Looking back at D&D 4e

4e is not really d&d but it can be fun
Its always good as a former pathfinder player to try 3e its possible its not the base system you dont like but the way paizo fucked it.
Eariler editions are all good to but 5e is a steaming pile of shit.

D&D in general has trash non-combat rules. Being a bit better than other trash doesn't make it not-trash.

Hey, a 4e thread! Now I don't have to make one just to ask this question:

Does anyone have a link to a 4e mega trove? There aren't any current 4eg threads, so I don't really know where to start digging. I started on 4e myself, and just today I was feeling rather nostalgic. My group does 5e, which is fine and dandy, but I miss that sweet, sweet combat. I might want to try out a session or two with a few interested friends, so I need some resources, ya'll.

I thought I had it but I guess not, sorry. Either that, or I had an old link that's no longer valid. I'll keep looking though, and let you know if i find it. Was there anything in particular you were looking for?

Ctrl + F "Mageguru" in the Archive PDF, he's got a folder.

>Is 4e at all redeemable, and if it is how would you play it?
It is, just play it as a glorified dungeon crawler boardgame.

Very redeemable.
Most issues are already noted and easy to fix.
It's only unmitigated sin was not being 3finder. Those who hate it for that will always hate it.

The encounter and adventure design systems were excellent and the rules very transparent. The DMG, however, was not pleasant to read. Anecdotal bit here, but the DMS who hated it in my area did so because they tried to DM it like it was 3rd edition. They never bothered to learn the new game, so they sucked at running it and everyone who played in their games had a shitty time (either rofl stomping everything, or having the DM arbitrarily tell them they couldn't use their character's abilities because he didn't know how to cope with swordsmen who weren't asthmatic nobodies in a world suffused with magic).

To lazy to come up with your own story from Heroic to Legendary, pic related is an easy one to use and has good examples of terrain based battles.

any general advice on a DM that its new to 4e but wants to run it?

What to do?
What to avoid?
Which rules I need to read careful?
What do you enjoy the most of 4e?

>What to do?
Combat. Follow the encounter design guidelines. Use only monsters from after they unfucked HP bloat if you're not doing low-level play.

>What to avoid?
Everything that's not combat but needs dice. Samey combats.

>Which rules I need to read careful?
Anything that's not a combat rule.

>What do you enjoy the most of 4e?
Combat.

4E's greatest strength and greatest weakness is it's combat. If you're using post-Monster Manual 3 math, basically every mostly well-built, well-run enounter *just works*, especially compared to other editions completely wrecked encounter-building systems. The weakness is that leans heavily on the action setpiece paradigm, and it can get a bit hard and repetitive to design or improvise so many of them.

The non-combat stuff doesn't really get in the way, but the stuff they also don't really enliven the game - at least not in core. I'm a fairweather 4E person, did they have optional systems for stuff like contacts and patrons, or crunchy wilderness survival?

>The non-combat stuff doesn't get in the way, but it also doesn't really enliven the game.

Wow, brainfart.

>dual-wield light blade rangers focusing on one-on-one combat don't work well in 4e

What

That's pretty much the most powerful striker build in the game, best at both DPR and nova

4e is a great skirmish wargame and a terrible RPG. Its not DnD and it should have been sold as an advanced revival of Heroquest.

Switching from 4e to 3x is definitely a step backwards. As horrible as Pathfinder is, as long as you dole out xp really slowly and keep the party below lvl8 its serviceable.

I can understand not liking the system, but I'll never understand the claim that 4e is somehow "not D&D."

It's nearly been 9 years at this point, and people are still bitter they tried something different with the formula.

>There are still people unironically spouting the "it's not D&D, feels like an mmo wargame, no roleplaying allowed" memes.
3.x really does cause brain damage. The longer I keep seeing this shit the more I become convinced that these people aren't just ignorant or even stupid, they're legitimately sick in the head. It's like visiting a psych ward. You need help.

Because they could have just launched a new product rather than taking something some people liked and saying "This is what thats going to be now, and its totally not the same thing".

Hell, if they released it as a separate property they could have that AND 5e running in parallel with no competition.

