What are some other examples where we didn't know how good we had it?

>>96145593 (OP)
It was always better than 5e but everyone was triggered by the GSL and the paywall
Now that everyone can pirate it on virtual table tops with it automated, it's fun

>>96145614
The biggest con is probably the token clutter, but it's telling that many popular 5e """houserules""" are just half-assed versions of things in 4e. There is a legitimate complaint about token clutter, however.

The Nentir Vale and it's take on 4e were also pretty good settings.

>>96145614
The biggest con is probably the token clutter, but it's telling that many popular 5e """houserules""" are just half-assed versions of things in 4e.

The Nentir Vale and its take on Dark Sun were also pretty good settings too.

>>96145671
The biggest weakness of 4E was that all the classes felt the same; since they all used the exact same powers, scaling, formulae etc etc. When they tried 4EE with some unique classes-- everyone hated those proto-5e classes

4E should have came out in 2014 with OGL, would have succeeded and had the technology to do so. Maybe refluffed 'dailies' as mana points or something too, would have made it easier to RP

CofD and the 20th Anniversary WoD's, because holy shit the 5e WoDs have been garbage.

>>96145593 (OP)
God I love 4e

>>96145593 (OP)
Nah, bro. There are so many rules and abilities in 4e that make no sense from an in-character perspective - that have no basis in the character's reality - and that kills any sense of immersion. The game was DOA from that alone, even before all the bullshit with stripping non-combat abilities form monsters, HP bloat and skill challenges.

>>96146130
It’s people blinded by nostalgia. You see this shit with people trying to pretend that nu-metal or metalcore was good music when it was universally panned by both metalheads and normies back in the day just because they grew up with it. You’re gonna see people here in five, ten years (unless Rapeapes incompetence kills the site before then) praising 5e as actually being a good game that was ruined by 5.5.

>>96146151
You might be right, although in the case of 4e I think there's also the fact that it probably does appeal to large autist population on /tg/ who spend their time whining about storyshitters. If all you want is a purely combat-based, tactical miniatures game where you can roll some dice with no pretensions at immersion or simulating a plausible game world then 4e might be great (I dunno, I've no interest in that so I can't judge it).

>>96145593 (OP)
This one.

>>96146151
I love that the most successful edition of D&D that brought about a ttrpg renaissance and is still the most played game 11 years later is still considered 'bad'.

I'm hoping the sand you chose to burry your head in at least tastes good bro.

>>96145593 (OP)
For a second I thought this was an actual
Topic to discuss 4e and not the more common nostalgia crying. The fact that this isn’t a general or a discussion about the game but more whining about “what was lost” for a game where all the resources to play are easily available online really shows that this game is just shit ass

>>96146230
Silly anon, you only need two of those boxes.

No one plays past B/X

>>96146130
>HP bloat
3.5 was an unusually explosive iteration of D&D.

>skill challenges
One of the most common rules that people half-ass into 5e.

>>96146230
That's another good call. The Basic line gets a lot more appreciation among modern players and designers than AD&D1e and 2e.

>>96146243
I enjoy 5e well enough. I sympathize with anyone who feels trapped by players who refuse to try any other game though.

>>96146243
I forgot how terrible the 5e art was. Those grotesque halflings are the things of nightmares.

>>96146217
Historically, teegee was a 3.PF board and disliked 4e. It's only now that you're seeing people going "actually, 4e solved some of my pain points with PF and 5e, maybe it wasn't so bad".

>>96146295
True, but I'm part of the minority that liked it from the start. I bounced off Pathfinder hard, and 4e appealed to my wargame sensibilities. Always enjoyed it, despite the clusterfuck of a launch and the CharOp nonsense that developed later.

>>96146295
You mean back when the board and site as a whole wasn't a shit show, fa/tg/uys actually had good taste.

>>96146328
>and 4e appealed to my wargame sensibilities.
You mean your warhammer sensibilities? Old D&D is much closer to wargames like kriegsspiel than warhammer miniature shit.

Ive never played a system I didn't enjoy in some aspect. I guess it comes down to how it is being run/the group you play with.
I guess the only one I really didn't care to pick up again was Starfinder 1e

Shadowrun 4e looks better and better in retrospect as CGL fucked up SR5 and SR6.

>>96146217
There is no edition of D&D that simulates a plausible game world and all of them have immersion shattering mechanics if you bother to think.

>>96146130
>There are so many rules and abilities in 4e that make no sense from an in-character perspective - that have no basis in the character's reality - and that kills any sense of immersion.

They went to far in on classes being locked to just one power source a fair number of powers would have been less immersion breaking if they had different power sources.

>>96146243
>that brought about a ttrpg renaissance

It didn't bring about a renaissance. It just happened to be the edition around when Stranger Things, Critical Role and Covid brought attention to D&D.

>>96145593 (OP)
Launch 4e was rough. The game with only the original 3 books was shallow and full of issues that should have been caught in testing. The entire first year of adventures sucked ass. But 4e now as a complete package using everything is a fantastic game. Especially because the Compendium is now free and if you aren't completely retarded you can also set up the character builder.

>>96146243
5e art has aged like milk, looks like sloppa

>>96146833
ttrpg's as a whole massively expanded thanks to 5e's popularity. everything from indie, osr, licensed, and new it's have been given a fighting chance because of how many people 5e brought in and then disseminated out from.

It isn't a coincidence that the market began to thrive after 5e released. A rising tide lifts all ships.

>>96145593 (OP)
>Pic unrelated

>>96147255
It helped that it was designed to be a game that 3.PF, 4e, and OSR players who hated each other's games could compromise on and it appeared to succeed in that.

