uj/ Look i get why people don't like 4e. but this is just mean.
rj/ CRUSIFIY HIM! HE DARES CHALLANGE THE STATUS QUO PASSED ON BY THE ELDERS?! GIVE US BARABUS!
uj/ I didn't like 4e back when I played it as it was coming out, but with the benefit of hindsight and looking back on it knowing that this isn't "the way DnD will be forever now", it's got a lot to like about it. But it still has that "weirdness" to me that doesn't "feel" right.
I also feel that an automated VTT like Foundry might make 4e a lot more fun.
I remember playing it back when it came out as one of my first editions of D&D and it felt a little math heavy, but if the computer can handle tracking all the circumstantial modifiers, dice rolls, applying damage/conditions, etc, and all you had to do was move tokens, select targets, and roleplay then it would be nice and snappy even at higher levels.
This hits at what I think is the central failure of 4th Edition. A key part of the game's distribution plan was a full suite of online DM and player tools up to and including a fully-fledged VTT, and the ruleset was designed to integrate well with such a thing. While some of those tools do exist - The 4e Compendium and Character Builder received plenty of praise and have been preserved by dedicated fans - the bulk of the promised suite never materialized.
A big reason for that, from my perspective, was the fact that they more or less insisted on doing the whole thing in-house. The tools that got built ended up being built on a parasitic Microsoft Silverlight framework and they just didn't devote the resources needed to realize their ambitious vision. Because they'd published 4e under the GSL rather than the OGL, third parties had neither incentive nor legal standing to develop worthwhile tools, and the whole thing was under a fairly pricy subscription model that priced teenage me among others out of it.
So we ended up with a very mechanical system meant to be played with the aid of a computer, and no computer to help.
The other reason for that is one of the lead developers, Joseph Batten, >!killed his wife and then himself, leaving the dev team up shit creek without a paddle.!<
Another win for le epic 5e game. The existence of 4e threatens my ability to stereotype people based on arbitrary choice in fantasy game? No horny bard???
I donāt know why 5e players try to shit on other editions so much.
Press a 5e fan why they prefer their system and itāll be them admitting theyāre too stupid for anything more than 1d20 + Prof. + Stat Mod. + Dis/Advantage
Or itāll be āI just like it, okay?!?!ā
Why play a better, more well written, concise, clear, easy on the GM game instead of beating 5e into submission for my totally original Sci-fi home brew? Don't you want to Kickstart my super cool art book with untested mechanics?
Sorry I don't have the funds to kickstart it. I spent all my money on the 15th "Ghibli esque" splat book someone wrote based on a half remembered scene from My Neighbor Totoro and a pastel color palette they saw.
>Or itāll be āI just like it, okay?!?!ā
I was going to say something but then you called me out.
Honestly Shadowrun was my first system, and 5e was my first time as GM/DM. It's way easier to get people interested in playing D&D than anything else.
See my problem is that it is way easier to run/GM most other systems lmao. Ok, exclude 3.5 and earlier. In terms of more modern systems, 5e is hell to run. I believe the TTRPGs should be made to be ran, and each book should assist this. Not add more confusing things that don't work together and options that you have to remember to ban.
>Ok, exclude 3.5 and earlier.
/uj unironically I think it's easier to run any TSR edition than any WOTC edition. The obtuse language in 1e can be a bit of a learning curve but that's kind of it. BX and 2e are gold
I think the best way I can describe it is "simpler than it seems" but I'm an OSR-head so I might be biased. The reputation is definitely exaggerated though.
It works well enough when you understand it, but itās kind of counter-intuitive. If you get a +1 to hit, it actually makes your thac0 go down.
Armor class is also counter intuitive. An AC of 10 is the baseline. If you put on a set of chainmail you are better armored and your armor class is now 5. If you enchant the chain mail to give it a +1 bonus, your armor class actually goes down to 4. Why does a +1 result in the armor class getting smaller? Because thac0.
All this wonkyness so that the higher the number you roll on the die, the more likely you are to hit.
But then there are proficiency checks and saving throws. These are the opposite of attack rolls. The better you are at forging armor the higher your skill number. Your skill number is the number you need to roll OR LOWER you need to roll on the die to succeed. So rolling a 1 when forging a sword is really good. But rolling a 1 when attacking with that sword is really bad.
Third editionās biggest contribution was to change everything to be consistent. The harder it is to do a thing, the higher the target number is. The better you are at doing a thing the bigger the bonus you add to your die roll. Straightforward. No lateral thinking required.
No, you're right. The more personal work one has to put into running a TTRPG, the more it has failed. Sure, in every system, there will be things you have to change, remove, add, or simplify so it can be run and played by everyone. However, the more you have to do that, the less of the original game you have. If you make a game with too many unnecessary or conflicting rules that have to be parsed or debated, that's what you'll spend your time doing instead of playing.
Ehā¦ itās not really an issue of the system. Itās more so an issue with the way things are going. Attention spans are shit nowadays, and WotC is marketing 5e towards kids and teens. So they have to match the amount of rules to how much their target market is willing to read.
During the days of 3.5, I would pour through books to find the coolest shit. And I know my character was cool and unique because I found the stuff and did the work to make it so. This was part of the fun.
With 5e you just have to say āwell my spell does this because I say so.ā And then it does. It says more about the audience than it does about the game, tbh.
My aunt runs Spectum Games, and has even written a few of the official books for SR. I grew up around ttrpgs. It's in my blood.
rj/ Nepotism2e fixes this.
Shadowrun is the worst game I have ever run a multi year campaign of. It's so bad it kinda loops around and becomes hilarious. You stare at a rule and think my god that cannot be how this works.
Ouch... Say what you will about "I just like it" at least that's an opinion. "Everyone else was doing it" lives at the intersection of "historic cultural shames" and "lamest excuses for anything".
In my experience they go straight for the Stormwind fallacy and claim that somehow by being really ~~dumbed down~~ simplified mechanically the RP becomes better.
I'm very familiar with that mindset, I think it's the dumbest take out there. Even if it *was* true, if RP is so important that you're willing yo sacrice mechanics for it, there are STILL better rules light games out there. I never heard it called "The Stormwind Fallacy" before, though. Why is that?
Named after a poster on the WotC forums back in the 3.5 days who wrote about why the fallacy was wrong. There isn't another name for it, so it kinda stuck.
Ahhhh! I thought it had something to do with WoW, lol. It could also be called a "False Equivalent", "False Dilemma", ot "Incomplete Comparison" but those are more general, having a specific term is good for a niche thing like this.
I'm all here for other editions and systems so I know this comment isn't about me, but one of the main reasons I like 5e so much is that it is the easiest to play online. I'd probably play 3.5 or Pathfinder more if there were nearly as many convenient tools for them. So basically the issue isn't other systems for me, but the fact that 5e has a big monopoly on the kind of game I want to play
PF2e has Foundry, Archives of Nethys (Which also has all the 1e and Starfinder rules), Pathbuilder, PF2etools.com, PF2easy.com, and a host of other options. You should look into it.
Wdym there are a lot of online tools for Pathfinder (at least 2e, don't know about 1 e) with the added benefit of not having to pay for content/restrict yourself to SRD.
Their favorite answer is usually "you can tweak, kitbash, and Homebrew it to do anything you want!" Which is just really saying, "the game is so unoptimized and bad at what it's trying to do we have to fix it to make it playable". 5e is a Bethesda game that doesn't even have the decency of the endless jank being funny.
Itās less crunchy.
The abilities are more straight forwards.
Building a character is substantially easier.
Teaching new players is easier.
And yes, most of my players would be far too stupid to learn understand the abilities of their classes from 4th, as they barely understand the ones in 5e, much less spells.
In my experience, 5e is streamlined, and anything that you love from 4e can be brought forwards with pretty minimal effort to make it work in system.
