D&D 4E Where was 4e headed before it was canned?

[Garthanos]

Which WotC makes every effort to disabuse whenever anyone approaches questions that way: see Jeremy Crawford's Sage Advice.

Its pretty much human nature we are talking about though to make otherwise freely attempted things limited in comparison to extant paid for things its like trying to do what the roman emperor did when he declared prices were "this" - it doesn't work.
OR are we talking about the genre shift?
It might just be that all them characters are martial adepts to the last and disarm is more common for some other reason?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We should note that, outside of combat (where we might measure effectiveness with, say, hit points of damage dealt), there is rarely a useful measure of effectiveness. We can't reasonably say if something was twice as effective or not. There is only perception of effectiveness, and usually then only in a hypothetical sense, as we don't see how the universe of the standard action, and that of the improvised action, unroll side by side.

This is a reasonably good point, and points out an area where 4e runs into difficulty with this sort of 'up the stakes' kind of move. There are SOME ways you can work it within the SC framework, like giving double success, or at least making the GM burn a 'hard check' resource, but it isn't really a very mechanically solid concept.
One answer is not to do it this way, but to instead require the player to expend some resource in order to 'do better'. An HS or AP is a fairly obvious choice, but not the only possible one (an advantage in an SC would be another, at least in RC-vintage SCs). HoML merges HS and AP into VP, which simplifies this process, and provides a type of 'inspiration' (not quite the same as the 5e version, which I find to have some flaws, but not too different).

 

[Garthanos]

Without using an Action Surge, still firing 40 arrows a minute.

Its actually kind of not unrealistic. But she is very good.
The archers that are doing full draw technique are pretty much like that and can keep on keeping on. I think she demonstrates moving while doing it

Lars actually demonstrates how much he can move including almost acrobatic dodges and the like and the accuracy he doesn't lose with his technique

But I do doubt that our snap shot barrage fire guy Lars could keep up his technique without a pause to load up but he would be like facing a machine gun for a bit to guys in leather and light chain.

 

[Parmandur]

Its actually kind of not unrealistic. But she is very good.
The archers that are doing full draw technique are pretty much like that and can keep on keeping on. I think she demonstrates moving while doing it

Lars actually demonstrates how much he can move including almost acrobatic dodges and the like and the accuracy he doesn't lose with his technique

But I do doubt that our snap shot barrage fire guy Lars could keep up his technique without a pause to load up but he would be like facing a machine gun for a bit to guys in leather and light chain.

Certainly wouldn't be a fun day for them

 

[Garthanos]

This is a reasonably good point, and points out an area where 4e runs into difficulty with this sort of 'up the stakes' kind of move.

Well what is an extraordinary History stunt? I mean my character guiding troops might get a special advantage for that swarm of soldiers or something. Where we try something impossibly tricky like a legendary general did or something. See martial ploy for a way to do it without the skill application.

There are SOME ways you can work it within the SC framework, like giving double success, or at least making the GM burn a 'hard check' resource, but it isn't really a very mechanically solid concept.
One answer is not to do it this way, but to instead require the player to expend some resource in order to 'do better'. An HS or AP is a fairly obvious choice, but not the only possible one (an advantage in an SC would be another, at least in RC-vintage SCs). HoML merges HS and AP into VP, which simplifies this process, and provides a type of 'inspiration' (not quite the same as the 5e version, which I find to have some flaws, but not too different).

SC do rather have it covered Ithink and even the history stunt I just mentioned is most likely a skill challenge context

 

[Campbell]

For my own tastes I Fifth Edition largely took all the wrong parts of Fourth Edition and did not take many of the elements that I consider integral to what made playing Fourth Edition such a great experience for me. These include:

• Tight and transparent math that makes it easy to design challenges, design monsters, and make house rules in a way that makes it easy to see their impact.
• Martial classes that could be played skillfully to the point where it has a strong impact on the outcome of any given encounter. Like you can play a Wizard poorly or more skillfully I want the same to be true of a Fighter.
• Monsters with unique abilities you must contend with that make every fight feel different and tense.
• Synergies between different characters that players must utilize to be effective both in and out of combat.
• More broadly skilled characters that can be effective in a number of different arenas. Unfortunately in Fourth Edition this broke down over time.
• A sense that magic is just as uncertain as using martial skill.
• Compelling lore that was focused on placing Player Characters into the center of the action. The idea that player characters were directly embedded into the setting's conflicts.
• Ritual magic as something anyone can do.

