D&D Races: 4e vs 5e

They got simpler. All the races did, if you'll notice.

Skyrim ruined the term "Dragonborn" for me, now I can't stop thinking of shouts and dumb arrow memes when I read it.

Concept: Lizardfolk are viewed by Dragonborn roughly the same way Humans are viewed by Elves and vise versa.
Dragonborn are the wise, magical race of the equation and Lizardfolk are the mundane self deterministic race.

Continued Concept: Half-Dragonborn/ Half-Lizardfolk character

Interesting idea. Eberron had the lizardfolk and the dragonborn live next to each other, but as separate cultures; humans of course couldn1t tell the difference between one scaly and the other, so they just assumed they are the same race for a while, although the two are actually radically different.

>And you can still stack feats on it to make it cool. I'm currently playing a Dragonborn Warlord with Close Burst 5 frostbreath that gives any allies hit a +1 to attack until EonT and gives allies a +5 to damage against enemies hit with the dragonbreath, making it a pretty potent bit of support.

And how many feats did you incinerate on that?

Three, IIRC? I've also gone for a Paragon Path that gives me multiple uses of it per encounter, so the benefits do stack up.

Dragonborn should not exist as a core race.

Grognards should not exist as a core demographic.

It's not like people didn't play as weird, goofy shit back in the 70s, right? Remember when Gygax totally stonewalled the guy who wanted to play as a balrog and forced him to play a core race only? And demihuman characters totally sprang forth whole cloth and weren't actually added in by the insistence of Gygax's players.
>Oh.

Maybe, but the art got better.

The Arduin Grimoires circa 1976 had more races and classes than you could shake a stick at.

>blowing ice on people makes them more accurate
4e was a mistake.

I mean, if you're an uncreative idiot I guess you could see it like that?

I chose to fluff it as the cold, draconic power imbuing her allies with strength, the potent innate magic of her race channelled through her heroic leadership and valiant example to spur her allies on to greatness.

You should try having fun instead of complaining so much.

Why not add mechanics that intuitively make sense instead of just giving everyone everything and forcing them to come up with some ad hoc excuse for it? And if you want it to be something unique, you can change it per the DM's approval. If I wanted an unlimited creative orgy, I wouldn't bother buying a rulebook in the first place, would I?

Because everyone can come up fluff that is fun and accepted in their group but coming up with fair and fun rules that lead to fun gameplay is hard.

You still buy rules, you are just not buying imagination.

Cool the autism dude.

That's fine, but that's under the presumption that WotC makes fun and fair rules to begin with, which several people in this very thread would disagree with. I think providing mechanical detail is good, I just also think providing narrative detail is, too.

I don't think it's true that everyone can come up with something creative that their table would agree with. Most people are not creative and I wouldn't expect them to come up with something, and I think that's what you see in a lot of the 4e criticism. Most people won't try to explain why they're doing what they're doing and it ruins their immersion.

I'd rather be rewarded for using my skills in an intelligent way than successfully throwing an excuse together for why I have skills. If most people are uncreative, then they won't b9ther imagining; if they don't need to imagine, then they can't fail; if you can't fail, then there's no reward for succeeding; if there's no incentive to succeed, why am I playing? I might as well go write a book.

I mean, it is a minor action support, so it can get pretty nasty.

...What? You start by stating a playstyle difference, which is fine, but then you descend into absurdity.

Dragonfear is nasty WITHOUT spending feats on it.

I think that Dragonfear is the more plug-n-play of the two, but Dragon Breath can generate way more with investment. For some builds it can be especially useful (Paladins, for one).

4e is the best example of fun and fair rules from WotC though. It's still not perfect, but for the most part the mechanical systems hold together really well, making it hard to build a straight up useless character as long as you follow a few basic guidelines.

I guess it might just depend on your group. For the people I play with, 4e's openness for refluffing is one of its greatest advantages. The rules work just fine and give you various cool thematic structures for characters that you're free to interpret however you like, the rules matching whatever fluff you choose for them.

Although I just don't understand your latter point.

Except every character in 4E is a useless character because you're playing them in 4E

...

For a moment there I thought he was serious.

I'm a dirty phoneposter and I'm typing during lulls at work, and I hurried through the end of my post, so maybe I was unclear.

You said everyone can come up with a creative explanation for their skills, but in both my personal experience and research into the subject I know most people aren't creative. If you ask a group of people to write down as many uses for a brick as they can think of in a minute, almost all of their lists will look identical. A very small portion of the group will have unique ideas. You can see this in D&D livestreams, too. Artists, actors, writers, musicians: they should all be super creative, but it's really only a moment here and there when they do something really novel that also makes sense. And a part of me wonders if it's that last part, "and also makes sense," that your groups omit. The vast majority of people don't find novelty for the sake of novelty rewarding, it also has to meet some sort of standards. Anyone can say, "I have an imaginary friend that actually turns out to be real," and because anyone can say it it's inherently not very interesting, but if a Warlock made that her patron, people would love it. So, if you're in a group where everyone finds everyone else creative, I suspect you're either a singularity or no one in your group actually judges eachother by any standards.

And if the latter is the case, then no one should judge you for not coming up with an explanation for your skills, since it's arbitrary. And if you don't have an explanation for your skills, there's no reason to immerse yourself into the world, because it has no fundamental suppositions to cling to, like ice being cold. And if you're not immersed, then it's not really a roleplaying game then, is it?

This is my opinion, but I think it's a driving force behind the backlash 4e received that not everyone can articulate. I mean, Matt Mercer didn't even like 4e and he likes everything.

