What Happened with 4th Edition D&D?

Episode 80! I had a patron ask request some insight into why people dislike 4e so much. So I made a video explaining some of the changes that happened.
Forgot to mention Helm died, which made a few people upset.
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[@Jorphdan]

Mike Mearls twitter thread twitter.com/mikemearls/status/1039023845145894913

[@citycrusher9308]

The ''nostalgia'' accusation is bunk. The rules of sports games being changed will be bucked by fans and not because they are ''nostalgic'' for the old rules. You change the rules of baseball, you are no longer playing baseball.

[@rebilacx]

Mike Mearls is the worst game designer Wizards has had.

[@shoogagoogagunga4350]

I'm going to agree with Trevor Cormier and ClandestineOstrich. Jorphdan, you say in the video that "people were holding on to nostalgia." Yet your own entire video up to that point is an outline of the ways that the change to 4th edition sucked. You noted real, tangible problems -- such as the over-reliance on a battlemat and miniatures, and people not wanting to play a MMORPG simulator at the table. You also hit on the fact that 4th edition classes are "samey," although you didn't use that word. It's the idea that they all have powers, all roughly doing the same damage, all roughly behaving the same way. You can't outline all these issues and then say, "but really it's just nostalgia." People had very plain and obvious issues with 4th edition. Your own video shows this to be the case. And yes, I also agree with ClandestineOstrich that if people were just nostalgic and refusing to change, then 5th edition would have failed too. Instead, it's wildly popular. People are open to change. They just want a game that fits them, feels right. 5th edition did that.

[@LordSathar]

The real thing that happened is they kinda pulled the curtain back to far to show the nuts and bolts of what game design actually is. If you game design, you stop thinking of things in terms of this is a Arcane Lightning to destroy the dragon, but more like this does 25 dmg on average and most monsters have 40 HP at the Level character gets the spell, so all spells need to do about this 25 damage but have some effect added to it. 4e was pretty blatant about that for all classes, and the illusion was blown.

[@TheOrganicartist]

​@@LordSathar the real issue is the clumsy nature of the similarity, you can achieve 25 average damage with multiple die types combined with modifers & 'damage over time'. they'll all do 25 average damage but have a different feel. Also every class having a once a round/turn/day power sure makes things EASIER to balance (and reduce whining from unimaginative players about balance, just look at any response to any balance patch made to any RTS game for type of comments i am talking about, humans exist on a spectrum) but it reduces the richness of the possibilities, and in an effort to make D&D accessible to 'the-every-person' it was homogenized into blandness. 5th Ed Fixes some of this but casters are still too boring, i don't care if my wizard can cast fire bolt every round (despite most gamers complaining i just want to be a wang-rod player and geez i'm not satisfied with being able to cast so much.?..) when what i WANT is wizards to be interesting again, give me variety and adaptability and reduce my damage - if all i cared about was killing monsters i'd play a fighter like most murder hobos that complain that wizards are broken (when , with variety and richness to spell descriptions like in 2nd ed (the Descriptions, not the power necessarily, magic & the world characters are allowed to interact in is such low rez detail its like experiencing d&D in 4k (2nd edition), 3rd shook thing up and added complexity but also clarified many things, and then 4th brought resolution down to 360p for bandwidth purposes to broadcasting/sell to as many people as possible , and with 5th edition we're back to around 720p - i am still very under whelmed. tired some adventurer league and some online 5th ed games and the world feels like i'm in a house where everything is covered in hard plastic except for a few things that i'm allowed to interact with. another way to put it 4th ed = A Michael Bay Film (lots of explosions and action, not a lot of plot) 5th ed = M. Night Shyamalan film ( supernatural plot, some good scenes can be found, but generally underwhelming but markets well to general audiences looking for 'an experience' 'because it happened to be playing near by')

[@darkowl9]

I've only played 5e but I have a whole load of 4e books that I inherited. The 4e books are far more interesting to me; it provides a _lot_ of flavour and has suggested strategies for enemies, and is just better at helping you with worldbuilding and scene setting. 5e is extremely pared down by comparison.

[@elgatochurro]

Ive felt this too, 5e stsrts me off woth a making a multiverse and bmstarting out i wanted to know what kubda wirld dnd itself was, forgitten realms

[@phillipalleva-cox3903]

Give 4e a try, it’s still my favorite edition of the game, flaws and all.

[@Forsaken927]

You will probably never see this reply, but I love 4e and my players love it as well (although, I haven't given them much of a choice in the matter). Two of the many things I like with 4E are the survivability (if this is even a word) of each character and "Roles" that they play. Roles pretty much make your character shine on whatever they do and in combat one can actually tell the differences. Survivabilty is huge in 4E, as a DM i'm not really afraid of throwing a few level 6-7 monsters to my level 3-4 party members knowing that with strategy they can overcome the challenge and survive the encounters. I'd say give it a try, you may be surprised of how fun it can be (encounter can be long but with strategy and good positioning they can be really fun).

[@Audiotrocious]

4E books are great especially for lore and flavor

[@Nexusofgeek]

I agree

[@jaredstreet8562]

Have always had a good laugh at people saying the 4e rules (or any ruleset) has some determination on how you can role play.

[@MrNetWraith]

Especially since the "roleplay system" that 3e uses is literally just "make a D20 check against a DC score and apply your skill bonus/penalty" - which is the exact same system 4e uses! The only difference is that 3e's "social skills" are Bluff, Diplomacy, Gathering Information, Innuendo, Intimidate and Sense Motive, whilst 4e's "social skills" are Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, and Intimidation, with Insight basically subsuming Gather Information and Sense Motive whilst Innuendo was dropped.

[@jamieadams2589]

So rolling initiative for conversations doesn't disrupt the flow of rp to you?

[@kosatochca]

@@jamieadams2589 oh, it’s in the raw? I’m currently playing 4e, which is mostly because our DM wants to set the campaign in this system. And well, we have made some considerable tweaks to combat and flow of the plot

[@jamieadams2589]

@@kosatochca yeah. It's probably the most commonly ignored mechanic but conversations count as skill challenges which are done in initiative

[@dougfile6644]

Conversations are not skill challenges. You are free to have conversations with NPCs without rolling any dice. Or you can ask for a single die roll. Skill challenges are a 3rd option you have available. Skill challenges allow multiple characters to get involved rather than just the party member with the biggest modifier making a single die roll. They encourage creative thinking and teamwork Far from making conversations awkward, 4e allowed for more different types of conversations and more roleplaying opportunities

[@MisterWretham]

That was THE slickest plug for something that I didn't know I really wanted.

[@r4z0rv1n3]

As a person who's played since 2e, I think the big reason for hate on 4e was how different the shift was between the editions compared to the 2e to 3e shift. The 2e to 3e shift was so much more about bringing the 2e players along for the ride. For those of you who weren't around, the original printing of the 3e core books were super super cheap so as to soften the blow of the new system. There also was a really cheap pamphlet for sale that was designed to help you convert over 2e characters to 3e rules. It also helped that they were strongly committed to respecting all that had come before lore wise. Yeah new things were introduced to the core of the game such as Sorcerers and Half-Orcs becoming a core book race. But those things were treated as they had always been there and folded naturally into the Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms the two most popular settings. While 3e did cut down significantly on the campaign settings that Wizards directly supported(2e was the hey day of campaign settings for D&D) the Open Gaming License caused a whole slew of 3rd party Settings to appear( some excellent examples of 3rd party 3e settings include Midnight by Fantasy Flight, Kalamar by Sword and Sorcery, and Ptolus by Malhavoc Press.) and even allowed the Ravenloft Campaign setting, which wasn't being directly supported by Wizards at the time, to continue on under management by White Wolf's, Sword and Sorcery, imprint. The Rule set also didn't change so drastically, yes there were things like Thac0 disappearing and AC becoming a positive not a negative number. But a lot of those changes were kind of things that people had started doing at their tabletops already. Also the 2e to 3e shift had come after a very very long 2e life cycle. A change was feeling needed if not inevitable. 4e on the other hand was significantly different when it came to the shift between editions. Lets start with time in between editions. If you count 3e and 3.5 as one edition then it lasted eight years to 2e's eleven years. 3.5 was a slight but a very significant change in 3rd editions ruleset. There was a similar revision in 2nd edition in reprinting the 2e rules. BUT the 2e revision was way way smaller and almost imperceptible to only the most versed in 2e rules. However 3.5 was different enough that a lot of people saw it as a different game than 3.0 so if you see that as it's own separate edition then that's a five year time between editions. Either way both gaps were smaller than the 2e to 3e edition changes. This seemed way to fast to 3rd edition fans, and then the other things started piling up. 4e's rule changes were such an overhaul that beyond ability scores the game itself wasn't even recognizable as the same ruleset unlike the shift between 2e to 3e. There was no attempt to bring the 3rd edition players along for the ride either. There was no conversion pamphlet for 3e characters to become 4e characters. It didn't help that the devs at the time seemed to be taking great pleasure in how different 4e was going to be. The old lore was tossed aside in favor of "streamlining the system." Stuff like the cosmology being thrown into a blender(example the Inner Planes being simply thrown together into a singular Elemental Chaos.) Old monsters and lore being tossed aside as "clunky or pointless" Instead of having a campaign setting baked into the core rules they attempted a more open campaign idea for the core rules called "Points of Light" taking the lore of older editions and mashing them together into a Frankenstein's monster of what they thought were the best ideas from older editions and basically telling DM's to build their campaigns around smaller individual places and build the world outwards on their own. (I don't hate the Points of Light idea in the abstract cause it's basically a build your own homebrew world built into the system. But I understand why some people hated it.) And then the MMO inspired rules... I understand why it was done but it was such a departure from what came before it's not really a shock that so many people balked at them. Balance was the name of the game... and I get what they were trying to do, but It also felt super boring as hell as no matter what your class was characters generally felt super samey compared directly to each other. It didn't help that the OGL still existed and that Paizo who printed the Dungeons and Dragon magazines decided to try their hand at doing what Wizards had opted not to do and create basically d&d 3.75 which you may know as Pathfinder which is an excellent system by the way. It was immensely popular among 3rd edition fans and probably contributed to 4th edtions short lifespan. I will say personally I didn't hate everything about 4e character creation was super super easy and fast. I loved the introduction of Warlords, Warlocks, Teiflings, and Dragonborn. But those small things aside the game itself was so different that me and most of my groups eventually moved over to Pathfinder after giving it the good old college try.

[@PandemoniumVice]

Definitely understand the concept of having spent a lot of money on 3.5 and feeling gut-punched when 4 came out. I had something like 30 books. Mostly 3.5 DnD, but a handful of compatible peripherals like Dragonmech.

[@rebilacx]

The reason they jumped to 4th edition so quickly is because for some reason they made the 3E OGL so open that anyone could make their own game based on D20, which allowed their biggest competitor Pathfinder to make a better game based off Wizards system.

[@rogerwilco2]

Pathfinder was a reaction to 4e, not the cause of 4e. It was when WotC janked the licences for Dungeon and Dragon magazine from Paizo, and excluded them from 4e, that Paizo had to scramble to come up with a way to survive. That attempt at survival turned into Pathfinder. The way that WotC killed the entire ecosystem supporting the hobby in the run up to 4e, with Gleemax and the Digital Initiative, make that 4e was hated before any books hit the shelves.

[@parmesanzero7678]

What do you mean quickly?

[@Ven_detta_]

That doesn't make sense. Pathfinder was literally a counter to 4e

[@arbiterskiss6692]

I read this statement a number of times, but it makes much more sense in 2023, after thr OGL debacle.

[@ralphhieke7087]

What fewer people realize, was that 4e felt very “gameist” because WotC were making their first foray into VTT. The game was designed around the fact that it would be accompanied by a money-making VTT, but the lead designer of the VTT (who came from Microsoft I think) had some personal/mental issues and had a complete breakdown during which he did some very bad things from what I understand, and so that half of the project came to a screeching halt. Without the other half of the game, the difference in mechanics from previous editions didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and so were criticised by many players of previous editions. I wonder if the same will happen with OneD&D? Hopefully without any designers having mental breakdowns of course.