Now you're just putting words in my mouth, and throwing around a pretty fancy strawman to boot.

>Because they could have just launched a new product rather than taking something some people liked and saying "This is what thats going to be now, and its totally not the same thing".
Yeah, how dare they released 3.0 as "Dungeons and Dragons"

4e is better than pathfinder. At least 4e is honest about what it is- a tactical combat game, with lots of character building options.
Pathfinder's just a fucking mess.

I'd say 3e is closer to ADnD than 4 is to anything. 4e threw out almost everything.

As someone who likes both, they serve different styles. I really like the multitude of options in Pathfinder that don't exist in 4e, and lots of 4e PoL lore has informed my campaign worlds, even if I run it in a heavily homebrewed PF.

Incidentally PoL has a lot of lore to it. More than people think.

thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=15210

4e didn't throw out all that much. What it did was get rid of the natural language style of presentation for a keyword style presentation. And if natural language is what makes D&D D&D, then people are idiots. For me at least D&D is defined by its lore, its monsters, its basic resolution system, and such things.

Not really. A big part of AD&D is class roles and 3E absolutely fucking destroyed them.

Honestly, in terms of "feel", 4e is closer to AD&D than 3e is

But "feel" is a nebulous and subjective thing, and the experiences of myself and the AD&D grognards I play with obviously won't be the same as the experiences of others

The lack of natural language is one of my favorite features of 4e.

Does "not listing spells in alphabetical order" count as being part of the "lack of natural language"?

Because 4e listing powers by level, rather than alphabetical order is why I picked it up in the first place, it's just so much more convenient.

Do you think they'd ever do that? Release a parallel game with different design principles? I'd be excited as to what could come of that, but I don't see it happening.

No but that's convenient too, yes.

Natural language refers to how many games blend fluff with crunch in describing game elements. 4e keeps them separate.

>he doesn't translate well into 4e at all
>dex-based dual-wield duelist ranger
What? That's one of the easiest (and best) things you could make in 4e

WOTC did make that Gamma World 7e game and 4e's mechanics fit like a glove.

in the middle of DMing a 5e campaign. huge mistake. wish I stayed with 3.5. oh well.

Why do you say that? I've heard complaints about the lack of 'options', but it seems easier to GM.

Sorry nigga but you're a fucking moron. The edition war ended a long time ago, you can meme as hard as you want but it doesn't make you right. Saying something is 'not D&D' because you didn't like it is ignorant, and can easily be done for third edition and pathfinder (which is 3.5 under the hood).

e.g.

3.PF is nothing like AD&D, it unified class xp tracks and changes everything about how stats worked. It didn't have race/stat restrictions on classes, it didn't have max levels for non-humans in classes, it changed multiclassing (for the worse imho), it introduced feats, codified magic item creation, abolished kits and completely changed combat etc etc.

Is 3.X still D&D? Yes, because it was still a high/low/techno/cthulhu/whateverforhomebrewis fantasy experience for nerds with rules that helped (and hindered) telling a story and playing make believe as adults. Does 4e do this? Yep so there you go user, 4e was still D&D you just didn't like it because it wasn't your edition of D&D.

I hate the lack of 'options' argument because 80% of the 'options' (including classes) were garbage in 3.5 and pathfinder. I'd personally prefer a game which just removed the shit nobody used since it was a waste of space.

Also because people are comparing a two year old game to a game with (across third almost editions) 16 years of products.

it is easier to manage, but not enough to warrant the cut away features and lack of PC customization, along with some other things. I even flat out refuse to accept 5e's death and dying system and I use 3.5's instead. can't get into dragonborn or teiflings either, pretty silly.

well, there's stuff missing that me and other players used, so obviously something happened that doesn't fit your conditions between 3.5 and 5e.

I miss feats and skill points most of all.

While convenient for optimization, the seams of the game become crystal clear. Every class has the same ratio of auto-attacks, special abilities, and ultimates. Every skill on skim reading said "Deal #[W]+Atr damage, and the enemy now has status effect". Presentation isn't the rules, but presentation influences how people interpret what they read. The PHB's presentation is cold and dry; it does not spark creativity. Because of this, though the actual rules themselves work well with non-combat situation, by all appearances the 4e PHB is about a miniatures tactics game. This is where the MMO accusation comes from, I believe.

