I have noticed a trend in both online videos and discussions of people supporting the notion that DnD 4e experiences a revival and renaissance out of nowhere. Is this true? And I'm asking because it's widely considered to be THE worst version of DnD ever and as dead as disco in 2023.
Have you noticed that too, or is it just me?
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It seems to be going through a revaluation as people realise that a lot of their 'fixes' for making combat more interesting in 5e were already mechanics in 4e
You mean things already in the DMG that people refuse to read or outright on the statblock, just as everything short of reverse triggers and the very few Miniatures+Heroes of+ToB content that made the jump to 4e, aka the only things 4e combat did right were in 3e.
No. Every year there are less games on VTTs and forum board adverts for it than there were in 2017 and thats when the hardcore shills pushed the idea of 4e not being the massive math flop it is. Most people stupid enough to like 4e, but not as stupid to be unable to do addition beyond 10 jumped over to the as big of a fail of PF2e (well success for paizo, but anything is a success if you dont pay the SJWs making half "your" releases and the rest are rebranded ports).
Maybe foundry cucks have better numbers but that sure as hell aint being openly disclosed as more people are getting savy to how customization on the fly without mod bloat and updates sending your game to the shadow realm is king.
>newbie
>shite opinions
Many such cases.
>projecting that hard
>4egger
Many such cases.
>Miniatures+Heroes of+ToB content
Many 3.5 games were pretty much PHB/MM/DMG only, if you compare a 3.5 vs 4 vs 5 game using only the three core books 4e comes out the most interesting of them.
All three of those are complete shit, though.
Yes but 4e is the least shit.
Even if you werent completely wrong...
>every table the two decades ago run at least +3 on book side
>every online game advert on vtts has most things short of serpent kingdom, the better psionics series and ss as legal
...you do realize that even if you add all the PHBs, DMGs and MMs the 4e ones would still be the only shit barely able to play option of the 3 on core content.
It outright improves if you remove the first two MMs and first DMG along with a large cut of the PHB for either starter set or online compendium from 09.
>a revaluation as people realise that a lot of their 'fixes' for making combat more interesting in 5e were already mechanics in 4e
Yeah and they were shit mechanics, which is why 5e ditched them. But since the D&D developers have no frickign idea what they are doing, they are going back to 4e (which was designed before their alzheimers kicked in) and copying shit off of that. None of it is "better" it's just different and that's all the zoomies need.
The biggest D&D content creator on YouTube is a 4e advocate, that's where it came from.
Who are you thinking of?
Calm down Fatt copesville
It's just some discord raid. I can tell.
>Is this true?
It is. There's been a pretty steady increase in positive 4e commentary in the last few years as well as many people who had never tried it finally giving it a go and finding it's a perfectly fine RPG. It still has its flaws but those flaws aren't as evident or in-your-face as the ones found in many other systems, especially 5e.
Yep, everyone just decided one day that 4e was PERFECT and that if you disagree you're just a rude stupid chuddie.
>steady increase over the years for flawed system
>INSTANT
>perfect
full moron.
Stfu stupid dysgenic c**t, none of the 4e shilling is organic.
This is the starting point for 4e's uptick morons.
One of the biggest DnD content creators makes a video talking about how he liked 4e and how it had a lot of great ideas for making combat better. It got a million views and was positively received. This emboldens people who always liked 4e but just went quiet on the subject to stand up for themselves finally, and drew in lots new people that engaged with it entirely removed from the drama and baggage of the edition wars. Its been slowly snowballing back into popularity from here, nothing instant about it.
A 4e ancient red can
>bite
>claw
>double claw attack
>strike with its tail only on a specific condition and on a specific target
>immolate a single foe for an average of 32 fire damage and apply ongoing 10 damage for you to track (recharging on a die roll)
>breathe fire in a 25 foot square for an average of 36 damage (recharging on a die roll and an arbitrary HP threshold) and negates fire resistance (another thing to track)
>use its Frightful Presence to stun(?) enemies once per encounter and apply a minor dice roll penalty for you to track
>automatically deal fire damage at the start of a creatures turn or when they enter its aura
A 5e ancient red can
>bite
>claw
>use its Frightful Presence to actually frighten enemies without being limited to one use per encounter
>do all of the three above together as one action
>breathe fire in a 90 foot cone for an average of 91 damage (recharging on a die roll)
>tail attack whenever it wants to even outside of its turn
>beat its wings, potentially knocking everyone around it prone and then fly away, whenever it wants to even outside of its turn
>stare intently at you whenever it wants to even outside of its turn
>make magma geysers erupt in its lair
>cause tremors in its lair, potentially knocking everyone around it prone
>create toxic fumes in its lair that poison and incapacitate enemies
>cause earthquakes near its lair because it doesn't care about building codes
>taint water sources near its lair because it doesn't care about water safety
>create portals to the Elemental Plane of Fire near its lair because frick you
Sorry, but 5e's ancient red seems more intimidating and interesting, especially as a lair encounter. 4e's Inferno aura and Immolate Foe are cool, but ongoing effects are a b***h to track. And I'm amazed at how little damage an ancient red does in 4e, while the party level and HP when encountering it will be higher compared to 5e.
4E's ancient red dragon is from MM1 and was never updated. It's not a surprise that they do less interesting things and do a lot less damage than they should because those are the exact complaints everyone has about pre-MM3 monsters. Compare it to the Ancient Blizzard Dragon from MM3.
>was never updated
I thought they were in Draconomicon?
Also
>74 replies
>24 posters
So who is the dedicated shitposter of this thread?
Some dragons were, but that's still a pre-MM3 book.
Is Dungeon Delve pre-MM3?
http://funin.space/compendium/monster/DalSarnquin-Ancient-Red-Dragon.html
is a remade ancient red, for all intents.
Yes, Dungeon Delve is a 2009 book and MM3 is 2010.
Bitwise identical to MM1.
As someone who only played 3.5/PF1 and then 5E b/c no one I knew did 4E, mobs having certain things they'd only do when getting low in health/bloodied always seemed awesome. Gotta import that for all future TTRPG's for non-trivial monsters.
