I feel like the characters in any given game world would be FAR more sensible that their players make them out to be.
Super badass monster thing that is there for set dressing? Players be like, "Fuck Jim and his world-building. Let's kill it!"
Minor NPC who gets the better of the party during a simple negotiation? Players be like, "Fuck that guy and the horse he rode in on. Later tonight we're coming back to rob him and burn him alive in his tent."
Or is that just my group?
The one time I DM'ed DnD, my group held an innocent villager at knife point to get information out of him, then threatened him if he told a soul about it. Of course he went to the mayor as soon as the PCs left, but at least had the sense to skip town before the group got back from the location he told them about.
The players dropped all interest in the main story (saving the village) in order to begin a "Catch Me if You Can" caper to hunt down the "dirty rat," whose only crime had been to complain to the authorities when some out-of-town mercs roughed him up.
GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
I adore one particular group I’ve had who often end up owning a establishment, having both business and social ties within the world, uphold oaths, actively want to hire useful NPCs and allow friendly rivals to persist. Feels like a TV show with them.
The others I’ve hosted for are pretty dang good too. Kids included, more so at times.
I feel for you guys. I think if I ever ran a game that devolved into psychotic murderers I’d explain to them at the beginning of the next session that they’re the bad guys, and the tone from now on will reflect that they aren’t Big Damn Heroes or Plucky Adventurers.
I’d give them criminal organisations, might makes right rulers, warring states, monsters that leave them with lasting wounds and maybe throw some insanity effects in there. I didn’t mention the weather before? It’s all rain and thunder from now on. Maybe even give them opportunities to turn on each other.
I would still host the game impartially and be a fan of the characters, but if you’re not playing The Fellowship of Wherever, why should the rest of the world?
The game I run has the players acting fairly reasonably.
In contrast, the game I play in recently had a session where the last 20 minutes was an argument between three of the PCs, a ship captain, and a sailor where the PCs were trying to frame the sailor for smashing a rat on an orphan's head.
so with regards to that dragonborn pally:
the 30 ac is achievable.
full plate+3
shield+3
defensive fighting style
and a smattering of ring/cloak/ioun stone of protection/defender sword.
It's still super gimmicky but not impossible :P
tip.. tip.. TALLY.. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
+2
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
My weekly guys just cleared Tresendar Manor. I really thought I was going to need to give them help with the pregen characters. They pulled through, Iarno narrowly escaped, and their ready to go questing.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
Hold the fuck up, is that still a thing? I thought it was gone! The disappearance of the digital character builder was a not-insignificant factor in the decision to run my current campaign in 5e instead of 4e.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
Hold the fuck up, is that still a thing? I thought it was gone! The disappearance of the digital character builder was a not-insignificant factor in the decision to run my current campaign in 5e instead of 4e.
The online CB apparently goes down for a day or two at a time, sometimes, and it still requires Silverlight which a lot of browsers have stopped supporting. So it's not really click and go anymore.
The online CB apparently goes down for a day or two at a time, sometimes, and it still requires Silverlight which a lot of browsers have stopped supporting. So it's not really click and go anymore.
Apparently there's some way to get a version of the offline CB modded to include everything released for 4E after the offline CB's discontinuation, but 1) I don't know where it is and 2) it would probably be against the rules to share here.
Sharing the installer for the offline CB definitely wouldn't fly here, yeah. Also that process is dependent on a website for updates which has also just gone down, lol.
MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
It is possible to install the old 4e CB as long as you have the installer and the last patch file. I am glad I kept my copy installed on my backup hard drive along with Masterplan.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
I think one of the dirty secrets of 5E is that it didn't actually "fix" any of the "problems" from 4E. It still expects the party to be gaining magic items as they level up, it still is focused almost exclusively on combat, it still has number creep. It just hides it all in non-optional optional rules, natural language, and "rulings not rules".
Personally I don't find any of those things to be problems in the first place, so I like both editions. I love 4E, and I enjoy 5E a lot too. But D&D has always been primarily about combat, loot, and steadily increasing numbers. We just happen to also use it to tell great stories.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
+2
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
Didn't 4e have a thing like that, too? A chart of inherent bonuses by level? I thought that's where 5e cribbed from to invent the proficiency bonus
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
Yes. All you have to do is tag an item as "magic" and boom. Requirement satisfied.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
Didn't 4e have a thing like that, too? A chart of inherent bonuses by level? I thought that's where 5e cribbed from to invent the proficiency bonus
Yes. But that came later in the development cycle. By then the taste was already in your mouth, so to speak.
+1
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
Yes. All you have to do is tag an item as "magic" and boom. Requirement satisfied.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
Didn't 4e have a thing like that, too? A chart of inherent bonuses by level? I thought that's where 5e cribbed from to invent the proficiency bonus
Yes. But that came later in the development cycle. By then the taste was already in your mouth, so to speak.