What features and PC customization do you miss? Wizard spells, Rogue abilities, give us specifics and we might be able to help.

>Dragonborn
>Tieflings
I understand, but I feel that they add variety to fantasy cities, depending on your setting. I always imagine cities being like Rabanster in Final Fantasy 12.

They're both in the game user.

oh it's very much the way feats and skills worked in 3.5 vs 5e, I feel it gave players much more control over their characters, and was more fun for characters when leveling, the two guys in my group who have played 3.5 agree. I have some new players in my campaign, so I'm trying to avoid straying from the handbook too far until they've played through a game, but yeah I'm just disappointed now that I'm playing 5e.

as for diversity, my setting has a dwarf fortress inspired scattering of animal people, I've gone pretty in-depth with that actually with their nation states and racial dynamics and such. a lot less ridiculous than dragon egg people or demon guys that "everyone knows are lying shits so they are good for rogues and tricksters?" idk not very inspired races in my opinion. seems like something an elementary schooler would cook up.

yes, but the way they function is remarkably unfun and uninteresting compared to 3.5. skills are more like a series of switches than a table of measurable traits, and the feat system has been whittled down into something that's more like class features.

I know I could add things or change the system to be more like 3.5, but I'm trying to avoid confusing the newer players with behavior like that. I'll just be patient for now.

What exactly do you miss user? Whenever I hear this argument all I hear is generalised bullshit instead clear, specific rules or features which were removed from core 3.5

I'm going to completely disagree with you because putting a skill rank in at every level up to marginally increase my chance of succeeding a d20 roll isn't a mind blowingly fun experience for me, maybe because as my table we didn't use the social skills in 3.5 very much because we were used to AD&D (which lacked them) but skills were an occasional help rather than a huge, character defining decision which we agonised over every level.

As for feats I'm curious that 5e feats, which normally include multiple changes to rules and actions are 'remarkably unfun' when compared to the hundreds and hundreds of 3.PF feats which gave a static bonus to d20 rolls.

It really sounds like you just want to play 3.5 because that was the version of D&D you started with and miss munchkining the fuck out of it but going through splat after splat after splat to find the right combo of class feature, race features and feats to create the 'perfect' character.

Not that guy, but the issue with 5e feats is that you're trading a cold hard mechanical bonus if you want them. That makes a lot of them suboptimal at best or outright traps at worst.
Ritual Caster, for example. Seems fun and great until you realize it basically reads "You get -1 to everything in combat. In return, you get to be a wizard/cleric/druid/whatever out of combat but have trash for your casting stat and only know two spells unless GM fiat".

They also streamlined the FUCK out of chargen. You basically have at most four or five actual choices if you're a non-caster.

user, did you actually read any of the Lore for them? The Dragon Egg thing is from 3PF, in 4e/5e they came to be from Io's blood a long time ago, and that might just be as assumed as the origins of Humans. Tieflings are the descendants of an Empire from a long time ago. They get way more leeway in 4e/5e to be unique than before.

Forgot to mention this, but post-level 1 chargen is even sparser. Some classes have literally one choice they have to make.

I mean, I thought I was being clear and specific on how feats and skills differ between 3.5 and 5e and why that bothers me. the hundreds and hundreds of 3.5 feats were part of the fun, many of them doing very different things than adding static bonuses and you know it. the mechanical sides of characters were much more unique, and people visibly had more fun when leveling up than they do now at least in my playgroup.

I've never been a min/maxer, and I'm also a foreverDM, I've only ever played one game myself. it really comes down to these small mechanical differences and some things like death/dying and things I personally and subjectively don't like such as tieflings, dragonborns, and warlocks which I shoehorned into my setting where extraplanar entities function entirely differently. comparing the two side by side, 3.5 just has more attractive and in-depth mechanics.

from the handbook:

" It’s easy to assume that a dragonborn is a
monster, especially if his or her scales betray a chromatic
heritage. Unless the dragonborn starts breathing fire and
causing destruction, though, people are likely to respond
with caution rather than outright fear."

