Thread 96475537

Why do people still think 4E and 5E are D&D?
Protip:They're not. They never were and never will be.
Touch grass.

Why are you pretending that 3rd editon is D&D.
Do you really think the company that makes Magic the Gathering is capable of making a true version of D&D? They're not. 3rd edition is, was, and forever will be bullshit. It's horseshit that takes all its queues from card games and video games.

>>96475556
>never actually studied the game mechanics
Most of the 3.x shit already existed in 1E and 2E in some form or another, no games.

>>96475537 (OP)
>Touch grass.
Weird, my ironymeter just blew up for some reason.

>>96475571
If you ignore the glowing red signs, yeah. The defining feature of 3rd edition was feats. Which are video game bullshit.

Dungeons and Dragons began to die in 1997 and finally breathed its last breath in 2000.

I understand that 3rd edition is the edition YOU grew up playing. That it's, in your mind, what D&D is SUPPOSED to be. And this is because WotC fucked your brain before you even knew what was happen, and gave you their lesser, corrupted version of D&D: A pen and paper video game.

But once again, I understand it. You grew up playing 3.5 D&D. You bought into the marketing and accept that this is what dungeons and dragons was. You didn't NEED any of those old books. This new book was modern and sleek and cool. You do not know what was taken from you.

>>96475537 (OP)
5e is a watered down version of 3.5. It's all WotC's slopfest. Always has been.

Didn't need to take pot shots at 4e. It's been dead for years.

>>96475608
Feats already existed in the form of certain proficiencies. It wasn't new or revolutionary.

>>96475675
It was not a core system, baked into the base rules.
Enjoy your vidyaslop.

>>96475680
Nonweapon Proficiencies were in core 2E. What planet were you living on, juicebox?

>>96475664
>>96475646

>>96475608
Proficiencies were pretty common pre-3e. All 3e did was make them feats.
3e simplified the ruleset a lot by making pretty much all non-damage rolls based off rolling at or above a TN on d20. Before then what dice you used depended on what you were doing and you might need to roll higher or lower.
It cleaned up a lot of shit by doing this. Unfortunately it introduced horrendous bloat as a result. Especially in regards to HP and AC.

>>96475767
This.

>>96475537 (OP)
>Why do people still think 4E and 5E are D&D?
They are sold as D&D, with the D&D logo on the books clearly indicating they are Dungeons & Dragons products. Just because youre a shit ass troll and pathetic fuckwit doesn't stop 4e and 5e being D&D. Even if you hate them, they will still be Dungeons & Dragons.

>>96475537 (OP)
4e is the only good version of D&D

>>96476251
>>96476299
Twintards.

>>96475537 (OP)
OD&D was the height of D&D's design, and it's all been downhill since.

>>96476372
you mean basic/expert

>>96475537 (OP)
Shit thread where no games will congregate to chant
>New bad old good
Ad nauseam

>>96476584
No, I don't.

>>96476372
Cope

>>96476251
>>96476299
>Twisting reality.

>>96477133
It was the only edition with an outright design goal other than "muh hulking mess of bullshit" and especially once the rough edges were sanded down it became even better. I've played every edition of D&D, 4e is the only one me and my group have ran multiple campaigns in.

>>96477242
>It was the only edition with an outright design goal other than "muh hulking mess of bullshit"
That's OD&D.

>>96477242
4E is pure shit. It's the epitome of mmorpg bullshit.

>>96477307
>Nothing but buzzwords
It plays nothing like an MMO, anon.
>>96477266
OD&D was a slapdash mishmash of multiple different systems and was so shoddy TSR had to have entire sections of their magazine(s) dedicated to just trying to fix it.

>>96477445
>OD&D was a slapdash mishmash of multiple different systems and was so shoddy TSR had to have entire sections of their magazine(s) dedicated to just trying to fix it.
Yes, it was 1974 and nobody had ever made an RPG before. However, it had an actual design goal, intended gameplay loop, and play experience.

>>96477461
And it was fucking atrocious. Even the handful of people who helped make it realized this. That is why we got Basic and Advanced lines, anon - the game sucked. And even then, both of those lines were horseshit because they were so scattershot in so many ways. It's why 3e "felt" good when it launched because it somewhat attempted to fix those issues but was again riddled with "well, what if we took X and made it do Y" bullshit and had layers upon layers of tedium (cross-skill bonuses for instance, or how to do grapple mechanics). 4e decided enough was enough and focused on what worked and took the literal decades of fan commentary from mail, forums, and fansites to make the game people had been claiming they wanted
>Fighters can do more than just swing a weapon
>No one needed to be the mandatory cleric because every character could heal out of combat and healing potions were affordable
>Combat was grand with moving parts and counters and more
>Epic levels right there in core, and they made more sense than the "spheres" bullshit from BECMI/RC or crapping over martials like they did in 3e
>Halflings were no longer toddlers but preteen sized which made more sense
>Focused skill uses
>Casters no longer needed to prepare non-combat spells in their spell slots, they could just learn a ritual
>In fact, anyone with the Ritualist feat could learn rituals, so now your Barbarian could get in on helping set up magical defenses or having a floating disk haul out the treasure
>Actual legit tiers of play that made sense rather than the wishy washy crap that was implied in earlier editions and now 5e
>Actual rules and guidelines on how to engage the numerous kinds of party members
>Actual fucking roleplay rules and guidelines, a fucking first for the game
>Rangers didn't suck

>>96475537 (OP)
Are they still selling 1st ed AD&D? No? That could be why. It's all down to marketing and IP ownership.