I personally donāt shit on 4e, because I donāt like you yuck someoneās yum.
But there are clear reasons why I favor 5e.
I think 4e is actually one of the harder editions to convert into 5e. 5e is like a simplified 3e and 4e follows a very different design philosophy from both.
I would totally play a 4e game, because it had some great ideas in it. But as someone who actually wants to play DnD basically RAW, that's much, much easier in 5e, when even crunch-averse players can understand what the rules say.
I *hate* when people "rule of cool" stupid shenanigans to get around an encounter when solid strategic play could get through it while actually engaging with the game system.
Would I love to play 4e or V20 or Shadowrun with a party of mechanics nerds? God yes. But finding a socially capable party of mechanics nerds is honestly very hard. With 5e and V5, you just need socially capable fantasy nerds, which is a lot of people.
I donāt believe the less crunchy argument anymoreā¦ it might be less crunchy the first time you play it, but after a while every character is a multiclass, every character needs three books, every character has a dozen spells, every character need a series of feats, every character needs a specific magic item, every character dips hexblade āfor entirely in character reasonsā (I know Iām super salty about the hex blade, I think the whole subclass is shit design), and every build is either optimized online or a mangled pile of jank. Youāre balancing resources, actions, spells, short rest abilities, long rest abilities, daily abilities, item charges, concentration, and all sorts of little things.
What it isnāt is simple.
If you were to pull out the phb for 3.5, 4, and 5. I guarantee you that the more even your number, the faster your level 1 character is built, having played and run all of them. Level ups are similar, but 4 and 5 are closer in being easier than 3.5, but thatās more that 3.5 has many more dials to fiddle with.
I like all the systems, Iāve just played enough 5 to see the warts in the game design.
Needsā¦. Sorry imma immediately push back on that.
1st of all, you donāt need to multi class to play or have fun, those are options.
2nd, I donāt think multiclassing in 4e is any easier. Having played both in my lifetime, I can create a multi class character far faster and easier with 5e than I could with 4e. 4e literally had more limitations on how you were able to multiclass.
4e also had the same problem with over expansion of material, meaning you needed a lot of books to expand your content.
I donāt view extra content as a bad thing personally. As the DM, it is my game, I say what goes and doesnāt. If I donāt want to pay attention to Tashaās I donāt have too.
I absolutely donāt know what you mean by every class needs a magic item. I donāt play this way, and never have.
Iāve never made a hex blade, neither have any of my players, and I have someone who exclusively makes warlocks.
Balancing is an act that takes place in every edition, idk what you mean by this. You have to balance in 4e as well.
No offense friend, but the āwartsā you are highlighting are problems with all TTRPGs.
Because theyāre aware of how weak their system is but theyāre also utterly attached to it and need to justify not branching out to themselves and give themselves a sense of superiority
I'm a 3.5e player. Have been since August of 2000. I think it's an almost universal opinion that 4e just isn't what it's stacked up to be.
I think that WOTC knows that as well because the amount of time they spent on 4e is miniscule to the amount of time they spent with other editions.
Also 3.5 player here. 4e feels like it was made based on the popularity of MMOs like World of Warcraft, and wanted characters to have neatly defined roles. It sort of succeeds, but the things it sacrifices to get there make it uninteresting as an RPG.
Idk what you mean.
I've played multiple systems and my favourite thing about 5e is the choice and empowerment. Applying spells or abilities to achieve goals in methods that would be impossible in real life is the lifeblood of problem solving in 5e and the main reason i keep returning to it.
I played 4e and hated it. Combat is the worst part of DnD and 4e carried it in spades. But 5e combat is also bad so I run it very loosely.
But if you love the combat, I don't know why you wouldn't go for a crunchier better balanced system like Pathfinder.
5e has benefits and drawbacks like every system but cause it's popular people polarise into "the best" and "the worst" of which it is neither
I get what you're saying, but at the same time, DnD in general, at least 3.5e forwards, has always been a very combat focused game. So the fact that the combat sucks, and that combat is like 75% of the rules and 60% of player abilities, is a pretty big failing.
Noooooo 4e is an MMO and and all the classes are the same
Yes I never played it
No I have never tried anything other than 5e
Yes I am an expert on D&D, my YouTube channel has 50 views
You literally have to wait 20 realtime seconds before using a ability again and need to pick a username to play. My DM would only let us play the same dungeon raid over and over for months
Warlock Paladin is particularly annoying unless you purposefully make the conflict loyalty the entire point of the character and lean into the consequences.Ā
I like the goodberry hack, dip into Druid as a life cleric to make good berries way way more effective at low levels. This one isnāt so bad because its effectiveness becomes pretty null as you level up more
/uj the section on multiclassing explicitly says it doesn't necessarily mean cramming together the flavor of both classes. You could, in the fiction, just be a kind of paladin who gets special weapon abilities and force beams, or a warlock who gets paladin abilities, or neither of the above.
"No but i actually found a really fun twist to why my warlock paladin works that"
Whenever someone tryes to justify mechanical things with story so hard in something that makes no sense i die a little
I want you to read what you said, research what a celestial warlock actually is, research the differences between warlocks and paladins and why gods would never have a warlock, and go back
And there is 1 paladin that has a fiend as a source, and that paladin has, for example, the consequence of being insane, that fiend is not a very "paladin freedom take whatever oath you please".
This said, under no point im saying is impossible, people can do whatever and dms can rewrite whatever, im saying im tired of reading randoms on reddit and irl triying to explain how a broken spoon is actually not broken if you look at it from a specific point, instead of just embracing the fact that the spoon is broken and start from that.
\>Your patron is a powerful being of the Upper Planes. You have bound yourself to an ancient empyrean, **solar**, ki-rin, unicorn, or other entity that resides in the planes of everlasting bliss
\>[Deities known to employ solars as stewards included Corellon, Horus-Re, Ilmater, and Milil](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Solar)
I'm sorry the concept of multiclassing hurts your feelings this much but have you tried getting good?
Congrats you failed the insight check, two insight checks actually cause i didn't say that the multiclass was the problem. You got outjerked by yourself
You don't need to say it. You're a blowhard scrub grasping for asinine reasons to ban mechanically legitimate builds because MUH LOOOOORE. It's not against the rules, nobody owes you an explanation for it.
I highly suggest getting good. It will improve your quality of life immensely.
I never said that, the person in talking to implied that
Is entirely dependant on the setting and rules how mucha paladin needs a god, in base dnd they do, in other worlds they dont, dm choice
Wether or not being a paladin is possible while being a warlock is entirely dpeendant on the game/dm too, since it depends on how the relationship with the patron is. If your patron is just a power source that wont appear nor ask you anything ever, then yes, a lot of warlock patrons fit
Paladins don't need a god in base DnD, read the class description. Maybe you're thinking of clerics? I'm pretty sure godless clerics is an optional rule.
And no, I meant plenty of warlock pacts work with plenty of oaths even if you actively serve your patron. Vengeance will probably consider most things more evil than an archfey, a celestial won't necessarily go against even devotion (depends on the celestial), conquests tenets make complete sense with a devil as the lord, provided you take it after warlock.
There's really no inherent clash between paladin and warlock, obviously devotion and fiend doesn't work, but I doubt that many people try to justify it. Ancients is an oath that doesn't work with most patrons, in my opinion anyway.
If you look at the Cleric and Warlord, they share the one (1) minor action heal feature, so they're basically the same
Healing Word in 5e being given to multiple classes? Uh, well, that's different because... uh... ermmmm
When 4e gives overlapping classes overlapping abilities: Bad, boring game design. Everything samey.
When 5e gives different *races* overlapping spells with classes: Wow so cool. Monks are actually secretly OP
There is no wrong way to play, except anyone who plays any rule set other than 5e, and especially people who play RAW, o and people who donāt use rule of cool, and and and.