>>96147255
I would say thank hipsters, critters and stranger things

5e 2014 launch was very small compared to 3e and 4e-- it just kinda appeared with little fan fair(doing half the numbers of 4e on launch). It didn't pick up in terms of sales until a couple years later in 2016 when Stranger Things released and Critical Role gained popularity

It was a right time; right place moment. 5e is the synthwave and Skyrim of it's time, one is an imaginary simpler ideal past and the latter needed tons of mods to make it fun

>>96147388
5E wasn't designed for 4E players at all, they knew 4E players wouldn't like it.

>>96147255
You are attributing too much success to 5e rather than from the secondary sources advertising D&D and catching the attention of a new major market. We would have likely seen a similar surge in the TTRPG market if Stranger Things had used Call of Cthulhu instead of D&D. The 2014 and 2015 releases were anemic and it was only after Stranger Things premiered in March 2016 that we see releases really accelerated.

>>96145671
Nentir Vale is great but 4e Dark Sun is and was trash compared to the earlier work.

>>96147526
When 2014 launched most thought it was very boring and imbalanced, advantage was pretty fun and some of the classes were neat

Once there were phone apps people really started to flock to it, something few realize is that 5e was the first D&D game you could have on your phone easily
As most 3.5e and 4e tools were spread sheets or pirated software on a laptop

>>96147497
4EE from 2012 was popular enough they copied many of it's rules over into 5E, but most 4e players converted over to 5e

>>96147593
No they didn't.

>>96145593 (OP)

>Baww, fighters are boring and don't have enough special attacks!
>Baww, someone is stuck being a cleric on full-time healing duty!
>Baww, the game doesn't scale up and down well and there's an obvious "sweet spot" from levels 4 to 11!

4E addressed every complaint about DnD and the players hated it. Kinda hate how this used to be one of my contrarian hipster opinions but now it's mainsteam.

>>96145593 (OP)
>>96145614
>>96146033
>Contrarian bullshit thread #2361
Yawn.

>>96145745
No, the biggest weakness of 4E was that IT WASN'T A ROLEPLAYING GAME AT ALL. It was a gay as hell miniature combat game and that is why it deservedly died. All the hate it got was 100% deserved, in fact it wasn't hated enough. There should have been public book burnings for this shit.

>>96147608
5e is basically 4ee without modifiers, flattened math and vancian magic bolted on

>>96147593
>4EE from 2012 was popular enough they copied many of it's rules over into 5E, but most 4e players converted over to 5e

Essentials killed it and only existed because of a coup d'etat that happened with the D&D design team. The new head of the design team pretty much started 5e development before Essentials was even published.

>>96147593
>4EE from 2012 was popular enough they copied many of it's rules over into 5E

Essentials was not popular. Half of its intended releases were canned because no one was buying it. Its similar to 5e because both were lead by the hack fraud retard Mearls who openly hated 4e. Essentials being his way of shitting on 4e and 5e being closer to his prefered game.

>>96147633
Everybody look at the muh theater of the mind storyfag.

>>96147628
Those aren’t real complaints though and just cope and revisionism

>>96147691
>roleplaying gamer wants role playing in their ttrpg.
Only a 4er could think that this is an issue

>>96147633
4e has more rules/skills/feats for exploring and downtime than 5e

Honestly if 4e wasn't presented on white paper like a spreadsheet and used 'mana' instead of 'daily powers' it wouldn't have been so weird to explain in world abilities

>>96147628
>Baww, someone is stuck being a cleric on full-time healing duty!
To be fair, this was one of the most retarded and inefficient ways to play a Cleric in 3.x.

>>96145745
>The biggest weakness of 4E was that all the classes felt the same
Man I played two characters in the same class who felt fundamentally different. Both were PHB warriors. Both felt very different.

>>96147633
>No, the biggest weakness of 4E was that IT WASN'T A ROLEPLAYING GAME AT ALL.
Genuine brainlet take. D&D was as much a roleplaying game as any other edition of D&D - if you think 4e wasn't a roleplaying game I got some bad news about whatever edition you prefer.

But both of your brainlet takes really boil down to the same thing. Artifice. There is a way that roleplaying games look and present themselves that 4e did away with. Flavor text was minimized, skills that had no real mechanical purpose were done away with. 4e showed you all the parts, how they fit together, and how the machine worked.

And this is, genuinely, why you dipshits keep coming up with the same fundamentally wrong takes. Your problems aren't ones of mechanics or roleplaying. They're ones of aesthetics. Classes "feel the same" because WotC kept the formatting consistent across classes and spoke in very plain terms about what powers did. It "wasn't a roleplaying game" because they decided to remove all the stuff that is there largely so you could check off a box on your sheet that gave you permission to roleplay a certain way - something you do not actually need. Nothing is stopping you from saying "my character is a cartographer" in 4e, but because the game isn't specifically telling you that's something you're allowed to do, you don't do it.

>>96147666
To vets who already had 4e? Yes, it wasn't popular outside of monster vault, but it was popular and being sold in big box stores and even pharmacies when they had book/mag/toy sections

Lot of kids bought it, especially out in the countryside

>>96147628
While it's not the only example, 4e is a great example of "the players don't know what they actually want, and you shouldn't listen to them."

Because yeah, players genuinely DON'T know what they fucking want. They're relatively decent at identifying a problem, but NEVER listen to your players for solutions. They have no fucking clue what they're doing.

>>96147783
4e sold well, but lost it's brand and the GSL/DnDI really pissed the players off

>>96147666
Like all things with regards to 4e and sales numbers, the failure of Essentials is overstated. Hasbro cares about return on investment, and sets sales goals based on reaching a certain ROI.

4e received a lot of capital investment, had high sales goals, and some executives made promises that they weren't able to keep because they were unrealistic.

And on some level, 4e was a bit more expensive to make than other editions. Not because the books were physically better quality or because there were better pack ins, but because the way 4e was designed required more time. You'll notice that as time went on and essentials came out, things got a lot more streamlined - this was so you had less time spent developing things and thus had to use less labor hours to make your product.

