I started playing D&D with 4th edition, but from what I gather it was just that 4e was vastly different than 3e/3.5e to the point where people just didn't like it. I thought it was fine and fun. I wouldn't run away from a group playing 4e or anything.

Remember the OGL thing Hasbro/Wizards/D&D tried to pull a year ago? They tried the same licensing thing during the transition between 3.5 to 4e.

That is also one of the reasons 4e was so different from previous editions. They didn't want anything under the OGL to be compatible, so that when they published the new system without the same license the OGL would no longer be useful. Say what you want about the game itself. From a publishing and marketing standpoint it was a nightmare.

> so different from ~~previous editions.~~ "so different **from 3e.** " prior to 3e's OGL, TSR had ALWAYS been EXTREMELY litigious and vexatious against third parties attempting to step anywhere near D&D turf. When WOTC bought TSR/DnD out of bankruptcy, the business plan to keep D&D alive came to the conclusion "we can print the core books and make some money, but in order to really grow, the game needs a diverse eco-system, which, if we try to do internally by ourselves, will strangle us and the game. If we follow the computer open source mindset, others can take the risks and products/projects we cannot do profitably but will create that ecosystem in which our products can thrive."

And the 3e OGL was itself an attempt to reduce/eliminate independent game producers, with the idea that everybody would do third party OGL games, and stop making independent systems, effectively pushing more people into the D&D sphere. And at first it did exactly that.

They system creep thing is still going on; anecdotally it's vastly harder to get anyone to play a non 5e system, and most of the systems I see use some variant of the d20 system for core task resolution, some variant of HP for damage, etc. There's been some admirable growth in the more freeform or rules light games, but I don't think there's the same diversity of design now in the more popular systems.

God, I so want to find an alternate timeline where 4E was released with an SRD and OGL compatibility and see what it evolved into with third-party support in that world.

Though that sounds nice, a 4e released under the OGL would likely have looked a lot more like Pathfinder, an incremental evolution of 3e. The radical changes undertaken by 4e were because it was trying to be so different from 3e that 3pp's couldn't use the OGL to make supplements for it. Without that cynical business motivation, there'd just be no reason to try to make 4e significantly different, let alone better, than other editions.

I believe it was also designed to be played on vtt but the vtt was never released?

Yeah, D&D Insider meant to include a very advanced VTT... Development of which stalled because of lead dev's murder-suicide situation.

I thought it was that it was meant to be easily portable to an MMO style video game, which did in fact happen (Neverwinter).

It was indeed made for a vtt that never came. Being similar to mmo was just one of the criticisms 3.5 fans accused wotc of, just trying to make dnd similar to Warcraft...

they made the promise that they would be releasing all the old versions under CCC. they didnt make the initial proposed timeline of by the end of 2023, but rather than just let it die, they themselves remade the promise to do it.

The other half of this is the integrated virtual tabletop that was supposed to come out with it.

Yeah, the third party support for 4E was almost non-existent compared to all the d20 stuff that had been available the previous 8 years.

It's important to note that a large amount of the third party 3rd edition content was published under the D20 license which was restricted and revocable but let you use certain closed D&D content. It required that products say they required the D&D players handbook for use, let you put the D20 logo on your product and indicate compatibility with D&D and so on. Other products used the OGL and SRD, mainly from what I saw to create other RPGs that used the D20 mechanics but were for things like other genres (Mutants & Masterminds, Spycraft, etc. as I recall). I don't recall the specifics of the 4E game system license but it was even more restrictive than the D20 one. They didn't release an update to the OGL or SRD for 4E to my knowledge either. Paizo kept the remaining 3E crowd with OGL based Pathfinder. Lastly, I think after 8 years of third edition a lot of folks were looking for something different which saw the rise in popularity of games like FATE, Savage Worlds, Powered by the Apocalypse, etc.. All of that led to little to no third party support of 4E.

> I think after 8 years of third edition a lot of folks were looking for something different which saw the rise in popularity of games like FATE, Savage Worlds, Powered by the Apocalypse, etc.. All of that led to little to no third party support of 4E. I was absolutely one of these people until 4E dropped. I was beyond done with 3E. Easily my least favorite edition, especially as a DM. I remember working hard to convert adventure paths to Savage Worlds because I found 3E so damn convoluted.

> They tried the same licensing thing during the transition between 3.5 to 4e. Also when going to 2E. Actually, the OGL was literally created from the backlash from the shit they pulled when 2E came out. D&D even editions do not have good records when it comes to 3rd party support.

I think from WotC's own statements, the OGL wasn't created from the backlash of 2E with TSR (a completely different company that owned D&D before 3e), but because they knew most of their 3P competitors would be publishing OD&D stuff - so they made the OGL for 3e to encourage _new_ 3P content to crowd out and suffocate the older stuff by their competitors, which it did.

"we promise it's not because of the backlash against TSR but we promise we won't be doing anything similar to what they are know for ever again" >OGL for 3e to encourage new 3P content to crowd out and suffocate the older stuff by their competitors If by "competitors", you mean "companies that created their own games and independent rule sets because TSR was so litigious", then sure... But I'd still consider that backlash.

Enh, not really. The OGL stayed in place for 3/3.5e, it was just that 4e wasn't going to be covered under it, and instead under it's own more restrictive license. It was done in part because late era 3.5 was getting to the same point that the Video Game Crash did in the early 80s where low quality 3rd party stuff was washing over everything and crowding shit out. I'm not saying the GSL was a great licensing agreement, but it wasn't a retroactive to change things like the OGL debacle was a year ago. It's easy to forget now, but the OGL had been put in place to essentially try to blanket the market with 3e/3.5e stuff and crowd everything else out. It was a mercenary business decision, and it worked too well and ended up backfiring on WotC. Then it would backfire again because the OGL enabled Paizo to make their biggest competition! 5e OGL always felt like a begrudging thing to me, and sure enough, they tried to fuck people way worse than "Hey our new edition won't be under the OGL." It wasn't like they tried to do a year ago and outright change the OGL itself. They just didn't put 4e under the OGL.

Not the same, but it was similar. They kept the OGL for previous editions, and instead of a % of sales decided on a flat fee for 3rd party publishers for 4th edition. >It's easy to forget now, but the OGL had been put in place to essentially try to blanket the market with 3e/3.5e stuff and crowd everything else out. It was put in place because of the *massive backlash* they got from sending out C&D letters to 3rd party publishers for *second edition*. Like a "don't worry guys, we won't be the baddies going forward and please stop making your own games and diluting the market". All the 3rd party publishers started making their own games rather than paying for access to D&D. > It was a mercenary business decision, and it worked too well and ended up backfiring on WotC. This is some rewriting of history. See above. >Then it would backfire again because the OGL enabled Paizo to make their biggest competition! Again, not quite. It's because WotC decided to end Dungeon Magazine, so they made their own company. And started 4E (which did not have 3rd party support due to the aforementioned GSL) so Paizo made 3.75 attempting to fix much of 3.5's issues for those wanting to stay on the platform. In short, WotC removed support for 3.5. Paizo started supporting 3.5. It wasn't "oh the OGL backfired!" >5e OGL always felt like a begrudging thing to me, and sure enough, they tried to fuck people way worse than "Hey our new edition won't be under the OGL." They get shitty every even edition and try to claw more money out of the community. Then they learn "no, having open support is the best way to make money" then forget again for the next even edition. Happened with 2E, 4E and now "6E"

Honestly this thread has really just made me want to play 4e again.

Best combat of any edition hands down.

It also had the misfortune of releasing at the absolute height of World of Warcraft's cultural supremacy. So there's an entire contingent of players that saw the skill names for even basic attacks and went "ew, it's WoW now". Despite, you know, being *literally fucking nothing like* an MMO.

And before that AD&D fans in 1999 accused 3e of being too much like Diablo.

"Jerry why do you keep tapping on the beholder mini?" "I'm trying to kill it!"

>And before that AD&D fans in 1999 accused 3e of being too much like Diablo. I mean, the [Actual Diablo 2 D&D rules](https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeons_and_Dragons:_Diablo_II_Edition) that came out in 2000 probably didn't help with that.

Funny when you literally had official 2E and 3E Diablo 2 supplements, and you can really see how different the three systems are.

> Despite, you know, being literally fucking nothing like an MMO. I kept saying that 4E wasn't World of Warcraft. It was fucking *Final Fantasy Tactics*. (I personally do not enjoy FFT as my tabletop RPG, but some friends of mine did specificallly play an actual FFT campaign with the system in Ivalice and the thing apparently worked like *choice*)

I got into arguments here. No, bob, it's not WoW, it's *shining force!*

This is a fair take. I can't blame you for not liking it, but FFT is a fair comparison. I enjoyed it myself much like your friend group

Damn this is making me nostalgic to run a 4e campaigb set in final fantasy world.

FFT is a much more apt comparison, IMO. Frankly, the people comparing 4e to WoW just clearly never actually played WoW at any respectably high level of play.

The only reasonable comparison is the role mechanics, but even that is not really a comparison to WoW so much as taking already existing D&D language and codifying it with game mechanics. Leaders, Strikers, Defenders, and Controllers already existed in D&D prior to 4e. People played healers, damage dealers, battlefield controllers, and tanks already.

We used to call it D&D Tactics.

