D&D 4e

>Fighters / Rogues figuratively have spellbooks

I never really saw it that way. It honestly feels more narrative a mechanic to me than anything.

Like, when you're watching a TV show, the effectiveness of an attack is almost always inversely proportional to how often it's used. Because even if it might make 'sense' just spamming your strongest thing over and over has no real sense of drama or tension. So you have people stick to basic stuff, breaking out a trick every now and then and only using these big, showy manoeuvres at key moments. That's the feeling I get playing 4e.

>Fighters / Rogues figuratively have spellbooks
I'm with on this. I never saw this as a problem.

Why did you make this thread? This has been discussed to death, you could have found dozens of threads on Veeky Forums alone if you had used the archive.

Because I've rarely seen it presented in a dry, neutral manner, and so far some of the comments are interesting, regardless of 'side'.

not the user who said it but my experience was that instead of roleplaying and adventuring in our heads for the gaming session, we stared at a map and moved pieces along squares while playing moves from cards

that is a boardgame not an rpg in my eyes, and that was how 4e felt to me

My biggest problem with it was that a lot of methods of attack were already maneuvers. Dragging an enemy along and bashing their head into a wall sounds like a good move for a fighter, but then you realise its a level 6ish encounter power and it gets kinda hard to justify this version of it being somehow weaker than the special 'drag and smash' attack.

Yeah, for a real RPG you want to read your abilities from your sheet or flipping through a book.

This was, of course, impossible with 4e.

As far as I'm concerned, if the math was based on bounded accuracy and magic items were not an assumed part of progression/kept in the DM's materials and not PHB, it'd be optimal.
Unfortunately that'd require ripping a lot of the math out, so I stick with 5e.

Why is this a trait of a 'real' RPG? I honestly don't see the difference.

(Also, this is untrue, all 4e powers are in the books and on your sheet, so I'm not sure what you're talking about?)

I guess it's just a personal thing, I never really found the mechanics an obstacle to roleplay. I could play my character and include interesting dialogue and descriptions, as well as basing my choices IC, while still interacting with the more robust set of mechanics the game presented.

>Why is this a trait of a 'real' RPG? I honestly don't see the difference.

It was meant to be sarcastic.

All 4e really changed was the layout and the language. The mechanics were generally the same.

Wrong: They let Mearls get his hands on it halfway through

Right:
Threw out unnecessary sacred cows
Good inter-party balance
Clearly delineated sources/roles that gave thematic and mechanical similarities without playing identically
Paragon Paths/Epic Destinies, they were cool and helped with the transparent power scale and intent of the game.
Warlords
Very gamist/narrative mechanics aren't the gospel truth but they work for what4e was aiming for

Overall, having a CLEAR FUCKING GOAL (action-RPG with an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration) and executing it mostly well. To my knowledge no other edition of dnd has had a clear goal, let alone one followed through.

Wrong:
Obligatory 'Monster math was always off' until right at the end
Published adventures were universally fucking trash. Encounters are well designed but they're all so fucking linear.
I didn't like Themes or Skill Challenges but that be personal taste
E-classes were half-assed. They pussied out and made MBA/RBA-centric classes for the 3tards, then pussied out again and delivered a half-finished attempt on that.

4th was teh best edition and it makes me sad that there will likely never be a 4.5 or 4Pathfinder equivalent (hopefully less shit than Pathfinder is)

>E-classes were half-assed. They pussied out and made MBA/RBA-centric classes for the 3tards, then pussied out again and delivered a half-finished attempt on that.

see Mearls was doing his best to nerf martials into the ground and kill 4th from the beginning, and as soon as Heinsoo was fired, he got his way, mostly.

Do better:
Push nonlinear adventure modules, with multiple ways to achieve the goal/find the treasure/rescue the princess etc
Make the roleplaying angle more prevalent. Give people a use for skills in the middle of a dungeon, encourage people to use that darkness power to counter the magical torches blinding them in the middle of a fight, etc. Anything that delineates that 'the rules don't say fire arrow sets the rope alight, just attack the goblin Steve' thing.
Maybe not have a murder-suicide in the middle of online platform development.

Can someone elaborate on the "murder suicide" and why it happened? I remember getting into 4e in highschool and being excited for the online portion that never materialized.

A tragedy involving the web developer and his wife, IIRC.

What's the "monster math" bit?

Who murder suicide'd who? And why did they murder suicide themself and their spouse?

I believe so, yes.

Seeing how there is less open hostility toward 4e these days and both 3.5 and Pathfinder have OGLs to rip from, I think it's only a matter of time before we see a true 4e successor.

