In a very long running campaign, we had an Elf Ranger, a Minataur Fighter, and my Eladrin Wizard. I had Rogue Multiclass feats, so I was sneaky and could open locks. We didn't have the Leader role, but we made it to level 14. Really fun campaign, and basically the first time I ever got to play and not DM for about 20 years. Multiclassing in 4E got a lot of heat also. I think it's great.
4e even had 2 differwnr multi classing. Normal feat based one and hybrid. Pathfinder 2 pretty much just took over the 4e normal multi classing (just less powerfull) And 13th age took the hybrid one (but streamlined it a bit) . So ir camt be that bad when other games copied it ;)
Another point worth mentioning along these lines is how Clerics in particular are actually more flexible and varied both in combat and in leveling than they were in previous editions. They always have their Healing Word, sure, but it kind of stays in the background as a minor action so they can have more to do even at low levels than just wait for someone to take damage. They have a range of options to choose from as a front line weapon user, ranged prayer-caster, or exclusive support/healer, and they’ll still have that baseline function of healing without feeling forced to ignore other things.
I really loved thqt in all the leaders. You are not a healbot. You can heal but a limited number of times and you do it on the siee your main action is foe soing something cool on your own!
To me, 4e providing the terminology and gaming language to properly quantify some of the systems was amazing Exactly as you said, you don’t need specific classes in a party to play, but it helps if you have a balanced party But then again, I’ve run games without leaders and without defenders before and we always made it work: players gotta be smarter if they have gaps in their talent lineup, which can be fun itself!
I do agree lots of early modules had player recommendations like B5 Horror on the Hill for things such as number of players and even HP. However, A0 Danger at Darkshelf Quarry is actually a modern addition released in 2013 for the Against the Slave lords series that started in 1980.
I like how different classes have different approaches to the different roles... Defenders in particular are sweet in their differences . I think there might be more roles the Warlords approach is so vastly different than other leaders.
I feel like the defenders had the best defined role with the most divers differenr specific mechanics, while the controller lacked a clear controller mechanic they were defined over their abilities. I also liked some of the later strikers though. Monk was really differenr as an example with more mobility and area damage focus
@@tigriscallidus4477 I did think monk was about a stones throw from being a martial controller and shows how effects could be delivered as an "attack on the run" to inflict more interesting area of effect instead of just adjacent enemies.
@@LanceDyas I agree. The monk definitly was close to a controller. Especially the later material where one of his glurry of bloes had more reach. The hunter ranger works decently for a martial controller and I like it (but I think would have needed a bit more power later).
People: 4e madet he rules too "gamey" Yeah, it is a game. God forbid the rules are clear. I hate reading a spell in 5e, i need to go through 3 paragraphs of fluff to know if the spell has a saving throw or what damage it does. (and the books are gorgeous)
Thanks for posting these vids. My exposure to 4e was brief and didn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth. That could have come down to my mindset at the time, the DM who was running the game or any other number of factors. Point is that though I've said for years that 4e just didn't work for me, I fully accept that my knowledge of it is far too shallow to give an informed opinion on the system as a whole. This is really helping to develop that blind spot for me.
I went through something similar with 2nd Edition AD&D. As I've always said, not every edition will be to everyone's taste and that's okay. We're all gamers here!
Same. Tried two sessions then decided I didn't like it. I'm in a 4e campaign now and I'm enjoying it a lot, though. I don't think I went in with the right mindset before, either, and didn't give it a fair shake. One difference may be that at the time, I literally only played DnD 3.5. Since then, I've played lots of rpg's, and broadened my tastes, so that's probably helped open my mind somewhat since I've first tried it. Videos like these also help me a lot with coming in with a more positive mindset.
