My favorite thing about 4E was how it managed to *feel heroic* from level 1 all the way to the end. That intro adventure, the one with the hatchling white dragon, might be the best in-book sample adventure they'll ever release.
One thing to note about the Virtual tabletop & character builder for 4e is the events around them. Specifically why the VTT never happened and why the character builder was late. For those online and active in the D&D / MtG space at the time, you'll remember WotC's Gleemax well... if not, google "The Failure of Gleemax" you'll get an idea of it's most glorious rollout. And the head of the Gleemax project was in charge of the 4e tools. From what I gathered the guy wasn't a good project lead: he kept ideas close to his chest, didn't give direction, was bad at communicating and didn't really have goals set. He was also going through a messy divorce at the time. Now's where things get dark. Real dark. Our project lead, one evening, stalked his ex, locked themselves in a room, and committed murder-suicide. Wikipedia has information and links to news articles if you want more info, search "Joseph and Melissa Batten". This caused WotC to cancel the Gleemax project and after bringing in an outside source to comb through Joseph's work for anything salvageable, the end result was they decided to scrap everything and work from scratch, as reverse engineering his work would take just as long, if not longer. They basically had to work full tilt to get just the character builder out, scrapping the VTT entirely, and it still wasn't ready for the release date of 4e. 4e had a messy, messy development cycle if you look more into it and hasbro/wotc policies of the time and i'm honestly amazed what came out was actually good. flawed, and could use a bit more time in the oven, sure, but it was good.
The closest thing you can use is the Encounter Building tables from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Monster _building_ tools... outside of the DMG don't exist.
Agreed. The introduction of "minions" first came about in Star Wars Saga with their non-heroics. Later on, 4e made their own very of minions which worked very well. The variety of monsters, roles, and how they're used in building encounters was by far the best for not just D&D but any RPG. A big problem for DMs in any system is creating challenging encounters. Sadly, that was forgotten or lost and it feels like we're starting over again.
^ I opened comments and the above said it all ahead of me. Roles for pcs and monsters were not only great for building encounters yet also for helping new to the hobby players get the hang of things. Say Mage vs Magic Blaster/ Artilirits (I think was it) drives home a role a lot better.
By far the most DM-friendly edition ever made. Once they tweaked the monster math in DMG2 and Essentials you could actually rely on your encounter difficulty levels to actually be where they should be, unlike every other edition ever. Admittedly, a bit rocky early on in the edition life cycle (we all remember the overperforming Needlefang Drakeswarms and condition-locking solos into uselessness) but they did fix it over time. 13th Age is a very good take on D&D 4.5, and will be better yet when 2nd edition comes out. There's also Orcus now as another alternative that's close to 4e proper.
I can only assume that at some point during development the design team stepped back and made a formal design goal to make the system as easy to run as possible. It's my favorite system to DM for because everything just works. The designers "showed their work" and tell you all the assumptions they made when balancing the game (how many fights in a day, how hard should they be, what should they look like, how much loot to give, pretty much everything honestly). Some people feel limited by all these guidelines, but every game has them, and the further you get away from how the game was intended to be played the more balance breaks down. At least 4e gave you the assumptions up front so you know what you are getting into.
4e caught so much flak by people who just never played it. I've managed to convince a number of people over the years to just sit down and play it (or at least READ the books) and they all came away with "wow, this is way better than I was led to believe." That more modern games are trying to snipe bits and ends from it is no surprise because of just how solid and good a system it was.
Game designers seem to pretty consistently acknowledge that 4e is a well-designed game. It was a massive fumble from a business perspective, but not necessarily a gaming perspective.
I played it, and I did not like it. I don't like roles and I don't like powers. It makes no sense to me that a fighter can make a special physical attack and then "forget" (?) how to do it again until the next encounter? It was too much like a video game.
@@OctoberGeek But the concept is same for both: how do you have a limit on spells or why forget the spells when changing them? For fighters, If you make an attack that pushes even a dragon 10ft., you might need a breather before you can do it again, and since encounter powers are regained after a short rest, you could go through multiple fights without your pushy power if you didn't get your power nap. Edit: Just out of curiosity, do you also have problem with 5e's short rest abilities, like action surge?
Its because you came in with no baggage of expectations and entitlements. You were able to approach the game on the terms it presented and accept it for what it was. Bravo! If only we could all do that!
I recall an interview with Chris Perkins were he said something to the effect that 4e was his best work. Can’t find the receipt though. I agree with Ol’Old. As my friends and I have watched the 5.5e rollout, we’ve said the same thing, and we taken every opportunity to remind our 5e friends that they are getting 4e features in their game. 😂
I thought the 4e character builder was fantastic, it made character creation so much easier. My wife still picks 4e, my friend has always loved warriors and will choose a 4e fighter every time.. lol.
Our group ran a full 4e campaign from 1-30 a few years back. I absolutely LOVED it!! I am running a 5e game now, and while it moves faster, there are less "I AM A BADASS" cinematic moments, particularly for martial characters. Martial characters feel absolutely amazing in 4e. I also loved all the variations of monsters in 4e with the different roles (soldier, stalker, striker, etc), not to mention the absolute genius inclusion of minions to pad out the ranks. Every battle required a degree of tactical thinking. I will admit 4e is not for everyone, but for people who really enjoy crunchy power gaming character construction and cinematic combat where each character can have epic moments, I think 4e is the definitive edition. It has its flaws, but if you are willing to put up with those, it can create some wonderful memories for your gaming group that will last a lifetime.
Oh, and Non-A/C Defenses (NADs) are WAAAAAY better than saving throws and I don't know why they switched back in 5e! Instead of casting a spell and making a monster make a will save, you rolled against their will defense. It is a subtle change, but slinging spell after spell and watching the DM continually roll high saves feels very bad. Rolling against their will defense and constantly rolling low still feels bad, but at least you feel like the bad luck is in your hands. For some reason, being an active participant in rolls that screw you is less frustrating.
I think they got really nervous after 4e and went the safe route. Dialed things back to the 3e rules. We saw a change in the latest Tales of the Valiant playtest that brings back some of what you are talking about. Monsters don't have a stealth or perception bonus. They instead have a DC for each. So the player gets to roll a perception check to overcome the monster's stealth. And the player rolls a stealth check to overcome the monster's perception. Not a huge change but I like that the rolling is in the hands of the player not the monster.
@@shweppy You are so right. Not to mention that it gave the player the ability to use reroll effects to their advantage. If you rolled poorly on your fireball attack, you could reroll it. Where as, it's much harder to force your enemy to reroll their successful save. It also made it easier to balance all attack modifiers. You could with the same support effect increase EVERY pc's chance of success if they had a +1 to hit (including lightning bolt), and likewise -1 to defense was available in one debuff, instead of penalty to save usually being separate from penalty to AC in other editions.
A lot of the 4e criticisms boiled down to "I have 3e buy in and will hate on 4e to validate staying with the game I like". Empty claims like "it's just trying to be World of Warcraft" are still hilarious when stated in defense of the edition AD&D players called "just trying to be Diablo". (A comparison not helped by WotC producing actual official 3e Diablo books! They're very interesting byproducts of early 3e with a decidedly TSR vibe. Highly recommended as an academic read.) I have my pain points over 4e, but they came about from years of running it and feeling out through experience where its limits lie. It's not "we can't roleplay." It's more things like "small encounters don't impact player resources, so I feel more pressured to make every encounter challenging". I'm glad to see people rediscovering 4e and hope it leads to someone polishing up a new take on its style.
Other criticism I've seen is "This piece of lore that takes place in 4E's default campaign setting is not what happens in Forgotten Realms. Therefore, they have crapped all over Forgotten Realms, as this thing that is describing events that happened in a different campaign setting is not what happens in Forgotten Realms."
The only bad thing about 4e is the amount of Ongoing effects, so many situational bonuses like bloodied , flanking, it can get messy quick when something is taunted , bloodied, has slow and ongoing 5 damage Balance was good , epic , and paragon tiers were awesome and you really felt like you where gaining power Tons of magic items , balanced arround only being able to use so many a day Lots of player choice everywhere
@@Synetik It's much better than it was in Pathfinder 1, but most of them are similar. Only the flavor is different in most cases. Frightened is a "scared" status penalty to all d20 rolls and DCs. Sickened is a "gross" status penalty to all d20 rolls and DCs. They do the same thing, but one doesn't work on mindless creatures, the other doesn't work on creatures without a digestive tract and each have different ways to be applied/removed. Demoralize is just one way to apply Frightened. It's not a condition. Even though it can feel daunting as there are a bunch of named conditions, most of them are the same as others, just a different delivery or single ability score that is affected.
Honestly 3e was worse, at least 4e consolidated most ongoing affects into a handful of simple keywords. Likewise duration was simplified to either one full round or save ends. In 3e, you could easily have just as man if not more ongoing effects to track, each with their own individual rules and durations to track across multiple rounds. The only complexity 4e added was that now every player could inflict status conditions, whereas it used to mostly be the preview of spellcasters or the occasional rogue with a poisoned blade.
I will go on the record to say 4th edition was good. I started with 3.5 not really understanding "editions" which would explain some of my confusion early on. Back then there was no online resources that would explain anything to me and I ended up with many 2nd edition and AD&D books and while they all seemed like they went together I still had no idea what was going on, reading the books cover to cover and I still had no clear idea what the rules were and had to keep making stuff up. Another complaint I had was there seemed there wasn't enough for players to do, casters had only a couple spells a day, then they stood around useless and martials would just hit stuff. Then came 4th edition and turned a table top game into a video game giving players a butt load of powers and abilities. I had to buy tons of blank cards for my players and write out every single ability they had and write out all the math formulas for them and when playing, it was like they had a deck of cards. Turns took forever as they had to flip through like 3 dozen cards to figure out what they wanted to do. Sure we could have made simpler characters but after 3.5 of not giving us abilities, we now wanted it all and keep hoarding powers. And lets not forget it had waaaaay too many floating modifiers. This gives me +1 if I'm doing this, but that guy gave me a +1 also, oh wait I'm standing in shadow, which gives me another +1, or did I add that already??? Then I get +1 to only this attack but not that attack, oh wait there was another +1 in there somewhere I think, oh and I still have the +1 that hasn't worn off yet from last turn. Also, can't believe I'm going to say this, it had toooo many power ups. Before and now in 5E, a class can be summed up in like 3 to 4 pages, 4E each class had like 20 pages, about 1 page per level, it was too much. That being said, 4E is where I was able to finally get friends to play cause the rules made sense and we could figure things out (and a plethora of minis didn't hurt either) I was reluctant to switch to 5E but then I realized it was a fusion of 3.5 and 4 where it simplified and streamlined all the 10 billion powers, maybe too simple, but we can understand how to play it. I will say I do like some of the complexity I see from Pathfinder 2E, many of the choices they made designing it make sense but the system feels weighty to me. That being said I have yet to try it out and would love to one day.
4e remains the most balanced version ever. At 20th level in every other edition Wizards ar3 casting Wish and altering the very fabric of reality. Martial classes were there to be HP sponges. 4e fixed all of that by putti g everyone on a more balanced playing field. Plus the creativity in 4e was so insane i had a Cleric of Love that had 0 damage spells and made the game so much more fun for the rest of the table with buffs, debuffs, and ridiculously cool heals. Then 5e came out and it was like "Oh, look. Fighters suck again."
Wasn't one of the biggest complaints of 4e the fact that WotC refused to add it to the OGL? A lot of people who had begun to enjoy 3rd party content were all of a sudden being boxed in again to official products, and Paizo jumped at the chance to keep 3.5e alive as Pathfinder, which furthermore eroded support for 4e. Whether or not you agreed the 4e was better than 3.5e, WotC's transparent move to kill off 3rd party support upset many people, which lead to a lot of blowback from people who never even played 4e like you stated.
Agree. There were a lot of contributing factors. The Game System License was a terrible decision. D&D, especially in the age of downloadable content, is a game that depends on 3rd party creators to grow the fan base. By locking those creators out Wizards hurt themselves. And they tried again back in January with the OGL mess. There are some things from 4e that should stay in the past. 😀
@@timnewman7591 Given the massive blowback that just happened a few months back many people I’m sure are very familiar with what the OGL is. Even I remember people bringing it up during 4th edition and WoTC’s statement on why 4th wasn’t added. As far as 3rd party stuff, I can’t speak for everybody, but I’ve honestly grown very cautious and hesitant to support that stuff. Some of it is just broken Homebrew or worse looks like it was written by a 5 year old and it makes me upset because I paid legit money for these products. I swear one of them included a “puzzle” with a Nightmare angrily galloping around and the solution was to feed it an apple…
@@timnewman7591 That may be true now, but back when 4e was released, I suspect it was a much bigger factor. Remember WotC used the OGL to grow 3e and 3.5e, and this being pre-Critical Role, I suspect the amount of players were more aware of 3rd Party Providers back then.
