Thread 96735558

4e... destroyed yet again...

Still playing 3.5. Sorry.

It's all WOTC trash.

>>96735584
D&D predates WOTC

>>96735623
I know that, you jackass. The last good version of D&D was the Rules Cyclopedia.
WOTC has made hash of it several times over with 3 or 5 editions, depending on how you count.

>not because I didn't like 4th edition D&D. I'm not making any judgements—positive or negative—on any of the editions
what a waste of a thread

>>96735558 (OP)
>>96735668
>making sure the action in his books hews close enough to the D&D rules of the day
It's not a waste of a thread, it's an opportunity for the reverse verisimilitude argument: rather than focusing on rules accurately depicting the setting, how are you supposed to write a setting around such blatantly gamist and simplified rules (this is also true about 5e)?
>>96735568
Good idea, 3.5e was the last edition where generating a fictional scenario in a world where the rules are mostly accurate was feasible without writing a LitJRPG.

>>96735558 (OP)
I don't play D&D, but what exactly is the whole point of editions? This is what I've vaguely gleaned from threads here over the years:
>1e - the original but limited
>2e - no idea, nobody ever mentions it
>3e - the one most people knew so stuck with it
>4e - an attempt to revolutionise 3e
>5e - it's just 3e again but people are stubborn and stick with 3e?
>all the 0.5e's - no idea, retconning of the edition they're the .5 of?

The most substantial part of that interview is him criticizing making supplements for players over making more material for GMs to work with, and naming trying to cash out with it as one of TSRs fatal follies.

At this point it really feels like some people really want to erase 4e's existence and force anyone who's still playing it to move to their preferred DnD version.

>>96736366
Most people really wanted to erase 4e's existence back when it came out already.

>>96736366
3.5egroids really, REALLY hate the idea that anyone could've enjoyed an edition that solved 3.5e's problems. If 4e doesn't exist, then they can point to every other edition and say "but actually, do you REALLY want to play that?"
>pre-3e is le clunky or something, do you really want to spend all the time to learn that?
>5e is a badly written mess that is a nightmare for the GM, surely you don't hate the GM that much with all the work they already put in?
So they can keep bullying everyone else into playing unfun dogshit while they play their wizards, clerics, and druids and make everyone else's lives miserable because they need a fighter (or similar) to be their meatshield, and they can't stand the idea that their packmule player might actually have fun.

>>96736446
>most people
You mean the 3.5egroids that were kicking and screaming that people wanted to leave their torture tables, so lashed out violently at a direct competitor?

>>96736292
And yet 4e printed far more material for GMs (even if you exclude dragon/dungeon magazine and just count the sourcebooks) in about 5 years than 5e has in twice that time.
Furthermore, 3e was extremely aggressive about printing a shit ton of redundant players option books.
Weird complaint, honestly.

>>96736474
That complaint was specifically about TSR's handling of D&D.

>>96736480
Didn't TSR D&D print a shit ton of setting material?

>>96736219
Iterative process of creating rules.

>Make ruleset
>Need to print more rules but think you can do it better
>Need to print more rules but think you can do it better than ruleset 2.0
>Need to print more rules but think you can do it better than ruleset 3.0
Then people have opinions of which they liked best because one man's trash is another man's treasure.

>>96736451
>implying 3.5 didn't have strong martial splats

>>96736669
>implying the overwhelming majority of 3.5 tables didn't force core only for this exact reason

>>96736219
>He doesn't know 1e was the 3rd version of dnd
I grew up on 3.5. I'd rather play 1e these days.

>>96735558 (OP)
Refresh my memory: is Salvatore the magical realm guy or am I thinking of someone else?

>>96736688
That would be Ed Greenwood.

>>96736219
>1e turned a fantasy tt war game into an individual characters game
>2e applied the learned lessons from 1e to make it a more concise thing that is much more seperate from its wargaming roots, still very experimental and written to the specific playstyle of the creators, pretty much set into stone all the expectations people have of what an RPG is and established all the fundaments that following D&Ds rest on
>3e rules become more standartized and universal with a very modular system that created probably the highest amount of third party material of any RPG in existance, very jank but also D&D at its peak
>4e hyperstandartized system that turned the game into an MMORPG flavored tt wargame with extremely restrictive progression and a rule system so universal that it sucked the flavor out of everything, the murder suicide of the online tools dev and paizo continueing 3e with the numbers filed off didn't help, either. It's death is only bemoaned by it's few fans
>5e essentially 3e for retards that are confused by options and are more afraid of power creep and "playing it wrong" then actually having fun, also actively tried to recruit the "modern audience" and the theater kids by throwing the grognards under the table of past shame, then tried to copyright scam the industry and community and lost both of them, effectively D&D if written by the marketing and HR department

>>96736766
3e was still a simulationist approach to design. The rules are there to model how "realistically" a fantasy world with magic would work. 4e was hated because it ditched that design philosophy in favor of gamifying the system. A lot of the rules make little in-world sense for game balance and VTT compliance reasons.

>>96736819
underage, 3e was generally derided as "tabletop diablo" when it came out
truth is, wotc d&d was always disgustingly gamified

>>96735558 (OP)
>almost
Makes a big difference, cry more.
And if anything, this would be an argument for 4e, not against.

>>96736219
>what exactly is the whole point of editions?
"Buy all our shit once again."

>>96736219
>1e
Clunky in every regard

>2e
More rules but they're retarded

>3e
Perfection

>4e
Desperate cash grab to get in on the 2000s MMO video game craze. Has zero reason to exist.

>5e
Desperate cash grab to make more money and bring retards into the game instead of just making 3.75e. Has zero reason to exist

>5.5/2024/Next
5e but with some errata. Has zero reason to exist.

>>96736901
>>3e
>Perfection
Containment thread. Now.

>>96736843
>argument is that some retard once said something
You're a faggot and wrong.

>>96735558 (OP)
>guy who created an special snowflake, OP, non-Evil drow, says 4e is broken
He's the biggest reason D&D has been a mess for decades. He had no clue of fundamental principles of the game. ALL drow are meant to be Evil. Just like orcs, goblins, etc.

>>96735899
>how are you supposed to write a setting around such blatantly gamist and simplified rules

Why would game rules affect narrative at all? Game rules aren't depictions of how a setting functions, just how the player can interact with it.

>>96736961
3e is a tabletop videogame.
Cope.

>>96736901
>3efag punching down at 4e for being a videogame
lmao
back to your tabletop diablo, fag
you're as bad as the 4rries

>>96736843
3e was never considered table top Diablo, that's fucking dumb.
Hilariously one of the last 2e official releases was a Diablo 2 book in the year 2000.

>>96736219
You forgot Basic and Expert (B/X) that was written by people other than Gygax and co. B/X deserves that special mention because a fuckton of Old School Renaissance stuff uses that ruleset for the base if not just using a straight up copy of it.

>>96735558 (OP)
To be fair, Salvatore seemed pretty damn tired of writing about drow.

>>96735558 (OP)
man, if he hated 4e's pussy-ass lore changes to appeal to a wider market, he must have absolutely seethed about 5e's gutted faggot lore that removed everything that could possibly be offensive

>>96736901
>3e
>Perfection

I like 3.5e. Been playing it for the last 3 years and it's so much god damn fun.
4e seems like a wholly different experience. More focuses on the game than the "simulation" so to speak, which is fine, I'd probably have fun playing it, but I get why it would be harder to model a setting that doesn't contradict the game's working,

>>96735899
>LitJRPG
I hate that shit. So god damn much,.
Both in the western novels and the easter (japanese, korean, chinese) novels and animation.
Specially all the isekai trash where the world runs on dragon quest rules for no apparent reason.
It was fun once, maybe twice, but it's been the standard for years now.
Fuck.
Fuck!
I'm mad.

>>96737126
Note the headline is about "rules" not "world".

4e walked so 5e could dissolve into bubbling chunks in the name of brand identity

>>96736901
>3e
>Perfection
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTT, fsg.

>>96735899
>gamitht

>>96735558 (OP)
Anyone who considers anything outside 2e canon is just objectively wrong. 2e defines D&D settings and everything else is just random nonsense.

>Prolific D&D novelist R.A. Thalvatore thayth writing around 4th Edition ruleth 'almost broke' him and he knew ith thetting changeth were a mithtake: 'In about 5 yearth they're going to come to uth and thay, Bob, we got to fix thith'
>Newth. By Ted Litchfield publithed theven hourth ago
>Changeth made in the popular 5th Edition theem to have vindicated him.

>>96736219
1E - actual D&D.
2E - D&D as imagined by freelancer morons and HR people who barely played.
Everything else - Not D&D. Made by corporate vultures.

>>96737562
1e - Poorly thought out random nonsense of whatever tickled the fancy of some people who weren't very bright
2e - When D&D became a coherent universe because they were able to hire writers much more talented than the originators

>>96735558 (OP)
I point out that this affected his writing directly. Due to the Spellplague, ALL of Drizzt's companions got fucked over in one way or another, and it started an arc where Drizzt was by himself for almost a century.
>Cattie-brie ended up in a coma and died
>Wulfgar went off to do barbarian things
>Regis ended up in a coma and died
Even Cadderly got fucked over, and he hasn't had a novel for decades.
Also this introduced the worst character ever, girlboss Dahlia, who was Drizzt's girlfriend from hell for almost a decade.
In the end, everyone reincarnated in 5E-friendly adventuring forms to pick up in the 'modern day', which was egregious as fuck.

>>96737371
Read the full article. Or just read the full headline. It's not about 4E's actual mechanics, it's about the setting changes, even the headline clarifies that. The "rules" he's talking about are the editorial restrictions on the setting that all contracted authors have to write within. The "rules" include things like taking focus away from the drow, downplaying their innate evilness (which devalues Drizz't's specialness as an iconoclast of drow culture), and generally not writing within the concepts of racial alignments to avoid coming off as racist. Salvatore hated this for obvious reasons, since racial alignments were a core concept of DnD as a setting and is one of the most interesting concepts to explore: born evil, or can you be redeemed? Salvatore built his career off of exploring the premise of racial alignments, Drizz't himself is interesting to people because he defies his racial alignment and stands out as unique because of it.

>>96737633
Yeah, it turns out that there were entire cities of non-evil drow. So Drizzt didn't need to spend decades on the run as a hunted fugitive. He could've just moved to California, basically.

>>96737633
This is only an issue if you assume FR is the only setting and not some novel/supplement fusion clogging up the catalog.

>>96737665
Generally if veteran writers are publically complaining about the setting changes, it's a good indicator that the lore is going down a bad route. It means that they're being tied up with so many editorial rules that they can't tell the stories they want to tell anymore, and if pro writers are that upset, imagine how GMs feel when they read the family-friendly version of FR that 4e and 5e offer instead of the wild west of variously wacky to edgy lore that DnD's FR setting was prior to 4th. There really was a slice of everything in FR depending on where and when you set a story, you could basically do almost anything you wanted.
Of course, Salvatore's commentary in this article proved to be tragically incorrect. He thought they'd reverse the setting changes in less than 5 years... it's been decades since then and they're only pushing harder towards sucking all the soul out of FR and also the other official DnD settings

>>96735558 (OP)
I don’t know why they felt like they needed to fuck up FR in this edition. They already had Nenthir Vale for them to use to explore their new ideas like dragonborn, elementals or whatever. No need to force them into the old stuff.

>>96735558 (OP)
This the 2nd ed general?

>>96736901
I love how Essentials was such dog shit it never gets mentioned anywhere. At all. Ever.

>>96737898
>anon STILL trying to defend 4e weeaboo fightan magic turning every class into at-will casters
lmao just give up, this is getting downright pathetic

>>96737592
>2E
>Coherent universe
Spoken like someone whose never actually touched 2E.

>>96737927
You can't explain how a character having an special abilities limited by arbitrary intervals of time makes them spellcasters.

>>96737950
>what is at-will casting, IE sorcerers
You 4etards just love exposing that you don't even know basic mechanics of DnD and are here solely to shitpost because you have nothing else going on in your pathetic worm lives, the one and only edition you like was abandoned as a misbegotten experiment decades ago like it deserves. Cope, seethe, dilate

>>96736684
Got numbers for that? Did you personally sit at every single table that ever ran 3.5 and made note of their houserules?

Putz.

>>96737963
So how is a Barbarian a caster? Please, it just doesn't fit the profile, Rages Per Day or not.

>>96737963
Can you explain it without invoking 3e sacred cows? I haven't played 3e.

