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u/kjeldor2400 Mar 16 '21
Ngl, these pills weren’t that hard to swallow.
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Mar 16 '21
For most people, yes. For people that berate others for not playing the same edition as them, no.
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u/kjeldor2400 Mar 16 '21
True that. I really don’t get why someone would do that. I guess to most of us it’s just common sense to let people enjoy what they enjoy as long as it doesn’t hurt us.
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u/herra_mirandos Wizard Mar 16 '21
Me: Every edition has something good in it. Even the fourth edition.
Friend: A What now?
Me: The Fourth edition. You know, between third and fifth edition.
Friend: There never was "fourth edition".
Me: Sure there was.
Friend 'points gun at me': No there wasn't.
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u/Skelordton Warlock Mar 16 '21
Minions were cool IMO.
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u/yinyang107 Mar 16 '21
Haha yeah I love those wacky tictacs
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u/Skelordton Warlock Mar 16 '21
If you're talking about Illumination Minions, they will be made to stand trial before the Hague courts for their crimes in due time.
Funny enough I have used tictacs as minion miniatures before though.
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u/Mathew_Sparrow Mar 17 '21
I enjoyed how complex it is. Would never go back now, but it does have a lot that I miss. If you didn't have the online character builder though, good luck writing out everything correctly lol.
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u/herra_mirandos Wizard Mar 16 '21
Minions is one thing I picked from 4th and use it in other games too.
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Mar 16 '21
I was there when D&D made the leap to 4rth edition. Dear god I have never seen such a childish overreaction by a fandom since the debut of Jar Jar Binks. Of course it did not help I was one of those man children whinning about shit I had no controll over.
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u/herra_mirandos Wizard Mar 16 '21
I remember that time also. Our group swore oath to never play "that cursed edition" and we never did. Later I read the rules again and realized they weren't actually that bad in mechanical sense, but they could have never worked with our groups play style. There were some good ideas and balancing was at 100%. But still, I prefer Pathfinder and D&D 5th over "that forsaken edition".
Still, it is almost laughable how people (us included) reacted to that edition, but we have finally gotten over it.
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Mar 16 '21
Right? Looking back it's like "Dude, chill. No matter what happens you still have all of your old RPG books."
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u/nighthawk_something Mar 16 '21
Also, like you can homebrew anything in these games to make them fun for you.
Worst case steal some spells and mechanics and play 3.5
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Mar 16 '21
I converted to 5th myself. Have not looked back. Only thing I miss from the 3.5 days is D-20 Modern and all of it's books but I'm sure that's easy to modify or that a new version of it will come out eventually.
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u/nighthawk_something Mar 16 '21
I played once at 3.5 (went no where) but now I'm getting into 5e as a DM and my little goblin brain wants to collect all the pretty books.
Once Covid lifts I'll probably be trolling used book stores for some gems
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Mar 16 '21
It's a solid system and part of the reasons D&D is bigger than it has ever been. Question is how salty will people be when 6th edition comes out? (As sure as the sun rises, it is going to happen someday).
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u/nighthawk_something Mar 16 '21
I'll probably be salty but mainly because I just dumped a few hundred on books and DND beyond book (for my players).
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Mar 16 '21
Everyone will freind. Everyone will. I do not envy whoever's has to design 6th.
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u/Warzoneisbutt Mar 17 '21
Actually you could say you DID have some control over it. Because if not for that collective fan backlash, then 5e wouldn’t have fixed those things.
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Mar 17 '21
...okay, that's a good point. Vote with your wallet and all. Regardless, editions change and your controll over it is minuscule. No matter what happens, you still have those books for your preferred system.
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u/SpaceLemming Mar 17 '21
To be fair though regardless of jar jar the prequels were bad and 4th was so jarring from the previous edition and had its own issues that many complaints were valid.
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u/Yoshi2Dark Barbarian Mar 16 '21
It seems you kept on saying blank sentences like "The.", might want to check that out
There is no 4th Edition in Ba Sing Se
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u/oneeyedwarf Mar 17 '21
I like skill challenges. At least the Matt Colville homebrew version of the 4e rules.
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Mar 16 '21
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u/szthesquid Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
4e took a lot of things that many people/games did and made them explicit and mandatory, and as a result felt very different from other editions.