>>96477665
They are still selling AD&D 1e, anon, it's Print-on-Demand on DriveThru.

>>96475685
No, it was an optional rule, p51 phb at the top

Replaying 3.5 based video games has reminded me of every reason I ever hated 3.5.

>>96477775
Still in the Core Rulebook.

>>96477817
>gaytard posts

>>96477541
And then everyone screamed the rules were explained too well and too consistent and demanded 3.5 back.

>>96477775
>Print on demand
With atrocious scans and “maps” across several bound pages. They’re dogshit and proof WoTC are a pale shadow of their former selves.

>4e is good
4e died a long time ago. It has faded quicker than even 3.5 from groups and memory. Let it die. It was a stupid idea in the first place, poorly executed with broken math, and quickly abandoned. Move on 4erries, you lost.

>>96477859
4e handled social stuff poorly. Hell it handled anything outside of combat poorly. The concept of at will, daily, and encounter powers were meta as hell. Healing surges were also retarded.
Combat went on far too long.

Honestly, it really seemed like they tried to build an RPG around a skirmish game. It creates a lot of flaws. Same as with Savage Worlds really.

>>96477881
>But but but muh rituals
They were shit and clearly tacked on. Shut the fuck up 4erries.

>>96475767
Non-weapon Proficiencies are not feats, they're skills. Weapon Proficiencies are not feats either, they're proficiency with weapons.

So what are the essentials to enjoying 4E?

>>96477923
Liking good game design and not liking D&D.

>>96477923
You mean the Essentials to enjoying 4E!

>>96477923
An inability to comprehend that the unity of game and narrative can only occur through simulationism as a bridge, which is the same deficiency that plagues fans of narrative systems such as PBTA. For some reason, the Lancer/Draw Steel/"4e was actually good just it isn't for you"/PF2e audience and the PBTA/BitD/Daggerheart/one-page audience, despite being separate audiences, occupy similar communities (reddit, rpgnet), have aligned out-of-game personalities, and join forces to act like wanting simulationism in a role-playing game is a capital crime.

>>96477785
I once had a player try to convince me that "Optional" meant that the player chooses to use it, not the DM.
The rule he was choosing to use was additional XP for warrior characters based on HD of monsters killed. He was very pissed off that I wouldn't let his paladin have an extra 10 XP for the one kill he actually got. We were playing 5e at the time.

>>96477930
>>96478307
Chill I was asking which books are nice to have.

>>96477541
>And it was fucking atrocious. Even the handful of people who helped make it realized this. That is why we got Basic and Advanced lines, anon - the game sucked.
No. They wanted to sell more books, that's why. OD&D's design was heavily warped, for the worse, when it transitioned into Basic and Advanced.

>>96475537 (OP)
Why do you think AD&D is D&D? Pro tip: it's not. It never was and never will be.
Kill yourself.

>>96475608
Consolidating something like a dozen weird tangential functions from AD&D into a small number of clearly-explained common processes is not "video game bullshit", it's just good design practice that video games happened to do first. For example, the Weapon Focus line of feats corresponds to a fiddly tradeoff in an AD&D supplement that allowed Fighters to sacrifice some weapon proficiencies for being better at specific ones, making it much more reasonable to acquire mid-campaign.

It's especially ironic given that accretion of bespoke rules with little relation to others being "how TTRPGs should be" and divergence to consolidated systems being "video game bullshit" is exactly backwards, because the former is onerously difficult for most humans but trivial for computers. Unless your point is abandonment of systematization to leave the door open for DMs to make up whatever they damned well please, which was a major contributor to TSR going under as this CRIPPLES the network effects.

>>96477266
...No, OD&D did not have "design goals", it had an ever-growing list of things to design that was done by accretion of bespoke functions. Much of the impetus for AD&D was to consolidate this feature-creep, and many of the loathed introductions of 3e were just repeating that honest design goal to the feature-creep of AD&D with a specific eye to actual mechanical consistency so people could wrap their head around it.

>>96478307
>unity of game and narrative can only occur through simulationism as a bridge
Incorrect, unless you bloat "simulationism" to incredibly blatant because-genre-says-so rules like that Conan RPG that forces you to waste all your loot on whores and booze. Very fuzzy logic largely detached from in-universe causation is important to shape narrative results that are neither realistic nor pragmatic.

>>96478921
>Much of the impetus for AD&D was to consolidate this feature-creep
*make Gary Gygax more money by trying to cut Arneson out of royalties

>>96478928
That is a separate reason from the mentioned, being why many of the core rules that were working fine got changed, but the sheer volume of options integrated from supplements and Dragon issues isn't justified by that alone.