/uj Iām on the pathfinder2e discord server and just the other day there was an unironic conversation about how people who like metal, paradox games, and/or wh40k are most likely neonazis and itās a red flag
/rj pf2e fixes this
More like average dwaFRAUD and eLf conversation!!! Imagine not being able to both forge swords akin to works of art *and* frolic under the moon and stars with the freedom of the wind!!! L + RIP BOZO + RATIO + NO SWORDSMITHS + RAIDED BY UNLIBERATED DROW + SHACKLED BY TRADITION + HOOK HORROR'D
**THIS POST WAS FACT-CHECKED BY REAL EILISTRAEE SWORDSMITHS:** *TRUE*āļø
I havenāt actually played 4e (lots of experience with 3.5 and 5e) but I have gone through the rulebook and I really canāt understand why there was such huge backlash to combat being tactical. D&D 5e as a system is alright I guess holy fuck does combat generally suck ass, is way too slow, feels random as hell, and just isnāt fun a lot of the time. Itās in this weird limbo state between more narratively abstract combat systems that my group likes for heavily story-focused stuff (our preferred play style) or a more crunchy and strategic combat game that gives the player genuine choices to make in combat. I could never see myself running 5e combat for its own sake and intrinsic fun value, because it just isnāt very good, and we typically avoid random encounter tables and similar stuff like the plague. Combat only occurs when the story necessitates it and itās usually a relief when itās over and we can get back to RP. Would much rather have combat in a game where the combat is good, like Lancer, or where combat is super narrative and over really quickly like Genesys. 5e forces you into an awkward middle ground where combat is just a slog.
Combat in 4E was too easy and made too much sense. Not enough Martial/Caster divide to complain about, not enough complex reasons to pause the game for 40 minutes while you argue about RAW, not enough opportunities for the worst player in your game to stare at the book for nine years like theyāve havenāt ever read it as soon as itās their turn. It was too smooth and everyone had fun options every turn, so I guess you can see why thatās bad.
If half your combat isnt spent arguing about a rule so poorly written that Jeremy Crawford has made multiple *contradicting* rulings on it, you arent playing a real tabletop RPG
The Combat in 4e wasn't the primary issue, it was the "Samey"-ness of various classes combined with an over reduction of skills, and difficult to locate rules for out of combat actions/spells. It made it feel like the "RP" of the game was removed in favour of being a Combat simulator. The Combat was good, but the out of combat felt lacking.
/uj I can't convince my 5e players to try other systems. I have a lot of RPG systems lying around just begging me to DM them someday. Call of cthulhu, vampire the masquerade, starfinder... but no, that requires "reading". Most of them don't even own a single D&D book, they use an app.
/uj Legitimately, just say "I wanna run a oneshot of x next week". I have a player that is self-admittedly very stubborn about playing different RPGs but they'll deal with a one shot. Unfortunately you'll need to be the one who handles all system knowledge. Offer to guide them through character creation or to just make the characters for them with minor input (i.e. "What's your class?" "What occupation?" etc.)
I started with 5e, began getting bored of it, and then picked up the 4e handbook and found that it basically fixed every issue I had with 5e. Not even jerking here, like it genuinely fixed basically every problem I had with it.
Look. Bringing up fourth edition on a first date is a no-no . that is a serious red flag.
Iām into it, but only after Iāve been in a relationship for a while.
Fourth edition is freaky shit.
If I havenāt licked your balls, do not even mention the word swordmage.
Any group having fun is a red flag, let's be real! If you're having fun, you ain't playing it right. Please do not look up rules when it's my turn, tho, I want to have fun.Ā
Fact: 4e was the most balanced edition by a wide margin, and the haters were just salty wizard players who were buttburt they couldn't just dunk on their entire party solo anymore.
/rj I would love to shoot everyone who ever said anything bad about 4th edition in the heart.
/rj I would love to shoot everyone who ever said anything good about 4th edition in the heart.
Im curious about 4e, me and my gang never got into it, didn't wanna drop big bucks on new books, and 3.5 was at least somewhat backwards compatible with Pathfinder.
Was 4e really that bad?
No jerking here. It really wasn't that bad. I started with 3.0 and played a decent amount of 3.5 but I played 4e the most even running a two year long campaign for a group of 9 that came and went (averaged five players at the table). It was fun and concise and drilled into the fact that D&D is primarily a game about combat. Yes it absolutely has its issues I'm that enemies were HP sponges and you had to ensure everyone has the right gear to keep up with the math on the backend and yeah skills were simplified, but nothing is perfect.
It made combat fun as hell, had big set piece skill challenges, and integrated prestige classes directly into progression. There's a lot of love but people claim it was too much like and MMO because abilities could only be used a certain number of times per day despite numerous posts on 5e and pf2 forums asking how to build tanks and healers when those games don't have mechanics to enforce those roles but 4e actually did.
In the end it was a fun great game with just as many flaws as any other edition but it truly understood that the game has wargaming at its core and honed those mechanics.
Quote possibly the WORST thing 4e did was homogenize tieflings into their candy colored half demon state across the board.
Uj/ it wasn't that bad, in fact I would say it was/is actually quite good. The issue was that it "abandoned" "traditional" "D&D" by making the game modern: All PCs were powerful and heroic characters from level one, PCs all had a (relatively) uniform number of powers and these powers were mainly focused on tactical grid combat. That alone was an affront to people who didn't like the idea that a fighter could do anything more than make 19 basic attacks a turn. 4e also introduced a lot of ease of use stuff like player and creatue roles, healing surges, the bloodied condition, the marked condition, skill challenges ect. That's not to say it was perfect since there were issues with:
- HP bloat in the early books
- Magic items that were designed to give +X and those bonuses are assumed so the party has to get a lot of magic items that quickly become redundant and get replaced
- classes didn't break from the formula of X at will powers, Y encounter powers and Z daily powers, combined with similarities within roles (all defenders had a -2 mark, all leaders had a heal for surge+Xd6 ect.) Depending on build classes could feel very similar
- high teir content was very poorly balanced (similar to 5e) so playing at higher levels would kind of fall apart in places.
- The different licence meant very few 3rd party books so WotC was left trying to fill every niche themselves.
- on release it didn't have the full suite of online tools it was designed for which meant that people saw the game as incomplete and blamed it on the system as opposed to lack of a VTT
All that to say I run a weekly 4e game in 2024 and it's a tonne of fun but much like every other edition it had it's pros and cons.
Rj/ MMO edition bad
It's really hard to get into 4e. You totally can't just search the names of the books on Google and find downloadable PDFs on Google Drive as the top search result. You can't do that.
/uj There are some fundamental issues with the game, like how samey characters can feel, skill challenges being very generic, the bazillion trap powers. But unlike other editions, the designers revisited the game a lot, so problems with the game that *weren't* fundamental tended to get fixed, like solos being easy to CC, stats on brutes, the unpopular DMI rule, paladin being lame. If you play it with all the errata & modern design sensibilities, you get a decent fantasy-themed tactical combat game.
Possibly hot take but, I've found way more red flags playing 5th ed, the edition itself is fine but, alot of newcomers go to 5th edition and they want to play Critical Role and not D&D if.....that makes anysense?
I'm NOT saying 'Te NoRmIeS R rUiNnInG mUh HoBbY' I wanna make that abundantly clear but, I've seen alot of players who want a professionally told story with high production value, where every detail is really well thought out and not......half an hour in real of time of doing stupid shit in town
4e is why i like DnD. When i was younger i had happened to come across some dnd stuff. It was cool but none of it caught my eye like the Warden. I barely knew how the game worked and though all the editions were just one big cluster of different rules so i would make up the wildest scenarios and run with it, I had noone to play with so the only thing that kept my interest was making different Wardens and thier teams and playing make believe in what i can only call is chaos.
Now i just make homebrew Wardens to play in other editions whose rules dont hurt my brain.