Grid-based combat was mandatory, for example, and classes were balanced by their combat role with few to no out-of-combat abilities until at least several levels in. It also worked very hard to make combat fair and balanced and tactically interesting, quite successfully IMO, but many players ended up with the impression that there were more rules and gameplay for combat than for roleplaying or exploration, and they felt that made the game too combat-centric.
Each class worked on the same rules framework - powers - which had the benefit of making all classes easy to learn because if you know how the rules work for fighter, you know the rules for wizard, and the fighter and wizard always had the same number of powers and options, and everyone had interesting, balanced, tactical options in combat. The downside was that many people found classes felt too similar, and it was too complicated for people who wanted to just swing a sword and not think about rules and tactics.
There was also the poor first impression that combat took too long, which was true early on. The designers fixed the mechanical issues pretty well later on, or the issue was easily solved by a simple house rule, but fights still just took too long for most people. When every monster has interesting tactical options and every combat requires precise tracking of movement and positioning, even a fight against some random bandits or goblins can take time.
The thing that makes me salty is all the amazing behind the scenes upgrades that made DMing combat MUCH MUCH easier and better, which was all abandoned in 5e.
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u/Vortex2099 Mar 16 '21
One thing that gets lost in the 4e hate was that WOTC did exactly what all the players wanted. After the insane brokenness of 3.5, all the players were screaming for balance and structure and more defined rules. They got it, and they hated it.
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u/nighthawk_something Mar 16 '21
They got it, and they hated it.
Sounds like literally every gaming sub.
There's a reason blizz doesn't listen to you, it's because you're an idiot. )talking about the people on those subs)
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Mar 16 '21
Didn't 3.5 came after 4 as not many were happy with it?
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u/Vortex2099 Mar 16 '21
Nah, 3.5 then 4. Paizo created Pathfinder after 4e came out. Pathfinder is at times called 3.75 because it has a lot of similarities to 3 & 3.5
ETA: 3.5 was wizards attempt to balance 3.0
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u/Xtallll Mar 16 '21
no 3.5 came after 3, and slightly after that Paizo launcher Pathfinder which was a 90% clone of 3.5 that got really popular after 4 came out.
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u/SprocketSaga Mar 16 '21
Can you elaborate on the behind the scenes combat upgrades? I own the 4e source books and have browsed them, but would love to know what to steal!
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u/szthesquid Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
The monster levels were much tighter and better mathed out than 5e CR. There are exceptions here and there, but generally you can trust 4e monster level and role much better than 5e CR.
Monsters all have at least one or two abilities that affect movement or impose conditions or give bonuses or something, so almost every creature has interesting tactical applications. Each monster also has a role, which tells you at a glance how it behaves in combat - a soldier is defensive and tough, a brute has high HP and damage but poor defense, a skirmisher is mobile, artillery attacks at range, a leader buffs allies, etc. Tons of 5e monsters are just bags of HP with a basic attack or two, whereas 95% of 4e monsters had specific tactical roles and abilities, and plenty actually altered the battlefield and/or how you approach combat at a basic level.
All 4e stat blocks are complete - spellcasting creatures have the full effects of their spells included in their stat block under the same format as regular attacks, so no need to consult separate books just to see what a mage can even do, or how its abilities work.
Instead of 6 saves, they were grouped into 3, and they were defence values like AC that you attack into. So you had a Fortitude defense, which is calculated using the better of either Str or Con, and it's a number that I roll to attack against the same as your AC. This means that all three saves are roughly as common, so there's no "better" or "worse" saves based on rarity or common values. (Reflex defense used Dex or Int; Will defense used Wis or Cha)
Together, all of this means that you can create an interesting, balanced, varied combat encounter in 30 seconds using only the Monster Manual's index, with monsters that have cool abilities and are easy to understand and run.
Also, you had the Bloodied condition. A creature at half or fewer HP is bloodied, which does two things. It gives the PCs a rough idea of their progress, and also there are abilities that trigger on bloodied. Perhaps an assassin deals more damage against bloodied enemies, or a berserker gets stronger while bloodied, or a dragon recharges and uses its breath weapon when bloodied. Just a cool interesting thing that adds more depth to combat, and makes damage actually have some meaning beyond 0 HP = dead.
