Found this at the bargain book store, Never heard of it and google doesn't have any results. is it any good?

Fucking what?

Dude, so many fucking games have way more deceptive fanbases than 4e. Just look at all the people who say 3.PF is a good system.

That card is actually pretty useful. I liked 4E for what it was, and if I ever run it again I'll def use that as a reference.

>No other game has such a deceptive fanbase.
3.5 holdouts are about the same so far as that goes.

If you ask me 3.5 shares some core flaws with 4e. Ultimately the biggest one, which also enables other irksome bits in both games, comes down to WotC using aggressive publishing schedules to attempt to fix parts of the game without fully acknowledging the problems were ever there.

What? Every thread about 4e mentions and accepts those. Most recommendations I've read make sure to mention them. If you want a deceptive fanbase look at how badly some people still deny caster supremacy in 3.x.

And that's on par with a fanbase that vehemently denies that CoDzilla exists and says that Fighters are good how?

Literally

blogofholding.com/?p=782
MM3 math is still slightly off, it's not a big deal but the above article is a good additional modification to the formula.

>No other game has such a deceptive fanbase.

Y'know, I could accept being turned off at a little bit of beginning complexity.

But saying something like that when you have games with rancid shit level game design such as Pathinder or 3.5e invalidates your point.

It's my favorite game, and I still regularly run it today.

The game genuinely feels like a fantasy novel in which the PC's are the protagonists, but the diminishing resource of healing surges still keeps the pressure on, especially when you realize that since surges represent protagonist plot-shield, non-combat encounters can cost surges too.

Also, be generous with the refluff. Because fluff and mechanics are largely seperated, it's easy to make a previously nonexistant, or mechanically unviable, character concept by taking the mechanics of an existing class and re-skinning it. For example, a "necromancer" could be a shaman who summons skeletons instead of "spirit companions."

If you try to run a game in a living breathing world in which the PC's are just unexceptional mercenaries trying to loot enough gold to retire before dying a horrible death, which mind you is a valid type of game too, look elsewhere, because this game will FAIL at that.

So... 4e general?

What's your game like user?

It's very over the top Pulp-Fantasy.

Over the course of two campaigns, off of mostly improv, I've wound up creating a setting where the fey are extremely prominent, but more like the O.G. Grimm's Fairy Tales.

I let the players go wild with their concepts, so there's a lot of wackey variety in character concepts, but we play it up semi-seriously for pulpy fun.

It's a lot like John Carter meets old-school Fairy Tales.

The party consists of a tribal child warrior who drank the soul of a shapeshifter created by their witch-doctor-god as a part of his manhood ritual, a kung-fu wuxia-witch who escaped this world's equivalent of hiroshima by fleeing into fairy, a plowshares-to-swords orc who just wants to save his wife, and a 7-foot-tall half-fairy who is actively denying his destiny as a fey lord by living the grizzly-adams wild-man archetype.

They've been fighting the agents of the recently awoken "True Dragons" who are as far beyond regular dragons as dragons are beyond mortals. During heroic tier, they fought their agents, and liberated a city from their influence. During paragon tier they hunted the dragons down one by one, though each one got stronger with the death of the others. Finally, they just hit epic tier by killing the last dragon, but they used help from a mysterious stranger. It turns out the helper was a pshcyic manifestation of the dimension that the true-dragons come from: they were accidental splinters from its mass consciousness, and it does not yet have the concept of individual sapience.

Funny guy

Great game, not for everyone, doesn't try to be for everyone. Medieval Avengers the Marvel kind, not the class.
Have flaws, everyone knows it, doesn't try to hide and offer the fixes for it.

Really want a new edition that follows the concept and fixes the math while expanding on it.
No, Striker!, you don't appeal to me

:(

>user provides perfect suitable answer to OP's stupid question
>Another user acts extremely hostile at with this solution to the problem
...Are you autistic?

>Bumping this trash thread to take obvious bait
:thinking:

Your search included "4e" you blathering retard.
Any person who found that book and searched for D&D Players Handbook wouldn't find such an unpopular result.

..?

That's how you know it's bait.

>I don't think any edition has done a better job of making each class feel unique.
trying this hard

DnD 4E should have just been a super hero game

>not tied to iconic classes, can embrace the role system
>making teamwork necessary fits much better with the team based dynamic of super heroes
>power system makes much more sense for super abilities than for stuff like Fighters or Rogues without having to suck some meta-narrative cock

Eh, I think it works fine for what it is.

