So how is 4th edition?

[Lizzybeth]

This may sound like a troll, but I'd really like some helpful thoughts, not trash talk.

I haven't played D&D for a couple of years (My group disbanded a month after 4th released), and I have been wondering how 4th edition has stood up. At the release, I investigated, studied, and even ran a few adventures in 4th, but I was not really excited about it. i found the 3.5 system a better system at the time because I loved the interconnected rules, and easy tables. I have heard 4th is more simplified/easier to run, but I have always liked flexible and open to simplified. Since I didn't use the system very long, I was wondering if 4th has merit, as I am hoping to start a new group soon, and am debating 3.5 or 4th. Since I own both rule sets/books, and support material, the choice actually comes down to which would be more viable and fun for me as a GM. My players have no preference, as they are more interested in just playing, period, not the specifics of the rules. Their only requirement is it allows them to develop fun and viable characters without massive work (ie not huge weighty rules like Champions).

Please don't flame. I want real opinions. I have been reading other posts, but I am putting this out as an easy place to look.

 

[Destil]

I can do little to recommend 4th more than urge you to play it. It's clearly a game designed to be played over most everything else. So I'd encourage you to try a one-shot or something and try it out.

That said, given your preferences I think you'll enjoy 3E more. 3E doesn't become a pain to play as a PC until the high levels, so if you're starting at 1 and going at the recommend rate the players may never end up feeling the system is too weighty. I think 4E eventually hits this point, too, but generally at a higher level (and generally because feat/path/destiny interactions can become a bit complex and are often conditonal).

 

[DracoSuave]

Well, the simplicity of 4e has proven to be a winner, in my opinion.

Before, it took a long time before 3e could put out new and interesting classes. With the exception of psions and psionic warriors, there really was nothing at all until Oriental Adventures--the ball didn't get rolling until 3.5e came out with the Complete books.

Fourth Edition, however, started bringing new classes out right away. As a result, you have 18 different distinct classes in print, with more coming on the way. As well, the Role system means that there's no need for specific classes on a team; each role has three or more different distinct options to fill it and so even if you're 'stuck playing the Leader' you have a lot of leeway on how to fill that role.

Plus, some of the classes are very new and quite refreshing. Warlord showed they were willing to stretch the system beyond the old confines of 'Martial characters deal melee, divine characters heal stuff, and arcane characters blast stuff, and bards suck at all three.' Swordmage was an awesome way of making a gish unique and have its own shtick rather than being a hybrid that was ineffective if cool (I'm looking at you, duskblade). Avenger is a concept that we haven't seen since Al-Qadim! Warden, a nature tank Rawr!

And the way that other classes work have proven to be full of flavor and made them distinct in a way 'rage 1/day' couldn't. Barbarians, Bards, Sorcerers, Paladins, soon Monks and Assassins, they're no longer classes that are 'like this other class, but do the same thing different, but still the same.' Now they do their own different thing, and revel in their uniqueness.


How was all this possible?

By making the system simpler, they made it modular. Instead of marrying five different systems and hoping it all balances out, they simply used one system to resolve what you wanted to do, and made the differences in classes be 'What do you want to do?' rather than 'What game mechanic do you use to do what you want to do?'

Easier to balance, and easier to create new stuff.



That said, I did like, and still like 3rd edition. However, 4th edition is a natural step in its evolution. 3rd edition was about unifying the core mechanics, and giving the players control over their character's abilities. 4th edition is about further unification, and giving DMs power over encounters. While, as a mathematical study, 3rd edition's monsters are very intricate and interesting to examine... you can see how they got to each and every number!... 4th edition's monsters are more focused towards their goal in the game; challenges for players to defeat.

4th edition is more geared towards the experience of the game, rather than the mechanics of how to get there.

 

[Windjammer]

T Since I own both rule sets/books, and support material, the choice actually comes down to which would be more viable and fun for me as a GM. My players have no preference, as they are more interested in just playing, period, not the specifics of the rules.

That's a tough one to answer (which is why I rather wrote a post than partook in the poll). Most improvements to 4E since you left it were on the players' side. A lot of player character material that one would have wanted to be integral to the game to begin with, has been added in the 1.5 years since: some key races and classes (see Player's Handbook 2), animal companions for rangers, divine domains for clerics, illusion magic for wizards, and so on and on. It's really splendid.

But for DMs I can't see a similar trend. The skill challenge subsystem hasn't been fixed (it certainly hasn't received the playtest it ought to have received before we were asked to pay money for it), and no significant novelties or additions to the game system came long in the past 1.5 years. Yeah, we got some nicer monsters mechanically speaking in the second MM, and some treasure items look better in Adventurer's Vault 2 than in 1, but seriously, nothing to mandate a second look for a GM.

I'm not saying that I'm unhappy with what 4E gives me as a DM, but if you left it some time last year for reasons you know best then there are absolutely no reasons to revisit it so soon. Give WotC another year or two to really add something to the DM's lot.

