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

[Zardnaar]

I’m curious: what is about big numbers that you dislike? Because one of the complaints about 4e is that it’s a treadmill and you never get anywhere: you have a +20 attack bonus, monsters have a 30 AC. OK, fine, I think that’s a fairly blah complaint, but… so what? +10 is OK but +20 isn’t? +30? +40? Why does it matter?

Treadmill effect and slips game down. I've been running for newbies and they can't add up as fast.

AC scaling while you level +10, 15, 20 etc your still hitting roughly as much.

Exampke (not exact)
B/X 1d8+2 vs ogre 18 hp on average.
4E or 5E more hp more dagebut you're not really killing it any faster maybe even slower and bigger pita to add up.

3.0 started hp bloat, 3.5 doubled down on it and 4E though it was a good idea.

In a way it's completely fake. You optimize or have options to get bigger numbers and HP liars to compensate.

Personally I think you need more than say OSR 3.0 might have it right if it wasn't 3.0 if that makes any sense. By that I mean monster hp is a bit higher but danage is also bloated.

 

[dbolack]

I choose to use my daily power: Being fun at parties.

Careful, Snarf may declare you a Bard.

 

[TheHand]

I’m curious: what is about big numbers that you dislike? Because one of the complaints about 4e is that it’s a treadmill and you never get anywhere: you have a +20 attack bonus, monsters have a 30 AC. OK, fine, I think that’s a fairly blah complaint, but… so what? +10 is OK but +20 isn’t? +30? +40? Why does it matter?

The bigger numbers tend to be slower for players to Math out, as Tigris above me mentioned. Aesthetically I don’t like when the bonuses start to near or exceed the size of the die I’m rolling (ie, a d20). The range to hit might be the same but in some way it “feels wrong.”

In my home brew hack, flattening the math more let me use a wider level range of opponents without them either being too easy to hit or impossible to hit.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Bigger numbers (when every target number raises by the same amount) is just busywork and constant adjusting of your values with every level - just hassle that doesn't change anything. But what it does do, is severely restrict what are reasonable opponents to throw at the PCs.

 

[Iosue]

2. He was NOT part of the original core design team. He tries to sound more important than he is, but several things he said over the years conflict directly whith what the original designers said. Like "WoW gameplay" is his interpretation. And just shows lack of knowledge.

It is certainly true that in the parlance of the time, Mearls was on the "development team" rather than the "design team" for 4e, but for our purposes, that's a distinction without a difference. The job of the development team was to implement the ideas of the design team. So they would need to understand what the design team wanted in order to come up with the mechanics.

Here's a breakdown of his role in 4e's development.
Sep. 2005-Feb. 2006 - Member, First Development Team
Mid-April 2006 - Member, One-Week Development Team. Money quote: "In what I’d judge as the most productive week of the process to date....Mearls and [Rich] Baker figured out what was going wrong with the design."
May 2006-Sep. 2006 - Member, Flywheel Team. This is the team that figured out AEDU-design, credited to Mearls and Rich Baker by Rob Heinsoo: "In truth the system didn't start feeling right until Mike Mearls and Rich Baker came up with the at-will/encounter/day split that put power attrition back into the game."
Oct. 2006-April 2007 - Member, Players Handbook Creation Team.
May 2007 - Member, Magic Item Revision

And for what it's worth, when challenged on his statement in the thread Alzrius linked to, Mearls linked to the GenCon TV 4e session, time stamped to Rob Heinsoo, lead designer for 4e, saying:

"When we made 4th Edition, one of the earliest design goals, that was given to us by the management, was that it should be more familiar to those coming in having played World of Warcraft and other digital games."

If Rodney Thompson, developer on 5e, came in here and talked about the design direction and goals of 5e, not one person here would gainsay him, and talk about how he wasn't part of the design team and so doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[Tigris]

"When we made 4th Edition, one of the earliest design goals, that was given to us by the management, was that it should be more familiar to those coming in having played World of Warcraft and other digital games."

I linked first to this video. Also when you watch the full video the designers also say that they did NOT take much inspiration from WoW at all. (Lead designer even only played WoW for like 3 hours. Even roles come from a different place). Yes it should be "more familiar with", but this does not mean it is MMO based gameplay. This is a huge difference! Cherry picking 1 sentence and ignoring everything else said does not make the point more true.


The gameplay was more streamlined, it used modern clear wording for abilities (from magic the gathering). The game was made easier to understand for people not already familiar to D&D. (This includes people coming from MMOs as well as other newcomers.)


Rodney Thompson also does not have a political gain from making 5E sound bad. Mearls has a big gain from shifting the blame of 4E to others (away from him). This is a big difference. (This does not mean Mearls lies, its natural that you try to believe things which are better for you. You see this often when you look at stories from different viewpoints).


Also no development team is different from design team. And yes they "should" understand the design, but this is not guaranteed.


When you look at the first released 4E adventurers it is clear that the 4E design was not really understood (most likely also because of time pressure from above but still).

Bigger numbers (when every target number raises by the same amount) is just busywork and constant adjusting of your values with every level - just hassle that doesn't change anything. But what it does do, is severely restrict what are reasonable opponents to throw at the PCs.

Well this IS a design goal. Power progression IS important in RPGs (like D&D) and absolutely wanted. And the best way to show power progression is to let players wipe the floor with enemies, against which they struggled some levels before.


Players WANT progress. Thats why nowadays even shooter have XP, levels, unlocking new weapons etc. Because that is fundamentally something most players want.