" Half-orcs are greeted with a practical caution, but
tieflings are the subject of supernatural fear. The evil of their
heritage is plainly visible in their features, and as far as most
people are concerned, a tiefling could very well be a devil
straight from the Nine Hells. People might make warding
signs as a tiefling approaches, cross the street to avoid
passing near, or bar shop doors before a tiefling can enter."

I don't really want to deal with that kind of nonsense with PCs.

That's what 3.5 skills were, though. Unless you were using one of the tiny handful of skills that stopped getting better with rank, like Tumble, skills aren't useful unless you're maxing them unless the DM is constantly lowballing everything.

I suppose this is why pathfidner is still a thing and remain a thing. What you've said is true about many feats not being worth a stat increase however you've hit onto the bigger issue which is some people just want a system of theory-craft and munchkin in and 3.PF is the system that those gamers have stuck with since they revolted against 4e (which had a big munchkin community too).

I agree that 5e is streamlined, I just don't think that is a bad thing when in 3.5 and pathfinder there are a few optimal ways to build a character so most of the options people lament losing were either broken as fuck or just plain old broken.

user you were not clear, you said that feats and skills function as a series of switches instead of measurable traits, what I was pointing out is that that is exactly how 3.5 and pathfinders feats and skills function. Does my +14 knowledge (arcane) tell less of a story than my +15, no. It tells no more or less story (and more importantly does not facilitate the telling of a story more) than a +5 or +6 in Arcana in 5e.

I never got into 'feats as roleplaying' because most of them modified mechanics which help the game run but don't determine a characters personality/ambitions/failing etc. in D&D.

I will agree with you that the mechanical side of things were more 'unique' in 3.5 and pathfinder, I have enjoyed making characters in 3.PF just like I enjoyed it 4e because of the huge list of options.

To be Cont.

Cont.

My issue with those options, and the argument which says 5th ed is bad for not having them, is once you know the system (which is not hard because the rules of 3.5 are not complicated or demanding) you can see which ones are good and quickly learn that the majority aren't, mechanically speaking, very good and I have found that feats don't assist you in telling the story of your character because of poor mechanical balance between feats and classes. Your group might be very different and only express their characters though the stats, skills and feats they have selected and that's fine but as someone who has never done that because I started with 2e (which didn't have them) and we played without proficiencies (since the whole chapter was listed as optional) I don't miss all the false depth of 3.5 because during my experiences with I have seen that so much of it was chaff or just fuel for powergamers who wanted to be 'the best'.

And I suppose this is where we disagree and 3.PF fans disagree with 5th edition. I don't see the linear progression of skills or the variety of feats in 3.5 as expressing significant depth and because the feats were so badly balanced they were often more of an impediment to expressing a unique character mechanically (because the concept might not work under the rules e.g. a whip wielding, street brawling bard which can be done but isn't great especially if you're not using lots and lots of splats to cherry pick options from).

I also take issue with the depth argument because of the different in published material between a game with support and supplements for two years and one with three rules revisions and 16 years of material, core to core they are more similar than dissimilar.

I personally don't like dragonborn and have never liked the monk being core in 3.5 or 5e that's all down to personal tastes and I don't have an issue with yours on that matter.

We'll have to agree to disagree on mechanics though.

So do you disallow half-orcs in 3.PF then? And all of the crazy races from 3.5 and pathfinder or is just dragonborn which bother you?

Why?

Then again, the same is true of most of D&D so it's kind of a wash.

There are crunchy wilderness survival rules for Dark Sun IIRC.

Somebody focused on Nature checks is going to ace it though... then again, that's probably intended.

Have you tried not playing D&D?

Yeah. I moved on to Strike!.

I kid, I played like 8 or so different systems that are not D&D so far; not a lot, I admit, but I have limited game time and finding a group for the more obscure ones is hard.

The skills in 3.5 weren't "deep", everyone knows this, but the thing about 3.5 feats is that there were so god damn many of them, that even with 90% of them being useless garbage, the remaining 10% was still a gargantuan selection.

