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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Where was 4e headed before it was canned?
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7786832" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>There is a big gulf of experience on this point though. My experience is similar to that of a number of other people. We find the lack of any structure to actions in play to work off of much more limiting. So, in 4e, I could leverage skill mechanics (which have some defined uses), 'page 42', powers, terrain powers, and the SC structure, along with keywords and a general 'up the ante' kind of play to guide what and how things could work when you did something that wasn't clearly 'vanilla'. Because it was possible for a player to come to a fairly objective estimate of what this process would look like, it became very easy for players to simply jump in and say "Oh, I do X; I'll make a Y check to see if it works." or at least know that the GM would be calling for a check of that sort (albeit sometimes difficulty level determinations and what are entailed in success/failure are not immediately obvious, but usually they are).</p><p></p><p>If I am involved in the same sort of thing in 5e, lots is simply up in the air and impossible to predict. 4e has a rep as very easy to GM, and this is also a factor, you can just go with the obvious solution, it is almost always the 'right' one. Even a lot of details are hard to nail down with 5e, like "is this an attack, or is the target going to make a save?" is indeterminate unless you're using some pre-existing ability or it is a fairly orthodox use of a spell. When things go beyond that it can get pretty nebulous and there are a lot of players who are not good at dealing with that.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7786832, member: 82106"] There is a big gulf of experience on this point though. My experience is similar to that of a number of other people. We find the lack of any structure to actions in play to work off of much more limiting. So, in 4e, I could leverage skill mechanics (which have some defined uses), 'page 42', powers, terrain powers, and the SC structure, along with keywords and a general 'up the ante' kind of play to guide what and how things could work when you did something that wasn't clearly 'vanilla'. Because it was possible for a player to come to a fairly objective estimate of what this process would look like, it became very easy for players to simply jump in and say "Oh, I do X; I'll make a Y check to see if it works." or at least know that the GM would be calling for a check of that sort (albeit sometimes difficulty level determinations and what are entailed in success/failure are not immediately obvious, but usually they are). If I am involved in the same sort of thing in 5e, lots is simply up in the air and impossible to predict. 4e has a rep as very easy to GM, and this is also a factor, you can just go with the obvious solution, it is almost always the 'right' one. Even a lot of details are hard to nail down with 5e, like "is this an attack, or is the target going to make a save?" is indeterminate unless you're using some pre-existing ability or it is a fairly orthodox use of a spell. When things go beyond that it can get pretty nebulous and there are a lot of players who are not good at dealing with that. [/QUOTE]
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Where was 4e headed before it was canned?
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