4th Edition D&D Explained - The Dungeoncast Ep.389

[@religionintherealms]

Diggy here with an answer, TLDR: It is speculated that WotC wanted to have a fresh start in the Realms not burdened by past lore and expectations. I have nothing concrete for you both. The Spellplague was the means to that end. As we know, this was not well-received. I kid a bit, but caution to anyone who utters the word "Spellplague" in any Realms community. I don't know why WotC jumped the setting of the Forgotten Realms one hundred years in the future. There is definitely speculation around it. What is concrete is that in two preview books for 4e, the design team explained their reasonings and directions for the edition. The names of the books are: "Wizards Presents - Worlds and Monsters" and "Wizards Presents - Races and Classes." In Worlds and Monsters James Wyatt explains his dislike for the Great Wheel. Why the World Axis was going to be the model going forward (even though the Realms did not use the Great Wheel in 3e but that's a tangent). From a creative standpoint there appeared to be a dissatisfaction with how things were currently established. Indeed, that is reflected with how often 4e lore conflicts with established ideas and lore from 3e back. I have seen it speculated that by jumping the setting so far forward, you essentially got a reboot on the setting. A fresh start. A new canvas. Folks coming into the setting did not have to be burdened with the weight of lore from 3e back (not to mention the novels). It was bad enough that the 4e mechanics and framing were making grognards and past fans hot under the collar. Now you've gone and drastically shifted a beloved setting to such an extent that all you ended up doing was truly pissing Realms fans off. In the Realms circles I frequent, hardly any old fan is willing to give either 4e (the game) or the Spellplague era a fair shake.

[@Thedungeoncast]

Thank you Diggy! This adds a lot to the episode. I'm gonna pin this comment!

[@Thedungeoncast]

Shout out to the Spellplague

[@davidrobertson5996]

I think there's a lot to love in 4e, especially varied statblocks of increasing strength for creatures. If it's not your jam, don't play. DnD is a broad enough church for everyone, I think.

[@JustFilmAlready]

Definitely I like that it’s better combat and you can throw some rp in it as well and make it balance. But being combat heavy makes it my go to for DMing imo 5e is cool too but 4e is my shi

[@danhooper3723]

@@JustFilmAlready Different combat. Not necessarily better. I have a completely different take on DMing. 4e remains my least favorite system to DM. Sure, combat action was dynamic, but it never flowed well because of one of the worst action economies of any DnD system. DM low levels its fine, but it goes downhill high heroic tier and falls completely off in paragon tier. I know essentials helped that out a bit, but I was long gone from the system well before the essentials release. minions - bad, action points - bad, heavy on bonus and conditional modfiers bad, reliance on character optimization- bad (i.e. because of monster math for paragon and above). I did like the bloodied and healing surge mechanic, and the many source books were well laid out and edited and the art and RP flavor were top-notch. But mechanically, it was a fumble.

[@OlympusPublicAffairs]

Real ones have seen this notification twice.

[@cernunnos_lives]

I'm as fake as my GFs chest

[@jacksonashworth150]

So true XD

[@justinmypants782]

I have been eagerly awaiting this episode ever since you mentioned it being on the Patreon Poll. I've been playing D&D since 2nd edition. 4E is my favorite by far, it's not even close. It was the first edition that I DMed, and am still running a 4E game with my friends (though I just DMed my first 5E game for my kids, almost killed the Bard, good times). I loved how it slaughtered so many sacred cows and tried to do something completely different from what came before it. But I understand how such a vast departure from previous editions would cause others to hate it. "Fun" fact; there was supposed to be a WotC VTT for 4E. If you have an early printing of the DMG, you can find adverts for it. There's even some alpha footage of it floating around the web. But it just kind of disappeared. The ads suddenly vanished and WotC just stopped talking about it. Turns out, the project lead got a bit murdery. Killed his wife and himself. WotC ended up scrapping the whole thing.

[@corymorse4271]

One of the best sessions I ever played in was 4E. We came upon a dilemma fight where we were supposed to choose to save children or a merchant. We split the party and did both. It was the first time I ever got to do wizard stuff without interfering with the paladin and we rocked both encounters simultaneously.

[@Viceroux]

There are boss fights I cooked up for 4e games many years ago that I still cannot quite get right in 5th. I miss the d&d raid bosses 😢

[@LittleCrowYT]

4TH EDITION EPISODE!!! 4E FANS OUT TIME US NOW!

[@mikeg8564]

There are dozens of us, DOZENS!