3.5 has significant depth to it, it just requires a lot of limitations to be artificially placed on it in order for that depth to be explored. Which is a serious, serious flaw for an RPG

>What
>That's pretty much the most powerful striker build in the game, best at both DPR and nova
Melee rangers use strength, not dex. Going dex-based means you're a pure DPS character who's bad at DPS.

>The only thing you need to make 4e "redeemable" is a DM to work with you.

Isn't this true for all editions of D&D and other games flaws in general?

I fail to see how that's any different from 3.5.

Melee rangers in 4e are str-primary, dex-secondary

Unless it's a weird heavy-armor-ranger build, you won't see ranger with a lower starting dex than 16, and since attribute-boosts come in pairs in 4e, your dex-mod will consistently be only 1 or 2 points lower than your strength-mod.

I'd say that's pretty "dex-based"

Im just trying to have a discussion about it. You're the one trying to relive the edition war.

Could someone explain me why at first monsters where bloated? I mean, common sense could make me think the opposite, that in the first editions they were better balance in relation to the system, leading me to think that mostly what you refer about the encounters may be a judgment of taste.

They misinterpreted the amount of time a round takes to complete, so they made it so combat would last for about 8-10 rounds, instead of the 4-6 rounds it should be.

Yes, but 4E takes it pretty hard. With the amount of options books and pretty gamebreaking epic destinies (I don't remember names and books arnt with me, there is one for rogue that lets it steal intangible things like ideas and eye color, for example of something very strong in the hands of a creative person) as well as RAW vs RAI being even bigger due to the amount of options and how powers work and are presented (example: an item for wild shape druids gave their beast form attacks 1d6 extra damage. Much later the werewolf/rat/whatever backgrounds came out allowing anyone to use the item to push damage even higher. The DM has to decide if the item designed for druids is usable for the weretyped people regardless of class.) While it doesn't seem like much at first imagine these types of problems being common for the DM. To add to it, 4e was amazing for powergamers who want to make very very powerful characters (see: rebreather dragonborn sorc) and the DM either has to dick them by saying no or ruining the playstyle or let that one player run rampant, and if that player does run rampant at later levels health bloat just won't be enough to stop these well crafted characters. 4E requires a DM that can put up not just with players shit but the games shit, and if you get one that can AND a group of like minded people (either they will ALL powergame so you can buff the shit out of monsters, or they will all be normal) then 4E can be a really good system where only like 1 main class doesn't shine (seeker).

It's also the nature of the beast, combat was supposed to
>have players use all their encounter powers
>maybe drain a daily for harder combats
>only then resort to at wills
WotC overstimated how long it takes a party to unload their encounter powers, by at least a couple of rounds, leading to
>prolonged at-will spamming
which was no fun for anyone.
Compound it with the
>badwrong math that had players miss just that little bit too often, unless optimized
leading to encounter powers missing, and combat going on even longer...

4e powergaming was peanuts next to previous editions. any competently built character could at least contribute next to the worst of 4e's powergamers. there was a huge amount of content bloat but the worst part of a DM was deciding whether or not they wanted to cope with the scope of it, there was very little that needed DM fiat to control power-level.

the all or nothing of encounters was a huge problem, especially at low levels. even if you got comfortable firing off your red powers, a miss could turn your haymaker into +2 rounds of combat. dailies always gave something with miss effects and things that happened regardless of the attack's success, but encounters seemed to be taken for granted in the backend math and then sometimes just didn't.

I think you're a bit wrong there

4e caters to powergamers, but even the most heavily optimized character can't win fights alone. There are very few things in 4e that really need a DM to curb their power, hell, even the claw-glove abuser or rebreather sorcerer you mentioned fall easily within manageable bounds.

Also, 4e has a lovely in-built role perfectly suited for powergamers in groups of normal players. They're called "leaders". A heavily optimized leader doesn't do awesome stuff alone, instead, they just make everyone else in the party more awesome.

My bad if prev editions were actually worse for it, I came in right before 4e came out and didn't get big into 3.5e, Either way I would gladly DM 5E over any of the extreme powergaming rules lawering 4e and earlier had. Might be fun for the players but really did a number on most DMs i knew.