>I thought they were in Draconomicon?
All it did was add a wyrmling version and a variant ancient red with somewhat different attacks to represent Ashardalon. The example dragon lair uses the standard MM1 elder red stat block.
>So who is the dedicated shitposter of this thread?
probably the dipshit just here to ruin the thread
The thread came preruined by being on Ganker.
Lets actually take a look at this instead of using generalized and biased simplifications.
First we need to look at the 5e one because it tries to sneak terrain stuff into the actual stat block, unlike the previous 4 editions, which left terrain effects as part of the scenario building but unconnected to the actual monsters stats. This cuts out magma geyser, tremors, toxic fumes, tainted water sources, and create portals. All of these are things previous edition dragons are noted for having in their lairs, but are terrain effects instead of dragon effects. An example is the Volcano Lair from 4es Draconomican: Chromatic Dragons, which has Quake and Cinder Storm hazards as random environmental "traps" in and outside the lair.
Once we have removed the lair effects, created for unimaginative normie DMs who suck at lair creation, we are left with a variety of attacks that are basically the same as 4es dragon. So lets look at the much vaunted Frightful Presence power and how the two versions, and even 3e and PF versions, are basically the same thing done mechanically different. The dragon picks a bunch of creatures within 120 ft and forces a wisdom check or be frightened for a minute. If they make the save or the effect ends, they are immune for 24 hours. This is the standard way 3e and PF1e do it too. This makes the effect a once per day, and technically a once per encounter, ability that cant be reused in future encounters that day, if there are any, such as it escaping and the PCs pursue it.
The 4e version is once per encounter, but has no 24 hour immunity attached to it. This means it can escape, reuse it when caught or once its reached better terrain, and can lead to more interesting multistage combat encounters. As a point of interest, the PF2e version is actually more powerful than any others, requiring a crit success to remain free of its effects and only immune for a minute, aka 10 rounds.
Legendary actions are basically slightly more free versions of the trigger actions, such as immediate actions and the bloody trigger. I prefer the 4e versions, since they make for good game design and are fun ways to convey how a fight is going and that certain placements are bad. The detect legendary action is very silly, since perception is a free action in every other edition.
The 5e version is rather boring once you remove the built in terrain effects. The fact its fire breath doesn't set things on fire is also a major problem.
And the physical attacks from the dragon are such boring shit. Compare the tail attacks, 5es does damage and thats all, while 4es does damage and shoves the creature around by 15 feet, making the combat more dynamic.
>ongoing effects are a b***h to track
No they aren't. A simple die specifically used to track it, or a chit to denote its presence is all you need. What I get from this is that you're bad at DMing, preferring to narrate shit and not run a game. Go play a narrative game instead so you can all sit around a table and play pretend with no need to remember staus effects or combat rolls or the need to rack shit liek HP or fire damage or other such things.
Ive heard of groups regularly houseruling ongoing fire damage for things like dragons breathe, so it is obvious there are shortcomings to the standard 5e statblock.
Its also 15 ongoing fire damage.
>th-that doesn't count
Not an argument.
>Its also 15 ongoing fire damage.
Got me there, my eyes wandered to the elder stat block for a moment.
>th-that doesn't count
It doesnt. Lair Actions are literally just hazards and traps from older editions built into the dragons stat block, which was done because they know that the average 5e DM is an idiot who isnt capable of building a decent lair without it being shoved in their face by the book. Also because the game is shit at doing hazards and traps.
>irony of 4e where the hazards were printed in as ability on statblock or role if you read it like most sources of ongoing and close blasts of damage complaining over it
And you do realize that all 8 notable dragon encounters (9 if you count tiamats avatar despite being a fiend) or 9(10) out of 13 with addition of dragonlance still have regular map based traps and hazards in addition to the actions of the dragons.
>5e red dragon
>6/14 if the actions are dependent on it being inside its lair
>8/14 actions can occur in a random wilderness encounter
>4e red dragon
8/8 actions can occur in a random wilderness encounter
So all you're saying is you like that 5e added lair actions.
>in its lair
>in its lair
>in its lair
>near its lair
>near its lair
>near its lair
If you poor Black folk only knew what a 3e dragon can do, especially with the Draconomicon.
>none of the 4e shilling is organic.
Are you fricking moronic?
Tell me who the frick, of all people, benefits from shilling 4e? Tell me who makes money by bringing 4e up in conversation. Wizards? The company that was about to abandon 5e to move to the eternal present ruleset? Cause nobody fricking else is making books you stupid bastard.
They do still sell all the 4e PDFs so profit margins are high there. WotC isn't that intelligent though otherwise they wouldn't have stopped selling PDFs at all with 5e
>THE worst version of D&D ever and as dead as disco in 2023.
Then why are you posting about it? The game has (and will always have) a following, like every single version of D&D that has ever been released.
The 'revival' is just 5e morons realizing their game is trash and stealing ideas from 4e, which is a better designed game.
It's not just 5e players, many other developers are quite open about how they find 4e influential, such as the Gubat Banwa developer, and Lancer, and 13th Age, and Battle Century G, and more.
One of the Soulbound devs is also a fan. He made a feat where you can use your action to have someone else attack. He says it's directly inspired by the warlord at-will Commander's Strike.
I don't know anything about Soulbound myself but if that is true then that is pretty legit.
>He says it's directly inspired by the warlord at-will Commander's Strike.
>not 3e Flanking Maneuver, Command, Swarming M, Gangup, Wolfpack, Grant Move, etc of the myriad variants that did or enabled it as out of turn attacks, attack of opportunity, provoke triggers or plain granting actions on their next turn at the cost of your own or a resource
Truly the pen and paper equivalent to calling Alien vs Predator the start of the Aliens franchise.
>praising feat taxes and bloat
lol
>feat taxes and bloat
>everything on the list part of a class or full value chain
>ignoring that 4e had 80 times the useless bloat and level add to everything as it was a 2 class game with flavor lock, 3 if everyone is kind to the person going vampire
3e is dogshit.
