D&D 4E The Dispensible 4E

[WarlockLord]

You linked that stupid tier list? The one with beguiler as tier 3 despite it being nearly as strong as a wizard, and where archivist and spell-to-power erudite are the be-all and end-all despite their class powers coming from DM pity? And the factotum, aka "If I dumpster dive through Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures, I don't suck?" That list? The one where there's no difference between 1 and 2 because it doesn't matter if the sorceror or the wizard starts the wish loop, the game is still wrecked? That list is a joke.

As for UMD, use it for long-duration buffs outside combat. Nothing (unless you roll a 1)happens if you fail to activate the wand of polymorph before entering combat, so spam your UMD.

And I think your last post really points out the gap here. I think all classes should aspire to the wizard, and the cleric, and so on. And quite frankly I think 4e is a boring, low-powered game. I would have rather seen the fighter become a final fantasy dragoon who could parry spells with his weapon, smash towers in a single blow, not have to breath underwater (cuz he's a damn fighter), and swim in lava, because why not. 4e offers...well, there IS no advancement. Early 4e wizards cast sleep at every level because none of the other dailies were that great. At 30th level your powerset is "do that thing you did at 1st level, but with bigger numbers/a different status effect attached/some other trivial change". Whereas 20th level 3.5 characters are doing awesome stuff like having armies of demons or undead, roaming the planes without setting all their money on fire, getting armies of bros,, building their own planes, and fighting enemies who actually feel threatening as opposed to yet another HP grind.

I'll address multiclassing. For martials, you really don't stop being a fighter if you get a high enough BAB. There are enough martial classes out there which have similar fluff (a barbarian also has a stick. But he's angry. Make it a new class!) so that you can throw a crapton of them together to get fighter. And at the end of the day, class is simply a mechanical construct - if your character uses metal sticks and no overt magical powers, why the hell can't we say he's a fighter? We certainly fit divine healing in yours.

As for prepared spells, replace with "memorized speeches that if heard again don't inspire". How is it any different from "I use Brutal Strike once per day?"

And I know morale, but how exactly is that giving out superhuman speed to make a crapton of MBAs every turn? After a certain point it feels supernatural. Which is honestly fine by me, because fighters and other martials are inherently low-level concepts that need to go away after level 10. But that's neither here nor there.

Admin here. Okay, begin the problematic part of this post...
Was magic in 3.5 overwhelming? Yes, yes it was. But that in no way justifies the failure of 4e. Because let me bring up the other elephant in the room. If 4e is so great, why are we discussing it on a 5th edition board only 4 years after 4e's initial release? Hint: It wasn't because Mearls and co delivered a perfectly balanced game.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of edition war trolling. It has earned the poster a free vacation as we underscore the fact that we do not wish to see this on these boards. Seriously, it solves nothing, it starts fights, and it annoys us. I don't care what edition you're trying to insult, either. It's fine if you don't love 4e or 5e or Pathfinder or 2e or what have you, but shut the heck up about it and talk about games that you DO love. That's much more interesting. ~ Piratecat

 

[Fifth Element]

If 4e is so great, why are we discussing it on a 5th edition board only 4 years after 4e's initial release? Hint: It wasn't because Mearls and co delivered a perfectly balanced game.

Is it just me or is this about 14 miles away from the topic of this thread? Surely there are other threads for 4E hate, I seem to remember a lot of them from when I was hanging around here regularly.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The Beguiler basically has the PHB Enchantment and Illusion schools. Very useful but ... limited. It can neither scry, teleport, nor fly. It can't polymorph or summon (without shadow conjurations). For that matter other than opening doors and locks, I don't think it can directly affect matter at all. It's a class that's good at what it does but isn't going to leave the DM in the dust wondering quite what hit his poor monsters - although it might take them to the cleaners in fairly predictable ways (counting creative use of illusions or mind control as fairly predictable). That's tier 3 not "nearly as strong as a wizard". At least not unless the wizard is an illusionist.

If I wanted tier 1, I'd be playing a four colour supers game. Or Exalted.

And as for early 4e wizards, Flaming Sphere was the PHB Level 1 spell of choice in most of my groups. Very effective, especially with a choke point (never mind its secondary uses in twisting corridors). And scarily high damage. From Arcane Power I've seen all the L1 dailies used effectively except Summon Fire Warrior. At L5, Stinking Cloud is a very powerful spell. So once more your understanding of 4e is lacking.

As for 3.X at high level, if your 4e foes don't feel threatening that's a DMing issue. But yes, you don't get to rewrite reality. Of course my biggest issue with 3.X characters rewriting reality is the six second risk free timescale. If you want to build somethign with magic it should take time and effort or money.

