility to come to the table with variety or at least less punishment if you don't have all defined bases strictly covered.

 

[Undrave]

I'm guessing this is more of a table thing since it doesn't work out that way in the groups I play with. Buffs of fellow PCs usually get deployed at the start of every combat.
But there is some truth to the idea that PCs aren't designed to have powers that are too dependent on each other - it's because you can't tell what classes a group will come to the table with. And so you don't end up with a group crippled by lack of a defender (as people seem to be indicating about Retreater's players). Fuzzy roles and more self-sufficient individual classes = more flexibility to come to the table with variety or at least less punishment if you don't have all defined bases strictly covered.

Yeah I played a Cleric, my first action was often to deploy Bless... but after that it was pretty much it until an emergency heal was necessary, and with low slots early on this wasn't something I did ever fight.

There's Vicious Mockery that makes enemies less good at hitting but there's no opposite equivalent as far as cantrips go, it's weird.

 

[pemerton]

I think a lot of this discussion is arguing for and against the idea that I cannot tell the difference from anime and say an action movie.

I don't agree with this.

There is nothing "anime" about the 4e fighter.

The 4e paladin, for instance, has a 13th level encounter power Radiant Charge, which permits the PC to fly up into the air and make an attack. I can see how that's "anime" in some sense. But the 4e fighter doesn't get that sort of ability. Their abilities involve making attacks against one or more foes, moving around as they attack, and being tough when they are attacked.

Where's the anime?

 

[zakael19]

Add me on to the list of "martials generally do more damage, especially optimized fighters (Echo Knight has just so many nova attacks)" but a caster can with a save vs suck sometimes just end the encounter threat entirely. You can't really account for that in parsing stats! Like when the bard pulled out a polymorph on a rampaging thing and baaaa it's a sheep. Encounter over. You've got a full hour to trivialize it, or just narratively deal with it.

Same thing can happen in 4e with a controller or the like, but everybody else has cool naughty word they can do too.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't agree with this.

There is nothing "anime" about the 4e fighter.

Allow me to help.

In this case 'anime' is a stand in for 'thing I don't like and expect everyone else to dislike, thus I am attempting to infer a negative connotation with this other thing I don't like that has nothing little if anything to do with the first thing'.

So you see, the 4e fighter for this person is totally anime. Or Wow. Or Diablo. Or Sewing Machine.

 

[overgeeked]

We are all in agreement on that point, but it's really weird on 5e feels like a VERY selfish game. There's near zero occasion where spending your action improving an ally is more optimal than inflicting damage yourself. Adventurers work together but they very rarely feel like a team. It almost feels purposefully designed to enable single PC games.

Yeah. That. Everyone having the same (or similar) goals does not mean they're working together as a team.

In my experience with B/X and AD&D, the players worked together as a team. There was no mechanical support for it per se. But everyone understood their character's strengths and weaknesses and worked together to cover each other. In 4E, the players worked together as a team. There was tons of mechanical support for it. You could easily argue that was the point. To mechanically reinforce the "no really, teamwork wins" aspect. In 5E, in my experience, the players all happen to be near each other and vaguely working towards the same (or similar) goals, but there's basically zero team work in play and there's almost nothing encouraging teamwork in the game. The aid action is "suboptimal" in just about every circumstance. A few buff spells exist, sure. But they're used as basic min-max spells and there's no real mechanical push for proper synergistic, all together as a team kind of play.

 

[pemerton]

FWIW, I did find this excerpt in Martial Power 2 that talks further about the Martial Power source.

Let's be clear that the last paragraph is supposition from inhabitants in the world. It's story and myth.

Moldvay Basic identifies Hercules as a fighter. Achilles is a candidate to be a fighter. These fighters can really fight!

And so can a 4e D&D fighter.

Looking just at the PHB, and setting aside paragon path and epic destiny - and so choosing 2 At-Wills, 3 Encounter powers, 3 Dailies, and 5 Utilities, here's a fighter build:

*Cleave (attack an enemy and set back another nearby enemy)
*Reaping Strike (attack an enemy, and even on a failed attack roll set them back somewhat, so relentless is the attack)

*Vorpal Tornado (17th level: attack all adjacent enemies, pushing them back and knocking them down)
*Warrior's Urging (23rd level: lure or wrongfoot all nearby enemies so that they are nearby, and then cut them all down)
*Cruel Reaper (27th level: attack all nearby enemies, move ten feet, and then attack all nearby enemies again)

*Devastation's Wake (19th level: attack all nearby enemies, and for the rest of the round keep going against any enemy that is, or moves, adjacent)
*Reign of Terror (25th level: a strong attack against one enemy, that focuses the attention of all enemies who can see me onto me (ie I mark them all))
*Force the Battle (29th level: a self-buff that adds to the damage of my attacks, and gives me a free opportunity attack against adjacent enemies until the end of the fight)

*Boundless Endurance (2nd level daily: regain hp while bloodied, until the end of the fight)
*Unbreakable (6th level encounter: gain damage reduction against a single attack)
*Into the Fray (10th level encounter: move towards an enemy as a minor action)
*Iron Warrior (16th level daily: self-healing)
*No Surrender (22nd level daily: when hp drop below zero, regain hp but until the end of the fight suffer a debuff on attacks)​

To me, that seems like a reasonable imitation of Hercules. It's pretty fight-y. It's more intricate than an AD&D or B/X fighter; it's also more intricate than a 5e Champion, but less intricate than a 5e Battlemaster. I don't see how it's in any way supernatural or "anime" in comparison to those other PC builds.

 

[pemerton]

Or Sewing Machine.

I thought that was the warlord, shouting sewing limbs back on.

 

[pemerton]

To me this seems like a meaningless distinction. Something that breaks natural laws is, by definition, supernatural. Calling it "magical" versus "extraordinary" doesn't make a difference. It's supernatural.

It's kind of like the difference between magic and psionics. One is supernatural abilities from the mind, and the other supernatural ability from spell books, or gods, or whatever.

It's all magic, in effect.

OK, so by this measure the 5e fighter is supernatural/magical: they do things that "break natural laws". (Such as the way they withstand going toe-to-toe with giants, the way they survive falling great distances, etc).

Why does the distinction between natural, supernatural, and maybe a universe with different physics matter? This is all fantasy fiction, anyway.

For me, it matters because of my character fantasy. Sometimes, I want a character who kicks butt without need supernatural abilities to do so.

OK, but the 4e fighter is exactly this character. I mean, I just specced one out. I could have chosen other options too, such as more defender-y ones. Where is the supernatural-ness?

Doesn't mean they can't also be something else, something distinctly different from fighters in other editions.

What is this supposedly distinct thing? I just reviewed the 4e PHB fighter powers. They attack, they defend and they self-buff and heal. I saw one leader power (Level 2 utility encounter power Get Over Here, which slides an adjacent willing ally to another adjacent square).

What is supernatural about any of this?

 

[niklinna]

Allow me to help.

In this case 'anime' is a stand in for 'thing I don't like and expect everyone else to dislike, thus I am attempting to infer a negative connotation with this other thing I don't like that has nothing little if anything to do with the first thing'.

So you see, the 4e fighter for this person is totally anime. Or Wow. Or Diablo. Or Sewing Machine.

or pineapple!