4e's encounter design - how they were set up, how they were layed out in adventure books - was fantastic. definitely one of the things 4e did well that would be worth bringing back.
4e was made for DMs, but the standardization of PC “powers” meant it didn’t “feel” like D&D for the older players. 5e was made for players, but leaves us DMs scrambling in the dark.
Having run both 4e and 5e I like having everything for an encounter in one spot. Now I write my own encounters and use the 4e method in my own game docs.
Formatting, balance, and powers in D&D4E were so good. And then add in the beautiful class balance between utility powers, at-wills, encounter and daily powers, and healing surges, minion mechanics, skill challenges, and oh my god it’s clear why most house rule mechanic channels and new d20 games take notes from D&D4E
Everything about formatting in 4E was amazing, MM, DMG, Adventures, even the way books were released (seperating player books from dm books) was just sooo good. its really sad 4E got so much hate and honestly it came out too early i think. Everyone now when they try to "Fix" 5E they always mention ideas that were done in 4E without even knowing it.
@@LetholdusKaspyr The only major flaws of 4E imo were the flawed math of skill challenges and monster hp at higher levels. Everything else people didn’t like was a matter of perception. It didn’t look like a traditional RPG, so people recoiled from it. It’s too bad they weren’t better at selling the ideas behind it.
@@maxducoudray It's not just that. The character creation process was very directed, to the point of being overly restrictive, and it got more aggressive as the edition progressed.
@@LetholdusKaspyr It’s less restricted than 1E and old Basic editions, which I prefer to 2E-5E, so I don’t see that as a limitation. 4E is my second favorite after the original editions. 2E, 3E and 5E are all a waste of time for me. Only 4E got “highly mechanical” right for my tastes.
@@maxducoudray A lot of things have happened in gaming since the old days. D&D needs to continually evolve to survive in a competitive environment. By the time 4E came out, most players craved flexibility and nuance in their character options. If that's not what you're looking for in a game, that's fine, but most players are not with you.
I once made a rough system of "tack-on" powers for PCs based on Golden Sun's Psynergy/Djinni. It was probably one of the easiest times I ever had balancing something, I've been on the "4e is better than 5e" Blasphemy Train for some time now. Glad to see someone agrees!
4e seriously made me a better DM. In addition to the great published adventure layout, the systems for building and adventure were sublime. The DMG gave great tools for encounter design, including the XP budget system and monster roles. Also, the attention to monster tactics helped me to run encounters more competently. I feel like my main group doesn't really "get" 4e, but I remember it really fondly.
4e is the best kept secret in the hobby! Just started playing and it scratches all the right tactical/build itches that I like about PF2, but way more streamlined and easy to run. Great video!
Stat blocks all on a two page spread, all relevant info bulleted and in easy to read chunks, entire tactics sections to give the DM an idea of how to prep encounters. 4e was an absolute masterclass in adventure and encounter layouts.
The structure for encounters in 4E actually started during 3.5. Check 3.5's Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, and you'll see that it formats encounters and adventure overview in exactly the same way 4E did. Now, if I remember correctly, this change or formatting from 4E to 5E was, in fact, discussed by the developers while they were working on 5E. It was intentional, and it was done to save on printing costs. Formatting encounters the 4E way produced chunky modules, which was pricier for them, and for the consumer. I'm not sure if they sell modules at the same price as they did before despite them being less substantial, but I would not be surprised if there's some "cost reduction" shennanigans going on here. WotC is, in the end, a company.
@@oldegreybeard That kind of encounter format only appeared at the very end of 3.5. Before that, they were doing something similar to what Pathfinder was doing with their 1E modules (I don't know anything about Pathfinder 2E). If you're into studying all this you're gonna have a lot of fun checking old modules, from 3.5 and back. Depending on your style of play, if you're more into narrative and roleplaying than encounter building, I would suggest you check out White Wolf's Storytelling Adventure System (SAS). It's great for setting up scenes, rather than encounters.
It's always nice to see love for 4E, since it STILL gets a lot of hate in the community (at least from the 3/3.5 side since most seem like fanatics about it and kind of drive me away from trying it). 4E was the edition that was around when I first wanted to get started with current DnD when my friend showed me an old basic set way back in highschool and the Acq Inc. show helped with that. Im kind of wondering with how 5E has been going, the latest news of DnD's future and with lots of online programs to help play digitally that 4E may make a comback (unlikely, but it would be nice to get more attention and less hate now).
That's also the format for Pathfinder adventure paths. 🙂 Everything is provided in-book, or a specific page is referenced to monster stats in the Bestiary. Sounds like a nightmare for 5e DMs the way WotC does it now by comparison.
I never played 4e so I had no idea this was a thing. I don't understand why they changed the layout it is so well organized. I wish they would bring this style back.
4e had a lot of backlash from old-timers and 3.5 vets who saw it as an attempt by WotC to chase after the "MMO" crowd due to a combination of the timing of its release and the codification of things that existed in various forms in 3.5 into a more structured format. Combine that with neckbeards whose power fantasies were focused on that playing high Intellect spell casters who can lord their cosmic powers over the plebeian martial characters, and you get a pretty loud voice of discontent. So, when they changed to 5e, they ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and abandoned all the good things 4e brought in an attempt to entice the 3.5 vets and OD&D lifers to buy into and play the new edition. All the cool ideas and mechanics that were brought about in 4e, all the cool lore and ideas that were released for the now-defunct Points of Light setting (that they were hoping would be the new Greyhawk) that was given in tidbits of rule books and Dungeon and Dragon Magazines released during 4e, and so much more was just tossed aside.