You are aware that it takes less than six seconds to make an attack? And that one attack per combat round is meant to represent openings? So making one or two extra MBAs doesn't require superhuman speed, it requires opportunity. Which can be pointed out or provided without giving someone superhuman speed.

4e is coming to an end for a number of reasons including a sales target that 3.X never met after publication of the PHB - and that after the dungeon survival guide is published, the biggest thing I see to be missing is the wilderness survival guide. A secondary factor is the volume of misinformation directed at 4e.

And to quote from the OP

Disclaimer: This thread is primarily directed at players and DMs who really like 4E. If you haven't played in a long-running 4E campaign, or aren't playing 4E right now, please don't chime in with a bunch of hate. We already know the many issues people have with 4E.

 

[loksvassago]

I've only got two big ones, and I've played 4e as mostly a DM for ~400 to 500 hours (plus that again, if not more, in terms of prep/general reading) and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Complaint number 1 is best explained by Angry DM. Simply put, milestones were just sort of a half-hearted failed attempt at resolving 5 minute adventuring days. Some sort of power meter that builds up over encounters to let you spend your daily powers like in a fighting game would be cool, or even just giving milestones exclusive benefits that cannot be gained by resting. (i.e. you ONLY get action points from milestones). As an addendum to this, encounter powers and other encounter resources are cool, but they feel sort of more like a checklist than options.

Complaint number 2 is, simply put, feature bloat. The game has too much junk. Nobody needs 3500 feats or 574 paragon paths; that level of complexity makes people enjoy the game less objectively because it's complexity overload. (If you don't believe me, feel free to consult "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz). Only the most devoted master players will actually get any benefit out of that many feats, and for them, most of the feats are useless anyway and that's why they don't feel overwhelmed.

I do have a host of minor complaints, like monster damage not actually scaling correctly (monsters get easier damage-wise and harder defenses-wise as they level without the "feat taxes" involved, and that's backwards as far as I'm concerned), or how I think it needs a way to make REALLY short battles in the official rules (even if I play against myself, an at-level battle takes like 20 minutes minimum), but really the big two are most important.

 

[pemerton]

One of the major issues here is that people ignored the DMG when designing encounters. Yup, if you use 5 Level=Par soldiers as an encounter, it's going to take bloody forever. But, if you look at the 4e DMG encounter design guidelines, the first thing you'll see is that that encounter is a poorly designed encounter.

<snip>

Grind is sometimes the fault of the system. Totally agree. Solos, particularly pre-MM3 are brutal for that. Takes frigging FOREVER to get through the encounter. But, DM's have to wear some of the blame here too for not actually bothering to read the DMG and look at the encounter design guidelines.

For whatever reason I've never had a grind issue in 4e. That's not to say that I haven't had combat that take a long time to play out at the table - but they've never turned into grind, ie mere hit point attrition in a back-and-forth exchange of at-wills. There are always decisions being made, about who to attack, and how, and where to move, and so on.

This may partly be the way my players play. They're reasonably coordinated, but they don't particularly focus fire - often the two defenders will each be dealing with separate targets, while the two ranged strikers take what attacks they can. Which means that there are always choices to be made about what to do next, as the dynamics of the situation change.

It may also be partly the way I build encounters - often with more monsters/NPCs than PCs, with room to move around, and with multiple fronts, so that the situation is dynamic rather than static. The PCs in my game nearly all have movement utilities of various sorts: Expeditious Retreat, Arcane Gate, Mighty Sprint, Winter's Arrival, and a range of fly and teleport options for the sorcerer. And they use them. When I compare it to my experiences in running classic D&D and Rolemaster, it's quite different.

I don't use a lot of solos - probably half-a-dozen or so in 15 levels. Only twice that I can recall has a combat been vs a solo on its own (both when the PCs were mid-heroic). One was an encounter I adopted from the WotC FR module "Sceptre Tower of Spellguard". I merged the flooding room trap with the solo vampire encounter, and it played pretty well. By the time they beat the vampire, the PCs were floating about on coffins while trying to unlock the door so they wouldn't drown.

The other was an encounter I designed myself, with a black dragon attacking the PCs as they were fleeing a shadowy temple. The PCs made their stand on the temple portico, which constrained the dragon's mobility, and they also took off some of its hit points with archery as it closed on them (which is makes for an interesting little episode in itself, as the fighter and sorcerer are forced to pick up and use their longbows, although the fighter has little DEX and the sorcerer no proficiency). And they had in their possession a statue of the Summer Queen (an Archfey) and while the other PCs fought the dragon the wizard was channelling his Light spell through the statue to dispel the dragon's darkness. Despite the MM black dragon having a bad reputation as a grindy monster, this was a great encounter, very exciting in play and memorable after the event.