4e's cancellation was not because 4e was some massive market failure. It sold well compared to the rest of the roleplaying market, despite what some people cherry picking a magazine poll will say. But for the people who ultimately make the decisions, it was not making enough money for how much money was being put into it. So the decision was made; new edition, simpler rules that would require less writing and playtesting, and lay off staff. D&D was basically being prepared to be a game that was more or less on a kind of maintenance mode.

5e happened to get lucky because the incredibly smooth, textureless roleplaying game they made was perfect for being the ruleset for liveplay games, which lead to an explosion of popularity.

>>96147845
DDI was genuinely great. One person in the group makes a DDI account and everyone gets new shit every month.

>>96147858
DDI seems like utopia compared to modern DDB

>>96147847
It's sad 5.5e is getting shelved entirely, no dev team, getting MLP'd probably for a decade

They hardly even tried verses Pathfinder and Daggerheart after the OGL scandal. But I think afterwards they just can to the conclusion that you can't really get that big of a return on making D&D books and to just license it out

>>96147771
The samey feeling is really a problem in the first player handbook, PH2 and PH3 improved classes unique feeling more

>>96147628
PF2E, Draw Steel or 13th Age are probably the best choices for 4E enjoyers in this day and age

I do see gamist/crunchy TTRPG making a massive resurgence due to VTTs after covid since the automation is so good now

>>96147847
I mean the staff layoffs were constant in 4e. Like half the people who wrote the first PHB weren't around by PHB3 and like half of those weren't around by the first wave of Heroes of books. Though that's to do with Hasbro and WotC leadership all being retards and insane. If Hasbro hadn't been demanding MTG numbers so they didn't have to pump out a book every 6 weeks plus all the other DDI content 4e would have been way cheaper to maintain and could have been a 10 year+ edition too. Plus its failed side projects that were just wasted money like the decks of ability cards that everyone just used index cards for instead, the fortune cards which were just ass and other side shit no one wanted but wasted time and money.

>>96145593 (OP)

>>96148276
What's bad about this?

>>96148298
It's a cinematic maneuver that works with humanoid enemies, but the mechanics lead to a lot of weirdness (beholders somehow biting themselves is a popular example)

>>96148322
Bites one of their eye stalks that the rogue pushed out of the way while running around

>>96146151
Just came in here to say SOAD's existence singlehandledly validates nu-metal.

>>96148366
Which may or may not be possible based on the beholder depiction. As I said it leads to weirdness. Some people have difficulty accepting that weirdness in 4e while letting similar weirdness through in 3.X and 5e.

>>96148276
The issue is both that narratively it doesn’t make a lot of sense but also that it’s really jank mechanically in play to resolve. This could have been much better designed but 4e was designed by idiots who don’t play games for idiots who don’t play

>>96148813
No it's not, it's easy as fuck. You're just stupid.

>>96146130
>so many rules and abilities in 4e that make no sense from an in-character perspective
I feel this same way about 5E, but why isn't 5E dead?

>>96145593 (OP)
Not a single person likes this crap.

>>96148858
Looks like you just hurt yourself in your confused rage...

>>96146250
NTA I did, this one >>96146230
It's the best edition of D&D ever

>>96148276
4e design in a nutshell.
Which is a shame because there were good ideas in there, if only they didn't have this terrible general concepts.
3e was the opposite, good general concept but plenty of "WTF were they thinking writing this"
Still prefer 3e, then BECMI, then B/X, then AD&D2e. Never played 1e but I think I would prefer it to 2e

>>96148322
Okay, and in 5e you make a Reckless Attack to Sneak Attack

>>96147666
>Half of its intended releases were canned because no one was buying it.
Essential represented the fundamental misunderstanding of the design team of what people liked about 3e and previous games and disliked about 4e.
The Slayer Fighter in Essentials is basically a seriously written, approved and printed strawman of a pre-4e Fighter which fundamentally misinterpret what people wanted from an non-bespoke attack flexible combat system in a 3e remake.
We went from
>please, enough with "I need improved pooping to poop" - which is frankly often exaggerated
to
>here your pooping of the seven wind, BTW only fighters and certain monks poop now

>>96149058
NTA but 5e is full of 4e-isms and they are, in fact, its weakest parts - without having the strong parts of 4e.
I think you should stop thinking anyone that dislikes 4e is a 5e player.

>>96148858
It’s multiple steps to resolve because it’s dumb as fuck design

>>96149128
It's literally just the AOO procedure, but they attack themselves.

>>96148100
The 4e layoffs basically took two forms.
There were the performance layoffs. Which were happening basically constantly throughout - someone was put in charge, they were given an unreasonable goal, and then fired when they failed to meet the goal. This was a perpetual issue.

Then there was the general cutdown of the team, where in wotc changed editions (with them floating the idea that "we're not making any more editions after 5th edition"), and generally reduced the staff. Let people go with no intentions to replace them.

Also yeah I forgot about fortune cards. What a shit fucking idea those were. "Hey, did you want a mini game? No. Fuck you. Buy cards."

>>96148954
>Which is a shame because there were good ideas in there, if only they didn't have this terrible general concepts.

A big problem is that they created a bunch of "one-size fits all" structures (AEDU power, class based on power source+role, skill challenges, etc.) and refused to deviate from them before the coup that lead to Essentials. The "Martials" suffered from Daily powers not really feeling right with them and likely would have benefited more from additional At-Wills or Encounters in their place. Power Source should have been tied more to the powers and their mechanics rather than directly to the classes. Utility powers were such a catch all, that combat applicable powers overwhelmed non-combat powers which made non-combat feel like a non-priority.