@@WolfJ Well that is kind of their job spec. Either making more of it, or keeping more of what they make as profit. It's a balancing act of going cheap and broad appeal, or expensive and narrow focus. Ideally they'd like expensive and broad appeal, but that's a tricky thing to pull off over a long term.
Also, when I look at the monsters in an encounter I divide them into complex and simple. If there are too many complex monsters, a combat will bog down. When first looking at an encounter, I assign simple or complex to the monsters and then look at adjusting the support monsters into less complex. Not really an issue in early stages of the game, but it comes up quite a bit in the Paragon and later stages.
While there are significant differences between the two editions, there’s no reason at all the better structured 4e encounter system can’t be ported directly into 5e
I think the main reason 5E discarded this is that they wanted to win back the audience they had lost. I'll note that I personally run a 4E clone on game night but design my adventures much more in the style Paizo was using in the 3.5 Era (similiar to the 5E version but statblocks are to be located near to the encounter as opposed to at the back of the book). On the downside it does mean flipping back and forth between pages but it also means the DM has the broader adventure themes at hand. You can lose track of the bigger picture when you are pretty much just going from one 2 page encounter to the next. Also this encounter design is very self contained but does not work well if the Monsters start changing locations. If your text reads "Monster X will retreat to its ally Monster Y when it loses half its hps" then the whole setup can start to get dicey in a hurry. Monster X may or may not actually manage to retreat. Some encounters need more then 2 pages while others work just fine with one. That huge trap being displayed probably does not actually work that well in actual play (late in 4E they redid traps and how they worked and they where far better - its a format I use in my clone). Monster Stat Blocks (again very correctly) got much larger after the release of Darksun which is an issue as well. The set up also precludes something like an NPC that might betray the PCs at an opportune moment or enemies that may or may not reinforce a combat (say they don't if the PCs already killed them but otherwise will). Finally this format is arguably good during play (as I note I don't actually think that is particularity true) but it is boring to read. All that said, under the right conditions I can see how it can be the best option when one wants to be organized during an encounter - it is certainly possible to adapt any system to utilize this style. I just think one should be aware that, by its very nature, it makes the interactions in the adventure less dynamic.
I’m pretty sure every edition except 5E did this. 1E often had the maps on the inside of the removable module cover so you could always see the maps no matter where you were in the book. Stats for monsters were also often contained in the text and not in the appendix, but they were a bit inconsistent about that.
Having the stat block at the back of the book means it’s much easier to reference when you aren’t running the story in linear fashion. Maybe the PCs are traveling and they encounter a group of wolves. In that case the DM would have to flip through the entire book to find where that stat block was located, instead of the appendix at the back. Still, more tactical suggestions for the encounters would be appreciated.
4e - for the life of me I'm still mystified WoTC threw that baby out with the bathwater in 5e. The layout of the dungeons was perfectly logical in 4e and smooth. I think because lots of the powers and feats were similar, and because lots of the adventures were dungeon focused, there was this view 4e wasn't a roleplaying game. Of course it was, and that was where the DM brought the story to life outside the combat.
Reasons why people dislike 4e: - It isn't the thing we're familiar with - It is popular to dislike 4e - It is set-up very combat-oriented. In that order (Originally. maybe the top 2 have now switched places) If I were to prep a 5e encounter, not only would I go for the post-its I would write the stat-block on the post-it. recreating the 4e-module approach. (as I (and most dm's I know) did when crafting their own 4e adventures)
That encounter format first appeared in the later 3.5e adventures; Undermountain, Demonweb Pits, Cormyr, Shadowdale, Anauroch, from early 2007 just before the changeover to 4e.
I love the 4e rules for generating combat encounters: you could just feed your party level into a formula, slap it on a template and bam, done. Want to create a monster from scratch? Feed its level into a simple formula and bam, done. What's more, if you don't want to do any maths at all, you could just open up the monster manual, pick a level-appropriate monster and it will naturally just suggest an appropriate encounter for it. The 5e DMG could never!
This was one of the things that confused me the most about 4e. I was simply unable to read a module at first as it made no sense to me. Why were there two books? Where was the stats? And I felt the was still flipping... since I wanted to have the plot at hand, but that was in a different book from the encounter. I loved a lot of stuff about 4e, but never grew accustomed to this.
I played 4e but didn't DM it, it's the first time I see the adventure books, I agree this was a great setup. There's still hope if you look at StarJammer, it was seperated in multiple soft books, it would be really cool if they did it or at least tried it with an adventure book for 5e.
I think I'm basically going to have to convert the 5e encounters to this style during prep, I'm a newbie GM and I'm still trying to figure out how to best create session notes, but this seems like a good starting point for dungeons.
If you have a tablet or a laptop, use organizational apps such as OneNote or Obsidian. The former is what I use when running a D&D game because the way it is structured, I feel more comfortable with. The latter is more flexible in how you can approach organizing things but requires a deeper understanding of how the app works. Anyway, with OneNote, you can easily link a word or an idea to another word or idea. For example, if you have put an encounter to an event or location, such as a goblin in one part of a cave, you can easily link the word, "goblin" to a page where the full stat of the goblin is or you can just make the info pop up. Same with a map. You can tag a room or area on a map to link it to another page where you have more info about that place. If you don't like using such a device than either buy a blank campaign notebooks or make one on your own (there are a lot of UA-cam videos of people showing you how to make one).