 

[Mannahnin]

I choose to use my daily power: Being fun at parties.

Careful, Snarf may declare you a Bard.

Sounds more like a Rogue at-will Utility power.

 

[Mannahnin]

It does seem that the only 4e that people will accept is...4e.

This seems like a random pot shot based on misunderstanding the point being made.

We were just talking about a specific mechanic which seems to have been designed to appeal to people who disliked something about 4E.

From what I've seen 4E players seem to have been excited to try games that draw from it, whether that be 13th Age, Lancer, Draw Steel, or Pathfinder 2.

 

[eyeheartawk]

This seems like a random pot shot based on misunderstanding the point being made.

We were just talking about a specific mechanic which seems to have been designed to appeal to people who disliked something about 4E.

From what I've seen 4E players seem to have been excited to try games that draw from it, whether that be 13th Age, Lancer, Draw Steel, or Pathfinder 2.

I only played 13th Age a couple of times and I really only remember my two major takeaways:

1. I was like a 3rd level fighter and even though the fighter class was not very well regarded in 13th Age, I felt super powerful. Like, in DCC, a level 3 character is equal to a level 6 character in most editions of D&D, this felt even more powerful than that.

2. With the sort of handwavy distance ranges and changes made to combat I remember thinking that "I don't think this is going to scratch the 4E itch for people who like 4E". Because at the time, when it was pretty new, it was more or less understood that it was sort of pitched as a place for the 4E fan to go to.

 

[Aldarc]

Actually no, at least not in WoW during its prime. This is not what the fun of (these kind of) MMOs is about. And thats also why I dont think MMOs and 4E are anywhere close.

In MMOs it is about having a good strategy and executing it, while reacting to dangers (evade attacks). There is no tactics involved. You know beforehand exactly when you want to do what. At least for the boss fights.

For the not boss fights (which are called trash fights), there its more similar to what was previously said, but overall it does not really matter. You will NOT use any cooldowns which matter during trash, because during boss fights you want to have everything ready, because thats the challenge, the other parts is just filler.


MMOs are about perfect execution of your strategy during stress over 100s of turns. RPGs are about improvising and tactical play. Making the best of your 5 turns you normally have using your abilities at the best possible time.
Just som examples:

• The difference between a good Arcane Mage and an average arcane mage was mostly just how good they are at their rythm.
  • An arcane mage had to press 1, 1, 1, 2 repeat. Almost the whole fight. After pressing 1 you had to wait for lets say 1 second to be able to press it again. A good arcane mage managed to press 1 after 1.01 seconds. A bad one in average had 1.16 seconds or so.
• As a cooldown reliant class (death knight which only came later is the clearest example so I use that). You would press exactly every 1 second a button. As above you had to make sure to do it exactly every 1 second. Now which button depends on the cooldown, but every players (should) know exactly the priority order of their attacks. You know attack 1 is the most important, followed by attack 2, by attack 3 etc. The cooldowns of attacks was normally exactly X seconds. So a good DK would need to press exactly 1 second after the last press the highest priority attack, which cooldown was up now. No thinking just executing and muscle memory kinda.
• As explained by someone before, there were some abilities with long cooldowns. They had 30 seconds, 2 minute 3 minute or 5 minute. In general you would always use ALL cooldowns you have together, EXACTLY as they are ready again. So you would not think about "is it a good time to use this now?" but you would think "I must use this as soon as the fight starts (some seconds delay to give the tank aggro), and then whenever they come up, this way I might be able to use them 1 more time during the fight).
• Healers are a bit different, but they would often not even really see the fight and mostly just look at life bars, and just tried to heal them as fast as possible after they got damaged: This is how a typical healer screen would look like https://cesspit.net/drupalbackup/storeroom/wow-repository/priestui.jpg
• What made these things "hard" was that you had to move (depending on boss fight) at certain points. As a melee you would need to always stay behind the enemy and move as they move. As a caster you would need to only move when you knew that an attack would be comming to where you are, and then you would try to move the least amount of time possible. (And if you have use a movement ability like a teleport), such that you lose as little time as possible and be able to again press your rotation 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, etc.
• Another big aspect was coordination and having a strategy as a team. You would play with up to 40 people. And you would need to select teammembers accordingly before. And each healer would know exactly who they would need to heal (and were not allowed to do anything else like damage normally). Each tank which enemie(s) to aggro. And damagedealer which target to focus etc. Also the mechanics of the boss would for 99.99% of the people be known beforehand and they would need to watch guides and know when to move. There would be messages (voice text and markes) telling when to move out of an attack.
• Also remember the huge number of buttons you saw in the above image? In actual play you will in 99% of the time only use 5 maybe 7 of your 30-40 buttons. You are optimized to need as phew buttons as possible. 1 button with all cooldowns on them. 3-5 buttons with your best optimized attacks. Sometimes 1-2 "I don't want to die" buttons which are also clear when to use.

WoW is a great example of teamplay, but it is not tactical. You dont improvise, else people will scream at you. You follow order with utmost precision and as efficient as possible.


I agree though, that it is interesting to look for how to do variety, which is a goal in D&D 4E and similar games, but was NOT a goal of WoW and similar MMORPGs. (There the goal was perfect repetition).

I don't think that it's a coincidence that the TTRPGs that are looking to 4e D&D for inspiration are NOT those that want to emulate MMORPGs, but, instead, the ones that want to emulate good ole turn-based team tactical JRPGs (e.g., Icon, Fabula Ultima, Beacon, Gubat Banwa, etc.), which were ironically heavily inspired by D&D in the first place.