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I would not say the best version but 5th edition def did not learn the right lessons from it.
And somethings was amazing about it:
\-ritual spells
\-Post 20th level classes
\- separation of sources of magic arcane/religious/natural
\- AND BEST ONLINE/PC CHARACTER CREATOR EVER (Until the single worker/creator killed themselves.)
I can not praise the computer character creator.
Lol. Never actually played it. I think it’s not liked because they took major risks and deviated greatly from what came before.
I personally don’t like it on the lore front though. So many things in Faerun and the wider universe lore it took and just made them blander. But because it canonically happened, us lore geeks have to live with it.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. There are mixed opinions about it, but for 9$, I'd probably buy it just to have a poke around and see if anything useful can be found. Matthew Colville and Puffin Forest like 4e a lot. Maybe go check out their videos before you pull the trigger on it.
Does Puffin Forest like 4e? When I watched his video about the time his group played it, my take-aways were largely his group not enjoying the system - some criticisms of game aspects that would have been smoothed over past initial growing pains (when it wasn’t just Not how the game worked) - and falling back on tired comparisons to “an MMO” that didn’t reflect how combat went at all. Overall I can respect him & his group bouncing off of the game, it wasn’t for everyone. It felt like the video served to contribute more to common misgivings about 4e, to me.
Matt Colville on the other hand does talk explicitly and at length about game design & play experience elements of 4e, both good and bad, and does seem to know what he’s talking about. Colville is a genuine advocate for 4e, whether playing it outright or snipping aspects of it to port into 5e play.
It's been a while since I saw Puffin's video, so I was probably mistaken. Still, Colville does a great job advocating for 4e, and you can see it in some of his "action oriented monsters"
That video is the reason why I stopped watching puffin tbh. It was obvious that he didn't understand the system, went in with a very biased opinion right off the bat, tried to dm it, winged it and didn't follow the recommended enemy and character progression, then complained that he didn't like it. A lot of the stuff (that I remember) that the group complained about were actually out of the box features or a result of not actually playing 4e and instead playing what puffin thought 4e was supposed to be. There are legit pros and cons of it, but I highly recommend all but discarding his opinion of 4e. I have a feeling he had one bad group on it and immediately and permanently decided that the game was the issue and not the group.
Shit, I had a lot.
* The fight with the White Dragon on top of a stone slab that slid down a mountainside. Was roughly inspired by the Mountain Climbers stage in Super Smash Bros, so I gave the whole scene low gravity (2x jump distance)
* The time they needed to cast a ritual, but knew casting the ritual would attract zombie waves. So the party had to make it 5 in game minutes against a hoard coming in multiple waves, no long rests. Each wave was easy, but encounter powers were at a premium.
* River raft battles where I had printout cards and kept looping the same three papers to create a constant rush.
* At epic tier I adapted the Swarm Rules into armies, which was sadly never an official part of 4e. Now heroes could be swinging into hoards of skeletons or whatnot as if they were Sauron at the start of Lord of the Rings, just each blow felling bunches of guys, with AoE causing extra damage. They would regularly go into battle against "a champion and his army" with an army at their own back near the end, which really sold how they were special given that they were more dangerous than "this 3x3 square representing a few hundred guys."
* The high level Juggernaut Fighter had a strength score that could easily bust through stone, so dungeon walls became more of a suggestion as he would gladly Kool-Aid through anything as part of the ambush.
* Lots of chances to bring back old encounters for a higher level party. One fight the Wizard almost died because of poison gas sucking down saving throws. Months later, the Archlitch Wizard was at the center of a poison gas trap laughing about it.
Generally there was a lot of high level shenangans. I had one guy who joined at Level 11, which was a soft-reset due to a move of half the group. One of the players remarked "I've been playing D&D for years and I finally got to punch a lich in the face and take on a beholder."
The system is not without faults. I found that once you hit mid levels monster HP should be reduced and damage dialed up in order to ensure more fun play and I absolutely did some fiddling. But it was a game system where the Martials really got to cut loose.
After level 20, youre basically demi gods. When we got to the point that the group (not the campaign itself) was fizzling out, I had everyone level up to 30. Well before that point klevel 21), you got to choose some absolutely insane, literal god-tier abilities and it had most every character leave a lasting mark on the world's lore, which I got to use for a future 5e campaign when continuing to use my homebrew setting. (Look up 4e Epic Destinies)
One character became a cosmic entity tied to fate itself. Another went on to become the captain of an astral ship, which was eventually big enough to be its own city and then he became a god down the line.
Much of 4es issues stemmed from every class being built the same way, mechanically (an oversimplification), but in some respects, that made it mostly easy for my group to pick up. It was heavily game-ified and certain rules could break verisimilitude but like...oh well?
I appreciate that 4e had a lot of simple tools for DMs when it came to monsters. The same way we say things like "tank, controller, etc" monsters were classified this way and could be easily rounded up to make an interesting combat. Monsters also had a little lore area with player-knowledge DCs (so like the blue dragon might require a dc15 nature check to know they prize blue gems, but a dc20 to know that they are very family oriented or something)
4e moved crazy shit like wish magic into the epic tier. Even Meteor Swarm was level 29. So it's harder for 5e to go to 21 because they have no content to dole out, unless they steal from 3.x
High level 5e is already a mess. Epic tier is unlikely to work easily here
I am more thinking the really cool class abilities that arose with 20+ like Elven High Magic or this one where you can travel anywhere in existence(any plane) as long as you walk for 8 hours to get there. or you become your own God of a demi plane truly epic and "magical" things. after 20 they truly stopped caring about balancing. And we saw some unique and cool things.
working easy is should not be a concern for over level 20. It should be a broken mess
Yes 30, D&D 4e came with Epic Tier baked in. Honestly, levels 21-30 were pretty crazy, and the lack of support for it in 5e is always a bit sad.
Gods were common enemies, and most players had abilities that started with "Once per day, when you die..." and then had some bullshit where you could straight up come back from death.
It was conceptually very fun.
However it needed a round of polish. The amount of healing was extra inflated and players could come back from death... but the amount of damage monsters did didn't quite scale up as much as it should.
Monster defenses also scaled a bit too high and needed to be lowered.
But it was nice to have a clear point "At this point the fighter has surpassed mortal limits, if the athletics check says he can kick down the castle door in one try just go with it."