Second or third best edition behind BECMI and B/X.

Rolled 6, 11, 20 + 5 = 42 (3d20 + 5)

It's not D&D but it's not a terrible game. It's a tactical game really.

Can you qualify or explain that statement at all, or is it just as arbitrary and unfounded as every other time someone has tried to make that claim?

The cover disagrees with you. It is as much D&D as any other aberrant edition, like say 3.x.

Had they not slapped the name DnD on there, we wouldn't have to deal with the shitshow that is pathfinder and paizo.

I agree that the system itself is acceptable, but trying to turn DnD into fantasy super heroes was a bad idea.

>DnD 4E should have been a super hero game
Hardly. While it tried its best to hype up the PCs as grand heroes in the chapter intros, the actual things PCs can do in 4e are quite limited. It does not suit the superhero genre at all.

But the name wasn't slapped on. It was D&D. Making something that wasn't D&D, even with the same design principles, would have resulted in a completely different game.

It's a tit-rattling temper tantrum brought to you by the "The rules forbid roleplaying" brigade who are part of the "Flimsy wooden doors get harder to kick down as you level up" cabal, which is the parent company of "I ignore the importance of defense stats, keywords, and damage types" and sons.

That's just a question of what powers they get though.

>Making something that wasn't D&D, even with the same design principles, would have resulted in a completely different game.
Of course, and it would have probably been for the better.

If it did not have the D&D name, 4e would never have gotten off the ground. The D&D brand is the most recognizable one in its industry, anything else would have hardly any new players at all.

Not really? I mean, okay, they aren't cosmis level superheroes like Supes (usually) but you get some pretty epic stuff going on by, well, epic.

I mean, just sort of wandering out of hell when you die and being able to steal people's thoughts, ambitions etc. are pretty superheroic.

I mean, 3e was very different from previous editions, just because 5e went back and committed to doing very little new and just refining and streamlining a previous edition doesn't mean D&D shouln't try to do something different. And it is still very much D&D, if it was released under a different name it would be called a D&D clone. It would have gone better had they called it something else of course, but that's something we can say with hindsight - they should have playtested and all that but they couldn't know there would be such a backlash.

>Can you qualify or explain that statement at all.
Yes. It came out in 2008 and here we are nine years later, it's successor edition has already been out for 3 years. The D&D community rejected it. They tried to rework it but failed and threw in the towel to pump out 5e. WotC can slap a D&D logo on a product but that doesn't mean the community is going to buy into their shit.

So your argument boils down to 'I didn't like it', got it. That doesn't actually stop it being D&D, y'know.

>anything else would have hardly any new players at all.
not if it was good. 4E was released in 2007. that's already the age of the startup. make a quality product and it will gain traction.
otherwise how do you explain shit like mutants and masterminds?

>I mean, 3e was very different from previous editions, just because 5e went back and committed to doing very little new and just refining and streamlining a previous edition doesn't mean D&D shouln't try to do something different
there's a difference between experimenting mechanically and changing the basic design assumptions.

>they should have playtested and all that but they couldn't know there would be such a backlash
Had they had any clue about their demographic, they could have. changing basic elements of your game is a stupid idea 99% of the time.

>post right above him does all of those things
???

>trying to turn DnD into fantasy super heroes was a bad idea.
So you dislike 3e then?
Because that is when the game became fantasy superheroes.

No, the argument boils down to the community doesn't like it and said fuck you to WotC.

Star Trek fucking Discovery sure as shit isn't fucking Star Trek either despite what name gets slapped on it. Same thing.

>changing basic elements of your game is a stupid idea 99% of the time.
So 3e is stupid then?
Because it radically changed how almost every subsystem worked with the exception of how casting worked.
>does all those things
>says outright that Essentials is a poor choice for classes, MM1+2 are to avoided, 2 tax feats should be given for free to fix the math and then forgotten

And the chunk of community who enjoyed 4e? While it was still being published it sold really well and was widely played.

>but you get some pretty epic stuff going on by, well, epic.
You really can't, though. Take a serious look at the epic powers. Even the most powerful, level 29 daily attack powers are just "do a bit more damage than your lower-level powers and put a status effect for six seconds (that is, one round)". Even low-power supes like spider-man outgun level 30 D&D 4e characters.