4e is better than 3e.
neither are as good as AD&D.
>4egger
>fake deflect to AD&D
Cope and seethe, wont change that 3e is actually mechanically good and has math that works baseline, even if template stacking bricks it, unlike homogenized crap that took to essentials and multiple base books attempts for anyone to try and salvage it with a basic calculator yet still failing.
>3e is actually mechanically good
>Move 30ft, roll d20 to attack, roll d8 for sword damage
VS
>Move 6 squares, roll d20 to attack, roll 1 [W]
Violently different games.
>move 30, roll with modifiers from 3-8 sources vs AC, roll damage with dr, absorb or 5 and full attack triggering a maneuver or feat to move due to action economy consideration making for interesting multiple encounters a day
VS
>move 7-8, roll d20 with level and 2 modifiers and one allies bonus, roll 1-2w against a fricking save, it doesnt matter the large monster was a minion its the little shit that has 450 hp by 8 but deals the same 1w damage the same monster did at 2 as a 55 elite with 3/4ths of them having the same bloody triggers for anything interesting
>action economy
>3e
3e is the pinnacle of the 5 minute wizard and rocket-tag combat anon. please stop.
>4egger
>doesnt understand play by daily xp and expected encounters to then claim 5 min adventuring day when wands, at wills and later reserves were all staples for reason
>thinks low level lethality extends beyond ecl3
You truly have a lack of brain tissue that makes 4e your only option it seems.
Reserve feats were nice because they helped you mop up an already won fight faster, worked out of combat, or were usable as a swift action. Wands were used for buffs or no save no SR spells. And combat stays extremely lethal if you aren't moronic.
Depends on what style of play table goes for.
Never ran mutual optimized nor resource grindfests default unless entire party asked, as it felt like it was negating part of the fun of actually getting to use what you worked for.
Otherwise, people vastly underestimate (or fell to too many noobtraps) how lethal combat gets after BAB average hits 4, one death every 3-5 sessions at most (so half the session gap between deaths compared to 5e RAW after 5).
3e is a mechanical joke. Housecat with more health than wizards, bears with better state than fighters. The absurdist system of skill points (good ol Use Rope).
Literally played A D&D last week lmao
>4egger
>edits AD&D on and doesnt even resize to normalize error and noise level
>thinks 1d8/2 rounded down is higher than 10+1d4+1~3 or that a person who finished basic combat training is physically fitter than a brown or black bear
Yup your moronation checks out.
What are you even talking about? I removed EXIF from a phone photo. Stay mad lol
Project and mald harder 4egger, wont make your shit edition any less terrible compared to actually good eds like 3e.
Take your pills moron, and stop sucking 3e dick please, there is cum coming out of your mouth.
Seethe and project all you want 4egger, you still wont unshit yourself.
4e failed.
>The math for skills wasn't, which is more than can be said of 3E.
3e skills work fine. You have stuff you can accomplish with a few ranks, and then rare uses that need specialization.
4e is a threadmill.
>Skill challenges work
This is why they tried to redesign them three times then they gave up. Because they work.
Diplomacy.
Absolutely overrated issue unless you use combos never meant to be used together.
The only thing those combos do is accelerate what's already possible.
No, because dialogue in a RP is a thing.
As a 4rrie, you see everything mechanically because you don't understand the connection with the gameworld.
BTW, this is why your shit game failed.
Dialogue is not the Diplomacy skill.
Yep. No understanding of the gameworld and of the fact that communication is required to use the skill, and that context matters, and that you are not always able to initiate.
>your build that just full attacks every round
It's not my problem you 4rries are unable to use a specific maneuver or feat combination without a power spelling it out for you.
Also PF came out 10 years ago, there are 2 different iterations of ToB, so this argument is not dead, is SUPER dead.
Give up. Your game is shit.
The context is built into the Diplomacy rules. That's why there are attitudes to change3. Not being able to use Diplomacy against unintelligent enemies does not make it balanced.
No, Diplomacy is used as part of communication with other creatures in the gameworld.
For people like you there is Heroquest.
PF 1e has wound thresholds in Unchained.
And those creatures are ranked on a scale based on their attitude towards the PC that changes how they respond to Diplomacy checks.
>how they respond to Diplomacy checks.
which takes times, it's languaege dependent and cannot always be carried out.
Thank you for your contribution anon now shut the frick up moronic 4rrie.
>which takes times,
A rushed Diplomacy check can be made as a full-round action, but you take a -10 penalty on the check.
>it's languaege dependent
Tongues.
>and cannot always be carried out.
[citation needed]
A -10 is massive (see comment about pimping, above). tongue could not be available, must be pre-cast, and if cast on the spot could cause a negative reaction because they see you cast spells
>but muh spellcraft
You can disguise a spell for another.
>>and cannot always be carried out.
No, it literally cannot.
Your game is shit anon, give up.
A -10 is not massive in a game with as many sources of bonuses to Diplomacy as 3E. And I'm not talking about the Diplomancer.
>tongue could not be available
Play a Bard.
>and if cast on the spot could cause a negative reaction because they see you cast spells
Good thing you have a skill to raise temperament.
>Good thing you have a skill to raise temperament.
Literally circular argument.
Yep, we are done here.
Your game is shit and it failed anon. Never forget this.
>wastes skill points and multiple level dips to get +24-30 instead of +14
>at least 3-4 wasted from insight and competence bonuses from better effects on spells not stacking
>by RAW influences one creature to attack their friends instead of them as by round 4 everyone else in the party gets monster xp while the combat diplomacy attempting one got the xp a level 1 would in a 4v1 curbstomp by raw due to non-combat participation
You truly do epitomize the lack of thinking common among 4e shills.
No such thing as flavor text, everything is crunch, if you are too brainlet to know that its probably time for you to dilate or rope already.
Everything you just said is wrong.
You have never played 4e
Nice that you admit to have never played 3e to 20 nor 4e to reject a solid 80% of pps on most flavors of both classes, oh sorry i mean "role" as if mechanical group set isnt what makes a class and why kits were developed but instead calling one primal somehow makes the exact same powers with sometimes one encounter being nerfed to daily any different.