Yes. Here in my country some publishers who used to publish material under OGL even made some kind of campaign against the 4e because they couldn't profit from it, eventually creating their own mechanics based on the OGL.
While I don't support their decision, I suspect most, if not all, of the GSL/OGL 1.0 nonsense was due to shareholder demands at Hasbro. I wouldn't put much blame on Wotc back in the early 2000s. Wotc already had the OGL before they were acquired by Hasbro in '99. I suspect there was pressure/demands to eliminate the OGL after Hasbro took over. One of the inherent problems with publicly traded companies is their shareholders expect unsustainable growth from year to year. Most RPG companies operate in a maintenance mode with a small, but steady fluctuation in new customers, but the most enduring customers making several purchases over the life of a game. Merchandising and licensing IP is one of those ways to expand growth potential, but that can be hard for a corporation to leverage when they have an open sharing policy for most of their IP. TL;DR: I don't think there is an alternate timeline where 4ed didn't operate with it's own GSL if Wotc was still owned by Hasbro.
4E is a really good system. I also feel that many just stuck their nose up in the air and never bothered with it. Honestly I feel that it is by far the most balanced of any edition still to date. I ran a couple full campaigns and it was great. I seen to many bitching about it not having the role-play element and that never sat well with me. Role-playing really has nothing to do with the system or any D&D system. That was something you brought to the table, Not the system. There were just so many complaints about it that made no sense and I wonder if those doing the nagging were those who never actually gave it a try.
I couldn't agree more, 4th for me, was phenomenal and my friends and I had a ton of fun with it. This was the same with AD&D, 2nd, 3rd edition, etc. Excellent post.
The thing I hated about 4th Edition the most (aside from what they did to the Forgotten Realms, don't even get me started) was the fact that combat seemed to take forever. In earlier editions, you could have a combat, wrap it up, and have time to advance the plot. 4th edition seemed to be all about having 2+ hour combats so that everyone would have a chance to show off their flashy At Will/Encounter/Daily Powers, which caused combats to drag on forever and slowed gameplay to a crawl.
It was a rough feature of the early life of 4e. The initial Monster Manual had too much HP for most monsters and not enough damage/too high of defenses on some. If your GM used a lot of soldiers and brutes, it would take awhile. If they used a lot of minions, artillery and lurkers, then it went smoothly, if not fast. They massively adjusted that in the 3rd Monster manual.
D&D 4e was more honest than 3e or 5e about being a board game in its massive focus on combat and everything adjacent to combat (including character creation and advancement). I also thing that the way characters had to replace lower-level powers with higher-level counterparts as they leveled up was a great way of curbing feature bloat (what MMORPG players would refer to as "ability crunch"). This should've continued onward to future editions of D&D, IMO.
My favorite feature of 4E (and one of the only ones I liked) was the bloodied condition. I like the idea that you become less effective or incur certain banes or penalties the more injured you become. it's why I love Numenera and the Cypher system, your stats are a currency that you spend as you exert yourself and lose as you get hurt, it creates some great decision making moments as the game goes on.
Bloodied was great because it wasn't just bad, it was a great fight enhancer hook that could speed up combat. PCs had tons of powers that triggered when the PC was bloodied to unleash new abilities, monsters and PCs could do more damage to bloodied creatures, and Solo (boss monsters) (eventually - once the design got nailed down) switched phases once bloodied for more cool stuff, refreshed reactions, and generally upped the anty
I'll never understand the backlash against character roles! If it's literally like "this is MMO now lul", no. Still completely different formats. I'd like to see people try what you could do in D&D in any MMO. While I don't believe there's an inherit need for certain party compositions, the character roles did a great job of explaining how classes function and synergize together. The "Leader" role is why cleric and bard are now my favorite classes. Finally replaced my stolen 4e DMG and can't wait to see what comes of it! That book elevated my DM skills back in college, and I agree it's easily the best one we have so far. Now that I'm older (and an accountant xD) I can appreciate 3.5's a bit more as well.
Yeah, it's cringy how the same ppl bashing 4e for lack of roleplay and in the same time creating multiclass characters like 1lvl barb, 2lvl ranger, 2lvl warrior.
@@Grom0zeka I straight up man multi-classing as a DM. I'm open to any feats and I don't mind mini-max characters, but the multi classing craziness seems lazy too me.
The evolving fan base of the game is the biggest change across all editions. The way we play - style, emphasis, and choice of the characters we portray - all of this is more important than the rules when determining the gaming experience. Having played continuously across all editions starting with ODD, I see the changes in our assumptions about D&D, and in our expectations for what D&D should be have had the greatest impact on how we play using any edition. My attitude has always been to make the game your own, and to play the game you want. Cheers!
I remember the first time I played “DnD” it was actually Pathfinder (this was 2009 and we were still half a decade away from 5e) Strangely enough because it seemed so hated (at the time I asked around about it and one memorable response was a guy actually hissed at me, which was honestly kinda BA!) but from then on I never even gave 4e the time of day (playing Pathfinder until 5th edition released, which that seemed to be the thing everyone was doing at the time) but anyway thanks for your refreshing explanation and not for hissing at me lol
It is totally playable without a grid. It was just an assumption that many/most people used one, so it was easier to write it with that in mind rather than making people count out multiples of 5/10 feet or 6/12 feet like in earlier editions.
Thanks Greyschool ‘Ol beard! I’m really curious about 4e. If I’m disappointed in the new phb I’m going to check out the 4e core rules - come to think if it, I might check out either way
I loved 4th edition. It was hands down the best edition in my experience, having played from 90s 2e onwards. 5e was a disappointment from the get-go, and the bitter irony that they are trying to make it more like 4e amuses me. But I'll stick to 4th, as I no longer want to deal with post-2014 D&D.
4e is by far and away the best edition of d&d or pathfinder imo. It was also YEARS ahead of its time sadly and a lot of people (myslef included) skipped it when it came out because of its reputation.
The weapon mastery features are actually closer to the BECMI weapon mastery than 4e's powers. This is because the BECMI rules linked the abilities to the weapon while 4e linked them to classes. Though, I would be really surprised if anyone currently working at WOTC is familiar with Basic, lol. Still, I'd love to see more options from Basic make it into the weapon mastery. Like charge (extra damage dice from movement), deflect (if hit, save to avoid all damage), Hook (basically grapple with the weapon but hold them at range and you can pull them down and drag them), Ignite (flaming oil weapons and arrows), set vs charge (bonus damage vs an enemy that moves to you), skewer (leave your weapon impaled in the enemy so it deals auto damage each round, but you're disarmed), and the mechanic of gaining ranks of mastery (basic, skilled, expert, master, grand master) as a replacement for great weapon fighting.
I keep doing a ton of research on all of the editions. My wife swears by 3rd/3.5. I learned on 5th. By DMing first. I've done my research and I'm now somewhat of a TTRPG collector. Everything from OSR to modern and so on. The more and more I keep learning about 4th edition. The more and more I keep thinking it will probably be my favorite. I might have to track down the core books. Also I will never understand when people say it "has a lack of rules for roleplaying." You don't need rules to roleplay. You never needed rules to roleplay. I do have a 4e starter set thing that I do look at but have never actually tried to run. I also have homebrewed the minion system and the bloodied system from 4th into my 5e games. Those 2 systems are amazing! My goal in life is to own all of the editions up to 5th. Probably won't do the 5.5/6th stuff. I see no reason to go beyond 5th. Lol.
I have links in the video description for Noble Knight games if you want used copies of the books and DriveThruRPG for PDFs. That is where I get my stuff. If you use those links it will help the channel. Thanks
What I find hilarious is how much of 5e also has 4e influences. When 5e came out, I was rather disappointed that we went back to the Spell Levels and Slots from previous editions. They were always clunky, and the disparity between what non-casters get at-will and casters get was always a problem. But then there's the sneaky 4e stuff they ported over that helped out: Concentration is basically "sustain: minor" in a different form. Hit Dice used for healing. Bonus Actions are minor actions, with some useful limitations. Reactions Battlemaster getting "encounter powers" of a sort. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. And they did rationalize the too-many-durations problem in 5e, which I do appreciate. (End of Your Next Turn, End of Targets next turn, End of Targets turn, Start of your next turn, end of encounter, Save Ends..), and removing "Delay" also helped with that problem. This does wonders for speeding up gameplay. I miss 4e's encounter building. As a DM, whipping up an encounter on the fly and having it be approximately as powerful as I expected was a breeze. 5e's wonky CR rules are so bad, and their monster design is all over the place, and with the Bounded Accuracy assumption, I have to work very hard to estimate a challenge in 5e. It's a lot easier to set up a Boss monster in 4e and have them be a threat, compared to 5e.
4e is still my favorite edition of D&D. I'm not saying that it was perfect, but they got a lot of it spot on. A few gripes aside (like how they handled magic items and the gold-dump that was ritual casting), it was easily the most internally coherent system. And I still miss playing it.
Great video thanks! I have had 3.5e and 4e books for years but never actually got around to playing as neither my wife or i have any TTRPG experience, certainly not as a DM! And dont know anyone who plays. Just playing with the 4e starter kit and slowly getting into it. I was put off 4e originally as i know people seemed to hate it but i got the books anyway to see for myself. Thank you for explaining clearly how 4e is different and what issues people had with it. My wife and i are now planning on jumping in to 4e properly and the sky is the limit! Do you have any advice for two very interested newbies? Thanks again!
Sadly nothing seems to be trying to bring back 4e healing mechanics. First you had in-combat healing that actually worked, clerics and other classes could heal without giving up their own actions. Second you had healing surges as a daily resource that wasn't tied to one characters spell slots. Pushing the party through multiple small combats to drain their surges was fun. Having the fighter down to a single surge going into a boss battle really changed the stakes and tactics. Sadly it wasn't something the DMG told you about, and the published adventures sucked.
I guess the published adventures were the biggest problem in 4E. Since the mechanics themselves are really great. 13th age has the same healing mechanics more or less, but it has no grid which makes it feel quite different.
The 4E Lore check on monster information was gone with it, it was so great in RP and tactical planning. My DM allows me to know fully the information of the monster or gives me a metagame license to brief new players of the monster's abilities if I can get a d20 lore check or pass the highest lore the monster has.
I can attest to the Epic Boons being a fine way to prolong your 5e game. My last big campaign ran "beyond" 20 for a good while. Most of the party ended up with at least 1 Epic Boon and they were happy to earn them. I'm _very_ excited to see what "One D&D" will do with them since people have also been saying the Epic Boons weren't _quite_ epic enough.
80% of my play group have moved back to 4e, thankfully, I have never liked 5e. We still use the DnD Insider desktop character builder. I wish WotC would release the online version that we use to enjoy.
It's been quite cool to see 4e come full circle. I know for myself, 4e has always been appealing and fun to run. It's great to see light being shed up this amazing edition still to this very day.
My group started playing 4e in 2010, loved it and played up until about 2019. We switched to 5e due to the length of combat, but switched back to 4th this year because of how we felt spellcasting left anyone without those features in the dust. It’s really crazy how balanced the system is, outside of a few outlier classes such as vampire. Even if a fight takes a while, everyone leaves a session feeling they did something to help. I’m also surprised that for 4e being the most “video game” of all the D&D systems that there was no 4e game.
I was disappointed when I came back to dnd years after playing 4e and saw that martials didn't have all the cool abilities. I was like wait my barbarian just has weapon attacks? Wtf
The later subclasses were a bit better (for some martials, barbarian still are boring). I really do not understand how people can claim "in 4E all classes were the same" when you have in 4E several classes which mostly only do basic attacks...
If I remember correctly, the advantage mechanics of 5e are pulled straight from the Avenger class of 4e. There were plenty of good ideas in 4e. I’d love to see the minion monster mechanics make a return as they allowed for some pretty epic fights where a group of high level players could cut down swaths of low level monsters.
My group and myself very much like 4e, running a scales of war campaign at the moment. One of the weakneses of 4e is the lack of good adventures/campaigns. Otherwise i nice edition, especially since you can play it today through VTTs (using Fantasy Grounds myself)
One thing is for sure , 4e D&D got a bad rap, although not my style of fantasy gaming, too slow pace and gamist combat crunch but... there are at least a half a dozen Great rules mechanics that came from it!!- a Recharge die for breath weapons or special abilities, bloodied condition for monsters, skill challenges , Minion rules , and i think a supplement had a sub-class have an ability that was what 5e calls now Advantage / disadvantage , - some good ideas in there!!