>>96148813
>narratively it doesn’t make a lot of sense
It makes perfect sense. You "provoke" enemies, they attack, you use their attacks against them.
>the mechanics lead to a lot of weirdness
Mechanically it's pretty simple. Hell, it's one of the few examples of a scaling power based on the fact that it uses an enemy's attack rather than your own.
>beholders somehow biting themselves is a popular example
It's not unthinkable that a beholder might bite down on one of its own eyestalks. That's entirely a reasonable thing.

Genuinely, the only problem with Bloody Path is that something that should be a monk power but it was given to Rogues. That's literally its only issue.

>>96146243
>I love that the most successful edition of D&D that brought about a ttrpg renaissance and is still the most played game 11 years later is still considered 'bad'.
Remember friends. If something is popular that means it's better than whatever you like. Which is why you shouldn't bother playing D&D at all. There are objectively more popular and more financially successful things to engage with in your free time. Remember, something that's popular is automatically good - and that the more popular something is, the gooder it is.

Why are you bothering with D&D? Go watch sports. An objectively more popular thing to do, and therefore objectively a better use of your time.

>>96145745
No, the classes LOOKED the same. Which was arguably a bigger weakness, since it turned people off before they could try playing them to see how they felt.

>>96146243
>fortnite and league of legends are the best videogames and mcdonalds is the best restaurant ever!
only on /tg/ do you see unironic appeal to lowest common denominator touted as a positive or indicator of quality

>>96149421
True, unironically (ironically)

>>96147847
>5e happened to get lucky

5e nearly died the first year, all the non-core books were flops, printing error, defects and untested garbage. It was basically an early access game

2016 was a magical year for 5e that brought it back from the brink of being hard cover 4EE. Curse of Strahd, Tome of Beasts, errata, Volo's guide all came out.

>>96145593 (OP)
>What are some other examples
Whaddya mean udder igzamples ya mook? You ain't shown us nuttin yet. Ya throw out sum hokey line 'bout agin' like fine wine and instead ya show us granma's moldy vinegar. How she makes vinega moldy is anyone's guess bud she does it. Maybe you oughta ask doz guys cuz dey dun it too with dat pile of ptooey.

>>96145593 (OP)
WEG Men In Black is surprisingly solid and fresh

>>96147771
>It "wasn't a roleplaying game" because they decided to remove all the stuff that is there largely so you could check off a box on your sheet that gave you permission to roleplay a certain way - something you do not actually need. Nothing is stopping you from saying "my character is a cartographer" in 4e, but because the game isn't specifically telling you that's something you're allowed to do, you don't do it.
The really funny thing is when you see the exact same criticism of it from OSR grogs who then go on to talk about how their games doing the exact same thing is a good thing because it's returning to the way RPGs are supposed to be.

>>96145593 (OP)
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e.

Unlike other games that aged well, this one 100% DESERVED the hate it got for pricing, core concepts being in staggered released supplements, the proprietary dice being hard to come by and needing at least two packs per player for an adequate sized pool, and heaps of other very legitimate complaints.

That said, if you are one of the bat shit people that DID get a hoard of dice and all the supplements for a complete game? You got absolutely, 100%, no contest the very best version of WHFRP ever made.

>>96151111
not really, but you knew that, right?

>>96148899
>I feel this same way about 5E, but why isn't 5E dead?
Because good game design matters less than good marketing and the network effect.

>>96148954
>Never played 1e but I think I would prefer it to 2e
They are closer to being the same game than any other numbered edition. A DM can use material from one of the AD&Ds with the other and players probably won't notice. I consider both 1e and 2e as the same edition because I played "AD&D" when I first got into the hobby. It was 2e (the most readily available core rules at the time) with a bunch of 1e rules replacing the 2e ones where they fell short. Splatbooks and modules from either edition were used willy-nilly and it seemed to work just fine.

Only the various Basic boxes are more similar, which perplexes me as to why OSR purists argue over which one is better.

>>96145593 (OP)
Shadowrun 4e

>>96146336
What's the equivalent of "/b/ was never good"?

>>96146243
Appeal to popularity is even more retarded in this hobby space than it is in other contexts.

I've played far more 5e than I ever played 4e. Same with 3.5 and pathfinder, because it's just easier to find games for them. But 4e is my favorite WotC edition by a fucking mile just by virtue of having halfway decent class-balance and being actually fun to play.

>>96147633
4e is exactly as much of a roleplaying game as 5e or 3.5, this critique has never made sense. Warriors getting fighting moves that superficially resemble spells (which they already had, since sane people were using Tome of Battle before 4e came out) does not somehow damage the roleplaying aspect of the game.

>>96152601
I have always maintained that SR4e was about as good as it was ever going to be after 3e.
Unlike some, I didn't mind the tech 'upgrade', as it made it more intuitive to understand the general technology of the setting and reduced the reliance of dedicated hacker to a group, and if you didn't try to snap the game in half, was very serviceable, even to the point of fairness towards the pcs.
>>96153265
The critique doesn't make sense because it is a troll statement that was taken as true by people who never played the game.

>>96151207
>the very best version of WHFRP ever made
I'd argue that it's a completely separate game that has nothing to do with WFRP, but it is really good, yeah.

It should've been called "Warhammer Heroes" or some shit rather than "Warhammer fantasy rpg 3rd edition" 'cause wfrp is about rolling dung shoveler as your starting career and having to burn a fate point 1st session to avoid dying of sepsis.

And the cards and dice and all that annoying shit should've been solved some other way, definitely.

>>96152608
4e is only good now because of VTTs and piracy

Imagine playing 4e without even a phone app and having to track all the unique debuffs every ability has

>>96152601
>>96153296
4e has terrible matrix rules, terrible summoning rules, horribly unbalanced magic and awful character creation.
The fact that 5e and 6e fixed nothing while breaking much doesn't make 4e particularly good. The 2050 sourcebook is cool though.

Cities without number has been my shadowrun edition of choice since it came out, and I cannot imagine ever playing with Catalyst matrix or summoning rules ever again.

