It's always great to hear that people still enjoy playing 4th Edition. It's still my favorite. I was surprised to hear that you find little difference between different classes of the same role. If you mean that two bards with different powers still seem the same, I could see that, but a bard is very different from a cleric and both are very different from a shaman. Yes, they probably do different types of damage, but where they stand in a fight, how they deliver healing, and the benefits they provide (to say nothing of their skill sets and rituals) are very distinct. I would have embraced a leader class that lacked the standard "word" power, just as I embraced defenders with auras instead of marks. The artificer comes close. Anyway, if you don't like regular 4th Edition, cool. Essentials offers a lot of fun. Good luck!
Just an FYI for viewers: While the Essentials line itself stopped at the two "player books", more were planned and released under the "regular" D&D 4e line: Heroes of Shadow, Heroes of Elemental Chaos and Heroes of the Feywild. They follow the same design as HotFK and HotFL.
commenting as I'm listening; I completely recognise the discussion with the Pathfinder player on samurai/fighter. What I learned from 4e is that you don't _need_ 1000 different options, you need imagination. If you want to play something not in the books, pick that next best thing and just re-fluff (or re-flavour). That is an aspect of any RPG system that is not repeated enough, especially in the RPG books themselves. That the text says one thing, does not mean it only has be that. I once played a 5E session (as a guest) as a "kobold bard", but was using very different things that the other bard was doing. The other player couldn't wrap their heads around how I did it; my stats were a gnome cleric, because that better matched what I wanted to do. *continuous listening*
I once played a halfling that I re-flavored as a deep gnome. I said some of his warlock spells were actually racial abilities, rather than being granted by his patron. Mechanically, everything was done by-the-book, but it felt like a very different character than what you might assume if you read his stat block alone.
The Essentials line has been one of the most dm-friendly editions I have seen so far. The core box set of the Essentials line included a small adventure campaign called "Reavers of Harkenwold" which is still one of the best starting campaigns ever written. As a new dm, you could run those adventures right out of the box without having to do much prep work. Why? Because you only needed to know the basic rules and read through the adventure booklet. Included in the box were punch-out double sided tokens to represent monsters and heroes on graph paper. Important battle maps were also included and some of them reusable if folded in different ways. The only other thing you might have needed was a box of dungeon tiles, or you could just use graph paper/battlemat and markers. Every encounter that was designed to include combat was preplanned in the booklet. Down to the very starting positions of the enemies, their stat blocks, their tactics, goals and motivations. What loot their corpses/cadavers would yield, and what consequences combat could have, what the battle enviroment looked like and how one could use the included battlemaps or an additional set of dungeon tiles to represent it, even a small "read out loud" flavor text for each encounter was included. Noncombat encounters were also included and described in a very easy-to-run way. I also loved the "points of light" setting where the 4th edition adventures predominantly took place, simply because it was generic enough that any DM could take the predefined region with its townships and outposts and take them as a starting point for their whole campaign world. Monsters were more interesting to run than in 5th edition, because instead of having just one standard goblin with 7hp and a blunt weapon, we had goblin minions, goblin snipers, goblin hex-hurlers (shamans), goblin bosses, goblin backstabbers, goblin bomb throwers, goblin beastmasters, and all of them could do special attacks that made combat interesting and varied and much more engaging for the players who had only ever known "the one standard goblin" and "the one standard owlbear" before. Thankfully, Matt Colville plans to publish a new monster book for 5th edition called "Flee Mortals!" with 5th edition monsters merged with 4th edition monster roles and stat blocks, new encounter building rules, rules for player companion npcs and a variety of new monster types. It is currently sold out, but it could make monsters cool again once it is out and gets republished. It is a shame that 5th edition adventures do no longer include the level of prep work already done for the dm that was definitely present in 4th edition Essentials. I've been running a prewritten campaign ("Madness at Gardmore Abbey") for my 4th edition "Essentials" group for two years now, and I rarely, if ever, have had to prep for a session. Just read through the booklet again, refamiliarize myself with the encounters most likely to occur, and that's basically it. I wouldn't be able to do that with a 5th edition adventure path.
I have also recently renewed my interest in 4e. Just discovered your channel and am pleased that others are going forward with 4e. 👍 Your more recent vids are about Heroquest. I am curious whether you are still playing 4e or if that endeavor "ran its course" as the phrase goes.