>Nice that you admit to have never played 3e to 20 nor 4e
You're absolutely right. I have played B/X, AD&D, 3e (unfortunately), 3.5, Pathfinder 1, 4e, and 5e, and I have never played a single one to level 20 because D&D turns to a total dogshit slogfest around levels 10-12
In one 4e game I played we went to level 30. I built a fantastic striker barbarian. Other editions might be shit at high levels but 4e is fantastic (for combat).
Sorry, but I really can't enjoy wailing on multiple monsters with several hundred hitpoints for half the session. Why anyone does because they get some gay meaningless ability at level 15 or whatever is beyond me. Don't even get me started on 3.5's "epic" level content.
I found level 30 quick because my barbarian was highly optimised and usually killed at least one enemy a round.
>0game 4egger that got repeatedly thrown out at setup before first session
>doesnt know that 3e is superior to the higher level slightly fixed with essentials era monsters 4e
Checks out, you do consistently shit the board with like someone that doesnt know the difference between roll under vs roll over as you never rolled any dice in the first place.
>you do consistently shit the board with like someone
Are you having a stroke?
Projecting eh? Dont worry, i understand that you are more allergic to math than the average IGN and youtube reviewer.
>4egger
Fouregger? What? At least 4rry makes sense as a pun, this is incoherent. Did you have a stroke?
He's clearly esl. These are all him.
esl shitskins detected
4e had bloat.
It's just that it looked like this:
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
instead of:
>AISHDHEJJSHDUNEBHJE
4rries are pathetic. Nothing of value in 4e cannot be found in 3e.
Lancer is dogshit.
13th Age plays nothing like 4e though. Why people keep pushing that?
It's cowritten by one of the old 4e guys and takes obvious cues from it in class design. Practice it's closer to in play 3.x though, no doubt influenced by it's other cowriter...
It's also the game that taught me to hate 'ring distance' as a measurement device. Just use a fricking grid, you hacks. Everyone can buy a dry erase one from any game store for 15 bucks. Could use hexes for all I fricking care.
>which is a better designed game.
No, is a badly design game.
5e is just a BARELY designed game.
I just found five 4e books in a local used bookstore, so I bought them for super cheap and started researching. There is a community that is actually importing everything into online VTTs and creating resources and keeping the old character builders alive. I'm running my first session of it in two days.
So, yes, it's going through a resurgence. PF2e, which is the new hotness in the d20 sphere is very heavily based on 4e.
>I'm running my first session of it in two days.
Hope you have fun, anon! I'm winding down a campaign myself (just about a year run now, party about to stop Lolth's scheme to conquer several more layers of the Abyss and use the power surge from controlling that to bind much of existence to her will).
It's true, they're calling it Pathfinder Second Edition
I honestly wish pf2e took more lessons from 4e.
I often see people claim PF2e is the successor to 4e but much like 13th Age, the previous "4e successor", I don't see all that much 4e in it. About as much as 5e which is barely any.
There will never be a true 4e successor till we have a game that embraces the grid as a core part of design. The tactical grid based combat was the primary selling point of 4e after all.
morons believe that a book being readable as a rules manual and not having to skim through 2 paragraphs of flavor text to see how much damage something does makes a game 4e like. 90% of the time someone says a game is like 4e, they really mean it just isn't formatted like dogshit.
TIL B/X is a 4e derivative.
honestly yes! at least for the point being made by that anon. fricking ttrpg writers have forgotten that these are games with rules and DMs need to be able to parse the text quickly and easily. in that at least B/X and 4e are closer than either of them and 3.5/5e/PF
I think it's the same now as back then: 4rries are noisy homosexuals and sound and look as being way more than their actual number.
You may not be this crazy but you're trying.
3.5 is 20 years old. 3e is 23. It's probably just that some of the grogs are starting to die from their extremely unhealthy fa/tg/uy lifestyles and others are bored of Ganker.
5e makes any shit look good by comparison, but the downgrade from 4e to 5e is nothing compared to the one from 3.5e to 4e.
3e was a mistake. I suppose 4and 5e are too. But 3e is where the massive shift in mechanics and tone came from.
3e gays will never accept they're fake grogs.
They never do. I started with 3e. Found AD&D and 4e more fun. Still have a weird appreciation of 3e for getting me onto the table but I don't really like it.
Literally me except I don't have the appreciation those 3.5e games sucked ass.
Ha, never met another one. Most people love their first version of D&D they play. The 3e simulationist garbage is so fricking dull. i tried going back to it last year with my uncle and the amount of penalties stacked onto a fighter just trying to use his armor and weapons is insane. Feats are literally just a Fighter tax. Skills too actually. Frick that edition hated fighters.
It’s a great wargame/board game. As an rpg it can be a bit lacking.
>As an rpg it can be a bit lacking.
How?
90% of your character sheet is combat related. You have maybe some skills (with broken math) and if you took them some utility powers but otherwise the game pushes combat too hard while having no interesting mechanics for roleplay.
>but but muh rituals
Bloated boring system where everything takes ages to cast.
Anon, the vast majority of every D&D sheet has been for combat. Hell, non-combat crunch has always been miniscule and rarely touched on in previous editions, 3e and 5e included.
You’re only half corrrect. 4e took that to the next level. Gone were interesting powers like charm person, disguise self etc in came a strict power system. They stripped away even the basic additions to non combat encounters. It is worse than the dungeon crawl combat heavy other editions and that’s saying a lot. If skills and very basic rituals are all I’m getting I would rather play a simple system with fast exciting combat.
So by "roleplaying" you mean "I win" buttons for spellcasters?
It's what always happens when you ask what "roleplaying" stuff 4e is missing, it's always just a list of spells that are basically "I cast this to bypass having to roleplay"
And funny enough several of them are still in 4e as rituals.
>play fantasy RPGs
>your character can't do anything that isn't explicitly on the sheet
>mother may I?