[@brucewhite8614]

By far my favorite. Slowly building my collection of books and getting ready for a new campaign. Even when hosting 5e I bring most of my research from 4

[@adampetra7865]

I am incredibly surprised D&D Miniatures weren't mentioned. I played during the 3.5 turning into 4e days; and I will still shout from the hills that that's the reason why they made 4e how it was. They were pushing out a mini game with Wizkids that was a lot of fun. They wanted to tie the constant stream of new minis to their book company for more incoming money. As y'all mentioned, once everyone has the core rule books, where do you go? Minis, the answer was minis; that could be used in the tabletop game; as well as having a mini battle game on the side.

[@Arcboltkonrad13]

Still my favorite edition! Love the system to bits.

[@FMD-FullMetalDragon]

My favorite as well.

[@hoodtralfeckfrom_elanthia6846]

At last the 4th edition explained episode !!! Been waiting for this

[@LittleCrowYT]

Second comment cause I finally got around to finishing the whole episode: Even at around an hour, you stl only touched on a very surface level overview of 4e. Like you mentioned in this episode, while very barebones at first, 4e would come to have such a rich and diverse library of lore. One of my favourites was the way it dove I to and expanded upon Spirits, Animism, and Spiritual ideologies in a way that felt fresh and unique. It's also not something I've seen before or since in a ttrpg, though I'm sure there's something out there that treats Spirits with as much reverence as 4e did. I could talk about - and sing the praises of - 4e until my last breath, because I feel that it was treated far too harshly by d&d fans, even if I understand a lot of that ire. I hope y'all will do future episodes on different aspects of 4e and share that richness with your audience, because I would love to see a revival of the setting and mechanics.

[@TweaksDIRT]

I even converted the Alexandrian's rules for Hex Crawling to good success.

[@TweaksDIRT]

What I find fascinating at least in as someone that should have picked up 4th edition a long time ago. Is that most people say it's not a role-playing game? Any game can be a role-playing game. If Candela obscura can put out a rule system that's awful and most the time as I'm running it, I'm basically just LARPing. 4e can do it as well. How it resolves skill checks and varying them up in social situations. I don't know what game they were playing for those that played it back in the day. But the transition to 4th edition has been probably the easiest one. The powers all being upfront is such a great design and layout choice. I am using it in my version of a BRP game. The balance monster design for 4th edition is so great!. It's just a great addition that nobody played and if they did they just complained too much. Yes, the skirmish aspect is really interesting, but that's the fun part and especially if you have a group that knows what they're doing. It flows so much faster than 5th. To me at least. And having the disengage/shift away for opportunity attacks has been great. Pcs are no longer wasting a whole action to do so. Sorry, I apologize. I know you're supposed to have the comment section for cool things, but I just love this Edition.

[@jsantos1183]

I aways enjoyed Will showing his fondness and respect for 4E. As a 4E Enjoyer, this video was an automatic like lol To me, a really underrated edition. Design-wise, ahead of it's time Love your work, guys! Shout out to Demogorgon! Or, in my Brazilian portuguese: Salve, Demogorgon!

[@ericksemones9681]

Hell yeah! The episode we've all been waiting for.

[@xeternalxdreamsx]

Ooooh, I betcha William gonna love explaining this one. 😉

[@kozmo7]

I would pay money to have this done for all the other D&D editions and who knows, maybe a pathfinder

[@jonathanl3945]

The lack of unified defenses in other d20 games drives me nuts. It’s counterintuitive and a waste of word count. Bonuses to accuracy can’t just be “attack,” they have to be “attacks and save DC.” Likewise, you can’t just say “defenses,” you have to say “AC and saving throws.” It’s not a ton of words, but this comes up a lot, and it adds up.

[@cdr1179]

That dog in Van Wilder was hilarious OMG 😂 Edit: when started dming I started watching Matthew Covile for dm advice and he showed his love for 4e a lot and even suggested using 4e mechanics to make 5e better one of them being skill challenges. I love your guys videos so much and I think Ilian and Beern might start making cameo appearances in my games lol. Also SHOUT-OUT TO DEMOGORGON!!!!

[@jordanharrison249]

I miss the old ritual casting 😢 My home group allows any spell 1/3 your highest spell level can be casted as a ritual in an arcane circle. Example: I am a lvl5 wizard, I can cast any 1st level spell as a ritual in an arcane circle.

[@Walupof]

As always, great episode! I can't see anyone I know being willing to learn 4e for a campaign, but I'd definitely give it a try if the opportunity arose! And Illian and Beern entering 4e was very entertaining! It was also awesome being a patron and getting to vote for this topic!

[@KhanConComedy]

I do actually agree with the criticism of not all classes getting their subclasses at level 1. The fact that the level you get your subclass is different across classes is also an arbitrary choice that is confusing to new players. I remember being baffled by that when I started playing 5E, and it was my first TTRPG. I think simple subclass features or simple versions of the subclass features you get at level 3 should be moved to 1st level. Maybe like only having one maneuver for a Battle Master at level 1 with three uses of it, let the players ease into what their subclass will come to be.