>>96153336
It worked just as well as every other edition at launch anon. I started my first 4e campaign less than a month after release.

The official character creator was really fucking neat though, I remember. I wish I could have seen what could have been if that web-developer didn't get cucked.

>>96153317
To be fair, rolling a basic bitch character that dies from dick rot in the first session is still on the table in 3e, but you needed the supplement with rules for diseases and the cards to go with it.

Like I said, a complete game? Damn good Warhammer but they fucked it up bad with releasing shit the way they did. Core box characters with no supplements were OP compared to previous games. Half the extra content was stuff to make it more lethal (diseases, miscasts, mutations, etc).

>>96153336
nothing on /tg/ is tolerable without piracy though
genuinely cannot imagine being a consumer that buys every physical book

>>96153669
4e books are super cheap and the GSL is a bitch

>>96153709
not cheap enough

>>96152459
>Only the various Basic boxes are more similar, which perplexes me as to why OSR purists argue over which one is better.
Depends on whether you like to play as a cleric or a thief whether you like BECMI better than B/X, and vice versa.

>>96153339
>4e has terrible matrix rules, terrible summoning rules, horribly unbalanced magic and awful character creation.
Okay, but what SR edition don't those criticisms describe?

>>96147633
Please actually play the games you talk about, you retarded fag.

>>96147180
You can still appreciate milk when it's fresh, though.

>>96147779
Essentials is so unpopular that when Justin Alexander was trying to get a good scan of the cover to Essentials for an (article? video?) about D&D's history, he couldn't find a good scan anywhere on the internet, including pirate websites.

It sucked dick. Nobody liked it. You only pretend to like it because you like 5e and it was kinda midway between 4e and 5e.

>>96145593 (OP)
NO

We are NOT doing 4E Revisionism.

It quite literally is the foundation for everything bad that came after even if the system was different. Same mindset

>>96155608
No.

>>96155608
Sure that wasn't 3e? It is the dawn of New D&D, after all.

>>96155611
The same mindset that led 4E designers to poach WoW mechanics in an attempt to appeal to non DnD players is the same mindset that led 5E designers to make everything as bland and normie friendly as possible, YES

Different solutions but fundamentally a Player-Hostile approach towards people who actually had been doing the hobby for a long time

>>96148899
Oatmeal of RPGs. Not good at anything, but mediocre enough that everybody in your play group can agree to play it.

Also, it appeals to this guy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1cpupus/hey_its_me_the_guy_at_your_table_who_only_wants/

>>96155626
What WoW mechanics are in 4e?

>>96155743
He’s referring to the way that the game is designed to be fun instead instead of dog shit

>>96155958
So fun everyone hated it

>>96155961
If it wasn’t fun, why did even its detractors compare it to World of Warcraft, one of the most popular games of all time?

>>96155979
Are you implying the WoW allegations were a compliment?

>>96155994
They're only really damning if you're in a specific mindset of "this thing I'm referencing is bad". Conversely, people can also not like the comparison because it isn't actually true.

Is there any good place to get 4e materials now?

>>96155961
Its PHB outsold PF1's until the very end but go off.

>>96156073
If you just google 4e phb the eye you'll find essentially all the pdfs. Some are shit scans like most of the Essentials books though

iws DOT mx is the online compendium. It has like 99% of stuff.

The 4e Discord has the offline compendium that actually has everything and the process to get the character builder

>>96155626
Name a single wow mechanic that is in 4e that is not something that already existed in D&D.

>>96156089
even then, the single data point that Paizo fanboys love to drag out is basically saying
"in this one quarter, in specialty stores, when D&D wasn't releasing anything, pathfinder was the #1 selling RPG"

It's the most qualified statement of all time. Especially when you factor in, and this is always important, that the only data point being looked at is specialty stores and does not include your mass distribution platforms (amazon, big box stores, major book retailers.)

>>96156212
NTA - AEDU was done as a clear imitation of short, medium and long cooldowns in warcraft.
There was a constant attempt to imitate in a gamistic way "tanking" (albeit that one is a cycle on influences from tabletop to VG and so on)
The way the initial monster math was calculated made sense with a quick videogame exchange but made the combat a true slog.
The way powers worked assumed an almost no-interaction with the environment or required effort to do so
Implements were item-drops for casters (but they were a great idea, mind it)

Ironically, 4e was more videogame-y than wow classic in some aspect. Wow classic, as an example, has spell reagents and crafting rules.

>>96152459
>I consider both 1e and 2e as the same edition
People over there at OSR disagree strongly due to an admittedly different ethos in 2e.
I am still delving into 2e now because I am into OSR stuff and becmi

>>96156454
3.0 had once per encounters abilities in the core rules. What are you talking about?

>>96155961
>Loud voices =/= everyone

>>96156454
4e had spell regeants and crafting rules. They were in rituals and martial practices. They just took away the boring bookkeeping of tracking how much bat guano you had left marking how many fireballs could be thrown before you bought more and moved that to the out of combat spells that should have cost like scrying, resurrection and magic item creation.

>>96156512
Is this the usual trite Barbarian answer? 3.0's wasn't systemic and they did everything to "mask" it with fatigue mechanic making it meld in-universe with a given fight.
4e didn't give a fuck about the "in-universe" and many consider it a virtue.
Which is a position valid as anyone else's too bad it was a huge turn off for many more.

>>96156559
>rituals
Not feasible as much, by design
>martial practices
not core

Oh hey, haven't had to trot this screencap out in ages.

>>96158137
The main practical difference is that each individual 4e encounter takes significantly longer so when designing campaign scenarios you want to have significantly fewer encounters.

>>96156454
Amazing. Even though there are real examples, you missed all of them.