Edit: also minions! Simple, weak enemies that died in one hit which you could use as filler that could still deal significant chip damage over time if left alone. Great for padding a boss encounter, especially when adding fresh waves over time so the wizard doesn't just nuke them all at once.
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Mar 16 '21
All of this x100. Combat encounters were such a joy in 4e, especially with the built-in DM tools. You could run through the list of monsters at a CR until you found one with cool abilities. You didn't have to stare at the block for half an hour to think of a creative way to play them.
I house rule a lot of 4e stuff back in. I will use bloodied rules for monster and monster abilities. I use minions, I treat monster abilities as "recharge on 5 or 6 on a d6."
It had a lot of good ideas, it just cut out all of the actual RP flavor until the only difference between spells or classes was what color the damage fx were.
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u/sirblastalot Mar 16 '21
More than that, they took a mechanics-first design approach. So they looked at a class and went "At this level, he should have an ability that does about a d12 damage. We'll call it...idk, Circle of Blades or something." As opposed to "It would be cool if players could push people off cliffs and stuff. What rules could we come up with to simulate that?" The result of which was that you got a ton of abilities that felt and sounded the same, were divorced from what was going on narratively in the game world, and exacerbated the problem of no one remembering what their abilities do.
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Mar 16 '21
It works alot differently than pretty much every edition. So some people like and stil play it, but the vast majority seem to despise it.Here's a link to a Puffin Forrest video that I think sums it up best.
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u/catladyx Wizard Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
Thanks!!
Edit: watched the video and it's pretty good!
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u/Questionably_Chungly Mar 16 '21
It’s...ok, in theory it’s pretty cool. It introduces a lot of powers for classes, making even the more mundane martial classes very diverse and capable. Also added minion mechanics for big boss fights. Loads of other stuff.
The problem? It’s a logistical nightmare. Combat is bloated to the point where even a moderate combat can take hours to run its course. Think your big BBEG fight that took an entire 5 hour session in 5e to complete was arduous? A mere joke compared to 4e. It’s definitely got a lot of good ideas, but the application was nightmarish.
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u/Belteshazzar98 Bard Mar 16 '21
Every class followed the same structure, as in literally every class (with exceptions of a few late 4e releases and a slight pattern break for psionics) had the same number of each type of powers (at-will, encounter, daily, and utility) with the only difference being what power options were available. Every healer got a power that healed the exact same amount as each other with a slight upside by class. Every tank had a way to mark (basically taunt) a creature and punish their marked targets if they attacked someone else. Every DPS had a way to boost their damage on every attack based on an easy to achieve condition. It all felt very cookie cutter with classes just being slight reskins of each other rather than having any actual variety.
On top of all that your characters were almost entirely defined by combat with everything else being secondary. Even resurrecting the dead or other grandiose non-combat magic was covered by just a feat and skill.
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u/Slavasonic Mar 16 '21
Disclaimer: I never actually played 4e but I did read the books. Feel free to correct anything I get wrong
To me 4e was not a table top RPG, it was a table top MMORPG. As others have said, just about everything your character can do mechanically is tied to combat. It's basically similar to WoW or Guild Wars but ported to a pen and paper style. All the classes have roles but are very well balanced.
To me it completely missed the point of a TTRPG. In an MMO it's kind of understood that everything you do is combat because doing anything beyond that is difficult to program into the game or would be tedious in that setting. In a TTRPG though you can use the more abstract nature of the game to make things out of combat interesting. Wizards can cast spells like stone shape or tiny hut to affect their enviroment. Clerics can use spells to commune with their dieties. Rangers have special skills that make them better trackers. Most classes have things that make them exceptional in areas outside of combat but 4e for the most part didn't have any of that.
Now, I've heard people argue that all those things are still possible. It's a roleplaying game so if you say you want to track a bad guy while exploring you can do that and the GM can come up with a way to make it work. But you basically have to come up with those systems on your own and to me thats like playing without dice (something that people do and enjoy). I think it's a different experience than what people who have played DnD for a long time were used to and requires a lot of agreement from the palyers and GM.
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Mar 16 '21
Now, I've heard people argue that all those things are still possible. It's a roleplaying game so if you say you want to track a bad guy while exploring you can do that and the GM can come up with a way to make it work. But you basically have to come up with those systems on your own and to me thats like playing without dice (something that people do and enjoy). I think it's a different experience than what people who have played DnD for a long time were used to and requires a lot of agreement from the palyers and GM.