>you can only wipe your ass if you have at least the greater ass-wiping feat
If it has the same amount of roleplaying mechanics as everything else that’s hardly an argument to use it. Especially when combat slows everything down to a crawl.
But then it's also not a knock against it.
The combat is fun if your DM isn't moronic. That's what this "resurgence" is about. Depending on monster your 5e fighter will move in on the first turn and from then on only use attack actions until the monster is dead (see 3.5 fighters, too). 4e fighters had encounter powers and dailies to choose from. But even then many monsters had interesting things they could do, bloodied triggers were common, your fighter would wade through tons of minions and could actually dissuade monsters from attacking the squishy. As. A. Class. Feature.
4e isn't perfect but the gameplay is leagues ahead of 5e and 3rd.
It’s more balanced than the other editions. That doesn’t mean it’s better. 4e has less players on roll20 than 3.5. There won’t be a resurgence. The point against it is that combat is a slog. I remember playing it after it came out. We’d be having fun rping and speaking to npcs. Then combat would start and everything would grind to a halt for the next hour or so. It was like we were playing two games. You get this a bit in other editions but it’s never felt as jarring.
But its not more balanced. At least 2 if not 3 of the flavors of each claimed role and all but 1-2 versions of the same powers per flavor set are objectively bad, often the same ones renamed at that so its not even in a feigned attempt to make the flavor names actually feel like their own classes and it somehow kept getting worse with more ACFs the closer the monsters were to being usable straight out of the book or in actually role flex cases after their role was applied.
Goad, Guardian chain (yes it are fighter bonus feats, no different than ACFs in 4e), Mettle/Challenge/IGG, half the defensive and aoo prcs that you can easily access at 5 (or 3+ with BAB tricks if DM allows them).
In 5e sentinel, MS, cavalier, FS:Intercept, Storm/Cloud Rune, etc.
As many options as the good ones in 4e (and in 3e about half as many bad ones like the mentioned goad if you only use the base miniatures).
In 3e you didnt need to take them with teamwork, in 5e people seem to be getting around to it now with BG3 showing how useful extra triggers are.
And thats just for that example, while 5e doesnt have all the mathematically interesting options 4e had (mid combat dice pool manipulation actually, as compared to both kits and acfs + feats of prior eds 4e was very lacking on the math side too) the idea that you didnt and/or now dont have equivalents of the as flashy good options is a plain case of skill issue.
Goad was terrible you moron.
>goad, cavaler, challenge
>asgood as 4e
what a nice fricking theory that you cooked up there
>you dont have any games
>you dont have any games
>empty game table
First of all
>(yes it are fighter bonus feats
marks you as an obvious esl.
Secondly
>no different than ACFs in 4e)
ACFs in 4e? You gotta be joking, Black person.
But for shits and giggles let's entertain you "argument":
>so what if fighter can actually fulfill its role in 4e with class features!?
>3e has a gazillion trap feats and if you pick these five you can actually be competent
>and in 5e you need to wait until level 4 to pick up one of two feats out of 50 to actually make you into a fighter even though you call yourself fighter from level 1
>maybe you don't need to wait until level 4 if you play vuman or one of these two subclasses
>this totally counters all other points you made too BTW because reasons
>God I love being intelligent
4E has a few ACFs like Battle Cleric's Lore and Combat Agility, they're just not called that.
Every additional books "new build" section of each class starts with 2-5 ACFs, even if they are not called that, so "a few" is at least a understatement as much as claiming that "5e monks lack of nova makes it slightly bad in the 4e style 5 minute adventuring day/one encounter and long rest a session play that noobs end up falling to even if they arent roleplay or trap and survival encounter heavy tables"
>ignores that fighters class feature is extra feats
>ignores that every released "not a kit, you can selectively pick these class features instead" are all ACFs all the way base expo books to Martial Power and Essentials
>ignores that both 3e and 5e did the thing 4e gets praised for superior
Projecting your ESL lack of reading comprehension and room temperature IQ even when someone spells it out for you wont make you any less the anal abortion moron you are.
Anon, open the 4e DMG and you'll quickly find it has more actual mechanics for RP than any other edition. The only thing it's actually lacking of "roleplaying" spells that really only served to trivialize roleplay, not improve it.
The math for skill challenges was broken lmao. Great rp mechanics.
The math for skills wasn't, which is more than can be said of 3E.
Skill challenges work, if you use them while there's a combat going on.
And that's amazing, even searching a library for forbidden lore is awesome if you have to fight off cultists as you go
Why can’t you just roleplay? Why do you need text on your character sheet that says “this is for roleplay”?
If we're going to just do freeform or system light roleplay there are countless systems that do it better. And the roleplaying won't be interrupted for hours on end by a wargame. If your argument is that you don't need the system to tell the story then why is it there in the first place?
4e was never a bad game, and it's one of the better versions of D&D. It died because it was different from 3e, and 3e players are murderously protective of their game. They didn't go to 5e, either, they jumped ship to Pathfinder, where Paizo boiled the frog for another decade before (somehow) getting most of them to finally move onto a new system with Pathfinder 2e. Even so, a stroll by the Paizo games general shows that they're still a very vocal (and very angry) part of the community.
In short, 4e didn't kill itself, 3e players murdered it. That being said, there's hardly a revival, I think people are just finally getting around to giving it credit for the stuff it did right. Nobody's actually playing 4e.
best answer in the thread. 3e gays are insufferable but 4e isn't seeing some explosion of popularity. it has its niche like all other previous editions.
4e's content was a big downgrade in terms of art quality. The text in the books was bigger, with formatting that allowed for more blank space on the page. They stopped making passion-project fluff splats like Libris Mortis and Lords of Madness and churned out player-focused splats with more encounter powers in them. WotC themselves were ready to shit on the fans who didn't like it before the game was even announced. Many elements of the game seemed designed to be monetizable rather than be played/enjoyed.
That's funny, I remember a jump in art quality going from 3.X to 4E because the style was much more consistent.
I prefer 4e's style to 5e. It does a good job of evoking the "superheroic' feel of 4e. 3e was okay, and everyone love the classic look of AD&D.