Yeah it's a shame there's no easy way to start 4e today with that thing and the fixed math and stuff.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
I do that anyway, to a certain extent
I know where my players want their characters to end up, so I make sure that they can get there one way or another
They also know that if they want a specific item, they can let me know, and I'll either include it as a quest reward or have an enemy use it against them
Maybe I'm just soft because I played too much Borderlands and know how frustrating getting nothing but trash loot or stuff that's no fun to use can be
Yes. So do I. I tailor treasure drops on occasion to suit the characters, sure.
To be held to a strict schedule of when to give (and then upgrade): a weapon, a shield, armor, a cloak, a hat, boots, a belt, gloves, a necklace and some rings? All specifically trailored to that PC. And if not done? That PC is woefully underpowered? That's a whole other thing. Bah. Me no likey.
Other than that, 4e handled combat really really well!
It wasn't quite that bad; to keep up with the math, characters needed a magic weapon or implement, magic armor, and a magic amulet.
This was still pretty damn stupid, and inherent bonuses were the correct fix, just two years late =/ Of course it also turns out they needed Versatile Expertise and Improved Defenses too; so many feat taxes. I'm going to be handing out all the feat tax feats for free, so I can focus on cool magic items instead at a reward pace that seems reasonable.
Also, DM42's MM3-adjusted math for monsters where damage to PCs remains at the same relative level from levels 1-30 instead of slowly tapering off as they level up. Probably.
The group i DM for has a barbarian that picked up a "bully" trait as a side consequence of doing the Amber Temple. Loves to fly into rage and then bully the other party members.
I made custom loot for him that he got a bit later that's a peace pipe that takes 10 minutes to cast as a ritual and it expends a charge of rage to cast calm emotions or zone of Truth.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
This criticism has always struck me as strange.
4e isn't any more or less focused on combat than any other edition, it just had a sufficiently robust combat system that combat was fun and interesting on its own merits.
5e didn't do anything to make non-combat better or more interesting. It uses exactly the same noncombat rules system 4e did - the noncombat rules are the area that changed the least between editions. You have some skills, you're trained in some of them based on your class and background, and when you want to try and do something you make a skill check. Aside from the systemwide condensation of circumstantial bonuses into the advantage/disadvantage system, the biggest difference between the two is basically that they changed the names of some of the skills.
5e is 'less focused' on combat in the sense that combat is less interesting so you spend less time on it, but that doesn't actually do anything to make the largely unchanged noncombat mechanics more interesting than they were before except by comparison.
Gauging from friends of mine who started on 5th and then played 4th with us, the complaint feels to largely be a case of "the spells in non-4th have a lot of out-of-combat utility and you can use them to solve problems".
But, "4th Ed isn't conducive to roleplay" sounds more damning than "I treat all problems as nails to be solved with my magical hammer". Not that I don't enjoy playing utility spellcasters in 5th, however I can count the number of Situations we solved in our 5th campaign without using any magic on the fingers of zero hands.
0
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
And the thing with 4th is that it HAD a lot of those out-of-combat utility spells. They're called Rituals and they're right there, just like they are in 5th. The mind boggles.
My work game will have it's character and party creation session on Tuesday. Since three of the four players are brand new to D&D I considered bringing some pregens and just running an encounter plus some RP, but I decided against it. Is that crazy? I've always liked the opportunity to have new players pick a class that's really interesting to them, and also to have everyone help each other come up with simple backstories.
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
This criticism has always struck me as strange.
4e isn't any more or less focused on combat than any other edition, it just had a sufficiently robust combat system that combat was fun and interesting on its own merits.
5e didn't do anything to make non-combat better or more interesting. It uses exactly the same noncombat rules system 4e did - the noncombat rules are the area that changed the least between editions. You have some skills, you're trained in some of them based on your class and background, and when you want to try and do something you make a skill check. Aside from the systemwide condensation of circumstantial bonuses into the advantage/disadvantage system, the biggest difference between the two is basically that they changed the names of some of the skills.
5e is 'less focused' on combat in the sense that combat is less interesting so you spend less time on it, but that doesn't actually do anything to make the largely unchanged noncombat mechanics more interesting than they were before except by comparison.
That isnt quite true. The mechanics of 5 lend to a different type of combat than 4. Whereas in 4 its very difficult to make things seem lethal and dangerous or anythig besides an action movie this is not the case in 5, where combat is swift and deadly and often decided before initiative is rolled rather than after.
And this bleeds over into all aspects of the game. Where as in 4th youre going to kickflip an enemy into your allies fireball in 5th youre much more constrained in how “awesome” you can be without wildly breaking action economy rules
Gauging from friends of mine who started on 5th and then played 4th with us, the complaint feels to largely be a case of "the spells in non-4th have a lot of out-of-combat utility and you can use them to solve problems".
