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

[Fanaelialae]

I don’t think that adaquately explains why the PF2 designers ignored lessons learned about 4e. I don’t think it explains why so little is similar to 5e.

I'm saying that they never learned the lessons from 4e because they (at least most of them, including the lead designer) never worked on 4e (or 5e for that matter).

I'm not suggesting that there aren't alternate plausible explanations, but I don't see how my explanation is inadequate.

 

[pemerton]

'Balance' as such depends to a degree on how directly comparable things are. If a game says "here are three ways to be a badass melee warrior, choose one" then those three things are likely directly comparable and as such there's an issue if they aren't balanced. If a game says "you can be a badass warrior or you can turn into a bat for 10 minutes every day, then these are less directly comparable, and much more difficult to balance. How useful is to be a bat? How much combat will there be? A lot of balancing the two falls back on the GM or the creativity of the players (depending on playstyle) and their different enough that even if they aren't balanced, the player who thinks turning into a bat is really cool, may still choose that option because it's the only way to achieve that end.

<snip>

4E was as balanced as it was not because it's options were rigorously tested and reiterated over time. It was balanced because it's options were designed in such a way as to be easily comparable. This has to result in a trade off in breadth.

So how would you compare and rank these four options (from the 4e PHB) for a 10th level Warlock:

Ambassador Imp
Daily * Arcane, Conjuration
Standard Action, Ranged 100 miles
Effect: You whisper a message into the air, and an implike presence appears next to the creature you wish to speak to and delivers your message. If the creature has a reply, the imp appears adjacent to you at the end of your next turn to utter it. If the creature has no reply or is not within range, the imp appears adjacent to you at the end of your next turn to tell you so. The imp then disappears.

Shadow Form
Daily * Arcane, Polymorph
Minor Action, Personal
Effect: You assume a shadowy form until the end of the encounter or for 5 minutes. In this form you are insubstantial, gain fly 6, and can’t take standard actions. Reverting to your normal form is a minor action.

Shielding Shades
Daily * Arcane
Immediate Reaction, Personal
Trigger: You are hit by an attack
Effect: Reduce the attack’s damage to 0. If the attack targets other creatures, they take damage as normal.

Warlock's Leap
Daily * Arcane, Teleportation
Move Action, Personal
Effect: You teleport 6 squares. You do not need line of sight to the destination, but if you attempt to teleport to a space you can’t occupy, you don’t move.

 

[Undrave]

5e gives the DM far more power than 3e or 4e simply via its overtly stated philosophy of 'rulings not rules'. That's empowerment.

That's a FORM of empowerment.

4e empowers the DM by exposing its underlying math and giving solid guidelines for encounters and treasures as well as solid tips how to modify things. It gives you guidelines for traps, terrain powers and the impact of improvised action as well. 4e was the first time I DM'd and I started by pitting the PCs against a crew of skeleton pirates I modified myself using the various guidelines of the DMG. It went swimmingly well.

It also doesn't ask the DM to know everything player facing. You don't need to know a list of spells or a list of feats, nor do your monster

I've yet to read the 5e DMG but I'm not sure I really get the 'rulings not rules' thing and how it empowers the DM more... To me it sounds like it's just throws you in the pool saying "You can swim however you want! You're free to express yourself!" without teaching you to swim in the first place, but that might be different in the actual book.

I don’t think that adaquately explains why the PF2 designers ignored lessons learned about 4e. I don’t think it explains why so little is similar to 5e.

What lessons did you want them to learn? That giving cool stuff to martial characters pisses off the Wizard players?

 

[Charlaquin]

I have DM'd every edition of D&D and I literally do not understand what 5e is giving me to make me so empowered as compared to the other editions. EVERY edition had some form of Rule 0, so what more "empowerment" do I need? I don't get it.

As you mention, though, it does make me work more...and not "fun" work, either.

I think it’s important to consider the perspective of folks who haven’t DMed, or even played, every edition of D&D. I, for example, started playing with 3.5. I found the immense volume of rules and subsystems and exceptions and situational whatnots intimidating even as a player. I pushed through it because I really wanted to play the game and that was part of the buy-in to do so, but I would never have dreamed of DMing it at the time. I had a hard enough time just building a single character, there was no way I would have felt confident enough to run the game. When 4e came along, I appreciated how much more usable it was for me as a player, enough so that I decided to dip my toe into the DMing water. But, the precise balance and tight guidelines gave me constant anxiety that I was going to do something wrong and the game would be ruined because I didn’t give the players the right magic items at the right levels, or the encounter I designed was too hard or too easy, or I put in too many encounters or not enough, or I forgot some important rule. I DMed mostly because none of my other friends would, but I didn’t enjoy doing it.