The short rest between encounters was inspired by eating and drinking to recover health and mana. Preparing a list of powers that you can only use once each until you rest to restore them is just Vancian not!casting.
Tanking is nothing like mmo tanking. There is no main tank aggros everything, and there is no complete heal spam for many times the tank's max hp per fight.
Implements are +1 swords for casters, not invented by WoW.
The actual part of combat inspired by WoW is the mechanically involved combat, with phases, movement, positioning, more reactions, trying to make the Solo boss fight, and everything applies a buff or debuff.

>>96146151
Are you legally retarded or just lying? There was a time when basically nothing but nu-metal was on. Normies absolutely lapped that shit up. Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Papa Roach, Staind, P.O.D., Linkin Park, etc. all were H U G E.

>inb4 "but it wasn't good music" or some other cope
I proved you wrong on one matter. I'm not discussing anything else.

>>96158161
Use the escalation die from 13th Age.

>>96153791
None, I told you I play cities now.

There's nothing wrong with the opinion that 4e is 'the best' edition or anything. I was more making a point of the fact that 4e is horribly flawed, but nothing was fixed with 5e and 6e

>>96153652
Oh okay, I didn't know that kind of stuff made it in later.
Still, I think you should rename games if you're changing them so fundamentally, using new dice, new resolution mechanics and (I would argue) new genre.

>>96158161
>each individual 4e encounter takes significantly longer*
*Above level 7, unless you use a few tips for fixing the monster math or only use monsters from the later books.

4e combat is the best of any d&d edition by a significant margin. The bad math and hp bloated monsters is a problem, but one I'll gladly fix if I can keep playing 4e.

>>96159234
>Are you legally retarded or just lying? There was a time when basically nothing but nu-metal was on. Normies absolutely lapped that shit up. Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Papa Roach, Staind, P.O.D., Linkin Park, etc. all were H U G E.
It was huge but also hated in the same way trap rap was like ten years ago or a lot of popslop and pop country is today. Limp Bizkit was the most hated band in America during the height of their career, they where treated as a joke similar to how Nickleback would be treated later.

>>96145593 (OP)
4e would have been great if fix a few things and made it online first.

>>96146289
Yeah, that was the time halflings couldn't be cute cause their size means they are basically
"children." I prefer the more youthful look over someone who put a "ugly middle age" filter on their kid look.

>>96164893
>made it online first.
That was the plan, but then the dude in charge of it killed his ex wife and then himself.

>>96147628
True, though the people often whining about it weren't players and fans. That's been a big problem, listening to the wrong group. Now I do think Fighters and Martials should have speical moves in highter levels outside of attack up to 4 times, and cleric should be more than a medic. However at the same time. Making every class the same to the point everyone can be the Tank, DPS, Healer, Support, etc. Makes no sense. Maybe they can be a backup. Or could have a subclass that can do two things like the bladesinger being able to tank and attack in the frontlines if need be but is mainly a caster.

There is a different of listening to people who have no idea what they want. To listening to the people who do and have given ideas and often made homebrews and 3rd party books to fix your game. Though let's be clear, 4e was a too MMO like. They needed to be a TTRPG not a Offline MMO.

>>96164961
You could have said "I didn't play 4e" in fewer words.

>>96164961
>Making every class the same to the point everyone can be the Tank, DPS, Healer, Support, etc. Makes no sense.
bruh every 4e class comes pre-sorted into tank (Defender), DPS (Striker), healer/support (Leader) or crowd control (Controller). This is one of the things people bitched about.

>>96164909
They've been messing up halflings since 3e, guess they were afraid of getting sued by the Tolkien estate.
Or just ashamed of D&D's origins.

>>96162583
>It's a tactical minis figure battle combat skirmish tactics wargame
This is a fair criticism though. There's a lot of GMs out there that like to resolve combat without tracking things precisely via grids. Such a thing is close to impossible to practically do in 4e because there are so many abilities that focus around specific movement.
I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but I am saying that people who are not used to or interested in busting out a grid map every time they resolve a combat encounter probably won't like 4e.

>>96164961
I love how you just throw out claims that show you never even read 4e much less played it.

>>96147633
>IT WASN'T A ROLEPLAYING GAME AT ALL
Holy shit what a bad take. RPing is RPing, if your mind says it and the DM sees it then it can happen. You or your DM or both must be aphantasic brainlets to let a mere streamlining of rules make you think there's less freeform roleplay content. It lets players easily forego miniature combat and improvise, you're just scared of math and parroting tired opinions.

>>96146230
I concur.

>>96146250
Me and my group did. But then again, we played from 1982 too about 2001.

>>96163730
>[coping noises]
Sure, that's why these albums absolutely didn't sell at all. Not multiple platinum or anything. Just admit you were wrong on an anonymous image board. You bots are so weak...

>>96164945
>but then the dude in charge of it
didn't deliver any usable code and was about to be fired for it
People like to leave out this part.

>>96167344
>There's a lot of GMs out there that like to resolve combat without tracking things precisely via grids
At that point it would be less of a hassle to just use a system that caters more to that kind of playstyle, instead of trying to reshape something designed for the opposite.

>>96168805
To be honest, one of the things that often slows down RPG combat is spatial confusion that could be cleared up with a grid, or a good zone system (which most games lack).

>>96168774
No, they had a working beta version of it near the end.

I liked the clear defined roles of 4e. Striker, leader, defender, controller. Some classes in a role were better than others (some more circumstantial than others), and some roles were more valuable in a fight than others.
I liked that my party felt like we were working as a team rather any each individual member trying to get their spotlight. Controller would neutralize targets so the striker could pick them off. Striker could take risks to provoke AoE while the defender would punish enemies for taking swipes. Leader would reposition allies and enemies for favorable positioning.
I like tactics games.
There was still room for non-combat encounters and mechanics in 4e.

>>96168190
By this logic Taylor Swift is an amazing artist.