Almost all those spells are in 4e too, though. Teleportation circle, scrying, sending, stone shape, detect thoughts, locate object, mage hand, tiny hut, unseen servant, arcane lock, knock, alarm, animal messenger, floating disk, speak with dead, pass without trace, commune, create food and water...they're all in there and then some, including a fair number of utility spells 5e doesn't have.
In the PHB3 they added abilities you could get tied to what skills you had proficiency in, which mean that everyone could get cool non-combat stuff to do, not just the casters.
Too many combat options that where too rigidly applied.
Yes, all those utility things were there. All that RP advice was there. But with so much of its splat dealing with nothing but combat, its not to difficult to accuse 4e of being not much more than as a fantasy combat boardgame.
I barely play D&D anymore, but no matter the version it’s very, how can I put it, comfy to prototype things in it.
Here’s a psychic monk ex-slave soldier ant alien.
Miaji
‘In the mist thick canyon of a backwater planet a crew of miaji were holded up, their cruiser shattered against the moss carpeted rock. Their intel had been poor, as always, and most didn’t know nor care to know the name of their latest enemy. Slave soldiers for generations, their queens imprisoned by the Veng, they fought and died for another’s dominion.
But here, dormant, or perhaps merely waiting, the salvation of a spiritually dying people was found. The miaji were drawn to the rain carved monuments of the polyin, towering fungal canopies curiously aligned with the stars above. They saw new paths open to them those first nights. Peace, unity, liberation. When these miaji were retrieved months later their invisible, immaterial friends joined with this crew too, and steadily wove their way into the minds of every miaji alive. Due to their influence many miaji blossomed into new queens, or fertile hybrids and a culture of liberation was quickly formed. The polyin have persisted within every newborn grub since.’
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Size. Small.
Speed. 30 feet.
Languages. Tradespeak. Miaji lost their own language long ago, and now speak only the galactic common.
Climb Speed
You have a climbing speed of 20 feet.
Psionic Lookout
You are mentally linked to a psionic entity known as a polyin, and this link cannot be severed. Your polyin is able to perceive your surroundings in a 30 foot sphere around your position. It can see regardless of the level of light, in shades of grey. While you are asleep your polyin remains active, and will alert you to oncoming danger in it’s sphere of vision.
Disassociated
As an bonus action, you can ignore a condition until the end of your next turn. This allows you to walk through something harmful (such as fire) without penalty. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Rending Bite
Your jagged mandibles are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. Additionally, you can make an unarmed strike whilst grappling a target creature as a bonus action once per turn.
Do you ever do that? Just think something up and make it into a D&D thing as a sort of proof of concept?
Too many combat options that where too rigidly applied.
Yes, all those utility things were there. All that RP advice was there. But with so much of its splat dealing with nothing but combat, its not to difficult to accuse 4e of being not much more than as a fantasy combat boardgame.
A huge amount of the pagespace in 5e is spent dealing with nothing but combat, too. DnD - in every edition - is mostly a combat game, at least in terms of what percentage of its rules (and, accordingly, pagespace) are about combat resolution.
It doesn't really seem like a meaningful position to concede that yes, 4e had largely the same noncombat mechanics as 5e, and yes, 4e had largely the same (or better) spread of noncombat spells and options, and yes, 4e spent whole book chapters on RP and noncombat advice just like 5e, but still insist that if you ignore all that then it's easy to accuse it of being a combat boardgame because it spent a lot of pages on combat which 5e also does. If 4e is a 'fantasy combat boardgame', then so is 5e - just with markedly worse combat.
If 5e had simplified the combat rules in order to free up pagespace for all the new noncombat resolution mechanics they wanted to add, there'd be an argument to be made that 5e changed focus to enable less combat-centric play. But they didn't. They cut down the combat stuff and left the noncombat stuff the same; that's not an increased focus on the noncombat side, it's just a reduction in total content.
Even if you prefer your games to revolve around noncombat encounters and think combat rules are mostly a sideshow, arguing that 5e made noncombat more interesting by focusing less on combat is like claiming that of two identical burgers, one is better because it is served with fewer fries. The burger is the same, and you always had the option to not eat the fries if you didn't want them.
And the thing with 4th is that it HAD a lot of those out-of-combat utility spells. They're called Rituals and they're right there, just like they are in 5th. The mind boggles.
Yeah, but the difference between them costing an action and costing +minutes is huge. You're not going to cast a ritual to salvage a conversation going pearshaped. On the other hand, if you just need to do a stealthy Calm Emotions, etc.
Too many combat options that where too rigidly applied.