The game may "encourage" players to fill different roles, but a DM can always tweak a module/campaign/homebrew to better fit a party if you have multiple players wanting to fill the same role and leave some party roles unfulfilled. No one wants to play a rogue or they're not into puzzle solving? Cut back the amounts of traps and puzzles. No one wants to play a frontliner? Scale back the amount/CR of enemies a bit. Etc, rinse, repeat. You can also find ways of getting players to fulfill different roles and trying new classes by explaining how they can do similar things to what they have in mind with other classes. Best example: you have multiple players who want to play a knight kind of character, so they all show up with a fighter. But more than just fighters can be a knight - the most obvious alternative is a paladin, but they could also play a cleric as a Crusades Hospitalier style knight, you could probably flavor a barbarian as a berzerker, Mountain Who Rides kind of knight, they could flavor a sword and bow ranger as an Aragorn/Faramir style knight of the frontier, and in Pathfinder 1e you also have the cavalier class, which flavor wise is about the closest you can get to true medieval knight.
I think that many of fourth editions problems came down to bad wording and a perceived lack of flavour. I have seen so much complaining about encounter powes but almost everyone loves focus spells from Pathfinder 2e. They are spells which you can recharge with a 10 minute refocus activity. So they are basically Encouter abilities. The same goes for the critique that 4e is only a combat simulation. Dnd is traditionally very rules light when it comes to social interactions. You can do the same amount of role playing in 4e compared to 1st Edition. I think you could rebrand 4e and release it today with much success. ( I mean Pathfinder 2e is half DnD 4e)
Encounter Powers for martials are very easily seen as tricks that once revealed are much harder to pull off (PF2e even has feats written explicitly that way). 4e allows one to envision the limits on powers the way you want. A priest might be performing a purification ritual in the short rest after every encounter. A druid might be waiting for nature to basically cool down and refresh from the manipulations they did. For instance you could picture the wizard as a "true vancian" and ironically that is the flavor text provided. The Wizards encounter spells are ones you can easily refresh by looking at your book during a short rest. (which is closer to Jack Vances writing where one could only have one instance of the same spell)
4e was ahead of its time, for sure The main “issue” I see many people claim as to why it is maligned is because they called it “D&D 4e” and not something like “D&D Tactics” or something like that
@@tigriscallidus4477Ok but Pathfinder 2e Artwork follows no design direction. Current Paizo is famous for letting their artists work with their own art style. This is the reason why PF2e art is super inconsistent.
Well, I think some of the flak the fourth edition got came from revealing "how the sausage is made". The descriptions of classes you've read here got don't evoke characters from fantasy books, but rather combat assignments in a WoW raid. In contrast 5e descriptions sound more like someone praising heroes of a saga.
I agree with your first point, but he's just reading the blurb at the top of what the characters do in the game. One really nice thing about 4e, imo, is that it separates flavor from actually important text, in ways like this or in powers. It's a godsend when you're playing with new players, trying to quickly roll up a new character or read a power in play, and you just want to know what it does so you can pick the right one! In an instant you get an idea, so then you can read the next one. There are paragraphs of other text about how cool the class is from a story point of view, like in 5e. You can sorta see them in the book in the video but it would've made the video take forever if he read them lol.
I had a very bad introduction to it when 4e first came out. Played 5 games the first week of release with "official" dnd dms and had such a terrible time as they hard pushed for all of us to buy the books multiple times during the badly directed adventure. Liked the dragonborn but didn't like the push of tieflings and no aasimars.
I really appreciate you bringing the receipts here. I think you’re misrepresenting the need for roles in early editions slightly. When an old module tells you to bring a thief/rogue, it is always because of the need for their special abilities concerning locks, traps, pockets, climbing, sneaking, thieves were not strikers and fighters consistently had better damage output than thieves.
True, I didn't go into enough explanation on the Rogue. Traps and locked treasure chests are still a big part of 4E. I think a better Role would be Utility characters, since many of the Striker classes also have an emphasis on skills that can be helpful outside of combat. Whether it's "mine sweeping" Rogues, or Rangers scouting ahead or setting Traps and ambush points. Skirmishers fill those roles well.