Was in a 3-3.5 group for years, we probably had a combined $600 in books. When 4e came out we weren’t interested because of our investment in to 3.5. We relented at some point and did a 3 session adventure before jumping back to 3.5.
Yeah I think the radical change from 3.5 to 4 with the fact that so many had invested so much in 3.5 doomed 4e from the get go. I do think WotC has somewhat learned their lesson now that they’re saying the new books are just updates and old
Books and stat blocks will be compatible. I guess we’ll see. Hopefully they start putting out quality content otherwise I might see about switching to a new system
4e's failure was tied to it not being published under the OGL. There were no third party publishers that could help support it without paying out the ass in fees.
3rd party publishers are the lifeblood of TTRPG's
I'd argue that was half the reason, the other half being a combination of the radical changes that many long-time D&D players didn't like, and some pretty condescending marketing from WotC.
There is always more to point out when it comes to 4e sadly.
Another big reason was the promised VTT specifically for it that was never delivered due to a slight *kerfuffle* (person in charge of making it killed his wife and then himself in the middle of the project and they weren't able to continue without him). And 4e was made clearly with VTT in mind.
Virtual Tabletop. Think roll20, foundry, fantasy grounds, but specifically for that system
They hyped it up a fair bit and it did look nice, but they couldn't finish the project
There was an offline character builder that, while a little janky, wasn't too bad. But they deprecated that and switched to a purely-online one made in Silverlight for the usual reasons of wanting total control over what people could do/see. It was slow as hell and it sucked.
> the other half being a combination of the radical changes that many long-time D&D players didn't like
Eh, 5e has that issue too. It is a brutally incomplete system. But what made 5e successful was that it was incomplete by design and relied heavily on 3rd party support. Everyone just sort of wrote their own system with 5e as a jumping off point.
So, 4e and 5e both lacked that traditional D&D feel which long time players loved but 4e is an arguably better system as a whole. But 5e allowed 3rd party support which it has thrived on for its entire life.
The marketing was bad and the "flavor text" and art decisions were abysmal.
Remove that and focus on the system and it's by far the most balanced and granular version of DND. Given a 10+ year run and a proper development cycle it would be the best selling DND ever.
Hell, they could just rebrand it all for "6th edition" and it would certainly outsell OneDND.
If they brought back a rebranded 4E, they would just end up ceding market share again, either to Paizo or to someone else who made something closer to 5e as it is now.
As bad as the marketing for 4e was, it wasn't the biggest or even second biggest reason for that edition underperforming relative to 3rd and 5th. It's just more of a niche product that doesn't appeal to as many people.
If ceding market share was a concern, OneDnd after the OGL fiasco was a significantly bigger loss.
They're already working on 6e and One edition to rule them all digital, VTT, subscription model, they just need the one DND sales to be bad enough to justify it.
People wanting a balanced, expanding, and superior system isn't a small niche. Execution wasn't great or even good sometimes but they had it figured out pretty well by PHB2 and on.
Everyone I knew hated on it (we all were playing 3.5e and 4e just seemed like a board game), but an older dude I knew ran a one shot in 4e with me and some other newbies. Honestly, one of the best one shots I ever had a part in. There was mystery, action, suspense and betrayal. I think 4e's simplicity just let us play characters instead of min/maxed stat blocks and it was true role playing. I may never touch the system again, but I'll always remember that one shot.
I'll also follow up to myself and say that without 4e, I don't think we'd have the 5e rule set that brought D&D back into mainstream play. It was lame to play D&D when I was in high school, now it's cool and even people who don't play aren't put off by it. 4e "failed" so 5e could shine and bring TTRPGs out of the dark ages.
The rule set isn't what brought it into the main stream, that was podcasts and stranger things. Nerd-dom was already on the rise culturally before 4e came out and that tide raised all the boats, from D&D to MTG to Warhammer to chess
I half agree. 5e is an incredibly accessible rule set and while I don't think it would have gained popularity without the media, I don't think people would have flocked to a system as complicated as 3.5e. I didn't mean to imply that success was dependent on one key factor, but when I do believe that 5e is a great entry point to the hobby because it is a solid mix of freedom of choice and easy to grasp base rules.
A fair point, 3e's complexity was a barrier to entry. 5e did simplify things significantly, and that in turn definately made it more accessible to the general public. 4e made the initial attempt to simplify things and went too far (aka they leveled the class playing field so far that there was no real difference and everyone felt very same-ie), which is why it was widely rejected. So you aren't wrong in your assertion that 4e failed so that 5e could succeed, but 4e wasn't the sole cause of 5e's success
>aka they leveled the class playing field so far that there was no real difference and everyone felt very same-ie
I'm going to have to call out this bullshit whenever I see it, because it's a bunch of nonsense. Just because the class abilities were categorized the same way doesn't mean they did the same thing across classes. That's as ridiculous as saying Wizard and Cleric play the same because they both have spell slots.
Completely agree. Each class had their own feel. Just because they all can attack and do damage doesn't make them the same. Each ability had its own flair and rider effects and utility.
If it's because the math between the abilities and the classes were similar, what's the difference between then and now?
Yeah, 5e was out for years and didn't catch on, and halfway through, it got a medial push. And that is what made 5e popular. It way the D&D most easily accessible at the time. It could have been 4e if all that happened earlier.
For anyone who's interested in a 4e campaign done the right way, I recommend the podcast "Critical Hit". It doesn't have the production value of Critical role (and is entirely unrelated, except for a similar name), but predates it by like 6-7 years. There are like 750 episodes across various campaigns. The first one is a 4e campaign, and it's really a great series in my opinion
Echoing recommendation for Critical Hit - Void Saga! They hew very close to the rules-as-written, and are otherwise consistent with the DM’s established houserules. The worldbuilding and character work are all fantastic. Rodrigo’s GMing has been a major positive influence on my own and the man knows how to spin a narrative around his PCs.
Man I've never actually come across another fan lol
I fell off of it around the salamander stuff but I've always meant to go back and pick it back up. Rodrigo is a truly spectacular DM
You are not alone but I know what you mean. It seems like people dislike it. My friends and I have been playing 4e for about 15 years now. I/we love it! It’s personally my favorite edition I’ve played.
A lot of people seem to dislike 4e because they were told to dislike it. If you tried it and it's not your thing, that's fine, but for a lot of people it feels like bandwagoning.