The real crime of 4e was not the system change itself, but the reasoning behind it: we can make more money this way. We can sell more battlemaps. We can sell more miniatures. We can sell more booster packs of cards so you can collect all of your at-will powers for easy reference. 5e just continued that garbage, but now it's all online shit.

>>96737991
>anon literally cannot come up with any counterpoints other than barbarian rage, for 15 fucking years of this discussion
Pic related
>>96737992
Oh you mean you never even touched 4th edition either, since you don't know what an at-will spell is? One of the basic mechanics of spellcasting in not just 3e but also 4e and 5e? Got it. Thanks for clarifying you're just a shitposter who's never even touched DnD in his life

>>96738041
>Oh you mean you never even touched 4th edition either
Correct.
I've only played B/X, 2e, and 5e.
>One of the basic mechanics of spellcasting in not just 3e but also 4e and 5e?
If you define anything that lets a player character do something without a resource cost as "at will" but then conflate that with spellcasting because cantrips exist you're simply retarded.
You haven't demonstrated that 4e turned everone into at-will spellcasters, just that you think any at-will power is spellcasting somehow.

>>96738059
>I've only played B/X, 2e, and 5e.
At-will spellcasting is also a core mechanic in 5e. You are either lying, retarded, senile, or simply shitposting.
>If you define anything that lets a player character do something without a resource cost as "at will" but then conflate that with spellcasting because cantrips exist you're simply retarded.
what the fuck are you on about? Nobody said anything about cantrips or at-will abilities having zero resource costs
>You haven't demonstrated that 4e turned everone into at-will spellcasters
You haven't even read 4e. You immediately disqualified yourself by proudly announcing you know nothing of the subject matter that anyone who picks up the book would see instantly. At no point in the last 15 years of this debate has anyone ever argued that 4e class design is not mostly at-will abilities. You are arguing for a stance that even the most ardent 4etards do not argue. Yeah, you're definitely shitposting.

>>96736766
See when I first sat down to play 5e, it to me gave off the impression of being the 3e we would have gotten back in 2000 if WotC had somehow already learned all the lessons of 3e and 4e.

That doesn't mean it was perfect or without flaws, just 5e felt closer to 2e than 3e or 4e ever did.

Also giving 5e credit where it's due, the Rogue (thief) class is the first time in ANY edition of D&D where I feel like I'm playing a Thief, and not simply a dungeon-delving assassin who moonlights in burglary. I dunno, something about Cunning Action and Fast Hands together just made me really feel like I was playing a THIEF.

>>96736843
>3e was generally derided as "tabletop diablo" when it came out
No, one article published by one guy called it that. There's plenty of others tha sang its praises for how well it attempted to model reality.

>>96738084
>At-will spellcasting is also a core mechanic in 5e.
Cantrips are spells that can be cast without a resource cost. ( in game rules terms, without consuming a spell slot )
That doesn't mean every ability that can be used at will is a spell.
Likewise, that doesn't mean every ability in 4e that can be used at will is a spell.
This is hardly difficult logic.

>>96736451
>3.5egroids really, REALLY hate the idea that anyone could've enjoyed an edition that solved 3.5e's problems.
Yeah it cucked casters and made them boring. That was what it did. Not making martials any stronger.
>b-b-b-but muh status effects! muh temporary buffs! muh ongoing damage save ends!
None of that made martials better at killing stuff, it just made it more complicated. Which is fine but it's not a power boost.
3.5e martials were the best at killing things out of any D&D edition with megadamage builds.
>lol damage doesn't matter
Physical damage is the only thing that nothing in the game outside the fuckin Zodar is immune to. Every SoD has something either immune to it, or with spell resistance, so you need to pass two checks to get your spell onto a monster.
>b-b-b-but polymorph exists
Yeah so you turn yourself into a martial just so you can compete with martials. QED.
>4e is still better!
Yeah if you want boring overly-templated combat. I do agree that 4e had better math, and the math is really the big issue with 3.5e, not the casters' capabilities. No one who plays a fighter does so because he wants to teleport or summon a magical mansion.

>>96737562
>TSR
>not corporate vultures

Don't care, 4e is still the best.

>>96737927
I can attack with my sword using an action at-will, does that make my fighter an at-will caster?

>>96735558 (OP)
He's an author, 4e is gamist, of course you can't write around that. Can you imagine writing a Fire Emblem fic where everyone waits for their turn? It would be ridiculous if it's not a parody.

>>96737003
People were calling Neverwinter Nights "dumbed down" back in early 2000. I was there.

>>96738041
>Pic related

Okay that doesn't answer the question anon. Why are barbarians an exception but fighters aren't?

>>96738084
>Nobody said anything about cantrips or at-will abilities having zero resource costs

Anon are you just throwing around terms with no idea what they mean?

>>96739014
>Can you imagine writing a Fire Emblem fic where everyone waits for their turn? It would be ridiculous if it's not a parody.

Why would you include game mechanics in your narrative? To my knowledge no dnd narrative has ever acknowledged level, class restrictions, feats etc. as a narrative concept despite their mechanical presence.

>>96739117
>To my knowledge no dnd narrative has ever acknowledged level, class restrictions, feats etc. as a narrative concept despite their mechanical presence.
Homeland by Salvatore explicitly states that drow can levitate once per day while young Drizzt is cleaning the place.

>>96737734
Forgotten Realms has always tried to justify rule changes from each edition by having changes within its setting. To a lesser extent so did Dragonlance. That's what makes it different from 3e Oerth or 4e Nenthir Vale, which are basically made up just for that edition.

>>96739117
>To my knowledge no dnd narrative has ever acknowledged level, class restrictions, feats etc. as a narrative concept despite their mechanical presence.
That's because the authors were writing before isekai light novels became a big fad. Even Record of Lodoss War failed to tie the plot to the game.

>>96737734
I got the impression from the PHB1 and DMG that Nentir Vale wasn't meant to be a full setting. but an example to build on. The way Greyhawk is used in the 2024 DMG.
FR was meant as the world for RPGA live play during 4e, so they had to shoe-horn in all the new character options. Doesn't excuse the way they did it.

>>96736451
>3.5egroids really, REALLY hate the idea that anyone could've enjoyed an edition that solved 3.5e's problems.
I'm not sure it solved any problems, but it sure created new ones. Which is why it flopped lol

>>96737876
he didnt mention 3.5 either

>>96739820
He called 3e perfection. Even the niggest 3aboos acknowledged 3.0's many and sundry flaws, guy is just a retard trying to stir the pot for cheap engagement.

>>96735558 (OP)
It's funny because it's much easier to write around 4E's rules because their flow more closely resembles fantasy fiction.

>>96735558 (OP)
example of 4th edition rules that he had to use in writing?

>>96737562
2E is AD&D as it had actually been played for years. You're a goddamn retard.

>>96736669
None until Tome of Battle and that came out close to 4E and was clearly them testing the waters for what eventually became 4E.

>>96736706
Ed Greenwood is a saint for giving us a definitive answer on what drow breastmilk tastes like.

Watching spergs edition war is so fucking hilarious.

>>96740657
It's a bit like console wars, except instead of sony and microsoft shills screeching it's 3D0 and PS1 fans arguing over which was the better console.

>>96736219
2e and 3e are like GURPS 3e and 4e in that the former had a shitload of basic rules that were only available in splatbooks and compendiums, and the latter tried to include them all in one big simulationist take on the system
5e is just 3e but all the flavor and detail removed (i.e. the reasons to play 3e)

>>96736219
>I don't play D&D, but
Epic bait opener, this prevents all variants of the HYTNPD&D counterattack.
>what exactly is the whole point of editions
Different editions are essentially different games with varying overlaps in mechanics and fluff

>>1e - the original but limited
Actually OD&D (an expansion to Chainmail, a wargame) was the original and it was infamous for having very vague rules and/or rules for specific and important procedures being hidden in unexpected parts of the ruleset
>>2e - no idea, nobody ever mentions it
2e is compatible with 1e (and the last non-X.5 edition designed to be fully compatible with a previous edition) but it made some changes in the rules, notably modifying how experience is gained, which OSR really hates.
>>3e - the one most people knew so stuck with it
3e tried the most to be a simulationist system similarly to GURPS, rather than requiring GM fiat for most decisions outside of casting a spell or attacking an enemy using a weapon, and it has the most unofficial content due to the d20 system allowing independent publishers to create content compatible with the rules.

>>96736219
>>96741113
(my comment was too long so I had to split it into 2 comments)
>>4e - an attempt to revolutionise 3e
Not at all, 4e is incompatible with 3e and much more similar to a board game, MMO, or Magic: The Gathering (in that elite monsters only use their signature abilities and not abilities that they should be expected to have due to most of their minions having, and that monster statblocks in general are simplified to a keyword-heavy card), and it started the trend of having monsters built using completely different rules than player characters, as well as abandoning simulationism in favor of game balance (it took errata for the rules to make it clear that you can attack objects, and there are no more long-term consequences like object corrosion or ability score damage except from very specific monsters built entirely around that theme). Also, the game is very discrete and many powers are built around moving targets a specific number of squares.
>>5e - it's just 3e again but people are stubborn and stick with 3e?
5e is the game design goal of 4e with some features brought back from 3e (like monsters with more than 2 attacks per turn, and spells with durations other than an encounter or until the target makes a saving throw), but it's still very oversimplified and video-gamey, as well as being rigged in the favor of players.
>>all the 0.5e's - no idea, retconning of the edition they're the .5 of?
Yes, and in a way which is mostly compatible with the edition they're the .5 of

>>96736976
See >>96737371 (not my post), this thread is specifically about trying to write a book in a setting where certain things are already established to happen by the rules. 4rries really like pretending that the anti-simulationism of 4e and later "just happened, it wasn't an intentional decision", and ignoring the fact that every previous edition at least tried to model what would happen in a fictional scenario (vancian spellcasting, if you ignore the confusing "per day" wording on prepared spells and rule it as only being limited by how long it takes you to prepare your spells, is actually one of the examples I have seen of setting-gameplay integration in a soft magic system). If you don't believe me, play a game of 4e and then a game of 3e (without minmaxing in either of them and without asking for GM fiat in roleplaying unless it also accomplishes a goal for your character), make a game log for each of them, and decide which one of them is a more believable series of events in a fantasy setting.

>>96738109
One guy who cherry picked his examples praised 3e for being realistic. It was The Alexandrian. Many people on forums called 3e tabletop Diablo, like this forum would have if it had existed in 2000.

>>96736219
Looks like you haven't gleaned enough. You've omitted the start of the story and an entire product line
>1974 D&D aka Original or OD&D
>1977 D&D aka Holmes Basic, replaced 1974 D&D generically called Basic
>1977 AD&D where the A stands for advanced
aka, stood as an alternative line to Basic
>1981 D&D aka Moldvay and Cook or B/X, replaced 1977 D&D, generically called Basic
>1983 D&D aka Mentzer or BECMI, replaced B/X but rules nearly identical, itself repackaged by Rules Cyclopedia in 1991 which contained BECM, the Immortal rules being split into their own box set because they were always very different from the rest of D&D, but RC doesn't really count as an edition being little more than a BECM reprint in a collected format, generically called Basic
>1989 AD&D Second edition, aka 2e, led to 1977 AD&D being called first edition
>1995, not an actual edition but sometimes called AD&D 2.5 or Player Options due to the release of books that made some big changes, if you bought them that is
>2000 DND 3 dropped Advanced but kept the numbering, same core of ability scores, combat, spell casting and stuff like that as in all earlier versions of D&D but what defined character classes was very different to everything that went before, the Basic line was terminated
>2003 DND 3.5, officially called 3.5 by the publishers
>2008 DND 4 combat and ability scores similar to earlier but abandoned the previous spell casting tabletop and gave every one at will/encounter/daily use powers, was in essence an adaptation of a MMO, which a lot of people said at the time, years later confirmed online by its designers
>2010 DND Essentials, a starter pack for DND 4
>2014 DND 5, sort of reversed a lot of DND 4 changes
>2024, a revision of DND 5 sometimes called DND 5.5 but I don't know if that's official

>2e - no idea, nobody ever mentions it
That's just a lie. It's always in /osrg/.

>what exactly is the whole point of editions?
Generate sales. Make money. Stay in business.

>>96741358
This is a great image to avoid exceeding the word count but why aren't "2014 DND 5" and "2014 DND 5.5" (possibly a typo) in a box?

>>96735558 (OP)
A somebody who wasn't around for it, what was 4e like? Why don't/didn't people like it?

