Was there a real need for a fourth ed.? Or would tweaking 3.5 have done it for you?

[lutecius]

I was burned out on 3e long before 4e was announced. And a number of problems had become apparent.
To me, a new edition was needed, just not the one we got.
I wanted less gamist abstractions, not more.
More class flexibility, not less.

Hopefuly i won't feel too old to be playing dnd when 5e comes out.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

The reports I've been hearing about 4E is that indeed rounds are much faster, but overall combat time is the same - and sometimes longer (especially the reported 4E grind that can apparently occur when all the daily/encounter powers have been spent for both sides and it's down to whittling away hit points).

True. This is exacerbated when against a Solo creature (tons of hit points). I still think overall length, on average, is shorter for 4e than 3e but not significantly so. I think it just "seems" shorter because guys are getting to act much more often.

With 1E, there were times when one could get through an entire adventure module in a 5-6 hour session. In 3E/4E, it takes 5-6 SESSIONS to get through an adventure.

Yeah. Um. Well, it's not that fast. I remember doing Tsojcanth in a day, but I also remember taking ALL SUMMER to do ToEE. We graphed every single 5' square in that dang adventure. Good times, good times.

WP

 

[Raven Crowking]

Count me as another saying that the time was right for a new edition. Not because 3e sucked, although it certainly has its problems, but because there was enough 3pp OGC to offer substantial improvements.

Combats in 3e do tend to take too long, especially as levels increase, and the power curve was too steep (IMHO). 3e's attempt to define everything also made adventure creation seem a bit more like homework than is good for the game. IMHO, game prep should consist of about 80% thinking things up, 10% writing things down, and 10% figuring out how to put things into gamespeak. 3e ended up about 75% figuring out what gamespeak to use. Again, IMHO.

I am not at all certain that 4e has really solved any of these problems......excepting, of course, that a truncated core means truncated gamespeak....at least until the PHB III comes out.

The best side effect of this new edition, IMHO, is that it has opened up a lot of discussion about game design, design goals, and how to achieve them. I don't believe that I fully appreciated/understood Mr. Gygax's work until I compared it to 4e. I imagine that the same is true for some of the folks at WotC, and that 5e will be better for it.

There are a number of really good ideas in 4e as well. Not all of these good ideas are executed as well as they deserve to be, IMHO, but there you go. I haven't yet seen what Ari has done with the material; I imagine it's brilliant, and fixes some of the warts.

If I didn't think it was time for a new edition, I wouldn't have started creating a "new edition" of my own (RCFG). I think that there are more than a few people doing the same right now.

4e helped me learn exactly what I wanted from D&D. What I wanted just wasn't 4e.


RC

 

[Dragonbait]

I'm not sure if this would be "tweaking" or a new system: A complete revision of the core classes (Paizo has covered this), game play about level 10 (Paizo talked about fixing this..), and a complete revision of how the DM works and what rules a DM goes by (I don't think Paizo is doing this).

That sounds like a new system to me. 4E answers some of these and creates other issues. Still, I like 4E a lot. I'll still happily play 3E, but I don't think I could ever go back to DMing it.

 

[timbannock]

Biggest problem with 3X was that I felt like I had to have access to everything my players did, either to help them build characters that were "properly balanced" or to ensure I knew what was REALLY broken so I could say "No."

The separation in 4E of "these rules are for players" and "these rules are for DMs" means I get to ignore most of the splats and stick with equipment/magic item books, monster books, and settings. Martial Power, Arcane Power, PHB2...all of that stuff is for my players to pick up (and for me to borrow if I want to skim). I save all my $$$ for Adventurer's Vault, MM2, DMG2, and any adventures I want to pick up.

That's how it should always be.

Therefore, 3X needed a ground-up rebuild in order to give me, the DM, the power I want to create things effectively and quickly, while the PCs can handle their (hopefully) balanced and fiddly details on their own.

Honestly, I would have prefered the PCs still to have the same level of detail as they did in 3X, but with the DMs stuff streamlined as in 4E. But I think 4E's close enough to that for me to be happy ;-)

 

[Agamon]

After the debacle that was the last 3 adventures of Age of Worms, I decided that if 4e didn't do it for me, it was off to other games, because 3.x was starting to make me angry at the mere thought. So yeah, change was necessary, IMO.

 

[Engilbrand]

I don't know. When I started playing, I really liked the game. As time went on, and I played with different groups. When the last books started coming out, I realized that I absolutely loved the options and ideas that they had. They made me wonder why the core was missing so many awesome things. I pretty much stopped playing core stuff. I love almost everything that came out that was a preview for 4th edition.
If I had stuck with core only for all of my years, I might have said, "No. There was no new edition necessary." The later books made me realize that 3.5 core was incomplete and needlessly restrictive. After those books, starting with the Warlock, my idea was, "Yes!" When I read that things like Tome of Battle and other stuff like that were precursors to 4th, I knew that I would love it.

 

[Allister]

Tweaking I think would not have worked for me as the fundamental aspects of the system needed to be rethought.

Tweaking, is what gave us the uber-powered spellcasters as the 3.0 designers basically translated the spells from the previous edition without fully understanding the sub-system attached.

How do you "tweak" 3.0 so that a DM can actually do either 5 on 5 encounters or 5 vs 1 encounters?

How do you tweak a skill system that breaks down by level 10?

I'm not sure it is possible to fix without going back to the beginning and saying "ok, we want to accomplish this...how do we do it?"

 

[The Little Raven]

Tweaks would not have done it for me, because the underlying math of the game was one of the key problems I had with it. In order to fix what I felt was broken, the math had to be redone from scratch (as it has been).

 

[Greg K]

Was 4e necessary? It depends upon whetheror not you consider heavy tweaking to be a new editon.

I freely admit that 3e has some problems that needed to be addressed. I do not, however, think that that the 4e we received was the right direction. Imo, 4e does a few things right (e.g, the unified save progression and removing both XP costs and level drain), but it does much more wrong either in idea or in implementation- especially, when comparing it to the available options and fixes from 3pp, and WOTC's own Unearthed Arcana and non-DND d20 products.

Unfortunately, I don't find Pathfinder shaping up to be impressive either.