Crimson Longinus
Legend
I think we looked at the tier lists in one of these threads and on most the fighter is actually ranked as top tier class, sometimes even ahead of the wizard... so how's that gonna work?
D&D 5E You Cant Fix The Class Imbalances IMHO
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
delericho
Legend
It depends on how you count it.
If you look at PHB sales only, each edition sold less than the one before (excluding 5e, of course).
If you look at the sales of every single product in the edition, though (and especially if you include DDI subs for 4e, which you should), each edition sold more than the previous. Which isn't surprising - each edition has had more stuff available than the one before (again, excluding 5e).
(The flip side of that, of course, is that more products means higher production costs. So while 2nd Ed sold more product than 1st, all that product hurt TSR more than it helped.)
So both statements are true, depending on your point of view.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I tried.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
What happened?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I found a great game. It ended after about eight months because the DM had an extremely serious IRL issue (not himself, a family thing) which required his full attention for a likely-extensive future. After that, I wasn't able to find another 4e game that lasted more than one canned adventure. For three years. The second great GM I found for 4e gave me a very earnest heart-to-heart and said he felt called to political volunteer work due to the situation at the time, and that while he appreciated me as a player, this calling couldn't be ignored--and how could I respond but to wish him luck? I've never found another 4e DM since.
I then tried expanding my search to other stuff. Got a great 13th Age PbP game! ...and then the DM no-showed from the forum for six months, ensuring the game died quite thoroughly. So I tried expanding it more--looking for widely different games, doing stuff with friends, etc. No dice. The only game I found with even a modicum of longevity--an SR5 PbP game--fizzled out after just two months.
Finally, disheartened and out of options, I tried looking for open-minded 5e games. No PbP game lasted longer than a month, and every proper weekly game I applied to join did not end up inviting me. For a full year of active looking, across multiple forums, Roll20, Discord, and Reddit.
I haven't had the opportunity for even a 4e-like game in six years--though I admit that for the last three or so, I basically just gave up entirely. Active hunting, working to assemble a group myself, tapping friends, all of it failed.
I tried.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I see, that seems unfortunate and annoying. Of course it is harder to find groups for less played games, but those don't seem like 4e specific issues, just RL stuff getting in the way that can happen to any group. Personally I have never had issues to get people playing different games, though sometimes it means you have to pitch the game and GM it yourself. I find most issues relate to scheduling and stuff like that, not to what game is actually being played.
Zardnaar
Legend
I just DM eventually a player steps up and I get to play occasionally
Paul Farquhar
Legend
My opinion is that D&D classes do not need to be balanced. The imbalance is part of the game's charm. The concept of "class balance" did not exist when D&D was invented, and classes where largely modelled on fantasy fiction. Trying to balance them was the reason why 4e was not broadly popular. "fair" and "fun" are competing objectives.
Look at the success of BG3, which implemented 5e rules in a way that was even more wildly unbalanced than the PnP game. Bonus action shoving people into pits and casting three fireballs per round in FUN. And that's what people play for.
Look at the success of BG3, which implemented 5e rules in a way that was even more wildly unbalanced than the PnP game. Bonus action shoving people into pits and casting three fireballs per round in FUN. And that's what people play for.
Aldarc
Legend
There are a number of issues that impair me from doing so, which tends to make such efforts pretty pointless.
(1) I can't find people in my area who want to play it. I prefer playing face-to-face. Here in Vienna, my D&D choices were limited to people running/playing either 5e (generally players age <25) or OSR and B/X (mostly players age 50+). I will be moving to Hamburg in less than a month, so things may change, but I'm not terribly optimistic about my prospects.
(2) I don't have hard copies of my books anymore,* which makes it difficult to share with a group. I do have some pdfs. However, I think that 4e D&D first needs an OSE-style revision and clean-up to hammer out the bugs. It's a bit too much work for me otherwise because I am out of practice with doing that sort of live maintenance work. My time with 4e was almost entirely as a player.
* Moving overseas involves a lot of cutting back.
(3) Also, believe it or not, but I don't necessarily want to play 4e D&D. There is a lot of great innovative game design in 4e, but I also think that the hobby has come a long way since then in terms of design.
I still wish that 5e D&D didn't throw out so many babies with the bathwater when it came to those design innovations made by 4e, because I see so many 5e DMs and groups online reinventing the wheel. I would still like to see D&D return to some of those innovative 4e elements in the future, but I'm also not holding my breath. I think that my ideal D&D probably game sits in a weird nebulous cloud between 4e, D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2, and Shadow of the Weird Wizard (all set in the Nentir Vale World Axis mythos, of course
) but that took a few design and advice cues from some indie games.(4) Finally, it must be acknowledged that there are some other games out there that scratch a similar but not identical itch (e.g., Lancer/Icon, Beacon, Fabula Ultima, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, Stonetop, etc.). But finding groups for these games also come with their own problems.