>>96737709
Have you considered it's natural to uh, have a fucking setting progress

>>96741593
4e's crime is that it took the fighting monsters part of the game and designed the hell out of it, then for the roleplaying part, mostly left it up to three pillars, free play, action checks and skill challenges. Beyond that reference you were free to do whatever, and encouraged to use your powers as part of your roleplay or rolls. This made crunchy classic guys pissed off, since they no longer had some omnipotent reason for why one thing worked the one way.

>>96741685
There's a big difference between diegetically updating the current state of a setting in newer products (like what Warhammer does, or at least did at some point) and forcing setting changes in order for the new rules to make sense (and they still don't), such as the Spellplague (for justifying 4e's retarded powers), or the massive retcons to race in 5.5e for justifying every race now being homebrew (there are now no humanoid evil creatures which do not have a supernatural origin, even lizardfolk, bullywugs, hobgoblins, and ogres explicitly are the embodiment of supernatural forces rather than a biological race).

>>96741719
3e still had more complex combat than 4e, and 4e's combat was eurogame-esque due to dissociated mechanics and overstandardization, as well as the removal of most ways to end a fight without dealing every point of damage to the target. I do however admit that spells overly simplify mundane exploration and roleplaying, although this is mainly due to every edition after AD&D making spells less risky to use and more consistent in effect (for example, fly used to have a randomized duration), but the solution to that is not to shoehorn spells into exclusively blasting and status effects. Also, the solution to the martial-caster divide was obviously adding injuries and locational damage, not giving martials limited resources for fighting game stunts.

>>96735584
Well this tends to happen when a company decays under antiwhite influence.
Sad shit though.

>>96741593
It made martials feel like casters, dumbed down casters in general, and had combat that was kinda slow and clumsy and basically required a grid, in return for being much more tactical. It also had dozens of small flaws that grogs didn't like, and in general was a very gamist approach to D&D, which only a minority wanted. This is why many simply wrote it off as being too much like WoW (Although that's not really accurate).

The people who did like it have been seething that it failed ever since, and have coped in a variety of ways such as talking up heartbreaker for a couple months before they fade into obscurity, claiming 5e is acktually 4.5th edition, claiming that 4e never failed, claiming that actually 3.5e/2e/5e are more like a video game, and a variety of other delusions.
Nuance in discussing 4e is basically dead thanks to this.

3egroids are the most vile subhumans to ever infest ttrpgs
wotc and their consequences have been a disaster for all of gaming

>>96735558 (OP)
Draw Steel, Daggerheart, and Pathfinder 2e are all continuations of 4e. They're scared of dumping 5e so soon after a rerelease so they're trying to trash the origin source to discourage players from jumping ship to more fertile ground.

>>96741753
That's not a solution you fucking retard.

>>96735558 (OP)
>tfw you design the new edition for video game adaptations, but they never happen

>>96742191
>Draw Steel, Daggerheart, and Pathfinder 2e are all continuations of 4e.
Is Daggerheart really, though? They aim to really, well, trivialize the game part even more than 5E. If anything 4E appeals to wargaming crowd more. For god's sake, you can't even outright fail in Daggerheart in that traditional "I rolled shit" sense.

>>96742341
god forbid characters be competent, they need to get epic fail rolls like "u failed to walk xd" so the gm can fuck them harder

>>96742371
Yes. Story can come from failures. This audience doesn't want actual mechanics to influence their storytelling, though.

>>96742377
yeah you failed to do basic thing you should do in a mundane scene is a great story starter
if you're fucking retarded lmao

>>96736219
>Dungeons & Dragons
The original product. It was a lot of quality issues (editing, assumptions, etc.) but it also had no competition.
>Basic Dungeons and Dragons
An attempt to edit the original Dungeons & Dragons to be more beginner friendly.
It deliberately left out a lot of the content of Dungeons & Dragons with the intention of being a supplemental product.
>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons, all official expansions, and new material bundled together in a better edited product.
Basic and Advanced were simultaneous and incompatible product lines for a while. Don't ask me why.
>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
They remade everything with Gary Gygax's named filed off after he was ousted in a corporate takeover.

~ TSR went out of business and WotC bought the rights to D&D ~

>Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition
WotC remade everything so they could make money.
>Dungeons & Dragons 3.5
Balance patch.
>Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
This is essentially the second edition of WotC's D&D branded tactical miniature game, not a successor to their RPG product line.
I don't remember exactly why they axed 3rd edition for this. It might have had something to do with 3rd party licensing issues.
>Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
A return to form after 4th edition didn't do so hot.

~ honorable mention ~

>Pathfinder
Legally distinct Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 by a company that used to make lots of 3rd party expansions for D&D 3e.
They made Pathfinder after 4e was announced so they could keep catering to their own customer base.
>Pathfinder Second Edition
I don't know what this is about.
>Old School Reference and Index Compilation
Legally distinct Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for people to make 3rd party expansions for AD&D.

>>96742341
>4E appeals to wargaming crowd more
Draw Steel, Daggerheart, 4e, and Pathfinder 2e, as well as PBTA ironically enough, all appeal to a certain category of players who, while having some variety on other preferences, all absolutely hate the very idea of verisimilitude. You could call them the gamist-narrativist alliance against simulationism.

>>96742311
Yes it is, it's a solution that differentiates the classes more instead of homogenizing them like 4e did. If weapons can break/sever limbs, and have a chance to instantly kill the target if enough initial damage was dealt (the head and torso could have separate massive damage thresholds), fighters would be actual fighters instead of just a HP barrier that the enemies need to get past in order to attack the spellcasters. Also, noticeably, 4e and 5e almost completely removed nonmagical ways to interact with the items of your opponents (like disarming or sundering) and replaced them with generic debuff bullshit. Also, you didn't provide a reason for why my idea wouldn't at least somewhat reduce the martial-caster divide.

>>96739259
Originally it was, yes, but it was so well beloved by fans TSR kept adding to it and promised a Nentir Vale gazetteer which never released sadly. Someone did, though, compile all the lore into one PDF a while back though.

>>96742487
>You could call them the gamist-narrativist alliance against simulationism.

>>96742408
>Basic and Advanced were simultaneous and incompatible product lines for a while. Don't ask me why.

Basic was more or less a bunch of boxed sets sold in toy stores. While the AD&D stuff was sold in game and bookstores.

>I don't remember exactly why they axed 3rd edition for this. It might have had something to do with 3rd party licensing issues.

Hasbro HQ started looking at D&D and MtG as individual brands rather than as parts of the WotC brand which forced the D&D team to try to be profitable rather than just being passion projects covered by MtG money. As they felt 3.X was played out then launched a new edition in order to be profitable.

Likely out of fear that 3.X would continue to compete with 4e, someone ordered 4e to products to be publish under a new closed GSL rather than the OGL. This, along with WotC taking back the magazine licenses for the Dragon and Dungeon magazines, caused a company that had been created to publish their magazines (Piazo) to go rogue and update 3.X in order to stay in business directly competing with 4e.

The last good ed was 2nd.

>>96742568
>UUUU
4U?

>>96742498
How retarded are you? Injuries greatly favor casters or martials. An injured martial is absolutely fucked, meanwhile a caster doesn't give a shit.

>>96741150
>it started the trend of having monsters built using completely different rules than player characters
Pre-WotC editions have completely different rules for building monsters and PCs, to the point that most attributes and consequently mechanics using these attributes are undefined for them. They also all have the same THAC0/attack matrix progression and most use the same saving throw table, based on their hit dice.

>>96742606
>hasn't considered spell interruption or spell failure chances
If only every edition after AD&D didn't make it easier for spellcasters to successfully cast spells in combat while right next to enemies (spell interruption -> opportunity attacks -> only disadvantage on ranged attack rolls -> basically nothing, if you have entry-level feats and don't stand in the center like a retard)

>>96742498
No it's not, you're retarded. Martials in 3E could already do enough damage to instakill anything on contact and still sucked. All that would change is that now enemies would die in a slightly different way and monsters would maim the frontline over and over.

It's weird as fuck watching these late 3.5 arguments come up, some twenty years after the fact. I'm waiting for someone to calmly tell the thread to just Ban Core.

>>96742371
If there is zero possibility of failure, then a roll is not required.

>>96735558 (OP)
>then a roll is not required.
Now you're getting it.

>>96741150
>started the trend of having monsters built using completely different rules than player characters
This is a good thing and people who complain about it are retarded.

>>96742714
>zero possibility of failure
Nope, you can't have competent heroes, everything they do MUST have a possibility of failure because that's good storyshitting

>>96742992
Yes. Why are you even need a ruleset in that case? Just play pretend.

>>96743034
>Why are you even need a ruleset
lol esl retard

>>96736901
>Clunky in every regard

Imagine thinking a simple-in-play but diverse ruleset like AD&D1e is clunky but then peddling fucking 3RD EDITION, the game where there are a billion class specializations and it takes 40 minutes to take a turn because everyone playing it is an autist who cares IMMENSELY about getting the perfect combat roll for their over-tuned character.

Actually die.

>>96743171
>it takes 40 minutes to take a turn
Sorry that you have brain damage, anon.

>>96743171
>t takes 40 minutes to take a turn because everyone playing it is an autist who cares IMMENSELY about getting the perfect combat roll for their over-tuned character.
Autists like that are spending other people's turns deliberating what to do during their own. In practice I've found your "normal" players to be a far bigger drag on game's pacing because they're unprepared and have to constantly consult either the DM or books. Autists are locked in.

>>96743192
I took my turn in 10 seconds last time I played 3.5, I got to take one action in a 40 minute combat round. It was absurd.

Everyone in that group LOVED 3.5e. I was only experienced with OSR games and was invited to play.

>>96743234
I don't really believe you, it sounds more like you were the slow retarded one who got frustrated with the game.

>>96743251
No, nigger. I sat patiently waiting for the rest of the party to line up their shots autistically like a wargame, then I just declared I was striking the enemy with my weapon.

>>96743255
Oooh breaking out the slurs to show how serious you are. I think I hit a soft spot lol. You were too stupid to learn the system and got filtered like the 'tard you are.

>>96743268
I'm not "breaking out a slur", it's just the same way I'd address any other retard on here for the last 15 years.

I learned precisely what I needed to, played one session and dropped out. There was a bunch of fiddly, overly-intricate homebrew stuff going on too, which is typical over later edition players, because the essential rules aren't enough for them.

>>96743277
You should learn how quotation marks work, newfag.
>I learned precisely what I needed to
Nothing because you came in mad that the system didn't want you to brainlessly go "Mother may I" at the GM and roll save or die for 4 hours straight. It's a good thing they filtered you instead of letting you stay around as a wallflower tee bee aych.

>>96743192
I like 3.5 and it slows down immensely with more bodies on the field or corner case mechanics.

>>96743325
Insufferable poster.

>>96742583
>forced the D&D team to try to be profitable rather than just being passion projects covered by MtG money
Oh, right. That sounds familiar. Isn't 5e developed by a skeleton crew or something?

>>96736219
>what exactly is the whole point of editions
Ostensibly to make adjustments to rules and improve the game experience. In reality, to make you buy all the rulebooks over again.

>>96742675
First of all, bows and throwable weapons (as well as traps, which are partially craftable without spells and magic items in 3.5e, in contrast to later editions where traps are arrangements of spells and magic items, or 4e where traps are almost impossible to make) exist and can have longer ranges than some spells. Have you considered that usually, the frontliners in an all-out fight are the ones who would get maimed first? It sounds like you think that having non-archer martials actually reflect the role that non-ranged fighters had in war would be unfair. Also, if you are considered about martials being the frontline, why would you previously praise the design of the game which made spellcasters into artillery (with bullets and mortars reskinned as spells as a way to say "Look guys, we even kept Black Tentacles and Lightning Bolt"). And how does any of this justify 4e's retarded AEDU system, which breaks verisimilitude in a way which is significantly less justifiable than requiring preparation or just requiring a time-based cooldown for all powers.

>>96743904
This has nothing to do with AEDU and everything to do with your idea for a fix to martials being dogshit garbage that fixes nothing and introduces a major problem to the game.

>>96735899
>how are you supposed to write a setting around such blatantly gamist and simplified rules (this is also true about 5e)?
Isekai writers do it literally all the time.

>>96741593
A lot closer to a heavier skirmish game.

People didn't like having to think about positioning, because a lot of RPG players are not as good at tactical thinking as they think they are. It also basically required minis/tokens, templates, and visual aids for tracking statuses. Not everyone likes the table clutter, or having to commit to making interesting arenas.

Skill challenges were often awkward in practice in spite of their noble goal of involving the whole party in skill checks instead of "the skillmonkey" or the one PC that had juiced [skill], although like advantage it was based on houserules that were used in 3.5.