You are completely wrong, classes within one role are dramatically different. The defender role for example have different approach in setting marks and interacting with them. Paladin spamming marks in bursts but doesn't have attacks to the triggering mark. Fighter set a small amount of marks but punish foes hard, if they ignore him. And battlemind can forget about marks, he controls battlefield without them.
You may be right. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been retreading 4e. I’ve always believed that 4e is one of the more honest editions of D&D by being upfront and pretty blatant about how “D&D” it is. “These are the classes, this is how they work, and this is how they should operate in the party... Oh, and we know we’re more combat oriented than other RPGs and we’re not afraid to say it.” All the other editions try and hide it and dance around it. And all those players saying that 4e isn’t D&D are being just as dishonest with themselves (I’ll probably catch a lot of flak for that statement)... If anything, 4e is probably the MOST D&D of all the editions.
The essentials was a more polished version of 4th edition, easier to learn for new players, less power creep, errated rules already included, great format. I believe if the 4th edition had started with the essentials line it would have been more popular.
Agree. Unfortunately, Essentials was the result of feedback, experimenting, and a reaction to the backlash of vanilla 4e. Some of Essentials changes/errata was an effort to win back some of the Pathfinder defectors v3.X die-hards. After the past few years, and diving deeper into 4e’s history and looking even further at 4e vs. Essentials vs. other editions, I believe even more that 4e is seriously misunderstood and not as different than its painted.
Are you still playing 4E ? As others mentioned there are other essential style characters, and they definitly still feel different from each other. I like the sorcerer (a simplified caster), the barbarian which switches from guardian to striker. I in general like options, but I agree with 4th editions having had too many options, although I would say the problem came AFTER Players Guide 2 (In it there were still a lot of unique feeling classes, like the shaman and also druid etc.) And the whole additional material for classes made it worse (so many options for some classes made them need to have more similar abilities ot others). I also really like the teamwork in 4E. You dont stand on each others toes, because you have different roles.
It was fun to hear a positive review of 4th Edition D&D. Thanks for sharing this.
It's always great to hear that people still enjoy playing 4th Edition. It's still my favorite.
I was surprised to hear that you find little difference between different classes of the same role. If you mean that two bards with different powers still seem the same, I could see that, but a bard is very different from a cleric and both are very different from a shaman. Yes, they probably do different types of damage, but where they stand in a fight, how they deliver healing, and the benefits they provide (to say nothing of their skill sets and rituals) are very distinct. I would have embraced a leader class that lacked the standard "word" power, just as I embraced defenders with auras instead of marks. The artificer comes close.
Anyway, if you don't like regular 4th Edition, cool. Essentials offers a lot of fun. Good luck!
Just an FYI for viewers: While the Essentials line itself stopped at the two "player books", more were planned and released under the "regular" D&D 4e line: Heroes of Shadow, Heroes of Elemental Chaos and Heroes of the Feywild. They follow the same design as HotFK and HotFL.
I don't need a game mechanic to tell my story, BRAVO!!!!
commenting as I'm listening; I completely recognise the discussion with the Pathfinder player on samurai/fighter. What I learned from 4e is that you don't _need_ 1000 different options, you need imagination. If you want to play something not in the books, pick that next best thing and just re-fluff (or re-flavour).
That is an aspect of any RPG system that is not repeated enough, especially in the RPG books themselves. That the text says one thing, does not mean it only has be that.
I once played a 5E session (as a guest) as a "kobold bard", but was using very different things that the other bard was doing. The other player couldn't wrap their heads around how I did it; my stats were a gnome cleric, because that better matched what I wanted to do.
*continuous listening*
I once played a halfling that I re-flavored as a deep gnome. I said some of his warlock spells were actually racial abilities, rather than being granted by his patron. Mechanically, everything was done by-the-book, but it felt like a very different character than what you might assume if you read his stat block alone.
The Essentials line has been one of the most dm-friendly editions I have seen so far.
The core box set of the Essentials line included a small adventure campaign called "Reavers of Harkenwold" which is still one of the best starting campaigns ever written. As a new dm, you could run those adventures right out of the box without having to do much prep work.
Why? Because you only needed to know the basic rules and read through the adventure booklet. Included in the box were punch-out double sided tokens to represent monsters and heroes on graph paper. Important battle maps were also included and some of them reusable if folded in different ways.
The only other thing you might have needed was a box of dungeon tiles, or you could just use graph paper/battlemat and markers.