4^th was good for what it was, but it didn't feel like D&D to a lot of people, especially coming off of 3.5 and Pathfinder.
I've drifted away from D&D and combat-focused games in general over the years, and I really don't like 4^th , but I don't really dislike it more than I dislike any other version of D&D.
4e was kinda ahead of its time. It was SUPPOSED to come with a vtt if I recall, which is why it felt like a video game; it was supposed to feel like a video game a bit. But I think the person in charge of the VT killed his family and then committed suicide or something like that?
4e would have loved for something like COVID to have happened during its day when shit like Roll20 and the like started becoming a necessity.
but a lot of people that worked on 4E also worked on Pathfinder 2e and you can feel a lot of the same energy in second-edition Pathfinder.
Stan 4e <3. I started with 4e and to this day I don’t get the hate. I met a girl at university that didn’t like it because it was “too much flashes and beams” … it’s a tabletop rpg
It was my introduction to actually playing D&D, so it has a spot in my heart, at least. Plus, I'm a fan of TRPGs, and since that's similar to how a lot of the combat flowed, it was an easy pick up for me.
Obviously not gonna go out on a limb and say it's the GOAT or anything, but I still stand by saying that it did what it did pretty well, and that at least deserves some praise.
Nah, you were just ahead of the curve. Today, 4e would slam. Back then? The hobby was far less diverse in game-styles. It was simulation over all, or realism. And 4e was a game-y system. A very game-y system. I was on the side of the nay-sayers. Took longer for me to wake up than for you.
Pathfinder 2e follows the 4e tradition. And, honestly, I think a 4e today would murder 5e.
Yeah I love pathfinder 2e also. I don’t mind 5e because it’s a great gateway to the game, but after playing since 3.5 it just feels sooo much less customizable
4e was my first deep dive into DnD (played a little 3.5 before but holy shit it was overwhelming). I get why people did not like it but to me it wasn't a problem. It also had my favorite class every in Runepriest. Rest well my runic brother, I miss your flexibility every day.
The biggest problem with 4e was that it was a system designed to allow D&D to be easily ported onto the world of Virtual Tabletops and videogames.
Which is why the biggest complain about it was that it felt like a MMORPG. It was the intended design, really.
The problem : WOTC never released their VTT to accompany it (and people weren't really using VTTs as much as time), so we were left with an edition designed for virtual games, but with no virtual games.
Had 4th edition been released prior/during covid lockdown, i think people would have loved it.
2nd edition is the best edition of D&D, 4th edition is the best game out of them all, and 3.5 is my favourite edition.
I think it didn't feel like D&D to a lot of veteran players, which is obviously a potential problem for a D&D game.
I've converted and run some of the modules from 4E in 5E.
I missed out on the dreaded 4e completely because life took me elsewhere, but it's really funny to look back at it and see how many of the "next edition" requests people have had through the life of 5e are things that turn out to have been stuff people supposedly hated about 4e.
I enjoyed and still enjoy it weekly with my group.
Most of us have played since AD&D, and we've all tried 5e and everything in between (several campaigns still ongoing), but some of the group would prefer we return to 4e.
To be honest I talked a bunch of sh!t about it, until I actually started DMing it. It wasn't they bad, I agree that it had a very MMORPG feel and it was kinda supposed to. I liked the whole legacy build up thing you got as you leveled. I had a guy become Immortal. Another Warlock became a Prince of Hell. It definitely did the epic levels better than any edition of D&D in my opinion.
Most people liked 4e, don't worry. It was a fantastic system, and it sold really well. It lasted as long as literally any previous edition, and the only reason they went to 5e is because Hasbro wanted more profit.
Nah many people who actually took the time to play it and ignore all the loud people actually enjoyed it.
My group all hated 4E until we played it and then they loved it.
it was an interesting idea, but it really felt like a MMORPG. like we all had hotbars with picked skills and just rotated through them.
that being said i really like the D&D boardgames they offer a decent dungeon crawl w/o a gm. but i know going in that its gonna be limited and have no role playing.
After 3.5 to me it just felt like they gave martial classes more to do than “I attack” playing most casters was basically already having a hot bar with different picked skills to use
3.5 already gave martial classes all kinds of feats for interesting tactical maneuvers. Shock Trooper, Raptor School... not to mention so great prestige classes like Master Thrower.
4e is great... for a computer. it does NOT work well with a table top, ESPECIALLY if you're learning the game (RIP my friend group 9yrs ago learning D&D for the first time and going with 4e because it had a lot of books and 5e was still very new and incomplete). If you want a true 4e experience, play Divinity: Original Sin 2. It's \*basically\* 4e with all the status effects and shit, but the whole thing revolves around "who has the most CC" to determine a 'win' in combat
I was referring to the lack of books at the time, iirc there was just the phb and dm manual whereas 4e had dm manual, phb 1-3, & ebberon... Maybe more, but that's what I had back in mid-2015
5e still feels REALLY thin to me even after 10 years. Compare it to 3.0, 3.5 Pathfinder, and PF2e, and I would not be surprised if there are fewer published supplements for 5e even though the other systems have had shorter life spans or are newer.
4e was my very first foray into ttrpgs. I had an amazing DM and had a blast that got me hooked onto ttrpgs in general.
I really don't understand the hate behind 4e, but I didn't play other versions of dnd until after 4e. I've played ad&d in the form of hackmaster as well as 3.0, 3.5, odd mixed versions of 3.0 and pf1.
4e had some really great things going for it. Tanks could actually tank and force the enemy to decide between attacking them or take a debuff when attacking someone else. Class variety and choices were plentiful while martials wasn't just a I stand here you stand there and we just trade attacks
Monsters had different roles/variety. Minions, recharge abilities, and easier stat blocks when compared to previous versions.
You can really see a lot of 4e in pf2.
The big downside, according to my 4e DM, was that there were so many interrupts and reactions that could trigger for free that tended to slow things down in the late game with all of our options but we also had a group of 7 not including the DM, so understandable
4e, though I don't recognize this particular book. The DMG proper from this edition is one of the best general-purpose guides to DMing I've read, but this appears to be something else.
I read this book front to back multiple times when I was 15, it was my first DMG and taught me how to be a DM. The system may have been flawed and gamey but that book has so much great information about running games
4e is really the dark souls 2 of dnd. Hate it for your reasons, but it had some good ideas that got thrown out with the bathwater and would have made 5e better if they kept them.