Yes, all those utility things were there. All that RP advice was there. But with so much of its splat dealing with nothing but combat, its not to difficult to accuse 4e of being not much more than as a fantasy combat boardgame.
A huge amount of the pagespace in 5e is spent dealing with nothing but combat, too. DnD - in every edition - is mostly a combat game, at least in terms of what percentage of its rules (and, accordingly, pagespace) are about combat resolution.
It doesn't really seem like a meaningful position to concede that yes, 4e had largely the same noncombat mechanics as 5e, and yes, 4e had largely the same (or better) spread of noncombat spells and options, and yes, 4e spent whole book chapters on RP and noncombat advice just like 5e, but still insist that if you ignore all that then it's easy to accuse it of being a combat boardgame because it spent a lot of pages on combat which 5e also does. If 4e is a 'fantasy combat boardgame', then so is 5e - just with markedly worse combat.
If 5e had simplified the combat rules in order to free up pagespace for all the new noncombat resolution mechanics they wanted to add, there'd be an argument to be made that 5e changed focus to enable less combat-centric play. But they didn't. They cut down the combat stuff and left the noncombat stuff the same; that's not an increased focus on the noncombat side, it's just a reduction in total content.
Even if you prefer your games to revolve around noncombat encounters and think combat rules are mostly a sideshow, arguing that 5e made noncombat more interesting by focusing less on combat is like claiming that of two identical burgers, one is better because it is served with fewer fries. The burger is the same, and you always had the option to not eat the fries if you didn't want them.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I've been around D&D a long time, I get it. Of course the majority of any D&D book is going to be given over to rules about combat. And I don't want to engage in any edition wars discussions here, so I'll leave it at this:
Looking at how the 4e books are arranged vs 5e, with all of those pages dedicated to the various at will/encounter/daily powers that characters have. The sheer number of options given, that 99.9% of the time (no math was actually done) only have an effect during combat. The fact that they needed THREE! Players Handbooks to deliver them all.... to me that is a demonstrable difference in how the game is presented. Yes, the powers for characters in 5e are also equally geared towards combat. They take 3-5 pages per class? The same character in 4e is presented to the reader with 30-50 pages of combat applicable powers per class. (again, no counting was done here). And how those powers are presented in the game (rulings not rules, vs. exacting instructions).... 4e comes across, to me very much as a great fantasy combat boardgame that you can roleplay around.
Too many combat options that where too rigidly applied.
Yes, all those utility things were there. All that RP advice was there. But with so much of its splat dealing with nothing but combat, its not to difficult to accuse 4e of being not much more than as a fantasy combat boardgame.
A huge amount of the pagespace in 5e is spent dealing with nothing but combat, too. DnD - in every edition - is mostly a combat game, at least in terms of what percentage of its rules (and, accordingly, pagespace) are about combat resolution.
It doesn't really seem like a meaningful position to concede that yes, 4e had largely the same noncombat mechanics as 5e, and yes, 4e had largely the same (or better) spread of noncombat spells and options, and yes, 4e spent whole book chapters on RP and noncombat advice just like 5e, but still insist that if you ignore all that then it's easy to accuse it of being a combat boardgame because it spent a lot of pages on combat which 5e also does. If 4e is a 'fantasy combat boardgame', then so is 5e - just with markedly worse combat.
If 5e had simplified the combat rules in order to free up pagespace for all the new noncombat resolution mechanics they wanted to add, there'd be an argument to be made that 5e changed focus to enable less combat-centric play. But they didn't. They cut down the combat stuff and left the noncombat stuff the same; that's not an increased focus on the noncombat side, it's just a reduction in total content.
Even if you prefer your games to revolve around noncombat encounters and think combat rules are mostly a sideshow, arguing that 5e made noncombat more interesting by focusing less on combat is like claiming that of two identical burgers, one is better because it is served with fewer fries. The burger is the same, and you always had the option to not eat the fries if you didn't want them.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I've been around D&D a long time, I get it. Of course the majority of any D&D book is going to be given over to rules about combat. And I don't want to engage in any edition wars discussions here, so I'll leave it at this:
Looking at how the 4e books are arranged vs 5e, with all of those pages dedicated to the various at will/encounter/daily powers that characters have. The sheer number of options given, that 99.9% of the time (no math was actually done) only have an effect during combat. The fact that they needed THREE! Players Handbooks to deliver them all.... to me that is a demonstrable difference in how the game is presented. Yes, the powers for characters in 5e are also equally geared towards combat. They take 3-5 pages per class? The same character in 4e is presented to the reader with 30-50 pages of combat applicable powers per class. (again, no counting was done here). And how those powers are presented in the game (rulings not rules, vs. exacting instructions).... 4e comes across, to me very much as a great fantasy combat boardgame that you can roleplay around.
