Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

[cavalier973]

One more thing that may have an impact on the feel of earlier editions: the first few editions of the game weren't just rules for dungeon crawling or having adventures, they were rules for building a particular sort of shared world. I base this on Matt Colville's discussion of the rules in his "Making a Fighter in Every Edition of D&D" videos. He had pointed out that rules elements like level limits for demi-humans were in place because the rules authors wanted a particular type of campaign setting--one where humans were numerous, and elves, dwarves, and halflings were not. Where there were dwarf clerics, but playable dwarf clerics were not supported in the rules.

Perhaps these strictures added to the "feel" in some way. I acknowledge this doesn't explain why 3.X edition has the feelz, and 4e doesn't...

 

[Imaro]

I understand the appeal to D&D grognards, but it's not a development I feel inclined to support or endorse.

I don't think the type of sale numbers 5e is seeing could be generated by grognards alone. I think one of the things that gets lost in these type of discussions is that 5e actually appeals to what alot of new players not just old want in their game. I think asking why it (in general) appeals to both (as opposed to disparaging it as backwards in some way) is one of the more interesting questions... My 2 cents is that "modern" design... "focused" design" and "indie" design (as commonly used by proponents of 4ed) are actually overrated and quite niche in who they appeal to. Of course this has no evidence to back it up so I could be wrong... *shrug*

 

[MwaO]

In the 4E era, their marketing was astonishingly unconsidered; this time around, they got their data down to a T, from what I can see.

Let's just grant that 4E marketing was unconsidered(which I've already said) and 5e data was down to a T(well, not really, but grant it for the moment). Here is an example of a problem because solely how of how the game is marketed compared to what the game actually says:
Claimed Magic Items were not calculated into the math via marketing.

According to page 133 of DMG, a PC ought to get about 1 good permanent magic item per 4 levels and a consumable every level when you work out the math. And specifically, someone interested in say hitting with a melee weapon likely ends up with about a +3 to hit/damage from a magic weapon.

There is no mention of magic items failing to change the math. In fact, when creating monsters from scratch, you lower the value of immunity to non-magical weapons based on level as an example. And for the most part, high CR creatures have a default AC of 19. That's fuzzy of course because of how 5e works, but that's the average AC.

-----

Now take a straightforward sword & board Fighter who does 1d8+5+2 damage with his longsword because he has a 20 Str. Take their friend who is exactly the same except she has a +3 longsword. They both fight an AC 19 Creature.

Fighter 1 has a +11 to hit(+5 stat, +6 prof), so he hits the creature on an 8(65% of the time) doing 1d8+5+2 or 11.5 = .65*11.5*4 = 29.9 damage is expected after 4 swings assuming no critical hits.
Fighter 2 has a +14 to hit(+5 stat, +6 prof, +3 magic), so she hits the creature on a 5(80%) doing 1d8+5+2+3 or 14.5 damage = .8*14.5*4 = 46.4 damage is expected after 4 swings assuming no critical hits.

Here's the problem:
It will take a group of 4 of the first kind of Fighter all doing Action Surge in the 1st round approximately 2.25 rounds to kill a CR 20 creature assuming the CR 20 creature doesn't take any of them out. i.e. odds are against them dropping the CR creature in round 2. Especially given two rounds of the CR 20 creature getting a chance to drop one of them.

It will take a group of 4 of the 2nd kind of Fighter all doing Action surge in the 1st round approximately 1.05 rounds to kill a CR 20 creature assuming the CR 20 creature doesn't take any of them out. i.e. odds are just barely against them dropping the CR creature in round 1 - and critical hits ought to make the difference on average. The CR 20 creature, on a poor initiative roll, might not even get to a chance to go.

-----

See what's going on here? One group of Fighters likely takes out an at-level challenge in a round, the other group of Fighters likely takes three rounds to do it. Magic items radically change how difficult a typical combat is going to be simply because a PC with one good magic item(and remember, that 20th level PC likely has five, one of which is likely better than a +3 weapon) doesn't behave in the same way that a PC without does.