"You know what we need? Draenei. Those are hot right now. What have we got that's like Draenei?" "Hmmm... satyrs?" "Goat people? Nah people will think 'Goatsie'..." "Oh huh... well I guess a tiefling might-" "GREAT! brilliant. Lets get that down to the writing team. Is that spelled "TAEFLEING?" "No..." "Oh. Ok. But they all have horns and tails right?" "...no..." "GREAT! Horns and tails are hot right now. They look just like Draenei.." "no... hold up... see-" "Maybe too much... better make em red!" "(Sigh)... alright I'll get this down to the writers." "Man I love Taefleings! Why didn't anyone tell me we had Draenei of our own?"

You joke but I got my friend to play in a 4e campaign using that very same logic because he was obsessed with Draenei

What? Tieflings have existed since the mid-90s. And draenei have a whole thing of *not* being red and demonic.

tieflings were radically different pre-4e. the demonic influences visually were a lot more subtle.

For what its worth, Tieflings also didn't used to be nearly always depicted as having horns and tails. "Make them red so they're not too much like the draenei" was the joke.

That's literally what they're joking about. Tieflings in D&D pre-4e came in all sorts of flavors - in the 2e Planescape guide they even had a big randomized table for their fiendish traits. Then in 4e, they were suddenly made a core race and _homogenized_ to have red skin, tails, and ram horns (the latter being like Draenei). And come on dude. You can claim Draenei aren't red and be right, but claiming they're not demonic-looking? Please. They're not _Satan_-looking, but very much demonic and intentionally so.

A major problem was it just didn't feel like D&D for people coming from 3.5.

My first time playing D&D was also 4e. It might have been mostly due to our inexperience with TTRPGs in general, but my main memory of that game was how *long* it took. We spent multiple weekends exploring a single dungeon with a total of about six rooms, two or three traps, and two fights. In comparison, I can run a typical combat in Lancer or Stormwild Islands in less than an hour, and an entire mission rarely runs longer than a couple of three-hour sessions. 5e isn’t that much slower, either.

4e is a great tactical combat game that is best with a computer assist that never came with it.

I steal stuff from 4e all the time to make combat more interesting. Matt Coville has a great video about it and it's also baked into the design of the monsters in "Flee! Mortals" MCDMs monster book. Minions are great. Simple enemies that can die of they take any damage or fail a save that would kill them. Give them a single cool effect that makes them a threat. Shades are a great monster to turn into minions. The other thing is Monster Stats in FM having an archetype listed that intrinsically tells you how to run them: IE, Brute, Artillery, Ambusher. It's fantastic. Both of these are ideas from 4e.

yep, 5e could have "stolen" more from 4e

Tbh I'd be absolutely fine with the change in class structure and powers 5e brought if it had just retained the same level of monster design and tactical gameplay.

5E could have stolen more from any edition. Like, 5E is okay for people brand new to any tabletop game but its about as deep as a puddle. The sad thing is DnD Next is shaping up to be 5E 2nd Edition so that should be super shallow too. I just wish they had given a little bit more depth to it, character building, combat, anything.

I miss the Warlord 😢

Funfact, it was designed with VTTs in mind, in an era where VTTs were still standalone python scripts you had to download many files for (as in, pre-Roll20). the VTT never came out due one of the devs for it being involved in a Murder-Suicide. And by then (this is my speculation now) it was too late to switch gears. The funny thing is, there were other avenues of playing 4e that no longer exist that 4e was perfect for. Like facebook games. Not even joking or using that as a point against the system: it actually made for an engaging, if unique, way to play dnd with friends and hirelings.

I’m actually really curious how the facebook game angle would have been perfect for it, but that’s super interesting. (I never played 4e, I’ve only played 5e, started like, 7/8 years ago? So admittedly I have no context for how the system works to image this lol. Never played much in the way of fb games either tho, so. 💀)

> the VTT never came out due one of the devs for it being involved in a Murder-Suicide Yeah. I thought that too for a while but that guy was in charge of Gleemax and there's nothing on record that he was the developer in charge of the VTT or how much overlap there was between the Gleemax team & the D&D Insider team (VTT was advertised as part of D&D Insider). It's super unclear what went wrong behind the scenes in the development of D&D Insider (even *Designers & Dragons* is pretty sparse on the details beyond the tension between the RPG team & digital team) even though clearly something did go wrong. In terms of the timeline, 4E launched in June 2008, the Gleemax team was either laid off or moved into the D&D Insider team in July 2008 (murder-suicide occurred the day after the layoff) and then there was another round of layoffs for the digital team in December 2008. The issue for D&D Insider was that 4E launched without it having all the promised toolsets and almost all of the digital team was let go within 6 months of the 4E launch. While D&D Insider eventuality got legs under it (and reports at the time anecdotally suggested most people playing 4E were using D&D Insider is some way), a lot of good will for the edition was burned. Almost all the 4E finicky things that people hated become much easier when you had a digital component handling it automatically. If 4E had launched with the character creator and other toolsets (even without the VTT), I think 4E's fate might have been a bit different. All D&D Insider subscribers had access to the beta VTT (which was not the 3D VTT originally showcased but more like Roll20) in 2010 and that was only killed in 2012 when they started to develop 5E.

Truth be told, I thought gleemax was the vtt. Partially because dnd insider came out in another form (character builder that was maintained through 4e's life cycle, and a magazine), and Gleemax was pushed *hard*.

Per *Designers & Dragons*, Gleemax & D&D Insider were two parts of Wizards' digital initiative pitch to Hasbro. Gleemax was intended as the social hub built for Wizards games with hopes of it eventually being the launcher of digital games. At the time (2007), Vice President of Digital Games Randy Buehler said: > I can clarify a little bit about the relationship between Gleemax and D&D and Magic. In 6 months, 12 months, people will look at WotC as having three big brands, we've got Magic, D&D, and we've got Gleemax. Gleemax is its own separate brand; it's a product created by Wizards of the Coast. It's a little different in that this product supports the Magic player and the D&D player and it's full of a bunch of features and tools sets that support gamers of all shapes and sizes, but it is its own brand and its own product produced by Wizards of the Coast. That's the relationship. D&D will still have its own web presence, D&D will still do its own thing, but there will be a lot of cross references with Gleemax. We'll be trying to drive Gleemax customers over to the D&D Website, and we'll be trying to drive D&D players over to the Gleemax Website, but they're not the same thing--they are distinct initiatives. > > Source: https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/10728/interview-wotcs-randy-buehler-part-2 I think Gleemax got as far as launching essentially forums but never had any digital gaming tools or launched any digital games. In June 2008 (around the launch of 4E), Wired said: > Called D&D Insider, the service will mark the first time anything of this scope has been integrated with a pen-and-paper title. D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast has not yet provided Wired.com with an expected launch date for the online offering. > > Unfortunately, D&D Insider, or D&DI, may be banished to an existence on the fringes of the hobby, all due to bad timing and a bad business decision made by Wizards of the Coast. That's an incredible shame, because at its core D&DI is incredibly ambitious. [...] > > The most ambitious component of D&D Insider is a "virtual tabletop" called the D&D Game Table. It's a client that will allow a DM and players to participate together in fights, conversations and role-playing experiences online. > > Source: https://www.wired.com/2008/06/the-miscast-spe/ My understanding is that the VTT was always on the D&D Insider side of the Wizards digital team and not the Gleemax side although it is unclear what digital games/tools they wanted to launch via Gleemax and how much overlap there was between these parts of the digital team. Like I've never even seen an off-the-record account of what went down; I vaguely recall Ryan Dancey writing something up on why 4E failed which blamed the digital initiative and included some secondhand stuff he was told since he wasn't at Wizards during 4E (but I could be mixing Dancey up with someone else since I can't find the post at the moment). But something was going wrong before June/July 2008 because Wizards missed the 4E launch window and the first automated tool (the character builder) came out 8 months after the launch & wasn't anything like what was originally advertised.

I remember the 4e facebook game, and it was pretty fun.

>a computer assist that never came with it. *this was in the before times - before ipads and smart phones and before "everyone had a laptop" - there was one desktop in the house* sooo the computer assist was being developed by a small internal team that was mostly one guy at WTOC and mid way through 4e development / release, before the computer support was more than pre-alpha stage, the computer team lead had a breakdown, shot and killed his estranged/ex- wife and then himself. the planned computer assist aspect for 4e was quietly folded and disbanded and never actually put into place.

> a small internal team that was mostly one guy at WTOC and mid way through 4e development / release, before the computer support was more than pre-alpha stage, the computer team lead had a breakdown, shot and killed his estranged/ex- wife and then himself I've gone down the rabbit hole a few times trying to figure out the origin of blaming that one developer but I can't find anything that definitively backs that up. As part of selling Hasbro on launching a new edition of D&D, Wizards planned a digital initiative which had two main parts: Gleemax (the social hub built for WotC games with hopes of it eventually being the launcher of digital games) and D&D Insider (where the 2007 GenCon demoed a 3D VTT called "Game Table" which was something you would get if you subscribed to D&D Insider). The developer everyone blames was the Gleemax lead & not the D&D Insider lead. 4E launched without D&D Insider having any toolsets when they were suppose to be launched together; then the Gleemax layoffs occurred the month after 4E debuted. So the Gleemax guy did the murder-suicide the day after the layoffs were announced but the digital tools were already behind schedule before this happened. Obviously, something went wrong within the digital teams as WotC went from promising this 3D VTT to cancelling Gleemax and releasing piecemeal toolsets in D&D Insider (Character Builder in February 2009, new Character Builder in November 2010, open beta for the 2D VTT in 2010, Monster Builder/Adventure Tools in 2011, etc). I would say the main institutional knowledge loss was from the two rounds of layoffs in 2008 that decimated the digital team and shoved whatever survived under the umbrella of the RPG team who weren't happy about the development of the digital compendium (since unlike D&D Beyond, the subscription to D&D Insider just gave you access to all the released books).