@@wayner7263 I have an ipad, which I might use. I've sometimes printed stat blocks of monsters just to be able to have them all right in front of me at the same time, so maybe hyperlinks might not be enough. I think I'll take the advice to move towards something with more features than printed google documents though!
I still have my 4e Dm toolkit programs from the Beta of their run (before the dark days), The monster creator, encounter builder, and original character creator. I also have a fan tool someone made that was an combat manager tool that importated all of the save filed (Character, monster, encounter files) and let you set them up for combat. It tracked everything for you with very little input (checkboxes and HP numbers), and had a random number generator for rolls if you wanted.. 1 hour of prep could run 8 combat encounters essentially on it's own. And the custom monsters you could make were increadibly. Simple, easy to use, and always balanced unless you chose to break them.
It's hip to bash on 4E but this encounter structure is very helpful to make decent encounters. I still think 4E combat feels "samey" but I feel that way about 5E too. We're subbed now and excited to see what else you have to say!
Did you play 4E nearer the end of the edition - in particular after the release of Darksun. 4E encounters felt 'samey' primarily because the monster design was weak initially. They wanted to make small stat block simple monsters and that just does not really work in 4E. The Monsters got significantly more and better powers later in the edition which improved this aspect.
I've often thought that the 4e Dungeon Delve release was one of the better releases across a lot of editions. It was well presented and clear, gave just enough to be structured and set a DM off, but left enough loose to be further developed and continued from the DM's imagination. That presentation of encounters across so many different environments was something that absolutely should have continued.
This format was first started in the later stages of 3.x edition. Not as two books but the first section of the book was the 'story' and the latter was the 'crunch'. The three Cormyr hardcover modules are a good example of this.
This was part of the 4E design thow. A lot of 4E design was tested in 3.5 like tome of battle. (Even SAGA star wars had parts in it). The skill powers which later were used in 4E were also first tested in 3.5
Great video. I've never played 4e and I love the layout you showed off here. Seems like a fantastic design and pretty unique. I don't think I've seen it in other non D&D RPGs either.
The DM side of 4E was brilliant. Simple and well organized. There are so many brilliant tools that should never have gone away. Minions, for example, are a fantastic encounter-building tool, and I don't understand why D&D5 and PF2 didn't pick them up. Also, Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies were excellent ways to spice things up. I miss them.
I think one thing that needs mentioning is to add importance to the terrain and movement during the fight. Many of the powers involve forced movement and you have to build a chance for those powers to shine into encounters. If you don't, PCs will end up designing characters to maximize alpha strikes and dishing out tons of damage with action point combinations.
As someone that never got to play DnD until 5E because of reasons despite wanting to play since at least 3E the 4E books are EXACTLY how I wanted my layouts to be since I started running my first game as a DM, would've prevented so much annoyance as well as ease up my prep without being discouraged because of the back and forth, then buying a bunch of monster cards to make it faster and easier only for the adventure specific monsters to not have a card.
What your video did was make me miss the 4e stat block lol. Similar to how you describe the adventure the format of monsters are laid out that there is little to no cross referencing. All the important information is present on that stat block. You it's funny when I was running encounters or adventures i spent way less time looking at monsters stat blocks scenerios and more time engaging players because for the most part that stats work.
And we're not even delving on how Monsters had roles, to balance what strategies they would use against players, along with a DMG page to budget those monsters and roles. There were Minions, with 1HP each but able to be a nuisance until they got hit. 4e was more GM friendly than 5e is.
I loved the 4E Encounter-Spreads. It made it easy to run and gave you interesting locations/tactics. But there was the downside that it took up quite some space. I would love to see a compromise, where you have mainly the short Version like 5E, but for some key Encounters the 4E Encounter-Spreads.
I agree wholeheartedly. It is a disgrace when you open a big twxt book for a 5E adventure... lets use Storm Kings Thunder as an example... and there is a massive chapter with like 50 locations across the world map. But each location has like... a paragraph. That's not ... even an entire encounter. Or the ones that do have encounters might just mention one or two monsters (or classes of humanoids) that are there. But nothing at all about what makes the location worthwhile to go to. I guess I get the point is to allow DMs as creators to be creative and fill in all the blanks. But 5e material is sometimes pages and pages of littlw content. But 4E materials, as you're showing, has all you need in front of you
That does look really useful. I don't see any reason why that organizational structure couldn't be used for 5e. It can be used with any system, from Cyberpunk Red to Savage Worlds. Of course for those who play online, like I do, it's really a non issue.
I completely. When preparing lost mines I would frequently redraw the map on squared paper and write notes all the way around for each of the rooms. Monster name, number of them, hp, attack bonus, damage, page number for full stat block. I had almost everything I needed on one page! I didn't understand why that was so hard for the designers. That fact it wasn't is just lazy and I'm amazed that 4e used to do it and they abandoned it. I think maybe there was a desire to abandon 4e ideas because that edition was so unpopular.
Other people mentioned cost. This needs more pages, which makes peinting slightly more expensive, but also needs a lot more work in the end. 5E is a product for the masses and tries to sell via volume so its important to keep it as cheap as possible
The encounter design is pretty good (though it sometimes gets a bit same-y, due to the somewhat forced format). For some skill challenges and social encounters it gets ... a bit iffy, in sometimes trying to force an investigation or exploration into a skill challenge, where that feels forced or more video-game-y than necessary (at least, for me).
