There were some neat ideas in 4th at least.
I look at editions as toolboxes to draw from in my own game, and 4th had a few good tools to it. The forest might have been unwanted, but there were some pretty trees.
Man, I still think 4e’s at-will / encounter / daily powers were an interesting idea that made non-magical classes more fun to play, balance issues aside. People complained that it made the classes too samey, (which is a valid criticism). But damn, I want cool, once per day fighter abilities on par with a spell.
I also thought that the progression of class -> paragon path -> epic destiny was badass and really enhanced the storytelling aspect of a character.
I still like minions as a concept. Dinky little guys that have 1 HP but if ignored will still do a decent amount of damage?
Yeah it’s good stuff. Still rewards people for splitting fire too so suddenly it’s fine to attack zombie ABC even if your ally has already damaged zombie XYZ.
4th edition gets a lot of hate but I definitely enjoy borrowing things from it.
Meanwhile Pathfinder's out there doing the royal bastard thing, just one mentor and magic sword away from becoming the chosen one.
I've played different systems, and they've had their pros and cons, but PF was my first and I just keep coming back.
I feel like most people who hate on 4e didn't play it much, but enjoy feeling like they're part of the group.
Yeah, 4e doesn't deserve the hate it gets. I found it much more mechanically engaging to play than 3.X or 5e.
4e was when WotC discovered D&D has a very large problem - it's not allowed to change anything, for worse or better.
4e was when WotC discovered D&D has a very large problem - it’s not allowed to change anything, for worse or better.
This is true.
They're so close to discovering dice pool with advantage/disadvantage.
I started thinking about a 5e hack that converts the whole thing to a dice pool system. Instead of 1d20+X, it's Xd20. You can then have degree of success via "how many dice hit the number?" and degree of difficulty via "you have to hit X times"
There's a ton of other stuff I'd love to see changed. Mostly around the adventuring day and only-spellcasters-get-cool-stuff
Agreed. With how many people started with 5e the older 3.5 cohort who shat all over 4e are in the minority. Plus I feel like a 5e player would more easily transfer over to 4e then 3.5
I learned Adv and then got too lazy to ever upgrade my knowledge and books, so I still play that (with feats)
I kinda like super slow leveling. Less fucking around with books and more RP, magic items more impactful, every step up feels more special. But then ofc you're still level three 8 games in
I used to play adv. back in the day. Also rules were more like guidelines anyway.
Yeah look at what video games have to do to match a fraction of our power
I've erased enough shitty movie sequels from my memory to know where this is going.
There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.
Here we are safe. Here we are free.
people like to shit on 4e, but every time anyone tries to actually explain why it was bad it just makes me wish for it more.
The way they told me is that every class of 4th edition effectively had 2 builds.
Every level had 2 choices: one that fit your build and one that didn't.
Choosing any option that wasn't on the build was useless.
Then there is also something about cooldown abilities, which is hard to keep track of on boardgames.
It's better for games where you actually have a table with miniatures imo, but the rules seemingly being structured around this was not great for strictly paper adventures. Grappling was simpler, I guess.
I started with 4e, so I have fond memories, but my friends and I also had no idea what we were doing and just made a bunch of stuff up, so that probably helped.
Having played all the editions in the comic, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 4e is unfairly maligned and I would rather play it over Advanced 2e or 3.5.
The powers system gets bloated fast, but offloading potentially broken support spells and powers into 10min to 1 hour rituals is genius. 4e has the only useful version of Pyrotechnics between the listed editions.
Short Rests being 5 min instead of 1 hour really feels like the pace of encounters keeps up without any awkward pauses, and means encounter powers are reliably up by the next fight.
The understanding that mechanical roles and flavor power sources could be swapped around and make a bunch of classes instead of trying to theme classes solely around fantasy archetypes let them have greater design freedom.
Short rests and powers attached to them, subclasses being a core part of the basic classes, ritual casting, at-will basic spells for casters, & proto-advantage in some class abilities are all extracted from 4e.
5e isn't bad - its arguably the best version of D&D. But I've seen a lot better fantasy systems than D&D, and some fantastic mechanics left on the cutting room floor between NEXT and 5e.
Hate new shit.
Love me 20 sided die.
Simple as.
Most of my group started with 4E. They love it. I'm a 3.5 child, so 4e is just weird to me.
We don't talk about 4-E, no, no, no, we don't talk about 4-E!
4E got a lot of people who never would try D&D into playing. At least from my experience.
From a very narrow perspective 4th was good.
That perspective was new people who knew nothing, and played briefly or got really in to competitive play.
Viewed from any other angle 4th was a pile of dog shit.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY ONCE DAILY MISSED. I HAVE ONE FUCKING SHOT WITH THIS PER SESSION AND I MISSED.
fucking infuriating.
As a former My Little Pony fan, this sentiment follows many fandoms that span generations.
If anyone's hankering after a 4e-alike that's actually good, try the new MCDM/Matt Colville RPG 'Draw Steel'.
Ootl here, I've started playing in 3.5, stopped playing for a decade and a half and picked up 5e when I got back in ttrpgs. Anyone has pointers to a good summary of why 4e was different and why it got the hate ?