1e thieves were indeed not strikers they were just terrible *you had to design really stupid trap dungeons and the chance of failing was huge... they were just not competent at anything.
They say they feel they're shoehorned in, with an emphasis on "feel". The way 4e presented character roles made it sound (and perhaps play, never played 4e so idk) like it's the only thing you do, maybe unless you're a hybrid class. (Sidenote: you might enjoy Final Fantasy 14 TTRPG that came out recently. It's clearly made by 4e fans.)
@@mslabo102s2 Well even if you had a role like leader oe controller oe defender you would still do damage as one example. Alao different classes were differenr good in secondary roles. Like an elementalist sorcerer can be good as secondary controller if they choose the ice elemental or they can choose fire and focus more on damage. There was still lot of choice involved in how to play a class. Itw just you have 1 role qkd all the tools to make aure you can do that job but you can and will eo also other things. Also there are different ways to fulfill that job. A warlord might be lazy and not attack themselves or fight in the frontline with the others. A wizard can try to debuff the steongest (single) enemies with strong spells or controll the battlefield with creation of damaging zones.
In later books, they started explicitly saying the secondary roles of classes in the PHB. Looking back, they probably should've done that from the beginning. Because basically every class can fulfill different roles depending on the powers you select, not just the PHB2 and beyond ones. For example, in my party, our druid picked some healing powers to help our bard with the leader role, and the Paladin already comes with Lay on Hands. We have no Striker but our Paladin picked some high damage abilities and so did our fighter and our party is doing fine. It's just like past editions in that regard. But for some reason the codifying of roles made people think that's the only thing you can do.
I really love your videos dude but could you please remove the automated translation? It´s so confusing because on each videos it´s showed to me in my language and it´s so confusing. I prefer in english. tx
4E isn't a bad game. I think where it went wrong was branding. Its so mechanically different from every other edition (powers vs class abilities or spells) that traditionalists balked at the "D&D title". If WotC had called it anything else (make up a name), it would likely still be in circulation. The number of camps in this hobby, especially D&D, where "X edition is best. The rest suck" is ridiculous. I've played this game since 79, having missed out on 3.5 and 4. With the right group at the right table, any game is fun. I refuse to discount an edition of any game. I can remember starting 2E and seeing my beloved half-orc race missing. Talked to my DM, and we worked it out. We didn't blame the edition. We found a solution. So, having never played 4E, I'm no judge. I have listed to Acq Inc since season 1 and it was born is 4E, and stayed that way until Rothfuss joined. I've heard its mechanics over and over. Seems fine, if a bit technical and obscure when defining how a power works. But, like most games out there, it just needs better editing.
D&D 4e had the best editing of any edition by far. If you look at the books etc formatting wording everything is quite clear. The language is consistent for powrrs its just different to D&D before (inspired by magic the gathering). Every single power had also a flavour text. I would really recolmend you to look into some D&D 4e books they are all on drivethru. The "monster vault threats to nentir vale" is especially good when you want to see good editing and layout.
I dabbled in 4E and liked a lot of it , but the idea of Roles turned me off. It did seem to be trying to pigeon hole your character into acting a certain way, mainly in combat. And the labels seemed more fitting to starting up a soccer club than a fantasy adventuring party.
@@tigriscallidus4477 Original D&D roles Arneson indicated were derived from the Fireteam of US military. (And it related to the Chainmail being reflavored wargame). But even the front-line concept which has been around for so long is definitely football feeling. A 4e fighter being actually good at defending allies is not something you see anywhere else (except maybe 5e Cleric casting well supported Sprit Guardians LOL)
@@LanceDyas sorry I first responded to the wrong answer. (In case you saw the notification). I am also a bit sad that so phew games really learned from d&D 4e like the defender, however, I feel its getting better. Beacon a nee really well made rpg also took the 4e roles and the defenders there are acrually good at their job!
@@LanceDyasI don't even mind the comparison to football teams or military squads or whatever. To me it just implies that 4e is more teamwork oriented. And when it works, it's soooooo satisfying. There's nothing like watching a plan go off perfectly that everyone has contributed to.