I could have sworn the rebreather evolved later in the publications to be much harder to deal with by multiclassing shaman, but I'm prob wrong. Either way, you are spot on assuming they take the leader or even the defender role in some cases. My problem wasn't the huge numbers but rather the turn time. An optimized battlemind taking his turn every monsters turn was aids, and they weren't the only ones with overly long turns. There is a problem when people at the table start to get bored waiting. Like I say 4E can be really good and fun, hell I enjoyed the amount of races and options more than I should have, but without a dedicated "Okay we arn't going to do this" it gets out of hand and can easily lead to the majority of players getting bored while one player hogs the stage.

>4e
>Good

>Made Orcus a MM entry to compete with Paizio making him their cover/poster boy BBEG
>All Liches are Orcus Bitches
>Stupid new fucking staff cocked up further and collectively fucked long-standing vampire lore, made Orcus bitches, Kanchelsis, age categories, and the sheer vampire power creep alienated so far gone it followed into 5e
>Shadowfell AKA halloweentown
>Resued asset after asset from 3.5, used the black dukes image for Kaz the betrayer resulting in a future image that was incorrect, used a joystealer for a tiefling, and much much lazier crap
>Alienists are now Psionic, an entire concept that utterly contradicts Psion powers
>Multiple instances of Far Realm access, despite how the Far realm works erecting a fucking gate not making it a part of the cosmology making it's denizens plane shift into real-space and ruin everything
>Tharizdun and the Abyss Don't get me wrong, it's decent, but they still didn't work in Ahriman's angle to this, and there are still many issues surrounding this actually working
>Dungeons and Dragons Online

No, and 5e is still recovering from this disaster, though to not much avail with the whole Warlocks now commonly contacting The Great Old ones because WOTC is still butthurt about not getting the fucking rights when they should have all the way back in 1e, and since, detailed endless hints and pointers to the kind of Shit Paizo did, expect Pazio couldn't get it right either.

You know you've fucked up when you establish the Illithid were the 3rd servitor species made by the Elder things, mentioning it twice through editions then say they blasted themselves back in time when possibly Thrazdun woke up or the REAL Old ones broke through, yet fail to adhere to your aligment system and paragon Force entity based lore which influences and controls a good degree of sentient thought in your setting, such as subverting and repelling Yog-sothoth from the Astral Plane, keeping his kin out.

>4e was bad because it didn't use all this other lore I liked better
user, take a deep breath, it's okay. WotC doesn't care about your lore and neither do we.

nobody cares about that stuff dude

Battlemind shouldn't have been that bad, you know he only gets one reaction/turn, right?

Been awhile since i've played, unless it was errated though lightning rush did indeed allow him to make an interrupt every time the conditions were present for it. Once again it could have been errated, but I believe it was agreed on virtually everywhere to work like that.

Keep in mind I'm not saying it was overpowered or whackadoodle crazy, just time consuming.

Interrupts were always once a round.

He could take it in any one turn (when someone marked by him attacks someone else IIRC), but just once a round.

Well shit, my bad on the battlemind part then. Like I said it's been awhile, and I'm not out to paint 4E as a monster since I'm one of the ones to actually like it. Thanks for clearing that one up.

You do realize that 4E's approach to lore was more it the vein of "pick whatever you like, make up or steal the rest"? They even had pieces of fluff that contradicted each other
It's not innovative at all but crying about loss of precious and entirely replaceable fluff is silly.

IMHO 4e's number one problem is needless number bloat.
If all numerical variables increase every two levels and you have to increase the DCs for tasks accordingly not to end playing exalted, perhaps You should just slow down the pace at wich statistics and HP increase. This is easily solvable.
Another problem is the small number of out of combat power options, that took me by surprise considering they formalized out of combat interactions in skill challenges and so it would have been trivial to frame out of combat powers as part of those, like combat powers were framed in the combat system.
Basically they should have treated skill challenges like "non combat encounters" in wich everyone would have had the chance to contribute, and that would have given xp upon completion like combat encounters.
This is more complex to solve but not impossible.
Also they decided to middle the definition of HP further on rather than clarifying it, and the "at will-per encounter-once a day" structure of powers is unfit for some classes, whose powers should have had circumstantial triggers.
All in all 4e dares too much to satisfy the grongard and too little to be really original. This is solvable: 5e "solved" by daring less, an hipotetical homebrew could solve by daring more.