I've been playing since AD&D 1st/2nd. Tried picking up 3E but it just didn't feel right. Waited on 4E until the Essentials line came out and I decided to give it a whirl. Downloaded the 5E basic rules PDF and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Turns out that 4E(ssentials) is my favorite version of actual D&D. If I am going to run a dungeon crawl game, it will either be Savage Pathfinder or D&D 4E(ssentials). Both systems fit me better than 5E or even 'real' Pathfinder. I don't believe the advent of a D&D 5.5 is going to change my mind much. I've already got all of the systems ( and not enough players) I need.
I think 4th edition was ahead of it's time of a lot of ways, That being said, I think a lot of 4th edition hate had to do with the game license change making 3rd party content very slim, and a too fast release schedule reducing quality.
MMOs were huge at the time, and I always felt 4E was WOTC's attempt to lure the MMO crowd to the table. It didn't really work, but I think the intention was clear. Powers were modeled after the MMO trait of skill cooldowns, for instance.
I loved 4e. I felt like the only one at the time. I enjoyed the powers, and minions, and the emphasis on moving around etc. Swordmage was by far my favorite 4e class.
As someone who really doesn't like Vancian magic systems in games, I really like the way they went about magic through the powers system. I love playing magic characters, but I'm always holding back. Even when the situation is right, I still feel like spending a slot is punishing. But knowing that if we have another encounter, I might be able to use the spell again, sounds really liberating. Now I have to see if I can find a 4e game and join in to see how it feels.
I completely agree about the digital tools aspect of this discussion. I still have a copy of the offline character builder on my PC to this very day, and if that tool hadn't been released then I don't think I would look nearly as kindly on the edition as I do now, because making a character in 4e is actually a lot of work if you have to track down all the options and write them out manually. I can only imagine how many more people would have enjoyed the edition if it came bundled with a virtual tabletop or companion app to keep track of the many effects and modifiers that get thrown around in combat (sure it would have given more ammo to the "4e is a MMO" crowd, but there wouldn't be any way of making them happy anyway, so I don't see that is such a great loss. In many ways I feel like 4e was an edition that was released too early (the developers made one of the biggest mistakes a designer can make: releasing the game you want to play rather than the game your audience wants to play). If it came out today I think it would be much more widely accepted. As it was, the gaming landscape just wasn't ready for it. There are starting to be more and more examples of newer gamers going back to look at 4e without knowing all the old complaints, and the general reaction seems to be that it is actually a pretty awesome game.
This is a delightful video! Thank you for reminding me about things of 4e I had forgotten. At the time I viewed 4e as an edition trying to leap into the computer gaming age. As you point out, we are now seeing many of the same innovations from 4e in a digital gaming age, but with the learnings from previous successes and failures. Perhaps you'll post a video on Pathfinder, and how you view the meshing of 4e into current game design?
I actually published a video a while back talking specifically about how I think D&D 4e influenced Pathfinder 2e... ua-cam.com/video/XkGr4HR3_r4/v-deo.html Thank you for the feedback.
I've never stopped playing 4e and am very glad it's finally getting the recognition it deserves. Shame about the online builder, it was great. The offline one is alright, but not the same. Not to mention that FoundryVTT and its 4e modules are an incredibly fun and fast way of playing it. Almost as if it was always meant to be played that way, hmm!
The worst thing in 4e is that after reaching -1 levels all characters become looking absolutely the same, with absolutely identical powers, just with different names. The best part of 4e was artworks and some mnster mechanics like minions and blooded effects, I use it in my games ever when playing OSR or 3.5
So I could go and point out any Avenger build, then compare it to a same level Barbarian build and those two would match at-least 75% on their playstyle and abilities?
You only have the same structure of abilities, and even that was broken up in the essential line! And as soon as you play with interesting terrain, it becomes obvious how small differences can make a big impact. If you do not use the terrain, then yes character are not that interesting. Also how are other editions better, when most martial characters can just auto attack?
I really enjoyed 4th. It's a shame no one I know agrees. I do think the way 4th assumed minis/was prepped for a VTT did a lot of damage to it. Theater of the mind is a lot harder when many of the powers assume tactical 5ft pushes kind of like a war game. Hard to track all that in your head. No VTT really killed it, I think.
I have always embraced each edition as they came out.4th was no different. By the time our campaign hit the 6th level mark, we decided as a group it was to similar to a video game. Sliding back to 3.5 until 5th showed up was the plan. Since then I have become a advocate agasint 4th "if I want a video game I would play a video game" was my montra. Times have changed and so has dnd and RPG games in general. Your talk points about 4th edition are valid and make me nod my head in approval at what WOTC was trying to do. Your right, they were ahead of their time. I still loved minions and tried my hands on converting that rule. Hasbro is making a mess of things these days and I have once again changed my focus to Tales of the Valiant with hopes they will pick up the crown and don it honorably. Gonna go watch more of your videos now.
I remember a lot of the debates that went on in the 4e space. Although I spent most of that time playing other editions, I did accumulate a lot of 4e books that went on clearance late in its life. There were fundamental disconnects with how the AEDU powers mapped to non-casting abilities. It didn’t make sense why a martial ability would be a Daily (whereas it’s much more accepted in D&D that a wizard only gets so many fireballs). There was also the problem where some of its mechanics weren’t actually doing anything obvious in the game world, only in the meta rules sense. Abilities that caused the Marked condition were notorious for this and prompted long back and forth discussions. There was a sense with 4e that the powers equalized the classes by making everyone too similar, and that like 3e there was too much running on the bonus treadmill. 5e has a lot of faults but it was seen as addressing those perceived issues. I’m not saying 4e did nothing right; I like the monsters and wish 5e had done monster design half as well as Monster Vault. I’d be happy to see a 5e fix that learned from 4e but not at the cost of its lengthy combats or the tons of modifiers or the powers all feeling like the same thing but reskinned.
i liked the explanation I heard, way back then, for martials having encounter/daily, etc The fighter is always trying their best, hack, slash, etc, but sometimes things are just right and they manage to grab some goblin and pull him into the other goblin's axe swing, or they see the opening to strike This guy and slip past him to strike That guy, but you don't have these perfect moments all the time.
I dont see why martials having things they can only do once a day being so unrealistic. One point is having the perfect opportunnity, the other is that some things are soo taxing on the body that you cant repeat it without proper rest. Also "marked condition" you can see as that enemy is distracted by the defender. They have them in the eye, are weary of them, and thus can concentrate less on attacking someone else. If you have some fantasy these things can make sense, and in a world with magic I dont see why this should make less sense than having spells which can transform a 10 gram creature into a 3 ton creature.
I ran 4e games well into Epic levels. I ran large games with 5-10 players because so few people were DMing the game. TBH, 4e was the best edition for DMs, with 5e coming in right after. However, 5e is only good because of the rules and math but not the DMG. The 5e DMG is pretty much garbage. The layout is awful. The ToC is just about useless as it doesn't list enough of what we're looking for. The 5e DMG forgot all of the genius of the 4e DMG and regressed back to 3e. Building balanced and interesting encounters in 4e was easy peezy. Other games are copying this, like Shadowdark, but not nearly as good. Encounter building in 4e was second to none. I loved the Points of Light setting both in concept and execution, and 4e Cosmology is easily the best; this coming from an OG gamer who still runs Greyhawk campaigns (I'm running one right now). Game designers need to understand that these books should be treated like technical writing first and fictional writing second.
As a Forever DM, with minimal time to make in-depth campaigns, an inconsistent table, and frequent first-and-only-time players being brought over to just hangout, I love 4e. Any Forever DM can appreciate the rules that address the specific problems I listed. It's the only ruleset, I think, that allows roleplayers and character experimenters and min\max power gamers to all contribute to anything that is happening at that moment. I still get amped to run a 4e campaign to this day.
What you've described as "1st edition" was a good deal more complicated. The original game spawned a handful of re-releases, and "1st edition" was a seperate product, closely related to, and co-existing with, the other. 3rd edition combined d&d with ad&d to lessen confusion, and they had to buy out Arneson to do it. Anyway, please, continue...
4e to 5e and 3e to 4e and 2e to 3e -- yes big changes. But have to disagree on 1e and 2e - they are very compatible and very little change but a lot of clean up and tightening. A big criticism of 2e AD&D was that they didn't change much at all because they still wanted to print older modules and supplement and Not alienate those who had a crap load already. - I played a ton of 1e/+2e amalgam D&D ,it worked well but I will never bitch of rules crunch
I think the reaction to 4e from people was a little outsized. There are some good things about 4e and I think bringing them into 5th edition will be popular. I bought the 4e starter set when it came out and gave it to a friend when realized it wasn't up my alley. I played in a few of his games, but it just wasn't for me, particularly to run. That said, I don't care for 3e or 5e either. I don't foresee ever playing any new version of D&D as what most gamers are like isn't to my taste. I want lower powered characters and fewer character options in the game which is the exact opposite of what almost everyone else wants. For reference, I started in 1985 with BECMI and 1e AD&D, but I now play 1974 0e which is my sweet spot.
i got my start with 4e. a buddy of mine had the 3e basic 3 books and the 4e core 3, and let me borrow both editions so i could learn to DM. (He refused to be the DM but said he would get a group together if i was willing to try and DM) So here it is 2008, I've never played D&D befor, and i have 3.5 and 4e to choose from and I have to be the DM... when 4e had a much more unified structure and cooldowns that felt more like WOW, it was the clear winner for a guy who had no idea what a TTRPG even was. Its probably the easiest TTRPG to understand for beginners to the hobby imo
Sorry if tldr. I started in 1e, and read Dragon for years, so I witnessed first-hand the transition to 2e. D&D went from being fairly abstract and non-specific to being even more complex, detailed, and crunchy. The people I played with had no use for it. I was ok with it, but it did seem like too much. Eventually, I got into 3e, which imo was in many ways a godsend. It solved many of the tangled knots of 1e/2e, streamlined the mechanics, and added many great features. But it was in its own way just as gnarled as 2e. When 4e came along, we thought they were trying to make the game kid-friendly and rejected it out of hand. And I wasn't playing when 5e appeared, tho it clearly moved the game back towards the earlier versions, and seemed to reject 4e outright. Since then I've learned a lot about 4e and 5e, and both of them have lots to offer. I think the best version of D&D, as I've heard before, is the one your table is comfortable with, or even better, the one you make for yourself from the best parts available, and not just in the line of D&D. Many other games have worthwhile elements too. Honestly, tho, if I were playing now, I'd rather start with something rules lite and add on to it as necessary. That's not something I ever had access to before, and I think it would have really improved my experiences bitd, especially all those times we played Risk or something else because we didn't have a forever DM or the time to get into starting up a D&D game from scratch, and consequently we never had an ongoing game to pick up and continue.
I played and was an RPGA DM for 4th edition for its entire run. I have literally ever 4th edition book. The problems I had with 4th were these. 1) Everything was same/same. You had your 1W, 2W and 3W powers. Where W was your weapon/spell damage die. It just felt like picking your character was just a name and some flavor. Because whether you called it hitting with a weapon or casting a spell you were doing 1W all the time, 2W once an encounter and 3W once a day. 2) Combat was both slow and not challenging. So you were far, far less likely to die and it took far longer to finish. This made combat pretty boring for player and DM alike. Example 1: My players took nearly an hour to kill a few of swarms of giant ants. No one felt threatened but it just took so long to wear the swarm done to nothing. Example 2: As a RPGA DM play reward I earned the 4th edition, special version, of S4 Tomb of Horrors. In every version of D&D besides 4th this module is a death trap. In 4th it didn't kill one player in my group. Not because they were exceptionally gifted players but because the whole thing just felt nerfed. I don't think S4 is a great example of D&D modules per se. but for this example, it just shows how the challenge and danger just seem to vanish in 4th edition. 3) Roles were less meaningful. So many classes had a way to 'heal'. As a DM you had to make challenges targeted to certain powers/abilities to make people feel they had a role to play. This actually took more prep time if you weren't playing a standard module. It just felt more like you were playing an online RPG or MMORPG than a tabletop RPG. The point of a TTRPG is that anything can happen. While that was technically true in 4th Ed. It felt like there was very little mystery. Oh look it is a bunch of anything. Must be minions. They are one shot kills. Quick use any power that targets multiple things! Standard opponents. Use your 1W power/ability. Leaders use your 2W power/ability. Bigbads, whip out that 3W. What class are you? Doesn't matter. Forget classes, roles were front line combatant, range combatant and buffer/focused healer. There were some tactical combat powers/abilities for special movement, interceding and the like but everything else was rote. Yes easy to learn but also boring to play.
