D&D 4E What can Next do to pull in 4e campaigns?

[Manbearcat]

Board Room at WotC: "Alright, on today's agenda: What do 4e player's want to capture their playing experience?

<crickets>

Uhhhhhhh

<more crickets>

Designer001: "I know! I know! Tactical Combat with FACING RULES!"

<Cheers, fist-bumps, and huzzahs resound!>

[sblock]
- Not an encounter-based resource system that puts the primary locus of play at the scene (where genre tropes can be more easily framed and then resolved via the mechanics.

- Not a unified, non-combat, conflict resolution system with subjective DCs that generates Story Now.

- Not encounter-based (rather than adventuring day-based) challenge budgeting which provides acute predictive value for GMs on a per-encounter basis.

- Not Forced Movement that creates dynamically mobile combats.

- Not built-in, intra-party synergy.

- Not awesome monsters that have the depth of design (resources and roles) to synergize together to create exciting, dynamic pushback against the PCs.

- Not a robust and user-friendly terrain/hazard/trap system.

- Not a robust, user-friendly stunting system.

- Not a broad descriptor resource system like Healing Surges that unlocks the heroic comeback in combat and allows for all manner of narrative descriptions as PCs lose these or spend these throughout the work day.

- Not deeply thematically-loaded Themes, Paragon Paths, and Epic Destinies which focus play.

- Not an outcome-based design that leverages a Keyword system and makes the math clear such that building all of the various elements couldn't be easier for the GM.

- Not a Quest System built into advancement that again calibrates play toward what the players are interested in engaging with.

- Not moving the magic item rules into the PC build framework that again allows calibration of play interests and makes for a uniquely malleable tool (eg instead of tangible magic items, PCs can get Divine Boons straight from a God or learn a Martial Combat Move via Alternate Advancement) to reward players with story awards while keeping the math in-line.
[/sblock]

I'm not sure when exactly I became certain that 5e in no way was going to be able to reproduce the 4e experience. It was no one thing. But that particular one was early on and I'm pretty sure it was from Mearls himself and I believe it was a specific invocation of how they were going to reproduce the 4e experience. It may not have been the straw that broke the camel's back but it was probably the tilling of the soil for the seed that produced the straw after the grain and chaff had been removed.

It looks to produce a great AD&D 2.5 experience. It looks to be exactly what I was looking for back when 3e was released. I think it may do extremely well with that cross-section of the D&D culture. I think it may do well with the 3e culture that wants a scaled back, streamlined experience, sans splat bloat. I think it could have easily reproduced both my long-standing AD&D 2e and 3.x games extremely well (and been much more wieldy GM-side than they were). I also think with some proper modules it can reproduce disposable PC, Pawn Stance, Step On Up, 1e Dungeon Crawls as well. But in no way (not with a dozen modules) could 5e reasonably reproduce my 4e game. AD&D 2.5 and 4e defaults are a world away from one another.

That being said, my game is in its last few levels of Epic Tier with Demogorgon and Dagon in the PCs' crosshairs at the bottom of the Abyss! If they pull the Lair System off right (which its initial iteration looked great) + the BBEG mechanics are robust + the PC build mechanics are robust (with intra-party synergy) + the encounter budgeting turns out to be reasonably tight, fighting Demon Lords in 5e may reach status of a poor-man's 4e BBEG combat (without the 4e staple of the heroic comeback via 4e's Healing Surge mechanics and all the battlefield mobility and positioning via Forced Movement, et al.)

 

[Stalker0]

I think there are a few things 5e can take from 4e that would help bridge the gap.

1) 4e's lack of reliance on magic items, especially with npcs. Other than your key stat bumps (and you could always use that official house rule to give you those with level), magic items were not that important to character balance in 4e. What made that especially useful was against npcs. In 3e, in order to make an npc useful they had to have a lot of items. Then when your players kill them they get those items...making them stronger and stronger. 4e broke that cycle I felt, and was one of its best features.

2) 4e monster design. 4e's monster design concepts are leagues above 3e. The understanding that it takes a team of monsters to beat a team of pcs...a monster xp system that was much better than 3e's CR system, the concept of solos and elite creatures (especially the ones made later in 4e's career), and the use of roles to quickly determine what a monster is meant to do. If Next copies nothing else from 4e than many of its monster ideas it will have copied some of the best aspects of 4e.

3) 4e's condition system. I'll be the first to admit that 4e uses conditions too much. That said, their codified condition system made applying conditions very straightforward and easy to remember compared to the things found in 3e. Even Monte Cook, a 3e guru, has said that the bloodied condition is such a wonderful concept it should be replicated in any game, any system.