>>96478991
>they made a bunch of extra supplements that made the game worse in ways people were bitching about even at the time, that means there wasn't any design goal
I guess the Essentials line means 4e had no design goals either.

>>96477923
First: its a game, do not expect a deep simulation of a universe.
Two: this is a game about high fantasy and high magic. The characters are not going to be gritty warriors who die in the mud from gangrene.
Three: the game expects you to know your character, to know what to do on your turn.
fourth: have fun. Get inspired by the options, from races to classes to paragon paths and epic destinies.

>>96478587
PHB 1-3
DMG 1-3
Power Books such as Martial Power, Primal Power, etc
Monster Manuals, all of them.

To be quite frank, all of the books except the Essentials lines. Each brings neat options, cool lore, and "fun" rules.
Even the Dragon magazine issues have some neat stuff. iws.mx/dnd is your friend for looking up 4e stuff. The Character Creator would be good to get too.

Some will recommend some homebrew fixes such as Monster Manual on a Card, but the game is perfectly playable as is. It won't be as quick or streamlined as some want, but its playable and fun, and the way I did it when I ran and played 4e during its lifespan. The big fix for monsters that many get wrong in homebrewing the first Monster Manual is to get rid of certain resistances and immunities. Thats the big slowdown for most monsters and why people say to not use stuff from it.

>>96479004
>I guess the Essentials line means 4e had no design goals either.
It did, its just the goals were counter to 4e's. The goals changed alongside the designers, namely Mearls and Perkins. Essentials were a trial run of 5e style simplification using 4es framework. And you can tell how shit 5e was going to be from that trial run.

>>96479087
Do you feel like the amount of books you’re recommending they pick up to enjoy 4e too many or too few?

>>96475537 (OP)
What "is" D&D?

>>96478307
Wanting simulationism isn't a crime, but acting like simulationism is the one true way while pretending every blatant violation of it in a game you like doesn't exist is faggotry of the highest order.

>>96477881
Forgotten Realms was shit and deserved to get butchered.

>>96479182
They should just pirate them. While its nice to have them, pirate first, then if you like it enough, then you can spend money.
And the game will function perfectly fine with the PHB, DMG, and MM 1, but its a whole lot more fun with the rest of them.

>>96479004
In addition to >>96479087's counter-argument, the issues with Essentials in the broader 4e context were two years into the run and was clearly defined as a separate product line (which could have resulted in a new BECMI/Advanced division if the new managers didn't promptly bury previously-advertised 4e products), versus the issues of accreting bespoke rules can be seen in the damned core rulebooks for OD&D and earliest issues of Dragon dedicating page-space to basic operational advice to cover for the books' lack of overarching structure.

>>96477923
PHB1 & 2
DMG 1. Maybe 2.
Rule's Compendium
Monster Manual 3 and Monster Vault.
Adventurer's Vault 1

Past this it's up to your own personal desires to fill in specific things otherwise. Though you got the online database and offline character builder to fill things in too. There's also picrel, which makes running older monster content like MM1 and 2 easier to wing.

Don't listen tot he hate, Anon. 4e is probably one of the more fun editions out there, despite the small list of actual warts. Just understand that it does set piece encounters better than random encounters and you and your table should have a fine time.

>>96480556
Dogshit advice. Mm1 has literally broken math. Use monster vault and the conversion card for monster manual 3. The math for skill checks are also broken in this shitty fucking system. That being said I’ve never player an edition with combat as enjoyable for players and the DM. It works super well for dungeon crawls but not for the kind of wishy washy 1 encounter a day bullshit 5e sometimes devolves into.

>>96475537 (OP)
>Hellfire Wyrm

I think there was a missed opportunity to really make dragons interesting. Sort of like how Sorcerers are magical mutants who become the way they are from exposure (or being the union of magical/planar creature and a mortal), you'd think it'd make sense for Dragons to seek out and gain new powers.

The idea of a White Dragon channeling the power of Baator could spit ice that deals negative/necrotic damage and ice jus sounds cool as fuck.

I don't get why this thread went on for so long. 5e, 4e and 3e are not D&D, they're Advanced D&D.

>>96481152
>theyre not dnd, they’re dnd!!!
Insightful contribution

>>96481152
Genericization of trademarks exist even within the scope of the brand that own the trademark. Most d20 based fantasy tabletop games are considered D&D, especially if offshoots of the OGL that 3.x created, and are only referenced by name for particular discussion regarding mechanics from those games. Pissing in the wind about specificity is pointless if referencing the concept as a whole though.

>>96479340
A miserable pile of rules.

>>96478510
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAdkKQ6-6wo I think I found you.

what D&D is:
rolling up a character to give them texture as an individual, then choosing a class to give the character a few useful tools. You then match your wits against the Dungeon Masters designs while he fairly referees the game outcomes.
what D&D is not:
building some superhero fantasy with an arbitrary collection of superpowers and mashing them against imaginary foes you always defeat like a child playing with toys and of course the dm ensures you always win because you are like a toddler who throws a tantrum whenever you don't get what want