StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I personally like the textbook feel of 4E power design, but I get why people aren't into it.
To me it feels more like something I can immediately play a game with, whereas that 5e description I'm going to need to copy down onto a notecard in my own shorthand. Which is nice for like, the feeling of reading through a spellbook, I guess? I dunno, I grew out of the reading spellbooks phase of my life.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
For Dailies, you could have them consume healing surges, to represent the amount of work. Like for the level or the spell/ability or whatever it consumes x number of surges.
I also think if you stripped the lore from 4e and released as a game system, setting agnostic, I think it would find a much broader audience these days.
I'm now on the step of considering what I would do with daily powers if I wanted to fuck around with 4E. I've never cared for them, personally, much like I've never cared for spell slots, but they were something I put up with because, well, two out of three ain't bad.
So I'm thinking about the narrative alternative to daily powers. I'd think you'd want to do some sort of milestone or alignment goal trigger, you would just need to figure out a way to keep that balanced. I'd also consider allowing (or even requiring?) a change in daily power every time you refresh the ability, to represent the idea that these are like, incredible feats that will never be replicated sort of thing. Which I guess starts hitting a different tone/power level than where dailies were previously, but conceptually I still like the feeling of it.
Ooh I have something to offer here. I tried a homebrew system with my group that replaced daily powers with what I called Crescendo powers. The basics of the system were:
The party shared a pool of points called Tension.
The party started every session with one point of Tension per PC. Tension from the previous session was not carried over.
Certain triggers built up more Tension (missing with an attack, an ally being downed, the effects of certain powers, stuff like that).
Crescendo powers required different amounts of Tension depending on how powerful they were.
As long as you had enough Tension built up, you could use a Crescendo power.
It worked out really well in the short amount of time that we used it. It encouraged risk-taking, teamwork, and added drama to the use of powers instead of "ooh that was a big attack, I better take a nap before I do that again."
GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
There is nothing that turns me off a d&d power or item or whatever more than the appended "can be used X times per long rest". Oh, I can talk to fish! Cool! Oh wait I've talked to 5 fish today already.
Encounter powers I like because they're a nice middle ground between [cool thing you can't spam] and [thing you really need to be sure you won't need later]. 'Once Per Fight' as a limit is letting me look at what's right in front of me and decide the time is now, rather than trying to predict if sometime during the next meandering few hours of play I'll be kicking myself for using up my Daily. I like informed decisions, not psychic mindgames.
Also, 4e fights were mainly about using your Encounter powers at the ideal moment (encouraging you to work with the party and set up combos), At-Wills were really just the backup when you wanted to save your big guns or had already run out of juice.
Grog on
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
There is nothing that turns me off a d&d power or item or whatever more than the appended "can be used X times per long rest". Oh, I can talk to fish! Cool! Oh wait I've talked to 5 fish today already.
Encounter powers I like because they're a nice middle ground between [cool thing you can't spam] and [thing you really need to be sure you won't need later].
I'm the same but with "per day" abilities.
Most adventures take place in a 24 hour period! I get to use an ability once for maybe an entire adventure!
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
There is nothing that turns me off a d&d power or item or whatever more than the appended "can be used X times per long rest". Oh, I can talk to fish! Cool! Oh wait I've talked to 5 fish today already.
Encounter powers I like because they're a nice middle ground between [cool thing you can't spam] and [thing you really need to be sure you won't need later].
I'm the same but with "per day" abilities.
Most adventures take place in a 24 hour period! I get to use an ability once for maybe an entire adventure!
I think that's a DM problem, not a system problem, but it's not like 4e wasn't full of once/day abilities.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I just don't like the imbalance in adventure styles that it creates.
Like, if I write an adventure about hunting a mythical beast in the forbidden forest, that's going to be an adventure that takes a couple of days. But if there's a high pressure kidnapping heist sort of thing, that's gotta be resolved in 24 hours, Kiefer taught me that.
Can you write around that, make the enemies in the first adventure more powerful? Sure, of course you can. But in doing so, you're losing some of the flair of like, saving and unleashing your most powerful ability when you're fighting the mythical beast in question, if it's something you also pulled out yesterday to take down the corrupted forest warden or whatever.
