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

[Hussar]

I gotta admit that while I've pretty much given up on the idea that I'll get an official warlord in 5e, it does leave a rather sour taste. This is the one clearly 4e concept. Something you can really point to as an iconic element of the game, and it got tossed to the curb, in a rather puerile manner as well. For all the talk of the "big tent" of 5e, that's probably one of my biggest grinding gears.

And it makes it all the more irritating because it was only done to pacify edition warriors. There's no real mechanical reason to not have a warlord in the game. But, like "damage on a miss" or "HP as Meat", there's just no way that folks will let this particular bone go.

 

[Mycroft]

I gotta admit that while I've pretty much given up on the idea that I'll get an official warlord in 5e, it does leave a rather sour taste. This is the one clearly 4e concept. Something you can really point to as an iconic element of the game, and it got tossed to the curb, in a rather puerile manner as well.

Maybe it was a mature, reasonable business decision, based on info, nothing wrong with that.

And no, the same dozen edition warriors on the WotC and Enworld sites of 2008+ (and some here now...) did not impact the sales of 4th Ed (that is grandiose to the point of hysterical absurdity).

 

[Garthanos]

Essentials marked a violent change of direction for 4e, really, Essentials presaged some of what 5e aimed for: natural language, aesthetics like the Red Box, 'Player's Option' & 'Survival Guide' titles meant appeal to returning fans, a flood of errata 'to bring into line with the classic game' (followed by a near-moratorium on errata to actually fix balance issues), daily-less 'L' fighters & 'Thieves,' spell-accumulating 'Q' wizards, and casting rangers, in a doomed attempt to appease edition-war critics, etc... all too late (at only 2 years in), and too little (because of trying to maintain compatibility to 4e).
That included a planned Class Compendium that re-jiggered the PH classes to fit the Essentials aesthetic, which may be what you're thinking of, but it was scrapped as too-blatantly selling the same material twice (something Essentials was already doing pretty aggressively), and the modded classes-as-sub-classes released on-line (I think DDI, but could've been free).

Prior to the Essentials bootlegger reverse, 4e seemed to be to putting out additional PH, MM, DMG, & setting products each about annually, so, from that & the direction implied by the books we'd already gotten, we might have expected:

• A DMG III could thus have been expected, and it would have been consistent with the DMGII's focus on Paragon levels if it had focused on Epic.
• An even-later PH IV might presumably have added a full slate of 4 Elemental or Shadow source classes (presumably Shadow, since HoS preceded HotEC), like PHIII added 4 psionic classes and PHII 4 primal classes (the 'no gridfilling' assertion notwithstanding, they filled every grid but Martial). Also, judging on the Psionics trend, you might well have seen new advancement structures beyond AEDU, though still balanced with AEDU through resource parity, like Psionics (which substituted short-rest-recharge Power Points for Encounter Powers).
• There'd likely have been a Shadow Power & an Elemental Power before Arcane/divine/psionic/primal got Power II's - and all that and perhaps more before seeing a Martial Power III.
• 4e MMs did not follow themes, particularly, so a MMIV wouldn't likely have been anything like Threats to Nentir Vale nor the MV.
• They also seemed to be working their way through the world axis, there were books for the Astral Sea & Elemental Chaos, already, we could probably have expected, similar 'secrets of' books for the Shadowfell and Feywild, expanding on material in the Manual of the Planes, and probably including what non-player-facing material was in HoS and HotFw.
• 4e was also working its way through settings, we'd already seen FR, DarkSun, & Eberron - I can't recall any indication what classic setting might've been next, but probably not the development of "Nentir Vale" we saw with Essentials, the original direction was for the 'default' PoL generic setting to remain generic. Edit: Apparently Ravenloft was next on the docket, for 2011, had things not changed direction. After that? Who knows? Maybe Greyhawk? Spelljammer (the Astral Sea evoked a fair bit of that vibe already)?
• Finally, The VTT was sorta working by the end, so presumably, development might've continued on that and, maybe, even finally completing the promised DDI tools, putting the CB on an app, etc.

OK ignoring the spiral we have put ourselves into. We have potential refinements on 4es multiclassing which already works, and late paragon and epic support of essentials classes to stick in that players handbook IV what else has been mentioned?

 

[pemerton]

Essentials pretty much canned it as far as I am concerned. It abandoned the spirit of the game. The attitude was gone. They stopped producing new lore material. Nothing experimental like we see in DMG 2 and Dark Sun. If Essentials was the cure I would have preferred to see it die.