Which is fine and not problematic at all provided the DMG tells you which party is at the correct power level in case someone didn't see the marketing about no magic items in the math.

Which it does not do...

 

[darkbard]

instead of the fear they carry

A wonderful example of parapraxis!

 

[Staccat0]

I don't think the type of sale numbers 5e is seeing could be generated by grognards alone. I think one of the things that gets lost in these type of discussions is that 5e actually appeals to what alot of new players not just old want in their game. I think asking why it (in general) appeals to both (as opposed to disparaging it as backwards in some way) is one of the more interesting questions... My 2 cents is that "modern" design... "focused" design" and "indie" design (as commonly used by proponents of 4ed) are actually overrated and quite niche in who they appeal to. Of course this has no evidence to back it up so I could be wrong... *shrug*

I'm not sure I follow. 5e is incredibly modern and focused design as far as D&D goes, and boy does it borrow from a few indie RPGs.

Not being snarky, but as someone who fetishizes all of those things I was genuinely confused.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not sure I follow. 5e is incredibly modern and focused design as far as D&D goes, and boy does it borrow from a few indie RPGs.

Not being snarky, but as someone who fetishizes all of those things I was genuinely confused.

Yeah go back and read a few posts in this thread or other 4e threads and you'll see quite a different opinion...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This makes more sense than the difference between feet and squares.

Right, and then feet vs squares just becomes an issue of flavor, at which point why not just use feet? Its not that squares are 'bad' or would pose a problem for 5e, but if you're just going to 'wing it' anyway, then its simply excess conceptual baggage. What is telling is its exclusion largely precluded other modes of play. I guess you could sort of rehabilitate grid play into 5e in some awkward fashion, but the lack of describing AoEs and ZoCs and whatnot in terms of a grid makes it pretty clunky at best.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That sounds rather heavy in all of the context we live in. But I sadly have to second this argument. The thought of getting back to an ideal state of something which lies often in the past is overwhelming these days (and maybe has been there throughout human history). If I'm getting too political here, just tell me - but I think that overabundant nostalgia can be found today in the political sphere of the western world as well as in popular culture. Think about all the retro games that spring forth, think about the "arguments of purity" when something that is advertised as being a successor of a long lasting series of cultural products (games, movies, stuff) is being changed too much. I myself am a nostalgic guy - I still like quite a lot of the stuff I liked as a kid/teenager and like to see it revamped. But I know that out there some people have a very unhealthy relationship with nostalgia.

---

Overall I found the discussion about TotM very insightful - thanks to all of you! And I also want to emphasize the argument that the "feelz" of 4E are not only evoked through how it handles certain mechanics and how it plays. It is certainly influenced through wording alone ("natural language") and through marketing and what people told other people about 4E. In this regard the discussion came back quite organically to the OP's question.

Agreed! Actually, although I am a big fan of 4e, I have plenty of nostalgia for the days of yore, back in '75 when we sat in a tent at a picnic table by Coleman lantern light and first picked up our dice and pencils to venture forth into the black maw of the downward spiraling staircase leading to death and treasure! I think OD&D and its close spiritual successors, B/X in its various forms, are an excellent implementation of a game for that genre, probably never really surpassed by anything since.

I just found that I didn't want to play that game all the time anymore, after say 1978 it paled and got old and we yearned for a different sort of play experience, and discovered other RPGs that showed there were actually other sorts of RP experience that were possible.

4e was so intriguing and fun in that it brought a lot of that back to the D&D milieu. Its the way that it can combine exploring caverns and fighting demons with heroic action and story-aware play that gives it the 'feel' of 4e. The way it combines both highly tactical play AND directed story telling in one very D&D-like system was eye-opening, as it was something that many of us weren't able to accomplish on our own to any great degree.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Jhaelan

The irony here is that you don't like 5th Edition, which was deliberately designed to be closer to pre-4th Edition versions by WotC, but simultaneously cannot see the fundamental contradiction between that dislike of 5th Editions differences from 4th Edition and the contention that 4th was a natural development of 1 to 3.5...

