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

[Tony Vargas]

I heard good things about DMG2 and later works aimed at the DM (Rules Cyclopedia maybe?),

Rules Compendium. It did have the best take on Skill Challenges. About the best thing, mechanically, to come out of the Essentials debacle.

but I wasn't going to keep chasing a system that offered so little initially and frankly offered a style of game I enjoy in other genres where I already have favourite systems like TfOS, BESM, and Strands of FATE.

Nod, if you'd already moved on from D&D, there are simply better games out there. 4e was a great leap for D&D, but, ironically, was still very much D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Rules Compendium. It did have the best take on Skill Challenges. About the best thing, mechanically, to come out of the Essentials debacle.

Going to have to disagree with you there. Monster Vault is great for a reworked MM1 post MM3 math updates. Nothing wrong with the DMs kit as an on-ramp. And Knight/Slayer/Thief/Cavalier/Hexblade/Hunter/Scout/Sentinel would have been a perfectly good set of classes for the PHB4 while the Warpriest packaged as domains (take the predetermined choices and get a free ability on a cleric) and the school specialisations for the wizard in place of implement specialisations would have been decent material in Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Going to have to disagree with you there. Monster Vault is great for a reworked MM1 post MM3 math updates.

Yep, we'll disagree. Not that MV wasn't nice, but MM3 had already done the heavy lifting.

Nothing wrong with the DMs kit as an on-ramp. And Knight/Slayer/Thief/Cavalier/Hexblade/Hunter/Scout/Sentinel would have been a perfectly good set of classes for the PHB4 while the Warpriest packaged as domains (take the predetermined choices and get a free ability on a cleric) and the school specialisations for the wizard in place of implement specialisations would have been decent material in Unearthed Arcana.

I found most of the Essentials classes pretty awful, as they seemed to exist to restore problems the game had only just solved a couple years earlier. In particular, the way every Heroes Of... book had a wizard sub-class or Mage schools that added more powers to the Wizard list (and the Essentials errata powered up wizard powers), while the martial classes had un-leveled powers that didn't add to their main class's list, and couldn't readily access that list, either. As a transition from 2e or 3.5 to 4e, they might've made sense.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yep, we'll disagree. Not that MV wasn't nice, but MM3 had already done the heavy lifting.

MV3 had done the heavy mechanical lifting. But sometimes I want normal orcs and the like.

In particular, the way every Heroes Of... book had a wizard sub-class or Mage schools that added more powers to the Wizard list

You'll note which of the classes I didn't include in that PHB4 I prefer the idea of Evokers, Enchanters, and Nethermancers to Orb Wizards, Staff Wizards, and Wand Wizards. But restricting it to a Dragon option would have reined in the power creep.

while the martial classes had un-leveled powers that didn't add to their main class's list, and couldn't readily access that list, either. As a transition from 2e or 3.5 to 4e, they might've made sense.

The martial classes were for people who didn't want the full option overload of 4e. I'll almost certainly never play either a Slayer or a Scout - but I have seen players who were massively more comfortable with them than they are with classic 4e characters. The big problem with Essentials is that the wizard in it was the mage and not the Elementalist; simplified classes are a good thing as long as we also have the full versions.

 

[Garthanos]

You'll note which of the classes I didn't include in that PHB4 I prefer the idea of Evokers, Enchanters, and Nethermancers to Orb Wizards, Staff Wizards, and Wand Wizards. But restricting it to a Dragon option would have reined in the power creep. .

To me it felt like the Enchanters et al basically gave the Mage strong class feature on top of the games strongest standalone/poachable powers...

Noticing the wizard power creep occurred in essentials just annoys me...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

One of 4e's biggest problems is that it was given a 24 month lead time from starting development to publication and they went right back to the drawing board 10 months in because they'd ended up with something genuinely terrible while releasing to time - meaning that the at-launch 4e was a good six months short on playtesting. (Another problem is that the best thing to do with Keep on the Shadowfell is simply drop an asteroid on the keep).

Keep On The Shadowfell wasn't that bad.

But I gotta laugh at the idea that the system was "terrible" at launch.

 

[Nagol]

Keep On The Shadowfell wasn't that bad.

But I gotta laugh at the idea that the system was "terrible" at launch.

No it was terrible halfway to launch. WotC scrapped their working version partway through development and couldn't extend the release date.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Rules Compendium. It did have the best take on Skill Challenges. About the best thing, mechanically, to come out of the Essentials debacle. Nod, if you'd already moved on from D&D, there are simply better games out there. 4e was a great leap for D&D, but, ironically, was still very much D&D.

The whole Rules Compendium was really good. IMO. And I loved the fluff of the essentials takes on the classes. I get why you don't like it in general, though.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Keep On The Shadowfell wasn't that bad.

When I counted it had from memory 17 fights in a row with no context other than being inside the keep and most of them in boring environments in a linear dungeon. The opening part with Irontooth, Destroyer Of Parties was actually good but once you got inside the keep it became terrible.

But I gotta laugh at the idea that the system was "terrible" at launch.

It wasn't terrible at launch. Just under-playtested. It was Orcus that was terrible and overcomplicated - the version they scavenged for the workable parts before going back to the drawing board.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And it bums me out that so many old school DMs get grumpy about it, because the rules "just plain working" means I can take all those hard won skills, and push them even further because I have better tools to aid in my efforts. I don't need the tools to be good at the thing, but they do help take my thinging up an extra notch or two.

Exactly. That's what my experience was. Contrary to [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] 's statement that 4e worked for indie gamer GMs, I wasn't any such sort of GM. I ran old school D&D (2e and earlier), Traveler, CoC, etc (I did run some 80's precoursers of story games like Top Secret and Gangster! now and then). Still, I had no particular experience with those sorts of mechanics, never played or GMed anything like V:tM or anything like that. In fact I pretty much dropped out of regular RP in the mid-90's and only came back with 4e. I played a little 3.x now and then.

So, what I IMMEDIATELY found was that my GMing skills were vastly sufficient to master 4e's encounter building and mechanical stuff. The monsters were easy to run and modify, the characters were all sorted out, there was little need for table rulings or tons of making up spell lists and other crap to get interesting NPCs. So I had tons of time on my hands to devote to STORY. So the story amplified itself. I didn't know how to deploy 4e mechanics to make the game story-centered, it just WAS. The presentation gave hints, some of which I got and some I didn't. I was nonplussed as any Grognard about healing surges and whatnot, but I just figured I'd play the game and see what the heck that was about. Pretty quick I came to understand that it was about heroes and their heroic tale, and then logic simply lead to the rest of it. Somewhere around that time Dungeon World also appeared, and we played that. Then I went back and GMed a couple of story games (PACE mostly). After that it was all pretty plain, 4e is a different form of D&D!