D&D 4E Things I Learned From 4e

[I'm A Banana]

Another thing that I have learned, that 4e specifically didn't teach me, is that the game is functionally about a 10-level game, for most players.

10 levels of content is "enough." Eveything else is icing on the cake!

 

[Remathilis]

Everything KM said +1.

In addition:

* Not every class needs to fit the same skeleton: Using the same ADEU structure for fighters, clerics, rogues and wizards is uninspiring. There is room for basic-attack augmented fighters, vancian mages, power-points psions, etc.

 

[Gryph]

What I learned playing 4e.

Standing in one square and trading full attacks may be boring, but a ton of finicky one square shifts and force movements bogs things down and is just as boring in its way. Dial back the forced movement and simplify the move options so we can get on with things.

Move, Minor, and Standard are good. Opportunity and Immediate are problematic. I appreciate the attempt at keeping combat interesting for players when it's not their turn, but, like movement, the dial swung too far. I'd like to see off-turn actions trimmed way down.

Character customization options are good, but you can have too much of a good thing. Power choice and feats was a pretty good level of customization. Power choice, feats, backgrounds and themes is a bit too much all layered together. Throw in magic item wishlists and we are in the province of power gamers. Its an ok place to be as long as the whole table is comfortable there, but it can break the game for players who aren't. This seems like a godd place for dials and options with good advice to GMs/players about choosing a "power" level.

There is a kernel of a good idea in skill challenges. A better designer than I needs to distill that down into a better presentation. Might be good to have less fear of slightly different subsystems. I'm not sure that a social encounter needs to strictly follow the same structure as an extended physical challenge (like a chase scene).

Good mathematical structures for levelling are important. Don't mess them up with a plethora of adjustments during encounters. Mod + 1/2 level isn't hard but it is kind of awkward. I think the Gamma World standard of Mod + level is cleaner.

Speaking of Gamma World, the healing mechanic of 1 second wind of surgeless healing and surgeless recovery of hit points out of combat is a fun base system. You can accomplish the goal of making healers relevant for other than simple healing without using healing surges. Trust the GMs to pace an adventure instead of making them work around healing surge availability.

I loved hybrid multi-classing, hated feat based multi-classing. Don't want 3.x level based multi-classing.

I agree with a lot of KMs points, would XP if I could.

 

[WizarDru]

* I don't care about the Encounter, I care about the Adventure: I think I'm missing some nuance here. I see Adventures consisting of many encounters. What am I missing?

4E changed the focus of the adventures to a series of stringed encounters with a minor amount of fluff to move the party from one to the next. Some adventures had some variation, but most 4E adventures that I've read are entirely focused on the encounter setup. The format of a 4E adventure is a synopsis, some story info and then a series of linked encounters that are far more detailed than the overall plot. Compare the format of The Sunless Citadel, for example, to the Keep at Shadowfell.

Sunless Citadel gives you a map and a vague sense of story that you flesh out, however tenuously. 'Keep' gives you context, but then puts you on a boat between encounters. The adventure starts with a goblin ambush. The players go to town for a hook (if they didn't get it already) and as soon as they leave town? Another goblin ambush. Then a battle outside the goblin lair. Then a battle inside the goblin lair. Every encounter detailed, starting from a Setup section, Tactics and Features of the Area. Sunless Citadel has rooms, Keep on the Shadowfell has 'areas'.

The distinction, at least to me, is that 4E focused much more on each individual combat being a set piece linked by an over-arcing adventure, while 3E had an adventure punctuated by set pieces. They both do roughly the same thing, but the focus was different. The logic of the approach wasn't bad, but it led to many 4E adventures feeling like a carnival ride. Sit in your chair and let the adventure carry you along to the next ghost jumping out at you in the fun house. It left me largely dissatisfied with many of the adventures...they felt more like a justification for the (sometimes very clever or interesting) combats and not an actual adventure, per se, IMHO.

 

[hanez]

4E changed the focus of the adventures to a series of stringed encounters with a minor amount of fluff to move the party from one to the next. Some adventures had some variation, but most 4E adventures that I've read are entirely focused on the encounter setup. The format of a 4E adventure is a synopsis, some story info and then a series of linked encounters that are far more detailed than the overall plot. Compare the format of The Sunless Citadel, for example, to the Keep at Shadowfell.

Sunless Citadel gives you a map and a vague sense of story that you flesh out, however tenuously. 'Keep' gives you context, but then puts you on a boat between encounters. The adventure starts with a goblin ambush. The players go to town for a hook (if they didn't get it already) and as soon as they leave town? Another goblin ambush. Then a battle outside the goblin lair. Then a battle inside the goblin lair. Every encounter detailed, starting from a Setup section, Tactics and Features of the Area. Sunless Citadel has rooms, Keep on the Shadowfell has 'areas'.

The distinction, at least to me, is that 4E focused much more on each individual combat being a set piece linked by an over-arcing adventure, while 3E had an adventure punctuated by set pieces. They both do roughly the same thing, but the focus was different. The logic of the approach wasn't bad, but it led to many 4E adventures feeling like a carnival ride. Sit in your chair and let the adventure carry you along to the next ghost jumping out at you in the fun house. It left me largely dissatisfied with many of the adventures...they felt more like a justification for the (sometimes very clever or interesting) combats and not an actual adventure, per se, IMHO.