The early monster math and players not understanding the systemic design that juicing your attack bonus was key because most of the rider effects that do work proc on actually hitting your target also lead to sloggy combats.

I think on the whole 4e demanded too much from the average player and DM and demanded a specific playstyle with a specific prep style that didn't mesh with the more abstract theater of the mind style that even a lot of 3.x players used.

>>96743806
Well yes, a new edition that makes you buy the core book (which is always the best-seller) is how you make money in RPGs. Splatbooks hit diminishing returns and kill your game over a long-enough timeframe.

>>96739149
Homeland by Salvatore explicitly states that drow can levitate once per day while young Drizzt is cleaning the place.

Right but does it justify this by using other fluff to explain it or does it just saying they can levitate once per day because drizzt is a drow on his character sheet?

>>96741220
See >>96737371 # (not my post), this thread is specifically about trying to write a book in a setting where certain things are already established to happen by the rules.

I understand but I have no idea why you would have to write a narrative this way. In 3e the rules are closer to what the narrative wants to depict but that's because the rules are designed around the narrative, not as framework for the narrative. 3-3.5e still had plenty of abstract "gameist" mechanics like levels, hp, abilites that can only be used a limited amount per day without being magical spell, etc. But no one was forced to include these as part of written story nor do I think anyone expected it to.

>>96742631
>what is concetration

>>96736219
0D&D is the original.

AD&D 1e was created because people kept badgering TSR for more comprehensive rules.

B/X and BECMI were split extensions from 0D&D, keeping it simple, not "Advanced."

AD&D 2e was created because 1e was a cluttered mess of whatever Gygax was feeling that day but had since left the project. Mostly just a case of reorganizaton and standardization (bard moved from a weird multiclass to a cousin of rogue, etc). Also there was the whole satanic panic thing so they had to rename demons and devils to made up names, that are now re-retconned into their proper names in Infernal.

3e was WotC deciding they could use their MtG design experience to make a better game. 3.5 was a "oops. this was harder than we thought" balance patch. The main difference was the introduction of granular character customization. The prior TSR-made editions have no feats, no skill points (skill proficiencies were a 2e optional rule and if used had no numbers you just wrote down "I know glassblowing"), no prestige classes, no subclass options, restricted class and race based on rolled stats, gave wizards their starting spells randomly, all casters were prep casters no improv, and multiclassing was either a thing you did at 1st level and then you were both classes at once but needed twice the XP or else was a single permanent career change only available to humans. Base building after 10th level is no longer an assumed concession, but the Leadership feat still exists. Combat Balance becomes important, with DM tools to manage such. 3e allowed 3rd party freely to make up for being especially litigious in the 2e era.

(cont)

>>96736219
>>96744234
4e was even more of that, both an attempt at redesigning and more balance combined with a repeat desire like 2e of wanting to standardize and organize out all of Gygax's idiosyncracies. To their credit, they were 100% successful in that regards and it was a better GAME. It was not, however, a better tabletop roleyplaying game. What they made was a very nicely balanced tactics skirmisher with a D&D coat of paint, and even that heavily warped by the lore rewrites to make them more ergonomic to new players. People who like heavily gamist TTRPGs still laud it as the best edition or continue their own products in its vein (Strike!, Draw Steel, 13th Age). All of the ability names sound like Anime powers. If I ever wanted to run a Sword Art Online or Log Horizon-esque campaign, I'd use 4e, and it would probably be kino at it. Leadership feat completely gone, never to be seen again, hired goons are no longer an integral part of the game, it's all just the heroes. 4e also didn't allow 3rd party unless it was officially licensed.

(cont)

>>96736219
>>96744234
>>96744251
5e is 3e remade with everything they learned from 4e about what was received poorly and what people were fine with. Also, since the brand was dying (or rather, doing well, but not good enough for Hasbro so still on the chopping block), there was an even heavier focus on mass appeal and accessibility than 4e. Godwizard has been nerfed from 3e, but at the same time all wimpwizard gets his dick stolen moments have been written out. Bonuses aren't a million numbers you just roll twice, and the targets basically never go above 25 or the bonuses above 11. There's options, but they're all in big chunks so you can't fuck up, so the designspace shifted from very granular building blocks to more duplo-ey, if that makes sense. The funny thing about this is, if you play 5e using JUST the free basic rules and are a stickler about resource and time tracking and actually run it in a dungeon, it does actually feel somewhat akin to ye olde B/X. 5e allows 3rd party again.
5.5 is a rewrite motivated pretty much purely at the corporate level, the changes were as much to facilitate their now-scrapped walled garden microtransaction VTT as they were for player feedback or balance purposes, and the balance changes fucked as much as they fixed. 5.5, didn't, VERY didn't like, tried to revoke even 3e usage retroactively, but now arguably does, allow 3rd party but no one is ballsy enough to test it. Bastions kind of bring base building back, but there's no henchmen proper, and honestly due to the change to bounded accuracy, hiring goons would probably break the balance, suddenly you'd be a 7 character party facing 4 character threat.

>>96742191
how the fuck is daggerheart 4e?

>>96741358
5 and 5.5 are highly compatible. You can run an adventure from one in the other and not change a thing.
They're certainly no further apart than 3.0 and 3.5

WotC is wrong to keep trying to pretend they're the same game. But they are highly cross compatible in most regards.

>>96744276
the defining features of 3.5, which is insane crunch nonsense isnt present in 5e. 5e is no closer to 3.5 than 4e was

>>96735623
4e doesn't, retard

>>96736219
>no idea, nobody ever mentions it
you just aren't paying attention

>>96744251
>If I ever wanted to run a Sword Art Online or Log Horizon-esque campaign, I'd use 4e, and it would probably be kino at it.
Log Horizon has its own official TTRPG though, and it's got an MMO-style aggro system properly baked into all the powers. Some of the playtest characters even made cameos in the anime.

>>96743976
>>without writing a LitJRPG
Anticipated, yet you still chose to walk into my trap.

>>96743997
I like having to think about positioning, but 4e made positioning discrete rather than continuous, made circles into squares, and removed cones/non-rotationally-symmetric zones entirely. When D&D started out as a wargame, it was expected that you would use a ruler to measure distance.

>>96744045
Concentration doesn't matter as much if the enemy doesn't get a free chance to hit you whenever you cast a spell. Also, if spells have randomized durations and/or numbers other than damage (as they did before 4e), you have to take into account a lot more possibilities.

>>96744516
>but 4e made positioning discrete rather than continuous, made circles into squares, and removed cones/non-rotationally-symmetric zones entirely.

3.X did that first. The reason 4e simplified AoE to squares/rectangles was because players were complaining about it taking too long to figure out what squares were hit by Cones, Bursts, Spreads and even Lines.

>>96739117
>>96739169
Salvatore wrote a book where a wizard had a literal "advance the plot" spell that did random things like teleport them to the next plot hook or let him read the DM's notes (but he got teleported away and had his memories wiped when he tried to spoil the plot). Also had a bunch of weird paraphrases of mechancis like how Bruenor would repeatedly say "orcs are my special bane".
I've seen a bunch of old-school DMs following this train of logic - so fixated on the idea that "acknowledging the mechanics breaks verisimilitude" that they wrap around to doing it themselves by introducing in-universe forces that punish their idea of metagaming (no your Fighter isn't allowed to take off their armor for better mobility before fighting the Wizard whose attacks bypass armor; wearing armor is what Fighters do).

Also Overlord has not-D&D 3.5 mechanics being acknowledged, though in that case it's more like a contaminating presence on a less RPG-like world. Some ancient wizard accidentally summoned a chunk of basically a modded Neverwinter Nights server into reality, bringing some PCs along with it. Said PCs were treated like alien gods, insanely strong but incapable of learning many basic skills like the world's native form of magic. Then at some point they used a series of Miracle spells to make it possible for natives to learn their classes from them. Though even then you'll find natives who gained classes in impossible combinations (e.g. multiple high-level prestige classes at low level), or with abilities that predated the D&D-folk's arrival and can't be explained in those terms at all.
E.g. there are native martial artists with Perfect Parry style abilities that allow them to survive briefly against even stupidly-powerful lv40 D&D characters, and native-made magic swords that have the aura strength of only a +2 weapon but always inflict "realistic" damage regardless of how inflated the opponent's HP or damage reduction is.

>>96744007
>Right but does it justify this by using other fluff to explain it or does it just saying they can levitate once per day because drizzt is a drow on his character sheet?
Pretty much says the latter without going into fourth-wall breaking territory.

>>96744871
Amusingly, Dragon's Dogma on the PS3 goes out of its way to justify a handful of common RPG tropes, and one of them which you would write off as "It's for the sake of a stealth mission" turns out to be a lategame plot point.

>>96742992
So you're a retard who uses the meme word and you're mad about a thing that isn't a rule in any version of d&d?

>>96745065
I liked when "I'm a Spider, So What" revealed that all the RPG-isms were introduced by the setting equivalent of The Weave. When you throw your fireball at the guy with 500 HP, it somehow deals 499 damage without even being hot, and he keeps on fighting without hindrance, you're actually engaging in a complex form of laser tag which a goddess introduced to prevent the world's mana from becoming depleted.

The forbidden dark magic, which can inflict instant death or incurable wounds regardless of HP... turns out to just be magic with actual force behind it, resulting in people getting struck by it and suffering actual injuries rather than just having their fake HP lowered.

>>96744276
>5.5, didn't, VERY didn't like, tried to revoke even 3e usage retroactively, but now arguably does, allow 3rd party but no one is ballsy enough to test it.
The change to Creative Commons makes it easier than ever to write and publish 3rd-party material and rules forks. Several of the fantasy heartbreakers that got traction during the OGL controversy wound up crediting WotC for the 5e SRD, e.g. Shadowdark, Dolmenwood and Tales of the Valiant.
>Bastions kind of bring base building back, but there's no henchmen proper, and honestly due to the change to bounded accuracy, hiring goons would probably break the balance, suddenly you'd be a 7 character party facing 4 character threat.
Henchmen/hirelings use an existing NPC stat block when it comes up, usually something like acolyte, commoner, guard or noble. Or the sidekick rules from Tasha's.

>>96736843
i remember this. its because the feat system and getting something every few levels mimicked diablo's talent system.

>>96742332
pathfinder 2 is that you?

>>96735584
>that one guy who really wants to show he knows something everyone else knows as if this makes him special
90 IQ behavior

>>96741685
4e and 5e didn't advance FR much. Instead they retconned huge chunks of previous lore, undermining pretty much Salvatore's entire career as an author.

>>96737734
Nentir Vale (holy shit what a dorky name) sounds like it's just, well, a vale? Was there any more to it than that?

>>96745039
>every day or so

While that's definitely a reference the fact it's using that as an average or typical amount rather than a hard rule is the exact thing I'm talking about. The narrative isn't sticking to the letter of the game rules, instead just using them as inspiration to pull from.

>>96746307
IIRC gaining x/day ability uses back requires a full night's rest, considering drow are always trying to murder one-another it wouldn't surprise me if that was why they couldn't use it every day; they keep getting their beauty sleep interrupted by assassins.

>>96743500
Mad cuz its true

>>96743416
Every system "slows down" with more bodies on the field dumbass.
>Immensely
Lmao, if you're retarded.

>>96742487
Can you elaborate on this subject?

>>96744516
>I like having to think about positioning
Me too. That's part of why I think there are more positives than negatives to 4e.

>>96746553
No

>>96742408
>This is essentially the second edition of WotC's D&D branded tactical miniature game, not a successor to their RPG product line.
I don't remember exactly why they axed 3rd edition for this. It might have had something to do with 3rd party licensing issues.

>Implying that any edition of D&D isn't a tactical dungeon raiding game first and anything else fifth or less.

50 years and the support for doing anything else is still... lacking. Admittedly, I only came in around year 21 or so, but still, don't try to fluff up the damn thing to fit your nostalgia goggles.

>>96746553
I'm mostly speaking from my experience of seeing this on reddit, youtube, and at my college's TTRPG club, but the audience for games like Monsterhearts, Monster of the Week, TSL, Blades in the Dark, and Daggerheart (narrativists) has a surprising overlap with the audience for games like Lancer, 4e, Draw Steel, and PF2e, and both of them act embarassed or annoyed about 3e, pf1e, or any form of verisimilitude.

>>96743904
You are mentally ill if you think that arbitrary time based cooldowns makes any more sense than AEDU.

