D&D General Why is D&D 4E a "tactical" game?

[Oofta]

Most non-combat stuff was put into the Rituals system. There were still non-combat (or at least not-combat-centric) utility powers, but if you want things that are pure non-combat, you want Rituals. Anyone could become a ritual caster with a single feat, and every character gets 18 feats, so picking up Ritual Caster is not an onerous burden even for a Fighter or Paladin--or you can just buy consumable ritual scrolls.

This is one of the problems when discussing 4e. People unfamiliar with it often make pretty sweeping accusations (like claiming that roles are straightjackets or that the game is purely about combat) that really aren't true, but require that you know that 4e actually put new things into D&D, like rituals, taking Themes or PPs with a focus different from your default class, or things like Quests and Skill Challenges for non-combat sources of experience, rewards, and obstacles to surmount.

Different people have likes and dislikes. No game is going to appeal to everyone, you liked 4E but a lot of people did not.

Can we ever have a 4E discussion without edition wars with accusations of people making "sweeping accusations" that are just opinion?

 

[Plaguescarred]

Various specific mechanics, such as the Defender "mark" mechanic, actually force real choices and trade-offs, for both PCs and opponents. If a PC marks an opponent, that creature takes -2 to make any attack that doesn't include the PC who marked them. Defenders get an additional mechanic, a punishment for creatures that "disobey" the mark (choosing to attack others without attacking the Defender). This forces real choices (attack "easy" low-armor targets and risk failure and damage, or attack high-AC targets first?), not mere calculations.

Oh yeah the Fighter's Mark was also pretty tactical. 5E Sentinel feat is a nice successor of that mechanic!

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Oh yeah the Fighter's Mark was also pretty tactical. 5E Sentinel feat is a nice successor of that mechanic!

To better illustrate the difference between 4E and 5E, a 1st-level 4E Fighter is roughly equivalent to a 4th-level 5E Battle Master Fighter with the Sentinel feat and the marking optional rule from the 5e DMG.

I wish there had been a 4E video game, but honestly it might have been too complicated for a computer to run. I've never played a turn-based tactical video game RPG anywhere near as complex as it.

 

[Lyxen]

Most non-combat stuff was put into the Rituals system. There were still non-combat (or at least not-combat-centric) utility powers, but if you want things that are pure non-combat, you want Rituals.

And that is my main problem with the system to be honest. To protect the balance of the tactical boardgaming, thy had to clearly separate the thing that you can do in combat from all the rest, which frankly does not receive much attention anyway. And in the end, you have what I would call a disjointed game where the phases are apparent and condition what you can do, which is not at all the way we play the game, where it's all about experiencing the world and where there are no phases since everything is interlocked as in real life.

So it's a great tactical (board)game, just at the expense of what is to me the core of the game, having adventures where you don't pause to transition to a complete different mini-game (combat, skill challenge, ritual, whatever) when the adventure takes you there. To each his own...

 

[Charlaquin]

To better illustrate the difference between 4E and 5E, a 1st-level 4E Fighter is roughly equivalent to a 4th-level 5E Battle Master Fighter with the Sentinel feat and the marking optional rule from the 5e DMG.

I wish there had been a 4E video game, but honestly it might have been too complicated for a computer to run. I've never played a turn-based tactical video game RPG anywhere near as complex as it.

I don’t think it would be too complicated for a computer.

 

[Lyxen]

Oh yeah the Fighter's Mark was also pretty tactical. 5E Sentinel feat is a nice successor of that mechanic!

And the "mark" corresponds to nothing in real or simulated life, it's just a way for the tactical boardgame to replicate the aggro mechanism of MMORPG, otherwise (barring roleplay) the role of tank does not really exist (which is more or less the case in 5e except using enchantment magic such as compel duel.

And the basic fighter's mark has nothing to do with sentinel.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And the "mark" corresponds to nothing in real or simulated life, it's just a way for the tactical boardgame to replicate the aggro mechanism of MMORPG, otherwise (barring roleplay) the role of tank does not really exist (which is more or less the case in 5e except using enchantment magic such as compel duel.

And the basic fighter's mark has nothing to do with sentinel.

It...actually does correspond to something in real life. Because the whole roles thing was heavily inspired by football (soccer for us folks north of Mexico).

It's literally the reason why two of the roles are called "Defender" and "Striker." Defenders mark opponent strikers in order to deny them the ability to control the ball. That's literally the term used, and very good IRL defenders can throw opponent strikers entirely off their game, while very good strikers know how to evade or break an opponent defender's mark so they can easily score.

And this is, again, a demonstration of what I meant by saying people make sweeping generalizations without knowing the game or its context. 4e constantly got people saying either mistaken or outright false things about it during its life, and I am not going to stop pushing against those things now. Marking repeatedly gets compared to "threat" or "aggro" from MMOs, just as you said, but it is literally exactly the opposite of that. A "threat table" FORCES creatures to always attack whoever is at the top of the table, they have no choices, no thought, just brute calculation. Marking is literally the opposite of that: it creates both a cost (creature will take damage if it ignores the person who marked it) and a risk (-2 to hit if an attack doesn't include the person who marked it), meaning that the person playing the marked creature must choose whether to eat the cost and take the risk, or play it "safe" but attack the hard-to-hit defender. By forcing choices rather than inflicting raw-numbers mind control, the mark actually quite accurately reflects the ways that real defensive fighters--those protecting more-fragile but more-potent allies--manipulate the battlefield and their opponents in order to secure victory, whether on the soccer field or the battlefield.

