D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

[Maxperson]

...and that's my opinion. They had to take a chance, and I'm not sure there were a lot of good options. Hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think we must differentiate between interesting tactically and interesting conceptually.

The sole difference in many powers were akin to whether you could slide an enemy 1 or whether you could slide yourself 1. Powers like that aren't interesting conceptually or tactically.

The difference between an agile character that moves yourself around and a forceful character that pushes other people around is pretty interesting. That's the conceptual difference which your powers represent - and it also makes most characters in other editions feel very same-y because in practice they all move almost exactly the same way with few meaningful differences other than the number of squares they move. (There's an honourable exception here for 5e rogues and monks).

And as for tactically are you fighting one on one in a featureless room other than walls to stop you escaping? Then yes I'll agree it's not interesting tactically because you are in a dead boring tactical situation. It's also not that useful in the middle of a line fight.

But in a more normal situation the ability to move yourself before an attack (without taking an AoO) is wonderful for setting up flanking which gives you a bonus to hit - or the party rogue sneak attack. The ability to move yourself after an attack allows you to rush up to the enemy, shank them with a dagger, and then retreat behind the fighter or away from the enemy, allowing the fighter to keep them on lockdown. (Or on one occasion rush up to the enemy, retreat off the edge of the ten foot wall, and use my acrobatics skill to land safely).

The ability to push an enemy can push them away from a wizard, to a more isolated position for flanking with your rogue, away from a downed ally to prevent a coup de grace, away from a downed ally so another PC could feed them a potion without eating an opportunity attack, backwards to allow you to get at someone into their own pit trap, into their own summoning portal (oops), off a bridge, off a walkway, off a winding mountain path, off the Lightning Rail in Eberron, into the camp fire, through a blade barrier, into a burning oil spill, close enough to the furnace to take fire damage, or into a latrine. And that's just the variations I can remember off the top of my head.

If you think that forcing your enemy to move where you want is not interesting tactically then either all your combats take place in very boring environments or we have a very different idea of what is interesting tactically.

 

[FireLance]

Eh, I get that. 4e powers “feel like magical effects” to many people because they come in discrete packages just like spells do. You can call it a “maneuver” or whatever, but after so many years, it’s been ingrained into many D&D players’ heads that a little packet of effects that you “use” to produce a specific outcome according to a self-contained set of instructions is what spells are. In my experience, you show a 4e detractor Tide of Iron and Hammer Hands, and they’ll find Hammer Hands more palatable, because modifying a basic attack doesn’t “feel like a spell” the same way that a special attack with a bonus effect does.

Actually, now that I think about it, there might be a case for presentation making a difference, after all. 4E martial powers were formatted pretty much like 4E arcane or divine spells, with keywords, action required, attack vs defence, targets, and so on.

On the other hand, 5E battlemaster maneuvers are pretty much mostly add superiority die to the damage roll plus effect, and I don't hear many complaints that they feel the same, or that they are like spells.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Instead: Both games focus on the encounter. Both games are obsessed with balance. Neither game really trusts the GM.

The difference between 3E, PF1 and 5E on one hand, and 4E and PF2 on the other,

I'm curious what you mean by "trusts the DM" in this context. If I'm looking for a game that doesn't trust the DM then the poster child here is the 3.X family where monsters are supposed to be built using ridiculous simulationist guidelines where the number of monster dice of the species they have is relevant as are their types and subtypes. Indeed this is so hard-coded into the monster design rules that constructs (such as devices made out of clockwork) are immune to critical hits. 3.0 was from memory explicitly designed to limit the DM.

By comparison to 3.X 4e trusts the DM. The only hard-coded rules for monster design can be put on a business card.

Besides, it's not that character imbalance is the crippling issue the design of 4E and PF2 think it is. Most games on the market couldn't care less about making sure that all character options are equal.

If you think that all 4e characters were perfectly equal then I can only wonder if you ever played it.

And having feats and options and magic items that really make a difference is mostly fun and cool and evocative. Not something that must be repressed and controlled, like in both 4E and PF2.

4e feats were far more fun, cool, and evocative than 3.X feats. Like Dodge. Or the feats that added +2 to two different skills. Or the feats that added +2 to a saving throw. Or all the other feats that were only ever taken as pre-requisites.

And in 4e the Portable Hole was a Bugs Bunny style portable hole rather than a bag to store things in. Of course this wasn't boring and traditional enough for Mike Mearls - who had to add "True Portable Hole" to function the old way. The part that was boring were the endless lists of swords - but the +X sword has never been interesting.

tl;dr: I think the downfall of 4E was its overbearing controlling nature,

tl;dr I think the downfall of 4e was a continual stream of counter-factual assertions about it. Because all your assertions here fly in the face of the game I actually played and enjoyed. The other downfall was people trying to treat it as if it was 3.X.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I always felt like 4E was half-baked and pushed out before it was quite done.