>And if the latter is the case, then no one should judge you for not coming up with an explanation for your skills, since it's arbitrary. And if you don't have an explanation for your skills, there's no reason to immerse yourself into the world, because it has no fundamental suppositions to cling to, like ice being cold. And if you're not immersed, then it's not really a roleplaying game then, is it?

I just do not follow this argument at all. Like... I cannot understand how you're getting from one step to the next. They just seem like arbitrary assumptions strung together to lead to a foregone conclusion.

Sorry, I know you've gone to the effort of explaining it better, but I still just feel a total lack of comprehension of your actual point.

>5e artwork
>better than 4e artwork
Right, yeah, sure it is...

Yeah, 4e's artwork is so much worse than 5e's... ya fookin' idjit.

>posts the worst art of the book with the shitiest art in all of 5e.
I know it’s pretty retarded to put all of your crap art in the first book you expect people to buy but at least compare it with the worst 4e has to offer.

I reckon what he's saying is that given most people aren't creative, it's very likely your group is uncreative and isn't judging eachother's creativity. So you shouldn't judge people for not coming up with explanations since that's mostly arbitrary. And since there's no need for coming up with an explanation, there's no need to immerse yourself into the world, because it doesn't have any fundamental suppositions. And if you're not immersed, you're not roleplaying.

It's a string of logic that assumes that you're not actually that creative, you're not judging your group's creativity so you think they're creative. And since you're not judging, no need for an explanation thus no need for immersion thus you're not roleplaying. It doesn't make much sense but I can see where he's coming from. I really disagree with him, but I can see where he's coming from.

The big flaw of 5e is that most races were made far more stagnant, simplistic and with fewer decisions, but also way less balanced.

well to be fair, 5e dragonborn is a shit race that should've been buffed in all common sense. But yes, we know. 4e is the superior edition

4e is vastly superior to 5e, overall, but 5e has two advantages:

1. More offense vs defensive differentiation in monster design
2. Less close scaling required (that is, you can threaten level 15 dudes with CR 5 foes, and vice versa).

In 100% of situations, I would prefer playing 4e over 5e. But its a lot easier to DM for and to houserule for.

So... his argument is because you are shit, and everyone else is shit, you look at others and think you aren't shit?
The assumption of incompetence is rife on this board.
>that is, you can threaten level 15 dudes with CR 5 foes, and vice versa
I just use minions and blobs, user. A swarm of 10 orcs swamping the paladin as he hews them as a man does trees in the forest is both mechanically sound and presents a great mental visual.
Then you throw mobs of 50 at the players when they hit epic levels

The argument is you're shit, everyone else is shit, you look around and think it's not shit, so you're not judging. Since you're not judging, you don't need to explain stuff just in general, so why even immerse yourself, why roleplay.

It's just a concept of general incompetence and that if you're not 100% trying your hardest all time why even bother trying.

In terms of mechanics they're easily the shittiest.
>no darkvision
>unless playing variant rules, not specialised for anything, just chuck 1 bonus point to any single ability
>no racial proficiencies or abilities
You might as well just play half-elf if youre that desperate to be kind of human, it's easily the most broken race of vanilla 5e

>why even bother trying.
Because it's fun?

I wonder why did they go with these proportions. Is this supposed to be some sort of meme? Are hobbitses with big hairy (and normal-sized, for that matter) feet copyrighted?

Consider Veeky Forums's rampant autism.

4e had so much going for it, how did it get so overwhelmingly bashed by critics after launch?

Because they started bashing it before launch and never stopped. What they actually published didn't matter, it didn't resemble 3.5 and the hate brigade was going full force in outrage over that simple fact.

Basically all the criticisms that aren't blatant lies are post-hoc justifications for hating it or wilful ministerpretations born of viewing everything in the worst possible light.

Although being fair, WotC did bollocks up the launch magnificently, the bad math was a significant failure, and then it had the awful luck of having a murder suicide torpedo the intended online features. Yes, really, that happened.

The only complaints I still feel are valid about the game itself relate to the dearth of effective skill challenge rules. It's a shame, because turning non-combat events into encounters neatly dovetails into the real positive qualities of the d20 system. In theory it's the best out-of-combat resolution device D&D has ever had.

>But its a lot easier to DM for and to houserule for.
WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH

I enjoy both 4e and 5e, but being easier to house-rule is NOT one of 5e's advantages compared to 4e. As a DM, 4e is a DM's DREAM edition. WIth the MM3 business-card edition, and a hefty helping of refluff and made-up-on-the-spot bullshit powers , you can make up basically anything you want in the time it takes for the players to start a fight.

5e has a much more narrow band for what house-rules/homebrew/made-up-shit will accidentally kill a PC. House-ruling in 5e requires playtesting and statistical analysis. House-ruling in 4e requires you to be able to count.

5e's greatest strength relative to 4e is SPEED OF COMBAT. Combats can be taken care of in 5-10 minutes in 5e, while even experienced combat in 4 takes a long time (granted I might make the argument that the fights are fun enough that the extra time is exciting enough to justify itself, but others might disagree.)

>I wonder why did they go with these proportions. Is this supposed to be some sort of meme? Are hobbitses with big hairy (and normal-sized, for that matter) feet copyrighted?

Because they wanted to visually show that halfing are small in size, and this retarded way was how they decided to do this.

oh holy fuck I had never noticed that those were feet and not simply the image fading out around the thighs

I already thought the art was bad but now it's just horrifying

Personally, I just really, really miss the style of races for 4e. I like the concept of subraces in 5e, but mechanically, I just find so many of the races to have hardly any mechanical "bite" to their flavor. I shouldn't even need to compare the Genasi 4e to the Genasi 5e.