[@ChaoticTabris]

About FR i remember that in interviews back in the day developers mentioned how they didn't see a central theme in Forgotten Realms. They had a lot of pressure from players to release an update of the setting but the whole setting didn't fit with their design philosophy for settings resulting on what was almost a reboot of the whole thing. In my opinion the big problem was an inability to understand the draw of sandbox settings and a focus on settings with a central theme and a concept that separated them further from classical fantasy. Dark Sun, Eberron and the Nantir Vale (the sorta official setting for 4e) all fit into this design philosophy while FR did not. To make matters worse the decision to soft reboot setting was very badly received by the original creator Ed Greenwood and by arguably the best selling author of D&D novels R. A. Salvatore. Salvatore would stop working for Wizards entirely during that time and was understandably enraged at the company for killing 90% of the cast of characters from his books and completely changing the setting. In the end the new version of FR was badly received by fans of the setting and was only moderately successful with the minority of players that subscribed to Wizards design philosophy. Needless to say, when both 4e and it's FR reboot undersold heavily and they changed their design philosophy for 5e the first thing they did was calling Greenwood and Salvatore back to lead the return of the setting to the older sandbox philosophy.

[@SRondeau]

Basically Hasbro did to FR with 4E what JJ Abrams/Alex Kurtzman did to Star trek Cannon and Johnson did with SW Ep 8? lolllll :P It might have peeved older fans, but got new ones interested in those universes. I thought the idea of Mystra being killed on her own plane where the god of Divination also lived and should have seen things coming was idiotic. But hey. If some had fun with 4E FR, good for them. I created my own timeline from 1380 + without the sundering and my players love it. To each his own. :)

[@donkeysaurusrex7881]

What is Nantir Vale?

[@ChaoticTabris]

@@donkeysaurusrex7881 It was sort of the official 4e setting. It was a really smaller area fitting on their whole ideas of points of light in a dark world that could be used independently or just dropped into any other setting if you want.

[@benwootton2544]

I started playing with 4e, and I had a good time with it... for a while. After a few adventures (all of which I DM'd) I stopped playing. A few years later, I joined a new group that played 5e, and I was a player for the first time. In my experience, It doesn't really matter what game you are playing as long as you have the right group. I do want to revisit 4e with a better group, and more experienced players. My biggest problem with 4e was my group. No matter what game you are playing it's no fun if half of your group doen't want to be there and you end up in an unhealthy relationship with one of your players.

[@SniperHarry]

I have played through every single change that D&D has had. (Yes, I'm that old.) I started Arneson and Gygax's first rule set and went to the boxes, AD&D, and so on. The 4e rules were the least D&D rpg like rules yet. They were a great game, but the weren't D&D as it was back when. That is what I feel so many didn't like. I played 4e and 3.5 at the same time with two different groups. The 3.5 group were more 'traditional' roll-players, where the 4e group were 'gamers.' I think many of the points made in this video were spot on. It's not that 4e was bad: it's just not what a lot the D&D players liked or wanted in the game.

[@bocconom]

I fully agree. I am an old timer myself though I started a little later than you with the AD&D version when it was the only version there was.

[@DolkkarToyznstuff]

I'm right there with you!

[@jekubfimbulwing5370]

As some one who started on the Red Box with Basic D&D, when you were pretty much just playing Lord of the Rings under a different name, I agree with you wholeheartedly. 4th ed was for "Gaming", 3.5 for "Role Playing".

[@ticklecrazy1]

What do you think about 5e?

[@ryanjones_rheios]

To be offensively hyperbolic I tend to think of DnD 4e as the DnD for people who didn't like DnD. It killed sacred cows, often needlessly, took balance as a religion as opposed to a general goal, then ripped apart the lore. In fact the last one was the coup de gras for me. I was a Planescape fan in a major way, and the move away from it to what I saw as a boring and inane spin mix of existing mythos with the character assassination of certain deities into Greek/Norse god expies just disgusted me. That some of that stuff boiled over into 5e with gods like Kord being tempest still bug me. In fact 5e's rather lackluster attempt to rewrite certain things is my biggest beef with it. Their fill out of Hags and Giants is interesting, but their butchering of Kurtulmak and kobolds, the continued perversion of aasimar and tiefling, and the stuff they did to the daemons (Yugoloths), by far the most interesting fiends in 2e, all are marks against the edition for me, although I enjoy other aspects

[@ColeHolio2294]

I think you've nailed it pretty darn well right here, this is an excellent video. They made 4e into a tabletop tactics style of thing, removing it as far as it's ever been from it's traditional "theatre of the mind" format (nice phrasing too!). That alone alienated many people, and as you say, all the world changes and upheaval in the FR books continuity took care of the rest.

[@dylanblack3635]

There was also a bit of backlash from moving away from the open gaming license to a game system license that while on the surface was just a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo actually alienated a lot of fans and developers. This in turn set them up with a great deal of negative press from the word go. 4e didn't fail because it was a bad game but more due to the fact that some higher ups misjudged the community and our loyalty to certain elements within the society. There were more than a few that even saw it as nothing more than a cash grab and a power play.

[@gabrielrussell5531]

Except 4E didn't fail. It was hugely successful.

[@OctoberGeek]

4E did fail. That's why Pathfinder and 5e exist. Otherwise, there would still be 4e.

[@OctoberGeek]

@@trevorhanson6295 4e literally split the fan base and we the reason Pathfinder exists. 5e exists to get those lost fans back. I've been playing more than 30 years, every edition, and 4e is the only one I don't like, and won't play unless it's the only game available. I was burned by the lack of backwards compatibility and easy conversion, the focus on tactics and video game like combat, and powers. Powers with magical-like logic for classes that aren't magical. As well as codification of roles for classes. Don't tell me what role my cleric has to play, or my fighter, etc.

[@SandyEA]

When I started to play 4th it often had the emotional impact on me as playing D&D for the first time in '78

[@ultraatari9298]

Dylan Black what happened was wotc has always been child molesting cunts who think we exist for their benefit. I remember when 4e was just "a vicious rumor spread by trolls" and banned people from the forum for mentioning it than it became "ok it is true but don't talk about it as it could compromise play tests" which made no sense at all as how could speculation affect a secret game system but again, ban ban ban. than they released it and expected us to all go out there and spend money on a system when we saw just how little wotc thought of its base and mind you this was a decade before sjws. all the meanwhile the system wasn't even bad but i wouldn't piss on a wotc employee if he was on fire

[@truckstation527]

Love 4e. 4e didn't stop roleplaying. The weekly encounters adventures did. The weekly encounters made the game feel like a board game session. We played as a group of friends and loved it. Still do. Not a fan of 5e at all.

[@elgatochurro]

Weekly encounters?

[@phillipalleva-cox3903]

Joel Miller I have never once had a problem with people role playing when i run 4e. People not liking certain game mechanics I get, but most of the 4e hate I hear is just people who don’t like it because it’s different or because they where basically told to.

[@mr.vercotti9509]

I mean I think it kind of depends on what one you were introduced to. I love 5e, but I mean its the only edition I’ve played, and I’m not changing, since I have all of the books. I think its the same with you and 4e. As he said it might of been your first edition.

[@phillipalleva-cox3903]

@@mr.vercotti9509 probably a bit but I've played 5e as well, a lot of it, and I think it's fun, hell it's probably even a better designed game. I play a lot of different RPG'S not just D&D and I find 5e to be fun in short bursts but bland. It isn't really good at anything except being easy to learn/play. For lack of a better word it lacks a gimmick, and I mean that in a good way. I had fun with my time with it but from a mechanics perspective it's,eh, it lacks it own identity. The longer I played it just didn't pop. I found myself in 5e games (in combat) walking away from the table more frequently to like make coffee or whatever because once your turn is over most of the time you don't even need to be around, the positioning changes and that's about it.

[@mr.vercotti9509]

@Phillip Alleva-Cox Im not disagreeing cuz I haven’t played call of cuthulu or pathfinder 2e, but I think blandness is kinda the gm’s fault. I don’t really understand how one system could be blander persee, but I, most* disagreeing cuz I don’t have the experience. Explain por favor *Edit: I’m not disagreeing

[@clarkside4493]

I like 5th Edition enough to where I can't actually see any meaningful updates that warrant an entirely new edition. Spellcasters have their at-wills as cantrips (my primary gripe with 3.5 and why I love 4), non-casters are still very relevant at higher levels, prestige classes/paragon paths are now core parts of their respective classes (no needing to bend over backwards for at least five levels to do what you want), races are more relevant than before. The only thing I have against 5e is the clunky CR system and the fact that I find most monsters in the monster manual to be boring.

[@phildicks4721]

With regards to monsters, its why I plan to use my collection of monsters going back to 1e an converting using online 5e monsster stat converters. This is one of the upsides of being an old grognard DM from the 80s. From the original monster manual, to the fiend folio and various sourcebooks aquired you have craploads of monster reafy to inflict on the party. My personal suggestion would be, if you can find it at a good price, get a copy of the 1e Fiend Folio and use a converter. I guarentee many modern players have never seen some of those monsters.

[@nonsensical8770]

If you ignore Forgotten Realms 4e lore is really interesting. And oh how I wish 5e would ignore Forgotten Realms a little more.

[@Jorphdan]

Yeah that Nentir Vale stuff was actually really interesting :D I'd like to see what WotC could come up with for 5e as a new campaign setting.

[@Rob12ser]

I think people should stop being mean to each other over editions. Just go play D&D and have fun, don't wage the pointless "Edition Wars".

[@rensten4893]

The setting wars are far more fun. :D

[@ballelort87]

Spoken like a true 4th'er! CONSIDER YOURSELF CHALLENGED SIR!

[@Rob12ser]

@@ballelort87 never played 4e so nah i dont feel myself challenged ;)

[@danlangsdale1412]

4e was made with the assumption that you need codified rules for resolving the tactical side of D&D, but you don't so much need them for the role play side of D&D. So when people look at rule books heavy on tactical rules and light on role play guidelines, they think it's a heavily tactical game. But, just like all other editions of D&D, it's only as tactical as the players make it. The rule set of 4e means that the burden of tactical play can be distributed across all players at the table, not just playing "DM, may I?" but empowering clear, game-codified answers to that question. And with creating and running combats made simple, the DM can spend less of her energy on futzing with combat and more on beefing up the role play.

[@reccesam7799]

I am one of those weird few that actually loved 4e. As a defender, meaning a fighter class, I loved the fact that I wasn't constantly performing the exact same thing each turn. With previous editions, as a fighter, all I did during my turn was "full attack". Boring. With 4e, I had so many more options. 4e was more dynamic from my perspective.

[@renatoramos8834]

I find it weird when someone hates 4e.

[@Kingdomkey123678]

Recce Sam A good middle ground I think is the combat maneuvers of 5e

[@vepristhorn8278]

@@Kingdomkey123678 Not really, IMO, I think they should have kept a lot of the changes to the melee classes

[@WeAreAllGeeksHere]

4E was the first and only time combat in D&D was actually interesting from a tactical standpoint. It was also the only edition ever published in which the non-spellcasters were more than just water carriers for the spellcasters. It also had the most interesting cosmology of any edition of the game, making extraplanar travel both more accessible than ever before (the Feywild and the Shadowfell) and more dangerous (the Elemental chaos). And classes like the warlord couldn't even exist in any other edition. And warlords were f'ing awesome. The criticism that there is "no roleplaying" in 4E has always baffled me. My 4E campaign was far and away the most RP heavy fantasy game I've ever played in. And no other edition of D&D would have allowed those characters to shine the way they did in that story.