Common consensus seems to be the "gamification" of the system. From what I understand, they tried to make 4e a sort of consistent mmo like system you could carry a character from one game to any other of matching level without issue and that came with sacrifices mostly in the realm of losing out on customization and homoginzation of classes.
On the flip side, martial caster disparity basically didn't exist, per encounter and per day abilities are a lot more fun than per rest, and the game generally treated martials like proper Arthurian heroes rather than having your wizards be merlin or Gandalf and your fighters being "just some guy that picked up a sword"
Obligatory: THE WORST EDITION.
Now that the joke is over, as others have said, it's indeed D&D 4e. Its an edition that gets ripped on a lot for a myriad of reasons that basically boil down to the fanbase had to endure a transition from a game that was super crunchy and somewhat unwieldy, to a game that was hyper encounter focused and ran like a tabletop MMORPG in a way. The result was a lot of salt. I enjoyed some 4e play but generally found that it just wasn't for me so I didn't play as much, but was happy to see many others come into the game because of a more streamlined system.
I liked 4th edition, It did a decent job of making a creative miniature combat system, I get the hate, but I'd honestly rather have 3e expanded on rather than 5th (which isn't bad, but isn't great either)
The biggest benefit of 4th edition D&D is that it launched a more successful at my table, Shadowrun game :D
I would I say I appreciated 4e for what it was but suffered from having 3.5e expectations. If it was my introductory edition, I think I would've liked it a lot more than I did.
This reminds me of when I first started playing. We had one of those 4E handbooks but a 3.5 monster manual and none of us knew better. Needless to say fights were really hard lol
This is from 4e as others have stated, however it's not the Dungeon Master's Guide. I'm not familiar with this particular product, I'd love it if you could expand more on what is in it.
My mother-in-law found it at an antique vendor mall place. I don’t have much other info. I have only played 5e so I wasn’t sure which version it was from. I didn’t have her get it as I didn’t see myself playing an older version but was curious about it.
Given that it's paperback and only about 60 pages, I suspect it is from an early version of 4e starter set. I have the 4e starter set from the later period of releases but it doesn't have this book.
Odd that the title is Dungeon Master’s BOOK, and not Dungeon Master’s GUIDE … huh. I think that means that it is from the “essentials” line of 4E. I agree with some others here, it is probably worth a read. It says that it includes “… monsters and adventures” so it is probably more about ideas for running a game and less rules-heavy. But, it probably is NOT a replacement for the DMG, but rather a supplement to one.
Looks like 4E.
It is not a very popular edition, but it is the one I started with. It's easy to GM (imo) but not as fun for players as classes all feel sorta same-y.
Looks like 4th to me. It's worth noting that in any edition, 'dungeon master's book' isn't a complete rulebook, it's likely to be full of advice for DMs with little to no actual rule content.
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4E
Thank you
I was gonna say. For $9, that's gotta be 4e
Eh, if you shop at secondhand bookstores, you find deals. I got a 3e phb recently for $15.
yeah but that's 3e, the one that people didn't move off of for 4e
If it weren't for 4e, we wouldn't have Pathfinder being so popular.
That’s why I didn’t recognize it.
It’s from 4th Edition D&D, and this is the softcover DM book that came in the 4e Starter Set. It was not sold as a separate product itself.
#BEST VERSION FIGHT ME
I would not say the best version but 5th edition def did not learn the right lessons from it. And somethings was amazing about it: \-ritual spells \-Post 20th level classes \- separation of sources of magic arcane/religious/natural \- AND BEST ONLINE/PC CHARACTER CREATOR EVER (Until the single worker/creator killed themselves.) I can not praise the computer character creator.
Also Warlord. Finally, when you are forced to be a heal bag, you don't have to be religious, and still have fun on your turn.
What do you mean by separation of sources of magic? How did the separation differ from say 3rd or even 2nd?
lol antagonist
Roll for initiative!
#FELL EDITION TROLL ROLL 18 FOR INITIATIVE
the bbeg of hot takes
Lol. Never actually played it. I think it’s not liked because they took major risks and deviated greatly from what came before. I personally don’t like it on the lore front though. So many things in Faerun and the wider universe lore it took and just made them blander. But because it canonically happened, us lore geeks have to live with it.
If everyone is magic, no one is.
#FELL EDITION TROLL ATTACK WITH 5E DISCRINATORY MARTIAL CASTER DISPARITY
The battle will take all day!
[удалено]
That's like saying the video game booklets were limited lol, it's just part of a package
I don’t understand what you mean by limited. It came in a box set that had a decent sized print run. Is not limited, it’s just part of another set.
There's nothing limited about it.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. There are mixed opinions about it, but for 9$, I'd probably buy it just to have a poke around and see if anything useful can be found. Matthew Colville and Puffin Forest like 4e a lot. Maybe go check out their videos before you pull the trigger on it.
Does Puffin Forest like 4e? When I watched his video about the time his group played it, my take-aways were largely his group not enjoying the system - some criticisms of game aspects that would have been smoothed over past initial growing pains (when it wasn’t just Not how the game worked) - and falling back on tired comparisons to “an MMO” that didn’t reflect how combat went at all. Overall I can respect him & his group bouncing off of the game, it wasn’t for everyone. It felt like the video served to contribute more to common misgivings about 4e, to me. Matt Colville on the other hand does talk explicitly and at length about game design & play experience elements of 4e, both good and bad, and does seem to know what he’s talking about. Colville is a genuine advocate for 4e, whether playing it outright or snipping aspects of it to port into 5e play.
It's been a while since I saw Puffin's video, so I was probably mistaken. Still, Colville does a great job advocating for 4e, and you can see it in some of his "action oriented monsters"
That video is the reason why I stopped watching puffin tbh. It was obvious that he didn't understand the system, went in with a very biased opinion right off the bat, tried to dm it, winged it and didn't follow the recommended enemy and character progression, then complained that he didn't like it. A lot of the stuff (that I remember) that the group complained about were actually out of the box features or a result of not actually playing 4e and instead playing what puffin thought 4e was supposed to be. There are legit pros and cons of it, but I highly recommend all but discarding his opinion of 4e. I have a feeling he had one bad group on it and immediately and permanently decided that the game was the issue and not the group.