Even if most of the art is mediocre, I really like that I can tell at a glance if any given piece is from 4e. Also it has the best looking dwarves of any edition.
I legitimately had more fun playing a wizard in 4e than in 3.5. They're completely different though so I can see why a 3.5 wizard fan would hate them. What I don't understand is the frothing at the mouth tard raging fighter players who got everything they asked for and more.
No need. WOTC will be releasing 6th ed soon, so if you don't like 5e just have some patience. It will be even better, you'll see!
>4e
lol
lmao even
enjoy simple encounters taking several hours
Kinda sad that the only discussion is thought killing trolling.
Let's repurpose this shitty skub thread then.
had a question about monster updates: MM3 is your go to book for new and improved monsters. You can generally find out when a book was released in the 4e Fandom wiki and anything squarely after MM3 is good to go out of the box.
There are corner cases though. I don't recall whether Eberron had the new math or not.
Any guidelines to what to do to stuff that came before MM3?
You should at the bare minimum adjust their numbers so they match this. If you aren't confident in making your own monster powers then consider taking a newer monster that's similar to what you want and just re-flavoring it.
>Is this true?
No, you made it up to get another 4E shitposting thread going. No one likes that version. It's the opposite of what RPGs should be. Give up.
Somewhat. It was mostly considered "THE worst" by people that construed the rules in intentionally incorrect ways (ie. the DC scaling arguments) or only knew it from the memes, and some youtuboid decided to actually read it after 15 years.
There's also the uptick in 4e-inspired games like LANCER bringing people back to it.
At the time of its release, 4e did get fricked over by bad monster math, the murder-suicide thing, not having all the 3.5e base classes at launch, and various other problems. These were all eventually fixed, but its reputation was damaged beyond repair by then.
Having recently started running it, I can see some pros and cons to the game, and do think they should have kept more of it in 5e and pf2e.
The fact that we'll probably never have a proper Warlord class again is the biggest fricking tragedy, it was probably the best thing about that edition.
What the best 5e homebrew for them?
You dont need homebrew, you can rep all the best powers by going fighter 4 bm, order cleric 1 and the rest in bard of choice that best represents the alternative class features you went for (lest be honest, you didnt trade hea- i mean inspiring word and it was bfl for chads or leader if boring).
Same way how 60% of the warlord and 100% of all the good powers came from the WR initiator of choice with marshal+LL or Bard+MythEx touchups used by the people that could convice the DM to run with full cohort gang.
You can't even handle a tenth of the good Warlord powers under 5E with any amount of multiclassing.
Another weird niche the Warlord had going for it was it was a great class for powergamers to play alongside people who don't min-max mainly because the best Warlord builds all focus around being a force multiplier for the rest of the party.
That's true of all the leaders honestly. Really every dm should encourage their powergamers to play support classes. If they're making the rest of the group better instead of soloing fights and stealing the spotlight then everyone wins.
Or the general niche of the Leader classes in general, really.
Healing Surges as a limitation were a good mechanic, and I wish that was kept around. Nicely establishes the limits of an adventuring day, nicely handles the whole "wand of CLW" matter, makes healing abilities matter in combat, etc. I've seen a lot less 5-minute workdays in 4e than 3.pf or 5e due to it.
Giving martials at least some option to target something other than AC while still doing work is also a good move.
Yeah. 5e has ways to build leaders, I had a lot of fun with an order cleric, but it's generally very niche.
We're far enough removed from the kneejerk hate campaign it got on release so people can have an honest look at the game in its complete state
There's obviously a few people that can't get over it and keep trying to fight a battle that ended a decade ago that will sperg out over any mention of the game but they're a minority
this is a general call to the board, does anyone know of a 5etools but for 4e? My group switched recently and I'm getting a bit swamped in trying to compile all the material simply for player options let alone monsters or other DM side stuff
4E has an offline character builder and an offline compendium.
I'm specifically looking for online options
sorry if I dont trust downloading an exe from Ganker of all places
Coward.
There are online databases but no online character creator.
as long as it has all the character options thats totally fine, I dont need a character builder I just need a database of character options
http://funin.space/
Has everything but can be a pain in the ass to navigate if you don't 100% know what you are looking for
http://iws.mx/dnd/?list.name.All&sort=Level
Has like 95% of the content, its missing some of the Dragon Magazine stuff, but it very well organized and easy to find things
If you don't trust Ganker but are willing to chance getting groomed the 4e Discord ran by r/4eDnD has all the resources including the hacked offline builder and the offline compendium that is iws but actually has everything.
>If you don't trust Ganker but are willing to chance getting groomed
An adult can't get groomed, what are you talking about
>widely considered to be THE worst version of DnD ever
This is solely because 3.pf tards seethed when it came out and sour graped it as hard as possible cause new thing bad.
Had the virtual tabletop finished and had factored in the worst part of 4e, so many fricking reactions, it would have been THE edition.
Additionally, a major issue was most people who ran the game didn't read the DMG that specifically says to use skill challenges for minor encounters including minor fights and save the actual combat for pivotal battles.
If you actually ran the game like the DMG tells you it's unironically the D&D game where the PCs most feel like a party working together instead of a group of solos all fighting the same foe.
Essentials fricking sucked and is actually what killed 4e.
>t. DM who ran multiple 4e campaigns for almost it's entire supported lifetime and then some.
They probably mean resurgence of BALANCE and SIMPLICITY FOR GMs at the expense of game actually being fricking fun
>5e is fun
Never said that
The crazy daisy chains of abilities is some of the most fun I've ever had playing D&D.
True. DM in 3.5 is fricking miserable. And 5e is boring .
>DM in 3.5 is fricking miserable.
No, you just need to not be a fricking moron.
I understand for 4rries this is unfathomable.