Perhaps a little late to this party, but I thought I'd share some thoughts about Essentials.

I think the Essentials presentation was terrible. Both in the player (Heroes of . . .) books and in the MV there was overwrought, overlong flavour text that added nothing to feats, sometimes seemed to contradict the in-block italicsed flavour text of powers, and in the case of monsters replaced the tight but engaging it's here to be used flavour of the MM with someone else's adjective-laden story that I had no interest in using. And don't get me started on the overlap between HotFK, HotFL, RC and DM's Kit.

The move to asymmetric resources is another thing I disliked. It undermined one of the biggest virtues of 4e - the lack of any inbuilt notion of an "adventuing day" as an inherent part of making intra-party balance work.

But some of the actual game elements were interesting - eg the possession power in HotFeywild (something-or-other of the Dark Dream, I think); some of the paths and destinies; and most of all the MV monsters, which are mostly tighter and more effective in design than their MM and MM2 analogues.

And the Essentials treatment of skill challenges also brought something new and useful to the table.

 

[pemerton]

I'm a big Fate fan...and its a game that let's you (by default) play literally anything you can make up (subject to group approval, etc.).

<snip>

You don't have to pour over lists of classes or feats or anything (which are, by nature, guaranteed to miss something).

I've more than once posted in the past that 4e is a "free descriptor" game in spirit, but for commercial reasons is one in which the publisher sells you bundles of descriptions as a precondition for using them in your game.

(Of course that's a bit of an exaggeration, especially when it comes to combat in 4e.)

Not getting into the Warlord thing too deeply, but I think when 5e backed off of 4e's detailed tactical framework that it lost the ability to support a lot of what people are used to in the 4e warlord.

I tend to agree with this.

 

[Parmandur]

I gotta admit that while I've pretty much given up on the idea that I'll get an official warlord in 5e, it does leave a rather sour taste. This is the one clearly 4e concept. Something you can really point to as an iconic element of the game, and it got tossed to the curb, in a rather puerile manner as well. For all the talk of the "big tent" of 5e, that's probably one of my biggest grinding gears.

And it makes it all the more irritating because it was only done to pacify edition warriors. There's no real mechanical reason to not have a warlord in the game. But, like "damage on a miss" or "HP as Meat", there's just no way that folks will let this particular bone go.

I'm sure a Warlord will show up at some point, we are still one early days for the edition yet.

Mearls put out an Alpha version of a Warlord Subclass for Fighter on his show, for instance, and it might grow into something down the line:

https://thinkdm.org/hfh/warlord-fighter/

 

[Parmandur]

Ughhh makes me sad to be honest they warned about hybrids too if I recall.

I appreciate the honesty about the problems with the idea. Even a ludicrous multiclassed character will contribute in 5E, but it is one of the real potential traps, and while I regret that it is in the PHB at all (cut Multiclassing, cut Feats, and it would be an improvement: more room for useful material), it is good that it is well signed.

 

[Mycroft]

I'm sure a Warlord will show up at some point, we are still one early days for the edition yet.

Do you really think WotC is going to release a Warlord for 5th Ed?

I mean, five years on, and the Artificer is still up in the air...

 

[Parmandur]

Do you really think WotC is going to release a Warlord for 5th Ed?

I mean, five years on, and the Artificer is still up in the air...

As a Subclass, yes.

As a Class, no, I'm not sure there is room for more than 14 base Classes in the game (Artificer & Psion/Mystic in addition to the original 12). The Artificer isn't really up in the air, it's coming this year: Crawford said in a D&D Beyond video that the survey results for the latest round were very good, and well over the threshold for publication.

 

[Ratskinner]

I've more than once posted in the past that 4e is a "free descriptor" game in spirit, but for commercial reasons is one in which the publisher sells you bundles of descriptions as a precondition for using them in your game.

(Of course that's a bit of an exaggeration, especially when it comes to combat in 4e.)

I don't think you're entirely wrong, either. The game Strike! is a pared-down 4e, with a lot of similar mechanics. However, the setting/character you choose has to fit within the combat zeitgeist or it stops making a lot of sense (at least, if you use the tactical stuff.) When 4e's PHB2 came out I looked at the various abilities for the classes with the same role...It made me wonder why they didn't just publish a list of abilities for each role and then let the players flavor as needed/desired. (Of course, the obvious answer is "To sell you more books.") I never got PHB3, but I understand it underlined the point even more, if you were looking at that way.