[@WarDogMadness]

I'm still playing 3.5

[@Izzoroth]

3e/3.5 is still the best one imo at least out of the ones I've played.

[@ChairmanRofImao]

There is no good reason to play 3.5, if that ruleset is your group's preference Pathfinder is for you. It's 3.5 upgraded, fixed and polished.

[@WarDogMadness]

@@ChairmanRofImao I home brew everything and I have almost all the books so there no point for me to spend more money

[@Ultrox007]

I stuck to 3.5, branched out to other systems, don't like Pathfinder though, it feels too much like the "Hey can I copy your homework - yeah just change it a bit" meme made manifest.

[@WarDogMadness]

yeah there was a lot of that plus you can always homebrew your parts of other stuff and systems to your games i use elements of call of cathulu and myfarog and isle of purple along with any other stuff i find interests me to my campaigns and sessions. i always keep 3.5 rules because it the set i enjoy and getting my 5 players to learn and stick to those was hard enough.

[@joceybear303]

My first dabble in dnd was 4e, but i could not get a grasp on it. 5e is considered very simple, but what i love is its easy for new players to jump in. 4e lost me, 5e brought me back.

[@SilvoKnight]

I started on, and still play 4e. I'm a DM and very lax on the rules. I think the rigidness of the rules is what confused a lot of players. A Fighter in my during our first game was surrounded, he had a large sword and wanted to try and spin around to cut as many people down at once as possible. As a new DM and not familiar with the rules i said "You can't do that, you don't have that ability.." The warrior does have access to "Cleave" a similar technique, but the player never picked it. So he ended up choosing a different thing and we went on. Now as an experienced DM more familiar with 4e's ruleset and balances, reading through the pathfinder and 5e rulebooks (and some of my father in law's AD&D books) I'd probably say "Sure, make an attack roll on the first, and if you do well we'll see if it goes through into the second. making him take a strength check or something, but punishing him for a failure, maybe he slips and falls prone. A Lot of what people didn't like about 4e was rules lawyers, its a framework like everything else, the DM's job was to build on it.

[@OmegaEnvych]

Funny. One of my friends didn't like any D&D edition except 4th. Mainly because 3.5 and 5 didn't work for her style of DMing - combining anime-esque style of over-the-top stylish combat and environments and, at the same time making players feel absolutely miserable at the same time because things were getting progressively worse during campaign. Like every good decision of the party felt not significant enough in comparison of how many things were getting worse around them. Still, that skill-challenge and role-play based game was played for years by core party. Which I need to give them credit, I wouldn't do myself as I'm more traditional D&D player and DM.

[@bavettesAstartes]

My only great disappointment in 4th ed was the overhaul of all the lore and stories of the famous settings. While some where (thankfully) left untouched, this felt forced, brutish and disrespectful in many ways. I do honestly believe some settings belong in different eras, different editions, but that is my point of view. But it is true they learned well from it and I haven't ever been happier than with 5e.

[@fullcircle2340]

It's funny how the history of Faerun now reflects the editions of DnD lol

[@GarredHATES]

8:08 yep that's me, 4e was my first love, coming from video games into 4e was a fun transition. these days I play the Pathfinder series but i'll always remember the fun I had playing 4e with my friends.

[@johnnyfountainS]

4th edition for me. I wonder why emo like pathfinder.

[@SandyEA]

There are also a lot of people who absolutely loved 4th Edition. Most of them had been driven from D&D by the power gaming aspects of 3 and 3.5. You have to look past the 3rd Edition to the larger RPG community in general to get an accurate perception on how forth was received.

[@vepristhorn8278]

I'm in that category of loving 4th, in fact the return to a more 3.5 style of things with 5th and the fact that 5th feels so lackluster compared to 4th pushed me and many others away from DnD

[@ismelll3449]

I started with 5e then went back to 3.5 because in the opinion of more experienced in the group, 3.5 had a good balance between gameplay and roleplay.

[@jcwolf886]

I personally ran 4e for about a year and a half before I gave it up due to combats taking FOREVER. The problem was inherent in the math. Monsters just had WAY too many hit points and as you leveled there were way too many "I interrupt his action to do this" followed quickly by "And I'll give you a reactive action to do something else" followed by the DM saying "As a reaction to your interrupt and reaction..." you see where this is going.

[@GRex7777]

I'm actually one of the people who got their start in 4th edition, and in some ways I actually still prefer it over 5th edition, mostly down to a few specific combat rules I really think should have carried over, and especially how much I HATE the levels of cross reference you need in 5th edition. In 4th, I can fully run a game just with a monster manual behind the screen with me, all their stats and abilities are right there. 5th? Nope, I have to have a player's handbook at all times to see what the spells actually are, cause the MM only says what spell they have, not even a simplified version of what it actually does. There are just too many things I have to dig up from too many different books, as well as the game being too easy to break outright with one magical item that did more than I expected.

[@Alexrider02]

I'm curious what magical item broke your game?

[@clarkside4493]

That actually is a fairly reasonable problem, the fact that you have to look up their abilities in another book does bog down. On another note, have you seen this? I use this as a basis for converting 4e monsters to 5e and I've had a lot more fun with the monsters. songoftheblade.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/improved-monster-stats-table-for-dd-5th-edition/

[@Ishlacorrin]

If you had had your DM start in a version previous to 4E you would actually have learnt how to prepare for a game session properly and not have those issues at all. 4E was the worst version for new players and DMs to learn about RPGs. It was however fine if you wanted to basically run Diablo on a tabletop.

[@raymondlugo9960]

You might like the Rules Cyclopedia. Everything in one book.

[@GRex7777]

@ Clark. I hadn't seen that before actually, I've just been transferring some of my 4th ed monsters straight to 5th. lol @ Ishla. At this point I've prepped for multiple games, not just 4th and 5th Edition D&D, and 5th easily has the worst cross reference. Clearly I have all the spells set up ahead of time, so it's not like I'm checking mid game, but no other game I've tried requires me to keep a players book around in order to set up most encounters. @Raymond. Do they make that for 5th edition or is it just the classic edition? Cause if that's a thing they make, that'd be awesome.

[@Jjk82486]

I am that person who 4th Edition was their gateway into D&D, and you know how my buddy sold it to me? "Dude, they made it easier, it's like WoW, only in person with your friends and you can do ANYTHING...within reason." I loved 4E, the combat was amazing, monsters were balanced but difficult if deployed well, and characters were balanced. I STILL tell stories to my players about the Pacifist Cleric I made. I also love 5E, and DM two weekly games. But yeah, 4E was my D&D gateway drug. ;) No regrets.

[@JRM_-yq5ed]

Joshua Kammert my friends used the same WoW explanation to get me to join their party for 4e

[@thebigsquig]

I remember reading a little preview pamphlet at my local game store right before 4th came out. It talked about how DnD was changing and went into what the devs were thinking. They talked a lot of being influenced by modern MMOs (modern at the time) and wanted to attract young players that only knew RPGs through PC games. They felt it was time for DnD to evolve with the times. BTW, if you drop all the role-playing, 4E makes a really good fantasy skirmish miniature wargame.

[@vepristhorn8278]

Yes it does, I was able to pull a lot of wargamers into RPGs with 4th

[@SovereignVis]

4th edition was not at all a bad game. It did add a lot of new interesting things to D&D, but it was less like D&D and more like tabletop XCOM. :D

[@dustymax56]

0:45 1D&D was just announced and this section feels like dejavu. We're right back in this state with 5e into 1D&D

[@leodouskyron5671]

Not bad but I think. I Think Cloville got it more on point. The 4th edition was not to pull WoW players in but to work with a virtual table. They even had announced plans that they would be trying just that. The change in language was an issue as well. But You CAN role play quite nicely with the system and that was not stopped but the battles took longer. This limited play time. A battle in 4th could take 2-3 times that of other editions because of the way it worked. Things that did not hurt were 1) number of books you could buy (open license and the game masters guild say not an issue) 2) balancing the fighter and others (GG was trying to fix this even back in AD&D with things like the Strength percentile rules ) That is my POV and loved your take on it even if I disagree with it.

[@Jorphdan]

Thanks for the great comment 😃

[@TheOrganicartist]

All that was needed to balance the fighter and rogue from the begining was to view them similar to the 1st edition Monk, through honing their body to perfection become superhuman (other games call these physical adepts) it un-linearizes a physical class, i've been using this change since my uncle gave me his AD&D books and i also loved playing shadowrun. The "problem of the linear fighter" is a myth, it isn't an issue, it is sociological artifact in the data from angry nerds (in a game design industry that barely existed yet, so it isn't like they had many other systems to compare against) letting their bias heavily influence their game balance decisions (meaning they were breaking new ground and were fallible humans, this is normal) . Also I suspect around the time of 4th the designers used that as an excuse to homogenize everything (i'm read it used in articles constantly since 4th came out), thus removing any meaningful differences between classes to broaden the appeal to everyone... Maybe they should have chatted with in house Mark Rosewater (20 years of designing Magic, seems pretty successful) Lesson #11 kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3mrmGxvndyEfbs

[@vepristhorn8278]

Your 4th battles took longer than your 3.5??? My 3.5 battles took ages entire sessions for 1 fight, where as the clean cut nature of 4th's combat made it flow and the more tactical nature of it forced players to think about their actions and since every action carried weight I never had the issue of players not being engaged with the fight.

[@taragnor]

The biggest problem with 4E for my groups was that combats took forever. It went from the lethality of 3E where a single saving throw missed could spell death and went to an extremely boring slog as you whittled away at oversized monster HP pools while having tons of combat healing options yourself. Results were very boring and predictable and even simple combats lasted an hour or so. The end result is that other than climactic battles, there was hardly any tension. If the monsters were outmatched (and being an RPG, most of the times the PCs held a significant edge), there was really no chance of them winning. Even if they scored several critical in a row, the extra damage wasn't all that much, and a few heal powers would negate any actions the monsters took. Unlike prior games where you'd have an orc with a greataxe scoring an x3 critical that would instantly turn the tides of battle, or ghoul paralysis and a few bad saves leading the group to sweat as members are knocked down, in 4E I found myself almost always confident of victory because combats were so long that luck was largely factored out of it.

[@ellentheeducator]

Easily the most valid complaint about 4e. And honestly, none of the hacks I've done quite worked

[@greegeree]

i see what you mean but i find that it takes forever in 5e as well. ive been in my share of boring drawn out 2 hour combat sequences at 5e games and it do have to say thats one of the reasons i like lower level fights in all editions because the hit points and ac's are lower so things die faster and it crates more quick and brutal combats.

[@taragnor]

artistguy99: Well it's not purely a matter of speed. There's nothing inherently bad about a long drawn-out combat so long as its exciting. The big problem I had with 4E was that the outcome was basically already determined 2 rounds in, it was just a matter of grinding through the monster's hit points, and how 4E worked, combats didn't escalate as they went on, they deescalated and became more lethal. Monsters that died couldn't heal so monster damage went down. PCs expended encounters and dailies and went down to low-damage at-will attacks. So pretty much after the first few rounds if the monsters didn't make any headway you knew the PCs were going to win, it was just a boring matter of waiting for them to grind through all the enemy's HP using weak attacks.

[@ClutchSituation]

You realize that a lot of us don't like playing with people who find the "perfect combo" to one-shot the enemy, right? What you call "slow," many of us call, "oh jesus, I actually get to take an action, since MinMaxy McPowerGamer didn't kill it."

[@markdiffendal4202]

I remember 3.5 days where we hoped we'd go before the Cleric or Druid of the party so we could do something fun before they rolled in super-charged like a Comic book hero and decimated the entire scene in 1 round. Yeah not fun for the group's Fighter or Rogue who only brought Hit Points and a decent attack modifier to the table...

[@ericpeterson8732]

I thought you were going to talk about how 3e became Pathfinder and 4e became 13th Age. And 2e became Hackmaster (KOTDT). Nothing ever dies as long as someone loves it. True, they reworked each of them to give them a new paint job, but mechanically they are still D&D. I also played 4e, but it wasn't as fun as 3rd edition so I'm glad they made the switch to 5e.

