D&D 4E What Aspects of 4E Made It into 5E?

[Garthanos]

4e had creatures being "bloodied" at half health. 5e has creatures "showing visible signs of damage" at half health.

The bloodied key word allows effects to be triggered by it....which is it's primary value

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The definition of meta-gaming you provide, by the way, curiously does not include aspects of world-building and scene-setting on behalf of the DM, which is where this whole side avenue started to split off in the first place (not deciding on exactly where the pot and the chicken are relative to anything else in the room, for example, is not an example of "making decisions based on information that your character doesn't have").

The pot and the chicken had to get there somehow. It's not like the entire world spontaneously came into existence as soon as the PC entered the room. Whoever left the pot and the chicken there was some NPC, and making decisions for that NPC falls under the same rules of role-playing and meta-gaming as govern anyone else.

If you look back at 4E, this was a huge area of contention, regarding the placement of adamantine reinforced doors. The 4E detractors thought it was silly that any locked door in your path, once you got to sufficiently high level, would become an adamantine reinforced door - because the rules said that this was what was necessary in order to challenge a character of that level. On the other side of the debate, the pro-4E crowd argued that this was a mis-interpretation, and that those guidelines simply meant to suggest that characters of sufficiently high level should embark on the sorts of quests where they were more likely to come across such challenges, because lesser challenges were beneath them; the world doesn't exist solely for the sake of the PCs.

Now what that "fun" actually looks like will be different to different players, and certain things that would be loved at some tables would be a complete non-starter at others. And that's a great thing. But the game and the community? Those are only strengthened by accepting and embracing a diversity of playstyles; rather than gatekeeping based on anybody's own personal OneTrueWay.

This comes across as the traditional difference between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good. The Lawful Good community believes that everyone benefits when everyone follows the rules. The Chaotic Good community believes that everyone benefits when everyone does what's best for themselves. It's not that the Chaotic Good perspective is wrong - you should definitely do whatever works best at your own table - but openly advocating for that position comes at the expense of the Lawful Good community, which relies on everyone (within that community) acting under the same set of rules. The Lawful Good community is trust-based.

Metaphors aside, the sub-community of role-players which trusts the DM to act neutrally and in good-faith is affected when well-meaning players from the narrative-driven sub-community advocate for contriving details to help the players. I'm not sure that the reverse is true, though, because that other method of play doesn't rely significantly on blind trust placed in the DM.

 

[Garthanos]

I 5e and 13th Age extend this model, using N encounters per day as their balancing method.

Which turns out based on polls (real world practice) ... It is pretty clear nobody plays with some expected significant number of encounters per day. And balancing around such expectations are as problematic now as it was designing around people playing games from level 1 on up to epic levels.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Which turns out based on polls (real world practice) ... It is pretty clear nobody plays with some expected significant number of encounters per day. And balancing around such expectations are as problematic now as it was designing around people playing games from level 1 on up to epic levels.

To be fair, in 13A it's hard-coded, you get a full heal-up after every 4th encounter - 'days' don't come into it. It's an arbitrary 'gamist' but solid solution to the problems inherent in designing classes as if resource balance were anathema.

 

[Hussar]

As someone that [MENTION=6703052]SA[/MENTION]elorn blocked years ago, I do actually appreciate the sheer number of Saelorn quotes. It's nice to see when someone sticks to their guns despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I needed the giggle. Thanks.

 

[Jester David]

If you want a shared story-telling experience, with shared narrative control where the players establish details during the game, or where the DM responds to the players out-of-game cues as to how they want things to unfold, then D&D really isn't the right game for that. D&D is an RPG where meta-gaming is explicitly called out as against the rules.

...
Which page is that rule on?

Page 269 of the DMG even offers up a suggestion for player narrative manipulation as a way to encourage that.

 

[Riley37]

I do actually appreciate the sheer number of Saelorn quotes.

FWIW he has neither confirmed nor denied, so far, whether he's actually that guy who walked out of Dave Arneson's first Blackmoor session, in 1970, on the grounds that his character's only reason for going deeper into the dungeon was for the players to enjoy Dave's scenario, and he refused to metagame.

Saelorn said "Meta-gaming did not originate with 4E, nor is it an aspect of 4E which was carried into 5E." Which is true; meta-gaming originated well before Gygax came up with "Dungeons and Dragons" as a name for what Dave was doing.

 

[pemerton]

Which turns out based on polls (real world practice) ... It is pretty clear nobody plays with some expected significant number of encounters per day. And balancing around such expectations are as problematic now as it was designing around people playing games from level 1 on up to epic levels.

To be fair, in 13A it's hard-coded, you get a full heal-up after every 4th encounter

Right, in 13th Age it's not a matter of GM pacing; it's a built-in recovery rule. The nearest analogue in 4e itself is the accrual of action points at "milestones".

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

...
Which page is that rule on?

Page 269 of the DMG even offers up a suggestion for player narrative manipulation as a way to encourage that.

To be fair, that page is talking about optional addons to the game. Which implies that the default is that those addons are not used.

Most of the DMG is basically: "So, you've decided you don't want to play D&D the 'normal' way and want to change things up, here are some things we decided were a little too weird or didn't work well enough with most groups to include in the rules. They might work for your specific groups, however, so we'll show you them and let you decide to add them".