>>96155608
It's interesting to me because, having never played 4th, I'm really curious if the final patched product would actually be fun like a lot of defenders say, or if I'm watching people with no taste or critical thinking skills come along and try to pump up something obviously terrible, like people did a generation later with the Star Wars prequels. I'm tempted to give it a spin to see for myself. What's a decent adventure that best captures what 4th ed was trying to do?

>>96156462
Yeah, mechanically very close in a lot of ways, but some key differences to people who have played both, and each is a totally different in *intended* play. 2nd tries tonally to be like 3rd/4th/5th but didn't actually lean into it in any way, so you have a game that tells you to be a hero but gives you an even more mudcore version of 1st (3d6 down the line as standard with weaker high-end fireballs and lightning bolts against tougher dragons and giants). That having been said, if you can actually puzzle out the combat rules for 1st (good luck: it can obviously be done, but hoo boy), 1st and 2nd combat play completely differently, with 1st being very rocket taggy at times due to how surprise works and skilled players knowing how to stack the mods for it in their favour to max out bonus attacks.

>>96155642
Good god that person sounds genuinely deranged
>"I don't like systems that ask me to focus on math"
>"here is a system that focuses on roleplaying, what do you want to do?"
>"I don't like that system it asks too much of me"
>"What do you even want"
>"lol man I just don't want to have to really think about anything haha I just want to joke around and smoke weed and jerk off haha"

I don't even give much of a shit about system differences, I'm just here to play games. But wow, what a miserable person offloading all the cognitive load to everyone else. They're the sort of player who needs a Face for the party not because of a low CHA but because they can't roleplay.
>>96168190
They sold a lot but it wouldn't be a lie to say that bands like Limp Bizkit were considered sellouts or low tier and not very good. If I recall correctly there was even a written review of The Fragile that used Limp Bizkit as a comparison for the criticism of Starfuckers Inc., it's not impossible for the albums to sell very well to a general audience but be maligned by the typical metalhead.

>>96171127
>like people did a generation later with the Star Wars prequels.
Episode I was panned in general, I've heard some people bitching about II a lot when it came out, but III I remember nothing but hype at the time.

>stack the mods for it in their favour to max out bonus attacks.
Oh so that's another thing 3e got from 1e, huh

>>96156073
4e online support is pretty horrible

>>96148276
>A move that emulates the big moment in any martial-arts movie of a hero deftly weaving through the enemy mooks and countering them one after the other.
>This is somehow a bad thing.

>>96171127
It's good but the DM has to be awake and aware of the game, even better if the players are too.
If you're not ready to commit to it, then you'll have a slog of a time, but if you learn the rules before hand, have a rough idea of what each player can do, and pre plan your sessions, it can produce the greatest moments I've ever had.
Main tip would be keeping an eye on when a fight has passed the point of deadliness. If the players have beat half the enemies and are just trying to beat down the last unit, have that guy surrender or otherwise die out.

>>96158161
The DMGs say to save the actual fighting for the big meaningful moments and resolve some of the lesser "four kobolds in a tunnel" style stuff to skill challenges and creative problem solving via roleplay.

>>96165274
>This is one of the things people bitched about.
Solely because people don't like being explained to and talked at.
Every single class in charop and other sections fo the community in the 3e and prior editions talked about DPR, meatshields, lockdowning AoEs and other things. It's just that it wasn't specifically put in the terminology of the community.

>>96164961
>Making every class the same to the point everyone can be the Tank, DPS, Healer, Support, etc. Makes no sense.
Exactly, which is why this isn't a thing in 4e and you'd learn that if you actually read the PHB.
>Or could have a subclass that can do two things like the bladesinger being able to tank and attack in the frontlines if need be but is mainly a caster.
You mean the Swordmage character class from 4e that 5e's Bladesinging is explicitly based on?

>>96169744
If a D&D game came out that was effectively 4e-XCOM based around building an adventuring guild and sending them off on adventures ala organized play, it would sell stupidly well.

>>96145745
>The biggest weakness of 4E was that all the classes felt the same;
This is the biggest lie told about 4E and I'm sad it's not dead to this day. Stop spreading it. The classes did play differently if you ask anyone who's played several classes. Or even the same class several times.

I can't believe people seeing that a d20 system is just Die+Attribute Mod+Static mod for damage and to-hit formulas mind broke everyone. As if it wasn't always that way. It just proves people thought 3.5 was cleverer and deeper than it was because they didn't understand the core mechanic of d20 in the first place.

>>96172302
I would agree that rider effects were different along with slightly different resolution mechanics in the hardcoded roles
The entire meta was daily dumping nova damage, with all the classes having the same resources in a resource management game due to the hardcoded Adventuring Day-- they were all effectively the same in obtaining a win condition

I believe Adventuring Day model was the biggest mistake of 4e

>>96168805
>At that point it would be less of a hassle to just use a system that caters more to that kind of playstyle
They do
And then they shittalk 4e
And people like you get mad at break out a cope bingo chart

4E comes out and enrages everyone with:
> It's clearly stated rules that are explained the same way every time they come up so you know it's the same mechanic handled the same way
> Revealing d20 systems mostly handle things with d20+modifier because the mechanics are no longer obfuscated like past editions
> Making sure all player options are valid choices and not trap choices included on purpose by the designers
> Daring to remove the alignment system that contradicts both itself and how DND settings work anyway someone is already typing an angry reply to this before checking this spoiler and leads to abuse from both players and DMs
> Not simply removing everyone but wizards from class selection just like 3.5 wizards wanted
> letting you have the freedom to determine how to flavor your ability (within reason)
> letting noncasters do more than I FULL ATTACK
> exposing which people literally cannot handle the mental burden of using imagination for abilities like Bloody Path
> not printing the pages with art that suggests you are opening an old cracked tome (like 3.5 did) to psychically bamboozle weaker minds in to thinking they are gaining some long lost arcane knowledge just by reading the rules

Did I forget anything? For all the whinging people did to force 4E out of existence, we got a more boring version of 3.5 with a genuinely weaker ruleset capable of less and doing it less coherently. I hope you all enjoyed 5E.