The husband who was the dev killed his wife, then himself.

Spoiler- Part of the reason I made this thread is that I'm starting to work on one with a group of friends. We might get nowhere, but we're giving it a try and having a thread reminding us of the consensus on 4e, from both sides, is a helpful reference.

Are you the Act of Valor team?

It's why 4e would make for a surprisingly good system to use for anime like Dragonball, One Piece, Naruto, etc.

I am not, and hadn't heard of it before. Always interesting to hear about alternate takes on the same concept though.

The original Monster Manual and several of the early books and adventures had monsters with incredibly bloated HP totals. Most D&D combats are expected to last 2-4 rounds. Early 4e fights would often last 5-10.

It wasn't fun difficulty, it was just monsters being damage sponges.

What it did wrong: It called itself D&D.

It means he thinks the fact everything is measured in squares primarily instead of distances- even though D&D has always had rules for tabletop play with miniatures like that- makes it more like you're screwing around on a board instead of having an epic yet measured imaginary brawl.

Honestly it doesn't play like a board game, it plays like an MMO, which also isn't bad but also isn't D&D...unless it's the D&D MMO.

>Wrong: Fighters/Rogues figuratively having spells
Fucking please, get out of here with this shit like Martials didn't deserve that beef up.
Most of their ridiculous spell-esque abilities came later in the game. People like you are the reason Ranger Marks in 5e are spells instead of just an ability, fuck off.

Right: Balance
Wrong: Bloated Enemy HP in the earliest phase, Dumb Concepts for Classes, No PDFs just when the game was getting better allowing Pathfinder to easily swoop in and steal the now alienated audience that doesn't have oodles of money to drop on hardbacks thus making 3.5s reign last even longer
Changes: Improved Grapple mechanics

Monsters in the Monster Manual 1 and 2 generally had too much HP and didn't hit hard enough, particularly in paragon and epic tiers. Solo monsters suffered from this particularly hard, presently very little difficulty beyond their massive health pools. Some of the early Soldier and Controller monsters were also excessively good at their jobs, dragging battles far beyond a fun length.

Mind you, it was all generally better balanced than any monster math up until that point since 3.x's CR system couldn't even pretend to be balanced, but this was definitely a point 4e could have (and eventually did) improve on.

For people just starting 4e it's generally recommended to pick up the Monster Vault because it redoes many of the MM1 and 2 monsters with the updated MM3 math that makes battles much quicker, exciting, and deadly.

>Honestly it doesn't play like a board game, it plays like an MMO, which also isn't bad but also isn't D&D...unless it's the D&D MMO.

This makes even less fucking sense than calling it a board game. What about its mechanics are at all MMOlike? Specific mechanics, not just vague stuff about having defined roles (which D&D always had, 4e just actually told players instead of perpetuating ivory tower behind the curtain bullshit)

>muh MMO

Anyone who says this can safely be ignored.

>No PDFs just when the game was getting better allowing Pathfinder to easily swoop in and steal the now alienated audience that doesn't have oodles of money to drop on hardbacks thus making 3.5s reign last even longer
honestly I think this more than anything is what doomed 4E, although it's online component getting crippled due to the murder/suicide didn't help

Was anyone else a fan of the 'concept' of minions? As a way to try and replicate a hero fighting off hordes of monsters? I thought the way they scaled to hit and damage, making them at least a nuisance was better then gaggles of Low CR's in 3.X clones

Oh yeah, Minions are an awesome idea.

Right :
Passive Skill Totals
Saves as Armor
Multiple Attributes to Attack / Defenses
Balance

Wrong:
Balanced to the point the classes seemed cloned
Damage needed to scale faster, unless you prefer much longer combat

Fix :
If I knew, I'd be much happier in my career

But you CAN. Rule 0 and page 34. Out of combat nothing changed. In combat I would allow this to hurt an enemy by dealing the same amount of damage your fire power would, but cold because of the freezing, newly melted water.

The point was that most idiots hating on 4e assume you can't for no good reason.

Yep, minions were great. I was already playing MnM though which uses minions for the armies of goons so it wasn't a huge culture shock.

People just made the mistake of coming from 3.pf simulationist hell and couldn't grasp that a goblin was only LV1-3 because of narrative, and could be represented as a lv3 brute or a lv10 minion depending on hero level. It had to be 'but no, he is a lv3 with 35HP ALWAYS BECAUSE HE IS A GOBLIN STABBY GUY'

Fucking 3.pf and its tables to see if you shit yourself and if so how long etc

>Right
Balance, healing surges, skill challenges, being a 'gateway drug' for board gamers to RPGs

>Wrong
Balance by standardizing and removing options to the point of all classes feeling mechanically indistinct, making healing too powerful, offering too many different abilities to everything making combat last forever, not offering any handles for noncombat.