Sorry but if you played like this, your GM was quite bad... The interesting and tactical part from 4E comes from the environment, forced movement and different enemy types. Wizards had a lot of power with no damage but just control or low damage. There where traps where you can push enemies in or they can push you in. There were lurkers which could attack your backline etc. I dont see how your mentioned points are in 5E any better. Against a lot of enemies you do area damage. And as a martial you just do basic attacks since you have nothing else to do. Yes the wizard has more different solutions in 5E, but at the cost of the fighter etc. who have only basic attacks as solutions. In 4E the big daily spells which could save the day where distributed among all characters.
I like 4e and still DM it. One of the best scenes I ever DMed (I've been DMing since the '70s) was a 4e skill encounter for a rooftop pursuit. It involved every usual cinematic element - parkours, running, rooftop laundry lines, tiles that slide off and fall into the street, jumping over alleyways and barely making it, etc. Was fun for everyone involved, and was really easy to do in 4e compared to prior and later editions. Combat can get very, very slow. Proper use of minions, or just cutting monster HP in half, fix that nicely. And, my favorite, 4e wizards aren't essentially useless baggage at level 1. Druids don't work well in 4e, because of how it handled Wild Shape. House rules are necessary to make them feel like druids again. Easy to do and makes them fun again, but necessary when it shouldn't have been. All in all, as a DM, 4e rocks.
The Actual Problem with everything moving from a Class Feature to Spell is that spells, specifically lower level ones like the class features, are dispellable. So you're big, signature "This is what my class does" power now gets got by a 3rd level spell that's handed out like candy.
Why nobody ever mention 4th edition essentials line? I can see it on your shelf!!! It was the best version of 4th for new players and casual play, plus the book format was great.
The problem with the essential line is that it ticked off a lot of 4E players and some vocal players just hated Mike Mearls. Also the first Essential book was not that well done in my oppinion. It made the wizard even more complex, while making the rogue and fighter almost identical (and low complexity). Thus strengthening the old "martials are simple casters complex" cliche. I think over all essentials is great (and it can be combined with normal 4E) but maybe rather the later classes. Also some classes were released underpowered, (and where thus not that much liked), but this is something which can easily be fixed on the 4E reddit you can find some threads for that). If Essentials would have released with Elemental Sorcerer instead of the wizard, and maybe the Ranger instead of the rogue, it would have been received a lot better.
For real though The differences aren't that massive It didn't 'become World of Warcraft' like negative neckbeards will continue to bark from their mothers basements. The biggest shift was all class abilities becoming at will/encounter/daily. That was it It also made new core classes and brought in new races both additions being awesome. Like people enjoy Warlock in 5e? You thank 4e for it becoming a core basic class, not some minor supplemental book option added in 3.5 You like Dragonborn, Tieflings and Goliaths? Again: 4e made them. So much good stuff I just wish I had easy to learn/use online tools to run 4e campaigns for new people today Core ra
I used 4E as the ruleset for one of my Campaigns in my Homebrew World Campaigns. We played for 8 years and only transferred to 5E after covid Lockdowns necessitated replacing a couple of the players for the 4E campaign. All my 4E players really enjoyed themselves it is all in boxes now but Accessible. We never had any problems in the Role Play in fact my creative players created whole story lines around their relationships with other characters and NPCs. Ask Wes the recovering alcoholic Warrior about his relationsships with Amy and Millie (PCs) and Wendy (Barmaid NPC).
The thing about 4e style games is that they are a ton of work to make since you have to design (and balance) 100's of abilities. I've never seen another system come even close to the ability diversity that 4e has, and 4e was far from perfect due to its somewhat poor balance and very constrained design style.
Personally, I never played 4E except once many many years later (I hated that we died so easily, but it was because we misread the starting hit points as being the modifier rather than the CON score) but I did read it when it came out and I liked so many ideas. I understand what people didn't like about it (no, it wasn't "this is warcraft mmo hurdurr" but real things like too many Per Day powers at later levels). One of my FAVORITE changes was the Alignment. Unaligned for everybody baby! Are you a primordial being made of raw chaos? Then you're probably unaligned, unless you're like Supercop PC Paladin or Cartoon Villain. I did think it was weird for Wizards to have to pick Daily powers like other classes instead of learning spells... but actually reading the class features, Wizards DID have the feature of learning more Daily powers than at level up (it goes into their spellbooks) but had to choose the allowed # of Daily powers they had memorized. Another thing I really liked was the IDEA of the 3 tiers. It reminded me of BECMI, with their Companion rules (which I never played but looked at wistfully) and Epic levels from 3.5. The idea that at Maximum Level you don't just go find tougher monsters to punch, is amazing. Tho 4E wasn't as big a change (they just told you, well, now the monsters to punch are interplanar or demigods or whatever) while Companion sets and above told you to start building and defending strongholds or domains. But the best part IMO for 4E was that this was one of the ways you "multiclassed" without actually doing the silly build-a-character per level class stuff - you either get 10 more levels in Paragon tier, or choose a second class for those Paragon tiers, but you don't get all the front-loaded stuff for the new class. I think the way Pathfinder 2E has shifted to for multiclassing is probably heavily inspired by this.
In 4E you die a lot less fast than in 5E, which I love! In 5E you can get 1 shoted by a goblin, in 4E the starting health pool is a lot higher. I agree that the confusing between score and modifier for health is confusing and that definitly does not work. Too bad, you had this bad experience with it, but great you still like it.
The design of 4th edition is amazing. It aimed to fix many of the problems that were plaguing 3e/3.5, and streamline the game more toward what the old rules already provided (solid, clear, and fun combat for heroic characters). It had its shortcomings, sure, but I am watching it getting vindicated over and over with some amount of satisfaction.
Think a VTT that tracked a lot of the situational bonuses would of made things better. I look at 4e powers and monster stat blocks for ideas all the time.
What are your thoughts on 13th age? I've heard good things about it and supposedly it came out around the time that 5th edition did but it was inspired by 4th edition with some streamlining and rules to allow you to not have to use a grid if you didn't want to
I started in 4e and pathfinder and can say that while many game advancements were made in 4e health scaling alone dragged the game down. Tools for GMs were, however, amazing! Learning the game as a new player was also amazing. I find pathfinder 2e is much closer to 4e, though again, i would certainly not compare feats to powers. Even now, i find myself ignoring my feat abilities in pathfinder 2e and can tell you powers in 4e were never forgettable. What d&d should look at doing is formalizing a power spike resource for martials to put them in slight competition with casters. It would help balance gameplay and also balance the adventuring day as characters wear out evenly.
Yeah, even in 5th you can see the influence of 4th. Advantage/Disadvantage had it's roots there, as does proficiency! The skills list was simplified. Warlocks came in. At will, power encounter, power day, became per short rest, per long rest and suddenly everyone liked it!
I'm an old-school B, X, 1e, and 2e DM. I see a lot of good things in 4e, but I'm turned off by the fact that all the classes are structured the same way. I see that complaint a lot, and I feel like there's a pretty easy fix, if someone just cooked up a way for martial classes and rogues to power their features with a hero die and/or luck.
4th edition is my favourite. Playing it since 2008 (along with 3.5 and 5e), and the game still has not lost its charm - finished last campaign this winter. Too bad it became a target for undeserved hate.
A bit too formulaic(?) for my taste. I don't need a power for every possible combat option. At will/encounter powers was great for wizards/spell casting and rituals was a good idea.
4e was always my favorite edition. My 4th Barbarian was the most fun and memorable character I've ever had and all my friends I used to play with still talk about him and his antics (both heroic and stupid). As a barbarian player since early 3rd I loved having more abilities and this to do that aren't "hit with sword." 4e was also a breeze to run which let me focus more on story and not worry about as much prep. It's hard to find a group for the edition because many people who "hate 4th" never even played it
I really think, those goals that 4e failed to reach, the digital things, all now are fulfilled with things like roll20 and DNDbeyond, I suppose it makes it easier to implement the inovations of 4e
my experience as a player with it was bad. at lv 1. the GM expected that I as a bard had a lot of utility powers so he put me on a situation that could be nice to put people to sleep or create an illusion. but my sheet had only attacks. that was a no-no for me. but anyway I'm trying to be open minded and see their merits from another point of view
The problem with 4e combats (and there were a bunch of good things) was that they did *NOT* in fact scale with level. And not because of flat-math vs linear math or other such nonsense. The problem was status effects. Imagine this scenario. A humble DM thinks 'oh hey, I have this pile of small coloured wooden cubes, I know what I'll do, I'll use them during combat so that people know when a monster is marked!' (Marking is a key-feature of defenders, and isn't itself a problem but is (at least ostensibly) good design). So our intrepid humble DM picks up this container of cubes and goes to D&D. In the first encounter he explains this new thing he's trying and everyone says it's a great idea to have the visual indicators. Oh, and let's use the red cubes to indicate who is bloodied ... (rinse and repeat). What's the problem? The problem is that after about level 10 (perhaps even earlier) you're _rapidly_ going to run out of cubes for different status effects. The defender, controller and the leader are going to be prime offenders here (I'll give striker the benefit of the doubt). Why? Because every buff for yourselves (leader) and debuff of the enemies (controller) is a different colour cube. Moreover the enemies might also themselves have controllers and leaders, so they're going to be handing out status effects like candy too. You get a status effect and _you_ get a status effect, everyone gets status effects!!! Woohoo! A 12 colour set of wooden blocks with 12 blocks of each colour is _not_ sufficient for even medium level combat. If you're not using markers of some kind the problem gets _worse_ because now you have to remember everything. And it's not like you can just go 'oh, monster A has +2, +1, -3, +1, +1, +4 and -1 and that sums to +5 so all the other monsters have +5' ... because the monster right next door might not have one of the +1s or it might have an extra -2. And you can't go 'oh, this monster had +5 last turn, so this turn it will have +5 as well.' No. There's been 4 players since then, all of whom had a chance to modify its stack of effects at least once. It's ... a lot. And the game design (which is probably the best of any D&D, by a large margin) feeds into that because if you're asking players to pick from cool-powers A, B and C - then you want to differentiate between those powers somehow. And if you do that with pure damage then obviously the most damage is the best and everything else is a 'trap' option. So you differentiate between A and B by having one of them target multiple things, so it spreads its damage out. But how do we make C a distinct option? Oh I know, let's put a status effect on C. Then when you come along to design the next tier of cool powers (a', b' and c') you have a problem because if you just re-use the same status effect on c' as you used on C then that's kind of lame, so c' needs to have a '_more different_' status effect ... and thus you have this massive proliferation of status effects essentially baked into the game at its most fundamental level.
I can definitly see the problem with the many status effect, especially ongoing damage feels too annoying to track for its effect. I still think having choices between different effects is a lot better than just doing basic attacks though.
My favorite thing about 4E was how it managed to *feel heroic* from level 1 all the way to the end. That intro adventure, the one with the hatchling white dragon, might be the best in-book sample adventure they'll ever release.
One thing to note about the Virtual tabletop & character builder for 4e is the events around them. Specifically why the VTT never happened and why the character builder was late.
For those online and active in the D&D / MtG space at the time, you'll remember WotC's Gleemax well... if not, google "The Failure of Gleemax" you'll get an idea of it's most glorious rollout.
And the head of the Gleemax project was in charge of the 4e tools.
From what I gathered the guy wasn't a good project lead: he kept ideas close to his chest, didn't give direction, was bad at communicating and didn't really have goals set. He was also going through a messy divorce at the time.
Now's where things get dark. Real dark.
Our project lead, one evening, stalked his ex, locked themselves in a room, and committed murder-suicide. Wikipedia has information and links to news articles if you want more info, search "Joseph and Melissa Batten".
This caused WotC to cancel the Gleemax project and after bringing in an outside source to comb through Joseph's work for anything salvageable, the end result was they decided to scrap everything and work from scratch, as reverse engineering his work would take just as long, if not longer. They basically had to work full tilt to get just the character builder out, scrapping the VTT entirely, and it still wasn't ready for the release date of 4e.
4e had a messy, messy development cycle if you look more into it and hasbro/wotc policies of the time and i'm honestly amazed what came out was actually good. flawed, and could use a bit more time in the oven, sure, but it was good.
Thanks for this, I had always heard a different story from folks around why they had scrapped the system.
@@darby2314 4e still managed to have 4 years of releases, but it was a very very messy 4 years.
4e combat encounter and monster building tools were my favorite. It was sad to see them gone in 5e.
The closest thing you can use is the Encounter Building tables from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Monster _building_ tools... outside of the DMG don't exist.
Agreed.
The introduction of "minions" first came about in Star Wars Saga with their non-heroics. Later on, 4e made their own very of minions which worked very well. The variety of monsters, roles, and how they're used in building encounters was by far the best for not just D&D but any RPG. A big problem for DMs in any system is creating challenging encounters. Sadly, that was forgotten or lost and it feels like we're starting over again.