>>96145593 (OP)
Great wargame. GW sniped its melee rules for their Lord of the Rings games.

>>96172459
I think 4e is better than 5e, but I think PF2E is better than 4e by a mile

>>96172483
I had a shitty experience with PF1. Haven't tried PF2.

In all genuine honesty, if people are going to shit blood over the idea of improving anything, I'd rather 3.5 come back in full force instead. Fuck it. The ruleset is robust and actually works if you use it as intended. I can assure anyone the vast majority of issues with balance they had, or gameplay coherence, with 3.5 is because everyone is too lazy to track what is going on. Passage of time. The need to eat. Carry weight. I could go on. If anyone doesn't understand why full casters were actually balanced, and why something like Ranger was one of the better classes, you don't get what 3.5 was driving at.

Besides, it let you do goony shit that actually works like strength only rogues and monks. Now that dex to damage is default, I suddenly realize why such a thing is a garbage design point.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just pissed off. 4E was not perfect, but it did everything it set out to do. It just needed some math adjustments here and there.

>>96172519
4e is very narrow, it does dungeon crawls and monster of the week lampoons adventures but with the GSL license it's software and online support will be limited. Strangely enough pvpve style campaigns well, but that's probably because of it's Heroscape DNA

>I'd rather 3.5 come back in full force instead
I think the problem is a majority of TTRPG'ers post-covid are now virtual

No one played 3.5 RAW and online play these days likes RAW with a bit of RAI. Pre-internet and phone apps Rules as Reference style of play is just unthinkable these days where interoperability and software are very important-- you can't just reprogram a piece of software as easily, so tables tend to roll with what the software does best

I think if you liked 3.5 and 4e, PF2E is a no brainer

>>96172519
You're going to have to explain, and keep explaining because you're just fucking wrong.

>>96172571
I'm not going to do a granular break down here, but I'll try to explain as best I can.

Gygax himself was on record in long past that DnD should be played by keeping track of EVERYTHING. You should know exactly how much time tasks take. How much food needs to be consumed. How much all your dumb crap weighs. Exactly who is carrying it. How long getting place to place takes. Even how long leveling up takes. More. Much more.

By shaving off all this busy work, you've removed the balance points DnD is originally built on. At least built on up to 3.5. Those too powerful full casters? No, they can't afford to dump all their spells on combat. Most of those should be saved for noncombat issues. Including incredibly mundane ones. Survival mechanics. Passing difficult terrain. Knowing where the hell you are. Bypassing the slow natural healing rate. Just to name a few obvious ones. These things are difficult and annoying precisely so you have a reason to spend resources to get past them. Full casters don't like having to reserve slots for sheer mundanity. It interferes with being cool. That's the point. On the other side, half casters have plenty of useful tools to bypass these kinds of mundane problems while still being almost as good as a plain fighter. The fighter himself comes out smelling rosey because SUDDENLY you realize a guy who can be set to blend for no cost is a massive gain to productivity. Better, you may be thankful the fighter is a minmaxer for once so you don't have to worry about your resource squeeze. If it can blend, let it blend. Save your resources for real problems that kill more adventurers than any amount of two headed giants or invisible dragons.

Player aversion to this kind of gameplay is probably why subsequent editions play the way they do. Ironically, people now enjoy DnD less. Or maybe that is exactly as expected and why things were designed that way.

>>96172744
Gygax's D&D is not D&D 3.5 and both 3.0 and 3.5 jettisoned most of that.

>>96172757
The stuff jettisoned wasn't even the subject of the post, anon. The relevant parts survived to 3.5.

>>96172744
As I said, you're just fucking wrong. From the earliest modules for 3.0 you can see you're wrong.

>>96172459
>not printing the pages with art that suggests you are opening an old cracked tome (like 3.5 did) to psychically bamboozle weaker minds in to thinking they are gaining some long lost arcane knowledge just by reading the rules
Okay, but you have to admit those Higginbotham sculpture covers were kino.

>>96172266
And what do fucking 5e GMs do? Exactly that. Except its power budget between short rest and long rest classes was designed around a different pace of play, which distorts the class balance and encounter math.

>thing comes out
>it sucks
>everyone says it sucks
>20 years later
>actually it wasn't that bad
yes. it was. fuck you.

>>96172815
Except it wasn't and it was assmad 3.pf tards shitting their pants like how the 2e crowd shit their pants when 3e was coming out, the exact same 'it's just a videogame on paper' and 'there's no real imagination now' arguments were replicated.

>>96172790
...It's a petty reason for people to have hated 4E.

But I can't deny it. That is correct. It was kino. The rules needed to be clearer. Having them be stated in purposefully confusing sentences, that changed the explanation every time it came up, had to go. The way the book cover and pages looked like a real tome of magic? That was just better. It's a petty reason for 4E to have vanished, but it holds true that one should always know their audience. There's no sugar coating it. That's a genuine screw up. It's just Web x.0 UI design logic applied to the core rule book, and that was a massive screw up.

>>96172848
>An arguably equal if not better product fails because of a failure of those viewing it to understand it's benefits as they are drawn simply by aesthetics
Many such cases.

4e gave them everything they said they wanted.
No wonder it failed.

>>96172859
I have long since lost my will to fight it. There is some truth to it. Things that are not aesthetic are shit. Yes, you should care about substance more. God even shit tests us on this a lot. Appearances can deceive. Many great and wonderous holy men in modern times are actually serving Satan, and I mean that literally. But it's not like being ugly is a virtue, and something looking good is not a sin.

And being ugly on purpose is just motive.