So you have no idea how the system actually works, got it.

Taking combat abstractions out of context to try and make a point is really, really stupid.

as I elaborated earlier, mechanical changes aren't necessarily changes of design assumptions, no matter how sweeping. You could change DnD to a D100 system and it could remain DnD.

3.5 changed a lot, but generally scaled up as much as it scaled up characters.

4E changed how the party dynamic and resources worked, both of which are integral to the identity of the game.

That's what I meant. The post above madanon explicitly laid out everything he implied 4e fans pretend don't exist.

Only thing it didn't mention was the broken classes, and Runepriest/Seeker/Assassin are still serviceable, they're just bad. It's like tier 3 versus tier 5.

4e needed another year or so in development. It needed people to kick the shit out of anyone who said "Hey we should take fan favorites out of the first PHB and put it in future supplements!" or "How the current gear and magic item and rituals are handled is okay for a finalized product." or "Skill challenges lmao!"

I liked what they were proposing, but they did it all at once and it seemed at the time we were losing a ton of old favorites. The whole release was a chaotic mess that could have easily been avoided by dialing back the treadmill a good amount.
D&D players weren't ready for total integration with online yet. And WotC's hyperfocus on that for the first three years of the edition sank it.

Runepriest doesn't deserve to be in the same category. Or Seeker, really. They're all different.

Runepriests can be good leaders, their only flaw is a lack of options.

Seekers are just utterly mediocre by design, and are generally not worth using.

Assassin is raw garbage that just does not fucking work.

Being fair, I'd say it was WotC's hyperfocus combined with the utter failure of their digital side after their lead programmer murdered his wife and then killed himself.

DnD players wanted DnD and not something using the DnD-name to launch a game with very different assumptions about how adventuring, party roles, combat and character growth works.
If they really are just tasteless sheep following the brand, people wouldn't be making the switch from 3.5 or Pathfinder to 5E now.

But 4e really didn't change that much.

It changed how things looked, and was honest about how some things worked, but there's very little present in 4e that wasn't present in 3.5, it's just presented differently and more honestly.

Stop deluding yourself and you might understand why 3.5 got a sequel in the end and 4E didn't.

It looked like it was changing everything though. And those first six months sank the edition

If they weren't tasteless sheep then Pathfinder wouldn't exist.

I'm fully aware why 3.5 got a sequel. It's entirely unrelated to the actual design of the game.

Yeah. Perception is very important, and as much as I like 4e WotC did utterly fuck up their launch and marketing.

4e took the same assumptions 3.5 had, and made them work.

It did standardize resources, but that just means that the management that was focused on one character is now spread out amongst the party. It didn't change the nature of the adventure.

Of course everyone is entitled to feeling how they want about it.

>DnD players wanted DnD

Tell me user what IS DnD?

You're underestimating the sheer amount of material that it took to make 4e.

>4E changed how the party dynamic and resources worked
Party dynamic was actually changed far less compared to 3e, where class niche protection virtually disappeared entirely. I'm not even sure how you typed such a bald lie out and expect it to be believed.
>resource management
This did change. It turned into most games on the market where every class works on the same chassis, rather than trying to balance a number of different subsystems (and failing since Basic to achieve it).
I've noticed it was only a problem if your gaming experience was primarily 3.PF.

It's not that they don't have taste but rather that they have bad taste. Still lying about yourself about how 4Es problem was in presentation only and that scared everybody is just retarded. People had a taste and it definitely was not 4E.

>I'm fully aware why 3.5 got a sequel. It's entirely unrelated to the actual design of the game.
You're an idiot. If it were, 4E would have succeeded, and Pathfinder, which by the way had as much aesthetic changes as 4E would have failed.

>4e took the same assumptions 3.5 had, and made them work.
It absolutely did not. You can't build a generalist in 4E, you have your role and are dependent on your team. in earlier editions, you were much more like a band of wolves, capable on your own.
Having mechanics reflect fluff is important for mechanic heavy games, and especially with the simulations roots of DnD resorting to this meta-narrative cop out was lazy.
Adventure scaling was much more expected. In early editions, ending a boss battle with a single spell was ok, it was just another stat bock. 4E advises you to prevent that with predetermined encounters per day to be able to play through your scripted dragon fight. It's a different approach.

