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| The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition http://www.worldworksgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=12988 |
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| Author: | punkrabbitt [ 03-18-2016, 11:37 PM ] |
| Post subject: | The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
I usually give 4th edition D&D a lot of bad press. I ran two separate campaigns (one for my adult friends, one for my kids) for about a year on and off I think, so I have a much better feel for it than 3.x/Pathfinder. But, given the format of the game, the thing I really liked was the "Delve" concept. Basically they were three related, programmed encounters. I would take published delves and reskin them to fit into my campaign world. Three sets of cardstock terrain is also easy to build between game sessions, as opposed to an entire campaign's worth at once because you never know when they will go the other way. It was also helpful that both the adult group and my kids were more intetested in killing things and taking their treasure than, say, hostage negotiations. |
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| Author: | oldschooldm [ 03-19-2016, 08:04 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
I'm a very terrain rich FLGS session of Out of the Abyss (5e), but using the "featured encounter" idea from 4e. No random encounters. Travel is between encounters is handwaved, sometimes with a simple resource depletion, but nothing more. (Though, there may be a significant on-the-road encounter, but only if plot demands.) Note: I milestone level my characters. I find this closely models modern episodic television: "We found a clue that Joe Smith was here." (Jump Cut). <knock knock>"Joe Smith, this is the LAPD...." As some are fond of saying: "Where are the monkeys? Get to the G*D* monkeys!" (Don't google that - I know I heard it several times on the Tome Show.) Let me say that when coming from the beloved fuzzy-as-hell AD&D direct to 4e, I thought it was awesome. BTW - More about my history is in a GeekDad post: http://geekdad.com/2016/02/custom-dunge ... er-screen/ |
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| Author: | Talae [ 03-19-2016, 08:36 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
I agree with your assessment. I personally think 4e gets a much worse reputation than it deserves. A big part of this is the poorly executed PR situation. We played 4e for years (with me DMing 99% of the time) and enjoyed it immensely. Each edition has things that I have pulled ideas from on how to run a game. For instance, the tiers of play in 4e helped to give me a framework to build my campaigns around. I was already doing it, but it was nice to have it called out specifically. Now I am not just doing this subconsciously. In my group, it also helped to codify teamwork as being better than hogging the limelight. Prior to 4e, my campaigns sometimes suffered from one or two players building characters as stat blocks with loopholes in mind. This led to them taking over in many situations and others falling into the background. It was not a major problem in my group, but it was an issue. 4e helped my players to find a way to see that the whole party is much more effective when they work together and build their characters with that in mind. The last thing that pops into my mind as positive from 4e, is that it gave a clear system of effects and got rid of "save or die" spells. My group has always been pretty tactically minded, but 4e honed that skill further and also, Save or Die spells can be fun for a player to use on a villain, but they are horrible for use against players. With all that being said, they are things that I have learned to make me a better DM and player, but I am perfectly content with 5e and have no intent to go backward to 4e. |
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| Author: | Ninevah [ 03-19-2016, 09:19 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
I won't hide the fact that I wasn't a big fan of 4th edition, but I will always acknowledge that it did a few things really well. And one of those was forcing the party to work together to defeat encounters. You really couldn't have one PC slaughter everything by himself, unlike most iterations of 3rd edition, including Pathfinder. Then again, I only played it for the first year or so that it was out, so things could have changed after the years went by and more and more book were released. I think a big part of why 4th ed was so heavily criticized is the way they presented it. The format of the books and the wording that they used just made it too easy to find the similarities between it and MMOs and board games. Some of the same elements or concepts were used in 3.5 books like the Book of Nine Cheeses...I mean, the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. The concept of abilities that are usable once per encounter is a great idea and seemed reasonable in the Tome of Battle. But the way it was presented in 4th ed just came across wrong to many. |
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| Author: | Magius [ 03-20-2016, 03:50 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
Personally, there were a lot of things that I liked and some things I didn't like about the system. I loved the Poison and Disease Track systems, which are the best models for these things in D&D certainly, and pretty top tier in RPGs in general, and the fact that everyone always had something cool they could do at any given time. Teamwork was very important, and it had hands-down the easiest encounter creation system of any of the games (Monster creation, on the other hand...). But the Skill Challenge system was wonky, and there were several clunky parts to it. To me, the biggest issue with 4e was the dichotomy between what the GM was told and what the players were told. If you looked at the GM side of things, you had this wonderful open world where you could try anything - swinging on a chandelier to get behind an opponent, kicking over a brazier to hurt and light some opponents on fire, etc, the GM's Guide had the guidelines for handling it. The players, on the other hand, were told throughout the Players Handbook that here's the box you get to play in and the cool toys you have in there to play with, with nothing to indicate that you could be creative in resolving encounters, thus giving it the illusion of being a Board Game or MMO, where you literally cannot color outside the lines. This, I think, is where most of the negative perception of 4e comes from - not the rules themselves, taken cohesively, but from the implications that it presents to players and GMs, which gave a false impression about what you could do with the rules. Of course, blatantly telling the fanbase that Role Playing in a Role Playing Game is doing it wrong is certain to raise some players ire no matter how good the system is. |
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| Author: | UHF [ 04-05-2016, 09:48 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
I was a big fan of 4e. The best situations were when you could bust the action out into 3D, i.e. walls, ledges, terrain variety. This worked best with a party of mobile strikers. The biggest downsides were sensitivity to grind, and hyper sensitive leveling of encounters. Running encounters was a task to keep straight, but I noticed that issue creeps in as Pathfinder levels up (starting >7th level or so). 5th has been a real pleasure to run, and my players are wanting more. There's been no grind issues, or difficulties in designing encounters. Many issues with early 4e were sorted and adapted to in 5e. (Like, Dragon legendary resistance, which keeps a single party member from locking down the Dragon.) I feel that 5th, like 4th, has lost some of the 'magic' feeling you get from a fantasy game. Pathfinder still has that. I think if there was an update to Pathfinder, I'd want it to switch over to a 5e style feat system. Still some of my best and most memorable action was 4e. |
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| Author: | Magius [ 04-05-2016, 01:25 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
Regarding the 'magic' of the system, I feel that Pathfinder has lost it, and 5e still has it (though I'd love to see a few more options come out for 5e, particularly with class archetypes and backgrounds). While Pathfinder still has a huge range of builds to explore, there's so much minutiae to it that I tend to get lost in the mechanics, and nothing really jumps out at me as saying, "This just works brilliantly!" anymore - and a large part of that is that I've played a tonne of games in the system. Granted, 5e still weighs in more on the mechanical rather than the magical side of things, but it's certainly a fair step closer, IMO than 3e and Pathfinder are. 4e, on the other hand... I think it's probably both the best and the worst in that regard. The best in terms that a good group and good GM could really turn it into a brilliant campaign with some truly unique moments in the story - but a mediocre GM or group taking the books at face value would have one of the least magical experiences in gaming with everything running by the book with no real creativity or excitement. |
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| Author: | tiles [ 04-12-2016, 07:46 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Thing I Really Liked About D&D 4th.Edition |
Skill challenges were a concept that worked really well at our table. We resolved many abstract situations with creative storytelling and mechanics that (after much experimentation) worked for us. |
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