Looking back, what made D&D 4e what it is? What made it fun? What made it not fun?

Looking back, what made D&D 4e what it is? What made it fun? What made it not fun?

As someone who DMs a lot, I found my favorite part of 4e was building encounters. The monster XP-cost scaling system worked really well for me.

I liked leaders as a concept, and I like that they expanded the role that the cleric usually has a monopoly on and let other classes in on it. The bard as an arcane leader felt so perfect.

The skill encounter rules were always changing (which was stupid) and I don't even remember the official rules- but the idea of using skill rolls to play a mini-game inside of a D&D game was an epiphany to my board game playing adventuring party.

I use minis a lot when playing D&D, always have, so the board didn't bother me. I know some people felt being forced to use it for combat was stupid, and I can't say forcing it was the best choice.

For bad... It took until Monster Manual 3 for them to get the solo (ie boss) monster rules right. Until then they were boring and took forever- not the greatest combo.

Until Essentials, all of the classes were built very samey. While they played very differently, they were built using the same number and types of class features and powers.

Because everything was considered canon, you had creature types getting shoehorned into settings that they should never have been in, just because the player races were popular.

I guess I'd like to see an updated version of 4e with Essentials/MM3 math as the basis and classes that really run with the role/power-source/background idea.

4e is my favourite version of D&D. I agree with you on a lot of the strengths, and on MM3, but Essentials was garbage IMO.

The Essentials classes are all just less interesting versions of the base classes they draw from. I think the overall power structure actually added to class differentiation, since it gave you a direct way to compare things and see how they worked differently. And in practical terms, how each class used their powers and what for varied a lot, even when you look at classes in the same role.

I dislike the weakness of the out of combat side of 4e. Rituals needed more development, and the things like utility skill powers were cool, but they always fought for space with combat-specced powers making it hard to justify taking them.

I agree that those versions of the classes are less interesting, but I did have some players who were grateful for the "I hit it with my sword" variety of fighter. I like the point you made about being able to more clearly see the differences between classes- that's true. Overall the feeling of mechanical transparency was something I thought added to the game. It made it easier for me to hack in things I wanted to see.

Do you have any ideas on how you'd rework rituals? I know in the vein of "needs more out-of-combat features" I'm thinking of home-brewing a way to integrate backgrounds more fully into classes. I'd do that by making all utility powers come from either your power source or background. All power sources share the same utility powers to choose from.

Personally I felt like rituals were too narrow in scope.

While this might rely too much on DM fiat, I like the idea of the players saying what they want to do with a ritual, and then the DM creates a DC for the knowledge rolls to discover the ritual, the DC of checks needed to perform it, and any materials the party would need. There would also be some guidelines about what sorts of things could be requested for a ritual so there aren't dumb Wish style clauses or making the party dependent on rituals for everything.

I'm actually with a group of friend who are putting together our own 4e rewrite, and power sources providing utility powers is something we're going with. We're also toying with the idea of each class getting multiple sources, one from its base class and ones from its build/subclass to let people have an interesting variety of utilities available.

Rituals are a bit far from where we are now, but in short we're thinking of waiving all GP and similar costs from rituals with temporary effects. Expending permanent progression resources for temporary bonuses in general sucks.

Instead, permanent rituals might cost GP or its equivalent, but short term and temporary rituals would be powered by Surges instead. We want to make Surges a broader used thing, having expending them be valuable for a lot of different reasons, making them a more flexible resource that you want to carefully conserve in combat because they have a purpose outside of it.

Although for backgrounds we really like 4e's idea of Themes. We like the idea of every 'tier' having its own extra thing- Theme/Background (or whatever we call it) for Heroic, PP for Paragon and ED for Epic. All renamed of course, but figuring out how to name things is a late stage in the process.

I think the biggest thing was encounter and creature design.

Trying to make my own monsters in 3.5 was a nightmare, whereas 4e things clicked right away. The skill encounter thing was great at least in principle, structuring skill encounters more like battles makes the skill monkey roll a lot more interesting.

I think 4e succeeded for me because I tend to be very freeform when it comes to non-combat RP. Non-combat rules don't really concern me, and I was always confused when people did the "no career skills" and shit complaints.

What, you can't be a sailor because there's no little number on your sheet? We can't arbitrate your sailing skills? Come on dude.

And the combat was good. It was fun. It was a little gamey (One thing that always updated my journal with 4e was the suggestion that players create an item wishlist, that was too gamey for my sensibilities) but it's a game.

4e is great for super over the top adventures where the heroes are larger than life badasses. The encounter design system and the aforementioned skill encounter suggestions, plus easy monster creation and templates, makes for a system where it's easy to make some crazy set-piece battles.

Like, in one game the players were fighting in an area where wild magic had made reality unstable, and the battlefield was basically a cluster of floating platforms above an infinite void (because reality-warping, if you fell off you came back down from above and took ten feet of damage)

So the PCs are on one side and there's an ogre and some hobgoblins on the other, and they're guarding a geomancer who's using his magic to push the platforms around and try to disrupt the fight. The ogre also had a couple platform-manipulation abilities I think.

It was fun and it was different, and it didn't take very long to figure out. 4e was great for that shit.

If I want a more subdued old-school D&D game I'll probably learn 5e or do some OSR stuff.

boring video game tabletop that took no effort to stay alive in

Nice argument.

>ask for opinions
.get mad when someone presents opinion

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

An opinion without explanation or substance is entirely worthless for the purposes of actual discussion.

Explanation: I played it and everyone who played with me agreed

fucking autist

Once again, that post adds nothing to the discussion. Explain what you disliked about it, give examples with actual argument and justification behind them. I don't care whether you liked the system or not, the point of a thread like this is to stimulate discussion and flat 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it' posts are worse than not posting at all.