But when the 5e playtest came out and I convinced my friends we should try it out, it was a night and day change for me. All of a sudden, I didn’t have to worry about all this precision that I thought I needed to have. There just weren’t that many rules to memorize, all I really needed to do was get comfortable with the core resolution system, which was easier than ever thanks to all the miscellaneous situational modifiers being consolidated into advantage/disadvantage and setting the appropriate DC. All of a sudden I felt free to improvise, and I loved it. Now I vastly prefer DMing over playing. 3e and 4e may have said I could change things however I wanted, but it never felt true there. It felt almost like a “change things at your own risk” warning rather than actual permission to change things.

Now, to someone who had DMed TSR era D&D before, 5e was probably nothing new. Those folks I’m sure had long since learned and internalized those lessons, and were confident enough in the DMing fundamentals that they had no problem applying those skills to 3e and 4e, and 5e may have felt like a step back (or a return to form, depending on their opinions of 3e and 4e). But to folks like me who had never experienced that less-structured form of D&D before, it was a revelation. A major paradigm shift. At least, that was my experience.

 

[Aldarc]

...and so the question remains unanswered: What do you think are the reasons for Paizo following in the footsteps of the clearly least successful edition of D&D, even though they had a blindingly obvious model for success right in front of their eyes?

This is a pretty heavy handed case of you begging a loaded question. It's on the level of "Why did you decide to stop beating your wife?" It's a crappy question to ask, lacking of any merit or value, so it is probably best anyway to leave such baseless questions left unanswered.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which is why I wouldn't have seen it - thanks for the summary! - as my 4e rulebook purchasing started and ended with the first round of three (PH-DMG-MM).

Without knowing any more about it, on that summary it seems simple enough. You say it more or less fights like a Rogue? Prime stat - Intelligence? Dexterity? Both?

Charisma - it's an innate spellcaster. And yes it was reasonably effective

How much trouble would it have in remaining functional if the adventure was mostly against fire-resistant (or immune) opponents e.g. a foray into a colony of salamanders backed by a couple of red dragons? Or would the player just cycle in another character for that trip? (similar to a 1e Illusionist when the adventure is going to be against mindless undead: leave it at home this trip)

There were a couple of options to help, especially once you hit tenth level. But yes you'd tried to avoid that.

As long as there's a range of simple classes to play it doesn't much matter what they are; that it's the 'muggle' classes that are simple also carries the benefit that those more-mundane types are probably easier for new players to relate to.

To me it does. Some people want to blow stuff up and don't want to deal with pages of spell list.

From my perspective [Essentials is] close enough for rock and roll.

One can say that 3e and 3.5e aren't the same thing but for me they're more than close enough to just lump together as 3e.

From my perspective they are the same in a way 3.0 and 3.5 aren't because you could play at the same table at the same time without knowing at all what other people (including the DM) were using. Or even what you were.

Some of it I found great because it opened things up to more players (Knight (simple defender fighter), Slayer (simple hitty fighter), Thief (simple rogue), Elementalist (simple blast mage)). I found the Scout and Hunter great because they were actual Rangers rather than the flavourless killer we got in the PHB - and they were also simple to play. And the Berserker (Barbarian who started as a defender and finished the fights as a striker) was great. Not everything was good - and it would have helped if the interesting classes in Heroes of Shadow (Assassin, Vampire, Binder) hadn't all failed to keep up.

5e gives the DM far more power than 3e or 4e simply via its overtly stated philosophy of 'rulings not rules'. That's empowerment.

... are you actually serious? Just saying something is "empowerment"? Especially when it's not a very empowering statement.

And it's not as if "Rulings not rules" is a particularly empowering mantra anyway. It means neither more nor less than "You're on your own bucko." It does precisely jack squat to empower DMs - it is the literal level zero baseline.

Now I'll admit that, as @Charlaquin points out, this is about a thousand times less disempowering than the 3.X family's "Here is how you must do things including how your monsters must be put together and the dozens of feats you must use and if you don't your players will be able to tell you you are doing it wrong".

But are you literally incapable of imagining anything more empowering than "You're on your own bucko"?

4e meanwhile did actual things to empower the DM that went beyond giving the DM all the power (which they have in 4e as well) and leaving them on their own and telling them to make it up as they went along. 4e provided tools. (Of course being 4e it released undercooked and with poor presentation that left people confused).

The two obvious tools are the power system and skill challenges. The power system as far as the DM is concerned says "You can do whatever you want - and here is a nice clean way to turn effects with mechanical impact into game language rather than being stuck making it up yourself. You don't have to do it this way but this is a good way to do a lot of things". Meanwhile skill challenges are a scene pacing tool that can be used by absolute newbies to handle things (I speak from experience). Again, the PHB stepped on the presentation. And the monster creation - again it didn't bind the DM - it provided good benchmarks for what would work well but the DM could break it if they wanted to. (And most did because the early 4e design guidelines weren't dangerous enough).

