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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8295605" data-attributes="member: 18">Disagree strongly, relative to other editions of D&D.But it does rely hard on the DM creating scenarios which require the PCs to use tactics, and on using the DMG2 monster math. If builds mattered more it means you were either dealing with players who aren't good at tactics, or, more likely, the players didn't need to use them the monsters were inherently too easy and/or the DM was putting the PCs in scenarios which were basically trivial. It was easy for this to happen if you didn't adhere closely to the guidelines re: encounter-building - not just in CRs or whatever they were called, but in terms of numbers, roles of monsters, terrain and so on. If the DM wasn't playing the monsters tactically that would also cause tactics to be less-needed.A lot of 3PP and even some WotC adventures fell down pretty hard here, and in other people's games I rarely saw the guidelines followed, or encounters designed in such a way as to encourage tactical play (4E did have good advice on this, albeit the initial monster math was flawed). You could see a drastic difference between say, me or my wife DMing, who both followed the guidelines closely, set up tactical scenarios, and played the monsters tactically, and one of our friends, who just ran 4E like it was 3E, basically, and wasn't afraid to have a one-role encounter full of too-weak monsters that he just basically walked directly at he PCs lol. I mean, it was viable, but yeah it didn't make for any tactics beyond "do as much DPR as possible to get these guys down".In 1/2/3E there tends to be little skilled or tactical play in combat. The skill, where present, tends to be more in pre-combat. I.e. setting up a good enough ambush, preparing the right spells, knowing when to rest, etc. 3E was a mess because its CR system actively deceived the DM, too. It was literally worse than useless. Eyeballing was considerably more accurate. 4E was the first edition of D&D to stress at the table tactical combat, and whilst the skill threshold might be lower than say, an actual wargame, it was vastly higher than previous editions. 5E dialled back from this and move more towards the older approach, whilst retaining a superficial appearance of tactical combat and some limited elements of it.I can't, off-hand, think of any RPG that comes particularly close to 4E on this. Even if you did think skill mattered "less" than it should in 4E, it certainly mattered more than any other RPG I can think of, and ludicrously more than previous editions of D&D.Conversely, strategy mattered less and I wonder if this is what you mean. In earlier editions, pre-battle strategy could often basically win encounters before you even took part in them. In 4E, your pre-battle decisions mattered considerably less, because of the lack of incredibly powerful spells/items and so on relative to the general abilities of PCs/monsters. So 4E allowed PCs to stumble into situations then have a good tactical fight, but wasn't great for preparation-focused players. Of course prep-focused players totally break 5E, which is almost worse.EDIT - WAIT! There is one "mainstream-ish" TT RPG that matches or exceeds 4E here - the fairly recent Lancer which has basically two modes, a fairly free-form RPG (albeit better handled than any edition of D&D) and combat, which is basically a tactical wargame, and has indeed been described as "4E with mechs" because it has considerable similarities. I think it commits a bit harder than 4E though.</blockquote>

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