D&D 4E What 5E needs to learn from 4E

[pemerton]

Every encounter should BE a story. It should have PLOT and CHARACTER, and MOTIVE.

100% yes to this!

James Wyatt talks about this in Worlds & Monsters, and the whole of 4e is designed around it, I think. 4e combat mechanics - with the powers, the healing surges, etc - are all about pacing. And skill challenges, while not as tightly designed, are meant to have the same dynamic.

4e is based on a presumption of no pointless combats, and no pointless encounters in general. (Which is also the true meaning, I think, of Wyatt's famous (notorious?) comment about the town guards in the 4e DMG.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

The way 4E was designed, in my opinion mind you, there were player's options that were completely ridiculous but couldn't really be taken out without some extreme house ruling on the DM's part.

Other than healing surges, name three of them. (OK, Martial Dailies might qualify for a second).

All the PC options in 4e that could cause problems are options at character generation. Don't like the Warlord able to shout people up off the ground? Ban him - and you've impacted precisely no other classes. Don't like Come And Get It? Ban it - and the fighter will just have to chose another 7th level daily power. But once they've chosen that, they are a perfectly decent 7th level fighter who isn't actually missing anything.

Or, in my experience, all you have to do is say to your players "This is the design of my world. Please design your characters in line with it." As long as the world is slightly larger than life it works well. And players won't be missing vast swathes of options. For that matter they won't be missing any options and you won't end up with a party feeling incomplete.

Right now I'm playing a Middle Earth game - the DM's rules for character generation to fit Middle Earth were simple. "All classes must be at least borderline martial" (i.e. the Barbarian may technically be Primal but he qualifies) "and no overt non-ritual magic. If you're not sure then ask the DM." Which is enough to produce characters that fit Middle Earth - larger than life and leading with sword or bow. And we have a healer (a Rohirrim Skald) who shouts to get people back into the fray. None of us are feeling cramped - we all have fully functional characters that are as effective as anything their level. And we have a balanced party.

If we were to try doing that in any previous edition of D&D, the rule would have to be "No Vancian Casters or other primary casters" as Vancian magic rates make Gandalf look weak. That's a game of D&D without Wizards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerors or even Bards or Paladins (no Archivists, Artificiers, Binders, Favoured Souls, Swordsages, etc. either). Which really changes the game. It just about takes all healing out of the game. It means that the range of things within the game the PCs can't handle is very large.

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

Another thing that 5E needs to learn from 4E is that killing all of the previous edition's sacred cows and rolling on their corpses is just a plain old bad idea.

Kamikaze Midget here, reminding all of our posters that whatever you may think of any given edition's changes, rest assured no one has killed the penultimate Sacred Cow of pretending to be a magical gumdrop elf with other grown-up folks in someone's basement on a perfectly lovely weekend afternoon. What sacred cows are OK to kill and what ones make delicious steak will undoubtedly vary between individuals, so keep that in mind before you launch your salvos at folks who pretend to be a magical gumdrop elf in a different way than you: they're having fun their way, too.

 

[DM Howard]

Other than healing surges, name three of them. (OK, Martial Dailies might qualify for a second).

I'll list these as my top three.

1. Magic items. 4E was designed to use the magic item marketplace. The math got really wonky if you didn't. Wotc tried to fix this by having the option to take it out by giving implied bonuses but this really didn't fix the problem.

2. The entire ritual list. I found them a waste of space but they couldn't be easily gotten rid of without creating a 0-level at-will list or something similar with specific conditions. Some of them could be insanely overpowered and to me seemed like trying to reserve some of the magical power of (mostly the wizard) in reserve and away from the reaches of most of the other classes. Wotc tried to amend this as well by allowing for ritual-like mechanics for other classes but like I said I felt they were ponderous but served a vital role.

3. and although you partly mentioned them I thought dailies as a whole were a terrible idea and led to a lot of resource-hoarding on the part of the players. There is only so much a DM can do to draw these resources out without using unrealistic (at least in my mind) amounts of force.