So even if the class system more resembles 3e in Next, there are a lot of great things in 4e they could bring in imo.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Why do I feel like the only one who recognizes that 3rd ed's CR encounter system, 4th ed's XP encounter system and Pathfinder's encounter budget system are all the same thing?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Board Room at WotC: "Alright, on today's agenda: What do 4e player's want to capture their playing experience?

<crickets>

Uhhhhhhh

<more crickets>

Designer001: "I know! I know! Tactical Combat with FACING RULES!"

<Cheers, fist-bumps, and huzzahs resound!>

[sblock]
- Not an encounter-based resource system that puts the primary locus of play at the scene (where genre tropes can be more easily framed and then resolved via the mechanics.

- Not a unified, non-combat, conflict resolution system with subjective DCs that generates Story Now.

- Not encounter-based (rather than adventuring day-based) challenge budgeting which provides acute predictive value for GMs on a per-encounter basis.

- Not Forced Movement that creates dynamically mobile combats.

- Not built-in, intra-party synergy.

- Not awesome monsters that have the depth of design (resources and roles) to synergize together to create exciting, dynamic pushback against the PCs.

- Not a robust and user-friendly terrain/hazard/trap system.

- Not a robust, user-friendly stunting system.

- Not a broad descriptor resource system like Healing Surges that unlocks the heroic comeback in combat and allows for all manner of narrative descriptions as PCs lose these or spend these throughout the work day.

- Not deeply thematically-loaded Themes, Paragon Paths, and Epic Destinies which focus play.

- Not an outcome-based design that leverages a Keyword system and makes the math clear such that building all of the various elements couldn't be easier for the GM.

- Not a Quest System built into advancement that again calibrates play toward what the players are interested in engaging with.

- Not moving the magic item rules into the PC build framework that again allows calibration of play interests and makes for a uniquely malleable tool (eg instead of tangible magic items, PCs can get Divine Boons straight from a God or learn a Martial Combat Move via Alternate Advancement) to reward players with story awards while keeping the math in-line.
[/sblock]

I'm not sure when exactly I became certain that 5e in no way was going to be able to reproduce the 4e experience. It was no one thing. But that particular one was early on and I'm pretty sure it was from Mearls himself and I believe it was a specific invocation of how they were going to reproduce the 4e experience. It may not have been the straw that broke the camel's back but it was probably the tilling of the soil for the seed that produced the straw after the grain and chaff had been removed.

It looks to produce a great AD&D 2.5 experience. It looks to be exactly what I was looking for back when 3e was released. I think it may do extremely well with that cross-section of the D&D culture. I think it may do well with the 3e culture that wants a scaled back, streamlined experience, sans splat bloat. I think it could have easily reproduced both my long-standing AD&D 2e and 3.x games extremely well (and been much more wieldy GM-side than they were). I also think with some proper modules it can reproduce disposable PC, Pawn Stance, Step On Up, 1e Dungeon Crawls as well. But in no way (not with a dozen modules) could 5e reasonably reproduce my 4e game. AD&D 2.5 and 4e defaults are a world away from one another.

That being said, my game is in its last few levels of Epic Tier with Demogorgon and Dagon in the PCs' crosshairs at the bottom of the Abyss! If they pull the Lair System off right (which its initial iteration looked great) + the BBEG mechanics are robust + the PC build mechanics are robust (with intra-party synergy) + the encounter budgeting turns out to be reasonably tight, fighting Demon Lords in 5e may reach status of a poor-man's 4e BBEG combat (without the 4e staple of the heroic comeback via 4e's Healing Surge mechanics and all the battlefield mobility and positioning via Forced Movement, et al.)

I want to XP this post, but I've given you XP too recently. This is becoming more of a problem for me as I'm seeing less and less by way of discussion I can get behind on these boards.

 

[Incenjucar]

Why do I feel like the only one who recognizes that 3rd ed's CR encounter system, 4th ed's XP encounter system and Pathfinder's encounter budget system are all the same thing?

I can't speak on Pathfinder, but while the CR system is the same concept as 4E's XP system, the 4E system worked a lot better, particularly since 4E characters are all roughly equal. It's also a lot easier to use the more-granular XP budget than a CR budget. The 3E encounter system also focused on one monster vs. one party rather than roughly one monster per PC.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) 2) 4e monster design. (snip)

While I agree with your other points as well, this for me is the deal maker or breaker insofar as Next/Previous/AD&D3E is concerned: I'm too used to being able to run a monster just using its stat block and I don't want to go back to looking up spells in a PHB or worrying about whether the NPC has the right balance of equipment.