I’ve enjoyed all the editions of D&D, dating back to Holmes Basic/Expert. I’m happy I kept all my 4th edition D&D books and I bought most of them back in the day! I might be running it again if 6th edition ends up as politicised and monetised as the rumours suggest.
I'll have to pick this up, for sure. The days of WotC putting this kind of effort into a product is long gone. If it were me, I'd fire everyone there under 40 and start over.
The thing is, they made more money with 5E with a lot less effort than they did with 4E. (Also 4E was more successfull than 3.5 but just not as successfull as WotC hoped for).
this was why i hated running a pathfinder module, let alone pathfinder as a whole. but i loved running 4th so much. its just a shame that the grognars left such a bad reputation it has ruined it for people unfamilair
Why don't you contact the One D&D team and propose to standardize this for upcoming modules? It would be a NICE addition. They appear to be open for suggestions.
I missed out between 3.5 - 5e. 4e really did have a better format as you showed. But I longed for a system closer to 1e and DCC so to get the exploration, searching and what's the encounters going to do I thank goodness for purchasing D100 Dungeon. A far less charecter and encounter crunchy game system that is D100 Dungeon.
IMO 4e was the best from a GM perspective - players could min-max some, but not nearly to the extent possible in 2e, 3e, 3.5e, and 5e. With much more homogenous power levels among players it was a lot easier to balance encounters, days, and entire adventures against a random group of players. I also found the encounter/day/adventure pacing a lot better both as a GM and a player. Being a bit simpler made it more streamlined (with the exception of players who never know what their character can or should do, but they're a plague on every version). And while skill challenges were introduced in 3e, it was 4e that fleshed them out into proper encounters and provided guidelines for balancing them.
It also helps, that 4e just had consistent well thought out math. Sure there was some errors in the early books as in higher levels dragged on, but thats a lot easier to fix, then having spells like "fireball" which just is more powergul than other 3rd level spells because its "well known" also having a clear "per encounter/per day" structure instead of 1 hour short rests which may or may not happen does not help balancing classes with different ressource structures.
No, it's even worse for 5e. Any stat block for a monster in the MM, you just have to own the MM to even be able to run. They don't have Goblin or Wolf there. You need the monster manual in any other adventure, or you just don't know the stat block of the monster. I like 5e more than 4e, but the organization of 4e and its adventures is hands down a lot better. It's less rushed, it's thought through from both a player and DM perspective, and they're just clean from a design perspective. Running modules is 100% more through our for 4e than 5e for literally any and all modules. If you want to run anything premade, 4e is much better. I just prefer my own stuff, and to have a lot more ease and flexibility, which is why 5e wins out for me. But if you want a cleaner and more rigid game, especially if you like combat tactics, 4e is great.
But isnt it just the "names" hich are different? 5e also has at will, per encounter and daily powers. Just named differently (ans differently structured between classes).
Yeah, but it sucked. Dnd prior to 4e had a looser definition of an encounter. 4e squarely place all interactions into the confines of a "combat" encounter. The system was so narrow viewed on the definition of encounter that DM's could litterally wash their hands of campaign world building, and simply run an interconnected string of "encounters" with small expositions between them. Gone was the experience of exploration and discovery that many who enjoyed the game previously, just to enter the guantlet of never ending turn based combat. 4e took dungeons and dragons from a carefully crafted role playing experience from a war game, back to a war game. Only a war game that was much to complex to actually work at a war gaming table. 4e failed in every sense of the word, because the development team had no idea what the actual problem was that they were trying to solve.
The Dungeon Masters Guide literally had a chapter about non combat encounters. It also had clear rules for non combat XP including quests, puzzles and skill challenges and traps.
4e is criminally underrated. Thanks for showing it some love.
I agree. I really feel that people misunderstood 4E. I miss so many of the aspects in 5E. I hope that they will bring some of it back.
No it wasn't.
@@WarWulf778 and why not?
@@WarWulf778 you people just hate change
@@GarredHATES I couldn't play 2e, I love 3.5e but I prefer 5e 🤷
4e's encounter design - how they were set up, how they were layed out in adventure books - was fantastic. definitely one of the things 4e did well that would be worth bringing back.
4E is having a renaissance for several years, and this is a good thing.
4e was made for DMs, but the standardization of PC “powers” meant it didn’t “feel” like D&D for the older players. 5e was made for players, but leaves us DMs scrambling in the dark.
Having run both 4e and 5e I like having everything for an encounter in one spot. Now I write my own encounters and use the 4e method in my own game docs.
Formatting, balance, and powers in D&D4E were so good. And then add in the beautiful class balance between utility powers, at-wills, encounter and daily powers, and healing surges, minion mechanics, skill challenges, and oh my god it’s clear why most house rule mechanic channels and new d20 games take notes from D&D4E
Everything about formatting in 4E was amazing, MM, DMG, Adventures, even the way books were released (seperating player books from dm books) was just sooo good. its really sad 4E got so much hate and honestly it came out too early i think. Everyone now when they try to "Fix" 5E they always mention ideas that were done in 4E without even knowing it.
It had lots of great ideas, but it had some bad ideas too, and a lot of those were player-facing.