4E's biggest problem was twofold; one was the horrible presentation (seriously; were they TRYING to make it seem like WoW?) and the other was that by the time it had come out there wasn't really much of an incentive to move away from 3.X because even people who were initially dissatisfied with 3.X had generally managed to find something in a supplement that addressed that complaint. This issue was exacerbated by the dearth of 4E splats. By no means were all (or hell, even most) 3.X splats good but by the time 4E came out there was a massive smorgasbord of 3.X content to cherry-pick from at your leisure and book piracy had really taken off so you didn't even have to buy a book if you just wanted to use a table from it.
I agree with the "worst edition ever" criticisms, but with a caveat: if 3.X had ceased publication in 2005, it would be worse than 4E. 3.X did not improve enough to avoid being worse than 4E until at least 2006 and frankly if you disallow ToB it goes back to being a toss-up. If we're considering 3.0 and 3.5 to be separate editions then 3.0 is certainly worse than 4E IMO.
I have a sincere belief that the same people who would ban Psionics because they didn't understand how they were meant to work and thought them overpowered or overcomplicated would ALSO shun 4e for being "too videogamey", despite it being the only edition to never get a videogame adaptation, ever.
Neverwinter the mmo. Yeah it was just awful.
Clearly you've never played either game if you think they're anything alike.
They did not use the actual 4th edition gameplay I know that. Its more that it was the D&D at the time so they tried to implement things that "looked" close to 4th edition. Would've loved a proper 4th edition game that's for sure.
I do find it funny how people claim such a game would be impossible and undesignable because of... reaction abilities, of all things.
It wouldn't be impassible, just annoying being constantly prompted everytime anyone does anything.
this is literally already bg3 if you ask for a prompt on reaction (which you should). its nabd and such a minor thing to quibble over, "oh they could *never* make a video game like this" when there's hundreds of games that do that already, plz
Never played bg3, but I assume it has barely any reactions. A 4e game would be closer to Yugioh or Magic with all the priority holds turned on.
My good sir, you cant apply logic here, this is a 4e thread where everyone with sense leaves or trolls and the rest act as if the edition wasnt a shitshow of fails on math, mechanics, flavor and even the claimed "muh streamline no bad choices" front.
>I assume it has barely any reactions
Any time a Paladin swings and hits? It asks for a smite.
Any time a Barbarian swings and misses? It asks for Reckless.
Any time you have counterspell and someone else casts? It asks for counterspell.
Anything that's a reaction - Shield, hellish rebuke, etc - needs a prompt.
Now, you can turn some of these off, I *think* you can set some of them to automatically go off until you lose resources or opportunities, etc. But there's plenty. It's really not fricking difficult, people just get boggled at the idea of, say, a bravura warlord doing a daily, kicking off four AoO, and healing his friends being possibly done smoothly and efficiently. They seem to think normal AoOs require the entire game to pause for the enemy or player to pick their action, and that two or three combatants having ready-to-go counterspells or counter moves to movements or attacks means the entire game has to shut down.
It's really fricking simple and *has been done by existent games* already!
You can turn any reaction to always yes, always no or ask.
So barely any compared to 4e then.
Neverwinter was a WoW clone that just called its global cooldowns at-will, its 1-5 minute cooldowns encounters and its 10-30 minute cooldowns dailies. Outside that it had 0 to do with 4e and was just another generic D&D branded WoW clone.
There was a short lived Facebook game too iirc that failed more because it was more complicated than Farmville and those stupid Mafia games and at the time no one wanted to think playing dumb games on Facebook.
Pretty sure wotc killed the facebook game themselves rather than it failing naturally.
>Neverwinter was a WoW clone that just called its global cooldowns at-will, its 1-5 minute cooldowns encounters and its 10-30 minute cooldowns dailies.
Yeah, that's what people who hate 4e think too.
>it's widely considered to be THE worst version of DnD
Yeah, that's players saying their bullshit.
I've said it since halfway through 4e's run: it's the best edition for easy DMing, and while making players happy will sell more books, catering to the DMs will make for a better game.
Also, frick, I'm old. It wasn't even the first edition of dnd I played.
I think it's just nostalgia giving an old thing a sudden boost of popularity.
Somewhat related. Look at Bionicle. A large collective of people are nostalgic over it and making memes/art about it and it's suddenly gotten a massive boost in popularity running purely on nostalgia.
>suddenly
There have been Bionicle lore threads full of autists for a fricking decade at this point.
For those who played 4e. how long are the combats at any given level for a balanced party of 4?
4e combats are absolute slogs. 75% of the monster manuals aren't even usable because 4e's "perfect math" was faulty from day 1.
They had to introduce stealth fix feats to increase the chance to hit of the players.
At first level a basic fight against like 4 goblins should be like 30 minutes. A more complicated fight like against a solo and minions or with a complex map can take like 90 minutes.
Add a few minutes per level since HP scales faster than damages does, like a lvl 1 striker should be able to one shot a lvl 1 standard enemy with an encounter power but that's no longer true by 5th level, as you get more and more powers you have more in the moment choices and often more fiddly momentary math to do and more statuses to track. I've heard of even veteran players taking 8 hours for a lvl 30 solo encounter but that was also against MM1 Orcus who had like twice the HP he was supposed to.
I will warn you that map size matters. My last DM kept using frick huge maps that only the mounted Ranger could cross with some ease so often 2-3 turns were wasted just having the two sides close the distance while they took weak potshots at each other and it added like 30+ minutes to each fight that didn't need to be there.
>the mounted Ranger could cross with some ease
sounds like your DM build enounters with their PCs abilities in mind and you're b***hing and moaning about it anon
NTA. Fricked up ranged encounters is a common criticism of 4e.
4e in general is set up for an incredibly narrow gameplay. People whose idea of D&D is extremely narrow and unimaginative find it perfect because they cannot think of a wider world.
See what I mean here
Illustrated here
>This is bad encounter and map building
Anything that goes out that little box breaks 4e.
Everything he complained about still applies in 3E.
>reads ranged weapons ranges
>read spell ranges
Ok, moron
>irrelevant and irrelevant
Are you going to try again? The problem is that one PC is getting to engage with the encounter on normal terms while the others can't. This can happen even worse in 3E, where armor and small size nuke some PCs' speed into oblivion.