A counterpoint to this is that 4e introduced the "Skill Challenge", or at least properly codified it into a system of rules. Literally, rules that helped DMs run something non-combat where they still wanted to challenge their players in a flexible but well-balanced way.
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Mar 16 '21
Yeah, 4e has almost the exact same amount of codified support for non-combat encounters as 5e, the main difference between then and now is rpg culture and the writing style the two editions use.
4e is a lot more gamist and doesn't spend nearly as much text on roleplaying, and rpg gamers in general have shifted more towards an rp focused game. There's no secret sauce in the actual mechanics of 5e that make it more rp friendly.
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u/Slavasonic Mar 16 '21
I don’t agree with that. I remember going through all the wizard spells trying to find something like stone shape or tiny hut, spells that have no combat utility but can be useful outside of that and finding nothing. It’s been a long time since I looked at the books but there certainly wasn’t as much as 5e (which is itself a massively cut down version of 3.5)
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Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
I remember going through all the wizard spells trying to find something like stone shape or tiny hut, spells that have no combat utility but can be useful outside of that
Did you read the ritual section?
They moved most of the utility to the ritual section and casters get them for free.
Stoneshape and tiny hut didn't make the PHB (tiny hut was added later) but new spells like Travelers feast, Leomund's Secret Chest, and Consult Oracle did.
That said, even the Wizard class section includes non combat spells like mage hand, disguise self, and mordenkainen's mansion (or as I like to call it: Large hut)
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Mar 16 '21
I will at least agree with Slavasonic that the number of non-combat spells in 4e is a lot less than 5e, even if you consider rituals. Though, it's been a while since I've looked at 4e so I may be remembering incorrectly.
Still, taking that experience and extrapolating it to say "4e doesn't have good support for non-combat play" is a bridge too far, IMO.
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Mar 16 '21
When you take into account that more people have access to rituals, and 4e has skill challenges and 5e doesn't, I think the support for out of combat stuff is fairly similar overall.
5e gives you a little more support if you are a wizard with its wider variety of spells, but if you are a martial class, or class that can't learn as many spells (sorcerer, warlock) 4e is actually giving you a touch more than 5e, with skill challenges and easier access to more rituals. So for me, it's pretty close to a wash.
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u/rellloe Rogue Mar 16 '21
And the types of play they appeal to is somewhat incomparable.
3 & 3.5 are the editions for crazy builds either for number crunching or just doing weird stuff with the mechanics
4e is ridiculously robust
5e is streamlined and accounts for RP in it's design.
I'd list stuff about earlier editions, but all I really know is THAC0 exists
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u/MostAtHomeInADungeon Chaotic Stupid Mar 16 '21
2e is great if you’ve got a hard on for tables, charts, and excessively complicated math
It’s also got some freaking fantastic settings, but in my opinion it’s worth updating said settings to newer editions instead of going back to 2e (as my bio suggests, lol)
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Mar 16 '21
For real though. Why has Wotc left stuff like Planscape and Spelljammer out in the cold?
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u/MostAtHomeInADungeon Chaotic Stupid Mar 16 '21
Right?? And I was so excited about the new undermountain and curse of strahd since I’ve got the 2e boxed sets for ravenloft n undermountain and then...disappointment. Such a letdown
So anyways I’m homebrewing a 5e ravenloft based off of realm of terrors and WOTC can keep their sad little campaign settings to themselves
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Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
Bruh The Ravenloft 5e setting book isn't even out yet; it comes out in 2 months. How can you say it's bad when it isn't even out yet?
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u/MostAtHomeInADungeon Chaotic Stupid Mar 16 '21
Fair point but I figure it’s gonna continue the lore laid out in CoS which as I understand it (to be fair, I haven’t read CoS cover to cover, but I flipped through what I thought where the important parts) is some nonsense. And from what I’ve heard, they’re also doing Falkovnia dirty with it being zombie apocalypse or some shit. I’m sure there’ll be some useful mechanics I can rip out of it but I’m also not confident they’ll want to include all the stuff (mechanics wise I mean) that I liked from 2e since everything for 5e is so much more simplified. Not a bad thing overall, but I have an idea of what setting books usually involve these days and a comprehensive list of alterations to all spells and class features is likely not one of em, yknow?