And now that I've said this let me say that I really enjoyed 4E for what it was I just felt like they went to far by completely revamping the game rather than revising and not fixing what isn't broke in the first place.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

100% yes to this!

James Wyatt talks about this in Worlds & Monsters, and the whole of 4e is designed around it, I think. 4e combat mechanics - with the powers, the healing surges, etc - are all about pacing. And skill challenges, while not as tightly designed, are meant to have the same dynamic.

4e is based on a presumption of no pointless combats, and no pointless encounters in general. (Which is also the true meaning, I think, of Wyatt's famous (notorious?) comment about the town guards in the 4e DMG.)

Yeah, I think in a sense they overestimated what adventure designers and DMs were able or willing to put into them, unfortunately. I can understand Mike's desire to scope things a bit differently in 5e. At least to have more options for different scopes.

Still, 4e's design is cool. The monsters get a few encounter/recharge powers, so they knock the PCs back and (hopefully for the monsters) wrong foot them. Then the PCs get the measure of things and cut loose with their response, etc. There's already a sort of natural plot outline there.

 

[Neonchameleon]

1. Magic items. 4E was designed to use the magic item marketplace.

Less true than in literally any other edition. If you drop the magic items and slip in enhancement bonusses, you very slightly nerf all PCs. But as far as I know, a grand total of one PC class is significantly item dependent - Warlocks with Rod of Corruption. In any other edition the fighter needs his +X items to keep up (and the 1e magic item tables are a subtle balancing factor). A fighter in 3.X without magic items is a complete chump.

2. The entire ritual list.

Not in my experience. In my experience across multiple groups (and about fifteen separate players, not counting Encounters), I've only seen one other player reach for the ritual book. And I was DMing that game and had given them the ritual book he was using as treasure.

3. and although you partly mentioned them I thought dailies as a whole were a terrible idea and led to a lot of resource-hoarding on the part of the players. There is only so much a DM can do to draw these resources out without using unrealistic (at least in my mind) amounts of force.

I see little difference between dailies and pre-4e magic. That said, I find 4e a much better game if you restrict extended rests to more than 8 hours sleep. A several day break works wonders for seriously increasing the pacing and pressure of the game.

And now that I've said this let me say that I really enjoyed 4E for what it was I just felt like they went to far by completely revamping the game rather than revising and not fixing what isn't broke in the first place.

Possibly. But a lot was broken - and I think that just cutting back the spellcasters savagely (as 3.X needs) would have been met with howls of outrage while making it no easier to attract new players. 4e is deliberately designed using a vocabulary close to WoW because this, it was thought, would grow the hobby. Of course Gleemax was a failure for many reasons, including tragic ones. (And one of my big concerns about D&D Next is that its goal appears to be simply going after old players).

 

[DM Howard]

It seems a lot of our differences of opinion on the above topics are mainly down to personal experiences so I'll leave it at that. Perhaps I haven't played with a DM that understood the nuances of the system, I'm willing to admit that.

(And one of my big concerns about D&D Next is that its goal appears to be simply going after old players).

This concerns me as well as there needs to be a constant influx of new players to every hobby and not designing/marketing to potential customers at all is a bad move on their part.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Yeah, I won't even go on about just how idiotic WotC seems to be.

I think WotC is being very clever, why would you want to embrace a D&D Miniatures game variant Heinsoo & Co. came up with a few years ago that fractured the D&D community like nothing before (and is being beaten by their own "game")?

 

[ForeverSlayer]

\

Every encounter should BE a story. It should have PLOT and CHARACTER, and MOTIVE.

Myself and random encounters disagree with you.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Myself and random encounters disagree with you.

Total, every combat being Kenner's Star Wars Jabba set is not D&D to me.

3-D is the way to go with 4th Ed (I am thinking about it, terrain, etc).