@@LetholdusKaspyr The only major flaws of 4E imo were the flawed math of skill challenges and monster hp at higher levels. Everything else people didn’t like was a matter of perception. It didn’t look like a traditional RPG, so people recoiled from it. It’s too bad they weren’t better at selling the ideas behind it.
@@maxducoudray It's not just that. The character creation process was very directed, to the point of being overly restrictive, and it got more aggressive as the edition progressed.
@@LetholdusKaspyr It’s less restricted than 1E and old Basic editions, which I prefer to 2E-5E, so I don’t see that as a limitation. 4E is my second favorite after the original editions. 2E, 3E and 5E are all a waste of time for me. Only 4E got “highly mechanical” right for my tastes.
@@maxducoudray A lot of things have happened in gaming since the old days. D&D needs to continually evolve to survive in a competitive environment. By the time 4E came out, most players craved flexibility and nuance in their character options. If that's not what you're looking for in a game, that's fine, but most players are not with you.
I once made a rough system of "tack-on" powers for PCs based on Golden Sun's Psynergy/Djinni. It was probably one of the easiest times I ever had balancing something,
I've been on the "4e is better than 5e" Blasphemy Train for some time now. Glad to see someone agrees!
4e seriously made me a better DM. In addition to the great published adventure layout, the systems for building and adventure were sublime. The DMG gave great tools for encounter design, including the XP budget system and monster roles. Also, the attention to monster tactics helped me to run encounters more competently. I feel like my main group doesn't really "get" 4e, but I remember it really fondly.
4e the actual best version of dnd
4e is the best kept secret in the hobby! Just started playing and it scratches all the right tactical/build itches that I like about PF2, but way more streamlined and easy to run. Great video!
4th Ed positivity got an instant click. Even before I've seen the video I'm happy.
This is a brilliant design feature. Thank you for bringing this to my attention
,.
good book design and layout can make all the difference
Stat blocks all on a two page spread, all relevant info bulleted and in easy to read chunks, entire tactics sections to give the DM an idea of how to prep encounters. 4e was an absolute masterclass in adventure and encounter layouts.
I found the great layout of 4e makes adapting them on the fly to other systems easy too.
I love 4th ed. It was my first to DM and I quickly learned to deal with powergamers
The structure for encounters in 4E actually started during 3.5. Check 3.5's Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, and you'll see that it formats encounters and adventure overview in exactly the same way 4E did.
Now, if I remember correctly, this change or formatting from 4E to 5E was, in fact, discussed by the developers while they were working on 5E. It was intentional, and it was done to save on printing costs. Formatting encounters the 4E way produced chunky modules, which was pricier for them, and for the consumer.
I'm not sure if they sell modules at the same price as they did before despite them being less substantial, but I would not be surprised if there's some "cost reduction" shennanigans going on here. WotC is, in the end, a company.
I've not looked at 3/3.5e as much as the others yet. I can't wait to get in and see what other cool stuff originated there.
@@oldegreybeard That kind of encounter format only appeared at the very end of 3.5. Before that, they were doing something similar to what Pathfinder was doing with their 1E modules (I don't know anything about Pathfinder 2E).
If you're into studying all this you're gonna have a lot of fun checking old modules, from 3.5 and back.
Depending on your style of play, if you're more into narrative and roleplaying than encounter building, I would suggest you check out White Wolf's Storytelling Adventure System (SAS). It's great for setting up scenes, rather than encounters.
I'm not surprised it saves them money. I'm time and effort alone, I hadn't considered printing.
It's always nice to see love for 4E, since it STILL gets a lot of hate in the community (at least from the 3/3.5 side since most seem like fanatics about it and kind of drive me away from trying it). 4E was the edition that was around when I first wanted to get started with current DnD when my friend showed me an old basic set way back in highschool and the Acq Inc. show helped with that. Im kind of wondering with how 5E has been going, the latest news of DnD's future and with lots of online programs to help play digitally that 4E may make a comback (unlikely, but it would be nice to get more attention and less hate now).
You don't know what you got 'til it's gone.
You've earned a sub. :) Also makes me want to run 4e..
Would have preferred 5e being far more similar to 4e than it ended up being...
Would have preferred 4e to be more like Star Wars Special Edition.
Yeah - when it was not that was when I got off the bus. I play a 4E clone these days.
One D&D driving people back into to old school D&D...4e
That's also the format for Pathfinder adventure paths. 🙂
Everything is provided in-book, or a specific page is referenced to monster stats in the Bestiary. Sounds like a nightmare for 5e DMs the way WotC does it now by comparison.
WotC threw the baby out with the bathwater when they made 5e.
I never played 4e so I had no idea this was a thing. I don't understand why they changed the layout it is so well organized. I wish they would bring this style back.
4e had a lot of backlash from old-timers and 3.5 vets who saw it as an attempt by WotC to chase after the "MMO" crowd due to a combination of the timing of its release and the codification of things that existed in various forms in 3.5 into a more structured format. Combine that with neckbeards whose power fantasies were focused on that playing high Intellect spell casters who can lord their cosmic powers over the plebeian martial characters, and you get a pretty loud voice of discontent. So, when they changed to 5e, they ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and abandoned all the good things 4e brought in an attempt to entice the 3.5 vets and OD&D lifers to buy into and play the new edition. All the cool ideas and mechanics that were brought about in 4e, all the cool lore and ideas that were released for the now-defunct Points of Light setting (that they were hoping would be the new Greyhawk) that was given in tidbits of rule books and Dungeon and Dragon Magazines released during 4e, and so much more was just tossed aside.