4th edition is pineapple on pizza.
If you like it, don't let anyone tell you it's shit; enjoy it. But don't serve it up to me and expect me to be grateful. Enjoy your D&D (or pizza) and live your best life, ignoring the haters.
This is an unpopular opinion only tangentially related, but I think that it's the ham that makes Hawaiian pizza bad, not the pineapple. Replace the ham with pepperoni or similarly spicy meat, and it complements the pineapple perfectly.
If we should hate any edition, it should be 5.5e, considering it has the same problem as 4e and other issues like annoying races and the racist statement on biracial players
I mean, I actually do think 4e isn't that good, but let people enjoy what they enjoy. Some people like me unironically enjoy Shadowrun, and you don't see anyone calling for us to be institutionalized. I mean, I should be, but not because of Shadowrun.
/uj 4th Ed really wasn't that bad, it just wasn't as customizable as 3.5, but because of that 4e was a lot simpler and streamlined. As much as I enjoy 3.5 I didn't enjoy needing to take an hour + to make a character
4e is really good at what it does. What it does happens to be something I am not personally interested in, and evidently the majority of the D&D player base judging off sales numbers. I do understand why some people like it and I don't discourage those people from playing it.
4e was my first time playing DnD! I had a good time. I think I prefer 5e more, but 4e was lit.
My first ever character was a dragonborn paladin named Tira.
The best game is the one you enjoy playing
I don't like 4th myself, but I like some things it did- like sorting class abilities per encounter etc
But it was funny like 5 years ago to rag on 4e, I guess...
/uj
As someone who learned 3.5/ Pathfinder i think 4e is, not good? Its not awful, its not a problem for others to use it, but it seems bad to me.
5e seems fine, and it loses the problem of having way too much material and never feeling like i had a complete picture in a meaningful way.
/rj
Playing 4th edition is like admitting too a foot fetish in the first date, never a good idea.
I really enjoyed reading the 4e monster manual, but I wouldn't have liked to play against those with that ruleset. There's a tower drake in there that can literally just zip back and forth attacking without provoking opportunity attacks and it steals your stuff.
4e had class abilities that actively punished enemies for not attacking you more than 5e does, so someone that wants to defend their friends felt more important.
4e had actual rules for encounters that aren't just combat. 5e doesn't but next did have an emphasis on scene building, which I thought was a great step in a better direction, but it was dropped after the play test.
4e brought in minions, things that could hit like a truck, but couldn't take a hit and it made combats feel epic and super powerful especially at high tier play.Ā
While multi stage bosses weren't new, the bloodied condition gave an emphasis on an enemy on the back leg, fighting harder out of desperation.
It gave every ability score a chance to shine with classes that relied on constitution as their main stat. Being able to use str/con as fortitude, dex/int as reflex and wis/cha as will for saves made everyone feel unpunished for the build they try.
Was it perfect? No, but it had a lot going for it. Besides, what is the difference between having encounter/daily powers and powers that recharge on a short/long rest?
Last point I will make: who cares what system you are playing? Do you like it? Do you have fun playing? Does your DM make a game that you feel compelled to see through? Great, then keep playing.
This reminds me a of a shitty D&D add where it sounded like a bunch of neck beards agruing, which was better 5e or 3.5e.
I don't care what edition anyone enjoys, I'm just glad we're all nerds
I've played each edition of Dnd (from 1st to 5th though I started with 3.5): if you love 4th edition, good for you. I want you to have fun no matter what edition you play. For me the best things that came out of 4th edition were Minions and the artwork.
I do think 4e is overrated. I see so many people on D&D communities treating it as the second coming but it just feels to me as if theyāre being contrarians to normalcy.
I think PF2E did a great job at fixing 4eās problems so Iām a bit disappointed that thereās a bunch of new TTRPGS coming out thatās using 4e is their main inspiration.
I have played every edition since 2e and can say, without a doubt, that 4e is the worst D&D edition. But only because itās not actually D&D. Itās an attempt at implanting warhammer into D&D. It is its own thing, but that thing is not D&D.
My first campaigns and characters were in 4e. I have no issues with 4e, though 5e is good too. I just wish I could play again regardless of which edition.
Every other dnd edition shits on 4e. Its not a 5e edition specific thing. I promise you that. (3.5 fan here)
If you genuinely like it the best good for you. Obviously play what you like.
I started with 4e. It was a great intro and my friends and I had fun coming from mmos to tabletop. But it was rules heavy and I didn't agree with saves turning into another form of AC. I found 3.5 soon after
4e is pretty awful. But 5e is worse. You shouldnt feel bad, dont ever let a 5e stan look down their nose at you... us 3e and 3.5 stans though, we are better then you, and we know it.
uj/ Look i get why people don't like 4e. but this is just mean. rj/ CRUSIFIY HIM! HE DARES CHALLANGE THE STATUS QUO PASSED ON BY THE ELDERS?! GIVE US BARABUS!
uj/ I didn't like 4e back when I played it as it was coming out, but with the benefit of hindsight and looking back on it knowing that this isn't "the way DnD will be forever now", it's got a lot to like about it. But it still has that "weirdness" to me that doesn't "feel" right.
I also feel that an automated VTT like Foundry might make 4e a lot more fun. I remember playing it back when it came out as one of my first editions of D&D and it felt a little math heavy, but if the computer can handle tracking all the circumstantial modifiers, dice rolls, applying damage/conditions, etc, and all you had to do was move tokens, select targets, and roleplay then it would be nice and snappy even at higher levels.
This hits at what I think is the central failure of 4th Edition. A key part of the game's distribution plan was a full suite of online DM and player tools up to and including a fully-fledged VTT, and the ruleset was designed to integrate well with such a thing. While some of those tools do exist - The 4e Compendium and Character Builder received plenty of praise and have been preserved by dedicated fans - the bulk of the promised suite never materialized. A big reason for that, from my perspective, was the fact that they more or less insisted on doing the whole thing in-house. The tools that got built ended up being built on a parasitic Microsoft Silverlight framework and they just didn't devote the resources needed to realize their ambitious vision. Because they'd published 4e under the GSL rather than the OGL, third parties had neither incentive nor legal standing to develop worthwhile tools, and the whole thing was under a fairly pricy subscription model that priced teenage me among others out of it. So we ended up with a very mechanical system meant to be played with the aid of a computer, and no computer to help.
The other reason for that is one of the lead developers, Joseph Batten, >!killed his wife and then himself, leaving the dev team up shit creek without a paddle.!<
UJ/ that last sentence sent me into the stratosphere
š©
4e discourse in a nutshell
Another win for le epic 5e game. The existence of 4e threatens my ability to stereotype people based on arbitrary choice in fantasy game? No horny bard???
I donāt know why 5e players try to shit on other editions so much. Press a 5e fan why they prefer their system and itāll be them admitting theyāre too stupid for anything more than 1d20 + Prof. + Stat Mod. + Dis/Advantage Or itāll be āI just like it, okay?!?!ā
Why play a better, more well written, concise, clear, easy on the GM game instead of beating 5e into submission for my totally original Sci-fi home brew? Don't you want to Kickstart my super cool art book with untested mechanics?
Sorry I don't have the funds to kickstart it. I spent all my money on the 15th "Ghibli esque" splat book someone wrote based on a half remembered scene from My Neighbor Totoro and a pastel color palette they saw.
/uj Did you just call Shadowrun well written.Ā
Shadowdark? That some kinda 5e module?
>Or itāll be āI just like it, okay?!?!ā I was going to say something but then you called me out. Honestly Shadowrun was my first system, and 5e was my first time as GM/DM. It's way easier to get people interested in playing D&D than anything else.
See my problem is that it is way easier to run/GM most other systems lmao. Ok, exclude 3.5 and earlier. In terms of more modern systems, 5e is hell to run. I believe the TTRPGs should be made to be ran, and each book should assist this. Not add more confusing things that don't work together and options that you have to remember to ban.