^ I opened comments and the above said it all ahead of me. Roles for pcs and monsters were not only great for building encounters yet also for helping new to the hobby players get the hang of things. Say Mage vs Magic Blaster/ Artilirits (I think was it) drives home a role a lot better.
By far the most DM-friendly edition ever made. Once they tweaked the monster math in DMG2 and Essentials you could actually rely on your encounter difficulty levels to actually be where they should be, unlike every other edition ever. Admittedly, a bit rocky early on in the edition life cycle (we all remember the overperforming Needlefang Drakeswarms and condition-locking solos into uselessness) but they did fix it over time.
13th Age is a very good take on D&D 4.5, and will be better yet when 2nd edition comes out. There's also Orcus now as another alternative that's close to 4e proper.
I can only assume that at some point during development the design team stepped back and made a formal design goal to make the system as easy to run as possible. It's my favorite system to DM for because everything just works. The designers "showed their work" and tell you all the assumptions they made when balancing the game (how many fights in a day, how hard should they be, what should they look like, how much loot to give, pretty much everything honestly). Some people feel limited by all these guidelines, but every game has them, and the further you get away from how the game was intended to be played the more balance breaks down. At least 4e gave you the assumptions up front so you know what you are getting into.
The way you as the DM could add traps and obstacles to an encounter and count them towards your "encounter budget" was great.
4e caught so much flak by people who just never played it. I've managed to convince a number of people over the years to just sit down and play it (or at least READ the books) and they all came away with "wow, this is way better than I was led to believe." That more modern games are trying to snipe bits and ends from it is no surprise because of just how solid and good a system it was.
Game designers seem to pretty consistently acknowledge that 4e is a well-designed game.
It was a massive fumble from a business perspective, but not necessarily a gaming perspective.
I played it, and I did not like it. I don't like roles and I don't like powers. It makes no sense to me that a fighter can make a special physical attack and then "forget" (?) how to do it again until the next encounter? It was too much like a video game.
@@OctoberGeek What about spell slots in other editions?
@@Eemi_Seppala I'm not talking about spell casters, I specifically said fighters.
@@OctoberGeek But the concept is same for both: how do you have a limit on spells or why forget the spells when changing them?
For fighters, If you make an attack that pushes even a dragon 10ft., you might need a breather before you can do it again, and since encounter powers are regained after a short rest, you could go through multiple fights without your pushy power if you didn't get your power nap.
Edit: Just out of curiosity, do you also have problem with 5e's short rest abilities, like action surge?
honestly 4th edition was my first experience with TTRPGs, and it was and is still one of my all time favorite games
Its because you came in with no baggage of expectations and entitlements. You were able to approach the game on the terms it presented and accept it for what it was. Bravo!
If only we could all do that!
I recall an interview with Chris Perkins were he said something to the effect that 4e was his best work. Can’t find the receipt though.
I agree with Ol’Old. As my friends and I have watched the 5.5e rollout, we’ve said the same thing, and we taken every opportunity to remind our 5e friends that they are getting 4e features in their game. 😂
I thought the 4e character builder was fantastic, it made character creation so much easier. My wife still picks 4e, my friend has always loved warriors and will choose a 4e fighter every time.. lol.
I miss the 4e character builder so much. I used to spend hours theory crafting more character than I ever got the chance to actually play.
@@EmeralBookwise There's a video on YT that tells you where you can still get the 4e Character Builder.
Our group ran a full 4e campaign from 1-30 a few years back. I absolutely LOVED it!! I am running a 5e game now, and while it moves faster, there are less "I AM A BADASS" cinematic moments, particularly for martial characters. Martial characters feel absolutely amazing in 4e. I also loved all the variations of monsters in 4e with the different roles (soldier, stalker, striker, etc), not to mention the absolute genius inclusion of minions to pad out the ranks. Every battle required a degree of tactical thinking.
I will admit 4e is not for everyone, but for people who really enjoy crunchy power gaming character construction and cinematic combat where each character can have epic moments, I think 4e is the definitive edition. It has its flaws, but if you are willing to put up with those, it can create some wonderful memories for your gaming group that will last a lifetime.
Oh, and Non-A/C Defenses (NADs) are WAAAAAY better than saving throws and I don't know why they switched back in 5e! Instead of casting a spell and making a monster make a will save, you rolled against their will defense. It is a subtle change, but slinging spell after spell and watching the DM continually roll high saves feels very bad. Rolling against their will defense and constantly rolling low still feels bad, but at least you feel like the bad luck is in your hands. For some reason, being an active participant in rolls that screw you is less frustrating.
I think they got really nervous after 4e and went the safe route. Dialed things back to the 3e rules.
We saw a change in the latest Tales of the Valiant playtest that brings back some of what you are talking about.
Monsters don't have a stealth or perception bonus. They instead have a DC for each. So the player gets to roll a perception check to overcome the monster's stealth. And the player rolls a stealth check to overcome the monster's perception.
Not a huge change but I like that the rolling is in the hands of the player not the monster.
@@shweppy You are so right. Not to mention that it gave the player the ability to use reroll effects to their advantage. If you rolled poorly on your fireball attack, you could reroll it. Where as, it's much harder to force your enemy to reroll their successful save. It also made it easier to balance all attack modifiers. You could with the same support effect increase EVERY pc's chance of success if they had a +1 to hit (including lightning bolt), and likewise -1 to defense was available in one debuff, instead of penalty to save usually being separate from penalty to AC in other editions.
A lot of the 4e criticisms boiled down to "I have 3e buy in and will hate on 4e to validate staying with the game I like". Empty claims like "it's just trying to be World of Warcraft" are still hilarious when stated in defense of the edition AD&D players called "just trying to be Diablo". (A comparison not helped by WotC producing actual official 3e Diablo books! They're very interesting byproducts of early 3e with a decidedly TSR vibe. Highly recommended as an academic read.)
I have my pain points over 4e, but they came about from years of running it and feeling out through experience where its limits lie. It's not "we can't roleplay." It's more things like "small encounters don't impact player resources, so I feel more pressured to make every encounter challenging". I'm glad to see people rediscovering 4e and hope it leads to someone polishing up a new take on its style.
Other criticism I've seen is "This piece of lore that takes place in 4E's default campaign setting is not what happens in Forgotten Realms. Therefore, they have crapped all over Forgotten Realms, as this thing that is describing events that happened in a different campaign setting is not what happens in Forgotten Realms."
4e was so far ahead of its time, new games are only starting to catch up to its ideas.
The only bad thing about 4e is the amount of Ongoing effects, so many situational bonuses like bloodied , flanking, it can get messy quick when something is taunted , bloodied, has slow and ongoing 5 damage
Balance was good , epic , and paragon tiers were awesome and you really felt like you where gaining power
Tons of magic items , balanced arround only being able to use so many a day
Lots of player choice everywhere
That's kind of how I feel learning pathfinder. lol
This monster is flanked frightened sickened and demoralized. What's that affect again? lol
@@Synetik It's much better than it was in Pathfinder 1, but most of them are similar. Only the flavor is different in most cases. Frightened is a "scared" status penalty to all d20 rolls and DCs. Sickened is a "gross" status penalty to all d20 rolls and DCs. They do the same thing, but one doesn't work on mindless creatures, the other doesn't work on creatures without a digestive tract and each have different ways to be applied/removed. Demoralize is just one way to apply Frightened. It's not a condition. Even though it can feel daunting as there are a bunch of named conditions, most of them are the same as others, just a different delivery or single ability score that is affected.
Honestly 3e was worse, at least 4e consolidated most ongoing affects into a handful of simple keywords. Likewise duration was simplified to either one full round or save ends. In 3e, you could easily have just as man if not more ongoing effects to track, each with their own individual rules and durations to track across multiple rounds.
The only complexity 4e added was that now every player could inflict status conditions, whereas it used to mostly be the preview of spellcasters or the occasional rogue with a poisoned blade.
I will go on the record to say 4th edition was good. I started with 3.5 not really understanding "editions" which would explain some of my confusion early on. Back then there was no online resources that would explain anything to me and I ended up with many 2nd edition and AD&D books and while they all seemed like they went together I still had no idea what was going on, reading the books cover to cover and I still had no clear idea what the rules were and had to keep making stuff up. Another complaint I had was there seemed there wasn't enough for players to do, casters had only a couple spells a day, then they stood around useless and martials would just hit stuff. Then came 4th edition and turned a table top game into a video game giving players a butt load of powers and abilities. I had to buy tons of blank cards for my players and write out every single ability they had and write out all the math formulas for them and when playing, it was like they had a deck of cards. Turns took forever as they had to flip through like 3 dozen cards to figure out what they wanted to do. Sure we could have made simpler characters but after 3.5 of not giving us abilities, we now wanted it all and keep hoarding powers. And lets not forget it had waaaaay too many floating modifiers. This gives me +1 if I'm doing this, but that guy gave me a +1 also, oh wait I'm standing in shadow, which gives me another +1, or did I add that already??? Then I get +1 to only this attack but not that attack, oh wait there was another +1 in there somewhere I think, oh and I still have the +1 that hasn't worn off yet from last turn. Also, can't believe I'm going to say this, it had toooo many power ups. Before and now in 5E, a class can be summed up in like 3 to 4 pages, 4E each class had like 20 pages, about 1 page per level, it was too much. That being said, 4E is where I was able to finally get friends to play cause the rules made sense and we could figure things out (and a plethora of minis didn't hurt either) I was reluctant to switch to 5E but then I realized it was a fusion of 3.5 and 4 where it simplified and streamlined all the 10 billion powers, maybe too simple, but we can understand how to play it. I will say I do like some of the complexity I see from Pathfinder 2E, many of the choices they made designing it make sense but the system feels weighty to me. That being said I have yet to try it out and would love to one day.
4e remains the most balanced version ever. At 20th level in every other edition Wizards ar3 casting Wish and altering the very fabric of reality. Martial classes were there to be HP sponges. 4e fixed all of that by putti g everyone on a more balanced playing field.
Plus the creativity in 4e was so insane i had a Cleric of Love that had 0 damage spells and made the game so much more fun for the rest of the table with buffs, debuffs, and ridiculously cool heals.
Then 5e came out and it was like "Oh, look. Fighters suck again."
Wasn't one of the biggest complaints of 4e the fact that WotC refused to add it to the OGL? A lot of people who had begun to enjoy 3rd party content were all of a sudden being boxed in again to official products, and Paizo jumped at the chance to keep 3.5e alive as Pathfinder, which furthermore eroded support for 4e. Whether or not you agreed the 4e was better than 3.5e, WotC's transparent move to kill off 3rd party support upset many people, which lead to a lot of blowback from people who never even played 4e like you stated.
Agree. There were a lot of contributing factors. The Game System License was a terrible decision. D&D, especially in the age of downloadable content, is a game that depends on 3rd party creators to grow the fan base. By locking those creators out Wizards hurt themselves.
And they tried again back in January with the OGL mess. There are some things from 4e that should stay in the past. 😀
@@timnewman7591 Given the massive blowback that just happened a few months back many people I’m sure are very familiar with what the OGL is. Even I remember people bringing it up during 4th edition and WoTC’s statement on why 4th wasn’t added.
As far as 3rd party stuff, I can’t speak for everybody, but I’ve honestly grown very cautious and hesitant to support that stuff. Some of it is just broken Homebrew or worse looks like it was written by a 5 year old and it makes me upset because I paid legit money for these products. I swear one of them included a “puzzle” with a Nightmare angrily galloping around and the solution was to feed it an apple…
@@timnewman7591 That may be true now, but back when 4e was released, I suspect it was a much bigger factor. Remember WotC used the OGL to grow 3e and 3.5e, and this being pre-Critical Role, I suspect the amount of players were more aware of 3rd Party Providers back then.
Yes. Here in my country some publishers who used to publish material under OGL even made some kind of campaign against the 4e because they couldn't profit from it, eventually creating their own mechanics based on the OGL.
While I don't support their decision, I suspect most, if not all, of the GSL/OGL 1.0 nonsense was due to shareholder demands at Hasbro. I wouldn't put much blame on Wotc back in the early 2000s. Wotc already had the OGL before they were acquired by Hasbro in '99. I suspect there was pressure/demands to eliminate the OGL after Hasbro took over. One of the inherent problems with publicly traded companies is their shareholders expect unsustainable growth from year to year. Most RPG companies operate in a maintenance mode with a small, but steady fluctuation in new customers, but the most enduring customers making several purchases over the life of a game. Merchandising and licensing IP is one of those ways to expand growth potential, but that can be hard for a corporation to leverage when they have an open sharing policy for most of their IP.
TL;DR: I don't think there is an alternate timeline where 4ed didn't operate with it's own GSL if Wotc was still owned by Hasbro.