If you're curious and got some cash to burn, I'd say look at the DMG 2. I'm not impressed by it at all, but that's the one 4E book which has tried hardest to make the game richer for the GM.

 

[Lizzybeth]

Very helpful

Valid points all. I remember some of this in my reading the rules, and some of your points are mentioned in the other posts I've read on the boards. Of course, there is still a balance of choice for which I should consider, but I have some new things to look into in 4th edition.

I don't have the number 2 books yet, but have been considering getting them (I have an obsession with collecting things anyways), so I'll look into them more.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I actually think it depends on how you play D&D.

I used to play 3.5e (mainly) as a tactical board game, and 4e suits me well.
But a lot of people played 3.5e without using minis, and the
"oh yeah I hit that guy."
or
"I fireball them as they crest the ridge"
approach doesn't work as well in 4e ... where all the cool stuff is in tactical positioning etc.

Just try 4e .. works well enough just with the PH, DMG, & MM to gauge how the game feels.

 

[Gort]

4e is a lot easier on the GM. Encounters are so easy to whip up, you end up spending more time on the plot and other stuff. I'd recommend it, but given that you're posting in the 4e forum, I'm not sure what else you were expecting.

 

[Lizzybeth]

why in 4e?

I chose to put it here because I have played D&D since 1st edition, and have always bought the new edition and support books as soon as they were released. As such, I played 3.0 and 3.5 for their full time in existence. I know how they work and play, and can formulate my own opinions. I posted in 4e because I was more interested in supportive opinions of 4e, so who better than those who play it. I figure I can base my selection on your advice and opinions. You know what I should look for and think about.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Personally I think there are a lot of misconceptions about 4e and I favor it myself. I really have barely played 3.x but I found that the same things bugged me about it that bugged me about earlier editions. 4e FAR more than previous editions acknowledges itself as a game and its design is focused on making it work well AS a game. This really does tell in a number of ways.

In terms of play you run into a LOT less issues with the rules fighting against what you want to do. A prime example is "plot busting" mechanics like Detect Alignment. Why powers of this ilk ever existed I don't know, but their primary effect was to give players a "gimme". Want to know which guy in the room is the evil badguy? All you need is a simple low level spell. Yes, the DM can go out of his way to THWART these kinds of things, but that's exactly what I mean, its DM vs the rules. A lot more thought went into this kind of thing in 4e and it shows. The DM has a LOT more narrative control.

Narrative control also shows up in the resting/healing system. Want to give the PCs a little boost? Give them a short rest. They can recover powers and use surges but you don't have to let them "spend the night" someplace or be forced to drop some kind of Doom-style recharge into the middle of an adventure. Want to really push the players? Make them accomplish a certain amount before an extended rest or shift extended rests to plot points instead of always every single day. It gives more flexibility right out of the box in how you can pace adventures.

Overall DM workloads with 4e are also a lot lower. Monsters are simple and easy to use and its trivial to set up even fairly involved encounters on the fly. Making custom monsters is very easy. NPC opponents can be just templatized MM entries and there is no longer a notion of character class as something that applies to anyone except PCs.

Mechanically I just see 4e as solid. It has a LOT less subsystems than earlier editions. Don't be fooled by that. The system tries to stay mostly out of dealing with a lot of purely RP stuff beyond giving you a good toolbox to let the players define non-combat aspects of their characters how they want. The mechanics it has outside of combat are simple, but they WORK and they work well for the vast majority of things you'll ever want to do. Because they are simple they are easy to use in new situations that come up. This means its very good for dealing with unexpected situations that aren't covered by the rules already.

If there is a downside to all of this it is that the system really asks you to understand it and work with it and not fight it. It wants you to trust it, but when you do it rewards you.

Combat is expected to be detailed and tactically rich. This can be a downside for some players who really aren't at all interested in learning even the simplest rules. On the other hand you can have perfectly acceptable encounters that don't force the players to get too involved with tactics if they aren't into it, you just have to understand that they'll find an encounter that would be easy for a tactically savvy group to be more difficult and adjust things to suite their style of play. Given that there is good support for encounters that don't involve combat at all or focus on doing things like spying, infiltration, etc and you'll find it works pretty good.

Really the main problem people seem to have with 4e is that it isn't 3.x. Its just a rather different game. The flavor of D&D is there, but it is structured a little differently and downplays some atypical kinds of play like the guy that wants to have a legion of undead follow him around or something like that. The misconception is that you CAN'T do these kinds of things. You can if you want, they just aren't something that the rules elaborate on. Because things like ritual magic are very open ended systems you just have to do a bit of extrapolation. The system will handle it if you do.

Personally I couldn't go back to older editions. There are just a lot of things that are much easier to do with 4e. The difficulty with doing a lot of that stuff really always bothered me in the past and I've played since the OLD days before AD&D and its only now that I see the game as mature enough to really open up all the possibilities in the genre without a lot of hacking.

 

[The Human Target]

I can only say that given an option between running/playing 3rd or running/playing 4th, I would choose 4th every time.

And while I like the game as it is now, I don't have a huge mad love for it either.