>IMHO 4e's number one problem is needless number bloat.

5e basically has 4e's number bloat halved.

This leads to bonuses to skills being too small to meaningfully increase the capabilities of characters relying on skills.

i.e. your fighter goes from being able to kill 1 orc to like 50, but still can't jump more than about 15 feet.

For everything else I agree though.

>they should have treated skill challenges like "non combat encounters" in wich everyone would have had the chance to contribute
that was th point if skill challenges. the problem was that while they codified as much as they could, they didn't have any explicit allowances for player innovation. while that's largely true for combat as well, positioning, HP and combat modifiers gave DM's room to adjust the significance and level of effectiveness of any player improvisation. because skill challenges had only successes and failures there was little room for improvisation to amount to anythingnother than either failure, invalidating a skill, or being irrelevant. they made challenges too codified without enough working room to accomodate more than "I roll this skill until you tell me we're done"

that and the fact that three failres ended a skill challenge flat out, with the idea of undoing failures completely left out of the basic design of skill challenges.

>in 4e everything scaled with half your level
>in 5e it does not
>5e basically has 4e's number bloat halved.
Gee whiz, you think?

Yes, it scales with quarter your level instead

5e scaling is 1/4th your level. Hint: look at prof bonuses.

>If all numerical variables increase every two levels and you have to increase the DCs for tasks accordingly not to end playing exalted
You have a very odd perception of what Exalted is and how it's different from Epic level DnD (spoiler, not terribly)
And you're not supposed to just raise all DCs. A lock on a cellar door is DC 10 when you're level 1 and it's DC 10 when you're level 25. It's just that in the latter case a strange complicated mechanical lock in the vaults of an ancient dwarven king
It gives you a nice emphasis that you're playing on a differently scaled field now.

>they should have treated skill challenges like "non combat encounters" in wich everyone would have had the chance to contribute
The way those rules were laid out initially, you still had initiative order and were supposed to apply your best useful skills to the problem. It's just that the rest of the system as presented didn't cooperate.
In the end, SC work best as a framework, a thing that tells you "That's enough rolling, here's the outcome..."

>Also they decided to middle the definition of HP further on rather than clarifying it
If anything it clarified it by stating outright for all to see that HP is not meat points

>It's just that in the latter case a strange complicated mechanical lock in the vaults of an ancient dwarven king
Shit... it's supposed to be
>It's just that in the latter case a strange complicated mechanical lock in the vaults of an ancient dwarven king is a more approriate challenge for your level

>powergaming rules lawering 4e
user, the difference between a fully optimized pc and a basic one was +2-3 to hit, and +3-5 to damage, unless the party went down the lasting frost or radiant mafia lines, and both require more than just a build, they need the right equipment.
I've run 4e for... some 6 years now? And played just as long, and my complaints are relatively few, but it reminds me much in spirit of AD&D, and that is alright with me.
It's fairly easy to run, easy to come up with shit for on the spot, pushes a heroic group based narrative that I prefer, can/is dangerous to pcs without being overboard and allows players to do a lot of shit without having to worry about it being mechanically poor unless they explicitly build counter to core expectations.

Have any one tried to subtract a fixed % to monsters to fix the issue that several annons told about encounters during too much?
if so, share it please.

There's no way a 1-by-1 retroclone is viable because of CBLoader and all the PDF, unless someone make new ones with all material (like a Martial Hero pdf with everything Martial from PHB, PHB2, MP, MP2, Dragon Magazines and setting books). Or dump the 1-by-1 and change things more deeply while keeping the tacticool approach.

What about a Fix Book with the unofficial fixes, and books expanding the non-combat side of the game?

Which would be better? Mostly a 4.75 or a new view on 4e much like 5e is a new view on 3.pf?

wasn't Strike! supposedly a 5e style take on 4e? if so then definitely not that.

Definetly not. 5e is sacrificing everything on the altar of sacred cows.

Strike! is killing all the cows and making BBQ.

I like it, but it's really, really far from traditional D&D.