Love 4e the class, paragon path, and epic destiny was such an amazing system. It helped make the coolest character ever
4E is a really good system. I also feel that many just stuck their nose up in the air and never bothered with it. Honestly I feel that it is by far the most balanced of any edition still to date. I ran a couple full campaigns and it was great. I seen to many bitching about it not having the role-play element and that never sat well with me. Role-playing really has nothing to do with the system or any D&D system. That was something you brought to the table, Not the system. There were just so many complaints about it that made no sense and I wonder if those doing the nagging were those who never actually gave it a try.
4E inspired a lot of the choices I made when designing my own game. I loved the focus on tactical gameplay and actually having a battlefield board.
I couldn't agree more, 4th for me, was phenomenal and my friends and I had a ton of fun with it. This was the same with AD&D, 2nd, 3rd edition, etc. Excellent post.
The thing I hated about 4th Edition the most (aside from what they did to the Forgotten Realms, don't even get me started) was the fact that combat seemed to take forever. In earlier editions, you could have a combat, wrap it up, and have time to advance the plot. 4th edition seemed to be all about having 2+ hour combats so that everyone would have a chance to show off their flashy At Will/Encounter/Daily Powers, which caused combats to drag on forever and slowed gameplay to a crawl.
That's completely group dependent experience and I'm sorry for your poor experiences.
It was a rough feature of the early life of 4e. The initial Monster Manual had too much HP for most monsters and not enough damage/too high of defenses on some. If your GM used a lot of soldiers and brutes, it would take awhile. If they used a lot of minions, artillery and lurkers, then it went smoothly, if not fast. They massively adjusted that in the 3rd Monster manual.
The Spellplague was the coolest thing to happen to the 40-year-old, convoluted, stale-ass potato chip that has become the Forgotten Realms.
D&D 4e was more honest than 3e or 5e about being a board game in its massive focus on combat and everything adjacent to combat (including character creation and advancement).
I also thing that the way characters had to replace lower-level powers with higher-level counterparts as they leveled up was a great way of curbing feature bloat (what MMORPG players would refer to as "ability crunch"). This should've continued onward to future editions of D&D, IMO.
My favorite feature of 4E (and one of the only ones I liked) was the bloodied condition. I like the idea that you become less effective or incur certain banes or penalties the more injured you become. it's why I love Numenera and the Cypher system, your stats are a currency that you spend as you exert yourself and lose as you get hurt, it creates some great decision making moments as the game goes on.
Bloodied was great because it wasn't just bad, it was a great fight enhancer hook that could speed up combat.
PCs had tons of powers that triggered when the PC was bloodied to unleash new abilities, monsters and PCs could do more damage to bloodied creatures, and Solo (boss monsters) (eventually - once the design got nailed down) switched phases once bloodied for more cool stuff, refreshed reactions, and generally upped the anty
I'll never understand the backlash against character roles! If it's literally like "this is MMO now lul", no. Still completely different formats. I'd like to see people try what you could do in D&D in any MMO.
While I don't believe there's an inherit need for certain party compositions, the character roles did a great job of explaining how classes function and synergize together. The "Leader" role is why cleric and bard are now my favorite classes.
Finally replaced my stolen 4e DMG and can't wait to see what comes of it! That book elevated my DM skills back in college, and I agree it's easily the best one we have so far. Now that I'm older (and an accountant xD) I can appreciate 3.5's a bit more as well.
Another great analysis.
Got my used 4e DM screen in yesterday. Now just waiting for your more in depth 4e play/run serie👍
I prefer how 4E handled multiclassing.
Kind of rained in the soup and mini/maxing.
Yeah, it's cringy how the same ppl bashing 4e for lack of roleplay and in the same time creating multiclass characters like 1lvl barb, 2lvl ranger, 2lvl warrior.
@@Grom0zeka I straight up man multi-classing as a DM. I'm open to any feats and I don't mind mini-max characters, but the multi classing craziness seems lazy too me.
The evolving fan base of the game is the biggest change across all editions. The way we play - style, emphasis, and choice of the characters we portray - all of this is more important than the rules when determining the gaming experience. Having played continuously across all editions starting with ODD, I see the changes in our assumptions about D&D, and in our expectations for what D&D should be have had the greatest impact on how we play using any edition. My attitude has always been to make the game your own, and to play the game you want.
Cheers!
100% agree.
I remember the first time I played “DnD” it was actually Pathfinder (this was 2009 and we were still half a decade away from 5e) Strangely enough because it seemed so hated (at the time I asked around about it and one memorable response was a guy actually hissed at me, which was honestly kinda BA!) but from then on I never even gave 4e the time of day (playing Pathfinder until 5th edition released, which that seemed to be the thing everyone was doing at the time) but anyway thanks for your refreshing explanation and not for hissing at me lol
If 4e had a robust digital toolset at the same quality as DnDBeyond, I'd be DMing games every single week.
I never played 4th edition because we never used a grid, but it sounds like it has some cool ideas.
It is totally playable without a grid. It was just an assumption that many/most people used one, so it was easier to write it with that in mind rather than making people count out multiples of 5/10 feet or 6/12 feet like in earlier editions.
@@kevinbarnard355 At the time we were told that we had to use a grid, so we never tried that edition.
Thanks Greyschool ‘Ol beard! I’m really curious about 4e. If I’m disappointed in the new phb I’m going to check out the 4e core rules - come to think if it, I might check out either way
I loved 4th edition. It was hands down the best edition in my experience, having played from 90s 2e onwards. 5e was a disappointment from the get-go, and the bitter irony that they are trying to make it more like 4e amuses me. But I'll stick to 4th, as I no longer want to deal with post-2014 D&D.
4e is by far and away the best edition of d&d or pathfinder imo. It was also YEARS ahead of its time sadly and a lot of people (myslef included) skipped it when it came out because of its reputation.
The weapon mastery features are actually closer to the BECMI weapon mastery than 4e's powers. This is because the BECMI rules linked the abilities to the weapon while 4e linked them to classes. Though, I would be really surprised if anyone currently working at WOTC is familiar with Basic, lol. Still, I'd love to see more options from Basic make it into the weapon mastery. Like charge (extra damage dice from movement), deflect (if hit, save to avoid all damage), Hook (basically grapple with the weapon but hold them at range and you can pull them down and drag them), Ignite (flaming oil weapons and arrows), set vs charge (bonus damage vs an enemy that moves to you), skewer (leave your weapon impaled in the enemy so it deals auto damage each round, but you're disarmed), and the mechanic of gaining ranks of mastery (basic, skilled, expert, master, grand master) as a replacement for great weapon fighting.
I would also love to see some of those older rules find their way back into the game.
I keep doing a ton of research on all of the editions. My wife swears by 3rd/3.5. I learned on 5th. By DMing first. I've done my research and I'm now somewhat of a TTRPG collector. Everything from OSR to modern and so on. The more and more I keep learning about 4th edition. The more and more I keep thinking it will probably be my favorite. I might have to track down the core books.
Also I will never understand when people say it "has a lack of rules for roleplaying." You don't need rules to roleplay. You never needed rules to roleplay.
I do have a 4e starter set thing that I do look at but have never actually tried to run.
I also have homebrewed the minion system and the bloodied system from 4th into my 5e games. Those 2 systems are amazing!
My goal in life is to own all of the editions up to 5th. Probably won't do the 5.5/6th stuff. I see no reason to go beyond 5th. Lol.
I have links in the video description for Noble Knight games if you want used copies of the books and DriveThruRPG for PDFs. That is where I get my stuff.
If you use those links it will help the channel.
Thanks
What I find hilarious is how much of 5e also has 4e influences.
When 5e came out, I was rather disappointed that we went back to the Spell Levels and Slots from previous editions. They were always clunky, and the disparity between what non-casters get at-will and casters get was always a problem.
But then there's the sneaky 4e stuff they ported over that helped out:
Concentration is basically "sustain: minor" in a different form.
Hit Dice used for healing.
Bonus Actions are minor actions, with some useful limitations.
Reactions
Battlemaster getting "encounter powers" of a sort.
Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
And they did rationalize the too-many-durations problem in 5e, which I do appreciate. (End of Your Next Turn, End of Targets next turn, End of Targets turn, Start of your next turn, end of encounter, Save Ends..), and removing "Delay" also helped with that problem. This does wonders for speeding up gameplay.
I miss 4e's encounter building. As a DM, whipping up an encounter on the fly and having it be approximately as powerful as I expected was a breeze. 5e's wonky CR rules are so bad, and their monster design is all over the place, and with the Bounded Accuracy assumption, I have to work very hard to estimate a challenge in 5e. It's a lot easier to set up a Boss monster in 4e and have them be a threat, compared to 5e.
The 4th edition Martial classes were such a step forward and 5th was two step backwards for those same classes.
D&D 5e reintroduced all the problems 4e fixed.
4e is still my favorite edition of D&D. I'm not saying that it was perfect, but they got a lot of it spot on. A few gripes aside (like how they handled magic items and the gold-dump that was ritual casting), it was easily the most internally coherent system. And I still miss playing it.
Try out 13th Age or Orcus on your group. They're both D&D 4.5 in all but name, albeit quite different takes on the subject.
My first 4E game to my buddy: “Congratulations, you are the very first among us to miss with magic missile! 😂”
Magic missile was later changed to no longer be able to miss.
Great video thanks! I have had 3.5e and 4e books for years but never actually got around to playing as neither my wife or i have any TTRPG experience, certainly not as a DM! And dont know anyone who plays.
Just playing with the 4e starter kit and slowly getting into it.
I was put off 4e originally as i know people seemed to hate it but i got the books anyway to see for myself.
Thank you for explaining clearly how 4e is different and what issues people had with it.
My wife and i are now planning on jumping in to 4e properly and the sky is the limit!
Do you have any advice for two very interested newbies?
Thanks again!
Sadly nothing seems to be trying to bring back 4e healing mechanics. First you had in-combat healing that actually worked, clerics and other classes could heal without giving up their own actions. Second you had healing surges as a daily resource that wasn't tied to one characters spell slots.
Pushing the party through multiple small combats to drain their surges was fun. Having the fighter down to a single surge going into a boss battle really changed the stakes and tactics. Sadly it wasn't something the DMG told you about, and the published adventures sucked.
I guess the published adventures were the biggest problem in 4E.
Since the mechanics themselves are really great.
13th age has the same healing mechanics more or less, but it has no grid which makes it feel quite different.
The 4E Lore check on monster information was gone with it, it was so great in RP and tactical planning. My DM allows me to know fully the information of the monster or gives me a metagame license to brief new players of the monster's abilities if I can get a d20 lore check or pass the highest lore the monster has.
I can attest to the Epic Boons being a fine way to prolong your 5e game. My last big campaign ran "beyond" 20 for a good while. Most of the party ended up with at least 1 Epic Boon and they were happy to earn them. I'm _very_ excited to see what "One D&D" will do with them since people have also been saying the Epic Boons weren't _quite_ epic enough.
80% of my play group have moved back to 4e, thankfully, I have never liked 5e. We still use the DnD Insider desktop character builder. I wish WotC would release the online version that we use to enjoy.
Glad to find this. I was musing on how to make the D&D fighter better and thought of adding 4E powers. Looking forward to watching your videos
It's been quite cool to see 4e come full circle. I know for myself, 4e has always been appealing and fun to run. It's great to see light being shed up this amazing edition still to this very day.
My group started playing 4e in 2010, loved it and played up until about 2019. We switched to 5e due to the length of combat, but switched back to 4th this year because of how we felt spellcasting left anyone without those features in the dust. It’s really crazy how balanced the system is, outside of a few outlier classes such as vampire. Even if a fight takes a while, everyone leaves a session feeling they did something to help.
I’m also surprised that for 4e being the most “video game” of all the D&D systems that there was no 4e game.
I was disappointed when I came back to dnd years after playing 4e and saw that martials didn't have all the cool abilities.
I was like wait my barbarian just has weapon attacks? Wtf
The later subclasses were a bit better (for some martials, barbarian still are boring).
I really do not understand how people can claim "in 4E all classes were the same" when you have in 4E several classes which mostly only do basic attacks...
If I remember correctly, the advantage mechanics of 5e are pulled straight from the Avenger class of 4e. There were plenty of good ideas in 4e. I’d love to see the minion monster mechanics make a return as they allowed for some pretty epic fights where a group of high level players could cut down swaths of low level monsters.
Well its a combination of "combat advantage" which was in 4e but just as a +2 (non stacking) and the avenger feature in a way,
The two things I want too china back most from 4e is Minions and the Bloodied condition. They were the best things that 4e offered.