What they ended up keeping included elements that I grew to not be particularly fond of during the lifetime of Fourth Edition. I know other Fourth Edition fans will probably not agree with me:

• Abstract short and long rest. I am particularly not fond of regaining all your hit points over a long rest.
• The lack of meaningful long term status conditions like poisons, diseases, and curses.
• Martial abilities with arbitrary resource management without any direct correspondence to the fiction. Stuff like superiority dice, rages per day, bardic inspiration, second wind, and action surge.
• Hit Dice/ Healing Surges. Particularly when healing does not use them up they do not really feel like extra reserves.
• Ability Score substitution effects like using Dexterity for attack and damage on finesse weapons or the Hexblade's Charisma to Attack and Damage. Also stuff like the Barbarian's Constitution to AC that lets them run around naked.
• Monsters that lack meaningful resistances, weaknesses, and immunities.
• Monsters with incredibly bloated hit points when compared to PCs

 

[JohnLynch]

To answer the original premise: I think D&D was moving towards a revision, but not in the style of Essentials. We had 1 more PHB (Elemental and Shadow Classes), 1 more DMG (Epic) and a MM or two. And then 4.5 would have come out.

If they didn’t massively overact (as they did with Essentials), they could have represented the game to be less accessory heavy/digital tools reliant. Consolidated powers dramatically. And perhaps used the psionic classes as a template for martials.

 

[JohnLynch]

We would have also seen Themes become standard and baked in.

Pathfinder 2e can definitely be seen as a look into what Logan and Stephen Radney -MacFarland liked about 4e and what they might have kept or tweaked a 4.5. With 13th Age for ideas from Rob Heinsoo and Johnathon Tweet as to what they liked and would have kept.

 

[pemerton]

The original contention was that 4E encouraged improvised play more because of the restrictions, which is counter to observation of 5E in play.

Well surely the question is encouraged for whom? Observations by whom of whom?

In my own D&D experience 4e encouraged far more improvisation than AD&D. I don't have enought 3E or 5e experience to make comparisons to those systems, but by comparing the systems they present with my own experiences of how 4e encouraged improvisation I wouldn't expect them to differ very much from AD&D.

Here's one hypothetical but in my view relatively plausible causal pathway: a participant in a 4e game (player or GM) contemplates improvisation but feels paralysed by their lack of grasp of the resource structure of the game. Suppose such a thing were to happen, and that the participant in question therefore attempts more improvisation in 5e - that will hae no bearing on my own play experience, which is not with players who have trouble with resource systems.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Literally every book WotC publishes pushes "Just say Yes" as their advice. The rules do not really recommend multiple die rolls per task, that's house rule territory there.

I don't see this. Most (all D&D except 4e with some very niche exceptions) D&D rules sets have no definition of the 'scope' of a success. I'm not sure of the exact wording in 5e, but 3e certainly lacks any requirement that a check 'advance the game state' or that a success should produce any specific increment of advancement in overall situational success. For example, to take @Garthanos specific example: There is no indication that a 'swim' check produce a result such as "survive the current episode of swimming or else begin drowning". Thus a GM is free to decide that any given arbitrary number of such checks are required. Often GMs attempt to follow "game rules as world physics" type logic and extrapolate from (or maybe the action is part of) a combat situation and require a check every round, with the character progressing some distance to his/her goal derived from a tactical movement system. Even if the checks are 95% success, the best possibility that leaves any chance of failure, 5 such checks in a row leaves a 12% chance of drowning. I think most GMs won't realize this and would think of this as a reasonable test for crossing 5 movement actions worth of water. Yet in 4e such a distance is only 150' for most PCs. This is basically a trivial amount of swimming which normal people can easily achieve with virtually no peril, assuming they are of average fitness. In 4e it would be cast (hopefully, if the GM is really following the spirit of the rules) in terms of an SC where it would represent a single check.

Again, I'm not sure exactly how 5e couches this, but it did discard the SC system, which is, AFAIK, the only system that D&D has ever had for gauging the number of checks which should ideally result in the party advancing out of the encounter and on to the next 'scene'. Without that, or at least a Page 42-like mechanism to structure ad-hoc action, I don't really see how anyone can say that 5e is really facilitating this kind of play in the way 4e does. IME of 5e play, it doesn't. You really cannot rely on knowing how feasible IN ITS ENTIRETY something is until you start negotiating with the DM, and often you need to help them understand what exactly the consequences are of how they are employing the mechanics. The game really seems to give very little solid guidance here. It may relate the 'say yes' theory, but the theory by itself isn't enough for a lot of GMs.