[@vepristhorn8278]

3.5 had multiple PHBs, DMGs, and MMs The entrance of the video gaming aspects was an early attempt at virtual tabletops, the VT was supposed to be available at launch it wasn't Yes 4th edition was heavily miniature dependent and its not the only RPG that is but I had always played with minis, personally I really liked this aspect Yeah they did some weird things with the lore, I liked the spell plague I agree as a player of 2nd, 3.5, 4th, and 5th I can say most of the hate I saw and still see revolves around peoples dislike of change and the most common complaint against 4th that WoC took out the roleplaying aspect of the game, which I never understand since the RP portion comes from the players and the DM, DnD is just a rules system. To your last point yes 4th was many peoples intro to DnD, I introduced many many people to RPGs through 4th and to this day 4th is still my favorite edition. I understand that not everyone has to like it but so many never gave 4th a chance and still have a burning hatred for an edition they never played (edits) Out of all the editions I've played 5th is my disliked it just feels bland and like an attempt to appease a very vocal group and in attempting to appease that group, most of which stayed with Pathfinder from my experience, they lost the bulk of the good from 4th. I remember the play tests for 5th, they were short and not listened too, WoC rushed 5th out of the door and it suffered for it. I truly prefer having to deal with THACO than playing 5th.

[@sportszahn]

Great video. I bought one 4e book and our group played one evening of it. Since then we have moved back to 3.5, and mostly Pathfinder. You should do a video comparing Pathfinder to 5e.

[@Jorphdan]

That'd be a great video. I'd have to probably play pathfinder first to make a fair comparison.

[@TheJPKaram]

So I have been introduced to dnd by 4e when i was a kid. I played it for years, we did 90% of the time theaters of the mind, because for example squares are simpler using than fricking feet as a measure of distance for anyone who isn’t in the US. And overall made it simpler to visualize. “Dm how far is the door ?, 3 squares ok cool”

[@youtubeuser4221]

D&D 4th was amazing. The largest thing holding it back was it being called D&D. I felt way more awesome as a character in at level 5 in 4E than I do in 5th or did in 3rd.

[@billskinner7670]

I have, since 1st edition, stated that D&D characters need to start at 3rd level (although way back then I called it 5,000 XP). 4th edition characters DO start at 3 level; they only call it 1st.

[@herbivorethecarnivore8447]

Then you seem like a minmaxer who doesn't actually try to RP.

[@vepristhorn8278]

@@herbivorethecarnivore8447 No its just that in every edition but 4th you start as a farm-boy fresh off the farm, in 4th you started as a capable adventurer that didn't die from the strong sneeze of an Orc

[@nicklarocco4178]

3.5 was just as focused on miniatures as 4th if you look at the books. The difference was that in 3.5 movement didn't matter. Once you got into melee (after level 6) all you did was full attack until either you, or your opponent died. I love 4th. I think It's the best edition of D&D because it isn't like D&D. If you really step back and look at D&D through the ages you'll see that its... just not that fun honestly. It's always had a strong focus on combat since its inception was a tactical miniatures game, and it sacrifices so much in the name of "realism" that the fun is often lost in the minutia of these games. 4e was different. It slaughetered the sacred cows of D&D, and for that it was named heretical by the purists. But looking back at it it still has rock solid design and in my estimation the best monster design bar none in a TTRPG. I do think a lot, and I mean a lot of people who say they hate 4e have never played it. Back when 4e was still being supported I would hear all the time "Oh man I hate 4e, it's not even D&D," and I'd always repsond "well have you played it?" 9 times out of 10, no was the answer. And don't get me wrong there are plenty of things wrong with 4e, it is not a perfect system. The skills are boring and uninspired, feats are a fucking quagmire of bloated shit 90% of which are totally useless or borderline useless, some classes can feel samey (looking at you PHB2), you heal back up to full after just 8 hours, monsters at higher levels just had too many HP and fights dragged on. But I think there are some many things 4e did right that WotC just dropped when they made 5e because they were afraid people were going to have the same reaction. The second sundering of faerun is a metaphor for the WotC D&D cycle in a lot of ways. By essentially retconning it they said 4e was a mistake in not so many words, but I think 4e was great! And WotC was too busy trying to improve their PR to take the lessons they should have learned from 4e. Like having varied monsters with interesting abilities, having high starting HP but low HP scaling, making sure everyone always has something interesting to do on their turns, balancing the game so it doesn't turn into wizards and sorcerers once the party hits level 5. 4e might have been gamey, but after all this is a game. The biggest complaint I always heard was that 4e didn't support rules for roleplaying, and that's true, it didn't. But that was a design choice made on purpose, in some article in one of the dragons magazines (I think? I don't remember) one of the lead designer's had mentioned that he didn't think rules for talking were important because you talk in your everyday life. You know how to make an argument, throw in some intimidating glares, and lie. What you don't know how to do is use magic to fight a dragon, or at least that's the assumption. The rules existed to give life to that part of the game because roleplaying can be arbited without dice rolls. I have had so much fun with 4e, and I still continue to run it with some heavy homeruling modifications. Honestly I can say it is my favorite game to run. And I think it was a game ahead of its time. Go back and try it if you haven't, try it again if you have, there are lessons to be learned even if you don't like 4e. It isn't a perfect game by any means, but it actually does what too many games are unwilling to do and sacrifice some of the tried and true TTRPG traditions for the sake of attempting to make the game more fun for everyone around the table at all levels of play. Also it supported Darksun in official books, and Darksun is my jam.

[@SDTCG]

I started with 4e, then played 5e, 3.5, and Pathfinder. Of those I feel 4e is the most balanced and has really interesting combat. I don't get why people are saying 4e doesn't promote role playing. The only edition that has any game mechanic to promote role playing is 5e with inspiration, which is probably the least used mechanic in the game. Other than that no edition of D&D has a mechanic that says, "If you role play you get this mechanical benefit." My point being D&D has never mechanically supported role playing, so why bash 4e for it? The mechanics of D&D have always been about killing monsters and getting loot. 4e provided a balanced class system, hands down the best monster manual (with the most interesting enemies as well as creative suggested encounters), and cool magic items. Concerns that WoTC was trying too hard to sell books and profit are fair, but I think 4e was great. 5e is my favorite, but I think there was a lot done right in 4e, some of which I wish would return.

[@villainvoice5143]

Right there with you!

[@rmsgrey]

A number of editions have suggested the DM award bonus XP for good role-playing, which wasn't an option in 4E because it would have upset the balance.

[@SDTCG]

Yes, but higher level characters are going to be stronger than lower level ones in every edition, so if you could do it in one you could do it in 4e also. It isn't any more of an issue to upset game balance in 4e than it is in other editions. What I was referring to with "balance" is that in 4e a 10th level fighter and a 10th level wizard were equally powerful, (which was not the case in other editions) and doesn't make characters feel bad for not picking a the "right class". "Balance" isn't referring to the fact that the party as whole has to all be the same level. Also if you do milestone leveling you can't award XP, and you're not going to want to award levels for RPing as that's too big of a benefit.

[@davemarx7856]

Folks always forget that these books are *guides* Not law.

[@nonyabiz7918]

I have heard many times that 4e wasn't designed for role-playing or storytelling which made no sense to me at all. Role-playing and Storytelling has never, and will never have anything to do with the system that you're using (D&D or otherwise). Not to mention that there were actually mechanics IN 4e that were designed to help out role-players at your table that were inept at dialogue (Let's be honest: a good portion of the community are entirely introverted and I've known more than a few at my table who barely spoke whole sentences). Further, I've heard people say it's a minis game. I played almost always with minis from my days with AD&D 2nd edition and my 3 and 3.5 days, even when I play Pathfinder. It's a choice. I've gamed WITHOUT them in every system INCLUDING 4 as well. Mind's eye and miniature play also has nothing to do with the system that you're playing. Other arguments that this game wasn't good for new players... I taught a brand new group of 8 how to play tabletop role-playing games with 4e. They grasped it in very little time. The game has very little cross reference and that led them down the roads they needed to in a hurry. Other arguments. "It's like a video game." The beloved edition known as AD&D was built by the company TSR who modeled the game after their video game PHANTASY. Look it up. Take care.

[@KenS1267]

It wasn't that players hated change. It was that 4e specifically changed what D&D was. The classes weren't what they'd always been. Suddenly they were MMO archetypes, and very obviously so. WotC could avoid talking about it but that didn't make it any less obvious. The fact that WotC also completely ignored all the howls of outrage during the open playtest from the people saying this wasn't D&D. which far outnumbered any other comment made about the playtest and eventually the WotC mods simply started deleting them so as to be able to pretend they weren't being made at all, proved that the decision was made at the very beginning of the design process. Further when 5e was announced the brand manager gave an interview, or made a blog post, which included a mea culpa about his part in 4e which basically admitted 4e was a mistake without saying what specifically WotC got wrong.

[@randyayo2846]

Wow, I stopped playing when it was still second edition. Wish I still had people that played it. 44 now, I miss playing but I enjoy your videos. They bring back plenty memories.

[@Lighthammer18]

Roll20 works, or go to your local geek shop and find fellow players.

[@dsan05]

46.just started dming again after a 36 year break. Having a lot of fun.

[@Chocolate83Bunny]

there are people wanting to play all over! at least in the USA. I play it entirely over the internet with friends in multiple time zones using discord. Almost all 3.5 books nearly ever can be found online as well as the newer 5th edition books Anything is possible! I'm sure there are also forums where players look for DMs. as mentioned above, roll20 is very common, and there are other programs for playing online too.

[@undeadknight01]

Actually, 3rd edition also had a Players Handbook 2, as well as Monster Manuals II through VI (Trust me I bought SO MANY 3E and 3.5 books as a teenager)

[@tartisan5663]

Yeah, that reasoning in the video made no sense.

[@ChairmanRofImao]

I've been playing D&D since AD&D and I liked 4e for what it was. It was a good game, more balanced than previous editions. I don't buy the complaints on it losing on the "role-playing" aspects of the game; that's mainly on the players and the DM, not the ruleset. But I understand why people didn't like it's more "gamey" approach. In the end, I was the sole pro-4e voice in my group and the shift towards Pathfinder was inevitable.

[@vepristhorn8278]

Thank you, I keep saying this to people who claim that 4th took out the RP.

[@fitzdraco]

One of the great things about 3 to 3.5 is it was a free upgrade. They published a giant list of errata that let you use your 3.0 books to play 3.5. Honestly most people bought new books, but the fact that you didn't really need to was nice. Also 3.0 was when they came up with the open gaming license. There were a lot of people who had D&D as their main game but had some random d20 wrestling game, or reality show dungeon crawl game for random one offs. The open gaming license made RPGs feel open. I don't have a source for this, but early in the development of 4th Wizards held a panel at San Diego comic con, one of the things they were really enthusiastic about is how 4th would come with it's own virtual table top. If you wanted to play D&D with your friends, it would be ready out of the box, they could sit down at their computer just like they sat down at your table. It's my understanding that that never happened, but if it was a design decision from the very beginning it does explain it's "video game feel" I've played a number of the D&D board games that have come out lately that are based on 4th, those work fairly well. As for the massive changes when 4th happened. It's a long standing tradition, especially in the Realms, that an edition change is celebrated by smashing the world. 1st to 2nd edition had all the gods get kicked out of the heavens, Mystra was killed by Tyr I thing, Cyric killed Myrkhyl, and picked up the portfolios of him, bane and Bhaal. Midnight also got Mystra's job. This is what explained all of 2nd editions changes and wild magic. One thing 5th did to sooth the hurt feeling of us old timers, a really subtle thing. 5th edition looks a lot like 2nd edition. Not in the rules, but in the fluff. Particularly the magic item lists. They are actually pretty close to what you got in 2nd, where as 3rd was incredibly different and I assume 4th was as well. And this is only tangentially related but I don't have any place to put it. There was a lot of great material in early Forgotten Realms. The Azure Bonds books, Pools of Radiance series. The old gold box games. When everybody wintered in the Dale lands and most of the characters from the books had much smaller stories that left a lot more room for the players to run around.

