D&D 4E What's in 5e for 4e fans?

[Jeff Carlsen]

I question how long Hasbro is willing to let D&D go without releasing any real product... unless someone has once again convinced them that maybe THIS time D&D will become a multi-billion dollar franchise on the level of MtG.

By the look of things, it would seem the plan is to turn D&D into a long-tail product. Instead of trying to make a ton of money every month, it will make a steady profit for many years.

The re-release of older materials hints to this, and may be a major profit source over the next couple years as D&D Next is being developed.

 

[Herschel]

What problems did you run into while playtesting?

It was rocket tag when facing the Orcs, for one thing. CharGen is still not very clean, there's very little variety in what you can do with a character, etc. It was said by pretty much everyone at the table there wasn't anything there to make us change to DDN from what we've seen. It was nice that they cleaned up some things from early editions but it really didn't do anything any edition does better than that edition. We all seemed to have fun, but everyone also said it wasn't something to switch to. There's just too many holes in it so far.

Ftr: I did my playtests with people I had never met or gamed with before.

 

[Advilaar]

I am a 4e player and DM who has played since 2e.

One of the stregnths of 4e is it's tactical combat system. Flanking, marking, push-pull all make for real solid battle mat action. Most 4e fans are huge fans of the tactics based play. If this is lost, you may have issues converting som 4e fans. At least have flanking in some form where position matters. Even "theatre of the mind" folks can probably handle some flanking mechanic.

That said, 4e has glaring weaknesses that 5e can correct that can win folks over. Skill challenges, while I understood why they did them, just destroys the freeform with success/failure if you follow it to the letter (which I do not). 4e also suffers from "small modifier hell" and is quite some accountig to keep up with every little +1 here, +2 there particularly approaching paragon and onward.

Then again, i was using mats in 2e.