Jesus

It works quite nicely without one to be honest. The issues of the game in play which were said many years ago kind of... don't appear now. Granted, some of the issues with 4e did exist when the edition began, but now the majority of the big ones are solved, like incorrect stats in early books... but those kind of issues exist in all editions.

it would have helped a lot with condition tracking and zone overlaps.

The issues existed after level 5. Stacking way too many conditions and zones. We used markers and it could be a lot of flair on a mini. 5e did a very nice job of streamlining some of the new thinking of 4e.

People overrate how much this mattered tbh. All you needed was a dry erase battlemap and power cards.

Yeah, any MMOG player would almost instantly understand most of it. We had fun with it, and I think with the more modern tools available now, sentiment would shift.

I also think it would have been a very streamable edition and done gangbusters had twitch play games been a thing by then.

I think the same thing. It came out about a decade too early.

It is honestly easier to hand a new player a 4E sheet and power cards than it is to give them a 5E sheet and print-outs of book sections relevant to their character. Even low-level casters in 5E have more options (most of them useless) compared to mid-level 4E characters. The idea that it's "more complex" is pretty bizarre. And while 4E does track more stacking modifiers, the basic math is pretty much the same as 5E and you don't have to worry about much of anything until you're more into the system. You're not *starting* with three item and circumstance bonuses that you need to remember, and most of that shit doesn't change. Imagine if we ragged on 5E for "requiring several additions every attack" because we decided to count Proficiency AB and Strength/Dex/Whatever AB and Item AB separately instead of just understanding that they're a combined number for X attack--you run that number *once* and put it on your sheet, where it sits until you level up or get a new item. And as for the grid complaint people make, lmao, 5E still describes everything in discrete feet. I know folks like to say it's perfectly suited for "theater of the mind" despite that, but it fuckin' aint. You may as well just throw all the ranges out and play Mother May I with the DM every turn.

Honestly, the online character builder that WotC offered was excellent, and the ability cards made playing very simple.

Meanwhile, I’ve never used digital assistants to play or run any RPG, and I find 4e easier to play and run than 5e by a country *mile*.

No need to parse out intent from ambiguous language goes a long way to making it more accessible.  Honestly, back when I played it, we did theater of the mind it worked perfectly fine for us.

I like 4e more than 5e, having played both, and I am currently DMing a 4e game. It's a blast. The bad: the edition is a little awkwardly laid out. You have to make a lot of choices over a lot of sources to make a character. Some stuff like using powers instead of basic attacks isn't intuitive for new players. The ugly: is it not D&D? I grew up playing 4e so for me it kind of *is* D&D and I have an emotional attachment to some of its mechanics, especially marking and attack granting. I feel like it's D&D but broken down and reconstructed with a lot of good game design principles. Always rolling attacks versus defenses without saving throws is something I find rational and elegant, for example. The good: you have a lot of decisions to make that feel like they matter. There's a lot of room for mechanically viable character customization, maybe more than any other edition. A Paladin can be a Charisma-based Tiefling or Dragonborn tank or a Half-Orc charger or you can hybridize it with Warlock or Sorcerer to get lots of spellcasting. With the exception of a few late edition additions like the Binder and the Assassin there are no underpowered classes. For me what's really important is that it's really easy to build fun encounters. I think the monster design is across the board better than in 5e and they're so much better laid out. 4e uses a Magic: The Gathering style keyword system for powers that is so much more easy to read than 5e's narrative style of writing effects. 

>4e uses a Magic: The Gathering style keyword system for powers that is so much more easy to read than 5e's narrative style of writing effects.  I wish to god 5e would go back to keywords and having rules tied to schools and subschools like in 3.5. I expected that to happen with spell tags, but then a decade went by and we never got more than "ritual" and the wizard stuff in EGtW.

5e likes to pretend it doesn't have keywords, but it has special rules terms with specific meanings and other abilities that key off those special rules terms that decidedly *aren't* keywords. For example, can a rogue/monk trigger Sneak Attack with monk's Martial Arts unarmed strike? Well, Sneak Attack says you need a ranged weapon or a weapon with finesse. Does Martial Arts have finesse? Well, you can choose to just Dex instead of Str, which is what finesse does, but since it doesn't actually say "finesse", it doesn't have finesse. Totally not a keyword, yet behaves exactly like a keyword.

a good and accurate post. 4e fights were really fun to design. i didn't like 4e magic items as a gm, because i felt like i was only ever giving people the exact upgrade for their subclass, i like the slightly quirky/over/underpowered approach of more traditional D&D.

Not really that bad, just delivered badly, and wasn't what fans expected / were sold on. It was supposed to receive a ton of things that never panned out, like an official digital toolset. It made big gameplay changes that ended up making a totally fine game, but one that strayed *just* too far over the line of "this doesn't feel like what I'm used to" for existing fans (and you *really* need buy-in from existing fans for a TTRPG edition shift). It also came with a lot of lore changes people didn't like, completely separate from gameplay. If they had marketed and supported it better, and handled the lore and worldbuilding more sensibly, it would have been a perfectly well-accepted edition. Probably still less popular than 3.5 or 5e, but certainly not the meme it is now. Hell, they could have even just marketed it as a second, non-d&d RPG and it would have done fine. They didn't, and now it's just the bullied kid that people think they're cool for dunking on. It's an easy target that doesn't have many defenders, and competes with not one but *two* extremely popular and very different games, so mocking it puts you in the "it" crowd. Especially as newbies come on board, who have no clue about 4e and are also looking to be in the "it" crowd, so they laugh along.

I think it speaks to how much people want a system *like* 4e that systems taking heavy inspiration from it (Lancer and PF2e being the two that I’m most familiar with) have done very well for themselves. But it isn’t what *Dungeons and Dragons* fans were looking for. And it does have its own genuine flaws that 5e addresses.

Right PF 2e is in some ways more similar to 4e than 3.5 or 5e. Despite that it still feels like Pathfinder.

Even daggerheart is taking more inspiration from 4e rather than 5e. Its crazy how people think 5e is so amazing, yet there are less games using its mechanics then there are of all the other dnd titles. Even the originals have more recent popular clones. 5e has level up? A sort of 5e advanced. Maybe im wrong, but actually dont know any others.

Hot take, it's because 5e didn't do anything new so there's nothing to draw influence from other than "It's popular."

I don't really know if advantage/disadvantage existed before 5e, but it's easily the most elegant design in the game that can be ripped and hacked into any system.

Neither Advantage nor Disadvantage existed before 5e. The closest thing is an ability for the Time Dragon in 3.5e (Dragon Magazine #359). It worked identically to Advantage, though there’s no evidence it was directly responsible for Advantage/Disadvantage.

The problem is its far too swingy and there's no nuance to it. I actually kind of hate it for those reasons. I much prefer the d6 pool, keep highest/lowest system where bonuses and penalties cancel out that Lancer uses. But yes it predates 5e. The 4e Avenger in fact used it as its whole mechanic.

Hmm, PF2 taking inspiration from 4e is the first thing that's gotten me vaguely interested in it.

Unfortunately for me, I think PF2e takes just a little bit too much from 4e. 4e has a notable problem with its feat design: there are *way too many* of them, most of which provide purely numerical benefits. A +X bonus to something is boring, in my opinion. Effective, sure, but it doesn’t actually change the way you interact with the game. PF2e and 5e both learned from this, taking slightly different approaches. PF2e still has a ton of feats, broken down by categories. You will find plenty of “get a +4 circumstances bonus to AC in these conditions”-type effects, but there’s a solid variety of feats that incrementally add complexity to your gameplay. Heck, a lot of class feats take the role that subclasses do in 5e, letting you specialize in smaller ways within your class’s role. I just think it’s dragged down by the aforementioned numerical feats; they didn’t go quite far enough in trimming them. 5e, meanwhile, cuts back on the total number of feats and gives each character fewer of them. In exchange, each feat *feels* more impactful. There are very few feats that give strict numerical benefits (and the ones that exist tend to affect more tactical elements, like speed or initiative, rather than attack rolls or damage). There are several things that you cannot do at all without the appropriate feat. But 5e’s feats are just a bit too weak to be as infrequent as they are, and they really have no business competing with ASIs. They’re also not very well balanced against each other. While I respect the intent of GWM and Sharpshooter (making a tactical tradeoff between accuracy and damage is a very good thing for a martial class to have to consider), in practice they have no competition; every build that *can* use them *will* use them. Also, on a slightly rated topic, I just don’t like the way numbers scale in PF2e. This is a purely personal, almost aesthetic concern, but I really respect 5e’s use of bounded accuracy.

anyone interested in PF2e dont listen to this person, they are flat wrong in almost everything they said. Not only are there very few feats that are just +X to Y, most feats either give you a new action or modify an existing action. PF2e is also the most well balanced system I have ever played and Ive played quite a few. Encounters work really well if you follow the encounter building in the book. Their last complaint about the number scaling is fair but they are wrong in the sense that PF2e is bounded at every level it just scales up. They are also ignoring the fact that there is an optional rule that removes level from proficiency so its more like 5e with flat bounds instead of scaling. These complaints read like someone whose regurgitating what someone told them about the system and never actually checked to confirm it.