>>96744871
>no your Fighter isn't allowed to take off their armor for better mobility before fighting the Wizard whose attacks bypass armor; wearing armor is what Fighters do
To be fair, this would be like Superman randomly deciding to wear power armor because the writer knew that the next encounter contained kryptonite.

>>96736451
>3.5egroids really, REALLY hate the idea that anyone could've enjoyed an edition that solved 3.5e's problems.
This shit fucking baffles me.

I understand the people who are 4th edition's last defenders. The people who will go to their graves saying it was good. I think they're wrong, but I understand that they this is game they really liked and they feel passionate about it.

The people I do not understand are the 3.5 fanboys who insist on still trying to fight the edition war long, LONG after both versions have left print. So why continue to try to bash it? What new take are you going to have that hasn't already been covered?

>>96736901
>3e
>Perfection
Rules so bad they had to literally re-release it as "3.5" and specifically say "the old books are outmoded and shouldn't be used" isn't perfection.

>>96746487
Nah. You've never played games where there are rules in place to improve the speed of the game when there are more characters in a fight and it shows.

>>96739149
Okay, and? Salvatore is a shitty writer.

>>96748977
You've never played games period, cope.

>>96748977
Name three.

>>96742191
Only one of those is a 4e successor, and it's Draw Steel.

Daggerheart is incredibly far from 4th edition in terms of mechanics and identity, and really does feel like a breakaway line of 5th edition.

Pathfinder 2e is... odd. Because it's very clear that Paizo wanted to continue to make pathfinder, but were running into a lot of the problems with 3.5 that WotC already had discovered. And if you look at pathfinder 2e, you keep seeing that Paizo keeps trying to address a problem in Pathfinder 1e, finding a solution, realizing that solution is identical to D&D4e, and then trying to make it look different so the Brother Fens of the world don't send a pipebomb to the paizo offices.

You also leave out the biggest 4th edition inheritor, which is the mecha RPG Lancer. Which is explicitly inspired by 4th edition's design.

>>96741685
I don't know much about the lore changes in 5th edition, but let me tell you something.

4th edition did not progress the story of the Forgotten Realms. It heavily retconned it. A bunch of world-altering shit happened off screen, time jumped forward a bunch, and generally the transition was written pretty badly.

I don't even like Forgotten Realms and even I thought it sucked ass.

>>96749016
Aren't new editions new cycles of reality? IIRC that's why there's a bunch of gods with the same names but they're always different and such. Some demons and sometimes aboloth and a tiny handful of other creatures are said to come from 'previous cycles of reality'.

>>96749024
No. It's all one continuous timeline in a world that's basically caught in stasis but occasionally has big world changing events because TSR and later WotC needs to sell new books.

Don't get me wrong. That idea? The idea that the editions are cycles? That's dope as hell. I'm going to steal that.

>>96749009
Lancer is also lauded as just being objectively good, except its person scale narrative system which is visibly tacked on and ass from a butt.

Which is why my group replaced it entirely with SWN. Though we did briefly also consider Edge of the Empire instead.

So I feel like the existence of Lancer hard proves that 4e didn't HAVE to faceplant as hard as it did. Though it is strongly possible that it might have had to lose the D&D branding in order to actually achieve its optimal playdesign.

>>96749024
very no. where the fuck did you get THAT idea?

>>96749038
>Though it is strongly possible that it might have had to lose the D&D branding in order to actually achieve its optimal playdesign.
This has, frankly, always been the worst possible take.

Ignoring that 4th edition fundamentally IS dungeons and dragons in a way that you can't really separate, it also kind of undersells how powerful the D&D branding is.

Personally, what it suggests to me is that most of the hate of 4e isn't really based on anything to do with 4e's gameplay. It's, at best, an issue of framing of mechanics. At worst? It's people working themselves into a shoot and hating 4e because they feel like they're supposed to.

>>96749024
>IIRC that's why there's a bunch of gods with the same names but they're always different
Some of those are because the old one died, usually murder, and a new one took their name.

And some of that, at least between editions, is because they have had different default settings (Mystara for B/X, Greyhawk for AD&D-3e, Nentir Vale for 4e, FR for 5e, arguably back to Greyhawk for 5.5 but also arguably multiversal a la MPMM), and Gods do actually change in their expression between the different Crystal Spheres, for instance Tiamat of Oerth, Tiamat of Abier-Toril, Tiamat in [Unnamed Planet with the continent Nerath], The Daughter of Khyber of Eberron, Takhisis of Krynn, and... Tiamat of *shudder* Exandria, are all technically aspects of the same entity. But nevertheless there are differences between them.

>>96749059
Reframe them all you want, its mechanics are a mess. A significant reason that its mechanics are a mess is because it NEEDS to move away from the sacred cows to fully realize its revolutionary design ideas, but can't.

>>96749095
Suggsverse tier garbage
>uh actually my character exists in every (D&D) setting, it's not just using the same name of a real like mythological figure for an in-universe OC

>>96749095
>>96749042
>>96749030
I have distinct memory of references to cycles of reality, but usually in very offhanded remarks that then sidestep the topic. I'm trying to remember where; I remember there was one monster that I thought was a Yugoloth or something. I remember it being able to reach through portals and make melee attacks anywhere within line of sight. It was like a snake centipede with scythe arms and I think it might have drunk lifeforce through its shadow. This was 3rd edition and I can't remember what book it was from. I'm still looking but it's been a long-ass time.

There's also the whole thing with Atropus trying to re-collapse the universe by absorbing all life force everywhere.

>>96749102
Eh. I never was bothered by 4th editions mechanics. To be honest, I think it's the ideal version of dungeons and dragons. The only edition that understand what this game wants to be and does that.

But yes, generally speaking I do think that wotc should have continued to go into bolder designs and sometimes butcher the sacred cows. It's part of why 5e actually annoys me so much - there's a cowardice to it.

>>96749132
>The only edition that understand what this game wants to be and does that.
what the hell are you talking about dumbass, 4e is so far removed from the original premise and purpose of DnD as a game that it ceases to be DnD. It's just an MMO with cooldown meters

>>96749183
Nta, but you're an idiot. Every version of d&d has been a cobbled together mess of ideas with zero consistency or coherency. 4e, good or bad, knew what it wanted to be and everything was moving towards that specific goal.

>>96746883
Its because the way they want to play is moving between mechanically dense combat events because its where the cool things happen and a meaningful game exists and mostly freeform RP where they can do … well freeform RP.
Simulationism under that paradigm serves to require someone to in some extent always be "on" in engaging with the full context of the game the entire time while constraining RP potential behind the simulation.
In other words Simulationism requires the players to consent to the terms of the system to engage with it properly while the gamist-narrativist alliance is based in making and running games where the system needs to consent to the will of the players or nothing gets done.

>>96749059
>Personally, what it suggests to me is that most of the hate of 4e isn't really based on anything to do with 4e's gameplay.
No. 4e's gameplay is genuinely not appealing to most people. There's a reason why there have existed very niche 4e clones, but they've always remained very niche.
Until the 4rries except this, they will never get over its failure to compete.

>>96749254
>>96749132
Samefagging and pretending not to is a pretty expected level of pathetic.

>>96749321
>while the gamist-narrativist alliance is based in making and running games
>and running games
LOL

>>96749341
>I have no argument so I'll just be a fucking schizo instead!

Cool story bro.

>>96749400
Your """argument""" was already calmly refuted by someone else, I'm just pointing out that your samefagging is obvious and pathetic.

>>96745946
Give it time.

>>96749410
>Still a schizo who's point amounts to "Nuh-uh!"

Cool story bro.

>>96749473
Haven't dropped your habit of making the same post twice when the first one gets jeered at. Gonna try again retard?

>>96749038
>Lancer is also lauded as just being objectively good
Not it isn't.

>>96749183
The original premise of D&D was exploring dungeons and fighting monsters so you could steal loot to explore more difficult dungeons to fight tougher monsters to steal better loot. Sounds like 4E to me.

>>96741593
Try reading through the Player's Handbook and tell us.
Or even just look at the cover and compare it to every PHB cover that came before.

>>96742408
>Basic and Advanced were simultaneous and incompatible product lines for a while. Don't ask me why.
Appealing to two different audiences? Offering a more simple alternative for people who didn't care for Advanced rules?

>>96749506
lancer objectively left a bigger footprint on the hobby than you understand. One of the biggest indies of the decade

>>96749335
that reason is the OGL and it being very different for 4e . The gameplay of 4e was attempting to make gamist combat more fun and approachable than 3e and it succeeded in that goal well enough. I think more at will powers could have benefited everyone.

>>96749038
4e had a similar narrative play system to lancer when it launched and if you are there for fun co-op combat experience i think its preferable.

the biggest issue with 4e was that the phb1 existed to sell people on a very new mindset to the hobby and a new-ish subgenre of the hobby and thus had to simplify the core classes too much. Honestly of the 6 returning classes in PHB1 I think really only wizard suffered greatly in the shift. I think action points were a bad idea for this edition and statistically mandatory optimization was a design issue that should have been addressed. 4e had some good design though. cleric healing being a swift action is still a stroke of genius that worked incredibly well. FF14 carries on the legacy of stealing from DnD by using its GCD/oGCD system to mimick coredellion action economy

We need advanced 4th edition desu. ICON would be the ultimate heartbreaker if the class system was getting deeper instead of wider. 13th age is closer but is a very unfinished system.

One big issue I have with 4e is that its just far less skill expressive than 3.X was and I really loved jumping new people into the hobby with how low its skill floor was

>>96749121
>I have distinct memory of references to cycles of reality
I've seen that referenced in Creature Crucible and I think Rules Cyclopedia. I don't know the specific flavor of OD&D that entails.
But from 2e to 3e for instance, there was an adventure path where Vecna, who was just a demigod and stuck in Ravenloft, had his followers in other worlds basically turn the multiverse inside out and get him back to Oerth, now promoted to a god.
Also I seem to recall reading that that's how Dragonlance 5th Age ended and Dragonlance 3e begins. The bitch goddess Takhisis had stolen the world and hidden it from the other gods in the Ethereal Plane, but when that whole mess with the planes happened, the world of Ansalon was suddenly visible for them again and they put it back into place.

>>96736493
Yes and no.
TSR did print a fuck ton of material, but notoriously (among the writers) cut out huge chunks of lore to fit in stat blocks.
The deity books were supposed to be more about day to day worship and such, but TSR said no one buys books without stats, cut out that shit and put in God stats and new spells.

3e, for all of its flaws, sold a great deal of books that were just lore.
The problem was while these books sold consistently they didn't have the spike sales that some of the mechanics focused books had.
So the bean counters at Hasbro said that's a problem.

>>96749656
Die Vecna Die was written by the guy who came up with 3.5 action economy like a month after the PHB went out. Very underrated designer.

>>96742631
It was fun going back and remembering that in the old days casting took your entire turn and your movement, and in some versions also removed your AC bonus from dexterity.
Protecting the mage made a lot more sense then.

>>96749689
yeah in 4e if you aren't fighting an enemy that can one-shot it can be good for the mage to tank for awhile to use some of his healing surges

Fucky wacky that people call this game MMO inspired for having a 'role system'

>>96749649
>lancer objectively left a bigger footprint on the hobby than you understand.
Not really. Lancer is mostly irrelevant outside of its niche, and 90% of its niche are people who just like the art and don't even play the game.

> The gameplay of 4e was attempting to make gamist combat more fun and approachable than 3e and it succeeded in that goal well enough
Again, not really. That's not really anyone's "fault" though, it just has a fundamental problem: People do not like the gamist approach and style. People liked it much less than 3e's style, and much much less than prior edition's styles, and imo it lacks retention too.
There's no magic trick or way to put it together that will make it work either, there's simply a limit to how much appeal it can have given it excludes the tastes of a large part of the tabletop market.

>>96749820
third edition was already moving in a gamist direction. Consider that they sold minis with monster stat cards in booster packs- something that people get mad at 4e for even considering and then not doing - was done by 3e. my play group had like 6 dire t-rexes from these boosters

Lancer laid pretty influence onto both draw steel and daggerheart. It may not be threatening DnD the way Runequest or Pathfinder did during 2e or 4e but its a huge cult classic. Lancer is shockingly easy to get a game for- probably more so than any other game in the hobby. Largely the people who do play it stick to it for awhile- likely due to aesthetic, community support and the genre being largely uncontested.

