The D&D thread
- Thread starter Kovaks
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Animosity
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Watched this today. Was a pretty good doc about the art history of D&D. Keith Parkinson is still the GOAT.
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Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I made custom tokens for my party (and their pets) and wanted to share them because I need some place to nerd out about them. I had to spend some time learning to use GIMP, but it was definitely worth it.
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Qhue
Tranny Chaser
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I swear I've asked this before... but I don't recall the answer:
Is there a game that has taken up the torch of 4e and continued making material in the same style of that system as Pathfinder did for 3.5e? I really liked that system but I realize that anyone who wants to play "D&D" at this point is gonna assume 5e+
Is there a game that has taken up the torch of 4e and continued making material in the same style of that system as Pathfinder did for 3.5e? I really liked that system but I realize that anyone who wants to play "D&D" at this point is gonna assume 5e+
Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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You can find a few 3rd party products published in the 4e era, but aside from that I'm not aware of any fitting your description.
4e nearly killed D&D so there weren't a lot of developers looking to reproduce that system.
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Zaide
TLP Idealist
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Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Not sure if serious....
Well, 4e is the reason that Pathfinder was created because D&D 3/3.5 are considered by many to be the golden era of D&D and the players didn't want a new edition so Pathfinder effectively became D&D 3.75. That's not to say 3/3.5 didn't have issues because it absolutely did (it was drowning under the weight of too many products/options), but it's objectively the best edition in terms of quality content. I have nearly every hardback produced for 3/3.5 and I still reference them far more often than any other edition, including 5e.
Anyway, 4e is almost universally considered to be the worst version of D&D ever designed. D&D sales in the 2000s were already struggling because MMOs were capturing a lot of the audience that normally played TTRPGs and with 4e being so poorly received its release really did almost kill the game because WoTC was losing their ass on the IP.
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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4th edition launched in a terrible state. Aesthetically the core three books themselves were all really bad. You put a 5th edition phb next to a 4th edition phb and flip through them both and it stands out how much effort went in to 5th and how little in to 4th. The 4th edition classes are all samey with the same general amount of abilities. The magic items are uninteresting. That first Player's Handbook has no Barbarian, Monk, Druid or Sorceror. The monsters are boring blood pigs with few abilities. There were other problems like having to errata'd the entire stealth mechanic during the first week. Some people had a real problem with default setting Dragonborn and Tieflings. One of the Ranger daily abilities had theoretical infinite attacks. A bunch of other shit had to be errata'd.
Now, if you revisit 4th edition like a year later (which almost no one did) the game is pretty good. The Players Handbook 2 provides a ton of missing classes, Martial Power gives a bunch of build options, the Monster Manual 2 has actual good monsters with proper damage and hit point totals, there's an item book with a ton of sweet items in it, etc.
You know, just spend another hundred dollars on this edition you didn't like.
Now, if you like Pathfinder than 4th edition was great for the game. Pathfinder is solid and it's really just DnD without the familiar names and settings.
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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While 3.0 and 3.5 were very good editions of Dungeons and Dragons the SRD opening gaming license thing led to every game company making a d20 version of their game and a sea of d20 products on the shelves. Shadowrun d20, Deadlands d20, 7th Sea d20, Star Wars d20, Legend of the Five Rings d20, barf. Every single one of those took all the cool, unique aspects of their game systems and turned them in to the same basic swill. Instead of your Deadlands huckster casting spells by trying to assemble poker hands from a deck of playing cards and a cool poker chip exp system you're casting Magic Missile. Star Wars? Don't forget to take the two-weapon fighting feats on your Jedi so you can use the obviously superior double lightsaber.
Buying a third party d20 product was just throwing your money away. I remember my local game store had a huge shelf full of soft cover books published by any game company that could cobble something together and no DM I knew would let any of that in to their game. It was the tabletop equivalent of back when anyone could make games for the Atari. There was absolutely no quality control.
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Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Admittedly, I have very little experience with TTRPGs outside of D&D. I've played a bit of Heroes, GURPS, Shadowrun, and some Vampire: the Masquerade, but the totality of it all comprises less than 1% of my experience. However, I do remember the sea of softbacks at local gaming shops, as you describe. The memory that sticks out more than any other is how shitty a lot of the art was, but that's probably because I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to fantasy art. It's hard not to be when my youth was shaped by Easley, Elmore, Caldwell, Parkinson, Horne, and Brom.
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Tranny Chaser
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Oh yeah, most of them were just cheap looking. There was also an incentive to include overpowered shit in them so someone would buy your book versus someone else's. There were also really gimmick ones like all adult themed wank or all evil stuff.