>Of course everyone is entitled to feeling how they want about it.
There's no feeling about it, these are the facts. DnD players at large didn't like 4E. Most people did not.
3.5 and Pathfinder have 10 times 4Es number of games and 5 times the players on roll20, do you think that's just 'feelings'?

To crush your d12s, see them driven before you... er what was the question?

wut?

class niche protection wasn't a thing after chainmail though, because the niches were so fucking broad as to be meaningless.
Look at the biggest RPGs.
DnD 3.5 and 5 have mechanical seperation
Shadowrun tends into this direction with hacking
WoD Disciplines do wildly different and nebulous things
the biggest games do that m8

4e is the perfect game for over the top pulp stuff. To get my players in the mood I generally have them read a R. E. Howard short story a week before. It's kind of what you ought to be going for, really. You're not gonna get Lord of the Rings, you're gonna get Conan.

4e does succeed extremely well at doing pulp stuff, but it fails trying to be anything else. Which is not a bad thing at all, it takes a special kind of game to pull off "trying to be everything at once", like GURPS, which is explicitly designed to be the sort of game that can pull that off.

Conan can bisect a dude more than once a day though

I have missed this style of edition wars retardation.

>Shadowrun tends into this direction with hacking
>WoD Disciplines do wildly different and nebulous things
Are also both well known for having HORRENDOUS internal balance issues. Using them as an example of good game design is flawed on face.
>class niche protection wasn't a thing after chainmail though, because the niches were so fucking broad as to be meaningless
>rogue being the only one with a strong breadth of skills
>fighter gaining multiple attacks, more hp, autoslaying mooks
>wizard, cleric both holding reign over their respective fields

>To crush your d12s, see them driven before you... er what was the question?

Nice way to avoid the question because you're too much of a retard to answer it.

retard.

The funny thing is, 3.x was designed around the idea of class roles. They just screwed it up.

The playtests were all run with tank fighters, blaster wizards, healbot clerics and backstabber rogues. It's why the system ended up so shitty, because rather than figuring out how the mechanics actually worked in practice, they only tested it in the way they intended it to work.

>implying that's how stuff goes
You know attacks don't have to be word for word what they're written, right? And bisecting is just a death, not a daily.

>You can't build a generalist in 4E

False.

>you have your role and are dependent on your team

3rd assumed this. Do you really think 3rd didn't assume the cleric will heal and the wizard will blast? That's how their playtests went, even (that's partly why those classes are bonkers).

>in earlier editions, you were much more like a band of wolves, capable on your own.

Capable _in your own role_. The Thief wasn't a capable warrior. The Wizard had to prepare and couldn't improvise, the Fighter only had mundane approaches and his weapons, etc.

D&D always used well defined niches until 3rd. 3rd tried to, but fucked up.

>mechanics fluff stuff

has nothing to do with what you are replying to, but I understand that your immersion is easily shattered.

>Shadowrun tends into this direction with hacking

Hacking and the Matrix was made to work the same as Astral (i.e. magic) in later editions.

>WoD Disciplines do wildly different and nebulous things

Disciples are not classes. They are like powers, which are plenty diverse mechanically.

why? I don't even think 3.5 is better, nowadays I mostly play Runequest modded and houseruled to fuck and GURPS.

However, it's delusional to blame presentation and customer anxiety on 4Es fundamental failure to replicate core concepts present in DnD so far. As I said, the mechanics aren't even that bad, had it tried to be its own thing and not tried to ride the coattail of something very different, it would have fared better.

>Are also both well known for having HORRENDOUS internal balance issues. Using them as an example of good game design is flawed on face.
They're among the most successful RPGs out there, though. Maybe most people don't care about the things you perceive to be massive balance issues as much as you think.

Basically open class niches, simulationist approach to world building, character options, medium to high lethality depending on level
there's more, but these are the important ones for discussing 4E

And bunnyhopping was a bug in the physics engine. A good dev knows, when to roll with it.

If 4E really is the best and does everything ADnD did and is so much better than 3.5, then why did it die? Oh, right because it couldn't and wasn't.
It's dead, you lost.
We could now have an actual discussion about the reason or you could continue being a retard, up to you m8

You really are good at ignoring the broader context of the market to cling to your prejudices. It's kinda sad. Especially when the actual financial situation that led to the 3.PF/4e split is actually really interesting in and of itself.