Lancer is a special game beacuse while it did steal damn near everything from 4e it does some original shit too, notably not being afraid to balance around unbalance. 4e character were not allowed to be nearly as gimmicky as lancer characters are,as many 3.5 characters were. I agree with you that most lancer players don't play lancer though - i think my playgroup is the only one with large enough balls to play with all non group authored homebrew catalogs available. Installing argent aurora engines in my harrison armory musashi was so fucking kino. There are probably like 30 people max on this whole planet who know what these engines are and no one is ever gonna see the unnerfed version again with its absurd overshield cashback for speed. Advanced Lancer is some of the most fun I've had in the hobby in the last 20 years. Up there with taking over the banquet room at the dennys to play 12 person talisman games weekly.

>>96749820
>People do not like the gamist approach and style.
[citation needed]

>>96749857
>third edition was already moving in a gamist direction
Not really, and the probes of doing so were pretty unsuccessful.

>Lancer laid pretty influence onto both draw steel and daggerheart
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me that Lancer is irrelevant outside of its niche by proving the point, or utterly lacking in reading comprehension.

>>96749965
>miniatures handbook
>selling booster packs
>third edition is literally being sold as a combat boardgame adjacent to its roleplaying game
>refuses to acknowledge this
gee i wonder who is lacking in comprehension here. Did u start with 5e?

>>96749906
>[citation needed]
4e failed lol

>>96749968
>gee i wonder who is lacking in comprehension here
Pretty obviously you. What's next, claiming your garbage game never failed in the first place?

>>96750026
So did 3E. 5E is also gamist as fuck.

>>96750033
Its hard to argue the game failed when its beloved by its devoted fans. 4.5 failed much,much harder than 4e did.

>>96750047
>So did 3E
Nah.
>5E is also gamist
Lol there it is. "5e is literally 4th edition guise I swear!!!"
Imagine being this delusional.

>>96750089
>Its hard to argue the game failed when its beloved by its devoted fans
All five of its devoted fans.

>>96750145
can you contend with my actual arguments instead of just cherrypicking everything? You argue like a middle school just getting online for the first time

>>96750241
>can you contend with my actual arguments
We did. You lost them, sorry not sorry.
>You argue like a middle school just getting online for the first time
t. The nerd necker who just begged me to "contend with my acktual argumentsh"
Let's get real here. The fact of the matter is that the game lacked widespread appeal. None of its successors have managed to outperform it, and if anything it seems like it's the same group of people inhabiting different games of varying levels of dead (e.g. touhoufag talks about and tries to play every 4e-alike)

You do not want to accept the simple truth that the path 4e took is inherently niche, and will stomp your feet and cry that it's not niche, everybody would love it if they'd just advertised it gooder (no all those other attempts don't count), and everybody who hates it is wrong anyways.
That's all there really is to what you've been posting at this point. You'll probably move on to trying to claim that successful systems that has as little overlap with 4e as 3.5e has with basic are successors, and thus proof that everyone is just being a tsundere about 4e.

>>96750261
4e's roots go back to the miniature wargaming handbook in 3.5 and this style of play hearkens back to chain mail.

my arguments with 2hu have lead to icon getting delayed and changes to my core fantasy game, which the lead dev of 3e works on now. Unironically all 'five' of us are effecting the hobby - not in ways that the mainstream sees just yet but give it another five years. Tom is almost certainly going to be the lead designer on 6e or Chainmail 2, they already hired miguel.

If you think Lancer isn't a power player in this hobby despite its small size you are just incorrect. I'm surprised its gotten as commonly known as it has. Mtg already hired miguel.

enjoy continuing to play the only edition to sell booster packs ( 3.5)

>>96750145
3E failed three times. Get over it.

>>96750468
but 5e is 3e :A)

>>96750145
5E makes no attempt to be simulationist at all. It's not a narrativist game either, inspiration is as close as it gets.

>>96742549
What was so good about it?

>>96749183
>MMO Cooldowns
The only reason you think this is because the game didn't obfuscate how the mechanics worked. It told you 1/encounter rather than 1/short rest and your brain went "MMO! MMO! IT'S AN MMO!" Speaking very bluntly - you're mentally weak.

But beyond that. D&D is a game that can be a lot of things, but the core gameplay mechanic of D&D is combat. It's fighting monsters. The core of D&D's gameplay is that you will go into a dungeon (sometimes literal, sometimes figurative) and kill monsters. That's what most of your character features are about. That's what a large chunk of the rulebook is dedicated to. It's what most systems converge on. And 4e is the only version of D&D that looked at the core gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons and asked the bold question "what if combat didn't suck ass?"

>>96750510
inspiration and advantage would be fine mechanics for a basic edition of the game. They work well for condensing tons of simulationist rules into a quick and fast system. Heinz and Badtweet are pissed their game didn't come up with that goofy ass mechanic. ( 13th age trying to be some kind of three way love child between 4e, 6e and Blades in the Dark ). That simplification gets stale pretty quickly to veteran players, and that is understandable.

>>96749183
I wish 4e had job meters lol. having at will, encounter and daily powers is not a new idea, the only thing new about the way 4e presented it was simplifying and labeling them and batching the mechanics in the way they did 4e could lean into class gimmicks much, much harder. Lancer leans into gimmicky shit and its fantastic. Gamma World makes things even role agnostic which helps tremendously with combat depth. The big thing 4e was missing is Hybrid classes. MMOs at the time 4e came out still had things like off healers and people who got a team slot just for their support moves. The combination of everyone having dailys, and the action points mechanic was not a healthy mix. Have you ever considered that an MMO is just DnD with cooldowns and not the other way around?

>>96750860
I enjoyed 3.5, especially the XPH , the complete series of splats and weird shit like MoI or ToB. 3.5 was a very experimental edition compared to pathfinder feeling rather washed out in comparison ( but the srd sure was nice and it was much easier to get a pathfinder game than a 3.5 one online ) but it was a pretty miserable game for alot of first time players and DMs hated me for trying to play the whole product line and generally being just way too good at chessmastering other players ( my psiwar looked and acted a fair bit like a crystal paladin i suppose) 4e did a really good job of lowering the skill floor and skill ceiling on character building. Same action economy as 3.5 , same ac, same stats. But character building was so much simplier- mostly it was much harder to fuck up and make a useless character. I saw lots of people do this in 3.5. 4e definitely lowered the skill ceiling on combat though by not having pages of obscure non combat physics engine rules you could cite. No more launching party members and astral constructs at people with ectoplasmic creation slingshots . High school was wild. One time we had the sorcerer cast burning wings on the party monk who was strong enough to grapple my full plate gish and have him do a huge plunging attack into an insect queen with his fullblade. Complete Psionics was shit but I got the feat i always wanted where I could make astral constructs explode :^) pretty sure that guy got killed by a storm giant or two after he got betrayed by the jewish grappler

4e was a game that was much, much more approachable to new players. The role action system an easy sell to the players who came from 3.5 for one major innovation: cleric and warlord healing as a swift action. The warlord as a new martial healing class was also to help get more people to fill their group out. I saw an instant shift in people being willing to fill the role after 4e dropped thanks to the action economy boon.

>>96751371
Tanking marks being a thing were very deliberately not an MMO aggro system. I didnt care for fighter or paladin too much but I adored the sword mage. Great aesthetic everything in one book , lots of interrupt actions and the aegis of shielding ( the original aegis ) variant let me damn near off heal while tanking and cranking out damage. Ultimately as a player I dislike that the DM chooses weather my class feature activates or not in a way that the other roles don't, but alot of people remember this mechanic very fondly to the point where they forced abbadon to bring it back ( somewhat) for icon as a variant option. Pirate Mechs in lancer from freebooter catalogs have some really god damn strange methods of tanking. Turns out 3-d printing a puddle of cum can be a very quick and effective tank, but thats a story for another day. Credit for originality in the mother may i marking though.

Striker marks worked pretty well and probably showed the most diversity in terms of mechanical design. Simple but effective.

Controllers didn't even have a role action lol. Nice symmetrical '''mmo''' there. Icon gave controllers all a stacking mana bar and its a fantastic role action. Icon's strikers feel like they dont have much of a role action anymore though for some reason.

they playtested having some powers roll for recharge instead of have timing based recharging and results were mixed.

Do you prefer just going 'i charge/full attack' for 6 months?

>>96746168
>sounds like it's just, well, a vale?
It was a vale. In the DMG its the basic starter region that introduces worldbuilding and having a place to
>Was there any more to it than that?
God yes. Every power, every race, every item had touches of worldbuilding in them. However, if you looking for a coherent large setting book with extensive writeups of all the areas, your out of luck, and thats intentional as the setting is intended as a place for DMs to homebrew.
There was an intended book, the Nentir Vale Gazetter, but it never showed up (you can still find Amazon listings for it) and still exists on Mearl's fucking computer, never to see the light of day. God I hate that fucking piece of shit hack

>>96742408
>I don't remember exactly why they axed 3rd edition for this.
Sales were cratering and they needed new revenue sources. There is a cycle for games publishers, especially ones owned by large corporate structures, that requires book sales to be consistent. After about a decade, these always die off, so you get new editions to inject new revenue. It is also an excuse to revisit and change up rules your dev team now hates or are pain points.

This is also the reason for PF2e, falling sales of PF1e books threatening shutdown and hatred of the 3.5 engine and all its pain points. Incidentally, every edition sells more than the last, with 4e out-selling 3.5, and PF2e out-selling PF1e.

>>96749542
The really funny thing is, youre memeing but its absolutely true. There is a subset of 3.5 players who truly believe the edition is literally simulationist and that the rules arent weird gamist abstractions hidden under natural language. They think its simulationist because its natural language. Under this type of stupidity, 4e with its keywords and clear game rules, is bad gameist bullshit that breaks "verisimilitude". This is, of course, nonsense if you understand youre still playing a fucking game when using the 3.x rules.

>>96736219
>>2e - no idea, nobody ever mentions it
tons of books on everything, settings, adventures, handbooks etc.

>>96752456
2e fags have it pretty good. They lost some players to 3.0 and they lost some players to hackmaster but they also had balders gate 2 PST and that third game frostgrave or whatever to keep people looping back to that ruleset. 2e players are also the original storygamer fags ( dragonlance suck my dragon dick) and the original edition war starters, they generally hated 3.0 . Table top diablo lol

i went back to their setting books when playing 3.5 several times for things like dark sun, planescape and spelljammer.

my first character sheet was a 3.0 one, and my DM was a fat argentian kid in middle school whos older brother played Adnd. I looked at the class list and thought it was gay beacuse there were no blue mages or ninja. It was the year 2002 and i had a windows 98 pc loaded up with illegal snes roms and life was glorious. I ended up doing 2 in rogue, 1 in monk and dicking around with a 10 foot pole for one recess. He got the 3.5 book a few years later and i made a soulknife which he banned after like six sessions for being too strong.

its crazy to think that skills were new . I think he mentioned thaco to me right away.

>>96735634
>RC
>good
KYS

>>96736219
youre a genuine fucking moron.
>>96736766
everything this retard say is wrong.

>>96752721
>they generally hated 3.0 .
My party was generally excited for it, and actually we ended up playing it for longer. Occasionally when we talk about playing again, and someone mentions 2e, everyone's like "sign me up... whenever we can play again". 4e generally made everyone cringe though.

>Table top diablo lol
That's kinda legit, though, you look at how feat trees work, some of the art direction, and you can spot the resemblance.
I remember at the time reading somewhere about there being an "exchange program" of sorts, which does make sense. Diablo got adapted by WotC from Fastplay to something almost like the "Basic Adventure Game" D&D, to 2e and 3e. The hype was legit.

>its crazy to think that skills were new
In 2e we mostly used Nonweapon Proficiencies with slots, which worked pretty well, but some time before 3e there was Player's Option: Skills & Powers, which introduced a version way closer to 3e skills. I don't think it caught on, though.

>>96735668
>people are unironically using em dashes like ai
grim

>>96752940
from what i have researched Skills & Powers was a very controversial supplement , sort of like a tome of battle for its era.

People fondly remember 3.5 but people arent in a huge rush to play it again. 4e felt like something easy to dust off and get moving again. Pathfinder was very playable but rarely hit the high highs of people trying to wrestle through a large party 3.5 game.

one controversial thing about 3.5 was printing alot of magic items in player facing books. As a player i really liked the huge piles of gold and wealth by level system unbound by gold=xp gold became a universal 7th stat. This is where char-op got really crazy.

that was also a bollocks amount of book keeping for someone who was new to the game but wanted to start at level 5 cuz 3.5 had many wonderful innovations but kicker HP was not one of them.

the art in 3.5 was quite nice.