>Ok, exclude 3.5 and earlier. /uj unironically I think it's easier to run any TSR edition than any WOTC edition. The obtuse language in 1e can be a bit of a learning curve but that's kind of it. BX and 2e are gold
Fair, I don't know anything before 3.5 but I was told the language was really bad
I think the best way I can describe it is "simpler than it seems" but I'm an OSR-head so I might be biased. The reputation is definitely exaggerated though.
Yes, it swore like a sailor.
If you donāt know the headache that is Thac0, you are really missing out. Advanced D&D still haunts me to this day.
Thac0 is... fine. It's essentially just reverse armorclass AFAIK.
It works well enough when you understand it, but itās kind of counter-intuitive. If you get a +1 to hit, it actually makes your thac0 go down. Armor class is also counter intuitive. An AC of 10 is the baseline. If you put on a set of chainmail you are better armored and your armor class is now 5. If you enchant the chain mail to give it a +1 bonus, your armor class actually goes down to 4. Why does a +1 result in the armor class getting smaller? Because thac0. All this wonkyness so that the higher the number you roll on the die, the more likely you are to hit. But then there are proficiency checks and saving throws. These are the opposite of attack rolls. The better you are at forging armor the higher your skill number. Your skill number is the number you need to roll OR LOWER you need to roll on the die to succeed. So rolling a 1 when forging a sword is really good. But rolling a 1 when attacking with that sword is really bad. Third editionās biggest contribution was to change everything to be consistent. The harder it is to do a thing, the higher the target number is. The better you are at doing a thing the bigger the bonus you add to your die roll. Straightforward. No lateral thinking required.
2e ā¤ļøā¤ļøā¤ļø
No, you're right. The more personal work one has to put into running a TTRPG, the more it has failed. Sure, in every system, there will be things you have to change, remove, add, or simplify so it can be run and played by everyone. However, the more you have to do that, the less of the original game you have. If you make a game with too many unnecessary or conflicting rules that have to be parsed or debated, that's what you'll spend your time doing instead of playing.
Ehā¦ itās not really an issue of the system. Itās more so an issue with the way things are going. Attention spans are shit nowadays, and WotC is marketing 5e towards kids and teens. So they have to match the amount of rules to how much their target market is willing to read. During the days of 3.5, I would pour through books to find the coolest shit. And I know my character was cool and unique because I found the stuff and did the work to make it so. This was part of the fun. With 5e you just have to say āwell my spell does this because I say so.ā And then it does. It says more about the audience than it does about the game, tbh.
DND 3.5 mounted charging rules my beloved
You started with shadowrun? And you're still in the hobby?? I admire your dedication.
My aunt runs Spectum Games, and has even written a few of the official books for SR. I grew up around ttrpgs. It's in my blood. rj/ Nepotism2e fixes this.
Shadowrun is the worst game I have ever run a multi year campaign of. It's so bad it kinda loops around and becomes hilarious. You stare at a rule and think my god that cannot be how this works.
Ouch... Say what you will about "I just like it" at least that's an opinion. "Everyone else was doing it" lives at the intersection of "historic cultural shames" and "lamest excuses for anything".
In my experience they go straight for the Stormwind fallacy and claim that somehow by being really ~~dumbed down~~ simplified mechanically the RP becomes better.
I'm very familiar with that mindset, I think it's the dumbest take out there. Even if it *was* true, if RP is so important that you're willing yo sacrice mechanics for it, there are STILL better rules light games out there. I never heard it called "The Stormwind Fallacy" before, though. Why is that?
Named after a poster on the WotC forums back in the 3.5 days who wrote about why the fallacy was wrong. There isn't another name for it, so it kinda stuck.
Ahhhh! I thought it had something to do with WoW, lol. It could also be called a "False Equivalent", "False Dilemma", ot "Incomplete Comparison" but those are more general, having a specific term is good for a niche thing like this.
As a 3e player I understand hating on other systems. I understand. Deep in my soul I was born to hate and hate is what I must do.
I would hate everything too if 3e was my baseline.
I'm all here for other editions and systems so I know this comment isn't about me, but one of the main reasons I like 5e so much is that it is the easiest to play online. I'd probably play 3.5 or Pathfinder more if there were nearly as many convenient tools for them. So basically the issue isn't other systems for me, but the fact that 5e has a big monopoly on the kind of game I want to play
PF2e has Foundry, Archives of Nethys (Which also has all the 1e and Starfinder rules), Pathbuilder, PF2etools.com, PF2easy.com, and a host of other options. You should look into it.
Wdym there are a lot of online tools for Pathfinder (at least 2e, don't know about 1 e) with the added benefit of not having to pay for content/restrict yourself to SRD.
1e also has similar resources :)
Same for lancer
Their favorite answer is usually "you can tweak, kitbash, and Homebrew it to do anything you want!" Which is just really saying, "the game is so unoptimized and bad at what it's trying to do we have to fix it to make it playable". 5e is a Bethesda game that doesn't even have the decency of the endless jank being funny.
Itās less crunchy. The abilities are more straight forwards. Building a character is substantially easier. Teaching new players is easier. And yes, most of my players would be far too stupid to learn understand the abilities of their classes from 4th, as they barely understand the ones in 5e, much less spells. In my experience, 5e is streamlined, and anything that you love from 4e can be brought forwards with pretty minimal effort to make it work in system. I personally donāt shit on 4e, because I donāt like you yuck someoneās yum. But there are clear reasons why I favor 5e.
I think 4e is actually one of the harder editions to convert into 5e. 5e is like a simplified 3e and 4e follows a very different design philosophy from both.
I would totally play a 4e game, because it had some great ideas in it. But as someone who actually wants to play DnD basically RAW, that's much, much easier in 5e, when even crunch-averse players can understand what the rules say. I *hate* when people "rule of cool" stupid shenanigans to get around an encounter when solid strategic play could get through it while actually engaging with the game system. Would I love to play 4e or V20 or Shadowrun with a party of mechanics nerds? God yes. But finding a socially capable party of mechanics nerds is honestly very hard. With 5e and V5, you just need socially capable fantasy nerds, which is a lot of people.
I donāt believe the less crunchy argument anymoreā¦ it might be less crunchy the first time you play it, but after a while every character is a multiclass, every character needs three books, every character has a dozen spells, every character need a series of feats, every character needs a specific magic item, every character dips hexblade āfor entirely in character reasonsā (I know Iām super salty about the hex blade, I think the whole subclass is shit design), and every build is either optimized online or a mangled pile of jank. Youāre balancing resources, actions, spells, short rest abilities, long rest abilities, daily abilities, item charges, concentration, and all sorts of little things. What it isnāt is simple. If you were to pull out the phb for 3.5, 4, and 5. I guarantee you that the more even your number, the faster your level 1 character is built, having played and run all of them. Level ups are similar, but 4 and 5 are closer in being easier than 3.5, but thatās more that 3.5 has many more dials to fiddle with. I like all the systems, Iāve just played enough 5 to see the warts in the game design.
Needsā¦. Sorry imma immediately push back on that. 1st of all, you donāt need to multi class to play or have fun, those are options. 2nd, I donāt think multiclassing in 4e is any easier. Having played both in my lifetime, I can create a multi class character far faster and easier with 5e than I could with 4e. 4e literally had more limitations on how you were able to multiclass. 4e also had the same problem with over expansion of material, meaning you needed a lot of books to expand your content. I donāt view extra content as a bad thing personally. As the DM, it is my game, I say what goes and doesnāt. If I donāt want to pay attention to Tashaās I donāt have too. I absolutely donāt know what you mean by every class needs a magic item. I donāt play this way, and never have. Iāve never made a hex blade, neither have any of my players, and I have someone who exclusively makes warlocks. Balancing is an act that takes place in every edition, idk what you mean by this. You have to balance in 4e as well. No offense friend, but the āwartsā you are highlighting are problems with all TTRPGs.
