There were some neat ideas in 4th at least.
I look at editions as toolboxes to draw from in my own game, and 4th had a few good tools to it. The forest might have been unwanted, but there were some pretty trees.
Man, I still think 4e’s at-will / encounter / daily powers were an interesting idea that made non-magical classes more fun to play, balance issues aside. People complained that it made the classes too samey, (which is a valid criticism). But damn, I want cool, once per day fighter abilities on par with a spell.
I also thought that the progression of class -> paragon path -> epic destiny was badass and really enhanced the storytelling aspect of a character.
I still like minions as a concept. Dinky little guys that have 1 HP but if ignored will still do a decent amount of damage?
Yeah it’s good stuff. Still rewards people for splitting fire too so suddenly it’s fine to attack zombie ABC even if your ally has already damaged zombie XYZ.
4th edition gets a lot of hate but I definitely enjoy borrowing things from it.
Meanwhile Pathfinder’s out there doing the royal bastard thing, just one mentor and magic sword away from becoming the chosen one.
I learned Adv and then got too lazy to ever upgrade my knowledge and books, so I still play that (with feats)
I kinda like super slow leveling. Less fucking around with books and more RP, magic items more impactful, every step up feels more special. But then ofc you’re still level three 8 games in
I used to play adv. back in the day. Also rules were more like guidelines anyway.
I feel like most people who hate on 4e didn’t play it much, but enjoy feeling like they’re part of the group.
Yeah, 4e doesn’t deserve the hate it gets. I found it much more mechanically engaging to play than 3.X or 5e.
4e was when WotC discovered D&D has a very large problem - it’s not allowed to change anything, for worse or better.
4e was when WotC discovered D&D has a very large problem - it’s not allowed to change anything, for worse or better.
This is true.
They’re so close to discovering dice pool with advantage/disadvantage.
I started thinking about a 5e hack that converts the whole thing to a dice pool system. Instead of 1d20+X, it’s Xd20. You can then have degree of success via “how many dice hit the number?” and degree of difficulty via “you have to hit X times”
There’s a ton of other stuff I’d love to see changed. Mostly around the adventuring day and only-spellcasters-get-cool-stuff
That’s why 4E is so good. 4E says “all adventurers are magic users. Having muscles so big they bend reality in your favour is magic. Being great at inspiring your team is magic. Being able to blend into the shadows so well you were never even there is magic. Nobody is a boring normal in this system.”
“Also here are abilities that recharge every encounter. Now you don’t have to worry about short rests.”
Well, I have good news! There’s a huge number of other systems out there, most of them are quite good, and there’s plenty of very interesting mechanical innovation going on. I encourage you to explore, D&D isn’t the only game in town. ;-)
people like to shit on 4e, but every time anyone tries to actually explain why it was bad it just makes me wish for it more.
The way they told me is that every class of 4th edition effectively had 2 builds.
Every level had 2 choices: one that fit your build and one that didn’t.
Choosing any option that wasn’t on the build was useless.
Then there is also something about cooldown abilities, which is hard to keep track of on boardgames.
Except cooldowns were extremely straightforward? You had at-will abilities (use as often as you want), encounter abilities (once per fight), and daily abilities (once per day). Easier than tracking spell slots.
