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

[Garthanos]

A fighter that trip attacks is slowing an enemy and giving allies bonuses to hit it control)

Fighter maneuvers attack attack attack attack a dozen more times and oops here have an ability to trip someone. Even a ranger in 4e did more control with a feat to adjust its striker feature to allow control.

 

[Garthanos]

Be a rogue.

Poorly defined and reliant on guess work what can I do with skill X is the element I see Pathfinder 2 providing

 

[FrogReaver]

Fighter maneuvers attack attack attack attack a dozen more times and oops here have an ability to trip someone.

You do realize that's the kind of thing a fighter power would do in 4e too, right?

Even a ranger in 4e did more control with a feat to adjust its striker feature to allow control.

I can't argue if you don't tell me what the feat your talking about does.

 

[FrogReaver]

Poorly defined and reliant on guess work what can I do with skill X is the element I see Pathfinder 2 providing

Not poorly defined and reliant on guesswork if you have a session 0 and ask your DM about those things when you make one.

 

[FrogReaver]

You know what I realized I hate the most - when someone quotes 1 line out of a rather long direct reply to them - a line that doesn't even contain the central message of the post and ignores everything else from that reply.

@Garthanos why did you do that?

 

[Garthanos]

I'll solve that one for you - be a cavalier

Not available in the PHB I said next to none in the PHB and half later that was a half later I consider it luck that they actually implemented something.

Not poorly defined and reliant on guesswork if you have a session 0 and ask your DM about those things when you make one.

I am really having difficulties imagining how a I could frame it and how DM is going to answer that in a coherent way that will make choices like that feel reasonable.

Question 1 what might i do in Tier X with this ability and how does that compare to other options in the game like this slew of spells and slew of subclass ability am I ever going to compete with wizards casting spell X or am i always going to be third fiddle because I cannot choose to make special exertion like a monk can with his Ki and so on and so forth.

Also requiring a ton out of the DM as well which is perhaps some of the appeal of pf2 (I think it has plenty of excess complexity from 3e still banging around so over all not appealing and 13A actually has anti-tactical choice elements i find unappealing)

 

[Garthanos]

You do realize that's the kind of thing a fighter power would do in 4e too, right?

I can get an effect other than damage every round of every battle in 4e powers the 5e maneuvers maybe have a frequency of an encounter power. I can knock down assault someone regardless of their size too.

 

[Oofta]

I don’t think any edition of D&D does a great job of emulating the sources you mentioned, honestly. Way too much vulgar magic (to borrow a term from Mage the Ascension). But yeah, 4e definitely leaned more fantastical in what characters could accomplish without magic, which is great for some campaigns but does make those more down to earth classic fantasy stories even more difficult to emulate.

I’ve heard it said that pre-4e D&D was about ordinary people becoming heroes, while 4e is about heroes becoming gods. I think the statement is a tad hyperbolic, but it does nicely summarize one of the major tone differences between 3e and 4e. I think 5e found a pretty decent balance, although I would like to see a slightly more mundane low-end and a slightly more fantastical high-end.

Yeah, that's a good point. In a lot of fantasy wizards are few, far between, and mostly ritual casters with nary a fireball in sight. Magical healing is pretty much limited to the equivalent of healer's kits or nonexistant.

Okay, not really a spoiler but if me poking fun at/joking about Gandalf is a trigger don't bother reading...

Spoiler

I used to joke that Gandalf (in the books, not the movies) was really just a stage magician with flash bangs, a fast horse and good PR. Did anyone actually see him kill a Balrog? Nope. We just take is word for it. As far as we know he realized the Balrog exceeded the weight capacity of the bridge, pretended to destroy it and then hid. Maybe his staff actually held some magical power but he had to break it to have any effect.

Defeating Saruman? Yep, it was totally his idea to send Merry and Pippin to talk to the Treants to take the dude out. Minas Tirith? Everyone is about to die and he keeps mumbling about how any moment now he's going to open up that can of whoop-ass and then everyone will be sorry. Any time now. Honest. They'll be sorry.

The most he had in the way of actual power was fireworks and scaring off goblins with a flash-bang.

I always thought growing up that Gandalf was meant to represent politicians, lots of talk while taking credit for other people's deeds and spinning their own deeds in the most positive light. Oh, and everybody knows he's really an angel (or something) because he has a great PR department.

Gandalf was a charlatan.

 

[Beleriphon]

I’ve heard it said that pre-4e D&D was about ordinary people becoming heroes, while 4e is about heroes becoming gods. I think the statement is a tad hyperbolic, but it does nicely summarize one of the major tone differences between 3e and 4e. I think 5e found a pretty decent balance, although I would like to see a slightly more mundane low-end and a slightly more fantastical high-end.

I think 4E general style was Herakles the incredibly powerful mortal to Herakles the member of the Dodekatheon.

 

[HarbingerX]

B/X was the pinnacle of D&D design. Everything since then has tried to tack more chrome on what was a simple and elegant system that encouraged in-game rewards instead of mechanical meaningless choices.

Joking aside, having played B/X, AD&D, 3.5e, 4e and 5e, 4e was the only edition I quit, like a lot of other groups. I don't think the philosophy of 4e was wrong - balanced and interesting choices - so much as the not addressing the design problems that it released with. To be fair, I hear people saying that they fixed a lot by the end of its life, but our group quit sometime after PHB2.