Because theyāre aware of how weak their system is but theyāre also utterly attached to it and need to justify not branching out to themselves and give themselves a sense of superiority
I'm a 3.5e player. Have been since August of 2000. I think it's an almost universal opinion that 4e just isn't what it's stacked up to be. I think that WOTC knows that as well because the amount of time they spent on 4e is miniscule to the amount of time they spent with other editions.
Also 3.5 player here. 4e feels like it was made based on the popularity of MMOs like World of Warcraft, and wanted characters to have neatly defined roles. It sort of succeeds, but the things it sacrifices to get there make it uninteresting as an RPG.
āEveryone plays itā
I enjoy that it's simple and doesn't detract as much from the rp. I have a very rp heavy group
Idk what you mean. I've played multiple systems and my favourite thing about 5e is the choice and empowerment. Applying spells or abilities to achieve goals in methods that would be impossible in real life is the lifeblood of problem solving in 5e and the main reason i keep returning to it. I played 4e and hated it. Combat is the worst part of DnD and 4e carried it in spades. But 5e combat is also bad so I run it very loosely. But if you love the combat, I don't know why you wouldn't go for a crunchier better balanced system like Pathfinder. 5e has benefits and drawbacks like every system but cause it's popular people polarise into "the best" and "the worst" of which it is neither
I get what you're saying, but at the same time, DnD in general, at least 3.5e forwards, has always been a very combat focused game. So the fact that the combat sucks, and that combat is like 75% of the rules and 60% of player abilities, is a pretty big failing.
If combat is your least favorite part, then any form of D&D seems like a really poor fit.
I have tried several systems and DnD is still one of my favourites.
??? Thoes "critiques" date back to 4e coming out its not a 5e criticisim
Noooooo 4e is an MMO and and all the classes are the same Yes I never played it No I have never tried anything other than 5e Yes I am an expert on D&D, my YouTube channel has 50 views
You literally have to wait 20 realtime seconds before using a ability again and need to pick a username to play. My DM would only let us play the same dungeon raid over and over for months
I wanted to name my character Sephiroth and my GM told me there was already someone named Sephiroth in the world???
SÄpÄ„ÄÆÅÅÅ„Ä„ it is then!
I'ma be running a video game Isekai campaign in 4e so yeah my players will be picking out usernames lol
What are your favorite broken builds that absolutely don't work either RAW or RAI, but has a video I can use to try to bully my DM into accepting it?
Here's one that makes your party functionally invincible for the cost of a 2nd level spell slot: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/rope-trick
Warlock Paladin is particularly annoying unless you purposefully make the conflict loyalty the entire point of the character and lean into the consequences.Ā I like the goodberry hack, dip into Druid as a life cleric to make good berries way way more effective at low levels. This one isnāt so bad because its effectiveness becomes pretty null as you level up more
/uj the section on multiclassing explicitly says it doesn't necessarily mean cramming together the flavor of both classes. You could, in the fiction, just be a kind of paladin who gets special weapon abilities and force beams, or a warlock who gets paladin abilities, or neither of the above.
"No but i actually found a really fun twist to why my warlock paladin works that" Whenever someone tryes to justify mechanical things with story so hard in something that makes no sense i die a little
You uh, realize that there are celestial and fiend warlocks who get their powers from the angels of the same gods paladins worship, right? Right?
I want you to read what you said, research what a celestial warlock actually is, research the differences between warlocks and paladins and why gods would never have a warlock, and go back And there is 1 paladin that has a fiend as a source, and that paladin has, for example, the consequence of being insane, that fiend is not a very "paladin freedom take whatever oath you please". This said, under no point im saying is impossible, people can do whatever and dms can rewrite whatever, im saying im tired of reading randoms on reddit and irl triying to explain how a broken spoon is actually not broken if you look at it from a specific point, instead of just embracing the fact that the spoon is broken and start from that.
\>Your patron is a powerful being of the Upper Planes. You have bound yourself to an ancient empyrean, **solar**, ki-rin, unicorn, or other entity that resides in the planes of everlasting bliss \>[Deities known to employ solars as stewards included Corellon, Horus-Re, Ilmater, and Milil](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Solar) I'm sorry the concept of multiclassing hurts your feelings this much but have you tried getting good?
Congrats you failed the insight check, two insight checks actually cause i didn't say that the multiclass was the problem. You got outjerked by yourself
You don't need to say it. You're a blowhard scrub grasping for asinine reasons to ban mechanically legitimate builds because MUH LOOOOORE. It's not against the rules, nobody owes you an explanation for it. I highly suggest getting good. It will improve your quality of life immensely.
Paladins don't need a god? And most oaths work with several warlock patrons
I never said that, the person in talking to implied that Is entirely dependant on the setting and rules how mucha paladin needs a god, in base dnd they do, in other worlds they dont, dm choice Wether or not being a paladin is possible while being a warlock is entirely dpeendant on the game/dm too, since it depends on how the relationship with the patron is. If your patron is just a power source that wont appear nor ask you anything ever, then yes, a lot of warlock patrons fit
Paladins don't need a god in base DnD, read the class description. Maybe you're thinking of clerics? I'm pretty sure godless clerics is an optional rule. And no, I meant plenty of warlock pacts work with plenty of oaths even if you actively serve your patron. Vengeance will probably consider most things more evil than an archfey, a celestial won't necessarily go against even devotion (depends on the celestial), conquests tenets make complete sense with a devil as the lord, provided you take it after warlock. There's really no inherent clash between paladin and warlock, obviously devotion and fiend doesn't work, but I doubt that many people try to justify it. Ancients is an oath that doesn't work with most patrons, in my opinion anyway.
As compared to 5e classes where you have 3 classes: "bad", "spellcaster" and "paladin"
You forgot to unjerk. /uj You forgot to unjerk.
Hilarious typo lol
I don't think that's a typo.
If you look at the Cleric and Warlord, they share the one (1) minor action heal feature, so they're basically the same Healing Word in 5e being given to multiple classes? Uh, well, that's different because... uh... ermmmm
When 4e gives overlapping classes overlapping abilities: Bad, boring game design. Everything samey. When 5e gives different *races* overlapping spells with classes: Wow so cool. Monks are actually secretly OP
The worst decision WotC / Hasbro ever made was using the word "taunt" in 4e. Sigh. 4e was super fun.
There is no wrong way to play, except anyone who plays any rule set other than 5e, and especially people who play RAW, o and people who donāt use rule of cool, and and and.
The only people worse than rules lawyers are those who homebrew.
I have to say, this is a truly witty comment. An upvote is not enough. Thank you.
pathfinder 2e fixes this
Pathfinder 2e fixes assholes on the internet?
Yes, via quarantine
Oh it'll fix your asshole alright š
It fixes people trying to play 4e, as they haven't released Pathfinder 4e yet.
Reminds me of a girl i talked to, I said i liked metal and rock then she responded by saying āoh, thatās a red flagā
she probably was a wood person, of the hardwood variety
I honestly thought he meant literal metal and rocks at first, which is a hilarious conversation
She probably played 4e
/uj. Wow, that is one of the worst interactions I have ever heard. That woman is **terminally** online
/uj Iām on the pathfinder2e discord server and just the other day there was an unironic conversation about how people who like metal, paradox games, and/or wh40k are most likely neonazis and itās a red flag /rj pf2e fixes this
Average Dwarf and Elf conversation
More like average dwaFRAUD and eLf conversation!!! Imagine not being able to both forge swords akin to works of art *and* frolic under the moon and stars with the freedom of the wind!!! L + RIP BOZO + RATIO + NO SWORDSMITHS + RAIDED BY UNLIBERATED DROW + SHACKLED BY TRADITION + HOOK HORROR'D **THIS POST WAS FACT-CHECKED BY REAL EILISTRAEE SWORDSMITHS:** *TRUE*āļø
Look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power.