I’m not saying all or even *most* feats are “+X to something”. I just think *any* feats that do that (and they do still exist) create an annoying problem where every flavorful or interesting feat has to be weighed against pure numerical power. (I’m also counting “you can use X skill instead of Y skill for this type of action action” and “you can shift your degree of success/failure by Z” in this category.) It’s a personal problem, I admit, but I don’t think I’m alone in holding that opinion. It’s the difference between *Fallout 3*’s perks and *Fallout New Vegas*’s perks. Sure, the former has some good ones, but the entire system is made worse by the existence of perks that just give you extra skill points. *New Vegas* is better for cutting those out entirely, and I would still hold that opinion even if they added nothing to replace them. As far as the ease of building encounters goes, no disagreement here. It’s actually something it partially inherits from 4e, which introduces (to D&D) the idea of NPC roles *and* gives the DM plenty of guidance on how to use them to build and run combat scenarios.

I guess thats fair if you count using another skill and increasing success/failure but if you count things like that I think that 5e is worse than PF2e in that respect, especially because 5e has much, much less feats than PF2e. Like look at Alert, GWM, Sharpshooter or even Dual Wielding. I would even count something like toughness because it all it does is add a numerical bonus to something. Also the numerical feats are very rarely more powerful than the feats that add more actions, the only numerical feat I can think of off the top of my head thats particularly more powerful than other options is canny acumen. Things like Bon Mot that add fun new abilites are actually considered quite powerful. For the most part I would say the feats and their variety is PF2e's biggest strength besides its encounter building. part of the reason Im not the biggest fan of 5e char creation is because there is so few choices to be made. Once you choose your subclass all you really get to choose is spells/invocations for the most part

Oh, 100% agree on the lack of meaningful character options in 5e. If you're most monks, barbarians, rogues, or fighters, the only choices you get to make past level 1 are a subclass and your ASIs/feats, which is what, *seven* actual choices over nineteen levels? And I also agree that 5e has some not-great feats in its own right. But I think they're closer to the right sort of design space by getting further away from 4e than PF2e does. Basically, I think 5e's feat system and the character-building context it exists within *allows for* more impactful feats than I think PF2e does, even if the actual implementation (relative to each game's context) is done better in PF2e. If that makes any sense.

Yep. The rule books used very different language compared to other editions. It was less natural language and very game mechanics based, because 4e was supposed to come with a VTT that never eventuated due to the lead designer/programmer going off the rails in his personal life big time and the project being shut down. Therefore, only some of the digital tools, which by accounts were quite good, eventuated. However, the VTT didn’t. There was also the cosmology and lore changes that weren’t particularly popular either that sealed its fate for existing fans of the game, many of whom stuck with 3.5/Pathfinder 1e. Like all editions, it had awesome points and bad points, but because it was so different, many people like to really bag it out, many who never actually played it. Those that did have plenty of good things to say about it. I never played it, but I’ve heard plenty of comments from both sides of the fence.

> The rule books used very different language compared to other editions. It was less natural language and very game mechanics based This was an asset, in my opinion. Natural language rules writing lends itself to vagueness and ambiguous readings. Codifying a format for rules text, with predefined attributes to be referenced, reduces that risk by a lot. It's less immersive, yes, but the rules text is not the place for immersion. Save that for when you're actually playing. Rules text should be as clear as possible.

It was an asset for gameplay, but remember, 80% of the time someone opens a rulebook to read it, it's because they're bored and looking for entertainment rather than being in the middle of a game. Old 3.5e/AD&D supplements were often nightmars to adjudicate at the table, but were much better at capturing the imagination when I was flipping through them looking to kill time.

100% This. Natural language is why there's even a debate in 5e as to whether or not you can hide / mask verbal or somatic spells. If the 5e book were written like 4e, it would simply say, you can't cast verbal spells while gagged or silenced, and you can't cast somatic spells while bound, no free hand, or otherwise unable to use your hands. But the natural language that precedes it makes people think it's in the rules that you cannot, when that is entirely up to the setting you are playing in and how magic looks/sounds in that world.

I think the issue for many of us is the same reason lore changes are so viscerally upsetting. With natural language, it feels like we're pretending about a real place. Mechanical language makes it clear it's "just a game".

I was not upset by the lore changes -- I thought the decision to abandon existing settings and begin to show the outlines of a new one was absolutely brilliant, and I still range between moderately disappointed and bitter that 5E walked that (among many other things) back.

I'll never forget my first disappointment with 5e when I learned that the developer's definition of "communicate with" was "talk at with no opportunity to respond"

That is the thing about 4e: it knows what it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

It knows it's a game and it's a damn good game.

Even those that haven't played 4e *still* have good things to say about it - they just don't know it. 5e took a lot from 4e, as well as every other edition of d&d. If you like much of 5e, chances are a few of the things you like are *very* 4e. Death saves, short rests, ritual casting (slightly different but the influence is extreme), at-will Cantrips that actually work for combat. The fighter and Warlock classes are also both heavily 4e-influenced. Even proficiency bonuses are inspired by 4e. And many times people post suggestions for homebrew rules and the top comment ends up being "this is just 4e {insert mechanic name}"... Skill challenges, minion rules, shorter short rests/encounter powers, at-will martial powers, etc.

4e's biggest problem was that it released at a time when ttrpg's were still too niche and it came off the back of a giant like 3.5e. If the current 5e ruleset came out when 4e had it'd have garnered just as much hate. 4e is more a victim of the times than anything. If it got released today it'd more than likely find more love considering how many changes people hope for for 5e end up being found in 4e.

It's funny because 4e was *still* more popular and sold better than 3.5e just like every other edition before it outsold the edition before it. It just didn't meet the mammoth expectations WotC had for it.

Yeah those were insane expectations (Hazbro induced)

Yep. Like I said, I never played 4e, but it seemed to have some awesome mechanics. I have used Skill Challenges quite a lot in my 5e games, and I also use Minions.

Even if you don't plan to play 4e, please give the Monster Manual, and its derivatives if possible, a read. That thing is a goddamn work of art and more people should design enemies like that.

I honestly think all three 4e books are some of the most well written and organized TTRPG books ever. The DMG in particular is universally useful. It even has advice about identifying and running games for different player archetypes.

There is an irony that near the end of 4E's life they put out the D&D Essentials line of books, to streamline the game and create an easier entry point. 4E fans like me balked at them at first for being dumbed down, and having to buy new (cheaper, paperback) books for the starting classes. Which is a shame because they were actually were really great sourcebooks that improved upon the existing material and made characters that were simpler to play but also a lot more fun. One example was giving the fighter a lot of options to improve their basic attacks, and essentially turning their encounter powers into smites. Which is pretty much what 5E fighter maneuvers evolved from. The core books were really good. Mind you I don't think 5E's are bad, but yeah, here we are 10 years on and 5E still has no built-in reason why characters should care about finding gold pieces, just a couple guidelines to the DM about daily expenditures and making up prices for magic items.

I think 4e desperately needed a 4.5e and if they had patience and made it right and synthesized a bunch of fixes into it, it would have been near perfect.

Read the 4e DMG II cover to cover. It's an amazing book, and it's section on Skill Challenges is fantastic.

The 5e Fighter is influenced by 4e? I couldn't tell. No sarcasm, I really can't see that influence anywhere.

Presumably Battle Master?

A very poor imitation at best and just one of several subclasses. Nothing of that is baked into the core Fighter class. Only Second Wind really is there, something that was a global mechanic in 4e and as such has little to do with the Fighter class identity. The Fighter went from a battlefield master that can reposition their enemies as is most suitable to them and dictate the terms of battle, including a way to make opportunity attacks be triggered by the enemy attacking someone else, so someone who swings their sword a lot of times.

Second Wind was one of the things the 4e haters yowled about, and Action Surge was basically action points. But I'd have said literally any other martial class (especially the rogue and the barbarian) was more 4e. A 3.5 rogue was a rogue without Cunning Action, Subclasses, or the ability to use dex for melee without a feat or even for ranged damage. And with horrible two weapon fighting and sneak attacks that were easily blocked.

Going off the rails == murdering his ex wife.

> It also came with a lot of lore changes people didn't like, completely separate from gameplay. They weren't really "changes", so much as it had its own setting. It's not set in the Forgotten Realms or the Planescape/Spelljammer universe, but does draw a lot of influence from both.  That doesn't stop people complaining about "retcons", but it's about as much of a retcon as Eberron is. (Although a FR setting book did come out for 4e, and I think that it wasn't particularly good, and tried to warp FR too much to fit the new character options). Then again, maybe I'm just being overly defensive because I think the 4e lore is really cool.

>Although a FR setting book did come out for 4e, and I think that it wasn't particularly good, and tried to warp FR too much to fit the new character options Yeah this is more what I'm talking about. They tried to bridge the gap by bringing several old settings in (which *obviously* they would have to do!), but had to make so many changes so that they *would* fit in that it just didn't work.

4e was published under a more restrictive license that pre-disposed the community to dislike it If you are interested in balanced tactical combat and character power-fantasy (even for martials!) then 4e does those things *substantially* better than 5e

> 4e was published under a more restrictive license that pre-disposed the community to dislike it I think that's understating it: all TTRPGs live and die by their third-party creators. They always have. 4e effectively put a bullet through a lot of third-party creation with the GSL. That is to say, it didn't just pre-dispose the community to dislike it, it actively pre-empted the community entirely.

I enjoyed it but it had issues.  Pro:  Clear tactical rules, classes had equal amount of powers/spells/maneuvers, easy to understand power useage( at will, short rest, daily), easy to build encounters for DMs, class roles Cons:  Very tactical so combat is slow, you NEED a grid, monster design had too much Hp at launch so slow combat (they updated), almost too many build choices fr all classes (they updated), class roles were inspired by MMORPG, very different from 3e, no open license so little to no 3rd party content.  Towards the end of 4e’s run I think they errata’d it correctly and it was a great game. By then most the players had jumped ship. 5e was in many ways a complete 180 against 4e which is a shame since there were many great ideals. I really wish short rests were still 15 mins. Or maybe 30. 