I love 4E. I think it would have done better had it been marketed as a new Basic/BECMI D&D and if there has been an Advanced D&D to go with it.

I really should start writing the BECMI & 4E mix I've been "Idea Guy"-ing.

>>96753190
what would you do differently than other games on the market that take up a similar space?

>>96737633
>The "rules" he's talking about are the editorial restrictions on the setting that all contracted authors have to write within. The "rules" include things like taking focus away from the drow, downplaying their innate evilness (which devalues Drizz't's specialness as an iconoclast of drow culture)
That isn't what the article says.

>>96753190
What would the hypothetical "advanced" 4e look like, in your opinion?

>>96753190
things i like about 4e:
classes and subclasses. Strong class identity with everyone having class locked power sets, usually with several hundred options. Much easier to wade through this part of the game than 3.5


mixed:
ADEU in function but not in form
every class ending up being 2/4/4/4 is wack and one of the first things you rip out of the game.

Damage scaling: having your at wills rarely scale up in damage combined with the action points mechanic tilts the combat towards novaing instead of actual tactics

da grid: 4e's sucessors have figured out that you need to use design way more spells, abilities, monsters and traps that care about where everyone is standing with push pull 2 effects.

I haven't seen a 4e successor adapt the 1-2-3e trope of the wizard with an enormous spellbook collection. When you start hitting 4th, 5th and 6th level spells and u get to start really unloading with evocation magic it feels good

4e is pretty sterilized and mass produced, but its a high quality product. Its definitly a product. 13th age could be comparable to a basic/4e hybrid, but its definitly a game that a DM needs to tinker with before he tables it.

>>96753288
One idea I was thinking of was going heavily into Races getting new thematic abilities/powers/techniques what have you as they level up. One thing that annoys me in some RPGs is how the various races are too similar to humans. (I'm also annoyed if Humans get nothing).

To give some examples. The Warforged equivalent for example would get extra item slots and/or some integrated magical items as they level up. The Elves would become increasingly fey, gaining the ability to create glamours and "phantom courts". Dwarves would become increasingly elemental as they go on. I'm kind of stumped on the short folk (pun unintended), maybe something with improving stealth and illusions? I'm partial to combining gnomes and halflings.

Setting wise it's more mid/late antiquity rather than medieval. Also the world is unfinished both in the Doylist and Watsonian sense, and things move around, mountains grow in the lifespan of a man and so on.

I'm sure some of these things have been done before and have missed out, but sadly I've been NoGames due to various reasons for a long time and only recently got back to /tg/.

>>96753303
Good question. I think it would have continued with some of 3.5's ideas and mechanics, but with greater effort into balancing the various options and trying to prune the weaker stuff.

>>96753340
>mixed:
>ADEU in function but not in form
>every class ending up being 2/4/4/4 is wack and one of the first things you rip out of the game.

The fixed AEDU gain order was definitely an issue even if it in theory made all the per-Essentials classes balanced. I think 4e would have gotten a better reaction if Fighters and other "Martials" had fewer Dailies and more Encounters and At-Wills than other classes.

Locking each class to a specific power source was another mistake in my mind. I think Martial Daily powers might have been better received if they had "Chi" or "Qi" as their power source rather than "Martial."

>>96753303
Continued. If we use Lego and Lego Technic as a comparison, the Advanced D&D would have more granularity in the options.

>>96753340
I think some of the ideas I've been pondering might be similar to your thoughts.

>>96753562
>One idea I was thinking of was going heavily into Races getting new thematic abilities/powers/techniques what have you as they level up. One thing that annoys me in some RPGs is how the various races are too similar to humans. (I'm also annoyed if Humans get nothing).

That was the idea behind racial paragon paths and racial feats, but the coup that led to Essentials prevented them from doing the racial books they had planned.

>>96753600
>I think 4e would have gotten a better reaction if Fighters and other "Martials" had fewer Dailies and more Encounters and At-Wills than other classes.
My homebrew solution was that 'Dailies' are instead called 'Singular', and the rule was you can only use a single one each Encounter. So if you have three Daily Attacks, you can use any one of those three and still keep it after that fight is over, but you can only manage to manifest the means to perform one such power once in a fight. After that it's all about your Encounter and At Wills.

>Locking each class to a specific power source was another mistake in my mind.
I don't think the Power Source was a problem as much as it wasn't made interesting in any real way. Divine classes are the only ones who got a feature specific to their Power Source before Psionic. Both Divine and Psionics also suffered in that this 'power source identity' was paper thin as well, rather than something that was baked into the foundation for each class that would follow. Shit, Psionics discarded the Power Point concept in the same book because they couldn't come up with a way to make Ki different from it to make Monk distinct, so they just wrapped it up in the Psionic header despite the rules being vastly different.

>>96750391
>my arguments with 2hu have lead to icon getting delayed and changes to my core fantasy game, which the lead dev of 3e works on now. Unironically all 'five' of us are effecting the hobby
What's sad is that you're either delusional and retarded enough to believe this, or gamism has fallen so far that it really is just the same couple of people involved in every single project. Eitherway though, you aren't affecting THE hobby. Your part of it could just fit into broom closet.

>>96749121
Eberron doesn't have an advancing timeline to explain the changes between editions, and some of them (like Tiamat going from the Daughter of Khyber to Khyber itself) line up with in-world myths about what a new universal cycle would look like.

>>96753976
>I don't think the Power Source was a problem as much as it wasn't made interesting in any real way. Divine classes are the only ones who got a feature specific to their Power Source before Psionic. Both Divine and Psionics also suffered in that this 'power source identity' was paper thin as well, rather than something that was baked into the foundation for each class that would follow. Shit, Psionics discarded the Power Point concept in the same book because they couldn't come up with a way to make Ki different from it to make Monk distinct, so they just wrapped it up in the Psionic header despite the rules being vastly different.

In my mind the cause of that is that power sources were to closely tied to whole classes rather than individual powers and types of effects. As you said the identity of the Divine and Psionic power sources were vague. The only thing determining if a power was Divine or Psionic was the fact that it was used by a Divine or Psionic class rather than anything it actually did. Imagine if the Paladin, instead of just being a blanket "Divine" class, had access to Martial powers (to cover physical stuff), Divine powers (to cover the non-physical effects granted by gods) and some powers that were both Martial and Divine (representing divinely enhanced physical things like Smite). You could even create variations that subbed out other power sources for Divine to cover, for example, Fey Knights (Arcane power source), Hell Knights (Infernal power source), Sword Cultivators (Qi or Psionic power source) and servants of Primordals (Elemental Power Source).

>>96753600
93% of dnd players dont want chi, thats why monk pick rate is not very high.

you are right about the martial caster split. I have classes with multiple power sources in my game and it comes up more than in 4e but not very often

>>96753976
13th age 2 switched to calling them arc powers. Once per story arc. I think thats slightly cooler language than singular but the daily terminology and sleeping each day was a weird ludonarrative oversight that should have been an easy catch

>>96754074
stay mad faygo

>>96754484
power sources are something i use in reaction rolls preluding social encounters, enemies detecting magic, and they often play a role in group ritual magic skill challenges

>>96754540
Why would I be mad that your games are dead and unpopular?

>>96754484
4e power sources were supposed to offer some kind of sub-role to your class. Divines had more healing and support than normal. Martials tended to do more damage. Primals were tanky. Psionic types had more CC. Arcane characters got wacky utilities and kind of did their own thing.

in 13th age with expanded content rogues have access to martial, shadaow and fate powers, and thats if they aren't spending part of their kit on dipping a bard song or a demonologists spell or something. Hybrid roles and power sources can make combat much more dynamic

>>96754559
Idk, why do you go into threads about "dead games" just so you can go on about how mad you are?

>>96754559
the campaign i run got one new player last week and one returning vetran yesterday. I think will get another returner soon as well. My game is doing just fine. Enjoy rage baiting me in the ad thread I have up. You should join my game and ragebait me in my game

>>96754540
I don't think the name of a power's typing really matters much as much as if it describes usage effectively. Indeed, as Daily showed us, the naming scheme can be detrimental to the mindset of how Powers are used. "Arc Powers" sort of smack me poorly right out the gate in this regard, because what is a story arc suppose to be in scope of time frame? That sounds like a nuevo way of saying 'once per adventurer', which might mean you hardly get to use them at all in that case.

My heartbreaker changed At Will and Encounter to Unlimited and Limited respectively, as a way to describe how many times during a fight you can use them. Is it boring language? Perhaps, but at least it's clear. Though I also have other sorts of power types with more interesting usage cases. Something that I feel 4e dropped the ball on with how they stuck to AEDU rather than expanded it with new types of Powers.

>>96754568
>y-you're mad!
well anon if screeching that helps you cope with your game being unpopular, be my guest

>>96754569
Weird to say your game isn't dead and then demand someone "ragebaiting" you join it.

>>96754625
Limited/Unlimited is pretty solid langauge.You can add several keywords to unlimited. 13th age added a step between A and D and between D and E for ADEU . Cyclic spells are at will half the time but can be expended like an encounter power if used off rhythm. Recharge spells have you roll a d20 to see if you get the daily power back.

>>96754662
demand is a pretty strong word. What kind of classes do you usually play?

>>96754684
Not interested in a game ran by a retard, sorry not sorry.

>>96754540
>93% of dnd players dont want chi, thats why monk pick rate is not very high.

I think it's more because the D&D monk doesn't fulfill the class fantasy that many want from the class. They want to play Goku (Dragonball or Monkey King), Kenshiro (Fist of the North Star) or a Xianxia Cultivator and all that is available is Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu ('72).

>power sources are something i use in reaction rolls preluding social encounters, enemies detecting magic, and they often play a role in group ritual magic skill challenges

The DMG suggested the possibility of terrain that enhanced or penalized certain power sources, but that idea was ignored because it basically meant that they were only important to certain classes and ignored by everything else.

>>96754561
>4e power sources were supposed to offer some kind of sub-role to your class.

Which kind of helped unify the classes associated with each power source but it also limited them at the same time.

>in 13th age with expanded content rogues have access to martial, shadaow and fate powers

If I was making a 4e clone I'd likely add alchemical and mechanical as well to cover trap creation and use of poisons and alchemical objects.

>Hybrid roles and power sources can make combat much more dynamic

Very true. When characters have access to multiple power sources things that interfere with specific power sources don't completely gimp those with that power source.

>>96754695
What kind of classes do you usually play? Are you a bard gamer? Do you like wizards?

>>96754720
terrians that penealize everyone except X or a terrian to keep the monster out of are both good mechanics to add an extra objective to a combat

>>96754678
Yeah, that's similar to ideas of mine. Tactical Powers are Unlimited if used at the right time, but expended like a Limited for the fight if not. Stock Powers start with a set number of Stocks you can spend to use the Power each fight, but if you run out of said Stocks you have to "Restock" the power. How you do this might be different or similar for each Stock Power though. Resource Powers spend Class specific Resource to use them, and Score Powers cost a Score (the game's equivalent to Action Points) in order to use each time.

>96754722
>Being so mad he has to repeat his question
Not even worthy of a (you) at this point.

>>96754722
You know damn well he doesn't play anything. He spends his time ragebaiting every thread that dares mention an almost 18 year old game like it harmed him personally. No one would stand someone that autistic in their games.

>>96754720
I have alchemist and tinkerer as full on classes in this game , and artificer as well and i have seen the first two on the table. Traps are even jankier than AoEs in this gridless game but they are functional enough.

>>96754819
I have DM'd for some turbo autists before I'll give dude a game

>>96754720
>Monks don't fulfill the fantasy the players want
Exactly this. It's why Swordsage is the preferred weeaboo fightan class while Crusader didn't meaningfully take away from the Paladin playerbase. It filled a much emptier gap in what people were looking for, which was a highly stylized technique-dense combo engine whose fighting style could be customized. And either no or an exotic weapon selection.

>>96754720
the guy who adapted swordsage , warblade and crusader to 13th age also adapted psionics. Its very 3.5 inspired but less of a direct port.to distance psions from the new paizo base class kinetcist who stole our evocation discipline's name he renamed the school to energenesis

Blaster psion was THE way to play a goku type character in 3.5 . Psi-Monk could get there as easily as energy missle from an expanded knowledge. Could prolly get that and energy ball as tattoos or power stones pretty cheap. Earn some extra gold by using your downtime in pit fighting boxing and dueling, fight for cash in downtime and use the fight milk to purchase more saiyan style ability unlocks.Maybe u treat the classic psion temporary hp self buff spell as the cultivated anime chi aura. I always longed for a better gish class . u could go pretty far with eldritch knight . duskblade and magus and hexblades were all duds for me. I wanted something with the versitility of a red mage in FF1 or a blue mage in FF5

>>96755375
I usually list this class as swordsage despite it containing crusader and warlord options. Maybe Wuxian would sound cooler. Combat Cultivator?