>> I don't understand why they changed the layout...
@@WolfJ Well that is kind of their job spec. Either making more of it, or keeping more of what they make as profit. It's a balancing act of going cheap and broad appeal, or expensive and narrow focus. Ideally they'd like expensive and broad appeal, but that's a tricky thing to pull off over a long term.
Also, when I look at the monsters in an encounter I divide them into complex and simple. If there are too many complex monsters, a combat will bog down. When first looking at an encounter, I assign simple or complex to the monsters and then look at adjusting the support monsters into less complex. Not really an issue in early stages of the game, but it comes up quite a bit in the Paragon and later stages.
You make a great point in this video.
While there are significant differences between the two editions, there’s no reason at all the better structured 4e encounter system can’t be ported directly into 5e
I think the main reason 5E discarded this is that they wanted to win back the audience they had lost. I'll note that I personally run a 4E clone on game night but design my adventures much more in the style Paizo was using in the 3.5 Era (similiar to the 5E version but statblocks are to be located near to the encounter as opposed to at the back of the book). On the downside it does mean flipping back and forth between pages but it also means the DM has the broader adventure themes at hand. You can lose track of the bigger picture when you are pretty much just going from one 2 page encounter to the next.
Also this encounter design is very self contained but does not work well if the Monsters start changing locations. If your text reads "Monster X will retreat to its ally Monster Y when it loses half its hps" then the whole setup can start to get dicey in a hurry. Monster X may or may not actually manage to retreat. Some encounters need more then 2 pages while others work just fine with one. That huge trap being displayed probably does not actually work that well in actual play (late in 4E they redid traps and how they worked and they where far better - its a format I use in my clone). Monster Stat Blocks (again very correctly) got much larger after the release of Darksun which is an issue as well. The set up also precludes something like an NPC that might betray the PCs at an opportune moment or enemies that may or may not reinforce a combat (say they don't if the PCs already killed them but otherwise will).
Finally this format is arguably good during play (as I note I don't actually think that is particularity true) but it is boring to read. All that said, under the right conditions I can see how it can be the best option when one wants to be organized during an encounter - it is certainly possible to adapt any system to utilize this style. I just think one should be aware that, by its very nature, it makes the interactions in the adventure less dynamic.
I’m pretty sure every edition except 5E did this. 1E often had the maps on the inside of the removable module cover so you could always see the maps no matter where you were in the book. Stats for monsters were also often contained in the text and not in the appendix, but they were a bit inconsistent about that.
The design, math and layout of 4e was rock solid.
Having the stat block at the back of the book means it’s much easier to reference when you aren’t running the story in linear fashion.
Maybe the PCs are traveling and they encounter a group of wolves. In that case the DM would have to flip through the entire book to find where that stat block was located, instead of the appendix at the back.
Still, more tactical suggestions for the encounters would be appreciated.
4e - for the life of me I'm still mystified WoTC threw that baby out with the bathwater in 5e. The layout of the dungeons was perfectly logical in 4e and smooth. I think because lots of the powers and feats were similar, and because lots of the adventures were dungeon focused, there was this view 4e wasn't a roleplaying game. Of course it was, and that was where the DM brought the story to life outside the combat.
Your channel looks just as awesome as this video is! You've earned yourself a subscriber :D
Thank you so much!
Here's the thing, 4e was actually too ahead of its time. It was a great game.
Yes!
All editions of D& D have some great ideas - even 4e. Only BECMI is a well designed complete system.
Reasons why people dislike 4e:
- It isn't the thing we're familiar with
- It is popular to dislike 4e
- It is set-up very combat-oriented.
In that order
(Originally. maybe the top 2 have now switched places)
If I were to prep a 5e encounter, not only would I go for the post-its
I would write the stat-block on the post-it.
recreating the 4e-module approach.
(as I (and most dm's I know) did when crafting their own 4e adventures)
That encounter format first appeared in the later 3.5e adventures; Undermountain, Demonweb Pits, Cormyr, Shadowdale, Anauroch, from early 2007 just before the changeover to 4e.
Well a lot of 4E design was tested in later 3.5 books. the Tome of Battle was how martials worked at that time in 4E for example.
I love the 4e rules for generating combat encounters: you could just feed your party level into a formula, slap it on a template and bam, done. Want to create a monster from scratch? Feed its level into a simple formula and bam, done. What's more, if you don't want to do any maths at all, you could just open up the monster manual, pick a level-appropriate monster and it will naturally just suggest an appropriate encounter for it. The 5e DMG could never!
This was one of the things that confused me the most about 4e. I was simply unable to read a module at first as it made no sense to me.
Why were there two books? Where was the stats?
And I felt the was still flipping... since I wanted to have the plot at hand, but that was in a different book from the encounter.
I loved a lot of stuff about 4e, but never grew accustomed to this.
Maybe you should do a “How to play” guide for 4e? That’ll help revive some interest in the system
I have that on my list as a set of videos I want to make. Thank you for the feedback.
I played 4e but didn't DM it, it's the first time I see the adventure books, I agree this was a great setup. There's still hope if you look at StarJammer, it was seperated in multiple soft books, it would be really cool if they did it or at least tried it with an adventure book for 5e.
All 3 books were hardcover.
I think I'm basically going to have to convert the 5e encounters to this style during prep, I'm a newbie GM and I'm still trying to figure out how to best create session notes, but this seems like a good starting point for dungeons.