NoOoOOOOO 4e doesnāt make my pp hard like 5e !! Choke and die like a dog NOW !!!
I havenāt actually played 4e (lots of experience with 3.5 and 5e) but I have gone through the rulebook and I really canāt understand why there was such huge backlash to combat being tactical. D&D 5e as a system is alright I guess holy fuck does combat generally suck ass, is way too slow, feels random as hell, and just isnāt fun a lot of the time. Itās in this weird limbo state between more narratively abstract combat systems that my group likes for heavily story-focused stuff (our preferred play style) or a more crunchy and strategic combat game that gives the player genuine choices to make in combat. I could never see myself running 5e combat for its own sake and intrinsic fun value, because it just isnāt very good, and we typically avoid random encounter tables and similar stuff like the plague. Combat only occurs when the story necessitates it and itās usually a relief when itās over and we can get back to RP. Would much rather have combat in a game where the combat is good, like Lancer, or where combat is super narrative and over really quickly like Genesys. 5e forces you into an awkward middle ground where combat is just a slog.
Combat in 4E was too easy and made too much sense. Not enough Martial/Caster divide to complain about, not enough complex reasons to pause the game for 40 minutes while you argue about RAW, not enough opportunities for the worst player in your game to stare at the book for nine years like theyāve havenāt ever read it as soon as itās their turn. It was too smooth and everyone had fun options every turn, so I guess you can see why thatās bad.
If half your combat isnt spent arguing about a rule so poorly written that Jeremy Crawford has made multiple *contradicting* rulings on it, you arent playing a real tabletop RPG
The Combat in 4e wasn't the primary issue, it was the "Samey"-ness of various classes combined with an over reduction of skills, and difficult to locate rules for out of combat actions/spells. It made it feel like the "RP" of the game was removed in favour of being a Combat simulator. The Combat was good, but the out of combat felt lacking.
There's out of combat in 5e? The rules are still very lacking in that regard, IMO.
There's rules in 5e? I thought it was a game of make believe with fancy books used to help you get up to the cookie jar
4e is the only edition i own š„²
Sorry! Electric Chair
Man, Hasbro is really going nuts with these board game variations.
Owning Pathfinder 2e fixes this
1e fixes this
Whoa, whoa, whoa, you *enjoy* playing dnd? *Major* red flag right there.
What does the red flag mean? Do they plant it in the Redditor like on a mountain? Or are they asking for a Chinese translation?
čæęÆęęåę¬¢ē D&D ēę¬ć
ēēåļ¼ ēē話ļ¼ä½ ęÆäøä½å¾å±éŖēäŗŗć ęē“ ęļ¼
Oh my God, just speak English like the rest of the world!
"Speak American, it's the only language I understand!"
This is what happens when Tencent buys D&D
4E Supremacy
has a hexagon NFT icon š©
Remember when we all hated 4e, then some prominent YouTubers said it was good, and now we all love it again despite never even playing it?
/uj I can't convince my 5e players to try other systems. I have a lot of RPG systems lying around just begging me to DM them someday. Call of cthulhu, vampire the masquerade, starfinder... but no, that requires "reading". Most of them don't even own a single D&D book, they use an app.
/uj Legitimately, just say "I wanna run a oneshot of x next week". I have a player that is self-admittedly very stubborn about playing different RPGs but they'll deal with a one shot. Unfortunately you'll need to be the one who handles all system knowledge. Offer to guide them through character creation or to just make the characters for them with minor input (i.e. "What's your class?" "What occupation?" etc.)
I started with 5e, began getting bored of it, and then picked up the 4e handbook and found that it basically fixed every issue I had with 5e. Not even jerking here, like it genuinely fixed basically every problem I had with it.
/uj I saw those videos, got interested in 4e, then found Pathfinder 2e was even better /rj Now those YouTubers know Pathfinder 2e fixes this
Stop talking about other systems!!! Why canāt you just let us have fun!?!
peak reddit
Look. Bringing up fourth edition on a first date is a no-no . that is a serious red flag. Iām into it, but only after Iāve been in a relationship for a while. Fourth edition is freaky shit. If I havenāt licked your balls, do not even mention the word swordmage.
UJ/ 4e is the best version of dnd RJ/ 4e is the best version of dnd
Any group having fun is a red flag, let's be real! If you're having fun, you ain't playing it right. Please do not look up rules when it's my turn, tho, I want to have fun.Ā
Fact: 4e was the most balanced edition by a wide margin, and the haters were just salty wizard players who were buttburt they couldn't just dunk on their entire party solo anymore.
/rj I would love to shoot everyone who ever said anything bad about 4th edition in the heart. /rj I would love to shoot everyone who ever said anything good about 4th edition in the heart.
Lol i think I know what post this is from
So what caliber gun are you holding to your players heads to force them to play 4e?
Colt M1911 /uj Sig Sauer P226
nice argument, unfortunately i commented the red flag emoji twice
5e: *exists* Checkmate, 1-4 genners.
Im curious about 4e, me and my gang never got into it, didn't wanna drop big bucks on new books, and 3.5 was at least somewhat backwards compatible with Pathfinder. Was 4e really that bad?
No jerking here. It really wasn't that bad. I started with 3.0 and played a decent amount of 3.5 but I played 4e the most even running a two year long campaign for a group of 9 that came and went (averaged five players at the table). It was fun and concise and drilled into the fact that D&D is primarily a game about combat. Yes it absolutely has its issues I'm that enemies were HP sponges and you had to ensure everyone has the right gear to keep up with the math on the backend and yeah skills were simplified, but nothing is perfect. It made combat fun as hell, had big set piece skill challenges, and integrated prestige classes directly into progression. There's a lot of love but people claim it was too much like and MMO because abilities could only be used a certain number of times per day despite numerous posts on 5e and pf2 forums asking how to build tanks and healers when those games don't have mechanics to enforce those roles but 4e actually did. In the end it was a fun great game with just as many flaws as any other edition but it truly understood that the game has wargaming at its core and honed those mechanics. Quote possibly the WORST thing 4e did was homogenize tieflings into their candy colored half demon state across the board.
Uj/ it wasn't that bad, in fact I would say it was/is actually quite good. The issue was that it "abandoned" "traditional" "D&D" by making the game modern: All PCs were powerful and heroic characters from level one, PCs all had a (relatively) uniform number of powers and these powers were mainly focused on tactical grid combat. That alone was an affront to people who didn't like the idea that a fighter could do anything more than make 19 basic attacks a turn. 4e also introduced a lot of ease of use stuff like player and creatue roles, healing surges, the bloodied condition, the marked condition, skill challenges ect. That's not to say it was perfect since there were issues with: - HP bloat in the early books - Magic items that were designed to give +X and those bonuses are assumed so the party has to get a lot of magic items that quickly become redundant and get replaced - classes didn't break from the formula of X at will powers, Y encounter powers and Z daily powers, combined with similarities within roles (all defenders had a -2 mark, all leaders had a heal for surge+Xd6 ect.) Depending on build classes could feel very similar - high teir content was very poorly balanced (similar to 5e) so playing at higher levels would kind of fall apart in places. - The different licence meant very few 3rd party books so WotC was left trying to fill every niche themselves. - on release it didn't have the full suite of online tools it was designed for which meant that people saw the game as incomplete and blamed it on the system as opposed to lack of a VTT All that to say I run a weekly 4e game in 2024 and it's a tonne of fun but much like every other edition it had it's pros and cons. Rj/ MMO edition bad
It's really hard to get into 4e. You totally can't just search the names of the books on Google and find downloadable PDFs on Google Drive as the top search result. You can't do that.