That is a silly bit of rhetoric and it isn't even accurate! A class description in 4e is ALL that you need to play that class. Cut those pages out of the book and you are good to go. No references to page xx or spell yy. They feature a whole bunch of repeated information as an intentional choice. It would be the equivalent of every 5e class with a spell casting option reprinting their entire spell list (as well as every spell being uniquely flavored and rewritten to suit a specific class). Yes, most martial classes would be considerably shorter in 5e versus 4e. That directly correlates with their variety of choices those classes have. If you were to pare down a 4e martial class and remove a bunch of options, say take just the Essentials, they'd be around the same length as a 5e class. Finally, the 4e had multiple PHBs that introduced new and different classes, the three weren't to cover the core classes as you seem to be implying.
Too many combat options that where too rigidly applied.
Yes, all those utility things were there. All that RP advice was there. But with so much of its splat dealing with nothing but combat, its not to difficult to accuse 4e of being not much more than as a fantasy combat boardgame.
A huge amount of the pagespace in 5e is spent dealing with nothing but combat, too. DnD - in every edition - is mostly a combat game, at least in terms of what percentage of its rules (and, accordingly, pagespace) are about combat resolution.
It doesn't really seem like a meaningful position to concede that yes, 4e had largely the same noncombat mechanics as 5e, and yes, 4e had largely the same (or better) spread of noncombat spells and options, and yes, 4e spent whole book chapters on RP and noncombat advice just like 5e, but still insist that if you ignore all that then it's easy to accuse it of being a combat boardgame because it spent a lot of pages on combat which 5e also does. If 4e is a 'fantasy combat boardgame', then so is 5e - just with markedly worse combat.
If 5e had simplified the combat rules in order to free up pagespace for all the new noncombat resolution mechanics they wanted to add, there'd be an argument to be made that 5e changed focus to enable less combat-centric play. But they didn't. They cut down the combat stuff and left the noncombat stuff the same; that's not an increased focus on the noncombat side, it's just a reduction in total content.
Even if you prefer your games to revolve around noncombat encounters and think combat rules are mostly a sideshow, arguing that 5e made noncombat more interesting by focusing less on combat is like claiming that of two identical burgers, one is better because it is served with fewer fries. The burger is the same, and you always had the option to not eat the fries if you didn't want them.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I've been around D&D a long time, I get it. Of course the majority of any D&D book is going to be given over to rules about combat. And I don't want to engage in any edition wars discussions here, so I'll leave it at this:
Looking at how the 4e books are arranged vs 5e, with all of those pages dedicated to the various at will/encounter/daily powers that characters have. The sheer number of options given, that 99.9% of the time (no math was actually done) only have an effect during combat. The fact that they needed THREE! Players Handbooks to deliver them all.... to me that is a demonstrable difference in how the game is presented. Yes, the powers for characters in 5e are also equally geared towards combat. They take 3-5 pages per class? The same character in 4e is presented to the reader with 30-50 pages of combat applicable powers per class. (again, no counting was done here). And how those powers are presented in the game (rulings not rules, vs. exacting instructions).... 4e comes across, to me very much as a great fantasy combat boardgame that you can roleplay around.
That is a silly bit of rhetoric and it isn't even accurate! A class description in 4e is ALL that you need to play that class. Cut those pages out of the book and you are good to go. No references to page xx or spell yy. They feature a whole bunch of repeated information as an intentional choice. It would be the equivalent of every 5e class with a spell casting option reprinting their entire spell list (as well as every spell being uniquely flavored and rewritten to suit a specific class). Yes, most martial classes would be considerably shorter in 5e versus 4e. That directly correlates with their variety of choices those classes have. If you were to pare down a 4e martial class and remove a bunch of options, say take just the Essentials, they'd be around the same length as a 5e class. Finally, the 4e had multiple PHBs that introduced new and different classes, the three weren't to cover the core classes as you seem to be implying.
Ok. Conceded. Regardless of which PHB it is in, each class has 30-50 pages describing what it can do on the battle map. But you can play the game with just one PHB. My hyperbole may have gotten away from me.
Essentials also came about at the end of the 4e's development. Not at the start.
But really! Truly this time! I'm done comparing editions! Roll on thread, roll on...
Yes, tell me about your homebrew D&D stuff instead.
Whatcha all invented today?
In my main 5E game, interdimensional spiders have turned large portions of Ravnica into a zombie wasteland. The PCs are a group of thieves that were caught in the explosion that opened the dimensional rift, and a combination of residual planar energies and Simic Combine experimentation has given them superpowers and an immunity to the spiders' zombie plague. So now they're going to use plane-touched mushrooms to create a psychic virus that will infect the spiders' citadel and kill all the spiders through their shared psychic link, which will then spread to all of the zombies that the spiders created and end the zombie apocalypse.