So D&D is defined by the things that are unique to 3.x?

I hope to god you are trolling, for your sake.

>They're among the most successful RPGs out there, though
Not only are you applying sales to quality, somehow, after already previously acknowledging that strength of brand power to get something to sell, you are ignoring how the same applies to SR and WoD.
Especially since all of the games, D&D included, find themselves hamstrung by mechanical ideas from the late 80's/early 90's that they refuse to do anything about because people consider the poor mechanics "part of the game".
People ate shit till they liked it, and now demand shit on their plate. Anyway, this has turned into a Virt style thread, and I'm out.
The rest of you ought to do the same.

>Basically open class niches,

They were more narrow in AD&D and earlier editions than they are in 4e.

>simulationist approach to world building,

What does "simulationist" mean?

>character options,

which 4e has

>medium to high lethality depending on level
there's more,

4e is more lethal than 3.5 in a lot of respects

>but these are the important ones for discussing 4E

These are a lot of empty meaningless words you're throwing out. Any examples? Instances? Specific quotes or comparisons you wish to make?

Then enlighten me, what was the reason for the split?

How the fuck did you play 2nd ed if you think these things are unique to 3.5?

>my mechanical taste is objectively better, these people just have no taste!
Keep rejecting reality, you autist, that will sure revitalize your dead game

You never played ADnD
Simulationist means not level scaling
4E doesn't even have multiclassing
It scaled down saveordies and saveorsucks, it scaled down early game lethality

What are you trying to argue anyway?

>4E doesn't even have multiclassing

Lying makes you look like an idiot

>Simulationist means not level scaling

PFHAH wow okay that's your only definition for that huh

>4E doesn't even have multiclassing

That's because each class has 400% more options than most base classes in 3.x do.

>It scaled down saveordies and saveorsucks, it scaled down early game lethality

That's not a bad thing? Save or dies and save or sucks boiled down to whether you lived or died to a fucking roll. There's no strategy there other than get your fucking save or die off first and hope you're lucky.

4e has actual depth to its lethality.

>What are you trying to argue anyway?

Initially that D&D has no definitive values or ideas because it's a conglomeration of random shit a bunch of nerds made in their basement but now it's just you're an idiot.

>Simulationist means not level scaling
So you're saying that in 3.X and older characters didn't go to more dangerous environments and face harder challenges? Because that's all the "level scaling" that there is in 4e.

>4E doesn't even have multiclassing

Multiclass feats and hybrids disagree. Level by level multiclassing was a mistake.

I think what he means is that older editions didn't push balanced encounters, instead focusing on what makes sense. If you encounter some trolls, that's 1d6+1 trolls no matter your level. If you go into the lair of a dragon, you're not going to just find some kobolds because you're level 2. However, I have no idea how this is the case in 3e, that was the edition that changed it IIRC.

Personally, I think if they just went a little deeper into tactical skirmish, and added a subtitle like "DnD: Tactics" the game would have been massively more accepted than it was.

It also doesn't take into account that in 4e if you were level 2 and decided to go into a dragon lair, you'd still find dangerous stuff and die because it's a dangerous place you shouldn't be at yet. All the advice on balanced encounters is for is to stop a DM sending the party to the dragon cave as part of his plot.

Of course it depends on the gm the most, but you know how challenging a monster is in later editions because they are suggested to be put in balanced encounters. In old monster manuals there's no CR, and with wildly varying numbers it's not really possible, and not really intended, to have entirely balanced encounters.

B8

I really don't get that idea at all. That 4e was somehow 'Not a roleplaying game'. Finally being able to do stuff out of combat with a martial character was a fucking relief after years of 3e bullshit.

This is 4e general, right?
What class can I use for the feel of "unnaturally sturdy undead/magically enhanced 'monster' that spews curses and ill effects at those nearby, and uses this to their advantage"? Are debuff runepriests a thing?

>but it's still generally less gritty than most other versions of D&D.
Arguable. The way healing surges work and the disease track make it much better for survival games than 3.PF at least, and for how much people like to bring up how many hit points PCs have in 4e, the monster math is designed assuming you're at full for every fight.

I've ended up have having way more PC deaths and party wipes in 4e than in 3.PF. It still feels really strange when people call 4e PCs basically invincible.