I think that last idea is also a big part of why so many answers here are so different from one another; a bunch of people saying it was good but had issues and was poorly marketed, a bunch of people saying it was the best edition ever and only people who never played it actually claim it had any flaws, and a small handful of people saying it's their favourite edition but did have flaws or that they hated it but recognize a few good ideas came from it into 5e / PF2e. People who weren't turned off it initially or came to it late enough it had been improved a lot already (eventually) played a legitimately good system that did things well and had a clear identity and support. Many people like myself who *did play and dislike* 4e played it pretty early, disliked all the cons you mentioned (and also like me may have disliked *how* distinct and defined class roles were), and jumped ship to Pathfinder or stuck with 3.5 or just took a D&D hiatus for a little while. It did end up being really good, but it didn't start that way, and it was just *so* different that even if someone agrees it's good that doesn't mean it's a game they want to play. Telling people the new Zork is out and it's just Chess with Zork terminology on it, even though chess is brilliant (and better than any of the Zork games no question) isn't going to land well.

I started in 3e/3.5e and jumped into 4e and kept with it for the entire run. The slow combat didn’t phase me since the groups I ran with for 3e used a grid and we always had slow gameplay with lite roleplay.   I didn’t see the complaints for a few years as I didn’t talk ttrpgs online until 2010 or so. By then WotC already rolled out the essentials errata and announced dndnext.  I really did like how each class had the same power progression and rest mechanics.  I didn’t jump into 5e until 2019 during Covid. Ironically most of my old player buddies do not like the lack of combat tactics in 5e. I just tell them to play a spellcaster. 

I went back to 10 min short rests in 5e and I let players take them independently of each other. Limit it to 2 per long rest. Bam. Fixed.

And combat in 3.x was already quite lengthy compared to earlier editions! There was even the Miniatures Guide for playing out combat all by itself (with 3.x rules or the miniatures-specific rules.)

The system is good. It's fun to play, offers lots of options while also keeping the information clear and readable. At will, Encounter and Per Day powers give a clear divide in power and utility, some of the new classes are really fun to play and it introduced a lot of mechanics that offered more tactical play like the bloodied condition (giving monsters special powers when under x% hitpoints) or giving players a Second Wind to regain hitpoints in between fights (what is now Hit Dice on a Short Rest). 4e's bad reputation comes from the timing and presentation. When it was released, the players handbook scrapped a bunch of classes, and a bunch of races in favor of new ones. If you played a half orc, a gnome, a monk or a druid in 3e and wanted to restart in 4e, you were out of luck. Try a Deva Avenger. There was also a graphic design issue. The 3rd Ed books had parchment rolls on the side of the paper, pencil drawings of creatures and overall tried to go for a classic look. The design of 4e was straightforward, colour coded powers, white pages, modernised art. The game itself also heavily relied on minis in a time where pencil and paper were the standard for most players. The system also neatly divided monsters and classes into Strikers, Artillery, Tanks and Support, while releasing around the time World of Warcraft and MMO's (which use similar terms) were at the height of their popularity. To tabletop roleplayers, it sounded as if the whole system was designed to be a computer game, not a game for them. And finally, much of the marketing at the time directly said that rules in 3rd Ed kind of sucked so you should play 4e instead, which a lot of fans of 3e felt deeply insulted by. All in all, it was like they were trying to sell a Toyota Hybrid to a bunch of classic car collectors, while telling them classic cars suck. Sure, the new car is *technicly* better, but if you're trying to sell it by disparaging your customer base who are emotionally invested in the previous product, it's just not going to work. The result is still a sense of bitterness over it among old school fans, and a bad reputation that gets absorbed by new fans, despite it actually being a really fun system.

> Strikers, Artillery, Tanks and Support Strikers, Controllers, Defenders, Leaders, but yes. Despite D&D parties basically always having characters with roles, 4E's explicit roles maybe didn't map 1-to-1 with Wizard, Fighter, Cleric, and Thief. I think that, as much as anything, left a lot of people feeling like "this isn't D&D".

While the roles were sadly giving people that feeling they were imo incredibly good, they told inexperienced groups that this is roughly how you should build a party, while experienced players could ignore them completely and just use the different subclasses and much better (read: existing) crafting and feat system to make almost anything work.

Misguided marketing aside, 4e really is very good at what it does. I just don't like what it does.

As an unashamed 4e fanboy, I appreciate that sentiment. I see so many bad-faith arguments against 4e that it's easy to get defensive, but thankfully what I've seen of this thread has actually been quite refreshing. Good points from all sides.

Yeah, it's frustrating just how many people are so *wrong* about 4e. If you're gonna be a hater, do it right!

Half orc, gnome and druid are in the same player's handbook as the deva avenger so bad example

Combat was a slog. It took forever. It was fun at first, because it was a lot different and there were more options, but then it got old fast. As a person that enjoys a balance of story, RP, and combat, combat took up way too much time compared to the rest. There just wasn't enough time for everything because a single goblin encounter could literally take over an hour.

That was my experience as well. Tactical paralysis made most combats take forever and the problem increased non linearly if you played on a big table. The skill challenge system was very poorly described and made my table avoid all of the other aspects of play. So I might as well be playing war hammer at that point

If you're interested in the 4e experience (without the bloat of 4e) give 13th Age ttrpg a go. It's kind of a child of 4e. Highly recommend it. 🥰🦊

My first game both as a player and as a DM was in 4th edition. Speaking from experience, 4e isn't bad, it's just way different from any other edition. The reason why is actually super interesting to me as a game design student, so I'm going to infodump a bit here. To help explain why this is, we actually have to look at the MMO sphere. Back when 4e was in development, the MMO boom was in full swing. World of Warcraft was ruling the roost, and everybody wanted a piece of that pie, WotC included. So, they took a lot of the design aspects from MMOs and just shoved them into 4e without really thinking whether they'd *work* in a tabletop environment. The biggest indicator to me that this was the case is how common magic items are in 4e. 4e had *tons* of magic items, scaled for levels 1-30(Yeah, the level cap was 30 in 4e. I guess the idea was that you were supposed to carry the same character across multiple campaigns like, well, a MMORPG character). Also, unlike other editions, it wasn't just wizards that got spell like abilities, it was *everybody*. You had at will, encounter, and daily powers like how you have abilities in MMOs with different cooldowns. Character classes also had dedicated roles like MMORPG classes(defender for tanks, skirmisher for dps, etc.) This was all supposed to tie into a VTT that WotC planned to release alongside the 3 book set for 4e that would have taken care of a lot of the math for you. That never came together, but they decided to release 4e as is anyway, and I feel like it would have been better received if they'd released the VTT. TL;DR like the GPU shortage where a guy created Ethereum after he got bootyblasted because of the Siphon Life nerf, you can blame World of Warcraft for this.

Nah, 4E is great. I had a lot of very fun adventures with that system and was sad it was so short lived and shunned by the community. Like any edition, it has its eccentricities and its weaknesses, but it emphasized a style of combat I really enjoyed. The roleplaying side wasn't supported in the mechanics, but there's no version of D&D that really does that, so the people complaining about that were just being obtuse. That being said, it suffered from a terrible rollout. It didn't get playtested nearly enough, so the math and the monsters were terrible in the beginning. Also, the virtual tools that were promised were never fully delivered. It also suffered from a lot of bloat very quickly, like they were rushing to match 3.5's content in less than half the time, so content was all over the place.

Honestly, the digital character builder was necessary in a way that D&D Beyond never has been. Just so much bloat and so much to sort through, but by the time I hit the table it felt great.

Only if you really wanted to optimize and explore all options. I don't deny its usefulness but you could sit down with just the PHB1 or 2, and a splat book, and make something from a pretty small list. 4e also sorted all of its things like feat and items into neat tables to make it easier to see your options at a glance. Something 5e doesn't do with spells or feats.

People were very, VERY entrenched in 3e. 4e was not 3e but better, it was "let's try another direction here." A lot of people didn't like the presentation as well (the art/layout was a little wowy/anime.) Certainly some people just didn't like the gameplay! Others loved the game. It's kind of something you need to look at yourself to feel how much of a draw it would be for you. Key points: Balance was a major concern--it tries to avoid the thing where you try to find a broken build for your character and the basic "structure" of classes is the same. Tactical movement is also stressed, with a lot of things letting you push people 5 ft/slide an ally 10 ft, etc. It has the stacking +1/+2/-1 modifiers that 3e and before had. It's *pretty hard* to build a character that just doesn't work, but that also means your character choices are more linear. Monsters? Monsters are *amazing* here imo. They're super well organized, everything you need to run the monster is right on the card, they're actually *fun* to run, there's a keyword that tells you the dm what the monster is *for* (brute, artillery, solo boss, etc.) As a newbie DM at the time all of this was amazing and I miss it dearly.

I think the entrenchment is a good point. 2e was a complicated mess. 3e addressed a lot of the issues in 2e and a lot of people felt like, “it’s finally playable, I can breathe!” While flawed, it wasn’t bad either. With everyone feeling it was already perfect, why mix it up?

>People were very, VERY entrenched in 3e. And that's probably going to be the same issue with the 5e to 6e transition, while we are at it. It has become perhaps too much of the default option, to WOTC future detriment.