Posts
The one time I DM'ed DnD, my group held an innocent villager at knife point to get information out of him, then threatened him if he told a soul about it. Of course he went to the mayor as soon as the PCs left, but at least had the sense to skip town before the group got back from the location he told them about.
The players dropped all interest in the main story (saving the village) in order to begin a "Catch Me if You Can" caper to hunt down the "dirty rat," whose only crime had been to complain to the authorities when some out-of-town mercs roughed him up.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Fuckin' murder-hobos....
The others I’ve hosted for are pretty dang good too. Kids included, more so at times.
I feel for you guys. I think if I ever ran a game that devolved into psychotic murderers I’d explain to them at the beginning of the next session that they’re the bad guys, and the tone from now on will reflect that they aren’t Big Damn Heroes or Plucky Adventurers.
I’d give them criminal organisations, might makes right rulers, warring states, monsters that leave them with lasting wounds and maybe throw some insanity effects in there. I didn’t mention the weather before? It’s all rain and thunder from now on. Maybe even give them opportunities to turn on each other.
I would still host the game impartially and be a fan of the characters, but if you’re not playing The Fellowship of Wherever, why should the rest of the world?
In contrast, the game I play in recently had a session where the last 20 minutes was an argument between three of the PCs, a ship captain, and a sailor where the PCs were trying to frame the sailor for smashing a rat on an orphan's head.
the 30 ac is achievable.
full plate+3
shield+3
defensive fighting style
and a smattering of ring/cloak/ioun stone of protection/defender sword.
It's still super gimmicky but not impossible :P
In dusting off my stuff, I had the opportunity to look at the Essentials products with a fresh eye. At the time of release I considered them to be mostly useful, if not a little simplistic. Why give up the variety of power selection for Fighters and Rangers in exchange for a bunch of flat bonuses and a return to endlessly doing basic attacks all day?
Now that I'm going to be introducing the game to total newbies, I really appreciate those options. I'm also looking through the Dragon magazine issues from around that time and I'm seeing that they did reprints of the PHB1 classes in the Essentials style; you still get all the AEDU selections but the layout is more approachable. And they incorporate errata and the "modern" power card formats, which is nice.
I found the hidden link to activate an Insider sub, which I'm kind of surprised is still a thing. Why aren't all those tools just free by now? Certainly they haven't been updated in forever. I'll resub once everyone's made characters so I can use the Builder to print up some nice sheets of power cards.
I know 5e is this hugely popular thing now and I don't hate it or anything. I just think 4e has this magical fun quality where everyone gets to do stuff and every level up means new fun options. It's a shame it had such a short lifespan.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Hold the fuck up, is that still a thing? I thought it was gone! The disappearance of the digital character builder was a not-insignificant factor in the decision to run my current campaign in 5e instead of 4e.
Question, answered.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The online CB apparently goes down for a day or two at a time, sometimes, and it still requires Silverlight which a lot of browsers have stopped supporting. So it's not really click and go anymore.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Apparently there's some way to get a version of the offline CB modded to include everything released for 4E after the offline CB's discontinuation, but 1) I don't know where it is and 2) it would probably be against the rules to share here.
It's all a crapshoot, really.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
4e has a certain charm in it's relative simplicity that's hard to articulate to people; the short rest, healing surge, encounter, daily and at will systems combined with tighter focus on party rolls meant that the game was exceptional for moving people from traditional board games over to table top RPG's.
Really, the only flaws I found in the system were how it assumed players would gain magic items at regular intervals so as to maintain accuracy/damage values remained on course and that the game was almost exclusively focused on combat (which overall it handled really well) leading to intercombat activities being a bit on the dull side.
Still though, it did give me a handful of characters I adore to this day; a Pixie scout named lawn dart who was an utter murder machine, Ludo Labrytha the fey pact drow hexblade who was the living embodiment of mercurial and Darth Kotnem an enchanter who abused the hypnosis at will so very badly the GM all but leapt accross the table to murder me at various points.
Personally I don't find any of those things to be problems in the first place, so I like both editions. I love 4E, and I enjoy 5E a lot too. But D&D has always been primarily about combat, loot, and steadily increasing numbers. We just happen to also use it to tell great stories.
This point irked me about 4e and I don't quite know why. Of course as a DM I would reward players with magic items. Thats D&D! But to have your players give you a wishlist that must be satisfied? Blah.
Being forced(?) to give items per a strict schedule by the very rules of the game took away some narrative freedom in my mind and that kinda bugged me from the very beginning.
As well the requirement in 5e is far less pronounced because you can totally make the run bottom to top without magic items, about the only thing that really fucks it up is damage resistance, and I've definitely designed a bunch of magic weapons that count as magic weapons to overcome that but don't do much beyond that and everything still holds up pretty well.