If you have a tablet or a laptop, use organizational apps such as OneNote or Obsidian. The former is what I use when running a D&D game because the way it is structured, I feel more comfortable with. The latter is more flexible in how you can approach organizing things but requires a deeper understanding of how the app works. Anyway, with OneNote, you can easily link a word or an idea to another word or idea. For example, if you have put an encounter to an event or location, such as a goblin in one part of a cave, you can easily link the word, "goblin" to a page where the full stat of the goblin is or you can just make the info pop up. Same with a map. You can tag a room or area on a map to link it to another page where you have more info about that place.
If you don't like using such a device than either buy a blank campaign notebooks or make one on your own (there are a lot of UA-cam videos of people showing you how to make one).
@@wayner7263 I have an ipad, which I might use. I've sometimes printed stat blocks of monsters just to be able to have them all right in front of me at the same time, so maybe hyperlinks might not be enough.
I think I'll take the advice to move towards something with more features than printed google documents though!
@@cristianhakansson7443 Just checked if there was OneNote for iPad and it is available in the Apple store. I highly recommend it.
I still have my 4e Dm toolkit programs from the Beta of their run (before the dark days), The monster creator, encounter builder, and original character creator.
I also have a fan tool someone made that was an combat manager tool that importated all of the save filed (Character, monster, encounter files) and let you set them up for combat. It tracked everything for you with very little input (checkboxes and HP numbers), and had a random number generator for rolls if you wanted..
1 hour of prep could run 8 combat encounters essentially on it's own.
And the custom monsters you could make were increadibly. Simple, easy to use, and always balanced unless you chose to break them.
It's hip to bash on 4E but this encounter structure is very helpful to make decent encounters. I still think 4E combat feels "samey" but I feel that way about 5E too. We're subbed now and excited to see what else you have to say!
Did you play 4E nearer the end of the edition - in particular after the release of Darksun. 4E encounters felt 'samey' primarily because the monster design was weak initially. They wanted to make small stat block simple monsters and that just does not really work in 4E. The Monsters got significantly more and better powers later in the edition which improved this aspect.
I've often thought that the 4e Dungeon Delve release was one of the better releases across a lot of editions. It was well presented and clear, gave just enough to be structured and set a DM off, but left enough loose to be further developed and continued from the DM's imagination. That presentation of encounters across so many different environments was something that absolutely should have continued.
This format was first started in the later stages of 3.x edition. Not as two books but the first section of the book was the 'story' and the latter was the 'crunch'. The three Cormyr hardcover modules are a good example of this.
This was part of the 4E design thow. A lot of 4E design was tested in 3.5 like tome of battle. (Even SAGA star wars had parts in it). The skill powers which later were used in 4E were also first tested in 3.5
Great video. I've never played 4e and I love the layout you showed off here.
Seems like a fantastic design and pretty unique. I don't think I've seen it in other non D&D RPGs either.
I miss 4E, it was my first experience in TTRPGs :(
The DM side of 4E was brilliant. Simple and well organized. There are so many brilliant tools that should never have gone away. Minions, for example, are a fantastic encounter-building tool, and I don't understand why D&D5 and PF2 didn't pick them up. Also, Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies were excellent ways to spice things up. I miss them.
I think one thing that needs mentioning is to add importance to the terrain and movement during the fight. Many of the powers involve forced movement and you have to build a chance for those powers to shine into encounters. If you don't, PCs will end up designing characters to maximize alpha strikes and dishing out tons of damage with action point combinations.
As someone that never got to play DnD until 5E because of reasons despite wanting to play since at least 3E the 4E books are EXACTLY how I wanted my layouts to be since I started running my first game as a DM, would've prevented so much annoyance as well as ease up my prep without being discouraged because of the back and forth, then buying a bunch of monster cards to make it faster and easier only for the adventure specific monsters to not have a card.
Great video! Thanks for your work :)
Written encounters done right. I Gotta learn from this ine
As someone who started with 5e and is currently running Curse of Strahd, I am so angry right now.
What your video did was make me miss the 4e stat block lol. Similar to how you describe the adventure the format of monsters are laid out that there is little to no cross referencing. All the important information is present on that stat block. You it's funny when I was running encounters or adventures i spent way less time looking at monsters stat blocks scenerios and more time engaging players because for the most part that stats work.
And we're not even delving on how Monsters had roles, to balance what strategies they would use against players, along with a DMG page to budget those monsters and roles. There were Minions, with 1HP each but able to be a nuisance until they got hit. 4e was more GM friendly than 5e is.
I loved the 4E Encounter-Spreads. It made it easy to run and gave you interesting locations/tactics. But there was the downside that it took up quite some space. I would love to see a compromise, where you have mainly the short Version like 5E, but for some key Encounters the 4E Encounter-Spreads.
As a DM, encounters were a breeze to prepare and to run.
Only thing missing is a picture of the room with the monsters in it.
Yeah, that 4e module had a much better user interface than the 5e one. Almost all digital books and VTTRPGS have similar problems.
I agree wholeheartedly.
It is a disgrace when you open a big twxt book for a 5E adventure... lets use Storm Kings Thunder as an example... and there is a massive chapter with like 50 locations across the world map. But each location has like... a paragraph. That's not ... even an entire encounter. Or the ones that do have encounters might just mention one or two monsters (or classes of humanoids) that are there. But nothing at all about what makes the location worthwhile to go to.