But fundamentally:

This is how you must do it <<< "Rulings not rules"/"You're on your own bucko" <<< "You have the power and here are some tools to help"

This sounds fairly reasonable...

...until you remember 5e also shares the exact same legacy. Literally nothing available to the PF2 devs weren't also available to the 5e devs... except one teensy weensy nugget of information: the knowledge designing your game like 5e brings immeasurable popularity.

Except that designing like 5e doesn't bring immesurable popularity. 5e was doing decently for a while on a nice sensible curve, selling more copies but making less money than 4e (subscription services are a license to make money). 5e then shot into the stratosphere with Critical Role.

And you not only haven't proven that 4e was the least successful edition of D&D (it was making about six millions a year for WotC a year after the launch of 5e). The least successful edition of D&D was overall 2e - not only was it caught (by White Wolf), it literally brought down TSR. You also haven't answered the basic question:

What would be the point of making a game like 5e when 5e already exists?

The market share of people who like games like 5e is covered by 5e. Why would they buy a different game just like it? The reason Pathfinder sold was that it took a different path to 4e and thus was able to compete by appealing to a specific audience.

Making a 5e clone would have just been shooting themselves in the head.

It should also make us appreciate 5E for what it is and for what it did. Despite this doom of having 3.5 as your "common ancestor" they still managed to finally fix LFQW, all without locking down the game or infesting it with a thousand little feats.

Except they didn't fix LFQW. The fundamental problem is still there and is basically unfixable. They just took enough steps to mitigate it that it's nowhere near so toxic.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Neonchameleon

Let me see what you think of this (because its hard for me to figure that we disagree here).

I think people are using "empower" in two very different ways when it comes to GMing 4e vs 5e.

4e Empowerment

I think people (like you and I) who speak of how "empowering" GMing 4e is are actually talking about empowerment through a lovely combination of liberation and constraint. Liberation from the burden of overhead (both rulings overhead and prep overhead). Liberation from the table-handling time issues of AD&D and 3.x where you had to cross-check multiple tomes to vet rules interactions etc. Liberation due to the fact that (a) you're constrained from the temptation of exercising Force by how player-facing the game is and the (b) simultaneous assurance of the fact that simply letting system have its say and coming up with creative, thematic obstacles and complications will result in satisfying emergent play (so you don't need Force in the first place).

GMing 4e is very similar to GMing PBtA games in that way. Your job is exclusively to maximize your creativity with interesting battlefield:team monster synergy and to come up with thematic obstacles and complications by referencing PC build flags and prior fiction in both your conflict framing and your Skill Challenges.

Its liberating in the "right" ways and constraining in the "right" ways; by proxy, empowering.

5e Empowerment

I think people who speak of how "empowering" GMing 5e are talking about (a) being back in the seat as "lead storyteller", (b) about being back in the suit with an overwhelmingly GM-facing rules mediation experience ("rulings not rules"), and (c) because the game is not so "bolted down" and action resolution is so GM-facing, (d) the GM has extreme latitude afforded to them to drive play as they see fit, and do so without table quibble or rules-reference, to tell an interesting story and entertain the group (and can easily deploy covert Force to get there).

---

Two TOTALLY different forms of "Empowerment", and in most ways diametric opposition.

 

[Charlaquin]

Charisma - it's an innate spellcaster. And yes it was reasonably effective



There were a couple of options to help, especially once you hit tenth level. But yes you'd tried to avoid that.



To me it does. Some people want to blow stuff up and don't want to deal with pages of spell list.



From my perspective they are the same in a way 3.0 and 3.5 aren't because you could play at the same table at the same time without knowing at all what other people (including the DM) were using. Or even what you were.

Some of it I found great because it opened things up to more players (Knight (simple defender fighter), Slayer (simple hitty fighter), Thief (simple rogue), Elementalist (simple blast mage)). I found the Scout and Hunter great because they were actual Rangers rather than the flavourless killer we got in the PHB - and they were also simple to play. And the Berserker (Barbarian who started as a defender and finished the fights as a striker) was great. Not everything was good - and it would have helped if the interesting classes in Heroes of Shadow (Assassin, Vampire, Binder) hadn't all failed to keep up.



... are you actually serious? Just saying something is "empowerment"? Especially when it's not a very empowering statement.

And it's not as if "Rulings not rules" is a particularly empowering mantra anyway. It means neither more nor less than "You're on your own bucko." It does precisely jack squat to empower DMs - it is the literal level zero baseline.

Now I'll admit that, as @Charlaquin points out, this is about a thousand times less disempowering than the 3.X family's "Here is how you must do things including how your monsters must be put together and the dozens of feats you must use and if you don't your players will be able to tell you you are doing it wrong".