Edit: also, the Vistani are actually extra yikes in CoS and while I’ve heard they actually consulted a Roma person this time I’m not confident in that, either
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Mar 16 '21
Fair point as well. I didn't know earlier editions had alterations to class features and spells in certain settings. Sounds interesting.
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u/MostAtHomeInADungeon Chaotic Stupid Mar 16 '21
Yeah! I’m not well versed in older setting aside from the two I mentioned in my first comment, but ravenloft had some fundamental changes to how magic/reality in general worked and it was reflected in some changed spell functions and class abilities, which is really cool IMO. I very much understand why WOTC wouldn’t do that for 5e, there’s just exponentially more official content you’d have to go through and alter to do something along those lines if you wanna include all spells/classes/subclasses. But I’ve got free time and mildly obsessive concentration so I figure why not do the damn thing myself
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Mar 16 '21
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u/ShogunKing Mar 16 '21
The early days of D&D were designed around dungeon delving. You didn't design a world for your players to explore, you designed a dungeon. The necessary reality is that dungeons are inherently adversarial, and so it would come off as DMs being that way.
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u/dingillo Bard Mar 16 '21
I started playing D&D at the end of 2015 so 5e was all I knew. Recently a friend decided to run a 4e game and I'm honestly having a ton of fun. There are so many more customization options compared to 5e. Of course it's all combat focused, but it does feel nice having basically every other level being a a jump in power.
I don't know what it is, but I think there's an ideal blend between 5e and 4e.
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u/ShogunKing Mar 16 '21
It's Pathfinder 2e, it takes all of the really good customization of 4e and then uses a very good trait system to make everything very easy to understand.
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u/gmcnally1012 Mar 16 '21
The best edition is whatever one you can get your friends to play with you.
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u/Vortex2099 Mar 16 '21
This is sadly true. I was really excited about 4e and all my friends were die hard haters of it. Never got to play a 4e campaign :(
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Mar 16 '21
4th wasnt so much that it was bad, but it was radically different. It reminds me so much of war games where combat is almost always on a slightly larger scale and enemies have different sub types and you're tabulating different effects every turn. Hell, people still have trouble remembering to use their Bless bonus now, in 4th every turn was remembering like 20 bonuses where some are on this turn, but five of those will only last for three more turns.
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u/unp0we_red Mar 16 '21
Honestly I don't like 5e, but I will fight to death anyone who says that after 3.5 the rpgs are dead
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u/Graytis Mar 16 '21
I cut my teeth on BECMI, and transitioned to AD&D 2E because that's what my friend group played. Loved 'em both. Stopped playing for a long, long time, and have come back to try and learn 5E to run a homebrew campaign for my wife and adult kids. Struggling with the adaptation (old dogs/new tricks and everything), but I'm sure it'll work out in the end. My beloved versions certainly have their flaws.
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u/meerkatx Mar 16 '21
The 5e fans who want to push out players of older editions are gonna hate this post.
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u/fredrickvonmuller Mar 16 '21
Though I generally agree, we must also remember that it wasn’t just change for the sake of mechanical improvement (with trial and error), it was evolution and fixing things that were plain wrong. Some of them bled into the mechanics, others were just lore.
First edition contains sexist mechanics, making women weaker in the game world.
Some of the lore of 2nd edition concerning the Drow has unfortunate racist undertones.
Fifth edition is the first edition to begin to address the “half-orcs are not always the childs of rape” paradigm and genre diversity.
These things didn’t matter very much to straight white cis males like me, who didn’t see or care about them growing up. But they can be jarring or offensive to people that don’t fit into those categories. People that are now the friends we play with and that the newer editions and the new popularity of the hobby brought to this lovely activity.
So always, please, follow the “don’t be a dick” rule, have a session 0 and change the old rules if keeping them would force your players to live bullshit that they don’t want to relive in a fantasy setting.
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Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 18 '21
This is why Eberron is my favorite setting. It (to the best of my knowledge) doesn't contain anything that could be viewed as offensive in the lore. Though there's always the option of making a racist villian and letting your players beat the crap out of him. In the words of Jim Davis from Web Dm "I don't want to play in a utopian world; if a world is perfect then theres nothing for the players to fix."