... to be clear - if you don't like 5th Edition because it is closer to the pre-4th Editions, then how can you logically argue that 4th was a natural development of the editions before it?

Well, this is what I would call a fallacy of the excluded middle. There are MANY different ways to develop something like D&D in different directions. 4e is a natural development in specific directions. Heck I can point you to an antecedent rule in 3.5 for EVERY subsystem that exists in 4e! 3.5 has an SC system for example, though its buried in one fairly obscure book and certainly wasn't used as a core part of the game. It has 4e-like classes in a couple of books, etc.

Likewise 5e is also a development which departs largely from 3e/d20 D&D, but in a slightly different direction. Both of them are departures from 3.x to a degree, which is itself a departure from 2e in many respects (which is why I've always referred to pre-WotC D&D as 'classic D&D'). Every edition departs from the past, though 2e was a pretty mild departure from 1e (offering virtually character and adventure level compatibility with 1e material). Later editions have tended to be somewhat more ambitious in their scope, perhaps because WotC has never quite reproduced the miracle of the late 70's when TSR managed to elevate D&D to a level of brand awareness and sales never since matched.

 

[Parmandur]

Let's just grant that 4E marketing was unconsidered(which I've already said) and 5e data was down to a T(well, not really, but grant it for the moment). Here is an example of a problem because solely how of how the game is marketed compared to what the game actually says:
Claimed Magic Items were not calculated into the math via marketing.

According to page 133 of DMG, a PC ought to get about 1 good permanent magic item per 4 levels and a consumable every level when you work out the math. And specifically, someone interested in say hitting with a melee weapon likely ends up with about a +3 to hit/damage from a magic weapon.

There is no mention of magic items failing to change the math. In fact, when creating monsters from scratch, you lower the value of immunity to non-magical weapons based on level as an example. And for the most part, high CR creatures have a default AC of 19. That's fuzzy of course because of how 5e works, but that's the average AC.

-----

Now take a straightforward sword & board Fighter who does 1d8+5+2 damage with his longsword because he has a 20 Str. Take their friend who is exactly the same except she has a +3 longsword. They both fight an AC 19 Creature.

Fighter 1 has a +11 to hit(+5 stat, +6 prof), so he hits the creature on an 8(65% of the time) doing 1d8+5+2 or 11.5 = .65*11.5*4 = 29.9 damage is expected after 4 swings assuming no critical hits.
Fighter 2 has a +14 to hit(+5 stat, +6 prof, +3 magic), so she hits the creature on a 5(80%) doing 1d8+5+2+3 or 14.5 damage = .8*14.5*4 = 46.4 damage is expected after 4 swings assuming no critical hits.

Here's the problem:
It will take a group of 4 of the first kind of Fighter all doing Action Surge in the 1st round approximately 2.25 rounds to kill a CR 20 creature assuming the CR 20 creature doesn't take any of them out. i.e. odds are against them dropping the CR creature in round 2. Especially given two rounds of the CR 20 creature getting a chance to drop one of them.

It will take a group of 4 of the 2nd kind of Fighter all doing Action surge in the 1st round approximately 1.05 rounds to kill a CR 20 creature assuming the CR 20 creature doesn't take any of them out. i.e. odds are just barely against them dropping the CR creature in round 1 - and critical hits ought to make the difference on average. The CR 20 creature, on a poor initiative roll, might not even get to a chance to go.

-----

See what's going on here? One group of Fighters likely takes out an at-level challenge in a round, the other group of Fighters likely takes three rounds to do it. Magic items radically change how difficult a typical combat is going to be simply because a PC with one good magic item(and remember, that 20th level PC likely has five, one of which is likely better than a +3 weapon) doesn't behave in the same way that a PC without does.

Which is fine and not problematic at all provided the DMG tells you which party is at the correct power level in case someone didn't see the marketing about no magic items in the math.

Which it does not do...

Well, if you consider one versus three rounds significant...

Point is, you can give Blackrazor to first level PCs, or never use magic items, and the game is playable with no mat required: things will swing differently, but it doesn't matter to the game.

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