Every encounter that was designed to include combat was preplanned in the booklet. Down to the very starting positions of the enemies, their stat blocks, their tactics, goals and motivations. What loot their corpses/cadavers would yield, and what consequences combat could have, what the battle enviroment looked like and how one could use the included battlemaps or an additional set of dungeon tiles to represent it, even a small "read out loud" flavor text for each encounter was included.
Noncombat encounters were also included and described in a very easy-to-run way.
I also loved the "points of light" setting where the 4th edition adventures predominantly took place, simply because it was generic enough that any DM could take the predefined region with its townships and outposts and take them as a starting point for their whole campaign world.
Monsters were more interesting to run than in 5th edition, because instead of having just one standard goblin with 7hp and a blunt weapon, we had goblin minions, goblin snipers, goblin hex-hurlers (shamans), goblin bosses, goblin backstabbers, goblin bomb throwers, goblin beastmasters, and all of them could do special attacks that made combat interesting and varied and much more engaging for the players who had only ever known "the one standard goblin" and "the one standard owlbear" before.
Thankfully, Matt Colville plans to publish a new monster book for 5th edition called "Flee Mortals!" with 5th edition monsters merged with 4th edition monster roles and stat blocks, new encounter building rules, rules for player companion npcs and a variety of new monster types. It is currently sold out, but it could make monsters cool again once it is out and gets republished.
It is a shame that 5th edition adventures do no longer include the level of prep work already done for the dm that was definitely present in 4th edition Essentials. I've been running a prewritten campaign ("Madness at Gardmore Abbey") for my 4th edition "Essentials" group for two years now, and I rarely, if ever, have had to prep for a session. Just read through the booklet again, refamiliarize myself with the encounters most likely to occur, and that's basically it. I wouldn't be able to do that with a 5th edition adventure path.
I have also recently renewed my interest in 4e. Just discovered your channel and am pleased that others are going forward with 4e. 👍
Your more recent vids are about Heroquest. I am curious whether you are still playing 4e or if that endeavor "ran its course" as the phrase goes.
Totally agree that base 4e was too complicated. I really liked Gamma World 4e but it was slightly too simple. I wanted something halfway.
4th edition is perfect for pandemic play. It just feels more naturally supported by roll20.
You are completely wrong, classes within one role are dramatically different.
The defender role for example have different approach in setting marks and interacting with them.
Paladin spamming marks in bursts but doesn't have attacks to the triggering mark.
Fighter set a small amount of marks but punish foes hard, if they ignore him.
And battlemind can forget about marks, he controls battlefield without them.
You may be right. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been retreading 4e. I’ve always believed that 4e is one of the more honest editions of D&D by being upfront and pretty blatant about how “D&D” it is. “These are the classes, this is how they work, and this is how they should operate in the party... Oh, and we know we’re more combat oriented than other RPGs and we’re not afraid to say it.” All the other editions try and hide it and dance around it. And all those players saying that 4e isn’t D&D are being just as dishonest with themselves (I’ll probably catch a lot of flak for that statement)... If anything, 4e is probably the MOST D&D of all the editions.
The essentials was a more polished version of 4th edition, easier to learn for new players, less power creep, errated rules already included, great format. I believe if the 4th edition had started with the essentials line it would have been more popular.
Agree. Unfortunately, Essentials was the result of feedback, experimenting, and a reaction to the backlash of vanilla 4e. Some of Essentials changes/errata was an effort to win back some of the Pathfinder defectors v3.X die-hards. After the past few years, and diving deeper into 4e’s history and looking even further at 4e vs. Essentials vs. other editions, I believe even more that 4e is seriously misunderstood and not as different than its painted.
Are you still playing 4E ? As others mentioned there are other essential style characters, and they definitly still feel different from each other. I like the sorcerer (a simplified caster), the barbarian which switches from guardian to striker.
I in general like options, but I agree with 4th editions having had too many options, although I would say the problem came AFTER Players Guide 2 (In it there were still a lot of unique feeling classes, like the shaman and also druid etc.)
And the whole additional material for classes made it worse (so many options for some classes made them need to have more similar abilities ot others).
I also really like the teamwork in 4E. You dont stand on each others toes, because you have different roles.
very fun to listen to, i also love 4th!
4e is my favorite...5e is a mess of half baked rules.
Ah, but there is a superior edition of D&D: the one you play is always superior to the one that sits on the shelf.
Well played, good sir. Well played. And very true. Same with the entirety pf all TTRPGS. 😁
*slow claps* well played.