This time I think you got the main point wrong, unfortunately. Character roles in combat were definitely a 4e thing, at least up to when it was published. Nowadays, Pathfinder 2e has reprised the concept to some extent, even though not that strictly. Before that, classes were defined by their type of abilities, not what role they played in combat. There were classes good at fighting, classes good at using magic, classes with special abilities, and so on. Those were not "roles", but more fields of expertise, which might have been required or not during an adventure or a campaign. 2nd edition's class grouping actually fits this concept very well: you have combat abilities, arcane magic, divine magic, special skills, and, a bit later, psionic abilities. There is one thing I do not particularly like about 4e roles, that is their coming from the videogame world, especially the mmorpgs. This fact makes them quite not "realistic" when applied to a type of games that tends to portrait a living world. For example, in a realistic setting there can be no "defender" role, because it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to force an enemy to attack you instead of the squishy and extremely dangerous spellcaster behind you except by physically blocking its path. The "mark" mechanic 4e uses simply makes no sense in the reality of actual combat. In more than a decade passed DMing 2nd edition, it never happened that one or two fighters would be able to stop the enemies from attacking the other characters past them, unless they were blocking a narrow corridor. They were not defenders at all, because they had no other ways to prevent that from happening. But it was them who dealt most of the damage in combat, which by 4e standards would make them strikers, except they had formidable defenses and lots of hit points, so they weren't this role either. Actually, there were no defined strikers in 2e. Thieves had a backstab ability, but its meager damage output was based on the crappy weapons they used and was incredibly hard to pull out. Some wizards may have been played as a classical glass cannon, but it was not a defining characteristic of the class, more like the result of a specific set of rolls, equipment, and spell learned. And the same could be said about the other two roles, the leader and the controller. It all depended upon the build of certain characters, but even so, often it didn't reach the perfect fitting 4e gave to its classes. What is really bad in most modern editions of D&D and similar games is how much they are built around combat and combat only. Combat is what gives you experience, combat is what gives you riches, combat is what provides you with special equipment, and so on. And this is actually not 4e fault. It all started with 3.0, which monetized magic items and forced players and DMs to follow certain "expectations", such as having a definite amount of equivalent wealth at a certain level or gaining most if not all their experience points from standardized combat encounters.
Thanks for your perspective. Most of my DMing Experience comes from 3rd Edition forward so it's very helpful to hear from those with more hands on experience with the older editions.
Roles in combat I'm pretty sure were always a thing. I distinctly remember people saying things like "we need a healer" or "we need a tank" way back to like 2nd and 3rd when the party is making characters. They weren't codified, and there were some different ones like skill monkey or "face", but it doesn't mean there weren't any expectations about what people did in combat. Fighters tanked by standing in front. Wizards would manipulate the situation with things like sleep and have had fireball forever. Cleric healed. Those areas of expertise you mentioned defined their roles, too. Divine magic implied healing and facing undead, arcane magic implied damage and control, fighter or warrior ability implied higher health and armor. So I wouldn't say the roles came from video games. They're just a natural result of an evolution of the game. They codified something players already used and referenced, and made it more possible, which I would characterize as a good thing. Fighters can tank by just standing in front in a dungeon but when campaigns became bigger and more varied, which happened more often especially into 3rd, you had to do more than that. Similarily, Rogues sneak attack is just an evolution of the thief backstab, but made more capable, which then naturally leads to it being the damage class. 4e just made people more easily able to live out the fantasies they had come to expect from before. As for marking, that is definitely a thing in real life. You can see man-to-man defense in things like basketball or soccer, but also real combat. Distracting people by getting up close and harassing them works. You can see it in boffer battles or SCA war or events that allow big battles with multiple people and melee weapons. When you focus on one guy and poke him every time he averts his eyes, especially if you're a big guy, he will focus you, too, or get smacked by you when he looks away, which is basically the marking mechanic. I also wouldn't say the roles are perfectly fit like you are implying either. Defenders may be able to mark enemies, but it's a -2 penalty, not some forced video game taunt. Enemies are free to ignore it. Also most classes have secondary or even tertiary roles. Fighters can put out near striker levels of damage if built for that. Druids are controllers but can do some tanking as an animal and some healing. Clerics can still wield some armor and can fight up front, giving them some tanking capabilities and they have some divine control abilities, too. Paladins still can tank, output high damage, and heal. It goes on. These are all the same as past editions, at least with what they can do in 3rd. There are some assumptions of what each class will do, of course, but that's always existed. It's the whole point of class based rpg systems, or role-based cooperative games in general.