[@Hepabytes]

*Shortest editon with Ad&d numbering. B/X D&D was only out for 2 years. (Still the best) Still loved the vid keep if up.

[@lucasvaughn629]

4E got me into the game and I will always hold a warm spot in my heart for it. We played for a few years before switching to 3.5 and played that a lot as well. I am now throughly burnt out on 3.5 and don’t really feel like playing it again. But I do long to go back to 4E with the balance and the tactical combat. I enjoyed the art more then 3.5 and it felt like it had a unified theme throughout the game.

[@ameliaward7429]

I've always just taken aspects of each edition and shoehorned them in to a hybrid anyway. No edition is perfect but the components for a perfect system do exist, only spread out throughout the line.

[@sharkdentures3247]

My longtime gamer friends (like, all the way back to college - wow I'm getting old) started implementing a collection of 'house rules' after having played 3.0 for awhile. (to smooth out some rough edges). We called it 3.5. When 3.5 edition came out, we renamed what we did as 3.25, tossed it aside & played 3.5. After awhile we realized that 3.5 hadn't really 'fixed' 3.0 as much as advertised & brought back most of our house rules. Now we called what we were playing 3.75 edition. Now we play Pathfinder (1st ed) or as we jokingly call it; D&D edition 3.99! (because it was about as good as 3.0 could get) We DID initially call it 4th edition D&D as a nickname, but then Wizards came out with an ACTUAL 4th edition, so we changed the nickname to avoid confusion. (not to mention it's Wizard's property so they have 1st dibs on naming stuff) lol

[@ellentheeducator]

I'll be honest, if while playing 4e you have less story for the sake of the combat, then the DM just sucks. 4e leaves story up to the people, instead of holding your hand. Cause that's not the hard part to balance. The hard part of a game is combat. Make combat fair, and the rest will fall into place

[@SilverAlex92]

I started with 4e, but had the good luck of a having a veteran master that played the game bassically from 1e. While at some points it was clear that he didn't really liked the new system as much as 3.5 (for one he loathed the new multiclass rules), he made a good effort to make a story-driven campaign. And we love it, after 5 years we are still running the campaign. Now Im also a master, and I have a campaign in 5e. As someone who loves both systems and has 0 experience in

[@davemarx7856]

4e is the only set I have and don't see anything horrible in it. It's got interesting combat mechanics that can basically turn every fight into an Avengers' brawl. So perhaps the combat was focused on too much. A good DM can work around this stuff. 4e is fine. Just use your imagination more.

[@DragonKingZero]

NGL, the way you describe the Spellplague kinda makes it sound like it would make for a good backdrop for a FFVI-inspired campaign.

[@Jorphdan]

You're not wrong. 👍

[@misomiso8228]

What's quite strange is that 4th edition went hard core combat, then 5th edition went full on story telling- roleplaying, and that is was 5th edition was way more popular. The Powers system was not actually that bad, but a lot of the people who enjoy the tactical stuff are playing video games of miniature games like 40k. Also for better or for worse there is so a lot of legacy in DnD; people liked having Wizards have to memorise spells etc. 4th edition just flushed a lot of that down the toilet rather than embrace gradual change.

[@TheRhetoricGamer]

That's not the problem with the powers system. The problem was: 1) Most powers felt the same. They were all some variation of "You do damage and some bonus effect involving CC, movement, or buffs happens" 2) It's an illusion of choice. At most levels, you only have one choice of power to select while others either scale with a different ability score or can't be selected unless you choose a different build at 1st level. 3) Powers are totally disconnected from the game world from a roleplaying perspective. The good example of this was when a player had a power that teleports enemies he punches and tried to use it on a prisoner to teleport him out of a jail. The game doesn't let you do that, because the game designers designed abilities in the context of a combat tactics game instead of designing them in the context of a roleplaying game.

[@nickwilliams8302]

cyrad 1. "Most powers felt the same." As opposed to the, "I hit it with my sword." mechanic that most characters were restricted to for most of the game's history? What else would you expect from an in-combat power other than doing the damage of a basic attack plus an extra effect? 2. "Illusion of Choice." Actually, that's a criticism far better levelled at 3/3.5e. The system _looked_ like it was endlessly customisable. In actuality, there were many hidden restrictions. The skill system, multiclassing, feats etc. 3 "Powers are totally disconnected from the game world from a roleplaying perspective. The good example of this was when a player had a power that teleports enemies he punches and tried to use it on a prisoner to teleport him out of a jail. The game doesn't let you do that, because the game designers designed abilities in the context of a combat tactics game instead of designing them in the context of a roleplaying game." No. Your DM didn't let you do that. Does it say in the power description that you can't use it to punch someone out of a prison cell?

[@elgatochurro]

4e was not hardcore combat, it was basic tactical combat. You can still role play ad you wish regardless. They simply planned things out tactically

[@elgatochurro]

@@TheRhetoricGamer powers did not feel the same, I was still pouring through options every level for my character. In 5e I simply look at it as "it's my warrior going halberd or great axe?" 5e is the simplified version and it leaves things feeling the same.

[@TheRhetoricGamer]

Nick Williams Samey powers and the illusion of choice completely defeat the purpose of having a powers system in the first place. Other games give you options that greatly affect how your character plays. Even Radiance has a better power system. Many classes in Pathfinder have options that affect the narrative of the game in non-combat ways. The 4th Edition DMG says your offensive powers have to be used against "significant enemies" during combat. You cannot use an offensive ability to teleport-punch an ally out of a cell unless the power specifically lets you target an ally out of combat. This is often called a "bag of rats clause" that's often necessary when designers fail to design abilities in the context of a roleplaying game.

[@SmileyTrilobite]

I can tell you some forum posters also criticized 3e (when it was new) as "too video gamey". Maybe it was because in 3e you could roll dice or take feats to do things that older players were instead used to roleplaying, or that there were combat ability trees, or even the paradigm that the DM must follow certain mathematical formulae when creating new content to ensure “game balance” (see 3:45). Anyway, I can agree with some of these critiques while also resenting "video game" being be used as an insult; I got into D&D because of Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda.

[@misomiso8228]

Also 3.5 / Pathfinder was a very very good edition of the game. It was over complicated yes, but the fan base loved that, and if you took the time you had a huge away of options as to how to biuld your character. It's difficult moving on from that.

[@celebrim1]

I've just started the video, but I'm going to give the real answers and see how informed of an opinion the video maker had afterwards: #1) When marketing 4e, WotC made it a centerpiece of their marketing just how bad of a game 3e was. This left a real bad taste in the mouth of many of their current customers, since those customers and not only been playing 3e for some time, but many had come back to the game for 3e, and had been loyal customers. Now they were told the product they supported was crap, which had a worrisome indication that 4e would be radically unlike a game that they enjoyed. #2) The withdrawal of the OGL from 4e combined with WotC failing to renew the Paizo license to produce the beloved Dragon and Dungeon magazines not only created a bitter taste in the mouth of fans, but meant that the numerous beloved small publishers were left in a huge lurch. Paizo and WotC were practically family, and they had as families do a really nasty divorce - one of the nastiest corporate divorces I've seen since Ford and Firestone broke up. The result created a lot of partisans that lined up to defend the small publishers against what was seen as anti-fan practices by WotC. #3) When designing 4e, WotC acted in strict secrecy and did not seek out fan feedback. Instead, they spent a lot of time theory crafting and attempting to create a game that they thought people would want that was mostly based around negative feedback of their prior gaming systems. In other words, they were mostly listening to people who were not fans of D&D and who were not customers of WotC when trying to design a product to market to its customers. In fairness, they actually succeeded in creating a product that many people who never liked D&D before actually liked, but this came at the expense of being a product that many existing customers hated. This is a classic corporate blunder that you see time and time again from market leaders. They decide the only way to grow their market is to appeal to the people who don't like their product. McDonalds did it. Microsoft has done it. Most famously, Coke-Cola did it with the 'New Coke' product. It always ends disastrously because the truth is that if you change a market leading product, chances are you'll change it in a way that reduces its market share. #4) WotC had decided that part of the cap on their growth was the need for a DM to run a PnP game. They were looking at the success of properties like World of Warcraft and wondering whether the reason PnP RPGs had never caught on was the huge burden in time and skill imposed on the player who has to run the game. WoW didn't need a DM, and so WotC sought to create a PnP game which as much as possible did not depend on the DM. But the result was an overly mechanical game system that felt too much like a board game or a video game, and too little like what players had come to expect from a PnP system. #5) WotC tried to reinvent itself as a software company despite having absolutely no knowledge of software development. Part of the reason for going to such a mechanical system was to create support for D&D as a computer game which could be played online using DM tools that facilitated play. Unfortunately, owing to the general incompetency of WotC with respect to software development, these advanced tools never actually materialized. The result was a thin PnP gaming system missing all the rich software and environment that it had been originally designed to thrive in. #6 ) To a large extent, it felt like someone's fantasy homebrew heartbreaker. Over 2/3rds of all D&D tables play in a homebrew setting that is usually inspired by D&D's decades of lore and intellectual properties. There was simply too much change for these independent highly creative tables to absorb. Not only were the mechanics changing rapidly, making it nearly impossible to adapt existing world building to the new mechanics, but 4e with willy nilly abandon changed almost all preexisting lore regarding alignment, cosmology, monster motivations and origins. The new lore was creative in many ways, but it simply could not be easily rectified with the vast majority of existing settings. You pretty much had to play in the setting imposed by the game, which was radically different than any setting anyone was playing in. It was like one highly creative DM had been allowed to impose his rather esoteric interpretation on the whole community, throwing out decades of consensus canon in favor of one guys opinion. I think that mostly covers it. So let's see where the video maker is coming from.

[@celebrim1]

Ok, I've watched the video. He wasn't egregiously wrong about anything, but he does strike me as being an outsider trying to piece things together. For example, I have seen the articles where former WotC employees talk about how they were motivated to emulate WoW. He ultimately settles on simply, "People don't like change", and that's largely bull crap. What they don't like is change that is forced on them. All the radical changes in canon and lore and mechanics was costly, in that it forced them to change the game that they had been playing in ways that they didn't want. Many tables have been playing on consistent worlds and with consistent stories through 1e, 2e, and into 3e. Material simply could largely be converted between editions with only mild problems (like how to handle demihuman gestalt multiclassing in a system that didn't really support it anymore). But 4e created radical continuity problems for virtually every DM, and forced changes on his setting that he didn't want. And ultimately, no D&D edition is going to succeed if it doesn't win over the DMs. WotC tried to create a 'player's D&D', but it didn't win over the people that have to make the worlds come alive. They didn't want to be excluded from the game, or see their role in the story change solely to the guy that made tactical choices for the monsters. They didn't want their creative vision dropped for that one guy at WotC's vision. So they went to Pathfinder or just stuck with 3.X.

[@rocketraccoon1976]

+ Matthew Reynolds Finally! Someone remembers how snarky & dismissive WOTC was towards skeptical players. They arrogantly told us we were stupid haters of change playing an inferior version of D&D. They pretty much said we were going to be left behind as unwanted, stubborn trash. Well, Paizo was only too happy to gather up us trash customers and make silk purses out of us.

[@Charlie.G506]

C'mon, i started with 4E, it was nice.

[@nachofilament294]

An issue with 4E that I heard a lot about back in the day that doesn't get talked about much anymore is the initial advertising campaign. The earliest ads for 4E were aimed at people who had never played TTRPGs and WotC, for whatever reason, thought the best way to do that was to directly insult the people who had been playing it for years. It didn't take very long for them to realize their mistake and purge the ads.