Also, it does nothing to counter the standard issues I have with D&D in general: vague skill system, mechanically encouraging combat, awkward 'adventurer' power level, hp/defenses bloat.

>Different
Market it as a board game/wargame OR make (noncombat) skill powers or class-based utility powers a more integral part of the game, cut down half the combat powers, remove the 'plus half level' modifier from everything, lower HP values and healing, give a more solid table of what skill roll equals what result, introduce the 5e inspiration mechanic or similar to encourage roleplay.

I dunno, the cards made referencing your abilities easier rather than, as said.

I'm not sure why everyone had so much trouble playing it like an RPG. My group treated it like every other game, abstracted narrative for roleplay and exploration portions, and only using a map/minis for combat.

Well, okay, we used a map for exploration sometimes, but mainly we just talked everything out. If we wanted to do a thing out of combat, and we'd tell the DM. He'd either say "Yes"or "No" or "Roll [x] for it." The only thing different, in my eyes, is that it codified your abilities into something easy to reference on the fly so you aren't flipping around a book during combat or something.

I've never really gotten the 'classes are too similar' thing.

I've played quite a few and they all feel different and distinct in how they fulfil their role and how they influence combat. Even within the same class your choices can lead to vastly different playstyles.

>What did it do right?
Passive defences. Good 'power' layout. Good use of colour to differentiate at-will, encounter, daily, and magic item abilities. Better class balance than most editions - no 'start weak but become gods' justification for casters, everyone progresses at the same rate. Paragon paths were nifty. Power Points were awesome.

>What did it do wrong?
Feats didn't need to exist. Being trained in a skill needed to give bigger bonuses at higher Tiers of play. Magic item dependency built into the monster stats. Defenders were too sticky and strikers dealt too much damage.

>What would you have done differently?
Simplify the presentation of powers a bit. Remove feats entirely. Make magic items optional and badass, special rewards instead of stuff you're assuming you'll collect. Make the power sources a little more iconic;
>Warriors treat all maneuvers as Reliable
>Rogues get bonuses when they make successful attacks and haven't taken damage recently
>Priests get more/better Channel Divinity
>Wizards get more powers known but the same number of uses per encounter
>Psychics work as-is with Power Points

Right: World building. 4e actually had some great fluff. I know people didn't like how they de-cannon-ed the previous Forgotten Realms fluff and the Dark Sun fluff was a shadow of it's former self, but the "base" fluff presented in Monster Manuals and Player's handbooks was great.

Wrong: Presentation and attempting to market MMO style peripherals. I'm not talking about the mechanics. A combat system is just a flavoring. I'm talking about boon cards and playing on Wed. night while watching their twitter feed to see what boons were active. They also attempted to market 80% of products to players (by having character options in them), which led the character creation bloat, a lack of good adventures, and made it one of the more expensive editions per player.

they should have named it CHAINMAIL 2
from the read of most post here.

i use 4th ed for 'final fantasy' game system / rpg.

monsters have too much hp, but, recharge was brilliant, if anything i would make the classes power go by a dice recharge.

It's been awhile, and I was not a big fan of 4th Ed, so my opinion is likely that of the unwashed masses.

You had a Striker, Tank, Controller, and a Healer?

Many of the Classes that shared a role felt redundant with a lot of the dailies, encounter powers overlapping from Class to Class.

In some ways it is a plus, because mechanically you can describe how you want to dagger strike, cast a spell, or hit someone with an axe the way it seems fun or cool to you, without paying for it on a tactical level

In some ways this is a drawback because once everyone is a superhero, no one is

>Tank
Defender

I don't get the super hero thing. Only the PCs should be super heroes and the BBEG and his Lieutenants super villains. Everyone else only serves to move the story along.

>Tank

Doing Defenders wrong, you pleb.

Sorry, dumb joke from the Incredibles

>Healer

Also never had a warlord or offensively-minded cleric either, I guess.

Leader too. There's a lot more depth to each role than you seem to think, and despite surface similarities those powers you think are really similar just aren't.

Even if they might have the same attack roll and damage, you need to look beyond that. The power tags, the secondary effects associated with it, the traits of their class or weapon that contribute. It's presented simply but there's a lot of emergent complexity that leads to really interesting decision making in play.

God, 4e Warlords are the best fucking class.