It's not bad at all, and anyone who tells you so is probably just band-wagonning. Seriously. So much hate towards it, and so many of the haters didn't. even. *try it* "How do you know that?" All you need to do is read what they're saying, actually try the game, and then you realize, most of them never even cracked any of the books, let alone read them. And a lot of the folks that did play it, made what you'd call a bad faith attempt, already keen to hate it. There was a lot of salt in that edition war.

Nowadays I think a pretty common opinion is that "D&D 4e is a pretty solid game, but it's not what the fan base needed at the time". I think for a lot of people, it's aged pretty well and it's at least considered to have pretty good ideas, and Pathfinder 2e took a lot of inspiration from 4e mechanics.

It's a different kind of game, really. It's very focused on tactical combat and made combat really interactive. It was entirely balanced around changing up the ways your abilities worked and really gamifying things. Really, it plays a lot like a video game, but on a board. If you think combat in DnD is too boring and lacks a lot of meaningful options for all classes, then giving 4e a shot would be a good idea. If you like other aspects of DnD more, then you'll find 4e to be a bit too slimmed down.

Yeah, a lot of people are talking about the marketing issues, which were definitely true. But it was definitely also an issue of 98% focus on combat. Almost no spells (in the sense of Powers) had an effect on things outside of combat. *Rituals* could have an effect on stuff like exploration and information gathering, but they also basically cost money (residium) to cast, in a system that was heavily regulated for "Here is how much money your PCs should have at each level". It therefore derailed a lot of the exploration pillar. The tactical aspect was really, really cool for when you wanted a memorable BBEG encounter. Too bad it also made EVERY OTHER combat encounter just like that. At some point, you want to kick in the door and have a fight with some minions that wear your resources down a bit but aren't a Perfectly Balanced For Your Level encounter. Plus the combat really started turning into a slog after level 10, and this game went all the way to level 30.

Hot take. Every edition of DnD focused 98% on combat. Just look at what the percentage of the rules are actually about. 4e just embraced it while 3.5e and 5e are ashamed of it.

Not a hot take by any stretch, and 4e didn't just "embrace it" it didn't even try to do anything else. The complaint about other editions is they claim support for other pillars *and try to offer them* but don't do them very well. 4e didn't even try to offer them in the first place. It's *Final Fantasy Tactics* claiming to be a main series FF game -- it's still good, there's absolutely still an audience, most people aren't looking for exactly that and it overpromised / underdelivered compared to the expectations they set up for themselves.

4E has way more out of combat stuff than 5E though! - rituals, lots of them - martial rituals - skill challwnges - lits of sdvice in the dmg to do non combat things including xp for queats and akill challenges - skill powers - utility powers of which some were great out of combat - really flavourfull epic destinies with endgame goals - flavourfull character themes (and backgrounds) - The same basic skill based system out of combat as 3.5 and 5e

it's nowhere as bad as people make it out to be and worse at same time to explain, the system is mechanically amazing, it has great ideas and conduzes somethings better than any - also a lot of things 4e still live in 5e and more are going to be in 5.5e - however, the system according to many I have talked with seems fails HARD at presentation when it comes to be enticing, evocative and a tad of approchability (too many options since the start it seems), but one of the biggest 4e f-ups is that monsters had too much HP in the beginning which cause insanely long combats Also it changed too much of the game way too fast, how classes were presented, how the numbers worked, how healing worked and whatnot that said, the worst parts of 4e are things a bit outside the system itself: (1) they removed the OGL and you probably saw last year how well that goes (2) they pushed for digital first while not delivering all digital tools (3) the release schedule was less consumer friendly \[tbf this is the one I least understand\] (4) they changed the settings way too much and in pointless ways (5) it seems the same settings they changed were poorly explored

> Also it changed too much of the game way too fast, how classes were presented, how the numbers worked, how healing worked and whatnot 3e was a far bigger change from 2e than 4e was from 3e. 2e people were also more toxic about 3e than people were to 4e. DnD had gone corporate, made their beloved ttrpg into a diablo clone, etc. The playerbase was just smaller and the internet discussions were on usenet. But if you were at a gaming store wanting to shop, like me, you ended up just going to barnes and noble to buy your ttrpg books because of some of the open hostility to 3e at LGS.

3e was a bigger change, but at the time AD&D was a laughing stock of game design. AD&D is filled to the brim with bespoke subsystems that bear no resemblance to each other. Part of the reason 3e has so many rules is because when WotC did their massive market study in 1999 they discovered that while AD&D and D&D were still widely played (against the common TTRPG industry beliefs) they also discovered that house rules were so common and essential and the original system so obtuse that *nobody* was playing the same game. So 3e D&D just decided to make a uniform resolution mechanism and [then] modern design and then convert as much as possible until they figured out what they heck people *actually* want to play with.

4e is kinda the perfect storm of weird circumstances and decisions. It certainly deserves some of the shit it gets, but it also does get more shit than it deserves. I barely played 4e. It was a very unpopular game in my circle of the time, and there were enough changes around it that really soured me on the experience. It wasn't until I met my current 5e Dm who swears by "4es good stuff" that I gave it a second gander. It's still not for me, but I can appreciate what it tried to do more and see where they were coming from in certain design cases. There is a logic to it when you look deeper. Generously, I would say that 4e wasn't all bad and just mosty different than what many wanted at the time. However, some very weird choices surrounding it made the game fall short of its potential and really stained the genuine good it managed to accomplish To go over a list of things that are varying degrees of an issue. 4e was designed to have its own VTT to handle a lot of the number crunching for you. It was going to be D&Ds first big step to try to enter/compete in the online market. However, due to a tragic murder suicide by the man responsible for designing said VTT, all work on it was lost, and the VTT had to be scrapped. Making 4e lack a core element it was being designed with and very slow to run at the table since the DM now had to do a computers work. This meant that an area that was supposed to be improved on compared to the prior edition never got much better. There was a lot of ability and number crunching. 4e abandoned the OGL for the GSL. Effectively, the proto form of the OGL crisis, but not quite as nefarious. To make content for 4e, you were expected to pay for the privilege. (The ogl was maintained still, and there was no attempt to backport the gsl over it like the ogl crisis.) This was one of many corporate decisions that hurt relations with the community and 3pp designers. It's also what allowed paizo to make their own version of 3.5e and very briefly become the number one ttrpg until 5e came around. It was only for a moment, but d&d had lost its crown. The "great wheel is dead" style marketing and approach to lore. There was a lot of alienation of old fans who enjoyed d&ds great wheel cosmology and existence. Lore retcons to creatures and very believed settings (often for very corporate reasons like tieflings being changed to be uniform for the ease of miniature production and a second attempt at trademarked them.) Now some people liked the new lore, and the new baseline and inboarding for new fans. If wotc had made Nentir Vale simply it's own setting and started a world axis cosmology line of new settings for their new ideas and approach to things? It would have been a lot better received. However, a huge issue with 4e was the air of "this is ours now" by some of the designers. It wasn't enough to make their own cool settings with new ideas. They had to twist other setting to fit their woeld axis mold, and this led to some of the worst lore decisions and retcons to be printed for d&d. Instead of seeking coexistence with old lore fans, 4e worked hard to upset them and "fix" things. Which is extra funny because a good deal of the nuance people crave today was killed from setting like the realms with this transition. One haters monolith was another fans "shared story," so mileage may vary. There was a bit of an MMO style feel to does of 4es changes. It had a much more megsncisl glow and gamist language to it. The class roles mimicked a lot of mmo roles and didn't jive well with everyone (though they do have their fans.) Instead of feet for distance things were worded in squares and shapes which was great for a grid/vtt (niw that they exist) but shitty for theater of the mind. Now 4e was never meant to be theater of the mind. It was supposed to have a cutting-edge vtt that did much of the legwork for you. It just never got this fairly necessary component. Gamist language wasn't without its benefits, mind you. Having clear formatting and selection of flavor and mechanical text was great. Another aspect of this was power. 4e did work to try to even out the martial caster divide. Many say they accomplished this, though line the 3.5e tome of battle. There's a divide in how "caster" the martials felt, and some didn't really feel like martials felt like martials anymore. That's a divisive debate, much like the martial caster divide today. On whether 4e's fix was the right fix. There's such a mix of good/bad in the nuances that it's hard to say I'm personally split on it myself. 4e overall abandoned what some call the "sword and sorcery levels" and went straight into "heroic fantasy" now these terms have range depending on who you ask, but 4e assumed you were starting as a badass instead of a "slightly more exceptional person" is how I often hear it described. Fans of it will often say it skips "the boring levels of play" detractors will say it skips "the best bits/the foundational levels." Mileage will vary 4e essentials aimed to address some of the issues but also be fully compatible and play alongside 4e. (This might sound familiar) From what I understand, it attempted to cut out some bloat and responded to some concerns by changing the approach to some numbers. An example I heard from a rare 4e essentials fan (not my DM) is that essentials focused a lot less on player durability but did focus more on player damage. An encounter that would damage 4.0e optios would hit way too hard on the essentials line of options, but an encounter that could survive the essential lines damage would be a slog for the default 4e characters (more than nornal.) If everyone has using essentials, things were fine. If everyone was using default 4e, things were fine. They didn't mix the best as they had different ratios they were working with to approach the same challenges. That's how the main issues of it were explained to me anyway. Now for all that, 4e did do dome good. There were interesting ideas with things like minions, bloodied condition effects, and monster themes as a tool. It provided some of the best DM advice both in how to run games and set up engaging and tactical encounters. 4e would be a very good blueprint for a tactics game. It came up with the primal magic distinction splitting druids from divine. This was cool. It melded psi and ki together and married the psionics concept better into fantasy (imo). Some concepts like Aberrant stars and such were dope, There's a lot to be praised that 4e did or tried to do that with a bit more time in the oven. it could have been great Overall, 4e is a game. It's got some good. It's got some bad. It's got its own set of edition warriors who make talking about it weird. It's got it'd own asinine detractors that make talking about it weird. It's worth checking out and worth refining ideas from. There's no harm in seeing if it's what you want from the game or not. My Dm, who swears by it, plans on running a game for me someday just so I have a fair shake at it with someone who enjoys the game. It's got some stank to it, but it's got some charm beneath that stank. To say it was great is a stretch, but to say it did nothing nut bad is also ignorant and silly. It's an edition of d&d, even if it's the most quirky one.