Didn't 4e have a thing like that, too? A chart of inherent bonuses by level? I thought that's where 5e cribbed from to invent the proficiency bonus
Yes. All you have to do is tag an item as "magic" and boom. Requirement satisfied.
Yes. But that came later in the development cycle. By then the taste was already in your mouth, so to speak.
Yeah it's a shame there's no easy way to start 4e today with that thing and the fixed math and stuff.
I do that anyway, to a certain extent
I know where my players want their characters to end up, so I make sure that they can get there one way or another
They also know that if they want a specific item, they can let me know, and I'll either include it as a quest reward or have an enemy use it against them
Maybe I'm just soft because I played too much Borderlands and know how frustrating getting nothing but trash loot or stuff that's no fun to use can be
To be held to a strict schedule of when to give (and then upgrade): a weapon, a shield, armor, a cloak, a hat, boots, a belt, gloves, a necklace and some rings? All specifically trailored to that PC. And if not done? That PC is woefully underpowered? That's a whole other thing. Bah. Me no likey.
Other than that, 4e handled combat really really well!
This was still pretty damn stupid, and inherent bonuses were the correct fix, just two years late =/ Of course it also turns out they needed Versatile Expertise and Improved Defenses too; so many feat taxes. I'm going to be handing out all the feat tax feats for free, so I can focus on cool magic items instead at a reward pace that seems reasonable.
Also, DM42's MM3-adjusted math for monsters where damage to PCs remains at the same relative level from levels 1-30 instead of slowly tapering off as they level up. Probably.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I really want to throw a ton of it into my 5E games.
I made custom loot for him that he got a bit later that's a peace pipe that takes 10 minutes to cast as a ritual and it expends a charge of rage to cast calm emotions or zone of Truth.
This criticism has always struck me as strange.
4e isn't any more or less focused on combat than any other edition, it just had a sufficiently robust combat system that combat was fun and interesting on its own merits.
5e didn't do anything to make non-combat better or more interesting. It uses exactly the same noncombat rules system 4e did - the noncombat rules are the area that changed the least between editions. You have some skills, you're trained in some of them based on your class and background, and when you want to try and do something you make a skill check. Aside from the systemwide condensation of circumstantial bonuses into the advantage/disadvantage system, the biggest difference between the two is basically that they changed the names of some of the skills.
5e is 'less focused' on combat in the sense that combat is less interesting so you spend less time on it, but that doesn't actually do anything to make the largely unchanged noncombat mechanics more interesting than they were before except by comparison.
But, "4th Ed isn't conducive to roleplay" sounds more damning than "I treat all problems as nails to be solved with my magical hammer". Not that I don't enjoy playing utility spellcasters in 5th, however I can count the number of Situations we solved in our 5th campaign without using any magic on the fingers of zero hands.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
That isnt quite true. The mechanics of 5 lend to a different type of combat than 4. Whereas in 4 its very difficult to make things seem lethal and dangerous or anythig besides an action movie this is not the case in 5, where combat is swift and deadly and often decided before initiative is rolled rather than after.
And this bleeds over into all aspects of the game. Where as in 4th youre going to kickflip an enemy into your allies fireball in 5th youre much more constrained in how “awesome” you can be without wildly breaking action economy rules
Almost all those spells are in 4e too, though. Teleportation circle, scrying, sending, stone shape, detect thoughts, locate object, mage hand, tiny hut, unseen servant, arcane lock, knock, alarm, animal messenger, floating disk, speak with dead, pass without trace, commune, create food and water...they're all in there and then some, including a fair number of utility spells 5e doesn't have.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Too many combat options that where too rigidly applied.
Yes, all those utility things were there. All that RP advice was there. But with so much of its splat dealing with nothing but combat, its not to difficult to accuse 4e of being not much more than as a fantasy combat boardgame.
Here’s a psychic monk ex-slave soldier ant alien.
Miaji
‘In the mist thick canyon of a backwater planet a crew of miaji were holded up, their cruiser shattered against the moss carpeted rock. Their intel had been poor, as always, and most didn’t know nor care to know the name of their latest enemy. Slave soldiers for generations, their queens imprisoned by the Veng, they fought and died for another’s dominion.
But here, dormant, or perhaps merely waiting, the salvation of a spiritually dying people was found. The miaji were drawn to the rain carved monuments of the polyin, towering fungal canopies curiously aligned with the stars above. They saw new paths open to them those first nights. Peace, unity, liberation. When these miaji were retrieved months later their invisible, immaterial friends joined with this crew too, and steadily wove their way into the minds of every miaji alive. Due to their influence many miaji blossomed into new queens, or fertile hybrids and a culture of liberation was quickly formed. The polyin have persisted within every newborn grub since.’