Interestingly, this mechanically incentivizes making 24 hour adventures for GMs who want to have that specific narrative pacing, while simultaneously disincentivizing completing quests in a single rest for players. Personally, I see this as a fault, but I could see some people enjoying that specific tension. For me it goes back to D&D being a frequently too broad system that tries to do too many things - if it were more up front about what "adventures" are/should be, it would be less of a thing.
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
This is where I like CofD narrative time. It's measured by Scene (a specific encounter or scene), Chapter (a session, start to finish) and Story (the entirety of this specific arc).
edit: to expand on this, abilities might limited to a per-scene or per-chapter basis, or last for a scene or a chapter, meaning you can plot out a story to happen over days or weeks without worrying about balancing for certain player abilities.
D&D is tied down by trying to be simulationist while also trying to be interesting everything else.
The problem I remember with 4e, although I never played it past level 3 or so, was every class started out with basically the same abilities, just with different names and flavors. You've got your attack with a bonus to hit or damage, then a choice of ones that do less damage but do some effect instead. And the per-encounter ones were just the same thing but with bigger bonuses.
So your Fighters and Rogues and Clerics were all doing melee actions that did roughly the same damage or had roughly the same bonus effects, and the Wizards and Rangers were shooting arrows/magic that did basically the same things. Maybe things got more diverse at higher levels, but I just remember seeing similar abilities with higher numbers at higher levels.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
The answer to this one is pretty simple
Fighters prevented enemies from attacking the Rogue and Cleric, the Rogue did higher damage, and the Cleric had healing
Even before you choose a single ability, those classes all have different functions innately
EDIT: Also Rangers did more damage, while Wizards hit wider areas and imposed more negative effects on enemies.
Honestly I feel like for me, DnD is a very specific form and style of game that 5e core basically does for me by itself. I want to relive playing BG2 at the age of like, 11 again and I want to do it with my mates. 5e feels like OG DnD but is also not super janky and instead runs pretty smoothly. Is it perfect? No. Do I need it to be perfect? No. Am I more interested in it feeling right than changing the game to reach some ideal of mechanical parity etc? No. I want spell slots and long rests and hit dice and so on. That's like, the whole point of DnD. And 5e works for me. Not that I actually play it that often although I guess last year we finished a two year long Curse of Strahd campaign so maybe I do tbh
Fighters prevented enemies from attacking the Rogue and Cleric, the Rogue did higher damage, and the Cleric had healing
Even before you choose a single ability, those classes all have different functions innately
EDIT: Also Rangers did more damage, while Wizards hit wider areas and imposed more negative effects on enemies.
It just felt like I could make five Fighters in 3.5 that were wildly different, but make five characters of five different classes in 4e and they'd all feel the same.
It didn't matter if they were technically different or that their abilities should/could be used in different ways, they felt the same. Actual facts rarely change how things feel.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Fighters prevented enemies from attacking the Rogue and Cleric, the Rogue did higher damage, and the Cleric had healing
Even before you choose a single ability, those classes all have different functions innately
EDIT: Also Rangers did more damage, while Wizards hit wider areas and imposed more negative effects on enemies.
It just felt like I could make five Fighters in 3.5 that were wildly different, but make five characters of five different classes in 4e and they'd all feel the same.
It didn't matter if they were technically different or that their abilities should/could be used in different ways, they felt the same. Actual facts rarely change how things feel.
That's the way most D&D characters feel to me regardless
So the difference wasn't much of one for me
Straightzi on
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
I just don't like the imbalance in adventure styles that it creates.
Like, if I write an adventure about hunting a mythical beast in the forbidden forest, that's going to be an adventure that takes a couple of days. But if there's a high pressure kidnapping heist sort of thing, that's gotta be resolved in 24 hours, Kiefer taught me that.
Can you write around that, make the enemies in the first adventure more powerful? Sure, of course you can. But in doing so, you're losing some of the flair of like, saving and unleashing your most powerful ability when you're fighting the mythical beast in question, if it's something you also pulled out yesterday to take down the corrupted forest warden or whatever.