I don't object to the D&Dnext designers keeping an eye out for grind, but I also want the game to be able to support these sorts of encounters. And that means having mechanics that make movement, tactics and innovation easy to design for, easy to adjudicate and meaningful in resolution.

 

[MacMathan]

As a side note it feels like many people commenting here have not kept up with 4e or the latest changes in it. Let's please continue to hear from people who use and like the main parts of the system.

A little back ground so you know where I am coming from: I have played and DMed 4e continuously since the beginning and my group is still going strong. I have also DMed/Played every edition of D&D since the Red Box 30 some odd years ago.

I have mixed the dispensable with what/how I would like to see them changed implemented for Type V.

I would like to see the unlikely slaughter of the +x magic items sacred cow and see magic items become more interesting. (this is not just a 4e problem it is present in all editions to my knowledge)

A better system of tracking status/buff/debuffs. I currently use Alea tools magnets for the task but it can become challenging to remember every situational bonus with varying durations.

Better digital tools from the beginning of the edition please. Digital controls for DMs to allow what players can choose from.

Debuff charging and the stacking of effects that occur around it.

Take some of the lessons learned on balance and continue to smooth out the math.

Rogues that can actually find the traps they are good at disarming. (Easily house-ruled but still many Rogues have poor Perception skill)

Further refine the Skill Challenge paradigm to be easier for the DM to learn to use. It can be really great in the hands of a good DM but it has taken time for that knowledge to be acquired and the math needs some work.

Continue to expand on the Rituals concept. Once again sooo much good potential there.

 

[Gargoyle]

• Healing surges (enough has been said about this)
• Non-magical healing (except for second wind)
• Five page character sheets for a level 1 character
• Too many feats that are not compelling
• Homogenized structure for classes (everyone is AEDU, somewhat fixed with essentials)
• Milestones (pointless complication)
• Magic item wish lists (that's what crafting should be for)
• Use of battle grid is assumed
• Feat taxes
• Wealth levels (when they get overpowered, throw bigger things at them and stop rewarding magic items for a while, this was a solution without a problem)
• Hybrid classes (kludge)
• Multiclassing feats (not satisfying for multiclassing thus the need for hybrids)
• Too many statuses to keep track of (especially things that expire "at the end of your next turn")
• Skill challenges
• Too much errata too soon (big problem, more playtesting in 5e will help)

 

[Howndawg]

My big beefs with 4e?

-Pairing of stats for defenses. This was frustrating for me as I like to play smart characters, but Int was clearly inferior to Dex as a paired stat from a game perspective.
- AEDU. Worked fine for some classes, but made other characters feel rather cartoony. Fixed to some extent with essentials.
-Overemphasis on combat.
-The numero uno for me: using CRPG talk in a tabletop game. Builds are fine in Diablo but NOT in D&D.

 

[Steely_Dan]

2e Monks: Complete Book of Priests.

There is also the full 2nd Ed Monk class in The Scarlett Brotherhood accessory (and Assassin).

You also had the Mystic of Nog (so cool) kit in the Sha'ir Handbook.

And most importantly, the 1st Ed Monk was still implemented in official 2nd Ed products (Horde boxed set, Oriental Adventures/Kara Tur accessories, oh, and even the Forgotten Realms Bloodstone Lands accessory, IIRC).

Yes, Monk is my favourite class.

 

[tomBitonti]

Re: Healing Surges

Returning to healing surges, is the problem here that monsters (whom the players fight) use different mechanics than the players?

That is, players heal. Monsters, barring abilities like fast healing or regeneration, usually don't.

Then, that an attack against a monster does real damage, and that a critical does exceptional damage, makes sense. The problem is for players, who have abilities to undo the damage. Narrating the damage as "strain from avoiding a blow" creates a tension with the different narration used for monsters.

Why not change healing surges into something that more closely matches the intent? Have a healing surge be used to negate the damage in the first place!

Then:

DM: The Orc stabs at you; you can tell the blow will likely get past your shield and seems aimed your light side armor.

Player: I dodge to the side (using up a heroic xxxhealingxxx surge).

Or:

Warlord: I shout at the player: Step to the side, you fool!

Or:

Cleric: I call to my god for mercy, and the Orcs blade is turned aside, leaving the player astonished with his sudden fortune.

With a carefully balanced damage budget (which was done in 4E), that could provide a near equivalent value in terms of the amount of damage which was affected.

Thx!

TomB

Edit: That is to say, abstract mechanics are *BAD* for a role playing game. *Concrete* rules the day, for story telling, for narration, for immersion. An abstract mechanic is a *lost* opportunity to introduce detail. Abstract is *OK* because it allows some mechanics to be simplified, but is only *OK* to a point.