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Size. Small.
Speed. 30 feet.
Languages. Tradespeak. Miaji lost their own language long ago, and now speak only the galactic common.
Climb Speed
You have a climbing speed of 20 feet.
Psionic Lookout
You are mentally linked to a psionic entity known as a polyin, and this link cannot be severed. Your polyin is able to perceive your surroundings in a 30 foot sphere around your position. It can see regardless of the level of light, in shades of grey. While you are asleep your polyin remains active, and will alert you to oncoming danger in it’s sphere of vision.
Disassociated
As an bonus action, you can ignore a condition until the end of your next turn. This allows you to walk through something harmful (such as fire) without penalty. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Rending Bite
Your jagged mandibles are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. Additionally, you can make an unarmed strike whilst grappling a target creature as a bonus action once per turn.
Do you ever do that? Just think something up and make it into a D&D thing as a sort of proof of concept?
A huge amount of the pagespace in 5e is spent dealing with nothing but combat, too. DnD - in every edition - is mostly a combat game, at least in terms of what percentage of its rules (and, accordingly, pagespace) are about combat resolution.
It doesn't really seem like a meaningful position to concede that yes, 4e had largely the same noncombat mechanics as 5e, and yes, 4e had largely the same (or better) spread of noncombat spells and options, and yes, 4e spent whole book chapters on RP and noncombat advice just like 5e, but still insist that if you ignore all that then it's easy to accuse it of being a combat boardgame because it spent a lot of pages on combat which 5e also does. If 4e is a 'fantasy combat boardgame', then so is 5e - just with markedly worse combat.
If 5e had simplified the combat rules in order to free up pagespace for all the new noncombat resolution mechanics they wanted to add, there'd be an argument to be made that 5e changed focus to enable less combat-centric play. But they didn't. They cut down the combat stuff and left the noncombat stuff the same; that's not an increased focus on the noncombat side, it's just a reduction in total content.
Even if you prefer your games to revolve around noncombat encounters and think combat rules are mostly a sideshow, arguing that 5e made noncombat more interesting by focusing less on combat is like claiming that of two identical burgers, one is better because it is served with fewer fries. The burger is the same, and you always had the option to not eat the fries if you didn't want them.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I've been around D&D a long time, I get it. Of course the majority of any D&D book is going to be given over to rules about combat. And I don't want to engage in any edition wars discussions here, so I'll leave it at this:
Looking at how the 4e books are arranged vs 5e, with all of those pages dedicated to the various at will/encounter/daily powers that characters have. The sheer number of options given, that 99.9% of the time (no math was actually done) only have an effect during combat. The fact that they needed THREE! Players Handbooks to deliver them all.... to me that is a demonstrable difference in how the game is presented. Yes, the powers for characters in 5e are also equally geared towards combat. They take 3-5 pages per class? The same character in 4e is presented to the reader with 30-50 pages of combat applicable powers per class. (again, no counting was done here). And how those powers are presented in the game (rulings not rules, vs. exacting instructions).... 4e comes across, to me very much as a great fantasy combat boardgame that you can roleplay around.
That is a silly bit of rhetoric and it isn't even accurate! A class description in 4e is ALL that you need to play that class. Cut those pages out of the book and you are good to go. No references to page xx or spell yy. They feature a whole bunch of repeated information as an intentional choice. It would be the equivalent of every 5e class with a spell casting option reprinting their entire spell list (as well as every spell being uniquely flavored and rewritten to suit a specific class). Yes, most martial classes would be considerably shorter in 5e versus 4e. That directly correlates with their variety of choices those classes have. If you were to pare down a 4e martial class and remove a bunch of options, say take just the Essentials, they'd be around the same length as a 5e class. Finally, the 4e had multiple PHBs that introduced new and different classes, the three weren't to cover the core classes as you seem to be implying.
Ok. Conceded. Regardless of which PHB it is in, each class has 30-50 pages describing what it can do on the battle map. But you can play the game with just one PHB. My hyperbole may have gotten away from me.
Essentials also came about at the end of the 4e's development. Not at the start.
But really! Truly this time! I'm done comparing editions! Roll on thread, roll on...
Whatcha all invented today?
In my main 5E game, interdimensional spiders have turned large portions of Ravnica into a zombie wasteland. The PCs are a group of thieves that were caught in the explosion that opened the dimensional rift, and a combination of residual planar energies and Simic Combine experimentation has given them superpowers and an immunity to the spiders' zombie plague. So now they're going to use plane-touched mushrooms to create a psychic virus that will infect the spiders' citadel and kill all the spiders through their shared psychic link, which will then spread to all of the zombies that the spiders created and end the zombie apocalypse.