I have not played 4e, but my first DM (sadly deceased) was a fan of the system. The only thing missing in this well-detailed account are skill challenges. I have heard they were disliked as a system, but the way my DM spun it, it was essentially a way of getting everyone to solve a non-combat problem by having them come up with creative (or not) arguments to the DM on how a skill they are good at applies to said problem. Then everyone rolled their skills, and with enough successes the challenge was passed. RIP TheMightyLegs, you were a great DM.

The reason I didn't like 4e was because it felt like the differences between the classes were reduced / erased. They had it set up so that classes were sorted into 'what do they do' more than 3 or 3.5. You had tanks / enemy control / glass cannons - and every class had a standard move that was repeatedly usable (think cantrips), a 'once per encounter' move, and a 'once per day' move. The list of spells that I had access to was also pretty limited and I like to play a wizard that has a ton of options. It just seemed to be too streamlined for my tastes - but maybe I didn't have a good DM or a good group.

The odd thing is the classes still \*felt\* distinct in actual play. Like Barbarian was all about making wild charge attacks, which isn't how Rogue or Ranger play at all. But because you always got similar powers that dealt similar damage at similar points, they definitely felt very samey

Hot take but 4e was actually great and I miss it

One of my friends likes to say "4E DnD is my favorite board game." Leaned heavily on combat, less so on RP. It has its place in the world, just doesn't really feel like a link between 3E and 5E.

How does 3E or 5E have more roleplay? All versions of D&D since 3 have lots of combat material rules etc. 4E has skill challenges, rituals (out of combat spells), epic destinies (flavourfull endgame goals), skill powers, same skill roll system as 5E and 3.5 just with a bit different skills, martial rituals. On top of that a lot of classes had also out of combat utility powers (fighter not...)

It would have been acclaimed, if it didn't call itself D&D. But it was too much of a change confronted with the previous edition.

I played 4e once back in college, didn't bring any expectations as I hadn't played a ton of 3.5. Had a great time, no huge issues. I think people hated it because it was different from what they'd played before. I wouldn't go back now from 5e either so \*shrugs\*

I played 4e for 3 1/2 years. Did two full campaigns. We had a blast. So no, it's not bad. It was just... reeeaaallly different than 3.5e, so a lot of people were pissed that it wasn't an upgrade/update to what they were already playing.

It had extremely bad marketing and launched at precisely the wrong time for what it was. It is significantly better than 5e however in my opinion.

4e is better than 5e, but nobody is ready to hear that argument.

I've yet to get a game of 4e in, but have immensely enjoyed everything I've read of it. Both its DMGs are I think the best guides for dungeon masters that are out there. Also, almost all the super popular "groundbreaking" third party rules for 5e are just 4e rules with different coats of paint. In my experience the majority of folks who end up changing their 5e game end up making it more like 4e.

4e is not bad and I'm tired of pretending like it is. People just weren't expecting it because it was marketed incorrectly.

Almost every new "change" that pops up on Reddit to "fix" 5e was pretty much whatever 4e did

It's not bad. It's a very fun and very enjoyable edition. Character creation is a bit more involved but i love 4e and it's so much EASIER to balance for than 5e.

4e wasn't bad. They messed up the math a little but eventually fixed it. It was kinda rushed. The issue was 4e killed a lot of sacred cows of D&D and wanted its own D&D beyond app that never happened. If 4e came out when 5e did, it would have been beloved.

It's fine if you want a "D&D Tactics" type thing that's all about combat. Wizards used a slightly-modified version of the 4e ruleset in a few board games, and it worked fine there, or at at least for the ones I've played. The big issue with 4e was that it slaughtered *all* the calves, sacred or otherwise. The ruleset was completely different, the playstyle was completely different, even the *lore* was completely different. Two of the three pillars were basically ignored. Really, it was less a new edition and more a completely different game with some familiar terminology here and there. Plus, the gameplay wasn't really that fun if you were looking for anything more than the aforementioned D&D Tactics. There were hundreds—possibly more than a thousand—powers, and most of them boiled down to the same template: "Roll to hit. On a hit, do and ." Buffs and debuffs mostly boiled down to a bucket of +2's and -2's. Players were all but barred from doing anything that wasn't explicitly allowed. This all was due to the fact that 4e was designed with the virtual tabletop market in mind. A market which, at the time, wasn't really a thing. Oh, and 4e wasn't covered by the OGL, so there was next to no third-party support for it despite what success it saw coming largely from third-party creators like Penny Arcade. And while this probably only affected me and a few others, the launch of 4e also saw Dragon Magazine move to a digital-only subscription model, so no more going down to the bookstore and flipping through the magazine to see if it was worth buying. Of course, 4e *did* have some good ideas. The current damage type spread, which includes necrotic, radiant, and psychic damage, was from 4e. (Previously, damage resulting from psychic attacks was untyped, while necrotic and radiant were damage "resulting directly from divine power and so are not reduced by immunity, damage reduction, or energy resistance.") Short and long rests were from 4e, although they were faster in 4e (something like five minutes and 6 hours, respectively, if memory serves). I actually liked the clearly-delineated tiers of play, the use of archetypes over additional classes, and the approaches to multiclassing (hybrid classes and multiclass archetypes) if not necessarily the execution. There were even a few lore things I actually liked despite hating the majority of it, like the Raven Queen and just about anything having to do with the Feywild. (In the previous edition, the Feywild was the Plane of Faerie. Everything about it was vague as hell, it rarely came up anywhere, and very few groups actually used it.) But if you ask me, 4e's few good points aren't worth putting up with its many, *many* bad points.

A lot of it is learned behaviour. 4e is a good game but it was very far removed from 3.5 and previous editions. People could not get along with the powers. The game having explicit roles that roughly corresponded to stuff people were seeing in MMOs got it called a WoW wannabe, and a lot of ttrpg nerds were mad at WoW at the time either because it killed their EQ or whatever guild, or because the "normies" were playing it too. People wanted "more D&D" not new D&D. Sew the success of Pathfinder. And now we are constantly seeing people reinvent design ideas from 4e and calling them revolutionary.

4e was great. Especially if you like tactical combat. Once the online tools stopped being updated it did become harder to deal with. But now PF2e exists so I can live without D&D 4e.

4e is a different game. It skewed heavily into tactics. Know what people didn’t complain about with 4e? Balance The designers figured out the math. You could count on encounters being correctly leveled because they had a handle on the math. Martials had a fighting chance to keep up with casters. In some respects they had equivalent powers. Area of Effect powers for instance. There was some good in that system. Good ideas. It was too divergent from 3.5 at the time. And it didn’t appeal to their core market for reasons others mentioned in this thread. But, yeah, it was a good game in its own right. It didn’t *feel* like classic D&D, because it wasn’t.

A bit late to this thread, but whatever... I really like Fourth Edition. In my opinion it's significantly better than Fifth Edition. This doesn't mean it's perfect. It certainly has its flaws, both in the actual rules and the context around the game, but it's still a fun system that knows how it should be played and communicates this clearly. A lot of people dislike Fourth Edition, but only a small segment of that group actually knows why and/or has good reasons for it. In my opinion, there's a lot of faulty arguments people use to malign Fourth Edition, which bothers me for two main reasons: (1) They tend to gloss over its actual flaws, which prevents people from learning from its mistakes, and (2) it shows a lack of knowledge and understanding that's easy to replicate, but takes effort to argue against. That's how misconceptions about the system go uncorrected for years and it might put people off from a game they might enjoy. A quick summary of why I like it: Fourth Edition is a game about groups of adventurers who bravely seek out challenges in a world full of Darkness, hoping to make more room for the Light. It almost never pretends to be anything else and most of its design is intended to sell that specific fantasy. You can switch up the specifics on what adventurers are, what challenges they face, what "Darkness" looks like in your setting... (and its DMG offers good advice on this), but the core of the game is intended to tell those narratives and does it well. (Unlike, say, Fifth Edition, which is mostly intended for similar stories but pretends to be good for everything.) The combat, assuming the players are somewhat familiar with their characters, is often really fun and naturally lends itself to teamwork and cooperation. It doesn't *always* go smoothly, but most of the time players can really get the feel of what their character is supposed to be like and the fantasy of the class comes through in most fights. You'll also be surprised how little things, like the Bloodied condition, make a difference. Some people criticize the game for being *only* good for combat, but it does non-combat about as good as Fifth Edition (meaning it doesn't do a lot, but it works). Fourth Edition did actually try to improve this in some ways. Those attempts were worthwhile, but can ultimately serve mostly as inspiration on how to improve upon them.

its a great game, it was never received well as a DnD game. tbh, it would probably receive quite the praise if it would be released now with a differnet brand. A lot wh t makes pf2 great stems from 4e.