[@justinmichael9043]

Great episode! I think the best level to introduce new players to the game is level 4. I think it’s important to have a sub-class so that you can introduce some of the flavor and fantasy that they might be looking for, and the stat increase or feet at level four makes them more durable. I think that level one and two are actually more fun for veteran players because these levels can be very dangerous. One attack can kill a lot of level one characters. My last campaign I started the players at level three and we had a lot of fun; the next one, that we are just about to start, we will begin at level one. I ran a one shot for five new players and I started them at level four. I think it was two months later I ran another one shot for the same group and I gave them level nine characters and they had so much fun with all the different abilities that they had. I think that it’s important to teach the game with a level of simplicity, but if you keep players at that low level for too long, they will miss the power fantasy, and it will fail to capture their imagination. I obviously can’t speak for every table, but I would have to disagree with Will’s assertion that players running XP rules might stay at low levels for eight sessions. If you look at the XP chart, or take a look at the first chapter of the campaign Tyranny of Dragons, the players can reach level two before they even make it through the town, and should be at level three before they head out on the next quest to the cultist camp. One of the reasons I love that campaign is how wonderfully it lays out all the different ways players can gain experience points.

[@Mordalon]

4e's heavy pushing of Elementals along with it's timing being in response to WoW reminds me how Cataclysm also was heavily about Elementals. And while I understand the positives of giving creatures a bunch of different stat blocks for different variants and levels of play, that also does feel very "gamey" to me especially with WoW as the comparison. WoW often reuses the same basic enemy types with 2-3 variants and with upgraded versions all along the leveling progression. Like in WoW the generic Fire Elemental model got used all the way from the beginning levels to endgame, usually with just just the color of their flame tweaked.

[@thomasarcher2108]

Don't mess with the OLG

[@prestongarner8796]

Can you guys talk about some more different domains of dread in the shadowfell and domains of delight in the Feywild?

[@dirk_gently]

I worked at PAX in 2009. The guy I shared a hotel room with wouldn't go out to do things after/ before con work because it got in the way of his WOW raid schedule. Insane

[@rpghorrorstories]

The reason they got rid of the Elemental Planes was because a lot of the time, they were too limiting. Until you're higher level, three of the four were basically instant-death. That said, getting rid of the planes was a bad move, I would have kept them and just made them the extreme ends of the Elemental Chaos.

[@Raidanzoup]

Relistening to this on here because the version streamed on my podcast app rolled a 1 halfway through. I appreciate the work you guys do making the podcast an enjoyable listen even without the video. Also shoutouts to DC's Convergence being like... a decade ago now?

[@Haunted_Gallows]

Sick double notifications. One for each of Demogorgon's heads. SHOUTOUT to Demogorgon. Shoutout to the Spellplague.

[@cobyhowarth4178]

"I feel built differently"

[@dirk_gently]

You lightly touched on it, but I always thought the thing that killed 4e was how it was clearly meant for a VTT (which would have been WAY ahead of the curve). The way it needed a grid to really play and the fact that the dnd VTT never showed up really made 4e tricky to play. Harder to do theater of the mind when you have to track a bunch of 5 foot pushes.

[@Aurelius-bf3yx]

I have absolutely had the start at level 3 argument with my DM before, It's definitely best to start at lv 3 but some DMs are just really set in the mind set of the beginning starts at lv 1

[@ectowolf203]

Should have waiting for the 400th episode

[@michaelbohannon527]

I'll make another in a minute. But about leveling. The DMG says if you are playing with hard exp, your players should level up every game session, or at most every two. Doesn't matter what level. 1-2, one session. 19-20, two sessions. Hard exp leveling should be fast and crunchy.

[@crowwithteeth7693]

its finally here!!!!

[@billedens4749]

I stopped paying at 4e. It is the only edition that I don't own any material from. I had been playing since the 70's but started to get fed up when I spent a bunch of money on 3E only to have it quickly replaced by 3.5E. I begrudgingly bought the 3.5E stuff which was expensive and painful because you had just learned a new system and then had to re-learn it with slight modifications so it was difficult to remember which version of the rules was in play. Then just 3 years after 3.5E was released there were rumors of 4E with the official announcement coming about a year after that. It was too much for me so I just didn't buy in. I got back in during 5E because my kids were old enough to play and it had always been a dream of mine to DM my kids. Still playing and will probably play for a long time to come.

[@albertonunez2045]

I really preferred the customization in 4e over the simpler character options of 5e. But I could see how newer people, or people who don't like memorizing a bunch of stuff would prefer 5th

[@doom2492]

AT LONG LAST! Fill my brain with the 4e knowledge!