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Chanur
Shit Posting Professional
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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It was/is even worse than that. WotC tried to repackage 4th edition as Dungeons and Dragons Essentials. Basically they stripped it way down while claiming it was compatible with the existing system. That was true but aside from very specific cream skimming you would never incorporate anything from Essentials in to a regular 4th edition campaign. If I remember correctly only the Wizard got the full complement of encounter powers and dailies. Want to be a Cleric from Essentials? Sure! You don't get encounter powers. Congratulations.
So Essentials bombs and 5th is still not out yet so the last couple of books that still look like 4th edition products don't even have game mechanics in them.
When you look at the cover and the spine it has all the earmarks of 4th edition. It's got the layout and it's got the aesthetic. You crack it open and it's 100% lore. It's just telling you about the drow capital for a couple of hundred pages. The 2nd edition equivalent of this and the Forgotten Realms equivalent of this back in the day both had cool shit in them. This has nothing. It was like they didn't want to put out any more 4th edition anything but still wanted a book to come out every month or two. This has to be one of the biggest wastes of space on my shelf.
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Qhue
Tranny Chaser
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The reason I asked is that from an actual game design point of view (divorced from the content itself) the 4e rules are really nifty in terms of providing some specific structure to combat encounters. Its especially useful for players or GMs hat are a little less savvy on the rules and/or lack the necessary creativity to have dynamic encounters.
I'm seeing some issues in 5e now with the overall action economy, especially with some archetypes. Some characters have synergistic action (many of which do more than 1 thing), bonus actions, reaction etc while others are pretty much just a singular action and that's it. It's not as silly as 3.5e was with the myriad of layering bonuses and special tweaks, but it's still getting a bit weird. The whole counterspell spam and legendary action system turns tactical combat into a game of Uno.
I'm seeing some issues in 5e now with the overall action economy, especially with some archetypes. Some characters have synergistic action (many of which do more than 1 thing), bonus actions, reaction etc while others are pretty much just a singular action and that's it. It's not as silly as 3.5e was with the myriad of layering bonuses and special tweaks, but it's still getting a bit weird. The whole counterspell spam and legendary action system turns tactical combat into a game of Uno.
Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I have to preface by saying that I hate 4e because it felt too much like a videogame.
That said, without you being more specific, it's hard to understand what you're really taking issue with, but Counterspell is definitely one of the spells that can create some fuckery. However, Legendary actions are definitely a good addition because they're designed to give powerful creatures a chance when they're encountered alone or with minimal support. Without them, even incredibly powerful creatures can die before they have an opportunity to do anything at all if they don't roll well on initiative. Which is precisely due to how action economy works in 5e.
It's incredibly disappointing as both a player and DM for your BBEG to get punked in one round after weeks or months of pursuit/build-up. It still happens pretty often, but I think that's more a consequence of DMs being unwilling or afraid to tweak a creature's stat block.
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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That's really the proper criticism versus listing all the bits and bobs that are shitty like I did. It's so very "gamey" with all the RP taking the backseat. The players and the DM aren't constrained or anything but it's like taking a squad-based small unit tactics table top miniatures game and trying to bolt roleplaying on top. Alright I guess but why aren't we just playing a RPG?
At the time of its release I was completely burned out on d20 and 4th was a lot of what I was looking for in a new iteration and I think in its final state it is a very good system BUT if someone doesn't want to spend most of their time at the table playing a miniatures game you will never convince them to like something they don't like.
Arden
Blackwing Lair Raider
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There is a happy medium between a more engaging and tactical combat experience than 3.5 was offering and a "video game" style experience. 4th edition just wasn't it. Frankly it did improve some elements of combat from 3.5, but what it lost in role-playing value ruined any value it had. Not just roleplaying stuff either, but I remember feeling like the entire out of combat experience, including skills, in 4.0 was seriously lacking
I do agree 4e load outs are super video game build-esque. But for me I love that. And 9 out of 11 of players cannot make stuff up to do. We played 3.5 for years. And so many of them would spend all night "roll to hit" nothing else.
But then the same guys with 4e were doing all this awesome stuff. Cause it finally an option written down for them to do.
Qhue
Tranny Chaser
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This is precisely the situation I'm talking about. That added structure ignited their imagination in ways that just did not happen before.
Minions is another of the 4e innovations that I just saw Matt Mercer tweet about as someone came up with a 5e homebrew implementation of that whole system. In 5e nearly every fight ends up being a 'boss fight' because trying to deal with lots of little dudes is a collosal pain in the ass. Minions was a nice closed-form solution that let players take on lots of baddies without the GM just having to improv their way through the game mechanics.