Interestingly, this mechanically incentivizes making 24 hour adventures for GMs who want to have that specific narrative pacing, while simultaneously disincentivizing completing quests in a single rest for players. Personally, I see this as a fault, but I could see some people enjoying that specific tension. For me it goes back to D&D being a frequently too broad system that tries to do too many things - if it were more up front about what "adventures" are/should be, it would be less of a thing.
This is why I like the scene / drama based re-ups from 13th Age (and other games) over the strict short-rest / long-rest stuff of 4e.
Honestly I feel like for me, DnD is a very specific form and style of game that 5e core basically does for me by itself. I want to relive playing BG2 at the age of like, 11 again and I want to do it with my mates. 5e feels like OG DnD but is also not super janky and instead runs pretty smoothly. Is it perfect? No. Do I need it to be perfect? No. Am I more interested in it feeling right than changing the game to reach some ideal of mechanical parity etc? No. I want spell slots and long rests and hit dice and so on. That's like, the whole point of DnD. And 5e works for me. Not that I actually play it that often although I guess last year we finished a two year long Curse of Strahd campaign so maybe I do tbh
Yeah, I think this is the crux of things for me. When I play D&D I want something that gives me really solid tactical combat, which 4e does better than other editions, imo. If I want a more story-driven rules-light to rules-medium game, I am simply going to use something designed to to do that from the ground-up without the hang-ups / legacy of D&D attached to it.
Yeah that's a good point and I think saying "this is what I want from DnD" is a good question that sets up what sort of edition/style you want, because that's not a question you ask so much of other games
Like if you said "what do you want out of Pendragon" well obviously I want Pendragon, it's comparatively narrow, it creates a more specific theme. I do think DnD is actually a very specific form of fantasy but it caters to a wide base of players with a wide array of desires, from "I like RP and acting!" to "I like reliving my youth of playing DnD!" to "I like tactical combat" to "I like hanging out with my mates and I am not so bothered beyond that, as long as it's intuitive and easy to play"
The thing I miss most from 4e was codified language for powers. Everything had a distinct type of action, target, range, hit effect, etc and the system worked for attack, movement and utility powers for all classes.
Plain language stuff is *fine* I guess, but I much prefer everyone being on the same page about everything rather than just "Ask your DM!"
Can you elaborate what you mean by this? I've only played 5e but things like target and range have always been pretty clear to everyone?
Here is an example of an ability from 4e, look how it is codified, everything is very specific in it's language, the triggers, targets, effects etc... The big thing is EVERY ability is codified this way, so it makes it extremely easy to understand abilities, because if you can read one, you can read them all.
here is a 5e lightning bolt in comparison, notice most of the spell is just in a big paragraph of text in the middle.
Purely on an aesthetic level the second is a million times more appealing, though. I think this is a good example of how "feel" is important
Yeah, am a huge 4e fan and I agree with that. The edition looks and reads like a textbook. 5e has really evocative design and is a much smoother read even though I feel like it ends up being much less precise in play.
All in all I think 4e is a great game that does a poor job evoking the feel of role playing even though it was fully possible to role play just as much with it as other editions.
It did depart from the rather mangled and out-of-context traditions that define D&D yes.
But as another example of games that are good to actually play vs those good to read and theorycraft about: Contrast the at-the-table experience of looking up how a spell or ability works in 5th ed vs. 4th. To make 5th ed not completely grind to a halt every time someone wants to cast a spell I had to copy out the full text of every single spell every caster had onto cards (and my group was 2 druids, a bard, a cleric and a sorcerer). The way the 5th ed PHB is organized (it's User Experience to borrow an idea from my day job) is fucking atrocious.
It's the end of an in-game day. Characters are about to get their long rest. The casters need to decide what spells to have readied for the next day. The experience of doing that from the book involves constantly flipping back and forth between the by-class-and-level lists and trying to find the spell descriptions which are in one giant alphabetical list with all classes and levels mixed up. People were sometimes contemptuous of having the powers in 4th ed on cards but in 5th ed it is even more vital to play to have every goddamn spell on cards because the way the book is organized is so bad for actual play!
Just imagining a society with people with once a day/week/rest powers, the time before bed or even a nap must just be wild, just fire off what ya got! You can't take it with you! Hell yeah I'll take a +1 to hit bonus on my sword before I take a nap! Why not?!