If Next was able to create a 4E-like system for monsters and NPCs than, and only then, would I give it a second look. (Mind you, I also feel the same way about Pathfinder.)

I want to XP this post, but I've given you XP too recently. This is becoming more of a problem for me as I'm seeing less and less by way of discussion I can get behind on these boards.

And I can't give either of you XP for the same reason.

 

[Lindeloef]

I want to XP this post, but I've given you XP too recently. This is becoming more of a problem for me as I'm seeing less and less by way of discussion I can get behind on these boards.

Covered for you.

 

[Bluenose]

It looks to produce a great AD&D 2.5 experience. It looks to be exactly what I was looking for back when 3e was released.

It's got some philosophical similarities, though it's also got some major differences (multi-classing, saving throws, codified combat mechanics - all 3e style). I'm fairly certain it doesn't do 1e, BECM, or 4e. Already there's a lot of the 2e/3e belief comcerning how much people like magic, and how therefore the designers are going to stick more and more of it in.

 

[Manbearcat]

Why do I feel like the only one who recognizes that 3rd ed's CR encounter system, 4th ed's XP encounter system and Pathfinder's encounter budget system are all the same thing?

I'm pretty familiar with Pathfinder but I haven't ever run a game so I'm not familiar with its encounter budget system. However, I can speak to the CR and ECL system and 4e's encounter budgeting system. The two are different to each other in the extreme for multiple reasons. The primary reason that the 3.x system becomes increasingly unwieldy is due to the fighter vs spellcaster issue. As the system scales, spellcaster levels become disproportionately powerful when compared to monster HD and/or martial levels. The CR system and the ECL system work off the premise that they are equal. As a result, after about level 7 or so things start go off-kilter. By level 11, its dead-man-walking. Shortly thereafter the system has flat-lined.

There are other issues as well (such as innate spell-like abilities or innate sorcery not being properly quantified) but that is the primary one. 4e encounter budgeting suffers from no such ails. Its predictive functionality is considerably more bounded. Depending on group makeup and number of PCs, you're probably moving level n combats to level n + 1 by early paragon, n + 2 by late paragon/early epic, to n + 3/4 by late epic after the "come back from the dead" abilities are gained.

I want to XP this post, but I've given you XP too recently. This is becoming more of a problem for me as I'm seeing less and less by way of discussion I can get behind on these boards.

Yeah. Its frustrating. There are so many posts that I'd like to acknowledge with a courteous + 1 or xp but I don't want to litter threads.

It's got some philosophical similarities, though it's also got some major differences (multi-classing, saving throws, codified combat mechanics - all 3e style). I'm fairly certain it doesn't do 1e, BECM, or 4e. Already there's a lot of the 2e/3e belief comcerning how much people like magic, and how therefore the designers are going to stick more and more of it in.

Yup. I agree on all fronts here. The philosophical similarities were what I was driving at primarily. It seems to aim at producing the expectant play of those editions even if some (key) mechanical odds and ends are slightly askew.

I'm still puzzled by the implementation of HD. As it stands now, they don't remotely function in the way that makes Healing Surges a staple of 4e play. Mostly, they just seem to annoy most camps and make 4e detractors decry them for (inexplicably) being too 4eish (when they don't remotely fit the bill). In play, they basically seem to be a mundane answer to the effect on play of the proliferation of Cure Light Wounds wands (extending the work day/week for martial characters who are dependent upon HPs and thus reducing the pressure on Cleric's spell load-out being resigned to healing).

I think if the effects of their default assumption on the system can truly have all vestiges of it removed from play + highly functional exploration mechanics and dungeon building tools + punitive SoD/S effects on monsters and traps/hazards + accrued gold as XP + solid, streamlining of classes (where they each perform well in their niche with no customization required) where you can make a guy in 5 minutes...then I think that a reasonable analogue for pawn stance, disposable PC play where you get together with buddies for an evening of old school dungeon crawls can probably be accomplished. The saving throw system is key here though (and it was still borked last time I checked in).

 

[Savage Wombat]

No, you're both talking about 3e doing a poor job assigning CRs accurately. The basic encounter system in all three editions is still "we assume a fair fight is - for a party of four - four creatures of X power, two creatures of X+2 power, one creature of X+4 power. Increase X by one or more to make the fight harder for your PCs." All of the CR math/XP budget work out mathematically to exactly the same thing.