But are you literally incapable of imagining anything more empowering than "You're on your own bucko"?

4e meanwhile did actual things to empower the DM that went beyond giving the DM all the power (which they have in 4e as well) and leaving them on their own and telling them to make it up as they went along. 4e provided tools. (Of course being 4e it released undercooked and with poor presentation that left people confused).

The two obvious tools are the power system and skill challenges. The power system as far as the DM is concerned says "You can do whatever you want - and here is a nice clean way to turn effects with mechanical impact into game language rather than being stuck making it up yourself. You don't have to do it this way but this is a good way to do a lot of things". Meanwhile skill challenges are a scene pacing tool that can be used by absolute newbies to handle things (I speak from experience). Again, the PHB stepped on the presentation. And the monster creation - again it didn't bind the DM - it provided good benchmarks for what would work well but the DM could break it if they wanted to. (And most did because the early 4e design guidelines weren't dangerous enough).

But fundamentally:

This is how you must do it <<< "Rulings not rules"/"You're on your own bucko" <<< "You have the power and here are some tools to help"



Except that designing like 5e doesn't bring immesurable popularity. 5e was doing decently for a while on a nice sensible curve, selling more copies but making less money than 4e (subscription services are a license to make money). 5e then shot into the stratosphere with Critical Role.

And you not only haven't proven that 4e was the least successful edition of D&D (it was making about six millions a year for WotC a year after the launch of 5e). The least successful edition of D&D was overall 2e - not only was it caught (by White Wolf), it literally brought down TSR. You also haven't answered the basic question:

What would be the point of making a game like 5e when 5e already exists?

The market share of people who like games like 5e is covered by 5e. Why would they buy a different game just like it? The reason Pathfinder sold was that it took a different path to 4e and thus was able to compete by appealing to a specific audience.

Making a 5e clone would have just been shooting themselves in the head.



Except they didn't fix LFQW. The fundamental problem is still there and is basically unfixable. They just took enough steps to mitigate it that it's nowhere near so toxic.

I agree with everything you say here, but I would argue that there is much more to 5e’s DM empowerment than just “rulings not rules” (which I frankly think is very overstated; it was mostly a buzzword used during the playtest to win over folks who were disillusioned with the rules bloat of 3e and 4e, but doesn’t hold up super well in actual 5e play.) Rather, I think people reach for “rulings not rules” as a snappy way to summarize what is a broader philosophical shift from 3e and 4e to 5e. Mike Mearls has talked about this a bit, where during 3e and 4e, WotC aimed to make the D&D experience as consistent as possible across different tables with different DMs, where with 5e they abandoned that goal in favor of embracing the uniqueness of the group.

One place where 5e’s philosophy of DM empowerment can be seen is in how it frames task resolution around the conversation between players and DM instead of around the skill system. I don’t recall how 3e handles this (because I never DMed it), but 4e encourages players to ask to use their skills and encourages the DM to say yes to these requests unless there was a compelling reason to say no. Now, these are not bad guidelines by any means. They’re very good guidelines for running 4e. But they do put the player in the driver’s seat, and asks the DM to exercise their power as little as possible.

In contrast, 5e says the DM describes the environment, the players say what they want to do, and the DM determines the results, calling for a check if necessary to resolve uncertainty in the results. This was a HUGE change for me, and it immediately made me feel more comfortable in the role of DM. Instead of being told to let the players decide when they wanted to use a skill and only saying no if I had a compelling reason, it encouraged me to take a more active role in the task resolution process. To use my own best judgment about a task’s likelihood of success and decide whether a check was necessary. It made me feel empowered to just let things succeed that seemed like they should succeed, to have things fail when it seemed like they should fail, and determine DCs on the fly, rather than making me feel like there was a system that had to be followed to insure the game ran correctly. Again, maybe this was something more experienced DMs had already grown comfortable with, but to me the idea of players describing actions and me determining the results, with the skill system as a tool to help me do so, as opposed to the players declaring checks and me interpreting their results was revolutionary.

 

[prabe]

@Neonchameleon

I think people are using "empower" in two very different ways when it comes to GMing 4e vs 5e.

---

Two TOTALLY different forms of "Empowerment", and in most ways diametric opposition.

Presuming this is true (I never played 4E, mainly because no one in my groups was interested enough to advocate for doing so): Given the aparently common attitude toward narrative-ish games (PbtA, for instance) among D&D players, is it really any surprise that at least some D&D players loudly rejected 4E as "not D&D"?

 

[Manbearcat]

Presuming this is true (I never played 4E, mainly because no one in my groups was interested enough to advocate for doing so): Given the aparently common attitude toward narrative-ish games (PbtA, for instance) among D&D players, is it really any surprise that at least some D&D players loudly rejected 4E as "not D&D"?

Nosir, it is not!