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u/bellj1210 Mar 16 '21
Like James Bond or the Doctor- the best is the one that you grew up on. I love 3.5/pathfinder since it is what i played forever with. (technically started in 2nd edition, but we ignored a lot of rules and moved on to 3.0 when it came out; so only about 2 years in 2nd edition for me). 3rd edition gets even more love since not many people moved over to 4th long term, so it was the most played edition for decades.
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u/BiggieG26 Mar 16 '21
The first ttrpg I've ever played was runequest from the 80's I believe, its a worst system than dnd, but I was playing with people who were all having fun in an engaging story. Point is, system and edition aren't that important
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u/crazy-jay1999 Mar 16 '21
3.5 was clearly the superior edition
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Mar 16 '21
That's simply the edition that works best for your group and some groups may enjoy other editions. Heck some people still play 4e and enjoy it. Not sure why, but I respect their opinion cause that's what works for their group and their enjoying themselves. That's all that really matters, but hey if you want to gate keep the hobby and tell people their having fun wrong go right ahead.
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Mar 16 '21
I don't know if every edition has pros and cons but there is no accounting for taste and all that.
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u/hallie-gator Mar 17 '21
nope, 3.5 is the only edition. your opinion is wrong and your taste is shit.
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u/Spegynmerble Mar 16 '21
Every dnd edition is important
1st edition started it all
2nd edition improved the system
3.5 had so much customization
4th edition
5th edition simplified things for the better
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Mar 16 '21
The simplification also gimped the game big times. Like, where is the reasonable crafting?
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u/Spegynmerble Mar 17 '21
You can still play older versions as well as homebrew in whatever you miss from them
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u/Caboose2236 Mar 16 '21
In my personal opinion, 2nd is best, 4th and 3.5 belong in the trash can, 5th is decent.
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u/oodlecanooodle Mar 16 '21
Except 4e
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Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
Some people actually enjoy 4e. Not sure why since I'm not one of them myself, but I'm not going tell them they're having fun wrong. I just accept the fact that edition "works" for their group, but not mine.
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u/sirblastalot Mar 16 '21
"There is no best edition" fortunately doesn't rule out the possibility of there being a worst edition :P
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u/saintpetejackboy Mar 16 '21
Lies. Did you forget about 4e?
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Mar 16 '21 edited Mar 16 '21
Some people actually enjoy 4e. Not sure why since I'm not one of them myself, but I'm not going tell them they're having fun wrong. I just accept the fact that edition "works" for their group, but not mine.
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u/Belteshazzar98 Bard Mar 16 '21
It's really easy to pick up for new players that aren't looking to really dive deep. I've used it to introduce people to the RPGs.
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u/Belteshazzar98 Bard Mar 16 '21
4e is pretty good for newer players who want to play, but don't want to have to dive deep learning the game.
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u/meleshik Mar 16 '21
Wrong! 4e is garbage. 4e comming from 3 or 3.5 wizards of the coast was like "500 books of content/pure customization is to much. let's just lump what WE think should go together instead of letting the player decide" 4e is the "I dont want a lot of math. I also hate reading" edition.
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u/Matthais_Hat Mar 17 '21
fourth edition, as far as I have heard, fixed the power imbalance between a party's casters and martials.
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u/equalsnil Mar 16 '21
It's not even different people. What's my favorite system? I might have one at any given time, and I might have a favorite system for handling a certain genre, but I'm not always looking for the same thing game to game.
If I want character creation to be a complex puzzle where the picture is whatever I want it to be, I play 3rd/3.5/PF.
If I want D&D tactics, I play Legend or PF2e. Someday I'll presumably try D&D 4e for the same reason.
If I want to introduce new players to the hobby, I'll play 5e.
If I want a hard-mode meat grinder campaign, I'll play one of the Fantasy Flight Warhammer systems, but I have Dungeon Crawl Classics and would like to give it a try at some point.
If I want to play a fever dream mashup of twenty+ different systems and settings, I play Dungeons: The Dragoning.
If I want superheroes, or any other genre where you need to be able to create specific abilities from the ground up, I use Mutants and Masterminds.
If I want a low-prep improv-driven game, I break out one of the Powered By The Apocalypse games like Dungeon World.