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

[Oni]

First off I like 3.x, it's the edition I've spent the most time playing.

I think 3.x was beginning to suffer from rules bloat, keep expanding on something and eventually it will collapse under its own weight. Now one might say that was all ignoreable, just use core. However I think a lot of bloat was trying to address shortcomings in the core. I felt like like a lot of PrC's were bandaids to fix things that didn't work so well with core.

Ideally an edition should collapse eventualy under the weight of its own rule tweaks, then all the good stuff is moved to core and previous problems are addressed and the process begins again, hopefully with a more refined product each time. I love 3e put like anything it was flawed and I think that it had a reasonable lifecyle.

If you're afraid to change things it leads to stagnation and a magnification of oddities. I've started following the developement of Pathfinder for instance and I like some of what they've done, but the whole idea of backwards compatability is very irritating to me because I can see it holding to much potential back and in some ways just making the system quirkier and quirker.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

3.5E was dead to me before 4E had arrived. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't even stand it after having tweaked it to be the game I wanted it to be.

4E went even further than I did, and I'm more than satisfied with the results. I haven't enjoyed D&D this much since 2E.

 

[The Ghost]

I think that the designers reached a point with the game where their creativity was being limited by a lot of the base rules of 3.5. They needed to clean up the base rules set and open up design space.

That said - As a player and DM - I think that it has come a couple of years too early for me. There was, and is, still a lot that I want to do with the game. Most of the problems that I saw with the game were fairly minor and a lot of the problems that I have heard or read about are things that never really bothered me. Or things I never noticed.

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't think there's ever a need for a new edition. But given there's enough 3.5 material (from WotC and 3PP) to last a lifetime, and given that I'm always game for new ideas, it's fine.

At the very least, one can take the best ideas from 4E and use them to "fix" 3.5 oneself.

 

[Masquerade]

If a tweaked game had been released, I would have bought it, played it, and loved it. There wasn't a need for a new edition.

...but that doesn't change the fact that I love my new edition. I didn't realize how tired I was of dealing with 3.5s flaws until I played a D&D without them. It's impossible to say whether I would have liked a tweaked 3.5 better than I like 4e, but I'd be willing to bet that I wouldn't have.

 

[Treebore]

A total rewrite. Which C&C with my house rules does perfectly for my tastes.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I think a whole new edition would have been needed in a year or two.

 

[humble minion]

I think a new edition was very necessary, in particular to cut down on buff-layering, reduce the Christmas Tree effect, and to make the game maths more functional at high levels.

It was necessary that there was a 4th edition, but I don't think the one we got was the right one. On the other hand, I don't think Pathfinder will go far enough.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The bathwater was dirty, but there wasn't a need to throw the baby out with it.

I think there was a lot of good potential in 4e that couldn't have been achieved without an "edition change." So I think there was something of a need for a fourth edition.

This fourth edition, though, I wonder...

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm not convinced that 4E really is a total rebuild of 3.5, to be honest.