>irrelevant
As I said, complete lack of out-of-the-box thinking.
>only 1 character can reach melee turn 1
>said character is squishy and will just die if left alone with the entire encounter while everyone else has to slow walk into range
>none of the enemies are mounted or otherwise fast so if the Ranger doesn't charge in everyone wastes time marching into javelin range
This is bad encounter and map building. Made worse when we had 3 melee characters but were forced to fight on a 5 foot wide dock because the river it was too deep to stand in and everyone would get fricked by the aquatic combat rules. So the Fighter sat in front and got to play the game while the melee Ranger was forced to chuck javelins because there was no space to maneuver and do his charge gimmick.
This is not indicative of proper 4e encounter design, anon. Your DM was just shit.
>a lvl 1 striker should be able to one shot a lvl 1 standard enemy
Only if they highroll or roll slightly above average for non-brutes if they're decently optimized.
I mean an optimized melee Ranger, with set up from an ally, can do something like 21 damage with an at-will. And that can be upgraded to 23 with another feat.
Dual longswords Twin Strike against your quarry who is prone with Headsman's Chop. 1d8+5+1d8+5+1d6 so averaging 4+5+4+5+3. Using battleaxes or broadswords lets you raise it to 23 average but less accurate and with either Bastard Swords or Weapon Focus it also gets to 23 without the accuracy penalty.
26 is about average HP for a lvl 1 Monster with 32 being about average for a Brute. You'd be killing a normal enemy with just above average rolls, though realistically they would already be missing some health from the Flail Fighter knocking them prone for you.
27~36 hp is the range for mm3 math. Lurkers and artillery are 27, brutes are 36, and the rest are in between. The average striker can hit 27 with a 3[w] attack without too much luck, but realistically most enemies will need a basic attack or a bit of aoe chip damage to finish them off.
>for a balanced party of 4?
that's hard to gauge tbh
I had a party of 4, but our only striker was a Warlock which are infamously bad at their job and combats would take eons (except if they were undead, then the morninglord cleric would melt them within 2 rounds tops)
the GM was already halving enemy HP, too
If you had Morninglord going you were already deep into Paragon where the game infamously slows to a crawl.
4e is fastest in Heroic but then halves in speed by mid Paragon and then halves in speed again in Epic.
looking at the archive of this game, the last combat before it went into Hiatus Hell lasted just shy of 100 minutes, with a party in the low 20s in level (I know we had our epic paths by that point)
>the GM was already halving enemy HP, too
The funny thing is that initial 4e cope was
>a-at least the math works
The math was broken badly in a system that could be less internally fixed than 3e.
In 3e, you have so many ways to act or to pimp stats and rolls that is so broken that becomes un-broken, so to speak. And is never BORING, which is what 4e mainly is.
>you have so many ways to act or to pimp stats and rolls that is so broken that becomes un-broken, so to speak. And is never BORING
your build that just full attacks every round (but this time with big numbers that kills stuff!) is indeed fricking boring, anon
>a system that could be less internally fixed than 3e.
Not really. The problems with 3e run deeper than its math and only restricting yourself to e6 makes it work, if only barely. 4e, due to its straitjacket design, can be fixed, and in fact was fixed by adjusting the to-hit math and monster HP.
>the problems with 3e
They aren't problems for non-morons. The fact that you suggest the (very cool) E6 system as the only one playable speaks volumes.
But here's the thing: you suggest E6 because in 3e, high and low levels are different.
4e is a threadmill. There is NO POINT in playing high levels.
This is one of the many reasons 3e is superior.
He suggests E6 because it's the only stretch of the game that was ever playtested.
This game's iterations have been played to epic by people for decades.
The fact that you are unable to do so (because of you extremely poor and narrow thinking) it's not my problem, or the game's.
And it's been a moronic thing to do for decades.
>stop having fun! Play my shitty, limited, soulless unimaginative game instead
Ok, moron.
Are you ok, moron?
You can have fun all you like, it doesn't make you not a moron for playing with the consistently lowest quality material made for D&D.
The fact that a brainlet like you deems it inferior (because literally, indirectly from his own admission, cannot handle it) it's a testament of how good the game is.
4ed is a shit game and it failed.
>They aren't problems for non-morons
Delusion it is then.
Since this is the current 4E thread, is there any third party content I should know about? Apparently this thing came out just this year: https://sanglorian.github.io/orcus/
It's not 3rd party but I know that you can also use Gamma World 7E stuff with 4E, and there's this Homestuck homebrew for it: https://homestuck.net/games/tabletop/homestuck4e.pdf
the repository has like 5-6 gb of 3rd party stuff just for 4e
I found a link to the repository in the archives but it's dead. Is there a backup somewhere?
its always the same anon, trying looking more
Well, the original site linked to by the 'repository' link is definitely dead, but I think I've found where it went. Thanks.
>Since this is the current 4E thread,
No such a thing. Every "4e thread" is a thread of 4rries seething about 3e because that's all they can think about.
4e has not value per se, but only as a knee-jerk reaction to often misunderstood 3e "problems".
4e is shit
One of my favorite pieces of 4e logic is that earthquake/tremor-flavored attacks have no issues whatsoever hitting flying targets.
http://funin.space/compendium/power/Erupting-Earth.html
http://funin.space/compendium/power/Seismic-Shock.html
http://funin.space/compendium/power/Tremor.html
http://funin.space/compendium/power/Tremors.html
http://funin.space/compendium/paragonpath/Earth-Shaker.html
http://funin.space/compendium/monster/Orc-Pummeler.html
Very JRPG.
>Erupting Earth
You are literally summoning earth and battering them with it.
>Seismic Shock
Close burst 1 means within 5 feet of you in said directions. If someone is flying literally above you they'd be hit I suppose.
>Tremor/Tremors
Yep here's a valid example.
>Earthshaker
Another close burst. Though this one weirdly is using thunder as its primary vector for attack like a thunderclap.
>Orc Pummeler
Earthshaking slam is more of a gigantic slam that causes a burst of attack damage around it. JRPG but in a different sense of a blast radius from striking.