My group and myself very much like 4e, running a scales of war campaign at the moment. One of the weakneses of 4e is the lack of good adventures/campaigns. Otherwise i nice edition, especially since you can play it today through VTTs (using Fantasy Grounds myself)
4e is my favorite edition. I still run games. I think people would not have hated it if it didn't have D&D labeled on it.
One thing is for sure , 4e D&D got a bad rap, although not my style of fantasy gaming, too slow pace and gamist combat crunch but... there are at least a half a dozen Great rules mechanics that came from it!!- a Recharge die for breath weapons or special abilities, bloodied condition for monsters, skill challenges , Minion rules , and i think a supplement had a sub-class have an ability that was what 5e calls now Advantage / disadvantage , - some good ideas in there!!
I've been playing since AD&D 1st/2nd. Tried picking up 3E but it just didn't feel right. Waited on 4E until the Essentials line came out and I decided to give it a whirl. Downloaded the 5E basic rules PDF and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Turns out that 4E(ssentials) is my favorite version of actual D&D. If I am going to run a dungeon crawl game, it will either be Savage Pathfinder or D&D 4E(ssentials). Both systems fit me better than 5E or even 'real' Pathfinder. I don't believe the advent of a D&D 5.5 is going to change my mind much. I've already got all of the systems ( and not enough players) I need.
I think 4th edition was ahead of it's time of a lot of ways, That being said, I think a lot of 4th edition hate had to do with the game license change making 3rd party content very slim, and a too fast release schedule reducing quality.
MMOs were huge at the time, and I always felt 4E was WOTC's attempt to lure the MMO crowd to the table. It didn't really work, but I think the intention was clear. Powers were modeled after the MMO trait of skill cooldowns, for instance.
I loved 4e. I felt like the only one at the time. I enjoyed the powers, and minions, and the emphasis on moving around etc. Swordmage was by far my favorite 4e class.
As someone who really doesn't like Vancian magic systems in games, I really like the way they went about magic through the powers system. I love playing magic characters, but I'm always holding back. Even when the situation is right, I still feel like spending a slot is punishing. But knowing that if we have another encounter, I might be able to use the spell again, sounds really liberating.
Now I have to see if I can find a 4e game and join in to see how it feels.
I completely agree about the digital tools aspect of this discussion. I still have a copy of the offline character builder on my PC to this very day, and if that tool hadn't been released then I don't think I would look nearly as kindly on the edition as I do now, because making a character in 4e is actually a lot of work if you have to track down all the options and write them out manually. I can only imagine how many more people would have enjoyed the edition if it came bundled with a virtual tabletop or companion app to keep track of the many effects and modifiers that get thrown around in combat (sure it would have given more ammo to the "4e is a MMO" crowd, but there wouldn't be any way of making them happy anyway, so I don't see that is such a great loss.
In many ways I feel like 4e was an edition that was released too early (the developers made one of the biggest mistakes a designer can make: releasing the game you want to play rather than the game your audience wants to play). If it came out today I think it would be much more widely accepted. As it was, the gaming landscape just wasn't ready for it. There are starting to be more and more examples of newer gamers going back to look at 4e without knowing all the old complaints, and the general reaction seems to be that it is actually a pretty awesome game.
This is a delightful video!
Thank you for reminding me about things of 4e I had forgotten.
At the time I viewed 4e as an edition trying to leap into the computer gaming age. As you point out, we are now seeing many of the same innovations from 4e in a digital gaming age, but with the learnings from previous successes and failures.
Perhaps you'll post a video on Pathfinder, and how you view the meshing of 4e into current game design?
I actually published a video a while back talking specifically about how I think D&D 4e influenced Pathfinder 2e... ua-cam.com/video/XkGr4HR3_r4/v-deo.html
Thank you for the feedback.
I've never stopped playing 4e and am very glad it's finally getting the recognition it deserves. Shame about the online builder, it was great. The offline one is alright, but not the same.
Not to mention that FoundryVTT and its 4e modules are an incredibly fun and fast way of playing it. Almost as if it was always meant to be played that way, hmm!
I just hope they start putting stuff in actual boxes in the layout again. It looked so clean. Put a border around that spell entry, you cowards! lol
The worst thing in 4e is that after reaching -1 levels all characters become looking absolutely the same, with absolutely identical powers, just with different names.
The best part of 4e was artworks and some mnster mechanics like minions and blooded effects, I use it in my games ever when playing OSR or 3.5
So I could go and point out any Avenger build, then compare it to a same level Barbarian build and those two would match at-least 75% on their playstyle and abilities?
You only have the same structure of abilities, and even that was broken up in the essential line!
And as soon as you play with interesting terrain, it becomes obvious how small differences can make a big impact. If you do not use the terrain, then yes character are not that interesting.
Also how are other editions better, when most martial characters can just auto attack?
I really enjoyed 4th. It's a shame no one I know agrees. I do think the way 4th assumed minis/was prepped for a VTT did a lot of damage to it. Theater of the mind is a lot harder when many of the powers assume tactical 5ft pushes kind of like a war game. Hard to track all that in your head. No VTT really killed it, I think.
I have always embraced each edition as they came out.4th was no different. By the time our campaign hit the 6th level mark, we decided as a group it was to similar to a video game. Sliding back to 3.5 until 5th showed up was the plan. Since then I have become a advocate agasint 4th "if I want a video game I would play a video game" was my montra. Times have changed and so has dnd and RPG games in general. Your talk points about 4th edition are valid and make me nod my head in approval at what WOTC was trying to do. Your right, they were ahead of their time. I still loved minions and tried my hands on converting that rule. Hasbro is making a mess of things these days and I have once again changed my focus to Tales of the Valiant with hopes they will pick up the crown and don it honorably. Gonna go watch more of your videos now.
I really appreciate this. The ability to honestly look at your opinions and change them over time seems to be a pretty rare thing.
Great vid! Thy Grey of Beard, have you perchance heard of the MCDM RPG?
Yes. I've been watching it with great interest.
I remember a lot of the debates that went on in the 4e space. Although I spent most of that time playing other editions, I did accumulate a lot of 4e books that went on clearance late in its life.
There were fundamental disconnects with how the AEDU powers mapped to non-casting abilities. It didn’t make sense why a martial ability would be a Daily (whereas it’s much more accepted in D&D that a wizard only gets so many fireballs). There was also the problem where some of its mechanics weren’t actually doing anything obvious in the game world, only in the meta rules sense. Abilities that caused the Marked condition were notorious for this and prompted long back and forth discussions.
There was a sense with 4e that the powers equalized the classes by making everyone too similar, and that like 3e there was too much running on the bonus treadmill. 5e has a lot of faults but it was seen as addressing those perceived issues.
I’m not saying 4e did nothing right; I like the monsters and wish 5e had done monster design half as well as Monster Vault. I’d be happy to see a 5e fix that learned from 4e but not at the cost of its lengthy combats or the tons of modifiers or the powers all feeling like the same thing but reskinned.
i liked the explanation I heard, way back then, for martials having encounter/daily, etc The fighter is always trying their best, hack, slash, etc, but sometimes things are just right and they manage to grab some goblin and pull him into the other goblin's axe swing, or they see the opening to strike This guy and slip past him to strike That guy, but you don't have these perfect moments all the time.
I dont see why martials having things they can only do once a day being so unrealistic.
One point is having the perfect opportunnity, the other is that some things are soo taxing on the body that you cant repeat it without proper rest.
Also "marked condition" you can see as that enemy is distracted by the defender. They have them in the eye, are weary of them, and thus can concentrate less on attacking someone else.
If you have some fantasy these things can make sense, and in a world with magic I dont see why this should make less sense than having spells which can transform a 10 gram creature into a 3 ton creature.
I wouldn't mind running 4e for new players. There is even plenty of figurines now you can buy at stores as well as maps for it. :)
I ran 4e games well into Epic levels. I ran large games with 5-10 players because so few people were DMing the game. TBH, 4e was the best edition for DMs, with 5e coming in right after. However, 5e is only good because of the rules and math but not the DMG. The 5e DMG is pretty much garbage. The layout is awful. The ToC is just about useless as it doesn't list enough of what we're looking for. The 5e DMG forgot all of the genius of the 4e DMG and regressed back to 3e.
Building balanced and interesting encounters in 4e was easy peezy. Other games are copying this, like Shadowdark, but not nearly as good. Encounter building in 4e was second to none.
I loved the Points of Light setting both in concept and execution, and 4e Cosmology is easily the best; this coming from an OG gamer who still runs Greyhawk campaigns (I'm running one right now).
Game designers need to understand that these books should be treated like technical writing first and fictional writing second.
As a Forever DM, with minimal time to make in-depth campaigns, an inconsistent table, and frequent first-and-only-time players being brought over to just hangout, I love 4e. Any Forever DM can appreciate the rules that address the specific problems I listed. It's the only ruleset, I think, that allows roleplayers and character experimenters and min\max power gamers to all contribute to anything that is happening at that moment. I still get amped to run a 4e campaign to this day.
What you've described as "1st edition" was a good deal more complicated. The original game spawned a handful of re-releases, and "1st edition" was a seperate product, closely related to, and co-existing with, the other. 3rd edition combined d&d with ad&d to lessen confusion, and they had to buy out Arneson to do it. Anyway, please, continue...
4e to 5e and 3e to 4e and 2e to 3e -- yes big changes. But have to disagree on 1e and 2e - they are very compatible and very little change but a lot of clean up and tightening. A big criticism of 2e AD&D was that they didn't change much at all because they still wanted to print older modules and supplement and Not alienate those who had a crap load already. - I played a ton of 1e/+2e amalgam D&D ,it worked well but I will never bitch of rules crunch
A while ago I made a comment that I thought 2e was not that different from 1e and a bunch of people made sure I knew what they thought. 🙂
I think the reaction to 4e from people was a little outsized. There are some good things about 4e and I think bringing them into 5th edition will be popular. I bought the 4e starter set when it came out and gave it to a friend when realized it wasn't up my alley. I played in a few of his games, but it just wasn't for me, particularly to run. That said, I don't care for 3e or 5e either. I don't foresee ever playing any new version of D&D as what most gamers are like isn't to my taste. I want lower powered characters and fewer character options in the game which is the exact opposite of what almost everyone else wants. For reference, I started in 1985 with BECMI and 1e AD&D, but I now play 1974 0e which is my sweet spot.
i got my start with 4e. a buddy of mine had the 3e basic 3 books and the 4e core 3, and let me borrow both editions so i could learn to DM. (He refused to be the DM but said he would get a group together if i was willing to try and DM)
So here it is 2008, I've never played D&D befor, and i have 3.5 and 4e to choose from and I have to be the DM... when 4e had a much more unified structure and cooldowns that felt more like WOW, it was the clear winner for a guy who had no idea what a TTRPG even was. Its probably the easiest TTRPG to understand for beginners to the hobby imo
4e was super easy for new players (I know because it was my first) and had so many great tools for new Dungeon Masters.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Sorry if tldr. I started in 1e, and read Dragon for years, so I witnessed first-hand the transition to 2e. D&D went from being fairly abstract and non-specific to being even more complex, detailed, and crunchy. The people I played with had no use for it. I was ok with it, but it did seem like too much. Eventually, I got into 3e, which imo was in many ways a godsend. It solved many of the tangled knots of 1e/2e, streamlined the mechanics, and added many great features. But it was in its own way just as gnarled as 2e. When 4e came along, we thought they were trying to make the game kid-friendly and rejected it out of hand. And I wasn't playing when 5e appeared, tho it clearly moved the game back towards the earlier versions, and seemed to reject 4e outright. Since then I've learned a lot about 4e and 5e, and both of them have lots to offer. I think the best version of D&D, as I've heard before, is the one your table is comfortable with, or even better, the one you make for yourself from the best parts available, and not just in the line of D&D. Many other games have worthwhile elements too. Honestly, tho, if I were playing now, I'd rather start with something rules lite and add on to it as necessary. That's not something I ever had access to before, and I think it would have really improved my experiences bitd, especially all those times we played Risk or something else because we didn't have a forever DM or the time to get into starting up a D&D game from scratch, and consequently we never had an ongoing game to pick up and continue.