[@nickwilliams8302]

The criticism that 4e focused more on combat and less on story is simply invalid. It focused more on combat, sure; it had a great combat engine with balanced abilities scaling up with power level. But there was nothing _missing_ from the RP bit of RPG. You could still do anything character-wise that you could do in other editions (in some ways more). Moreover, skill challenges - while they had their flaws - were a major step in moving the G bit of RPG away from just combat. I remember having conversations with people that would run something like this: Friend: It's too restrictive! I can't play a DEX-base Fighter inspired by Westley from the Princess Bride anymore! Me: Sure you can. Just play a Rogue with a rapier. Friend: But I want to play a Fighter! They've forced me to play an armored guy based on STR! Me: No. You can play a character _exactly_ like Westley. It's just that character in 4e is a Rogue. Don't get hung up on the name of the class, look at what you want the character to do. Friend: Stop trying to tell me who my character is! Me: I'm not, I'm going off the things _you've_ told me. Quick, deadly, rapier, black clothes. Rogue. Friend: But it doesn't _feel_ like D&D! It always seemed that the criticisms would start with some broad, sweeping claim that something the claimant loved had been rendered impossible. You'd point out that they could still do that thing and the complaint (eventually) reduced to something quite trivial. Like the decision to replace active Saving Throws with passive Defenses. From a basic concept point of view, this was just an extension of the 3e concept of a single mechanic. You want to do something, roll a d20, add modifiers and compare the result to a target number. In 3e though, Saving Throws were the exception. For some things, the _defender_ had to roll instead of the _attacker._ Swing a sword at them and you're rolling to hit; cast a spell (though not all spells) and your target rolls to avoid. Why? Because that's what was always done. The really huge decision was already made when 3e replaced the grab-bag of random mechanics with one mechanic: the d20 roll. Weird categories of Saving Throw were replaced with REF, FOR and WIL. Compared to that, the decision to alter those same three categories to passive Defenses is minor. Mathematically, it's identical and it means the rule that the party trying to do something is the one who rolls becomes consistent across the board. Which basically meant these people were pissing and moaning because the _term_ "Saving Throw" had been altered. Or Roles. In 4e each class had a clearly defined Role. These were basically a summation of how any competent player played the class, developed from years of playtesting in 3.5 (and yes, observation of the millions of players on MMOs). Defenders (Tanks) got into the thick of the fight, took a licking and kept on ticking. Strikers (DPS) either operated at range or had awesome mobility; they did incredible amounts of damage but couldn't handle what they dished out. And so on. Yet some people seemed personally aggrieved by being told that a Wizard was probably not a good choice if they wanted to play a front-line combatant. But who ever thought they were? You'd have that one noob who'd try to go toe-to-toe with an orc, then he was rolling up a new Wizard while promising himself not to fuck up like that again. Roles just made explicit what every experienced player was doing anyway. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TL;DR people complaining about 4e tried to pretend that their concerns were tied deeply into things like player freedom and roleplaying. It is my experience that their _actual_ problem was with extremely superficial legacy features. Features so superficial that the complainers were too embarrassed to be honest about why they were _really_ pissed.

[@rmsgrey]

Combat encounters take three times as long. It's impossible to cast a Wish spell. If I want to make a simple character, I still have to go through tens of pages of class-specific powers as the character levels up (Essentials addressed this somewhat)

[@nickwilliams8302]

rmsgrey "Combat encounters take three times as long." If you are unfamiliar with the system and utterly unprepared to play, then yes. But that's true of any system, and has nothing to do with what I said. "It's impossible to cast a Wish spell." How does this make roleplaying harder? "If I want to make a simple character, I still have to go through tens of pages of class-specific powers as the character levels up (Essentials addressed this somewhat)" I found character creation to be greatly simplified. Pick or roll your stats, pick a race and class, pick from a couple of skill proficiencies and class powers, make a couple of decisions as to equipment. Simple as fuck. As for leveling up, there was a universally-applicable advancement table on p.29 of the PHB. You apply that then flip to your class and pick stuff. How the fuck is that even challenging, let alone hard? And how does _any_ of that negatively affect roleplaying?

[@r1ckNz]

That's perfect. I have been playing since AD&D and I still play 4e these days because it's good. Yeah, it's heavy on combat rules, but, you know, as a DM, I really want good rules for combat. Because I don't need rules to roleplay. Roleplay is about criativity, sharing a story with your friends. Why would I lock it into some rule? I remember how much I hated on AD&D because I couldn't level up past some levels of some classes because of my race. That was awful. 4e was very balanced for the DM to make encounters and find challenges to the players. I didn't even bother about it for much time, so I could spend more time thinking about engaging stories and places to make them feel more and more invested in the world and their own characters, beyond the character sheet. Well, many of my players didn't enjoy 4e at first because they were coming from AD&D and 3e, but right now, everyone who played on our groupe likes it more. And I love too on 4e how you could even get a recipe for a good build on internet, but if couldn't adapt to circunstances and make better use of your habilities, you would suck. In 3e sometimes you just had to learn some recipe on the internet and roll the dices, without even thinking about it. As a player, I feel nice because I can do almost any flavour of character who can make heroic deeds in combat apart from what does out of it (I'm not a big fan of controllers, though). 4e encourages the players to act together in sinergy, differently from my previous' editions experiencies were players used to compete against each other to see who is better at everything. In the end, everyone have they preferences and every edition have its unique characteristics. I stopped giving much toughts about what other people like or if they hate the RPGs I like more some time ago. When the subject ressurges, I see the hate coming back. And it's an issue here in Brazil too, where 4e was bashed for the only RPG magazine we had (but their authors also lost they profit without the OGL, so you can suspect about their opinions) but they were a heavy influence on our market... And then they have done their own OGL system, wich have been reworked now and have some 4e elements together (they did admit they were using 4e ideas, but still bashed it again).

[@markdiffendal4202]

Nick Williams: 100% spot on! Damn that basically sums up my experiences talking with people about what they "can't" do too. Hell I remembe someone saying they couldn't re-create their Half-Dragon Paladin/Bard of 3.5 because it couldn't do the stuff the 3.5 version can. I gave them a Dragonborn build that mixed Paladin|Bard Hybrid that not only did the things they wanted just as good, but their attacks and overall non-combat stuff was *better*. In return they said the stuff could be done all day long or hours long unlike in 3.5....... Also the often "My Fighter can use a Bow" complaint in 4E really irked me. Even after pointing out that you can use a Longbow as a Fighter and you take 2-3 feats and you've got good bow powers (via Multiclass feats with the Ranger). Of course that's not good enough until you get things like Twin Strike or other Ranger-y things. Then you say just play a Ranger and use a Bow ...."But they're a *Fighter*!" it makes on sense.

[@CosmereInformant]

I always felt like the only guy in the world who actually liked 4th edition and thought the complaints were petty. I’ve found my people! Lol

[@ThorDog81]

Those saying 4e killed roleplaying have not yet tried dnd 5e. 4e was great in that you had a huge amount of character customization and actually made it feel like you had a real role in a group. Sure all classes had the same basic structure (at-will, encounter, daily) was that much of a jump from all classes having the same saves or the same actions each round (standard, move, swift)? Never understood the hate of 4e outside of just people not able to grasp it.

[@dunewizard]

What saddens me, is that this whole video is 100% Forgotten Realms specific. Forgotten Realms, thanks to writers like RA Salvatore, has become an overdone world, where the lore is so well known that it actually has started more than one mid-session fight at our gaming table between players. As such, it has been banned from my table in favor of a completely uniquely created campaign setting, outside the TSR created or even WoTC created and published worlds. It is really disheartening that so many players these days do not realize that Forgotten Realms was only one of a plethora of campaign settings, and due to intentional removal of emphasis of the other worlds by WoTC, they have made the LEAST interesting world the standard. Before WoTC there were worlds of such vibrancy that the PHB today still has reference to them, for instance, look throughout the spells, find anything with a person's name in the title, and you can guess that arch-mage was either from Dragonlance or Greyhawk. Barovia, home of Castle Ravenloft, of which the campaign setting took its name, resided in THE DEMIPLANE OF DREAD, and had nothing to do with Forgotten Realms. Anyone that would have gone there would not have been able to return, if entered from Faerun, as it existed as a plane of imprisonment, meant to contain and isolate specific elements deemed destabilizing to the rest of the multiverse. The "One Setting" method of marketing is probably really simple for WoTC, but we are not talking about products that even need marketing. Just stop making lore changes to 40+ year old content, and publish rule books that have been adapted to the existing lore. Otherwise you drive away your older, wealthier, and more apt to spend money player base.

[@orochifuror7148]

I'm fairly sure they lost the license to some of if not most of the worlds they don't support so much anymore, like Dragon Lance. So it's sorta understandable. Some people like 'knowing' the world because of all the stories they have read in it or because it has huge maps and defined places, while others like new worlds that you can discover and can have lots of things that are new to everyone. Sadly the latter just doesn't have much place in D&D unless you play in home brew worlds, unless you do what I like to do, take a setting that's not been over done to death, like Eberron, and just don't read the lore, get a feeling for how things run, the unique rules for it and then home brew all the places and things in it to your liking.

[@Zyemeth0]

Honestly I wish I would stop seeing the same 3 towns brought up in anything relating to Forgotten Realms. Listen... Baldurs Gate is cool. Neverwinter has a lot of history. Waterdeep is huge. But what about the other 90% of the map? There are areas of Faerun rarely touched at if at all. Not to mention on the world map of Abeir-Toril, Faerun is like a 10th of the world.

[@dunewizard]

As soon as there are authors willing to write for those regions, I am sure you will find them more prominently represented. Back in the 2nd Edition Era, the Moonsea and Dalelands were the central focus of all things Abeir-Toril (with some noted exceptions in places like Evermeet), I am sure it is not long before the Swordcoast becomes boring, both for the writers and readers, and the focus will again change.

[@companyoflosers]

worlds change, time goes by and things happen. you cant expect lore to remain static or things would get boring even if it takes place in the same setting. the good news is that 5th edition seems to be popular which means it will be longer before wotc decides to begin on 6th edition. this means 5th edition will be around longer and they will have more time to write content for additional worlds kind of like how they are now close to releasing ravnica and eberron. they will probably have more soon too since in dungeon of the mad mage, skullport is a known location which is a known access point from which planar travel can take place. this means wotc is gearing up for more settings.

[@dunewizard]

While I am personally not interested in Ravinica (never really enjoyed CCG's, and the crossover is not likely to produce sufficient new players to have been worth the development time) and I never played, but am intrigued by the concept of Eberon, seeing additional settings receiving attention from Wizards is a move in the right direction.

[@danielknapp159]

There is a theory that the obelisks that keep showing up randomly will lead to players being sent back in time a thousand years or more. Either starting in that time or rewriting history altogether, which is theorized to lead to 6th edition being rewritten history of some sort, with time shenanigans.

[@VolosynT]

I was one of the people who made their start in 4E. My friends played for about a year and a half, then i asked if we could try 5E or switched because it looked so much more fun. While i did enjoy combat and the tactical parts of 4E, the roleplaying lacked. Eventually we switched our game to 5E and were still going strong (3.5 years)! I'm glad to have experienced it but i enjoy being able to 'just do more'. Now what i REALLY want is a Planescape setting, i LOVE that lore and actually started DMing my own campaign using 2E/Planescape Lore but 5E mechanics. I hope WotC releases more content for that setting! Thanks Jorphdan, always great and always boosts my Wednesdays!

[@spellbladeoff-hand7662]

I don't find anything in 4E stops you from roleplaying. It's just 5E has much better materials and extras that help you flesh out your character such as the more detailed backgrounds and tables to roll on if you're stuck.