More importantly, the cost was always diegetically associated with the nature of the class that provided it. For example, the Fighter's marking mechanic, Combat Superiority, is specifically tied to making attacks, and its punishment mechanic is getting to make an extra attack against that target. It does absolutely nothing (other than the -2 to hit, representing the marked target's wariness due to having just been hit) unless the Fighter remains within range to attack the target. This means Fighters want to get up close and personal with their enemies, or use reach weapons so they can lock down more foes. As a contrasting example, the Paladin had two marking mechanics, Divine Challenge and Divine Sanction; Divine Challenge required that you stay "engaged" with the target in order to maintain it (doing damage, physically approaching, etc.) while Divine Sanction was always some kind of set duration, often one round but sometimes not.

You didn't have Fighters magically mind-controlling enemies. They had to physically attack a foe in order to mark it, and the mark would only last until the end of the Fighter's next turn.

I also rather heavily dispute your accusation that Rituals were siloed off into a totally separate part of the game. Ritual components were expected to be rewarded frequently in treasure; several classes (Bard, Cleric, Wizard, Druid, Artificer, Invoker, and Psion) get the Ritual Casting feat for free. The rituals list was continuously expanded throughout 4e's lifetime, and parallel options (Alchemist and Martial Practices) were added for folks who wanted a different means of gaining non-combat utility stuff beyond what was offered via Utility Powers. They also added Skill Utilities later on, many of which are not at all useful for combat applications.

4e made combat a rich experience. It did not do so by impoverishing the non-combat experience. It simply made the two things use distinct resources.

Edit:
You're also straight-up wrong about the 5e Sentinel feat. It functions almost exactly the same as the Fighter's mark punishment: "When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn't have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature." (The 5-feet limit and the "target doesn't have this feet" requirement were added by 5e, but otherwise this LITERALLY IS how 4e Fighters punish opponents that disobey the mark: making an attack against the attacking creature.)

 

[Hexmage-EN]

The game is specifically designed for working as a team. In 3e, that wasn't the case. It was usually best to optimize yourself, with party-level stuff being an afterthought. In 4e, if you don't work as a team, you're going to struggle even against enemies that should be relatively "easy," whereas a well-oiled machine of a team can punch well above its weight.

This is key, IMO. Player mechanics are often designed with their allies in mind. You don't just attack, you attack AND:

• Force an enemy to move (which can allow an ally to move away without triggering OAs, set-up flanking, force the enemy into a hazard, etc)
• Heal an ally.
• Give an ally advantage on attack.
• Allow an ally to move.
• Etc.

There were also other powers such as one the Invoker had to let allies immediately move towards them without provoking OAs and such.

I think 4E went a but overboard with this (afterall, not every player is going to be so tactically-minded), but I wish it was a bit more present in 5E.

My second 5E PC was built specifically to use as many 4E-style forced movement options as possible. He was a Battle Master Fighter/Hexblade Warlock with Pushing Attack, Maneuvering Attack, Repelling Blast, and Grasp of Hadar. It was really fun to slide enemies around or allow a wounded ally to safely retreat without provoking an OA. A later character I played was another Battle Master Fighter with a reach weapon and the Sentinel feat for a similar reason.

 

[Lyxen]

It...actually does correspond to something in real life. Because the whole roles thing was heavily inspired by football (soccer for us folks north of Mexico).
It's literally the reason why two of the roles are called "Defender" and "Striker." Defenders mark opponent strikers in order to deny them the ability to control the ball.

No, sorry, when you mark someone in a sport, you stand next to him and you foil his attempts at something. Please explain how this works out with the Fighter's mark, in which you do not even need to stay adjacent or even be able to attack him at range ?

So no, absolutely no correspondence to anything happening in real life, it's a purely technical and tactical artefact. I'm cutting all the rest because it's wishful thinking about a mechanic that does not work the way you think it does.

You didn't have Fighters magically mind-controlling enemies. They had to physically attack a foe in order to mark it, and the mark would only last until the end of the Fighter's next turn.

Even if the fighter or the target moves away, please explain how this is not totally "magical" (without actually being magic. since, you know, magic is a very strange thing in 4e and martial is not supposed to be magical).

I also rather heavily dispute your accusation that Rituals were siloed off into a totally separate part of the game. Ritual components were expected to be rewarded frequently in treasure; several classes (Bard, Cleric, Wizard, Druid, Artificer, Invoker, and Psion) get the Ritual Casting feat for free. The rituals list was continuously expanded throughout 4e's lifetime, and parallel options (Alchemist and Martial Practices) were added for folks who wanted a different means of gaining non-combat utility stuff beyond what was offered via Utility Powers. They also added Skill Utilities later on, many of which are not at all useful for combat applications.

Amd this is exactly what I'm saying, they have specifically cordoned the part of the tactical boardgame that is combat, pushed the rest away and created a disjointed game.

4e made combat a rich experience.

It was a good boardgame, some of us want more than this from a roleplaying game.

It did not do so by impoverishing the non-combat experience. It simply made the two things use distinct resources.

My point exactly, two distinct games, not what I'm looking for.

 

[Shiroiken]

The way I like to describe it is that in 3e, you win the game in character generation by choosing the strongest character options. In 4e, you win the game by actually playing the game and using your abilities at the right time and preferably synergizing well with your comrades.

And in AD&D you win by killing the enemy before initiative is rolled!