I ran a LOT of WOTC modules. And wow, you just said exactly what they felt like. It was REALLY REALLY REALLY different from the old Dungeon Magazine adventures (by paizo), and it spoke to the philosophy of what D&D was to the designers.

To me D&D is a grand story, that the players help create and shape, and that is speckled with battle and great feats here and there. 4e felt a lil bit like some really great tactical battles with really detailed and fabulous combat tactics, stuck together by a usually pretty lame story. Obviously it is hard to take lessons from a campaign, and map it to a system.... but I would say it does seem that for me battle tactics, mechanics, and balanced play were overemphasized.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Kind of mentioned, but I wanted to expand on it:

Magic Items should be rewards Don't work the math so that a level 12 fighter requires a +3 sword. Additionally, move the magic items out of the PHB and back into the DMG. Magic Items are for the DM to give the players, not for the players to pick out.

 

[billd91]

Kind of mentioned, but I wanted to expand on it:

Magic Items should be rewards Don't work the math so that a level 12 fighter requires a +3 sword. Additionally, move the magic items out of the PHB and back into the DMG. Magic Items are for the DM to give the players, not for the players to pick out.

And don't get around needing that +3 sword with a set of 'inherent' bonuses to incorporate it either. If you want to keep the math steady, do it with the basics in the class and stats based on about a value of 16. Let bonuses above and beyond that actually be above and beyond that - tools to make fights easier than designed, not to keep up with expectations.

 

[Plane Sailing]

So, I have been playing 4e more or less since it's launch. Here are a few things I've picked up, that I hope the team keeps in mind going into 5e. Please share your own, too!

• I don't care about the Encounter, I care about the Adventure. 3e started the trend of making the encounter the central part of the game, and 4e solidified it. The thing is, I don't care about the individual encounter. I don't care about one fight with goblins, or one talk with the guards. What I care about is the context it is embedded in, the multi-day struggle to survive the dungeon, or to journey to the far-away land. It's not killing monsters that makes me feel heroic - it is the context for killing them that matters to me.
• I want to do more than fight things. Specifically, there are three things that I'd like to do, in addition to combat: Exploration, Discovery, and Interaction. 4e's minis combat system is peerless, but that's not how I want to solve all my problems. I want robust subsystems for plumbing dungeons (including resource management!), unearthing secrets (including knowledge rolls!), and dealing with NPC's (including skill rolls!), systems that every player at my table might contribute to in some way. I don't want you to worry about balancing classes so tightly on combat roles, but to rather see them in the context of adventure roles.
• I want combat to move faster, and be more cinematic. 4e combat lasts way too long and is way too concerned with the minutae of opportunity attacks, squares, cover, and BLAH BLAH BLAH for my fun. I don't want to have to bust out the minis. I don't want to have to bust out the grid. I want to be able to put thoughts in my players' heads without requiring little plastic toys for the deed. I want more danger, more swinginess, more chaos.
• I don't want 500 powers for each class. I think I'd like power sources to be where powers are -- all martial powers come from the same source, and all martial characters draw on the same power pool, even if the Thief and the Fighter take it in different directions.
• I don't want any role to be "necessary". The baseline for balance should be set low enough that any character can clear it. No one should have to play the leader or the defender or the controller (or the Face or the Sage or the Explorer), if they don't want to.
• I want treasure that is more fun. I do not want to fill out a shopping list. I want to roll on a table, get things that are potentially a little unbalancing (but a lot of fun!), and always be entertained with the quirks.
• I want monsters to be more fun. I do not want to plunk down a stat block on a minis grid and wait for it to die. I want to populate my world with interesting and fascinating creatures waiting to be discovered around the next bend in the river.

I'm interested in what other 4e players have learned from their experience, and I'm sure WotC is, too!

I endorse these opinions, and want to sign up to your newsletter. But I think you know that already, eh?

I would have expressed myself differently, but those are all things that I know I want in D&D, and it is perhaps true that 4e has helped to crystallise those things for me.

Cheers

 

[Crazy Jerome]

On a more abstract note, there is one thing that I more or less believed before 4E, but 4E has convinced me finally: Vestigal design elements are always a sign of a bigger problem. That bigger problem needs to be ferreted out fearlessly, where ever this takes you.

For example, power source is such an element in 4E. It really doesn't mean anything, except as a nod towards flavor and a few vestigal ideas that the designers had that didn't show up in the final edition. So when 4E first came out, I thought, "Ah, no big deal; something didn't work exactly as planned but was retained for classification/guideline purposes." Yet, now I think those power sources were supposed to partly handle the huge list of powers. Perhaps the concept of power sources was not the answer, but the problem of huge list of powers remained.

To a lesser extent, roles in 4E, prestige classes in 3E, and even some feats in both editions show this characteristic, too. It isn't as obvious with those, because they have real meaning, albeit slighter than was probably first conceived.

 

[Sammael]

The one thing I'll have to disagree is the concept of encounters.

Preferably, encounters should be renamed "scenes" to divorce them from the combat-only baggage. However, a single "scene" is a very convenient unit of adventure organization, and also a very convenient unit of abstract time-keeping.

It's very useful for ability balancing as well. 3.x and prior editions were a nightmare when it came to effect tracking for effect that had a duration in rounds. It is much, much easier to track these effects by "scene," thus removing a huge nuisance.

Of course, adventures should not be built solely around encounters/scenes. But scenes can help "frame" the adventure in a way.