[@jonofpdx]

So can you explain that? Because, obviously, you should play whichever edition you personally enjoy more. But I just don't understand what about 3.x or 5e as a system of mechanics promotes roleplaying in any way more than 4e does. Is it really just that Lost Mine of Phandelver is so much better at telling a story than the terrible Keep on the Shadowfell and that poisoned the well by presenting the first intro adventure as a more or less straightforward combat-sequence?

[@TooLateForIeago]

I loved 4e. With a fistful of house rules (mostly from 5e) still do. What grated on me was the high-handed, "This is what you're getting and you WILL like it," approach Wizards seemed to have.

[@WannaBeRockStar800]

I’ve been playing D&D for years and 4E is a great game!

[@ClutchSituation]

What happened with 4E is that all the min-maxers of the world pitched a fit that someone dared to ruin their video game, I mean, role-playing game: 3.5.

[@philheaton1619]

The main problems I had with 4th edition was that every previous edition allowed me to transition my campaign and characters. That did not happen from, 3.5 to 4th. The game wasn't D&D anymore. It wasn't a bad game perse, it just wasn't D&D.

[@TheVpog]

What do you mean by transition?

[@darkcardking]

You uh... You left out the murder suicide that completely tanked 4e's online applications, which were meant to be something like 50% of the editions content. The edition was designed to depend heavily on it, and losing it pretty much put it to screeching halt. 4e was the only edition where we had at least a year long gap between it last published material and the first published material of the next edition, and it was due to that.

[@jessemxgangl]

I hated 4e...until i started playing it. In the end, I was very sad to see it go. It's by far the most DM- friendly edition and the system I most prefer to run a game in for the overall ease.

[@kdhlkjhdlk]

Yeah, because as a DM, you're worthless. You do nothing but provide a list of encounters in 4E.

[@WeAreAllGeeksHere]

Yeah! And NPCs. But other than that, it's just a list of encounters! Oh, and plot hooks. But apart from the plot hooks and NPCs... Well, yeah, you have to provide a backstory and plausible motivations. And descriptions and atmosphere to create a fantastical and yet believable world for your players to live in for a little while. But other than that, that's it! I mean, of course you have to provide forward momentum for your story and make sure that action scenes do more than just provide bags of hit points for the players to reduce to zero. You have to make sure that action drives the story and that there's more at stake in a combat scene than simple "kill or be killed" stuff. That goes without saying. And of course you have to make sure each of the players gets a decent amount of spotlight time and that their individual stories matter just as much as the larger story. Okay, okay, and sure, you need to make sure to keep an eye on pacing and rhythm between bigger and smaller plots, providing relevant side quests and personal moments carefully spaced out between the bigger epic beats of the story. But other than that, you're just providing a list of encounters! That's it! You also might want to think a bit about the wider themes of the story and how they're reflected by the conflicts faced by the protagonists, their relationships with NPCs and the wider fictional society of your campaign world, their place in the cosmology and history... But aside from NPCs, dialogue, story construction, plot hooks, pacing, momentum, balancing player/character involvement, establishing the stakes from scene to scene and adventure to adventure, and the larger picture of heroes in an ancient and marvellous world that isn't going to save itself, what is there for a 4E DM to do? Nothing! No wonder people hated this edition!

[@rmsgrey]

+WeAreAllGeeksHere I think you're confusing being a good DM with being a DM. To me, 4E is the system with half a page in the DMG saying "this should be a magical world full of wonder" against a couple of hundred pages giving detailed instructions on how to build a cardboard paint-by-numbers world. It's the system where every character class has pages and pages of powers to choose from as they gain levels, but no Wish spell. It's the system where a routine level-appropriate combat encounter reliably takes an hour or more. Where trying to negotiate is reduced to a series of die rolls rather than something role-played. Of course a good DM can bring the world to life, but that's true in any system, and happens largely independently of the system - or even in spite of it - not because of it...

[@WeAreAllGeeksHere]

I found a lot of useful material in the 4E DMG about how to be a good DM. Chapters 1, 2, 8 and 9 were dedicated entirely to that, and no other edition does it so well. DMG2 expanded on this with lots of indie-rpg inspired material about shared storytelling, vignettes, dream sequences, what it means to succeed or fail, and so on. The combat stuff takes longer to lay out in rulebook format, but that doesn't make it more of a priority at the game table. If some people played 4E as a combat-centric game, that was their choice. We played it as a roleplaying game, and the combat scenes were more cinematic, exciting and challenging than in any other edition. Terrain mattered. Teamwork mattered. It wasn't just "stand back and wait for the spellcasters to do everything" as it had been in every other edition, both in and out of combat. The main difference between 4E and other editions was that the combat in other editions was so intolerably boring that it forced everyone to be much more inventive if they didn't want their games to be completely dull. You could play 4E strictly as a combat game if you wanted, and it would be a decent miniatures skirmish game, if nothing else. Or if you wanted, you could add in all the rest, and get the best of all possible worlds: a rich and rewarding storytelling game with tough, exciting combat, where every party member mattered. Take for example the idea of a die roll to determine the success of negotiations. This has been a thing ever since 3E, and rightfully so. Not every player has the confidence and skill to make an inspiring speech off the cuff IRL. But every D&D player should have the chance to play a character who has that ability, if that's what they want to play. So the die roll determines success or failure, and then different kinds of players will proceed as appropriate. Those who are comfortable with it will proceed to speak as their character, deftly adding elements to their speech that will make it clear why their character succeeded or failed. Players who are less comfortable doing so will instead describe the speech they attempted to make, perhaps with help from their fellow players, until the group has a clear enough idea in their minds of what they were going for, how it was received by listeners, and why. If that is "reducing roleplaying to a die roll," then I guess that's what my table does. The stories we devise are rich, engrossing and unforgettable to us, but what the fuck do we know, right?

[@WeAreAllGeeksHere]

I will readily admit that "skill challenges" were garbage though. We tried to make them work and we just couldn't do it. An interesting idea, but fundamentally flawed. We dropped them in favour of a more freeform indie RPG style approach to noncombat challenges, and we used skill checks when it was uncertain whether or not a character would succeed at a particular task they were attempting.

[@BestgirlJordanfish]

Going to be honest, I preferred 4th to 3/3.5/5. Doubled damage dealt and cut hp in half when using monster manual, and homebrewed, and called it a day. Jesus the game was clean, balanced, and made me want to work with others. DnD and PF are still Plus, these new terms and conventions were so transparent for players to understand function and play. I also ADORED the powers frequency with encounters, etc. Anyone who says they didn't "emphasize story" is full of shit. PF is the clearest example of not being about RP. RP is what you make of it. I also never cared for DnD's lore, as I homebrewed most of my stuff. Now I'll say that I actually like story systems. I play Dread, PbtA, WoD, and oodles of indies. We all have different tastes, and maybe it's because in the end I just don't like DnD (especially 3/3.5/PF) as an rpg system.

[@muddlewait8844]

The best thing in 4e in my opinion was the tacked-on, half-baked ritual magic system that made almost any noncombat magical effect accessible by nearly any character. It's the lack of magic's out-of-combat versatility that really hamstrings lower-magic classes.

[@shiningwhiffle]

4e is a really fun tactical game, and it introduced a lot of great ideas that ultimately benefited 5e, like short rests and healing surges (now hit dice), simpler enemy statblocks and enemy creation, death saving throws instead of negative hit points, resources for off-the-cuff decisions (like appropriate damage amounts by level), etc. Where it failed in my eyes were (a) you pretty much HAD to have miniatures and grids, even for small fights; (b) you had to craft battle areas, which took back a lot of the reduced prep time that simpler stat blocks had given; (c) battles took longer; (d) D&D Essentials (aka 4.5) felt like a slap in the face after their promise not to do that again; and (e) it was completely inappropriate for low-powered campaigns. There was also the matter with feats and character options proliferating out of control, but (i) some people really like that, and more power to them; and (ii) it didn't seem to affect it as badly as as it did Pathfinder, where any attempt to reduce the rules' complexity invalidated some feat or class/race feature. To my mind, feats were a great idea in 3e but by late 3.5 and on had turned into thousands of tiny pinpricks through the rules, and I'm glad they're both optional and more restrained in 5e.

[@kyliepoe6231]

I began playing AD&D just as 2e released. The story was fun but the system always felt punishing. 3e fixed that, and made you awesome, and allowed a breadth of tasks to be completed in interesting ways using equipment, skills, spells, magic items. Then 4e came out, and it said you can do these few things in this incredibly stringent way, sometimes only once a day. It was a shock. To go from fully booked out 3/3.5 to a brand new system with no splat books and a return to a kind of hostile mechanics system of course bothered people. As they game went on, and probably mostly when essentials started, enough new content and mechanics and changes to those core classes addressed the stringent system question by giving a lot more options to work with within those limitations. It actually became more enjoyable as it aged, and now I run 13th Age, which is a 3rd party F20 made by the 3e and 4e design leads, and makes even better use of some 4e mechanics and ideas.

[@rogerwilco2]

When WotC moved towards 4th edition they did everything possible to alienate their existing user base. The way they mishandled the end of 3.5e both towards their players as well as the whole ecosystem of small companies supporting the hobby, made that people disliked 4e before any of the books would hit the shelves. I remember Gleemax, the Digital Initiative, how they treated Paizo, Dungeon and Dragon magazines, Code Monkey Publishing and many, many more. It was vile.

[@lorddraekan]

I think something more akin to D&D 5.5 would be the next iteration. They could easily fix the problems with 5th edition and tweak the action economy. Mike Mearls has stated multiple times that he does not like bonus actions and would tweak the system so as to remove them. Edit: To further clarify, you would be removing the bonus action and moving the things that used them to become a part of an action. It is not the things that use bonus actions that seems unnecessary but rather the bonus action itself. This would not screw over any classes because they're not losing anything. It's just getting condensed instead of having a bonus action that some classes may or may not use.

[@BlackLotus30]

yeah and screwing the paladin over majorly.

[@Sozile]

That sounds awful

[@JonathanScruggs]

I was thinking that a 5.5 release should be made before a major new release like 6. It would just tidy up the existing rules in a way that would be compatible with all the existing modules, maybe with a little conversion that you can do in your head so nothing too complicated.

[@Recardoguy007]

BlackLotus30 for the most part as long as the paladin has the spell slot and can choose to smite on a success, why even make it a bonus action to initiate the smite? I usually allow it as long as they have the slot.

[@BlackLotus30]

Because a lot of the Paladin spells need bonus actions to activate. Especially spells that does damage like the "smite spells" searing, banishing etc....

[@CaptainGerBear]

The main complaints our group had about the game were A - Removal of non-combat-relevant skills from the rules, like professions and crafts. Sometimes it actually could be important to know exactly how good your carpentry or smithing work is, and we had to house rules all of that stuff. B - There was no difference in the complexity of the classes. In 3.5 there was a distinct hierarchy of complexity in the classes, noobs usually got started on a simple class like a fighter, and you could gradually ramp up one character at a time until you could handle a core spellcaster or a prestige class. In 4e there is no such thing as "a simple class" and that made the learning curve for some of our inexperienced players very steep. C - The necessity of having a deck of cards in hand for every class. It just added one more thing to keep track of at the table, and that's something nobody needs.

[@JOHNMARTIN-zm6zz]

6e wow, let not get ahead of ourselves, after all, their still making a lot of 5e content. Plus I'm just not ready for them to screw it up again.

[@johnnyfountainS]

Hasbro says dnd 5th is the end.

[@32ShadowWolf]

That's exactly what the 3.5 ed players said...and WHAM! 4th ed b*tches

[@coolio3267]

@@32ShadowWolf don't jinx it

[@whoisj]

I played AD&D (aka 2nd edition) on collage and it never occurred to any of us to use miniatures. I think if it had been expected, we'd never have gotten into it because we were poor in collage.

