I have to ask, what was it you liked about 4e that you see so well replicated in 5e. Only ask because I'm clear as to why so many 4e players don't see what they are used to.
(Please no edition wars)
No edition warring necessary! A while back there was a
thread on what people liked about 4e. Here's what I wrote:
Iosue said:
I love all editions of D&D, but particularly close to my heart are Red Box Basic and 4e. Red Box because it's what we played the most and the longest back in the day. And 4e because many of its changes are things I house ruled or wanted to house rule in D&D. Things like:
At-will spells - I understood and agreed with the idea of Vancian magic as a limit on Wild Wizard Shenainigans. But I often thought that a magic-user should be able to use some low-level spells whenever they wanted. E.g., magic missile as a basic self-defense spell. Read magic whenever needed. Cantrips to give that wizardly sheen. Lo and behold, 4e does exactly this.
5e does this as well.
Fighter options - A two-fold problem. Giving fighters (and thieves) more to do at higher levels, and more interesting options than just extra attacks. In BD&D we did this via DM Fiat and stunting, but 4e did this elegantly by making combat more tactical, and giving minis a real purpose. Much fun.
5e does this as well. And in fact, one of the things I really liked about 4e was marking, as well as the Knight's Battle Guardian/Defender Aura. With the latest packet, marking is back, and the Knight's Defender class feature also hearkens back to the Defender Aura.
Expanding the "sweet spot". Once we'd done "zero to hero", we tended to start characters at higher levels to create the kind of cinematic fantasy heroics that drew us to D&D in the first place. This is baked right into the game in 4e.
This is baked into 5e as well, although in a slightly different manner than 4e.
Tiered play - I loved the distinct meta-levels of BECM: dungeon -> wilderness -> domains -> world. I'm happy to see a similar progression again in the core rules.
5e will also have this with Apprentice Tier, Adventurer Tier, and Legacy Tier.
And while I loved core 4e, I really love Essentials. Everything I loved about the core now tweaked even more to my taste! Plus, maps/tiles and tokens!
While I've had this sense from the first packet pregens, the character classes in the latest packet strike me as particularly Essentials-like.
Finally, the great thing about BD&D was the ease of set-up and prep for DMs. It was real easy to wing it. Now 4e has a similar ease to winging it, plus an easy system for creating accurately balanced (or unbalanced!) encounters or modifying modules. This was brought home to me when I set aside a good hour for reworking the sample dungeon in the Starter Set from 5 adventurers to only 2. In the end it only took me 20-30 minutes.
The essential structure of 4e encounter building is in 5e: XP budgeting to make balanced or unbalanced encounters/modify modules.
Now, I know there are some other features of 4e that are salient with other 4e fans, particularly those with bad experiences with 3e. There's the tight math, the AEDU system making sure people are essentially on the same page power level-wise, page 42, the ease of reskinning, keywords, a mode of play where powers give players narrative control, Pemertonian scene-framing, etc. I appreciate these features, but I don't require that they be present for my enjoyment. I enjoy 4e for the experience it gives me, but I'm not wedded to the specific mechanics. 5e gives me essentially the same experience, while also removing the things I
didn't like about 4e; e.g., the long, involved, fiddly chargen, and sloggish combat in which enemy miniatures become Condition Christmas Trees.