There is nothing that turns me off a d&d power or item or whatever more than the appended "can be used X times per long rest". Oh, I can talk to fish! Cool! Oh wait I've talked to 5 fish today already.
Encounter powers I like because they're a nice middle ground between [cool thing you can't spam] and [thing you really need to be sure you won't need later]. 'Once Per Fight' as a limit is letting me look at what's right in front of me and decide the time is now, rather than trying to predict if sometime during the next meandering few hours of play I'll be kicking myself for using up my Daily. I like informed decisions, not psychic mindgames.
Also, 4e fights were mainly about using your Encounter powers at the ideal moment (encouraging you to work with the party and set up combos), At-Wills were really just the backup when you wanted to save your big guns or had already run out of juice.
Yeah encounter powers and daily's that aren't super pointless (like cantrips in 5th) really helped with the 15-minute-workday problem that has been there since 1st ed (prior to 1st ed it wasn't such a problem as at low levels there was much less difference in melee between a Fighting Man and a Magic User). Much like the linear-fighter vs quadratic-wizard problem 5th ed brought it back and doubled down.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
While we're talking about games where every class feels the same, I did see a sort of neat looking game on Kickstarter the other day, a game called Slayers that is pitching itself as using a completely different dice system for every class - exploding dice vs variable pools vs push your luck.
Obviously it's not out yet, but if you're interested in these conversations and theory and all that, who knows, maybe it would interest you as well.
Just imagining a society with people with once a day/week/rest powers, the time before bed or even a nap must just be wild, just fire off what ya got! You can't take it with you! Hell yeah I'll take a +1 to hit bonus on my sword before I take a nap! Why not?!
One thing about that 4th ed took further than any edition of D&D is the difference between player characters with classes and powers vs common people. Society is not made up of people with powers. OD&D on up through 1st ed was designed with the core assumption that everyone in the world was in some sense "generated" using the rules for characters. They all had 3d6 for each stat in order. And it was fair to balance classes by making them way more powerful but require higher stats. If you are rolling "by the book" you had incredibly tiny odds of ever being a monk or bard or paladin. In 2nd ed you had maybe 50% odds of even qualifying to be a plain Fighter (the "dump class" being Thief).
Honestly I feel like for me, DnD is a very specific form and style of game that 5e core basically does for me by itself. I want to relive playing BG2 at the age of like, 11 again and I want to do it with my mates. 5e feels like OG DnD but is also not super janky and instead runs pretty smoothly. Is it perfect? No. Do I need it to be perfect? No. Am I more interested in it feeling right than changing the game to reach some ideal of mechanical parity etc? No. I want spell slots and long rests and hit dice and so on. That's like, the whole point of DnD. And 5e works for me. Not that I actually play it that often although I guess last year we finished a two year long Curse of Strahd campaign so maybe I do tbh
Yeah, I think this is the crux of things for me. When I play D&D I want something that gives me really solid tactical combat, which 4e does better than other editions, imo. If I want a more story-driven rules-light to rules-medium game, I am simply going to use something designed to to do that from the ground-up without the hang-ups / legacy of D&D attached to it.
I very much agree. D&D is today and always has been a game about killing monsters and getting treasure. You can role-play anything. But the game is about killing monsters and getting treasure. Full fucking stop. Of course the people selling D&D products have tried to push the notion that it is a universal RPG that can be used for anything but that is just not the case for the game mechanics.
With all tabletop RPGs the experience, whether it was a "good game" or was fun, is so overwhelmingly about the people you are playing with compared to the rather tiny contribution of the game mechanics that it is easy to overlook this.
People say things like "we went that entire session without any combat!" as if it was relevant to the question of what the game system of D&D is for. In that session if you substituted your D&D characters with those rolled up under the rules for GURPS or Rolemaster or One Ring or FATAL would it have made any difference? Did you actually engage with any of the systems written in the books in any way? I am sure that session was fun and a great experience for those involved but would it have been any less so with any other set of books on the table / numbers on the character sheets?