[@heathbarnhart1092]

Objectively, 4E as a game isn't that bad. My biggest problem were the core books were terribly written and leading to some ambiguity with the rules. I eventually picked up the Rules Compendium which basically combined the rules sections from the PHB and the DMG into one $20 paper back. The writing was much better and the rules were clear. If Wizards had written the other books the same way I wouldn't have hated 4E as much.

[@Biostasis5x7]

As a guy who runs several 4e games I completely agree with the ambiguity issue. The majority of abilities and actions are simple and easy to understand. There are a few outliers though, that were written so ambiguously that you have to google them. Commander's strike, the at-will ability from the warlord is a good example.

[@trevorhanson6295]

Agreed. They needed more play testing, if anything to clarify the rule set.

[@Biostasis5x7]

@@trevorhanson6295 little late now. Its been out for friggin years. The majority of the answers are on the internet. If not, i make my own.

[@dougpridgen9682]

As someone who started playing D&D in the '80s, this video made 4e sound less aberrant and atypical than 3e, since it grew out of wargaming and explicitly involved the use of miniatures, terrain, and battlemaps/grids. Theater of the mind was for the interaction with NPC's and RP in civilized areas, whereas combat involved the things 4e brought to the table. I realize this comment is narrow and simplistic, but this stood out to me during the video so I thought I'd share the thought.

[@luketfer]

Something I find interesting is that, with the rise of Virtual Tabletops like Roll20 etc. You're actually seeing more of this sort of mentality. Theater of the Mind is usually reserved for NPC interaction but once combat hits, bam, you're transported over to a battlemap that the DM has (hopefully) spent some time working on (or at least gotten decent assets to use) and because there is a grid there that is 5ft square it works more like a wargame with the ability to go "well, what if I run off this wall and try to drop kick that Goblin in the face?" and not be met with "we're trying to play Warhammer Age of Sigmar, the rules don't allow that Jerry" and more, "eh...make a skill check for me to see if you pull it off..."

[@dougpridgen9682]

@@luketfer True enough. D&D started with Chainmail, and was zoomed in from third person/army perspective to fist person/character perspective. Thus was born the tabletop rpg. So the battle terrain and minis are there from the beginning. Apparently the people who launch these complaints don't know the history of the game. It's ridiculous.

[@luketfer]

@@dougpridgen9682 I also think that battlemaps and tokens/minis help people understand the combat better IMO and decreases the workload on the DM, pure theater of the mind combat means he has to basically keep the map, all the bad guy positions, all the player positions in his head which can be kinda hard to keep track of. By contrast having even a just a basic battle map with tokens slapped down and the terrain drawn on makes life so much easier for both players and DMs.

[@jacobnestle3805]

4e did help the DM do a lot more with creating a personalized world, though. 5e murdered some of the most interesting aspects of the 4e world and somewhat forces Forgotten Realms lore into everyone's universe. You have to do a lot more "work" explaining that the books aren't the same as the world you want to build, basically.

[@Grf1556]

I played 3.5 for years, and then when me and my friends played 4E for about six months, and then we dropped it after no one (not even me, the DM) was having fun, and we went back to 3.5 for a few years. Me and my old buds picked up 5E and we all fucking LOVED IT, we never want to go back.

[@andrewrawlings5220]

As a friend of mine said "4th ed was great game but it wasn't Dungeons and Dragons".

[@tartisan5663]

If someone thinks D&D 4E was less focused in storytelling…then your DM sucks or you are playing it wrong. What about an RPG’s rules makes a difference in your acting sitting around a table? Some of our group’s best storytelling and roleplaying were in 4E.

[@Luckmann]

I really don't think it was "holding on to nostalgia" and "people do not like change". I think that a lot of people would be willing to accept 4e as a system, it is just that to *a lot* of players, 4e simply wasn't D&D. It didn't play like D&D, it didn't feel like D&D, the focus was different from D&D, etc., etc., etc. Of course, a lot of this can be attributed to people thinking about what D&D is in a certain way, but I don't think that can be called "nostalgia" per se, but rather the issue is that something that was established and had an established appeal was dismissed in favor of something fundamentally *different*. It is much like you liking croissants, and then someone is trying to sell you a donut, but they're still calling it a croissant. And sure, donuts can be good too, but *they're not croissants*, and you happen to really like a good croissant. Similarly, I'm not a huge fan of 5e, but at least it is, in a manner of speaking, a croissant. 4e simply wasn't. And this is the first time I use an analogy in which I hate donuts, which just feels wrong, but I think it gets the point across.

[@Jorphdan]

The people that started with 4e seem to complain about it the least. The people who have a past experience with how D&D should be seem to hate on 4e the most. So I 100% think that nostalgia for the older system conflicted with trying to learn and accept a new system. Having a preconceived notion of how a product should feel or be stops an individual from accepting change. I think it's the same reason people are upset with the new Thundercats Cartoon, it isn't how it used to be so it must be bad. I see your point though and I enjoy your croissant metaphor :)

[@bonnecherie]

@Jorpdan As a gamer whose demographics were aimed at with the creation of 4th Ed, I'd like to chime in. I cut my teeth on 2nd Ed when I was 13 in 1997, and went on to 3.0 and 3.5 later on. I tried playing 4th ed, but it wasn't nostalgia that drew me away from 4th Ed, it was just a conglomeration of issues that the game had. It lacked a lot of things that made roleplaying enjoyable in 3rd/3.5 Ed. As one poster and you in your video pointed out in several places, it was hard to figure out how to build things in the system like new races, items, even monsters, it had much more of an MMO feel to the game, and it really lacked in the true way a tabletop RPG game felt. I hate to say it, but if I were going to play an MMO-style game, I'd just boot up my computer and play WoW or SWTOR or something like that, more or less a mind-numbing bit of enjoyment that I just play to see how far I can get before I grew bored. I haven't played 5th Ed yet, but that's mostly because of money/time constraints/no one in my current gaming group having the books. I'm not sure I want to play it either, since I migrated away from D&D and went over to Pathfinder. For me, I could easily go back to AD&D and still enjoy the same game since the same feel's there as from D&D 1st Ed and 3rd/3.5. It just didn't feel like the same game with 4th Ed.

[@ellentheeducator]

I really don't get where people get the MMO feel from 4e. I am an MMO gamer and a 4e player, and they're wildly different. Like, at this point, it's not just disagreement, I genuinely cannot see how it feels that way, other than the fact the powers are in cards instead of text boxes

[@elgatochurro]

It did feel like dnd, and played like dnd

[@elgatochurro]

@@bonnecherie that's more so you're own fault. I role played the most in 4e.

[@powerhouseofthecell9758]

In 3e, those with magic trumped those without 4e levelled the playing field by making the arcane, divine, and martial act the same. Without units to weigh power, the only way to balance is by symmetry.

[@scoots291]

This is how I consider each version. B.C.I.M=beta (I forgot the c and I positions) Dungeon and Dragon= Original Advance Dungeon and Dragon= Balancing and inducing more stuff and allowing you to play powerful heroes 3ed edition= wanted to extend the edition to make god like characters (not heroes) 3.5= the hot fix needed for 3.5 4th edition= board game 5th = revamp of second edition (the major reason I say this is mechanical s more similar to 2 e then 3 or 3.5 and you don't play God's you play heroes) My personal rating goes like 2nd 5th 3.5 B.I.C.M First edition 3rd 4th

[@saintsinna]

Well, I started playing D&D 3.5 maybe 2 years before 4e came out. I remember wanting to at least give it a try until I found out my favorite class Monk was missing from the first released players handbook. I still thought I would give it a try later, but I would wait until a bit later, and just continue playing 3.5 for a while longer, I was a poor college student anyway and couldn't afford getting new books. Then I remember all of the 3.5 material gone from every place that I bought it, I felt like I was being forced to play 4e or nothing. And then when I was introduced to Pathfinder, thats when I decided I was never giving 4e the chance. Can't say I regretted my decision either. I love 5e tho.

[@Latino-Gamer]

4e is still my favorite. I love the Warlord class and Hybrid character rules.

[@vepristhorn8278]

Right with you buddy, Druid was my favorite.

[@robertoakes5117]

3.5! 3.5! 3.5! We did use miniatures. Just a large laminated grid paper from the back of the DMG/PHB. I don't remember which one it was in.

[@DocEonChannel]

I really prefer the 4e cosmology to the great wheel - and I say that as someone who's played since 1980. Never cared for FR, so that whole thing was no skin off my back. I also enjoyed the balance of the system. There were still some issues with the math: the skill system in particular, and the encounter building math. But that could have been tweaked. No, the only real deal breaker for me was how long it took to play out a fight.

[@jonofpdx]

This is one of the only legit criticisms of 4e that is backed up by evidence and not just an opinion people try and PRETEND is based on objective fact rather than just their own preferences. I loved 4e's combat engine, but it did objectively draw out fights much longer.

[@callumsmall273]

Dnd 4th ed was my first introduction to any RPG. Although I look back at the system realising it wasn't that great, it got me into a hobby I love. I now DM more games than I play but 4th ed will always hold a special place for me, especially my dumb Dragonborn fighter.

[@chicones]

I got away from RPGs when they started doing the "Now buy the revised version and now buy the new system and now buy the..." BAH That and work

[@Wolfphototech]

4th edition main world was the *Neather vale* also known as *The World* if my memory serves me right . The forgotten realms ( Toril ) was not the focus but had a little support . However Eberron & Dark sun had more support in 4th edition then Forgotten realms .

[@georgewilson2575]

Of all of WotC editions, 4e was by far the worst and farthest you could be from playing D&D. You hit the nail on the head. They tried to make an online MMO style tabletop RPG out of D&D and it failed hard. Now in 5e they have tried to make a medieval superhero game and while it has succeeded, that has more to do with it not being 4e and the success of online D&D streamers than the game itself. None of the WotC editions have been an improvement on D&D or AD&D. They have been grossly inferior products, but WotC will never acknowledge that, or really ever go back to the old style of play, which is why so many old style game systems have popped up to fill the gap that WotC refuses to see.

[@KertaDrake]

I would honestly prefer it if they gave general outlines to build a setting based on several options for cosmologies rather than specific worlds with established histories in the core books, then keep all the world-specific stuff to the add-on books so that DMs can get more of a feel for making settings their own alongside their players without having to worry about the fancy historical details unless they actually want to. Encourage creativity over adding yet another world-altering storyline to the same setting.

[@emccoy]

When D&D went to 4e I went to pathfinder mostly. I cut my teeth on 3e and well 3.5 was much needed. 4e as a balanced combat system was good, but it never felt like D&D. I played lots and lots of different role playing games, from Traveler, Space 1889, Ars Magica, Paranoia, and GURPS and many other systems. And I think that the biggest thing that failed 4e was it was too focused on combat. Most of the other systems I've played have combat, but combat is a last resort because you are less likely to get injured and more likely to die if things go wrong. You role play to get what you need and to succeed. I think it was the departure for roleplaying support that really hit them hard.

[@jonofpdx]

I guess I'm not sure how the rules of the game somehow emphasized combat over roleplaying? Like, I AGREE that Keep on the Shadowfell certainly did. It's not a very good module, ESPECIALLY as the first one they released. It's focused primarily on combat and skill challenges as a way to teach players how the system has changed but it DOES end up being very combat heavy. But...The mechanics around roleplaying are largely identical from 4e to 3.x. Other than just...having a more balanced combat system (whether you like that system or not--it IS more balanced) and really needing a grid (I do get why theater of the mind players don't like it) I don't see how the game focuses on any one aspect more than others. Surely that's the GM and the players, not the mechanics, no?

[@nickwilliams8302]

Jonathan Grant Exactly. I have never received a good answer to the question, "What exactly was it that stopped you from roleplaying in 4e?" Mostly, it seemed that it was the GM, not the system. Oh, and D&D's needed a grid since 3e. What people (incorrectly) call "theater of the mind" is playing on an imaginary grid. Really, the only edition that didn't have fairly precise rules governing the imaginary space the characters were operating in was 2e.