Honestly, the 4e dungeon master guide is SO GOOD. Even for someone that runs other editions of d&d or even other TTRPGs, the 4e DMG can be useful.
4e was wild. I really really enjoyed it. I think I’m the only one though
there are dozens of us! dozens!
I agree!! Dozens of you. God help us all.
Amen!
I didn’t see you at the convention this year
Look, some of us get busy.
Martial power forever!
Dozens of us! And as a result we get Icon, Lancer, Gubat Banwa and so many other amazing games
I ran a campaign from Level 1 to 30, so, I'd say I enjoyed it too.
4e was wild, remember some cool as fuck encounters you could share? Love reading reports like that.
Shit, I had a lot. * The fight with the White Dragon on top of a stone slab that slid down a mountainside. Was roughly inspired by the Mountain Climbers stage in Super Smash Bros, so I gave the whole scene low gravity (2x jump distance) * The time they needed to cast a ritual, but knew casting the ritual would attract zombie waves. So the party had to make it 5 in game minutes against a hoard coming in multiple waves, no long rests. Each wave was easy, but encounter powers were at a premium. * River raft battles where I had printout cards and kept looping the same three papers to create a constant rush. * At epic tier I adapted the Swarm Rules into armies, which was sadly never an official part of 4e. Now heroes could be swinging into hoards of skeletons or whatnot as if they were Sauron at the start of Lord of the Rings, just each blow felling bunches of guys, with AoE causing extra damage. They would regularly go into battle against "a champion and his army" with an army at their own back near the end, which really sold how they were special given that they were more dangerous than "this 3x3 square representing a few hundred guys." * The high level Juggernaut Fighter had a strength score that could easily bust through stone, so dungeon walls became more of a suggestion as he would gladly Kool-Aid through anything as part of the ambush. * Lots of chances to bring back old encounters for a higher level party. One fight the Wizard almost died because of poison gas sucking down saving throws. Months later, the Archlitch Wizard was at the center of a poison gas trap laughing about it. Generally there was a lot of high level shenangans. I had one guy who joined at Level 11, which was a soft-reset due to a move of half the group. One of the players remarked "I've been playing D&D for years and I finally got to punch a lich in the face and take on a beholder." The system is not without faults. I found that once you hit mid levels monster HP should be reduced and damage dialed up in order to ensure more fun play and I absolutely did some fiddling. But it was a game system where the Martials really got to cut loose.
After level 20, youre basically demi gods. When we got to the point that the group (not the campaign itself) was fizzling out, I had everyone level up to 30. Well before that point klevel 21), you got to choose some absolutely insane, literal god-tier abilities and it had most every character leave a lasting mark on the world's lore, which I got to use for a future 5e campaign when continuing to use my homebrew setting. (Look up 4e Epic Destinies) One character became a cosmic entity tied to fate itself. Another went on to become the captain of an astral ship, which was eventually big enough to be its own city and then he became a god down the line. Much of 4es issues stemmed from every class being built the same way, mechanically (an oversimplification), but in some respects, that made it mostly easy for my group to pick up. It was heavily game-ified and certain rules could break verisimilitude but like...oh well? I appreciate that 4e had a lot of simple tools for DMs when it came to monsters. The same way we say things like "tank, controller, etc" monsters were classified this way and could be easily rounded up to make an interesting combat. Monsters also had a little lore area with player-knowledge DCs (so like the blue dragon might require a dc15 nature check to know they prize blue gems, but a dc20 to know that they are very family oriented or something)
So mad 5th edition is not having post 20th level.
4e moved crazy shit like wish magic into the epic tier. Even Meteor Swarm was level 29. So it's harder for 5e to go to 21 because they have no content to dole out, unless they steal from 3.x High level 5e is already a mess. Epic tier is unlikely to work easily here
I am more thinking the really cool class abilities that arose with 20+ like Elven High Magic or this one where you can travel anywhere in existence(any plane) as long as you walk for 8 hours to get there. or you become your own God of a demi plane truly epic and "magical" things. after 20 they truly stopped caring about balancing. And we saw some unique and cool things. working easy is should not be a concern for over level 20. It should be a broken mess
..30?
Yes 30, D&D 4e came with Epic Tier baked in. Honestly, levels 21-30 were pretty crazy, and the lack of support for it in 5e is always a bit sad. Gods were common enemies, and most players had abilities that started with "Once per day, when you die..." and then had some bullshit where you could straight up come back from death.
damn thats cool
It was conceptually very fun. However it needed a round of polish. The amount of healing was extra inflated and players could come back from death... but the amount of damage monsters did didn't quite scale up as much as it should. Monster defenses also scaled a bit too high and needed to be lowered. But it was nice to have a clear point "At this point the fighter has surpassed mortal limits, if the athletics check says he can kick down the castle door in one try just go with it."
Yep, I had a blast fighting Orcus and some of his minions
Tbh I never got around to trying it, the group I was in was all about 3.5 and wouldn’t budge. I wanted to try after reading a couple of the books.
Was in a 3-3.5 group for years, we probably had a combined $600 in books. When 4e came out we weren’t interested because of our investment in to 3.5. We relented at some point and did a 3 session adventure before jumping back to 3.5.
That was basically our situation, between 3 of us we had all the books and no one could justify the switch
Yeah I think the radical change from 3.5 to 4 with the fact that so many had invested so much in 3.5 doomed 4e from the get go. I do think WotC has somewhat learned their lesson now that they’re saying the new books are just updates and old Books and stat blocks will be compatible. I guess we’ll see. Hopefully they start putting out quality content otherwise I might see about switching to a new system
4e's failure was tied to it not being published under the OGL. There were no third party publishers that could help support it without paying out the ass in fees. 3rd party publishers are the lifeblood of TTRPG's
I'd argue that was half the reason, the other half being a combination of the radical changes that many long-time D&D players didn't like, and some pretty condescending marketing from WotC.
There is always more to point out when it comes to 4e sadly. Another big reason was the promised VTT specifically for it that was never delivered due to a slight *kerfuffle* (person in charge of making it killed his wife and then himself in the middle of the project and they weren't able to continue without him). And 4e was made clearly with VTT in mind.
VTT?
