Please tell me we're wrong. Explain to me why we don't see the 5th edition in the right way, what we can find satisfactory, keeping in mind what we loved about 4th edition.
Again, my point is not to start a troll fight about editions. Real genuine concern about the eventual inevitability of switching editions.
Thanks!
Actually, my comment is relevant to the conversation because it is about roles. You have managed to turn my comment into something it wasn't ment to be. I found 4th edition's emphasis on roles to be a constraint while 5th edition's less emphasis better. The OP is obviously looking for reasons to play 5th edition and what I have said is one of those reasons.I'm sure that's nice for you, but the OP was pretty clear that they were looking for advice from people who liked 4e. Threadcrapping like this just has the potential to degenerate into edition wars. Posting about how much you dislike 4e in a thread about how 5e might be received by a 4e fan isn't welcome, so please don't.
Thanks
Weirdest thing -- when I played 4E, we never had that. We'd get in 2 or 3 combats per 4 hour session, and get plenty of roleplay opportunities in, besides. Even back when I was playtesting 4E 6 years ago, my combats from first to 10th level (my range) lasted 30 to 45 minutes, tops. However, I have heard combats above that level range taking longer. I don't think I ever ran a 4E game above 10th level.
Henry said:I also have a suspicion, based on that WotC research study back in 1998, that a fair amount of 1E and 2E players engaged in "theater of the mind" style play, with very little spatial representation (I know my groups ALWAYS used minis in some fashion) so the questions of "stickiness" or Op attacks may not have come up as often for some people. Perhaps it's actually having every edition laying it on the table in some fashion almost manditorily in the past 15 years made people sit up and take notice? All speculation on my part.
Players are getting a lot more tricks at Paragon and Epic Tier. I really notice it at 11th level, because most characters now have abilities that trigger off an action point. So the use of action points really lets things bog down, because an action point doesn't just mean one more action, it generally triggers a host of stuff.
Our core campaign only made it to 17th level, but we played an Epic one-shot. Combat took time. Now, it was probably more frustrating for our DM than for the players. I was having a blast, my Swordmage could mark practically the entire battlefield.
But even my 17th level Bard was often taking a fair amount of time resolving turns (and I know I did my best to resolve the turn quickly), because I would be enabling an ally to attack, moving minis across the board like a chessmaster and generally causing havoc. It's a lot of fun, but it is also time-intensive.
Actually, my comment is relevant to the conversation because it is about roles. You have managed to turn my comment into something it wasn't ment to be. I found 4th edition's emphasis on roles to be a constraint while 5th edition's less emphasis better. The OP is obviously looking for reasons to play 5th edition and what I have said is one of those reasons.
Cheers.
Two things kind of dovetail to make it a bigger issue with more recent editions than it was before.
The first is monster survivability. In 3e and 4e, one hit is no longer the difference between a living monster and a dead one anymore. This means that "opportunity attacks" for getting out of melee are less punishing (unless specifically ramped up like a defender's is).
The second is combat mobility. It was pretty fine up until 4e to stand in one place and trade blows with the monsters for the few turns it might've taken you to kill them. After 4e, things move around a lot. And the moving around isn't punished.
5e retains the mobility (move-attack-move!), but ramps up the vulnerability of most monsters. In general, this helps the goal of faster combats (monsters that can survive 3 hits are faster to go through than monsters that can survive 6), but this ALSO helps the defender retain their teeth so that one hit from a Fighter (especially one who tosses a couple dice onto the damage) is nothing to be sniffed at. It would be a little like if, instead of stopping movement, a 4e fighter just did striker damage with OA's. That's still a HUGE disincentive to move, and it doesn't rely on grid positioning and fiddly movement as much.
4e's defender philosophy (as embodied in the fighter) was "I won't let you escape." It was controller-y, negating actions. 5e's defender philosophy (as embodied in the same place) is "If you move, you die." It's striker-y, killing things faster. Which does make it less obvious when you're just looking at the RAW.
Part of what I like about that, as a player and a DM, is that action negation is SUPER BORING in play. Saying "you can't do what you try to do" is part of grind, it turns forward momentum into nothingness, a waste of time to process through, it screws with character authority, and all it does is make the action more stilted and less dynamic. However, with the "you do it and you die" mentality, the game moves forward even if the action is denied. There is a consequence that isn't just "you can't do it" that moves the action toward resolution. It is a little bit like "fail forward" design -- even if the hobgoblin who tries to get to the back ranks takes a hit and doesn't die, you're a LOT closer to ending the combat after that hit than you would be otherwise.
5e's got a lot of sophisticated juice beneath its simple-looking chassis.
4e's defender philosophy (as embodied in the fighter) was "I won't let you escape." It was controller-y, negating actions. 5e's defender philosophy (as embodied in the same place) is "If you move, you die." It's striker-y, killing things faster. Which does make it less obvious when you're just looking at the RAW.