Sorry if I can't remember the terms, from that game, I stopped playing 7-8 years ago.

I dropped the edition after the release of the core before any of the various splat books would have been released.

Does anyone have a good link to where you can find all the 4e books? I've found a lot of 4e troves, but it's always missing the latter half of splat books and random stuff like the 4e Book of Vile Darkness.

I'm not even positive the 4e general (when it even appears) has a complete trove.

Keep my favourite mechanic (feats) a part of core gameplay.

Powers. Not inherently bad, but they fucked it up. Specifically, by giving every class basically the same powers and making them have cooldowns and shit to make them all feel like spells.

I would have made powers work differently for every archetype. Works alright for casters. Rogue and fighter powers shouldn't have cooldowns, but I don't know how I'd balance them.

They don't have cooldowns, though? It's more like described it.

But why?

They don't tend to publish that kind of shit on the news, even if they knew.

>making healing too powerful

Huh? Run that one by me as I don't really see it. Leader healing doesn't really keep up with the wear and tear of battle too well unless it's a pacifist cleric who are 100% about healing.

>Keep my favourite mechanic (feats) a part of core gameplay.

What? Feats were integral to 4E.

>Many of the Classes that shared a role felt redundant with a lot of the dailies, encounter powers overlapping from Class to Class.
I keep seeing this over and over again in reference to 4e but I'm truly at a loss for what would satisfy people with this issue. 4e classes, even within the same role, are objectively far more dissimilar mechanically from full casters in any other edition of the game and far and away more dissimilar from the endless list of classes whose "differences" amount to variations on "I roll to hit. Maybe damage. Okay done."

Especially considering that 4e classes by definition DON'T share any of their powers with any other class.

10 to 1 he makes some retarded comment about Second Wind or that the standard 25% heal was too good and rolling Hit Dice is a better version of it,

inherent bonuses work fine

Err, for the most part, dwarven armor and other non-scaling items become ludicrously effective for their cost at higher levels, and it buffs rangers and nerfs monks and sorcerers, which is the opposite of what you want to do

Those people either never played 4E and just jumped on the hatewagon, or are idiots.

Quote myself as a lv10 fighter, two sessions ago, at full health (again):
>Guys, I only have two healing abilities left, we should probably hurry this up a bit

Note that this was after me tanking literally all damage dealt by the enemy for at least five turns, in a party of four with a warlord as only healer. That encounter cost the party ten healing surges in total, nine of which were mine.

Combat in 4e doesn't feel dangerous at all, because with hp pools that large there's zero chance of you actually dying as long as the party has some healing left, as you'll always get patched up before you hit zero.

How on earth did they run through 10 healing surges with only a warlord as a healer? Healing word is limited to 2x encounter.

There weren't feats? Oh shit, I don't really remember. I went back to 3.5 after playing for about a year, and just started playing 5, so I'm mixing things up probably.

Per day and per encounter are cooldowns.

>Per day and per encounter are cooldowns.

I have literally never seen the term 'cooldown' to describe that sort of thing (even when it was used in 3.PF), but sure, whatever I guess.

Do fighters even get two healing abilities by level 10?

They get several that give pathetic amounts of THP, one daily attack that heals without spending a surge, and i think a couple of utility powers at 10 which heal you, but since you can only take one, that still leaves you with only two real self-heals

>Per day and per encounter are cooldowns.
Then what do you call Vancian Casting? Once you use it it's gone and you have to rest for hours to get the spells back after all. Sure sounds like a cooldown to me.

>played 4
>went BACK to 3x

Opinion discarded

Two healing words from the warlord, another from a warlord multiclass, an inspiring word from a bard multiclass, one from the warlord's lion's roar, one from mine, one from another fighter attack power, one from the ability of my armour, two from using a second wind with a cloak of the walking wounded, and one from a healing potion, IIRC. So eleven, not ten. Also healed as if spending a healing surge once. The ones I had left were another healing potion and that stance that gives regeneration when bloodied.

>oh no there's no risk of death when my entire party spent an entire day's worth of healing resources on me

You're just an idiot.

Well, it fits the definition. You get my point now, right?

Although makes a good point, it didn't feel that way to me. It felt like I was casting the all the same spells across different classes, just with different flavour and name. There were exceptions though, like the shaman and a class variation I found called a brawler fighter. The brawler was exceptionally unique.

I've thought of some other things I liked in 4e, come to think of it. Warlock pacts were cool. I liked the way they did skill checks, with successes and failures.

No, that's also a cooldown. I didn't mean to imply it wasn't, and did say the system worked for casters. I'm saying it feels weird to have cooldowns for non magical abilities.