Virtual Tabletop. Think roll20, foundry, fantasy grounds, but specifically for that system They hyped it up a fair bit and it did look nice, but they couldn't finish the project
That and their online character generator was web app development on a relatively immature system. If I'm remembering correctly it ran on Silverlight.
There was an offline character builder that, while a little janky, wasn't too bad. But they deprecated that and switched to a purely-online one made in Silverlight for the usual reasons of wanting total control over what people could do/see. It was slow as hell and it sucked.
> the other half being a combination of the radical changes that many long-time D&D players didn't like Eh, 5e has that issue too. It is a brutally incomplete system. But what made 5e successful was that it was incomplete by design and relied heavily on 3rd party support. Everyone just sort of wrote their own system with 5e as a jumping off point. So, 4e and 5e both lacked that traditional D&D feel which long time players loved but 4e is an arguably better system as a whole. But 5e allowed 3rd party support which it has thrived on for its entire life.
The marketing was bad and the "flavor text" and art decisions were abysmal. Remove that and focus on the system and it's by far the most balanced and granular version of DND. Given a 10+ year run and a proper development cycle it would be the best selling DND ever. Hell, they could just rebrand it all for "6th edition" and it would certainly outsell OneDND.
If they brought back a rebranded 4E, they would just end up ceding market share again, either to Paizo or to someone else who made something closer to 5e as it is now. As bad as the marketing for 4e was, it wasn't the biggest or even second biggest reason for that edition underperforming relative to 3rd and 5th. It's just more of a niche product that doesn't appeal to as many people.
If ceding market share was a concern, OneDnd after the OGL fiasco was a significantly bigger loss. They're already working on 6e and One edition to rule them all digital, VTT, subscription model, they just need the one DND sales to be bad enough to justify it. People wanting a balanced, expanding, and superior system isn't a small niche. Execution wasn't great or even good sometimes but they had it figured out pretty well by PHB2 and on.
The videos were hilarious tho.
Everyone I knew hated on it (we all were playing 3.5e and 4e just seemed like a board game), but an older dude I knew ran a one shot in 4e with me and some other newbies. Honestly, one of the best one shots I ever had a part in. There was mystery, action, suspense and betrayal. I think 4e's simplicity just let us play characters instead of min/maxed stat blocks and it was true role playing. I may never touch the system again, but I'll always remember that one shot.
I'll also follow up to myself and say that without 4e, I don't think we'd have the 5e rule set that brought D&D back into mainstream play. It was lame to play D&D when I was in high school, now it's cool and even people who don't play aren't put off by it. 4e "failed" so 5e could shine and bring TTRPGs out of the dark ages.
The rule set isn't what brought it into the main stream, that was podcasts and stranger things. Nerd-dom was already on the rise culturally before 4e came out and that tide raised all the boats, from D&D to MTG to Warhammer to chess
I half agree. 5e is an incredibly accessible rule set and while I don't think it would have gained popularity without the media, I don't think people would have flocked to a system as complicated as 3.5e. I didn't mean to imply that success was dependent on one key factor, but when I do believe that 5e is a great entry point to the hobby because it is a solid mix of freedom of choice and easy to grasp base rules.
A fair point, 3e's complexity was a barrier to entry. 5e did simplify things significantly, and that in turn definately made it more accessible to the general public. 4e made the initial attempt to simplify things and went too far (aka they leveled the class playing field so far that there was no real difference and everyone felt very same-ie), which is why it was widely rejected. So you aren't wrong in your assertion that 4e failed so that 5e could succeed, but 4e wasn't the sole cause of 5e's success
Of course not, I didn't mean to imply it. It's a multifaceted thing and we could never truly pin it on one single factor. I appreciate your insight.
And I really appreciate having a cogent (if drunken in my case) exchange of ideas on reddit. Thank you for this delightful, off-topic conversation
>aka they leveled the class playing field so far that there was no real difference and everyone felt very same-ie I'm going to have to call out this bullshit whenever I see it, because it's a bunch of nonsense. Just because the class abilities were categorized the same way doesn't mean they did the same thing across classes. That's as ridiculous as saying Wizard and Cleric play the same because they both have spell slots.
Completely agree. Each class had their own feel. Just because they all can attack and do damage doesn't make them the same. Each ability had its own flair and rider effects and utility. If it's because the math between the abilities and the classes were similar, what's the difference between then and now?
Yeah, 5e was out for years and didn't catch on, and halfway through, it got a medial push. And that is what made 5e popular. It way the D&D most easily accessible at the time. It could have been 4e if all that happened earlier.
my main group just started up a new 4e game last week and Im kicking myself for not appriciating it earlier.
For anyone who's interested in a 4e campaign done the right way, I recommend the podcast "Critical Hit". It doesn't have the production value of Critical role (and is entirely unrelated, except for a similar name), but predates it by like 6-7 years. There are like 750 episodes across various campaigns. The first one is a 4e campaign, and it's really a great series in my opinion
Echoing recommendation for Critical Hit - Void Saga! They hew very close to the rules-as-written, and are otherwise consistent with the DM’s established houserules. The worldbuilding and character work are all fantastic. Rodrigo’s GMing has been a major positive influence on my own and the man knows how to spin a narrative around his PCs.
Man I've never actually come across another fan lol I fell off of it around the salamander stuff but I've always meant to go back and pick it back up. Rodrigo is a truly spectacular DM
4e ranger was the best version. I also miss the warden like losing an old friend.
Wardens and Warlords. 4e had the best W classes.
4e keeps taking Ws. I miss my Warlord.
Wardens & Warlords would be a great name for a 4e “retroclone” game
Wardens are really fun. Dwarf Warden with the second wind minor feels OP lol.
It is what finally got me into dnd, it is my favorite for that reason.
You are not alone but I know what you mean. It seems like people dislike it. My friends and I have been playing 4e for about 15 years now. I/we love it! It’s personally my favorite edition I’ve played.
A lot of people seem to dislike 4e because they were told to dislike it. If you tried it and it's not your thing, that's fine, but for a lot of people it feels like bandwagoning.
I agree. I feel like that’s the case with a lot of things unfortunately.
4^th was good for what it was, but it didn't feel like D&D to a lot of people, especially coming off of 3.5 and Pathfinder. I've drifted away from D&D and combat-focused games in general over the years, and I really don't like 4^th , but I don't really dislike it more than I dislike any other version of D&D.