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Yeah that's a good point and I think saying "this is what I want from DnD" is a good question that sets up what sort of edition/style you want, because that's not a question you ask so much of other games
I think this is why I dislike 4e because man
I hate tactics videogames and 4e makes me understand when people like Scott Kurtz say "I love D&D but I would rather just skip all the combat".
It's not that I am all about role playing, just whenever I rolled initiative in 4e it felt like we stop telling a story and started doing a math quiz.
4e combat is extremely specific and granular, which is great for some people but it strips almost all improvisation and creativity out of it in my experience.
Honestly I feel like for me, DnD is a very specific form and style of game that 5e core basically does for me by itself. I want to relive playing BG2 at the age of like, 11 again and I want to do it with my mates. 5e feels like OG DnD but is also not super janky and instead runs pretty smoothly. Is it perfect? No. Do I need it to be perfect? No. Am I more interested in it feeling right than changing the game to reach some ideal of mechanical parity etc? No. I want spell slots and long rests and hit dice and so on. That's like, the whole point of DnD. And 5e works for me. Not that I actually play it that often although I guess last year we finished a two year long Curse of Strahd campaign so maybe I do tbh
Yeah, I think this is the crux of things for me. When I play D&D I want something that gives me really solid tactical combat, which 4e does better than other editions, imo. If I want a more story-driven rules-light to rules-medium game, I am simply going to use something designed to to do that from the ground-up without the hang-ups / legacy of D&D attached to it.
I very much agree. D&D is today and always has been a game about killing monsters and getting treasure. You can role-play anything. But the game is about killing monsters and getting treasure. Full fucking stop. Of course the people selling D&D products have tried to push the notion that it is a universal RPG that can be used for anything but that is just not the case for the game mechanics.
With all tabletop RPGs the experience, whether it was a "good game" or was fun, is so overwhelmingly about the people you are playing with compared to the rather tiny contribution of the game mechanics that it is easy to overlook this.
People say things like "we went that entire session without any combat!" as if it was relevant to the question of what the game system of D&D is for. In that session if you substituted your D&D characters with those rolled up under the rules for GURPS or Rolemaster or One Ring or FATAL would it have made any difference? Did you actually engage with any of the systems written in the books in any way? I am sure that session was fun and a great experience for those involved but would it have been any less so with any other set of books on the table / numbers on the character sheets?
Well
I think it is about killing monsters and getting treasure in it's purest form, but these days I think it is about adventuring. And that is not so necessarily about killing monsters and getting treasure, it's about talking to people and doing investigations and so on, navigating natural obstacles etc. But largely yes. Like I think that it has moved on somewhat since AD&D but that's still the core thrust of much of the game. That said you can reasonably do a lot of non-combat stuff with the DnD system these days which you couldn't before, like most of the skills and a lot of low level spells and abilities and such. It is largely window dressing mind.
Honestly 4e is not really that much more tactical than any other DnD tbh. The other editions are basically just as tactical they just don't write everything like a physics textbook.
Is there even one single offensive ability in all of D&D that cannot be boiled down to "a d20 is rolled and, depending on the results, some damage and/or effect is applied" ? I feel like that's a very bad take on why 4e was bad.
Honestly 4e is not really that much more tactical than any other DnD tbh. The other editions are basically just as tactical they just don't write everything like a physics textbook.
I think a lot of the conversation around it being more tactical is based around the fact that a lot of moves describe themselves in game terms rather than world terms
Like, the simple thing of being pushed back one square as opposed to five feet - that's absolutely the same in terms of end output, but one is couching itself in real world terms rather than completely staying within game terms
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
So, to talk about literally anything other than D&D edition wars in the year of our lord 2020, there was some drama with the ENnies (a real shocker.)
Honestly 4e is not really that much more tactical than any other DnD tbh. The other editions are basically just as tactical they just don't write everything like a physics textbook.
I think a lot of the conversation around it being more tactical is based around the fact that a lot of moves describe themselves in game terms rather than world terms
Like, the simple thing of being pushed back one square as opposed to five feet - that's absolutely the same in terms of end output, but one is couching itself in real world terms rather than completely staying within game terms
I've been reading a lot of RPG stuff from the 70s lately. Every measurement in OD&D is in inches at the scale of miniatures being used. With some notes that in a dungeon 1 inch = 5 feet but outdoors 1 inch = quite a lot more (don't remember which). So it's exactly like the 1 square = 5 feet but without the convenience of a grid (since the wargames D&D comes from didn't have a grid).