This is actually true. The team was given two years to make 4e and 10 months in went back to the drawing board because they had ended up with an over-fiddly mess. Despite starting over 10 months in they still released on time, and 4e badly needed those ten months.

Even social and free-form exploration encounters became skill challenges, which sound great on paper but tended to change free form play to a series of mechanical checks with some extraneous narration.

Skill challenges are an excellent tool that was really poorly explained. If you treat them as an improvisational DMing tool for handling player-generated plans (three strikes and you're out and the rough difficulty for what's being attempted) they are wonderful. The more you try and nail them down beyond that the more rigid they become.

And the book is very bad at explaining that. Another thing that should have been fixed in that ten months, along with the DCs.

 

[FrogReaver]

The difference between an agile character that moves yourself around and a forceful character that pushes other people around is pretty interesting. That's the conceptual difference which your powers represent - and it also makes most characters in other editions feel very same-y because in practice they all move almost exactly the same way with few meaningful differences other than the number of squares they move. (There's an honourable exception here for 5e rogues and monks).

The differences in strength and agility come up in many different ways. You slide yourself or you slide enemy just doesn't add anything.

And as for tactically are you fighting one on one in a featureless room other than walls to stop you escaping? Then yes I'll agree it's not interesting tactically because you are in a dead boring tactical situation. It's also not that useful in the middle of a line fight.

Sure - Obviously all I ever fight in is featureless rooms

But in a more normal situation the ability to move yourself before an attack (without taking an AoO) is wonderful for setting up flanking which gives you a bonus to hit - or the party rogue sneak attack.

Sure - but I'm not comparing whether an ability is interestingly differentiated from a basic attack. I'm talking about a slew of powers that -

Slide 1
Push 1
Grant +1 to next allys attack
Grant -1 to enemies next attack

The choice of which to take isn't meaningful or interesting at that point.

he ability to move yourself after an attack allows you to rush up to the enemy, shank them with a dagger, and then retreat behind the fighter or away from the enemy, allowing the fighter to keep them on lockdown.

Wouldn't have mattered whether you could slide them or slide yourself

(Or on one occasion rush up to the enemy, retreat off the edge of the ten foot wall, and use my acrobatics skill to land safely).

Wouldn't have mattered whether you could slide them or slide yourself

The ability to push an enemy can push them away from a wizard, to a more isolated position for flanking with your rogue, away from a downed ally to prevent a coup de grace, away from a downed ally so another PC could feed them a potion without eating an opportunity attack,

Such an example rarely occurred in actual play

backwards to allow you to get at someone into their own pit trap, into their own summoning portal (oops), off a bridge, off a walkway, off a winding mountain path, off the Lightning Rail in Eberron, into the camp fire, through a blade barrier, into a burning oil spill, close enough to the furnace to take fire damage, or into a latrine.

Nearly all forced movement in 4e gave an enemy the ability to not go into such a harmful location.

And that's just the variations I can remember off the top of my head.

Sure - and how about the million times when those abilities had no impact and made no difference? It's easy to cherry pick a few example when they worked as intended. It's more realistic to put them into their proper context where the choice of a particular power over another made no difference 95% of the time.

If you think that forcing your enemy to move where you want is not interesting tactically then either all your combats take place in very boring environments or we have a very different idea of what is interesting tactically.

Weird how I don't see hardly any forced movement in 5e - even though nearly every class can push. Pushing is just not interesting tactically most of the time.

 

[FrogReaver]

Actually, now that I think about it, there might be a case for presentation making a difference, after all. 4E martial powers were formatted pretty much like 4E arcane or divine spells, with keywords, action required, attack vs defence, targets, and so on.

On the other hand, 5E battlemaster maneuvers are pretty much mostly add superiority die to the damage roll plus effect, and I don't hear many complaints that they feel the same, or that they are like spells.

Maybe spells changed in 4e and changed back in 5e?

 

[FrogReaver]

Interest is subjective. Personally, I’d agree that the difference between slide yourself 1 and slide your opponent 1 isn’t conceptually that interesting to me, but I disagree strongly that it isn’t tactically interesting. If it doesn’t interest you tactically, fair enough, but it does have a lot of potential to affect the encounter in very different ways.

Sure it could - but it so rarely didn't...

 

[Umbran]

It's an argument from bad faith.... when they want to diss it for that association it is a miniatures game ... but when they want to pretend things are all the same hey ignore positioning and pretend its not significant.

Mod Note:

Oh, so now we are down to... when They want. They pretend. They ignore...

Them and Us, is it?

We are about to be done here - this discussion is degrading to the same old arguments of Them and Us... as if nothing was learned from the conflicts a dozen years ago. It wasn't constructive then. It isn't constructive now.

Do better, or the thread will simply be closed.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure it could - but it so rarely didn't...

My experience differed.