[@loganmcgee18]

This is a moment, y'all! I was here for it

[@geoffreyperrin4347]

Love this!

[@Haunted_Gallows]

Genuinely, I've played pretty much every edition of D&D at least a couple of sessions, and the only ones that aren't very fun in my opinion are 1st and 2nd. 3rd on are a blast, each for their own reasons. D&D is fun. Folks seem to forget that sometimes.

[@dungeonology622]

4E wasn't perfect, but there's a lot about it I wish was in 5E and I often homebrew 4E-style monsters, terrain, and magic items into my games I DM.

[@ThatPrettyBMF]

I agree with Brian: Just start at a higher level. It's not a big deal.

[@andirach]

For myself & my circle of players, you hit the nail on the head. If 4e had just not insisted on butchering the Forgotten Realms, tearing the world, history, and lore to pieces. The rules weren't bad, and a lot of fun in different ways. It was the destruction of decades of love & work that was the line in the sand

[@DrMetropolis]

They should have fossilized the Realsm, since its fans hate change to that dull setting. The Dawn War and the Axis was awesome for me,as I always hate the Wheel.

[@andirach]

@DrMetropolis I have zero problems with change via evolution. The Time of Troubles, another edition change, was a lot of fun & very interesting. The change to the planar structure wasn't a problem - that is not only easy to deal with, but opens new possibilities. I actually prefer the Elemental Chaos to the mess of para & quasi planes. The only real problem I had was the retconning that occurred. The blatant disrespect & disregard for what already existed. I bought many of the 4e books & cannibalized some rules that I liked. I use the Realms as a setting because I'm not a teenager anymore with unlimited time to write my own setting from scratch

[@TweaksDIRT]

Is there going to be more coverage of 4th edition? I know the new players handbook is the new hotness but older editions are really good or Tales of the Valiant for that matter

[@Rinavani]

2 mins into the video I knew WoW would come up lol. Been playing since launch.

[@kingmasterlord]

if 4e was released as a standalone game instead of shoehorning mechanics into an existing system it would have done better

[@Arcboltkonrad13]

I don't think it would have. Look at all the "big" RPGs on the market today - 5e, PF2e, Call of Cthulhu, and Vampire the Masquerade. All of the big ones are "legacy" or are a new edition of a successful spinoff of a previous edition of one of the legacy RPGs. Now if 4e were released TODAY I think it would do far better, but under a different name? I don't think it would, and that includes it keeping the mechanics it has.

[@kingmasterlord]

@@Arcboltkonrad13 it was a radical departure from previous editions with lore and mechanics. wizards, like you, erroneously felt the only way to be successful was to leech off of previous success and tied the system to d&d where it became the least favorite variant and quickly forgotten. when it _could_ have been a legacy system all its own by now if they had the balls to take a risk back then.

[@Tomatowormprince]

My condolences for having Cataclysm be your introductory experience to WoW Will 😭.

[@randomusernameCallin]

I am glad they did not include a skill tree system. I hate those in RPG be they table top or video game. Too many times I had to waste a level up because of a skill tree tax.

[@spacefork7296]

2007 would be President George Dubbyah Bush.

[@TweaksDIRT]

4e is my favorite version of DnD. 5e for me is really is just boring in comparison.

[@SerifSansSerif]

Again? Why was the other taken down?

[@Thedungeoncast]

Audio and video were out of sync on the original drop.

[@vechcron]

How bout a 2nd Ed episode yall must learn about the Gygaxian age

[@luisaguillon7201]

ITS BACK

[@ZachScouten1218]

So even though I'm not a fan of 4e I now have a better understanding of the edition. As far as video games go the f2p Neverwinter is designed in 4e style.

[@Thedungeoncast]

I played the Neverwinter MMO and honestly it feels and plays nothing like 4e. It does share some class and power concepts though.

[@ZachScouten1218]

Fair. As a 3.5 and 5e player I wasn't sure. Thank you for informing me. I would prefer to know things and be corrected than be ignorant.

[@dirk_gently]

4E was fun. Haters gonna hate, ya know?

[@Thedungeoncast]

Correction, 4e is STILL fun 😊

[@dirk_gently]

@@Thedungeoncast 100%. If I could find people willing to play it, I'd do it! I'm the only "hey, fourth was good!" person in my group. :(

[@mistergoats4380]

4e boo ya

[@mr.smithsgovermentclass4556]

What happened to doing Pathfinder lore? Or is DnD off the hook?

[@Thedungeoncast]

More is coming this summer.

[@surewhynot2156]

Generic comment

[@myautobiographyafanfic1413]

So... It's a wargame?

[@destonlee2838]

4th edition doesn't need an explanation. It simply owes us an apology.

[@francescobarbaro7575]

Imo, we as TTRPG players owe an apology to 4e.