I played and was an RPGA DM for 4th edition for its entire run. I have literally ever 4th edition book. The problems I had with 4th were these. 1) Everything was same/same. You had your 1W, 2W and 3W powers. Where W was your weapon/spell damage die. It just felt like picking your character was just a name and some flavor. Because whether you called it hitting with a weapon or casting a spell you were doing 1W all the time, 2W once an encounter and 3W once a day. 2) Combat was both slow and not challenging. So you were far, far less likely to die and it took far longer to finish. This made combat pretty boring for player and DM alike. Example 1: My players took nearly an hour to kill a few of swarms of giant ants. No one felt threatened but it just took so long to wear the swarm done to nothing. Example 2: As a RPGA DM play reward I earned the 4th edition, special version, of S4 Tomb of Horrors. In every version of D&D besides 4th this module is a death trap. In 4th it didn't kill one player in my group. Not because they were exceptionally gifted players but because the whole thing just felt nerfed. I don't think S4 is a great example of D&D modules per se. but for this example, it just shows how the challenge and danger just seem to vanish in 4th edition. 3) Roles were less meaningful. So many classes had a way to 'heal'. As a DM you had to make challenges targeted to certain powers/abilities to make people feel they had a role to play. This actually took more prep time if you weren't playing a standard module. It just felt more like you were playing an online RPG or MMORPG than a tabletop RPG. The point of a TTRPG is that anything can happen. While that was technically true in 4th Ed. It felt like there was very little mystery. Oh look it is a bunch of anything. Must be minions. They are one shot kills. Quick use any power that targets multiple things! Standard opponents. Use your 1W power/ability. Leaders use your 2W power/ability. Bigbads, whip out that 3W. What class are you? Doesn't matter. Forget classes, roles were front line combatant, range combatant and buffer/focused healer. There were some tactical combat powers/abilities for special movement, interceding and the like but everything else was rote. Yes easy to learn but also boring to play.
Sorry but if you played like this, your GM was quite bad...
The interesting and tactical part from 4E comes from the environment, forced movement and different enemy types.
Wizards had a lot of power with no damage but just control or low damage.
There where traps where you can push enemies in or they can push you in. There were lurkers which could attack your backline etc.
I dont see how your mentioned points are in 5E any better. Against a lot of enemies you do area damage. And as a martial you just do basic attacks since you have nothing else to do.
Yes the wizard has more different solutions in 5E, but at the cost of the fighter etc. who have only basic attacks as solutions.
In 4E the big daily spells which could save the day where distributed among all characters.
I like 4e and still DM it. One of the best scenes I ever DMed (I've been DMing since the '70s) was a 4e skill encounter for a rooftop pursuit. It involved every usual cinematic element - parkours, running, rooftop laundry lines, tiles that slide off and fall into the street, jumping over alleyways and barely making it, etc. Was fun for everyone involved, and was really easy to do in 4e compared to prior and later editions. Combat can get very, very slow. Proper use of minions, or just cutting monster HP in half, fix that nicely. And, my favorite, 4e wizards aren't essentially useless baggage at level 1. Druids don't work well in 4e, because of how it handled Wild Shape. House rules are necessary to make them feel like druids again. Easy to do and makes them fun again, but necessary when it shouldn't have been. All in all, as a DM, 4e rocks.
The Actual Problem with everything moving from a Class Feature to Spell is that spells, specifically lower level ones like the class features, are dispellable.
So you're big, signature "This is what my class does" power now gets got by a 3rd level spell that's handed out like candy.
Why nobody ever mention 4th edition essentials line? I can see it on your shelf!!! It was the best version of 4th for new players and casual play, plus the book format was great.
I've not spent as much time with the essentials stuff, but I do plan on digging into them more deeply.
Mostly because they were a marked downgrade compared to 4.0.
The problem with the essential line is that it ticked off a lot of 4E players and some vocal players just hated Mike Mearls.
Also the first Essential book was not that well done in my oppinion. It made the wizard even more complex, while making the rogue and fighter almost identical (and low complexity). Thus strengthening the old "martials are simple casters complex" cliche.
I think over all essentials is great (and it can be combined with normal 4E) but maybe rather the later classes.
Also some classes were released underpowered, (and where thus not that much liked), but this is something which can easily be fixed on the 4E reddit you can find some threads for that).
If Essentials would have released with Elemental Sorcerer instead of the wizard, and maybe the Ranger instead of the rogue, it would have been received a lot better.
For real though
The differences aren't that massive
It didn't 'become World of Warcraft' like negative neckbeards will continue to bark from their mothers basements.
The biggest shift was all class abilities becoming at will/encounter/daily.
That was it
It also made new core classes and brought in new races both additions being awesome.
Like people enjoy Warlock in 5e?
You thank 4e for it becoming a core basic class, not some minor supplemental book option added in 3.5
You like Dragonborn, Tieflings and Goliaths?
Again: 4e made them.
So much good stuff
I just wish I had easy to learn/use online tools to run 4e campaigns for new people today
Core ra
I used 4E as the ruleset for one of my Campaigns in my Homebrew World Campaigns. We played for 8 years and only transferred to 5E after covid Lockdowns necessitated replacing a couple of the players for the 4E campaign. All my 4E players really enjoyed themselves it is all in boxes now but Accessible. We never had any problems in the Role Play in fact my creative players created whole story lines around their relationships with other characters and NPCs. Ask Wes the recovering alcoholic Warrior about his relationsships with Amy and Millie (PCs) and Wendy (Barmaid NPC).
The thing about 4e style games is that they are a ton of work to make since you have to design (and balance) 100's of abilities. I've never seen another system come even close to the ability diversity that 4e has, and 4e was far from perfect due to its somewhat poor balance and very constrained design style.
13th age is similar in that regard
4e was a good game, I had lots of fun running it, but it didn't feel like DnD to a lot of people.
A lot of newer 5e games and some other RPGs like Pathfinder 2e have been taking things from 4e and reusing them.
Personally, I never played 4E except once many many years later (I hated that we died so easily, but it was because we misread the starting hit points as being the modifier rather than the CON score) but I did read it when it came out and I liked so many ideas. I understand what people didn't like about it (no, it wasn't "this is warcraft mmo hurdurr" but real things like too many Per Day powers at later levels). One of my FAVORITE changes was the Alignment. Unaligned for everybody baby! Are you a primordial being made of raw chaos? Then you're probably unaligned, unless you're like Supercop PC Paladin or Cartoon Villain.
I did think it was weird for Wizards to have to pick Daily powers like other classes instead of learning spells... but actually reading the class features, Wizards DID have the feature of learning more Daily powers than at level up (it goes into their spellbooks) but had to choose the allowed # of Daily powers they had memorized.
Another thing I really liked was the IDEA of the 3 tiers. It reminded me of BECMI, with their Companion rules (which I never played but looked at wistfully) and Epic levels from 3.5. The idea that at Maximum Level you don't just go find tougher monsters to punch, is amazing. Tho 4E wasn't as big a change (they just told you, well, now the monsters to punch are interplanar or demigods or whatever) while Companion sets and above told you to start building and defending strongholds or domains. But the best part IMO for 4E was that this was one of the ways you "multiclassed" without actually doing the silly build-a-character per level class stuff - you either get 10 more levels in Paragon tier, or choose a second class for those Paragon tiers, but you don't get all the front-loaded stuff for the new class. I think the way Pathfinder 2E has shifted to for multiclassing is probably heavily inspired by this.
In 4E you die a lot less fast than in 5E, which I love! In 5E you can get 1 shoted by a goblin, in 4E the starting health pool is a lot higher.
I agree that the confusing between score and modifier for health is confusing and that definitly does not work. Too bad, you had this bad experience with it, but great you still like it.
The design of 4th edition is amazing. It aimed to fix many of the problems that were plaguing 3e/3.5, and streamline the game more toward what the old rules already provided (solid, clear, and fun combat for heroic characters). It had its shortcomings, sure, but I am watching it getting vindicated over and over with some amount of satisfaction.
Think a VTT that tracked a lot of the situational bonuses would of made things better. I look at 4e powers and monster stat blocks for ideas all the time.
What are your thoughts on 13th age? I've heard good things about it and supposedly it came out around the time that 5th edition did but it was inspired by 4th edition with some streamlining and rules to allow you to not have to use a grid if you didn't want to
I've looked at it only briefly. From what I saw it definitely has a 4e feel to it and is worthy of further investigation.
I started in 4e and pathfinder and can say that while many game advancements were made in 4e health scaling alone dragged the game down. Tools for GMs were, however, amazing! Learning the game as a new player was also amazing. I find pathfinder 2e is much closer to 4e, though again, i would certainly not compare feats to powers. Even now, i find myself ignoring my feat abilities in pathfinder 2e and can tell you powers in 4e were never forgettable. What d&d should look at doing is formalizing a power spike resource for martials to put them in slight competition with casters. It would help balance gameplay and also balance the adventuring day as characters wear out evenly.
Yeah, even in 5th you can see the influence of 4th. Advantage/Disadvantage had it's roots there, as does proficiency! The skills list was simplified. Warlocks came in. At will, power encounter, power day, became per short rest, per long rest and suddenly everyone liked it!
What old is new, again.
4e had some interesting ideas but it didn't grab me. It did have good tools and I liked its art over 5e.
I'm an old-school B, X, 1e, and 2e DM. I see a lot of good things in 4e, but I'm turned off by the fact that all the classes are structured the same way. I see that complaint a lot, and I feel like there's a pretty easy fix, if someone just cooked up a way for martial classes and rogues to power their features with a hero die and/or luck.
4th edition is my favourite. Playing it since 2008 (along with 3.5 and 5e), and the game still has not lost its charm - finished last campaign this winter. Too bad it became a target for undeserved hate.
A bit too formulaic(?) for my taste. I don't need a power for every possible combat option. At will/encounter powers was great for wizards/spell casting and rituals was a good idea.
4e was always my favorite edition. My 4th Barbarian was the most fun and memorable character I've ever had and all my friends I used to play with still talk about him and his antics (both heroic and stupid). As a barbarian player since early 3rd I loved having more abilities and this to do that aren't "hit with sword." 4e was also a breeze to run which let me focus more on story and not worry about as much prep. It's hard to find a group for the edition because many people who "hate 4th" never even played it
I really think, those goals that 4e failed to reach, the digital things, all now are fulfilled with things like roll20 and DNDbeyond, I suppose it makes it easier to implement the inovations of 4e
my experience as a player with it was bad. at lv 1. the GM expected that I as a bard had a lot of utility powers so he put me on a situation that could be nice to put people to sleep or create an illusion. but my sheet had only attacks. that was a no-no for me. but anyway I'm trying to be open minded and see their merits from another point of view
4th Ed was proof of the multiverse. It was an accidental crossover of dnd in a different timeline.
It's my favorite edition, especially as DM.
The problem with 4e combats (and there were a bunch of good things) was that they did *NOT* in fact scale with level. And not because of flat-math vs linear math or other such nonsense. The problem was status effects.
Imagine this scenario. A humble DM thinks 'oh hey, I have this pile of small coloured wooden cubes, I know what I'll do, I'll use them during combat so that people know when a monster is marked!' (Marking is a key-feature of defenders, and isn't itself a problem but is (at least ostensibly) good design). So our intrepid humble DM picks up this container of cubes and goes to D&D. In the first encounter he explains this new thing he's trying and everyone says it's a great idea to have the visual indicators. Oh, and let's use the red cubes to indicate who is bloodied ... (rinse and repeat).
What's the problem? The problem is that after about level 10 (perhaps even earlier) you're _rapidly_ going to run out of cubes for different status effects. The defender, controller and the leader are going to be prime offenders here (I'll give striker the benefit of the doubt).
Why? Because every buff for yourselves (leader) and debuff of the enemies (controller) is a different colour cube. Moreover the enemies might also themselves have controllers and leaders, so they're going to be handing out status effects like candy too.
You get a status effect and _you_ get a status effect, everyone gets status effects!!! Woohoo!
A 12 colour set of wooden blocks with 12 blocks of each colour is _not_ sufficient for even medium level combat. If you're not using markers of some kind the problem gets _worse_ because now you have to remember everything. And it's not like you can just go 'oh, monster A has +2, +1, -3, +1, +1, +4 and -1 and that sums to +5 so all the other monsters have +5' ... because the monster right next door might not have one of the +1s or it might have an extra -2. And you can't go 'oh, this monster had +5 last turn, so this turn it will have +5 as well.' No. There's been 4 players since then, all of whom had a chance to modify its stack of effects at least once.
It's ... a lot.
And the game design (which is probably the best of any D&D, by a large margin) feeds into that because if you're asking players to pick from cool-powers A, B and C - then you want to differentiate between those powers somehow. And if you do that with pure damage then obviously the most damage is the best and everything else is a 'trap' option. So you differentiate between A and B by having one of them target multiple things, so it spreads its damage out. But how do we make C a distinct option? Oh I know, let's put a status effect on C. Then when you come along to design the next tier of cool powers (a', b' and c') you have a problem because if you just re-use the same status effect on c' as you used on C then that's kind of lame, so c' needs to have a '_more different_' status effect ... and thus you have this massive proliferation of status effects essentially baked into the game at its most fundamental level.
I can definitly see the problem with the many status effect, especially ongoing damage feels too annoying to track for its effect.
I still think having choices between different effects is a lot better than just doing basic attacks though.