I guess I get the point is to allow DMs as creators to be creative and fill in all the blanks. But 5e material is sometimes pages and pages of littlw content. But 4E materials, as you're showing, has all you need in front of you
4 > 5 > etc
That does look really useful. I don't see any reason why that organizational structure couldn't be used for 5e. It can be used with any system, from Cyberpunk Red to Savage Worlds. Of course for those who play online, like I do, it's really a non issue.
I completely. When preparing lost mines I would frequently redraw the map on squared paper and write notes all the way around for each of the rooms. Monster name, number of them, hp, attack bonus, damage, page number for full stat block. I had almost everything I needed on one page! I didn't understand why that was so hard for the designers. That fact it wasn't is just lazy and I'm amazed that 4e used to do it and they abandoned it. I think maybe there was a desire to abandon 4e ideas because that edition was so unpopular.
Other people mentioned cost. This needs more pages, which makes peinting slightly more expensive, but also needs a lot more work in the end. 5E is a product for the masses and tries to sell via volume so its important to keep it as cheap as possible
The encounter design is pretty good (though it sometimes gets a bit same-y, due to the somewhat forced format). For some skill challenges and social encounters it gets ... a bit iffy, in sometimes trying to force an investigation or exploration into a skill challenge, where that feels forced or more video-game-y than necessary (at least, for me).
I’ve enjoyed all the editions of D&D, dating back to Holmes Basic/Expert. I’m happy I kept all my 4th edition D&D books and I bought most of them back in the day! I might be running it again if 6th edition ends up as politicised and monetised as the rumours suggest.
I'll have to pick this up, for sure. The days of WotC putting this kind of effort into a product is long gone.
If it were me, I'd fire everyone there under 40 and start over.
The thing is, they made more money with 5E with a lot less effort than they did with 4E. (Also 4E was more successfull than 3.5 but just not as successfull as WotC hoped for).
this was why i hated running a pathfinder module, let alone pathfinder as a whole. but i loved running 4th so much. its just a shame that the grognars left such a bad reputation it has ruined it for people unfamilair
Very cool! Are all the official 4e modules done this way?
All the ones I've come across. Very DM-friendly. Thanks for the feedback.
Why don't you contact the One D&D team and propose to standardize this for upcoming modules? It would be a NICE addition.
They appear to be open for suggestions.
Railroad?
I missed out between
3.5 - 5e. 4e really did have a better format as you showed. But I longed for a system closer to 1e and DCC so to get the exploration, searching and what's the encounters going to do I thank goodness for purchasing
D100 Dungeon. A far less charecter and encounter crunchy game system
that is D100 Dungeon.
IMO 4e was the best from a GM perspective - players could min-max some, but not nearly to the extent possible in 2e, 3e, 3.5e, and 5e. With much more homogenous power levels among players it was a lot easier to balance encounters, days, and entire adventures against a random group of players. I also found the encounter/day/adventure pacing a lot better both as a GM and a player. Being a bit simpler made it more streamlined (with the exception of players who never know what their character can or should do, but they're a plague on every version). And while skill challenges were introduced in 3e, it was 4e that fleshed them out into proper encounters and provided guidelines for balancing them.
It also helps, that 4e just had consistent well thought out math.
Sure there was some errors in the early books as in higher levels dragged on, but thats a lot easier to fix, then having spells like "fireball" which just is more powergul than other 3rd level spells because its "well known" also having a clear "per encounter/per day" structure instead of 1 hour short rests which may or may not happen does not help balancing classes with different ressource structures.
No, it's even worse for 5e.
Any stat block for a monster in the MM, you just have to own the MM to even be able to run. They don't have Goblin or Wolf there. You need the monster manual in any other adventure, or you just don't know the stat block of the monster.
I like 5e more than 4e, but the organization of 4e and its adventures is hands down a lot better. It's less rushed, it's thought through from both a player and DM perspective, and they're just clean from a design perspective. Running modules is 100% more through our for 4e than 5e for literally any and all modules.
If you want to run anything premade, 4e is much better. I just prefer my own stuff, and to have a lot more ease and flexibility, which is why 5e wins out for me. But if you want a cleaner and more rigid game, especially if you like combat tactics, 4e is great.
4e is the best designed "game" of any edition of D&D. It's just not very D&D.
But isnt it just the "names" hich are different? 5e also has at will, per encounter and daily powers. Just named differently (ans differently structured between classes).
They sacrifice the freedom of Dnd for computer like encounters. So you can easily build encounters but nobody will be there to fight it. yay 4e.
Yeah, but it sucked. Dnd prior to 4e had a looser definition of an encounter. 4e squarely place all interactions into the confines of a "combat" encounter. The system was so narrow viewed on the definition of encounter that DM's could litterally wash their hands of campaign world building, and simply run an interconnected string of "encounters" with small expositions between them. Gone was the experience of exploration and discovery that many who enjoyed the game previously, just to enter the guantlet of never ending turn based combat. 4e took dungeons and dragons from a carefully crafted role playing experience from a war game, back to a war game. Only a war game that was much to complex to actually work at a war gaming table. 4e failed in every sense of the word, because the development team had no idea what the actual problem was that they were trying to solve.
The Dungeon Masters Guide literally had a chapter about non combat encounters. It also had clear rules for non combat XP including quests, puzzles and skill challenges and traps.
too easy, too computer game-ish