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
I want to relive playing BG2 at the age of like, 11 again
only sorta metaphorically related to the discussion at hand, but I do too and it took me like two AAA releases and a couple of kickstarted games to make me realize that I didn't want tactical rtwp dungeon crawlers, what I really wanted were visual novels.
Honestly 4e is not really that much more tactical than any other DnD tbh. The other editions are basically just as tactical they just don't write everything like a physics textbook.
I think a lot of the conversation around it being more tactical is based around the fact that a lot of moves describe themselves in game terms rather than world terms
Like, the simple thing of being pushed back one square as opposed to five feet - that's absolutely the same in terms of end output, but one is couching itself in real world terms rather than completely staying within game terms
Yeah I think it's more accurate to say 4e is more explicitly gamist in feel. And that's something some people appreciate, and others don't.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
I'm actually kinda surprised at the apology for Blood in the chocolate.
Sorry, I don't know anything about the Ennies and I am not clear why it's a problem that Lancer was submitted
I was confused about the Blood in the Chocolate thing until I realized it was a Legend of the Flame Princess products. Fucking hell that whole product line is just FATAL with a facelift.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Sorry, I don't know anything about the Ennies and I am not clear why it's a problem that Lancer was submitted
It's not. Lancer called out the ENnies for being shit and someone else was like, well why did you submit yourself for nomination, then? But the person from Lancer who submitted them wasn't part of the indie RPG scene before Lancer so he didn't know about the ENnies backstory.
I want a midway point between the formatting and style of writing that 4e and 5e spells and abilities have, personally.
5e has a way better aesthetic and descriptive writing, but it is extremely inconsistent with how it presents the important information, and 5e was sort of the reverse.
So just, like, give me both.
Give me Baldur's Gate style spell/ability descriptions.
As someone who loves organization, something closer to 4e without feeling so dry and flavorless would be nice. I never played casters because I hate having to look up spells.
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To me it feels more like something I can immediately play a game with, whereas that 5e description I'm going to need to copy down onto a notecard in my own shorthand. Which is nice for like, the feeling of reading through a spellbook, I guess? I dunno, I grew out of the reading spellbooks phase of my life.
I also think if you stripped the lore from 4e and released as a game system, setting agnostic, I think it would find a much broader audience these days.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Ooh I have something to offer here. I tried a homebrew system with my group that replaced daily powers with what I called Crescendo powers. The basics of the system were:
It worked out really well in the short amount of time that we used it. It encouraged risk-taking, teamwork, and added drama to the use of powers instead of "ooh that was a big attack, I better take a nap before I do that again."
Encounter powers I like because they're a nice middle ground between [cool thing you can't spam] and [thing you really need to be sure you won't need later]. 'Once Per Fight' as a limit is letting me look at what's right in front of me and decide the time is now, rather than trying to predict if sometime during the next meandering few hours of play I'll be kicking myself for using up my Daily. I like informed decisions, not psychic mindgames.
Also, 4e fights were mainly about using your Encounter powers at the ideal moment (encouraging you to work with the party and set up combos), At-Wills were really just the backup when you wanted to save your big guns or had already run out of juice.
I'm the same but with "per day" abilities.
Most adventures take place in a 24 hour period! I get to use an ability once for maybe an entire adventure!
I think that's a DM problem, not a system problem, but it's not like 4e wasn't full of once/day abilities.
Like, if I write an adventure about hunting a mythical beast in the forbidden forest, that's going to be an adventure that takes a couple of days. But if there's a high pressure kidnapping heist sort of thing, that's gotta be resolved in 24 hours, Kiefer taught me that.
Can you write around that, make the enemies in the first adventure more powerful? Sure, of course you can. But in doing so, you're losing some of the flair of like, saving and unleashing your most powerful ability when you're fighting the mythical beast in question, if it's something you also pulled out yesterday to take down the corrupted forest warden or whatever.