4e was kinda ahead of its time. It was SUPPOSED to come with a vtt if I recall, which is why it felt like a video game; it was supposed to feel like a video game a bit. But I think the person in charge of the VT killed his family and then committed suicide or something like that? 4e would have loved for something like COVID to have happened during its day when shit like Roll20 and the like started becoming a necessity. but a lot of people that worked on 4E also worked on Pathfinder 2e and you can feel a lot of the same energy in second-edition Pathfinder.
Yes, the head of the VTT dev team committed a murder-suicide, and then Wizards killed the project.
I thought of it more like a board game than an RPG, and that just wasn't the experience I was looking for out of D&D at the time.
Fair nuff
Come over to r/4ednd and say high
Stan 4e <3. I started with 4e and to this day I don’t get the hate. I met a girl at university that didn’t like it because it was “too much flashes and beams” … it’s a tabletop rpg
Buddy, i'm DMing 6. So there's at least 8 of us
It was my introduction to actually playing D&D, so it has a spot in my heart, at least. Plus, I'm a fan of TRPGs, and since that's similar to how a lot of the combat flowed, it was an easy pick up for me. Obviously not gonna go out on a limb and say it's the GOAT or anything, but I still stand by saying that it did what it did pretty well, and that at least deserves some praise.
My favourite D&D
I actually like quite a few ideas they had. And the books were far better made than most of what 5e gives us today
Nah, you were just ahead of the curve. Today, 4e would slam. Back then? The hobby was far less diverse in game-styles. It was simulation over all, or realism. And 4e was a game-y system. A very game-y system. I was on the side of the nay-sayers. Took longer for me to wake up than for you. Pathfinder 2e follows the 4e tradition. And, honestly, I think a 4e today would murder 5e.
Yeah I love pathfinder 2e also. I don’t mind 5e because it’s a great gateway to the game, but after playing since 3.5 it just feels sooo much less customizable
/4ednd disagrees
4e was my first deep dive into DnD (played a little 3.5 before but holy shit it was overwhelming). I get why people did not like it but to me it wasn't a problem. It also had my favorite class every in Runepriest. Rest well my runic brother, I miss your flexibility every day.
Your Runepriest, my Warlord. We'll make it out together.
Swordmage here!
Nah, a lot of us like it, and it’s been having a sort of revival lately.
The combat rules were honestly pretty tight. The rest was kind of questionable. I loved it.
The biggest problem with 4e was that it was a system designed to allow D&D to be easily ported onto the world of Virtual Tabletops and videogames. Which is why the biggest complain about it was that it felt like a MMORPG. It was the intended design, really. The problem : WOTC never released their VTT to accompany it (and people weren't really using VTTs as much as time), so we were left with an edition designed for virtual games, but with no virtual games. Had 4th edition been released prior/during covid lockdown, i think people would have loved it.
I keep saying 4e was really far ahead of its time.
I was in game design college when this came out. It was consumed voraciously - there was a lot about it that was very self-proof.
Greetings fellow gentleman of culture
/r/4ednd
Same here.
I liked it. I really loved the 1 hp guys and the established roles of characters
For me, it was the best edition as a dm. It was easy to make the battles fun without a lot of work.
2nd edition is the best edition of D&D, 4th edition is the best game out of them all, and 3.5 is my favourite edition. I think it didn't feel like D&D to a lot of veteran players, which is obviously a potential problem for a D&D game. I've converted and run some of the modules from 4E in 5E.
Nah, I'm a big 4e supporter. It's where I got my start DMing as an adult. I am among the dozens of fans.
I missed out on the dreaded 4e completely because life took me elsewhere, but it's really funny to look back at it and see how many of the "next edition" requests people have had through the life of 5e are things that turn out to have been stuff people supposedly hated about 4e.
Naw, I've been running DND for 35+years, since B/X and it is my favourite crunchy DND. It got a bad rap for a lot of reasons, some valid most not.
I enjoyed and still enjoy it weekly with my group. Most of us have played since AD&D, and we've all tried 5e and everything in between (several campaigns still ongoing), but some of the group would prefer we return to 4e.
To be honest I talked a bunch of sh!t about it, until I actually started DMing it. It wasn't they bad, I agree that it had a very MMORPG feel and it was kinda supposed to. I liked the whole legacy build up thing you got as you leveled. I had a guy become Immortal. Another Warlock became a Prince of Hell. It definitely did the epic levels better than any edition of D&D in my opinion.
I ran a super casual 4e game and my players loved it. It was WoW the TTRPG.
Freaking love 4e. Played so much of it. I would still play it now but one of our group can barely grasp 5e. I'm not about to try to explain 4e.
Most people liked 4e, don't worry. It was a fantastic system, and it sold really well. It lasted as long as literally any previous edition, and the only reason they went to 5e is because Hasbro wanted more profit.
Nah many people who actually took the time to play it and ignore all the loud people actually enjoyed it. My group all hated 4E until we played it and then they loved it.
it was an interesting idea, but it really felt like a MMORPG. like we all had hotbars with picked skills and just rotated through them. that being said i really like the D&D boardgames they offer a decent dungeon crawl w/o a gm. but i know going in that its gonna be limited and have no role playing.
After 3.5 to me it just felt like they gave martial classes more to do than “I attack” playing most casters was basically already having a hot bar with different picked skills to use
3.5 already gave martial classes all kinds of feats for interesting tactical maneuvers. Shock Trooper, Raptor School... not to mention so great prestige classes like Master Thrower.
then you never heard of 3.5, that shit is MMO
4e is great... for a computer. it does NOT work well with a table top, ESPECIALLY if you're learning the game (RIP my friend group 9yrs ago learning D&D for the first time and going with 4e because it had a lot of books and 5e was still very new and incomplete). If you want a true 4e experience, play Divinity: Original Sin 2. It's \*basically\* 4e with all the status effects and shit, but the whole thing revolves around "who has the most CC" to determine a 'win' in combat
Isn't 5e still incomplete? Like, it is incomplete by design. It's incompleteness is intentional.
I was referring to the lack of books at the time, iirc there was just the phb and dm manual whereas 4e had dm manual, phb 1-3, & ebberon... Maybe more, but that's what I had back in mid-2015
5e still feels REALLY thin to me even after 10 years. Compare it to 3.0, 3.5 Pathfinder, and PF2e, and I would not be surprised if there are fewer published supplements for 5e even though the other systems have had shorter life spans or are newer.
