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

[ForeverSlayer]

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).

My worlds are living and breathing places that exist and function with or without the PCs. If you are walking through a forest then you may run into a creature or group of creatures who happen to be walking through at the same time. Sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with the story, if there is even a story going on.

My player's and I don't want to feel like we are in a novel or a movie because it eventually begins to feel like one big script where everything just happens to appear at just the right moment and just the right items are being found. This is a monstrous turn off for us.

 

[pemerton]

4E was designed to use the magic item marketplace. The math got really wonky if you didn't.

I don't use a magic item marketplace, and the maths isn't wonky. I just level up the PC's items at the appropriate points (as per the treasure parcel rules). If they let me know they want a change of item, I place one as appropriate, or have their god change the enchantment on their item, or whatever else seems to fit the ongoing narrative.

The entire ritual list. I found them a waste of space

<snip>

Wotc tried to amend this as well by allowing for ritual-like mechanics for other classes

I don't quite follow this. Is the problem that rituals are no good? Or that they're essential, but they're too hard to access? - which is itself an odd notion, given that anyone can get access to them with a feat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Myself and random encounters disagree with you.

Well, be my guest, go back to 4 orcs in a room if you want. There are plenty of editions of D&D already out there for you, have fun... .

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My worlds are living and breathing places that exist and function with or without the PCs. If you are walking through a forest then you may run into a creature or group of creatures who happen to be walking through at the same time. Sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with the story, if there is even a story going on.

My player's and I don't want to feel like we are in a novel or a movie because it eventually begins to feel like one big script where everything just happens to appear at just the right moment and just the right items are being found. This is a monstrous turn off for us.

What does this have to do with the point I made, which is just that encounters should be GOOD. First of all many of us can wing that, at least often enough that if we need to pull something new out of the hat once in a while we can. For that matter the 10x less time I have to spend preparing other stuff in 4e gives me PLENTY of time to do up interesting unrelated encounters on the side if I wish. Heck, generate them off some tables with dice if you feel compelled, but there's no difference between doing that beforehand and doing it at the table. Then you have plenty of time to make it interesting.

Your objection in other words IME doesn't amount to anything. We won't even get into the whole question of why you would think random wandering monsters are needed to make the world come alive. I guess people believe all sorts of peculiar stuff, but whatever.

 

[slobo777]

I don't quite follow this. Is the problem that rituals are no good? Or that they're essential, but they're too hard to access? - which is itself an odd notion, given that anyone can get access to them with a feat.

My objection to 4E rituals is that they are essentially self-serving money drains. In a balanced game, where narrative is player driven and focussed on what PCs can do, then the only worthwhile rituals are those based around crafting magic items.

The rest are tools to solve problems that the DM cannot - in a fair game - present without an alternative path (that may or may not involve spending the same cash). The problem being that with the ritual you get to spend the players' cash resource (which is primarily in 4E a gamist resource for combat enhancements) on story elements (which primarily do not affect combat unless the DM makes significant effort to entangle the results).

At best, with some effort to the DM, the use or not of a ritual can be made a cost/benefit decision (e.g. Do we suffer loss of Healing Surge or spend 20 gold on Endure Elements).

The problem in my eyes is resource contention by re-using gold for two diverging purposes. If rituals drew on some other resource, or gold was a story resource and not primarily for combat bolt-ons, then I think 4E's rituals would be sitting pretty.

An alternative "fix" could be attempted if gold investment in a ritual interplayed with taking or avoiding risks . . . a smart DM can set that up in 4E as-is, but only by considering what rituals were already available to the PCs, which is why I consider them "self-serving". Better from an (optimising) player's perspective not to have the rituals in the first place and avoid the issue.

 

[Animal]

My grudge with 4E fights is that it provides a player with a very limited set of choices. Like in WoW you have a number of powers and all you need to do is "press the corresponding button" at the right time. DMs experience pretty much the same thing with monsters. So all creativity boils down to resource management and maybe using terrain to your advantage. Every option you might take outside using a power is usually highly suboptimal (unless DM fiat kicks in). I miss the "candelabra swings" we managed to cram even in our 3E games.

 

[Neonchameleon]

My grudge with 4E fights is that it provides a player with a very limited set of choices. Like in WoW you have a number of powers and all you need to do is "press the corresponding button" at the right time. DMs experience pretty much the same thing with monsters. So all creativity boils down to resource management and maybe using terrain to your advantage. Every option you might take outside using a power is usually highly suboptimal (unless DM fiat kicks in). I miss the "candelabra swings" we managed to cram even in our 3E games.

Please! You're confusing bad DMing with different games. And if all you do is blindly use powers you're at best a mediocre player.

A candelabra swing in 3E is massively mechanically suboptimal. Opportunity attacks all over the place. And you shouldn't be doing it anyway as a 3e melee character because of full round issues.

4e actively has guidelines for how powerful improvised actions are meant to be. And is a lot easier to improvise in. And you have move actions as welll as attacking. All you lack is the bag of sand issues (GURPS guideline: If sand in the eyes always worked fighters would stop carrying swords and instead carry round bags of sand). And we have candelabra swings in 4e.

 

[Animal]

Please! You're confusing bad DMing with different games. And if all you do is blindly use powers you're at best a mediocre player.

That escalated quickly.
Guess folks in all the groups i've played in just failed to figure out how to be good 4E DMs/players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My grudge with 4E fights is that it provides a player with a very limited set of choices. Like in WoW you have a number of powers and all you need to do is "press the corresponding button" at the right time. DMs experience pretty much the same thing with monsters. So all creativity boils down to resource management and maybe using terrain to your advantage. Every option you might take outside using a power is usually highly suboptimal (unless DM fiat kicks in). I miss the "candelabra swings" we managed to cram even in our 3E games.

I can't comment much on how this played out in 3.x as I didn't run it and have played a fairly limited amount. I can say I didn't see these things happen there, but YMMV of course. In AD&D I almost never saw this kind of thing. It was feasible, but there were no really clear rules on how to do it, and since even a small slip-up was likely fatal to most PCs it was at best generally relegated to absolute last-ditch desperation maneuver or really high level play.

In contrast these things happen all the time in our 4e games. Yes, PCs have powers and they can just use them, but often situations come up. There's lots of terrain, varying goals, and usually some pretty dynamic action going on in our 4e encounters, so there's usually a pretty good opportunity to pull something off, often with a lot of motivation to do it. PCs aren't that fragile, so if things go badly it is more interesting than tragic. I also go heavily for 'fail forward' type resolutions whenever possible. Much of the same things can be applied in 3.x or AD&D too of course. You just don't have the cushion of HS and the tone of AD&D is much more in the direction of "pile a bunch of NPCs between you and danger, or else run" IME.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

My grudge with 4E fights is that it provides a player with a very limited set of choices. Like in WoW you have a number of powers and all you need to do is "press the corresponding button" at the right time.

How is this at all distinct from, say, 3E combat? Excepting the part where your 3.XE fighter has only one button (it says "Basic Attack").

Okay, sometimes, your fighter has two buttons - the other one says "Make a trip attack," but since you always press that button, anyway, once you put feats into Improved Trip, etc., and never* press it otherwise, I think you're still functionally limited to one button.