>an entire day's worth of healing resources
Apart from the fact I had healing left by the end of it.

Also, the fact that you can brush off more healing than the HP total of the entire party combined as only a single day of healing resources kind of proves the point there's too much healing in the game.

So 'Everyone ever spent healing on me'. I mean, that is an uncommonly huge amount of healing.

I just find that oddly divergent from my experience. Even within the same role, 4e has a huge variety in its powers, and figuring out their mechanical nuances and how to most effectively make use of them is one of my favourite parts of the game.

As an example, this is one of my favourite powers. It's not particularly good, but it's so much damn fun-

funin.space/compendium/power/Fearless-Rescue.html

Fearless Rescue
One of your allies falls, and without regard for your own well-being, you rush to make the attacker pay. Your bravery inspires your ally to fight on.
Daily Healing, Martial, Weapon
Immediate Reaction Melee weapon
Trigger: An enemy within 5 squares of you reduces an ally to 0 hit points or fewer
Target: The triggering enemy
Effect: Before the attack, you can move to the nearest square from which you can attack the target.
Attack: Strength + 1 vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier damage.
Effect: The ally can spend a healing surge and regains an additional 1d6 hit points for every opportunity attack you provoke while moving to the target.

No other class in the game would do something like that. It captures the martial heroism of the Warlord and the role they play in a group in a nutshell. I don't get to use it often, but when I do it feels fucking fantastic. Especially if I manage to dash through a hail of blows to do so.

I never found this to be the case

Oh sure, a blaster wizard and a sorcerer felt similar, as did a control wizard and control warlock,. But try comparing rogues, rangers and monks. Rogues pick one target, gang up on it with friends, and hit it a small amount of times with massive damage on each hit, Rangers pick one target that the rest of their party is ignoring and smash it into the ground with a gratuitous number of individual attacks, Monks leap into the middle of all the enemies and smash all of them in the face while flying across the battlefield like a demented pinball to always hit the maximum number of targets with their close-range AoEs. And those three classes are all melee-ranged, dexterity-using strikers

Pretty much nail on the head

>Barbarian Rage
>Monk Healing

DERP

My personal favorite is this one

Swordmage

Aegis of Shielding

You create an arcane link between you and an enemy, allowing you to blunt its attacks against your allies.

At-Will Arcane
Minor Action Close burst 2

Target: One creature in the burst

Effect: You mark the target. The target remains marked until you use this power against another target. If you mark other creatures using other powers, the target is still marked. A creature can be subject to only one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place.

If your marked target makes an attack that doesn’t include you as a target, it takes a –2 penalty to attack rolls. If that attack hits and the marked target is within 10 squares of you, you can use an immediate interrupt to reduce the damage dealt by that attack to any one creature by an amount equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier.

At 11th level, reduce the damage dealt by 10 + your Constitution modifier. At 21st level, reduce the damage dealt by 15 + your Constitution modifier.

>an uncommonly huge amount of healing
Your experience does not match up to mine here, although it's certainly a bit above average, and usually spread over more players.

In my experience, it's either "the powergamer has killed off half the enemies before they could act", costing a surge or two afterwards at most, or healing-grinding slugfests after which the party goes to sleep at the earliest convenience.

That sounds like bad encounter design more than a problem with the system.

Also, you do realise healing surges are meant as a kind of meta-currency for the adventuring day, right?

>Bardic Music
>Druid's Wildshape
>Cleric's Turn/Rebuke Undead
>Paladin's Lay on Hands

Ranger Attack 29 Ultimate Confrontation
You study your foe’s movements, and as combat grows fiercer, your knowledge allows you to deliver deadlier blows with each hit.
Daily, Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Ranged weapon
Target: One creature designated as your quarry
Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 4[W] + Dexterity modifier damage.
Miss: Half damage.
Effect: Until the target is no longer your quarry, whenever you hit the target with a melee attack, you deal 1[W] extra damage. The extra damage increases by 1[W] each time you hit the target with a melee attack, up to a maximum of 5[W] extra damage. If you miss the target with a melee attack, the extra damage decreases to 1[W].

4e has lots of fun ways of increasing damage output, but this one is just my favourite to use, even if it does come one level before cap

Mearls plz go

I still don't understand how the fuck people can think a game isn't "allowing" them to roleplay, that's not something you need rules for.

You're not going convince me by giving me a paltry two examples of cooldowns for martials that make sense. Explaine to me why a fighter could only smack an enemy upside the head once per encounter.

dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Bell_ringer

Game balance