D&D 4E Outstanding later 4e products +

[bert1000]

I was cleaning out my rpg books in storage to sell a bunch of 3e, and ended up reading 4e material. I forgot how many outstanding products came out in the last 1/3 of the run! I consider 4e pretty well done overall, but

* monster vault, monster vault nentir, and dark sun creature catalog -- what amazing fluff and crunch

* neverwinter campaign book -- amazing sand box. pulled together a lot of later mechanics. themes fully integrated and "factions" described with goals that actually make sense for the most part

* forget if these were late, but the "fantastical setting" books: underdark, astral, and elemental chaos -- just oozing with flavor, locations, and mechanics.


Anything I'm missing that you consider the pinnacle of 4e? 4e really could have used another 2 years...

Note: this is a + thread but I welcome civil disagreement -- "you know, neverwinter read great but wasn't good in play" or whatever. Just no edition bashing please.

 

[darkbard]

Though I don't think 4E adventures run well "out of the tin," especially when it comes to prescripted Skill Challenges, Reavers of Harkenwold (DM's Kit) and Madness at Gardmore Abbey were two exceptional products for mining for ideas.

 

[Eltab]

I liked the fluff in Primal Power. Finally, a barbarian character can be something more than a stereotype.

 

[Zardnaar]

Though I don't think 4E adventures run well "out of the tin," especially when it comes to prescripted Skill Challenges, Reavers of Harkenwold (DM's Kit) and Madness at Gardmore Abbey were two exceptional products for mining for ideas.

I have Madness at Gardmore Abbey PDF and yeah I think its a good adventure.

I don't like the Edition but found 4E Eberron better than 4E Darksun or FR. And by better I mean a bit more faithful to the source material.

 

[Eymerald]

4E was full of innovative and complex adventures. I maintain that it is the edition most likely to bring in non-d&ders

 

[bert1000]

4E was full of innovative and complex adventures. I maintain that it is the edition most likely to bring in non-d&ders

What were some of the 4e adventures that really got what 4e was good at? Many of the early adventures seemed to ignore every piece of advice in the DMG and DMG2 for some reason...

EN World's Zeitgeist is an awesome example of playing to 4e's strengths. Adventure #2 is 100 pages and only includes ~10 mostly plot meaningful large set piece combat encounters around lots of investigation. Perfect for 4e.

What are others?

 

[S'mon]

I found with the published 30-fight adventures that removing 20 fights helped a lot.

 

[pemerton]

I think the Underdark and The Plane Above are both great books. Unlike the OP I don't care for the flavuor text in the Monster Vault, but its monster design is top-notch.

 

[TwoSix]

Neverwinter Campaign Setting is amazing. It's really a shame that the "theme" concept (which are done really well in NWCS) wasn't more integrated at the start of 4e (i.e. as a heroic tier equivalent to Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies). Themes do a great job of integrating story concepts with mechanical heft, which is where 4e really sings.

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

4E was full of innovative and complex adventures. I maintain that it is the edition most likely to bring in non-d&ders

I really, really would like to agree with you - but I think unfortunately 4E wasn't very good when it comes to adventures. At least in the first one or two years this wasn't the case. But the later adventures (like Madness or Reavers) were super solid. Also a lot of stuff from the later Dungeon Mag issues (from 2011 on) was terrific!

Your second statement: true!


Edit: Hm, well, on a second thought: The edition to bring in most non-D&D players is still 5E. Because of the Pen-and-Paper-internet renaissance. But yeah, 4E had some tricks up its sleeves to lure in people from a non D&D-background.