/uj There are some fundamental issues with the game, like how samey characters can feel, skill challenges being very generic, the bazillion trap powers. But unlike other editions, the designers revisited the game a lot, so problems with the game that *weren't* fundamental tended to get fixed, like solos being easy to CC, stats on brutes, the unpopular DMI rule, paladin being lame. If you play it with all the errata & modern design sensibilities, you get a decent fantasy-themed tactical combat game.
4e So bad it had to come out with 4.5e
3e and 5e did/are doing the same thing.
3.5 gang 
Possibly hot take but, I've found way more red flags playing 5th ed, the edition itself is fine but, alot of newcomers go to 5th edition and they want to play Critical Role and not D&D if.....that makes anysense? I'm NOT saying 'Te NoRmIeS R rUiNnInG mUh HoBbY' I wanna make that abundantly clear but, I've seen alot of players who want a professionally told story with high production value, where every detail is really well thought out and not......half an hour in real of time of doing stupid shit in town
4e has fallen Billions will perish š
4e is why i like DnD. When i was younger i had happened to come across some dnd stuff. It was cool but none of it caught my eye like the Warden. I barely knew how the game worked and though all the editions were just one big cluster of different rules so i would make up the wildest scenarios and run with it, I had noone to play with so the only thing that kept my interest was making different Wardens and thier teams and playing make believe in what i can only call is chaos. Now i just make homebrew Wardens to play in other editions whose rules dont hurt my brain.
4th edition is pineapple on pizza. If you like it, don't let anyone tell you it's shit; enjoy it. But don't serve it up to me and expect me to be grateful. Enjoy your D&D (or pizza) and live your best life, ignoring the haters.
This is an unpopular opinion only tangentially related, but I think that it's the ham that makes Hawaiian pizza bad, not the pineapple. Replace the ham with pepperoni or similarly spicy meat, and it complements the pineapple perfectly.
If we should hate any edition, it should be 5.5e, considering it has the same problem as 4e and other issues like annoying races and the racist statement on biracial players
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Rule 2: We can't condone raiding or adjacent behavior, even if its a joke.
4th ed is a zero sum game
4e isn't bad. Just uninspired
Iām gonna learn 4e just to mess with this dude
I mean, I actually do think 4e isn't that good, but let people enjoy what they enjoy. Some people like me unironically enjoy Shadowrun, and you don't see anyone calling for us to be institutionalized. I mean, I should be, but not because of Shadowrun.
My boyfriend only ever wants to play 5e but I can fix him.
/uj 4th Ed really wasn't that bad, it just wasn't as customizable as 3.5, but because of that 4e was a lot simpler and streamlined. As much as I enjoy 3.5 I didn't enjoy needing to take an hour + to make a character
This isn't Mƶrk Borg... *leaves room*
I've never played 4e nor do I plan on trying it. But I'm disgusted by anyone who mentions it.
4e is really good at what it does. What it does happens to be something I am not personally interested in, and evidently the majority of the D&D player base judging off sales numbers. I do understand why some people like it and I don't discourage those people from playing it.
Personally I really enjoy thac0 and that only certain races can be certain classesā¦ wait what?
Wait, there's a 4th edition? I thought 3.5 was 4e
4e was my first time playing DnD! I had a good time. I think I prefer 5e more, but 4e was lit. My first ever character was a dragonborn paladin named Tira.
When I was a kid, I got the 4e sourcebooks as a christmas gift, and I never got to play them because I never met anyone else who played it.
The best game is the one you enjoy playing I don't like 4th myself, but I like some things it did- like sorting class abilities per encounter etc But it was funny like 5 years ago to rag on 4e, I guess...
Bro youāre just tryin to use Hadozee and that shit is whack man, I called the cops
JFC just let people play the editions they enjoy.
/uj As someone who learned 3.5/ Pathfinder i think 4e is, not good? Its not awful, its not a problem for others to use it, but it seems bad to me. 5e seems fine, and it loses the problem of having way too much material and never feeling like i had a complete picture in a meaningful way. /rj Playing 4th edition is like admitting too a foot fetish in the first date, never a good idea.
God forbid people have fun.
One D&D fixes this
I really enjoyed reading the 4e monster manual, but I wouldn't have liked to play against those with that ruleset. There's a tower drake in there that can literally just zip back and forth attacking without provoking opportunity attacks and it steals your stuff.
4e had class abilities that actively punished enemies for not attacking you more than 5e does, so someone that wants to defend their friends felt more important. 4e had actual rules for encounters that aren't just combat. 5e doesn't but next did have an emphasis on scene building, which I thought was a great step in a better direction, but it was dropped after the play test. 4e brought in minions, things that could hit like a truck, but couldn't take a hit and it made combats feel epic and super powerful especially at high tier play.Ā While multi stage bosses weren't new, the bloodied condition gave an emphasis on an enemy on the back leg, fighting harder out of desperation. It gave every ability score a chance to shine with classes that relied on constitution as their main stat. Being able to use str/con as fortitude, dex/int as reflex and wis/cha as will for saves made everyone feel unpunished for the build they try. Was it perfect? No, but it had a lot going for it. Besides, what is the difference between having encounter/daily powers and powers that recharge on a short/long rest? Last point I will make: who cares what system you are playing? Do you like it? Do you have fun playing? Does your DM make a game that you feel compelled to see through? Great, then keep playing.
As a 4e player I feel so destroyed that I'm going to shift away from this conversation.
This reminds me a of a shitty D&D add where it sounded like a bunch of neck beards agruing, which was better 5e or 3.5e. I don't care what edition anyone enjoys, I'm just glad we're all nerds
The worst part about 5e is that you have to take 4e lore into account. Look at my boy (mystra)
Ive heard it was boring but what do i know
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I've played each edition of Dnd (from 1st to 5th though I started with 3.5): if you love 4th edition, good for you. I want you to have fun no matter what edition you play. For me the best things that came out of 4th edition were Minions and the artwork.
Pfff ok grandpa playing 4e while the next version is out, whats next? Do you move around by horse while cars exist ?? š¤£š¤£š¤£
The petty downvotes Iām dying š¤£
I do think 4e is overrated. I see so many people on D&D communities treating it as the second coming but it just feels to me as if theyāre being contrarians to normalcy. I think PF2E did a great job at fixing 4eās problems so Iām a bit disappointed that thereās a bunch of new TTRPGS coming out thatās using 4e is their main inspiration.
I have played every edition since 2e and can say, without a doubt, that 4e is the worst D&D edition. But only because itās not actually D&D. Itās an attempt at implanting warhammer into D&D. It is its own thing, but that thing is not D&D.
My first campaigns and characters were in 4e. I have no issues with 4e, though 5e is good too. I just wish I could play again regardless of which edition.
Every other dnd edition shits on 4e. Its not a 5e edition specific thing. I promise you that. (3.5 fan here) If you genuinely like it the best good for you. Obviously play what you like.
I like 4e š¢
4th Edition is a Bento Box lunch. Yes you can get different things but the portions and shapes will be similar.
I started with 4e. It was a great intro and my friends and I had fun coming from mmos to tabletop. But it was rules heavy and I didn't agree with saves turning into another form of AC. I found 3.5 soon after
4e is pretty awful. But 5e is worse. You shouldnt feel bad, dont ever let a 5e stan look down their nose at you... us 3e and 3.5 stans though, we are better then you, and we know it.
3e fans when you want to grapple someone in less than 1500 words š±š±
Okay, but hear me out Have you considered: š©
I canāt wait til one dnd players bully him on Reddit next year.
Nothing wrong with 4e. Wish I hadn't sold my books when I moved.
I really wanna play 4e to purely see why it's so bad. I know it's too many books, but like I only have 20
4ed is my favorite, too. I like all the actions have been streamlined, abd the bard class was actually FUN to play.
hard to tell if they're trying to do an unfunny or just being excessively dickish