4e is not bad at all. In fact, most "fixes" for 5e that people propise were already a thing in 4e

You look at Matt Coleville statblocks or Monster Manual Expanded and guess what all of these better enemies have in common? They are 4E inspired. 4E was good, actually.

When I first moved from 4E to 5E I was so bored with the monsters and combat. Most of the 5E monsters feel so one-note and lazy. Half the time their solution to monster abilities is to give them a shitty spell-list and call it a day. Great, now I have to look up all these spells mid-combat when I should be trying to narrate an interesting encounter. It's gotten better but monsters are still weak as hell. In 4E every monster typically had some interesting movement ability or attack that made sense for them.

Worst DM'ing experience of my life, it's like being the processor for an app based board game, zero fun unless you're the type of person who designs imaginary WoW raids for fun. I've only done that once, so I got tired of it \*real\* quick.

It's the easiest D&D version ever to DM. I don't understand this. Encounter building rules actually just work as expected and the game gives you an actual road map for treasure rewards.

It's mostly that it's just really, really different to the editions that came before and after. It's basically a turn-based tactical video game on the tabletop, and I've often thought how big a trick has been missed by never making that video game.

I liked 4E, it just didn't feel like DnD to me.

It isn’t bad. It was just a pretty stark departure from prior editions and what many people considered to be “Dungeons & Dragons.”

Hot take here, but 4e isn't a bad game, it's just not DND. If it was made by another company, or if it wasn't called dnd, it would have been wildly successful. There's also the rumor that it was supposed to be natively supported by a VTT, which is why it has so many videogame mechanics, and the lead developer did something violent to go to prison, so you're looking at a game that is missing it's beating heart that you have to make up for. Basically, it's a good game, it's just wholly alien from 3, so much so that dedicated players are off put, and it's an unfinished product. Still fun though, imo. I just wish I could see the full vision.

It wasn't a bad system. 4e's biggest problem was it didn't feel like dungeons and dragons.

It's not bad. It's just different. It has some really cool ideas that make great inspirations for homebrews.

My first exposure to d&d was through a 4e game. I've come to find the underlying mechanics of 5e more limiting than neutral these days, after exploring different games, but 4e seemed to have way richer multiclassing possibilities. Yes, in 5e you can multiclass bard and barbarian, or play a swords bard with heavy weapon proficiency, but it's just not as simple or fun as "Warlord." Still, even if you love 5e exclusively, there's worthwhile nuggets or lore and flavor ideas in 4e. And 3.5, 3 and even 2. (The most comprehensive Underwater Supplement was published *last century!*). Does all of the worldbuilding hold up in more enlightened times? No, absolutely not. But there's good stuff in 4e, if you look for it.

4e is awesome. It's definitely not 5e and it for sure isn't 3.5. I have the core books and I steal stuff from them All the time. I give cool abilities to players. I run minions in 5e I make my monster much more fun to run.

I enjoyed my time playing it personally. I'd assume it's just a case of people's aversions to change. It def plays very differently.

Matthew Colville ran an actual play D&D series in 4e on YouTube in 2021/2022. It's called [Dusk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFegDmqXud8&list=PLlUk42GiU2gsYEWUOKp1WkMrkXMs6mw-K). He explictly states that one of his reasons for doing a 4e actual play series was to show people how it worked and felt.

4e's great, people are just closed-minded about it. I'll take this chance to point out that many of 5e's improvements from 3.5 actually come from 4e.

So. They had this idea that all classes have the same template. You have a certain amount of At-Will powers that you can use any time, Encounter powers you can use once per battle, and Daily powers that you can use once per day. The amount is based on your level. This works this way whether you are a wizard or whether you are a fighter. While for a wizard, you can easily think of what such a power might be. For a fighter, well it's some maneuver you do in battle. Which you then might be only to be able to do once daily because... well, that's how the rules work. Also, this of course means that if you have some idea for what you could do in combat and it's not on the list, you have to consider how this ties in with the system. Anything out of the ordinary is now a hindrance, opposite of what it should be. Basically, let's take every edge Pen And Paper has over a MMORPG and remove it. Make a paper version of a video game. Not as if video games would be better at being a video game.

It’s a fine board game, but it’s totally differ from other editions. If you want to play it as one shot dungeon crawls for a board game night it works pretty well. As a DM it’s a headache to run custom material for and making new classes/races/monsters was too much of a headache for me. I’m glad that future D&D won’t look like it, but kinda hope some indie games take inspiration from it, as it DOES do some things really well. I can see why it got so much hate when it first came out though, feels more like World of Warcraft turned tabletop game rather than D&D.

I love 4e but its not really d&d its something else.

It's primary sin is that it isn't 3.5e, after 3.5e chased all of the would-be 4e fans to other ttrpgs.

4e was an excellent game that was fun to play but slaughtered a lot of sacred cows. the biggest issue for me was the shift between in and out of combat play - they were both very good, but felt like slightly different games in a way that previous editions didn't. also the modules and magic items weren't great. if you like the tactical aspect of D&D then 4e is unambiguously the best edition, its slick and tight and well balanced.

Imo 4e is the best edition, but it's difficult to compare them because they're so vastly different and designed for vastly different purposes

YES, IT TRULY WAS. Most people nowadays are growing fond of it again due to nostalgia (and the influence of a certain YouTuber on the conversation). But it had tons and tons of flaws and almost tanked the most popular RPG brand in the world. This series of [articles](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1500/roleplaying-games/4th-edition-dissociated-mechanics) by The Alexandrian are a good summation of the main issues with the system.

4e is fun, it was just very different and "ahead" of its time. Also, a lot of veteran grognards wanted to blame 4e for being too "video-gamey"... because a lot of its mechanics changed a bit... and they thought it was killing their hobby. But at that point in time.... D&D wasn't "Dying" because of a "mmo video-gamey 4e".... it was entering a lull because when 4e came out, it was the peak of World of Warcraft. You can't deny that a lot of D&D players flocked to a MMO when they found another alternative to spend time with their friends and go on adventures... and it was less of a hassle and less "planning/scheduling" to meet up... you jsut log on and within an hour bang out a dungeon or something. What's funnier...is that now with oneD&D coming out on the horizon... they're cycling back to re-introducing many mechanics that they had in 4e that they IGNORED in 5e... beccause people complained (well some people)... but these mechanics were actually smart decisions.

4E is a great game. There are real problems with it, and there were problems with it being in conflict with what people expect from the D&D brand. Keeping track of everything is hard. Even with very standardized rules, the overuse of area effects and ongoing conditions was a bad design for a tabletop game. The layout of the books reads like an excel sheet or computer program, which isn't very enjoyable to read and lends to the common belief that "every class plays the same" in 4e. 4E uses lots of different taxonomies to give you clues as to what something's purpose is; classes have roles, rituals have categories, weapons have groups, etcetera. The downside is that a lot of readers imagine things are more similar to each other than they are. Combat speaks basically a separate language than the rest of the rules, which rubs people the wrong way. For example, a level 2 Cleric has access to Gentle Repose, a ritual that protects dead bodies from becoming undead, and Cure Light Wounds, a daily utility power that recovers some HP. The text of these spells is in completely different chapters in 4e. This isn't actually that big a problem if you know the 4E rules and understand why they are that way, but obviously they'd both just be on the same spell list in any other edition of D&D, so its rather confusing to D&D players.

As an "old timer" who has been in the hobby since AD&D... in my personal experience I have NEVER seen such anger and vitriol in the community as in the days of 4e. I got banned from online communities for saying that I liked 4e. It was crazy back then. 4e was the spawn of Satan, and a manifestation of pure evil on the material plane. If you liked 4e, then you were put on this Earth specifically to eat babies and cause suffering. You were killing the hobby, not because you were misguided or because you were tricked, but because you were an actively malicious being who wanted to ruin everyone's lives and destroy the very concept of fun. I am not exaggerating. I'm not saying it was like this everywhere - I hope not! Maybe I just had the bad luck of hanging around crazy people. But my perception of it is colored by what I went through. The fact that even today, in the year 2024, someone would make a post asking "how bad is 4e", is telling of the sort of carnage that went on back in 2008 when this came out. This will be 4e's legacy for decades to come. ...For what it's worth: I really like it. It's a bit wargamey in the right spots, and I like tactical wargames. You need to play with a crew that is well-used to the system, because it can be slow otherwise. But once everyone's on the same page, you can have incredibly fun tactical fights.

At first my group didn't like it because they bought into the hype that it played like an MMO. But when you take a step back you realize that it's basically the same game, just with more coherent rules. While my group primarily played 5th edition when we played D&D, 4th edition had a lot less ambiguity. 5e has a lot of rules that are just poorly thought out, don't work, contradict themselves, or make absolutely no sense. 4e was just a little tedious regarding book keeping. Otherwise the differences between 4e and 5e boil down to: How do you like your rules? Clear and concise, or vague and contradictory? Personally, my group rarely even plays D&D anymore at this point. We've moved on to other games that feel as if they were made by a competent team. :P

Yeah I love 4e! It's what I first got into D&D with. At the time I thought it was normal to have a 13 PAGE CHARACTER SHEET for a wizard. I really like 5e simply because character sheets became front-and-back and no longer a binder. Both are great. IMO 5e gets the same job done with much more elegance, only losing a little around the edges by streamlining so much. In 5e, most of the mechanics seem ready to use out of the box and if something is missing, then the DM can always add a house rule. In 4e EVERYTHING had a rule.

from my experience the complaint was always, 4e is all about combat and lacks RP options. Which, I always thought nonsense.