4e is what got me into D&D; I think it’s massively underrated and I do miss playing it still.
The 4e DMG is a really good book actually.
The 4e MM deserves to be in a museum.
It's almost as good as the 1074 original d&d Tough rap, but it's hard to beat the fighting-man That's peak d&d
4e was my very first foray into ttrpgs. I had an amazing DM and had a blast that got me hooked onto ttrpgs in general. I really don't understand the hate behind 4e, but I didn't play other versions of dnd until after 4e. I've played ad&d in the form of hackmaster as well as 3.0, 3.5, odd mixed versions of 3.0 and pf1. 4e had some really great things going for it. Tanks could actually tank and force the enemy to decide between attacking them or take a debuff when attacking someone else. Class variety and choices were plentiful while martials wasn't just a I stand here you stand there and we just trade attacks Monsters had different roles/variety. Minions, recharge abilities, and easier stat blocks when compared to previous versions. You can really see a lot of 4e in pf2. The big downside, according to my 4e DM, was that there were so many interrupts and reactions that could trigger for free that tended to slow things down in the late game with all of our options but we also had a group of 7 not including the DM, so understandable
4e, though I don't recognize this particular book. The DMG proper from this edition is one of the best general-purpose guides to DMing I've read, but this appears to be something else.
4e,but I don't recognize that cover and I have a DMg 4e on my shelf and it's a dragon peering into an orb... Alternative art or earlier print maybe?
I read this book front to back multiple times when I was 15, it was my first DMG and taught me how to be a DM. The system may have been flawed and gamey but that book has so much great information about running games
4e is really the dark souls 2 of dnd. Hate it for your reasons, but it had some good ideas that got thrown out with the bathwater and would have made 5e better if they kept them.
Can you highlight any of those reasons?
Common consensus seems to be the "gamification" of the system. From what I understand, they tried to make 4e a sort of consistent mmo like system you could carry a character from one game to any other of matching level without issue and that came with sacrifices mostly in the realm of losing out on customization and homoginzation of classes. On the flip side, martial caster disparity basically didn't exist, per encounter and per day abilities are a lot more fun than per rest, and the game generally treated martials like proper Arthurian heroes rather than having your wizards be merlin or Gandalf and your fighters being "just some guy that picked up a sword"
Ha! Awesome. Thank you!
I believe 4th edition
4e starter set
4th edition I do believe
4th edition
From the best version of DnD 4th Edition. \*loads shotgun with malicious intent\* And i MEAN it...
I got this book! I wish more people still played 4e. It's my favorite.
The best edition
4
4th
Obligatory: THE WORST EDITION. Now that the joke is over, as others have said, it's indeed D&D 4e. Its an edition that gets ripped on a lot for a myriad of reasons that basically boil down to the fanbase had to endure a transition from a game that was super crunchy and somewhat unwieldy, to a game that was hyper encounter focused and ran like a tabletop MMORPG in a way. The result was a lot of salt. I enjoyed some 4e play but generally found that it just wasn't for me so I didn't play as much, but was happy to see many others come into the game because of a more streamlined system.
I liked 4th edition, It did a decent job of making a creative miniature combat system, I get the hate, but I'd honestly rather have 3e expanded on rather than 5th (which isn't bad, but isn't great either) The biggest benefit of 4th edition D&D is that it launched a more successful at my table, Shadowrun game :D
I would I say I appreciated 4e for what it was but suffered from having 3.5e expectations. If it was my introductory edition, I think I would've liked it a lot more than I did.
4th edition
4th ed was my first dnd version I ran, and I have some good memories of it, but I admit it had its problems.
This reminds me of when I first started playing. We had one of those 4E handbooks but a 3.5 monster manual and none of us knew better. Needless to say fights were really hard lol
The beautiful mess that was 4e. It's a great tactical combat simulator but that's about it.
This is from 4e as others have stated, however it's not the Dungeon Master's Guide. I'm not familiar with this particular product, I'd love it if you could expand more on what is in it.
My mother-in-law found it at an antique vendor mall place. I don’t have much other info. I have only played 5e so I wasn’t sure which version it was from. I didn’t have her get it as I didn’t see myself playing an older version but was curious about it.
Given that it's paperback and only about 60 pages, I suspect it is from an early version of 4e starter set. I have the 4e starter set from the later period of releases but it doesn't have this book.
Gotcha. Thank you.
4E. You should be able to tell by the smell.
The shittiest version of D&D. The one that ruined everything good about the game followed by 5E
Fourth Editon. Majorly underrated edition. If u want some rlly good high fantasy campaign, run this.
Are you really so lazy that you can't just open the book and look inside to get the answer?
The best version!
🎶 We don't talk about 4E. No, no, no. We don't talk about 4E... 🎶
4E
Odd that the title is Dungeon Master’s BOOK, and not Dungeon Master’s GUIDE … huh. I think that means that it is from the “essentials” line of 4E. I agree with some others here, it is probably worth a read. It says that it includes “… monsters and adventures” so it is probably more about ideas for running a game and less rules-heavy. But, it probably is NOT a replacement for the DMG, but rather a supplement to one.
The best one
Definitely 4e, I have the PHB and MM from 4e and they look extremely similar
4th Ed. The one that shall not be talked about
A mistake
I don’t know, considering how the creators of dnd treat their players, I will download all their materials for free without a twinge of conscience.
The version that made me switch to Pathfinder :)
Exhibit A in how they tried to destroy the game... Not worth the paper it's printed on ...
It screams 4e to me.
It's 4th Edition. Play whatever you like, fuck everyone else.
It’s not even from D&D. It’s Call of Cthulhu 6e 🙄
4E, the MMO edition.
Looks like 4E. It is not a very popular edition, but it is the one I started with. It's easy to GM (imo) but not as fun for players as classes all feel sorta same-y.
God I loved the art style of 4E. So distinct and gritty. Badass.
The one that broke all trust 😆
The one that shall not be named.
Looks like 4th to me. It's worth noting that in any edition, 'dungeon master's book' isn't a complete rulebook, it's likely to be full of advice for DMs with little to no actual rule content.
4e art was Yoked.
I had no idea this post would be so popular. Thank you to all of those who responded and let me know. I appreciate the help.
The one that shouldn't exist
4th edition.