You are disciple of the nine swords. you are martial initiator. Disciple is a very fine name but that has been name for psion , monk and cleric before too.

Maester-at-Arms or Sifu could be good names for this class too. These are the most discipline martial. with trad alignment they should probobly all be lawful ( though crusaders explicitly arent)

what can /tg/ cook up with the book of 9 swords condensed into a single class?

>>96754819
>>96754832
>>96754722
Replying to yourself? Wew.

>>96755375
>>96755507
You're missing out by not having three different initiating mechanics.

Crusader's religious connection is pretty weak; they should have leaned more into the "wild card" nature of the mechanic by attaching it to more of a swashbuckler/gambler themed class. Maybe if Tome of Battle II were a thing that would have happened.

>>96737003
And despite 4e being called "WoW edition" by retards 3.x had all the WoW splats.

>>96754720
>I think it's more because the D&D monk doesn't fulfill the class fantasy that many want from the class. They want to play Goku (Dragonball or Monkey King), Kenshiro (Fist of the North Star) or a Xianxia Cultivator and all that is available is Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu ('72)

Remo Williams, actually. The Destroyer series was lifted pretty heavily for the specifics of the D&D monk back in the day.

>>96747902
Get your graph paper out and start drawing when the caller tells you to, or else you're going to get lost and attacked by a wandering monster. Make sure to carry around an entire smithy's worth of iron spikes and drive them through doors! Or else they'll arbitrarily close on you!

>>96755644
henchmen split one share of treasure and the door spiker only gets a half share. Hes only one step up from a dedicated bag mule. These hencmen can clutch in a pinch though.

I always liked the 10 foot pole as bo-staff monk

>>96755563
This game definitely has room for a gambler or corsair style class. Its wild mage but on a rogue chasis, and alot of gimmcky minigame spells. I was going to make their card throwing attacks quite weak at 1d3 damage but they could throw an extra card for each pip on the escalaion dice. You could also have them make three attac kolls and use the natural results with slot machine tables.

>>96749689
5e might have been the nail in the coffin for "protect the mage", since not only did it remove opportunity attacks in response to spellcasting, it also changed the HD of wizard and sorcerer from 1d4 to 1d6, and removed arcane spell failure chance (meaning that wizards with armor proficiencies don't have any class-specific downsides).
>>96749742
And 4e also has very few enemies that can one-shot, as well as very high enemy HP and very few enemies that can hit the same target more than twice per turn (in contrast, even non-epic enemies like the Grell in 3.5e get an attack per limb, in this case 10, as well as a bite). 4e also started the very lore-inconsistent trend of beholders using random eye rays or only 3 eye rays at a time, instead of any eye rays that have line of sight (as in 3.5e and earlier, which included formulas for determining how eyes could be used, which could easily be over half of them). 4e also has very few long-term consequences except for diseases (in contrast to 3.5e's very frequent ability damage/level drain/death effects), meaning that if you don't die in a fight, you can just wait a day and you will probably be fine.

>>96749857
>Consider that they sold minis with monster stat cards in booster packs
I would unironically buy this, it certainly beats having 20 d20srd tabs open at once, and if they were laminated I could also use them to track HP, initiative, and every ability score (as well as modifying them to represent a different monster) using dry-erase markers. 3.5e went all-in on monsters using the same rules as characters, so monster character sheets might be necessary.

>>96753340
>>96746593
>>96744670
Why do internet users keep failing to understand that you can just use rulers, if you are already using miniatures, and you don't need a damn grid? WOTC could have sold cone-shaped and circular rulers, as well as D&D-themed measuring tape with markers for various range increments, and this would have solved positioning much more accurately than both requiring everything to be on a grid and dumbing down every AOE. It also wouldn't trigger any autists who understand trigonometry or above (a significant proportion of D&D's target audience before the Stranger Things paradigm shift). A ruler also doesn't require all parts of the background to be snapped to the grid, and doesn't create a dilemma between hex-grids and square grids due to diagonal movement/adjacency.

But sure, turn your brain off and pretend that circles are squares (which r/dndmemes unironically considers to be both elite knowledge and true rather than either a rule misinterpretation or an accomodation for individuals with low spatial intelligence)

>>96755644
>Get your graph paper out and start drawing when the caller tells you to, or else you're going to get lost and attacked by a wandering monster. Make sure to carry around an entire smithy's worth of iron spikes and drive them through doors! Or else they'll arbitrarily close on you!

>>96735899
By writing it as exactly what it was in-setting: the world is fucked and what used to be easy is now hard. It's a post-apocalypse arc, what did you think would happen?

>>96756102
are you dumb? the grid is faster than rulers

>>96753645
There was a coup?

>>96756008
Very high HP was more of a part of pre-correction 4e. Granted, it's far from perfect for the real monster stats to get presented in the third MM, but it's there, and you can re-stat things that haven't already been altered in, say, Monster Vault.

>>96757767
Depends on your players, really. Anyone used to earlier AD&D or wargames probably wouldn't miss a beat.

>>96736219
4e is the best D&D because it stopped pretending that D&D isn't a combat role-playing GAME.
It balanced the combat so that you actually have roles in combat, and made the tabletop aspect of the RPG relevant.
Where other editions focuses on stuff that D&D is bad at, like social interactions, survival mechanics, and downtime stuff, 4e made these things simpler and straightforward to focus on the aspect of the game where the players care more about, the combat.

>>96760855
Not that anon but I wouldn't call it a coup but there was something. Because 4e wasn't making MtG numbers, which it was never going to, Hasbro/WotC kept kicking out its devs to make the game cheaper to make. By PHB 3 only a small handful of the writers of PHB 1 were left and the disgusting fat gremlin Mike Mearls had schmoozed and ass kissed his way into a leadership position. He publicly hated 4e and so once he was in control he threw away the planned books and instead steered the game into Essentials. Essentials pissed off 4e fans and didn't bring in any new players and so a year and half after the first Essentials book 4e went out of print.

Mearls must have been a legendary cock sucker because even after he blatantly drove 4e into the ground Hasbro let him lead another edition.

What the fuck does he mean 'writing around 4e Rules'?

Do his books read like
>Drizz't dropped Prone from Standing, a Minor Action, and grasped the hilt of Snowbane or whatever the fuck his gay sword is named. His back heaved once or twice in the six second interval representing a Round of Combat, and he took sharp, labored breathes through clenched teeth to activate his Second Wind and regain 2HD of Hit Points.

>>96762182
He's probably just malding and making excuses for his favorite setting getting retconned to hell and back. Though honestly the Spellplague was the most interesting thing to happen to the Realms since its inception.

4e is the worst because it believed people wanted to play a boardgame that takes 10x longer than a normal boardgame.
Really, it would have been great if it weren't an edition but instead a different specialist gameline.

>>96762182
4e made a bunch of gods no longer exist or become aspects or exarchs (think jesus) of totally unrelated gods, Asmodeus became a god which makes Hell a divine realm in the Astral Sea, the magic system was no longer vancian so writing caster now had to care about the whole AEDU system, martials now ALSO have to care about the AEDU system for writing the use of their class abilities, tieflings and dragonborn fully changed in concept and origin, elves became ex-fey, goblinoids became ex-fey, the cosmological model changed from great wheel to world tree, which also made elementals devil adjacent also there were no more elemental planes and slaads demon adjacent because full chaotic, because the cosmology change was motivated by the alignment system also changed to a line instead of a grid.

>>96761934
if mearls was the problem why did BG3 end up so good, he was the WotC side head for that.

>>96762522
sorry, world tree to world axis.

>>96753562
funnies aside, this is raw and metal as hell, why is this bad?

>>96749519
4e is indeed back to the games wargame roots, but as a dungeon crawler is laughable. its more like Final Fantasy Tactics.

>>96762522
Larian.

>>96749117
Gruumsh is not a real life mythological figure, nor is Lolth or Corellon or Moradin.

The primary races of demihumans actually share their pantheon across multiple worlds a lot.

>>96761686
>Very high HP was more of a part of pre-correction 4e. Granted, it's far from perfect for the real monster stats to get presented in the third MM, but it's there, and you can re-stat things that haven't already been altered in, say, Monster Vault.
I know that the math was changed in MM3, but it's still a lot harder to kill players or monsters in 4e. Full Attacks don't exist (remember what I said about most extra-limbed monsters having 1 attack per limb), ability damage doesn't exist, and instant death effects only exist in technicality (such as the Bodak's gaze, which is now an encounter power). Also, healing after combat is extremely easy. Overall, 4e is less of a tabletop MMO and more of a tabletop fighting game: every enemy has a very small set of mostly uncustomizable attacks, which are more likely to fling the target around than kill it.
>>96761912
4rries keep making this argument alongside the "it could have been a bestseller if it was just called D&D tactics!!!" argument, but it's wrong. The focus on combat in 4e only served to show how unrealistic, homogenized, and no-fun-allowed (you have to ask the DM for houserules if you want to do anything other than a pitched battle where 2 sides slug at each other until one of them wins, traps and terrain features are just monsters which only attack after you fuck with them, adventuring gear is basically a prop you can use for skill checks) the game was, and it had none of the domain-level play, mass combat, or lair exploration (Number Appearing got absolutely raped in 4e and beyond, which both removes verisimilitude and rigs the game in favor of the players), or weapon properties (such as matrices comparing weapon types vs armor, or different initiative modifiers dependent on attack types) that made previous editions a wargame. The tabletop aspect of the RPG is much more relevant if you have a large army on at least one team, and if there is a non-houseruled connection between the fight and the setting.

>>96762295
>Really, it would have been great if it weren't an edition but instead a different specialist gameline.
Muh "they should have just called it D&D Tactics!!!" argument, but the only timeline where I would accept 4e existing is one where it filled the role of a trading card game (just like in M:TG, 4e monsters only have their iconic abilities to save space on the card, unlike in 3.5e where they can also do things that their lesser counterparts can as well) with extremely small deck sizes. It would probably be more like Yu-Gi-Oh than M:TG because of the HP inflation.

>>96762559
I consider 4e to be closer to a Eurogame than a wargame due to the dissociated mechanics and lack of any features to encourage tactics that would work in real life (such as hiring goons, setting traps, burning down enemy fortresses, or the most heretical tactic: the monsters daring to send more than 6 minions at the adventurers at a time!).

>>96735558 (OP)
4e wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't D&D.

>>96762987
D&D was consistently incredibly bad at domain play and mass combat, so no, the argument isn't wrong.

>>96749183
brainlet
4e is the only true successor to BECMI
AD&D and its abominable derivatives were a mistake

>>96763139
Dungeon Crawl Classics is a closer successor to BECMI than 4th. Don't even with that bullshit.

>>96762522
>slaads demon adjacent
I mean that one is no big deal, except even devils are probably disgusted by them.

>>96763436
*demons. Whatever.

>>96763436
Sure but Slaads aren't supposed to be evil, just batshit insane.

>>96756102
Don't blame internet users for the fact that 3.X and 4e were gridbased. 4e was was likely even more gridbased the 3.X because they had originally planned for most play to be by virtual tabletop and that would have been easier to program.

>>96763008
>It would probably be more like Yu-Gi-Oh than M:TG because of the HP inflation.
Stats are totally irrelevant in Yugioh and have been for decades.

>>96764047
well, yes but no.

you still have to deal 8000 lifepoints to win most of the time.
But actually accomplishing that is pretty flexible, provided you have some way or another to clear your opponent's board (or prevent it from ever forming), which is where all the all-important effect text comes in.

we should round up all the 3egroids and hang them from trees

>>96746110
>Instead they retconned huge chunks of previous lore, undermining pretty much Salvatore's entire career as an author.
Makes me think of the Star Wars novels he wrote that are just Legends stuff now.

>>96763471
That's just the same excuse for That Guy playing chaotic neutral. There's not a single thing about them that doesn't reek of evil.

>>96765468
Yeah, 4e players unite and rise up! Maybe start meeting at McDonalds, I'm sure there's an empty table right now.

>>96735558 (OP)
Ahh, I still recall the 4rries seething that nobody liked their shit WoW tabletop while whining about muh game balance.

I said at the time that this was just communist faggot shit masquerading as interest in rules, and it turns out I was right. The objective result was that the shitcolor manifested everywhere.

You made your bed D&D fags, now you get raped in it.