Interestingly, this mechanically incentivizes making 24 hour adventures for GMs who want to have that specific narrative pacing, while simultaneously disincentivizing completing quests in a single rest for players. Personally, I see this as a fault, but I could see some people enjoying that specific tension. For me it goes back to D&D being a frequently too broad system that tries to do too many things - if it were more up front about what "adventures" are/should be, it would be less of a thing.
edit: to expand on this, abilities might limited to a per-scene or per-chapter basis, or last for a scene or a chapter, meaning you can plot out a story to happen over days or weeks without worrying about balancing for certain player abilities.
D&D is tied down by trying to be simulationist while also trying to be interesting everything else.
So your Fighters and Rogues and Clerics were all doing melee actions that did roughly the same damage or had roughly the same bonus effects, and the Wizards and Rangers were shooting arrows/magic that did basically the same things. Maybe things got more diverse at higher levels, but I just remember seeing similar abilities with higher numbers at higher levels.
Fighters prevented enemies from attacking the Rogue and Cleric, the Rogue did higher damage, and the Cleric had healing
Even before you choose a single ability, those classes all have different functions innately
EDIT: Also Rangers did more damage, while Wizards hit wider areas and imposed more negative effects on enemies.
It just felt like I could make five Fighters in 3.5 that were wildly different, but make five characters of five different classes in 4e and they'd all feel the same.
It didn't matter if they were technically different or that their abilities should/could be used in different ways, they felt the same. Actual facts rarely change how things feel.
That's the way most D&D characters feel to me regardless
So the difference wasn't much of one for me
This is why I like the scene / drama based re-ups from 13th Age (and other games) over the strict short-rest / long-rest stuff of 4e.
"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
Yeah, I think this is the crux of things for me. When I play D&D I want something that gives me really solid tactical combat, which 4e does better than other editions, imo. If I want a more story-driven rules-light to rules-medium game, I am simply going to use something designed to to do that from the ground-up without the hang-ups / legacy of D&D attached to it.
"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
Like if you said "what do you want out of Pendragon" well obviously I want Pendragon, it's comparatively narrow, it creates a more specific theme. I do think DnD is actually a very specific form of fantasy but it caters to a wide base of players with a wide array of desires, from "I like RP and acting!" to "I like reliving my youth of playing DnD!" to "I like tactical combat" to "I like hanging out with my mates and I am not so bothered beyond that, as long as it's intuitive and easy to play"
It did depart from the rather mangled and out-of-context traditions that define D&D yes.
But as another example of games that are good to actually play vs those good to read and theorycraft about: Contrast the at-the-table experience of looking up how a spell or ability works in 5th ed vs. 4th. To make 5th ed not completely grind to a halt every time someone wants to cast a spell I had to copy out the full text of every single spell every caster had onto cards (and my group was 2 druids, a bard, a cleric and a sorcerer). The way the 5th ed PHB is organized (it's User Experience to borrow an idea from my day job) is fucking atrocious.
It's the end of an in-game day. Characters are about to get their long rest. The casters need to decide what spells to have readied for the next day. The experience of doing that from the book involves constantly flipping back and forth between the by-class-and-level lists and trying to find the spell descriptions which are in one giant alphabetical list with all classes and levels mixed up. People were sometimes contemptuous of having the powers in 4th ed on cards but in 5th ed it is even more vital to play to have every goddamn spell on cards because the way the book is organized is so bad for actual play!
Maybe just use d&d beyond I suppose?
Yeah encounter powers and daily's that aren't super pointless (like cantrips in 5th) really helped with the 15-minute-workday problem that has been there since 1st ed (prior to 1st ed it wasn't such a problem as at low levels there was much less difference in melee between a Fighting Man and a Magic User). Much like the linear-fighter vs quadratic-wizard problem 5th ed brought it back and doubled down.
Obviously it's not out yet, but if you're interested in these conversations and theory and all that, who knows, maybe it would interest you as well.