>says i havent added anything to the discussion
>i have in fact shifted the entire thread focus of discussion

WE W LAD

Gods I wish it were easier to find a game for...not to mention easier to find a game where there arent' three people playing leaders.

nice dubs, also play 3E, the spell casters are udeniable leaders of every group due to how necessary they are

Not him but, you did not make clear what you meant by it. It's too vague.
Confirmation bias. Because you didn't have fun does not mean other people won't.
>I'm a stupid person with weak opinions who only replies in stale memes because I have nothing good to say and I can't stand that these people enjoy something other then what I personally enjoy.

>replying to all of my posts

i have one word for all of this

D R A G O N K I N

It is odd. You wouldn't expect it from the support class, but Leaders are just so damn fun to play. Even aside from Warlords (Best class in the game), every variety of Leader has some interesting tricks to bring to play.

I do think 4e did amazingly at that, taking a role which is traditionally seen as boring and making it something people really enjoy doing.

As a GM: It was ridiculously easy to run
As a player: It had fun combat and minimalist RP rules

An opinion without explanation or substance is entirely worthless for the purposes of actual discussion.

Except that post had both explanation and substance. It was minimal, but present, as opposed to the complete lack of information provided in Would more detail add to the discussion? Sure. But trying to level that accusation against others just shows how little you actually understand it.

Once again, that post adds nothing to the discussion. Explain what you disliked about it, give examples with actual argument and justification behind them. I don't care whether you liked the system or not, the point of a thread like this is to stimulate discussion and flat 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it' posts are worse than not posting at all.

Well, I suppose they do say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Thank you for the compliment?

>I'm a stupid person with weak opinions who only replies in stale memes because I have nothing good to say and I can't stand that these people enjoy something other then what I personally enjoy.

>Until Essentials, all of the classes were built very samey. While they played very differently, they were built using the same number and types of class features and powers.
>they played differently.

How is that a bad thing?

I think it's down to a couple of things

1. Every healing ability in the game was a minor action that let the target spend a healing surge, but every leader healed in a slightly different way. Artificers healed pro-actively, shamans healed two people at once, warlords could apply a bunch of temporary bonuses, clerics healed more than everyone else and bards repositioned allies when healing them

2. The main job of the leaders wasn't healing, it was enabling. All leaders could heal, but what made leaders valuable was their ability to hand out bonuses and free attacks to their allies.

3. You could screw up. Leaders took more skill than strikers, controllers, and some (but not all) defenders, and having that risk of failure makes the gameplay more exciting. (Unless you're an artificer, in which case you can just use magic weapon every turn and provide a valuable contribution to the party)

and 4. You were important. Playing without a leader was much harder than playing without any other role. So playing a leader means you always feel like you're vital to the party

>Hmmmmmmmmmmm

Is this going to be a thing now? I have seen it pop up in the last few weeks.

This is even less effort than smug anime faces... unless it's meant to be ironic, which considering the original post in the reply chain would make sense.

I'd like to see something like 5e, but where:

>All abilities are powered by a unified MP pool, or Shadowrun style strain rolls (probably MP).
>Where regular enemies (non-minion/non-boss) have the same math scaling as PCs.
>Powers scale up with level automatically, and you never replace them, only learn new ones.
>a separate expanded progression of utility powers.
>An option for classless, and gestalt campaigns.
>Math fix feats are worked into default scaling so they're not necessary.
>Innate bonuses are default and required.
>An equivalent to cBuilder with a handy front end for adding homebrew like you can with a text editor and cbloader.

Something like 4e.

Autocorrect hates me today

Anyone got a working character builder that includes most of the auxiliary materials?

One thing that I really didn't like about 4E was having to replace low level powers with high level ones. It's not a big deal to replace "Bladestorm" with "Bladestorm+" but it did irk me to pick another power and lose out on what Bladestorm used to give me.

Note: Bladestorm is just a random name for example's sake.

There are very few classes that don't get replacement powers as they level up. And when they don't, it's usually because the power works almost as well at high levels as it does when you get it (low slash, most summoning dailies, most dominates, etc.)

Not him, but I also think powers scaling would be nice. You could still include higher level powers that do things you couldn't really allow at lower levels, but that effects like pic related turn up once and then don't really repeat makes me sad.

It's not a particularly good power anyway, too conditional, but it's one I love for how fluffy and evocative it is and wish stayed relevant for longer.

Last time I checked, the one in the pastebin was working fine.

Fearless Rescue becomes irrelevant by mid-heroic, because the amount of damage you take will far exceed the amount of bonus healing it gives even at level 5

I've made it last a little longer, with good defences from Armored Warlord and the bonus to defences against OA's from Heavy Blade Expertise, but yeah, I'm at the point where training it out is a necessity and it's sad because it's such a cool power conceptually.

>So the PCs are on one side and there's an ogre and some hobgoblins on the other, and they're guarding a geomancer who's using his magic to push the platforms around and try to disrupt the fight. The ogre also had a couple platform-manipulation abilities I think.

>It was fun and it was different, and it didn't take very long to figure out. 4e was great for that shit.

4E fags just have incredibly low expectations. 3.5 has more diverse fights literally out of the rulebook without adding on terrain.

>3.5 has more diverse fights literally out of the rulebook without adding on terrain.

Because 'The wizard wins' is such a wonderful combat dynamic.

Maybe if everyone in the party is a spellcaster, but no, definitely not otherwise.

>wizard supremacy shitposting
kek

4E gives me bad tummyfeels so it's objectively bad. Argument over.

/thread

darkie please go