The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

[Micah Sweet]

Yuuup. This sort of thing is (and used to be moreso) endemic in the hobby. To the level of "fish have no word for water". It's such an unquestioned assumption for a lot of folks.

You can see it in RPG marketing all through the 70s and 80s and into the 90s, pitching how "realistic" games are, as a selling point. By which I think they mean a) that how the rules model things that exist in the real world looks a lot like how they DO work in the real world, or close enough to feel intuitive in their outcomes, and b) that the game is inherently a physics engine, for simulating a world. Rather than the prime priorities being to be a fun game to play and to create satisfying stories.

Gary in his comments in the 1979 DMG was already reacting against the constraints of this design philosophy, but it's definitely one of the major assumptions of a lot of RPG design, and you see it in (of course) the zine and hobbyist discussions documented in The Elusive Shift and elsewhere.

And I think that it really does originate in that "shift" from wargames (which, at least for historical ones, really WERE trying to simulate real things and have as realistic a set of rules as possible) to role-playing games, where the priority was no longer historical simulation but exciting adventure and satisfying and dramatic character interaction.

Absolutely. As one of the players who fully integrated that philosophy I can attest to its ubiquity at the time. To this day that's still what I want, and I resist any game that pushes against that idea intentionally.

 

[SteveC]

The multiclass system in 4E is something that I think there can be some legitimate discussion on. I didn't see it used very often and I don't think it was really updated (outside of Gestalt characters). I think the "archetypes" from PF2 are a good development from that initial idea.

 

[Mannahnin]

I put this down as historic evidence that generic systems define mundane classes. Fighters arguably did get magical powers, delivered through a specific carve out in a system that ever character could theoretically interact with.

Only Fighters could actually use them, though. (And Thieves, a year later).

Fighters getting "sweep" attacks was also special and unique to them, though not overtly magical.

The abilities of Superheroes to force morale checks on enemy units and to spot invisible creatures were basically left behind in Chainmail, although the spotting invisible creatures thing was generalized to higher level PCs of all classes in AD&D (and the odds were bad; you only got up to 50% chance at 13th level with at least a 15 Int. Although at level 15 with a 17+ Int you had 95%!).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Anyone else reread portions of the 4E phb recently?

Been rereading 3.5 a lot as well. The art has not aged well. Useful maps though.

If you're not a fan of WAR 4E and Pathfinder are not good. 4E landscapes, buildings etc can look good. Characters not so much.

3.5 arts also better than 3.0 generally.

It's been 20 years on some of those 3.5 books.

How can art be outdated? How one reacts to it is so personal.

 

[payn]

It’s all matters of taste, and tastes are idiosyncratic.

In my case, one of the biggest annoyances was the radical redesign of the multiclassing system. Requiring feats- that didn’t have a uniform benefit structure- to multiclass left a very bad taste in my mouth because multiclassing was one of the main design tools I used going back to my days playing AD&D. Hell, I didn’t even like the overall benefits of the better multiclass feats.

And even so, 100% of my 4Ed PCs were multiclassed. So that particular mechanism got to grind on me every session.

Which is also core to why I felt 4Ed would have worked better as a classless toolkit RPG system as opposed to constraining it into one with classes with targeted escape mechanisms to emulate multiclassing from earlier editions.

This was the killing blow to 4E for me, and why I also didnt adopt PF2.

 

[FrogReaver]

The multiclass system in 4E is something that I think there can be some legitimate discussion on. I didn't see it used very often and I don't think it was really updated (outside of Gestalt characters). I think the "archetypes" from PF2 are a good development from that initial idea.

4e hybrid characters were great though. IMO

 

[eyeheartawk]

This was the killing blow to 4E for me, and why I also didnt adopt PF2.

I know for some friends of mine, this was a big issue. They came from a place where achieving total system mastery rewarded you with a substantially better character at the table. Which, if you have a wider array of "valid" or useful things to do at the table than everybody else that equates to more fun, right? So when 4E didn't really reward it in the same way they bounced off of it.

D&D does have this issue where the moment you sit down and make a character you basically have to have the whole level 1-20 progression (or 30 in 4E's case) mapped out in your head. It can be very intimidating.

By not multiclassing, and even just randomly picking a class in a game like 4E and just sticking with it and having a, roughly, just as powerful character as someone with complete system mastery is a pretty cool achievement and that's probably my favorite thing about it.

 

[TwoSix]

The multiclass system in 4E is something that I think there can be some legitimate discussion on. I didn't see it used very often and I don't think it was really updated (outside of Gestalt characters). I think the "archetypes" from PF2 are a good development from that initial idea.

Ideally, PHB3 Hybrid multiclassing would have been in PHB1. Hybrid MC + Feat Multiclassing + Using Theme/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny to broaden and change the character over time is pretty much the perfect slew of options to my mind.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The house rule solution (?) to 4e's punitive multiclass entrance requirements is -- ignore them. Just pretend you took the MC feats (or press the House Ruled button in the character builder) and go nuts.

But.

You don't need to MC in 4e though, because 4e already has approximately 73 billion(\*) combinations of non-MC feats + paragon paths + epic destinies + power selection + magic item powers + plus plus plus.

\* I know I know: [citation needed]. I'm sure I have the napkin with the equations here somewhere....

 

[TwoSix]

4e hybrid characters were great though. IMO

I mean, it does let me make a warforged warlord|warden/warlock, and you can't go wrong there.