One thing about that 4th ed took further than any edition of D&D is the difference between player characters with classes and powers vs common people. Society is not made up of people with powers. OD&D on up through 1st ed was designed with the core assumption that everyone in the world was in some sense "generated" using the rules for characters. They all had 3d6 for each stat in order. And it was fair to balance classes by making them way more powerful but require higher stats. If you are rolling "by the book" you had incredibly tiny odds of ever being a monk or bard or paladin. In 2nd ed you had maybe 50% odds of even qualifying to be a plain Fighter (the "dump class" being Thief).
I very much agree. D&D is today and always has been a game about killing monsters and getting treasure. You can role-play anything. But the game is about killing monsters and getting treasure. Full fucking stop. Of course the people selling D&D products have tried to push the notion that it is a universal RPG that can be used for anything but that is just not the case for the game mechanics.
With all tabletop RPGs the experience, whether it was a "good game" or was fun, is so overwhelmingly about the people you are playing with compared to the rather tiny contribution of the game mechanics that it is easy to overlook this.
People say things like "we went that entire session without any combat!" as if it was relevant to the question of what the game system of D&D is for. In that session if you substituted your D&D characters with those rolled up under the rules for GURPS or Rolemaster or One Ring or FATAL would it have made any difference? Did you actually engage with any of the systems written in the books in any way? I am sure that session was fun and a great experience for those involved but would it have been any less so with any other set of books on the table / numbers on the character sheets?
I think this is why I dislike 4e because man
I hate tactics videogames and 4e makes me understand when people like Scott Kurtz say "I love D&D but I would rather just skip all the combat".
It's not that I am all about role playing, just whenever I rolled initiative in 4e it felt like we stop telling a story and started doing a math quiz.
4e combat is extremely specific and granular, which is great for some people but it strips almost all improvisation and creativity out of it in my experience.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Well
I think it is about killing monsters and getting treasure in it's purest form, but these days I think it is about adventuring. And that is not so necessarily about killing monsters and getting treasure, it's about talking to people and doing investigations and so on, navigating natural obstacles etc. But largely yes. Like I think that it has moved on somewhat since AD&D but that's still the core thrust of much of the game. That said you can reasonably do a lot of non-combat stuff with the DnD system these days which you couldn't before, like most of the skills and a lot of low level spells and abilities and such. It is largely window dressing mind.
Also utility powers are right there
I think a lot of the conversation around it being more tactical is based around the fact that a lot of moves describe themselves in game terms rather than world terms
Like, the simple thing of being pushed back one square as opposed to five feet - that's absolutely the same in terms of end output, but one is couching itself in real world terms rather than completely staying within game terms
Lancer called out the ENnies for Blood in the Chocolate, which won in 2017. After getting a lame response they withdrew their nomination.
They were called out for even submitting Lancer in the first place but the explanation for that is pretty easy and boring.
All that is really just a lead-in for the author of Blood in the Chocolate completely disowning and apologizing for the product in what has gotta be one of the better internet apologies I've ever read.
I've been reading a lot of RPG stuff from the 70s lately. Every measurement in OD&D is in inches at the scale of miniatures being used. With some notes that in a dungeon 1 inch = 5 feet but outdoors 1 inch = quite a lot more (don't remember which). So it's exactly like the 1 square = 5 feet but without the convenience of a grid (since the wargames D&D comes from didn't have a grid).
only sorta metaphorically related to the discussion at hand, but I do too and it took me like two AAA releases and a couple of kickstarted games to make me realize that I didn't want tactical rtwp dungeon crawlers, what I really wanted were visual novels.
Yeah I think it's more accurate to say 4e is more explicitly gamist in feel. And that's something some people appreciate, and others don't.
Sorry, I don't know anything about the Ennies and I am not clear why it's a problem that Lancer was submitted
I was confused about the Blood in the Chocolate thing until I realized it was a Legend of the Flame Princess products. Fucking hell that whole product line is just FATAL with a facelift.
It's not. Lancer called out the ENnies for being shit and someone else was like, well why did you submit yourself for nomination, then? But the person from Lancer who submitted them wasn't part of the indie RPG scene before Lancer so he didn't know about the ENnies backstory.
5e has a way better aesthetic and descriptive writing, but it is extremely inconsistent with how it presents the important information, and 5e was sort of the reverse.
So just, like, give me both.
Give me Baldur's Gate style spell/ability descriptions.