@@SeiferVII "Marking" as intended in videogames is far different from the one in real life. The latter is more like trying to interdict and block the path, while the former is actually dragging the enemies towards you. A basketball or soccer player tries to avoid its marker, not to go against it. Even giving a penalty to someone on the other side of the battlefield when that particular someone doesn't care about you doesn't make any actual sense. That is the "tank" problem for me. There is no real "aggro", unless you really piss someone off, which requires a lot more effort than just use a few words or gestures. As for the other roles, as I said, they were not as such either. We had things like the "frontliner", the "blaster", the "glass-cannon", the "healer", the "buffer", the "debuffer", the "scout", the "face", and so on. They were more like titles given based on what a character could do. "Tank" back then meant your character had a ton of hit points and defense, being able to resist a lot of punishment without dying, but it didn't mean he could "aggro" the foes. The fact it could dish out less damage than other builds was due to the fact that he tended to use a shield, and so was limited to his primary one-handed weapon as a mean of offense. In 4e and in mmorpg, instead, the abilities are given to characters based on the role they were assigned beforehand. They work the other way around. Of course you can somewhat adjust your power list to achieve a bit more versatility, but you will always lack the kind of abilities necessary to cover other roles. I am not the only one that lamented this lack of flexibility at the time, and in fact they first introduced some "hybrid role" classes in other Player's Handbooks, and then, as a last resort, they published the Essentials line, with the first prototype of what in 5e would become the subclasses, capable of giving the classes a choice of roles instead of a fixed one.
I have some fondness for 4E, as the first ttrpg I played or ran. I wouldn't go back to it - I think the positives are better captured in other systems, particularly Pathfinder 2E, and I've moved away from very combat-centric rpgs in general.
I agree, every edition has strengths and weaknesses. Not every edition is going to appeal to everyone and that's okay. Like what you like and let others do the same. It really shouldn't be so difficult.
@@fingersmcoy I think there’s a case to be made not that 4e is objectively bad but that it’s misnamed. If it had been called Heroes & Hallways, there would have been more room for it to do its own thing, which it did very well. Wizards of the Coast obviously wasn’t going to do that because it would have sold a tiny fraction of what it did, but for a lot of people it made more sense to switch to Pathfinder as the “real” continuation of the D&D system.
@@DravenSwiftbow i got into this game to escape judgemental, rude people. it is an escape for me, and its a shame when the real world enters into what is supposed to be fantasy
@@fingersmcoy There are certainly elements taken from CRPGs, most obviously the 4e Defenders being like CRPG “tanks”. I think of 4e as an RPG/Board Game hybrid, which does have precedent in the earliest versions. It was a great system for my players, who were all high school students (including my daughter) with computer game experience but no previous table top experience.
In a very long running campaign, we had an Elf Ranger, a Minataur Fighter, and my Eladrin Wizard. I had Rogue Multiclass feats, so I was sneaky and could open locks. We didn't have the Leader role, but we made it to level 14. Really fun campaign, and basically the first time I ever got to play and not DM for about 20 years.
Multiclassing in 4E got a lot of heat also. I think it's great.
4e even had 2 differwnr multi classing. Normal feat based one and hybrid. Pathfinder 2 pretty much just took over the 4e normal multi classing (just less powerfull) And 13th age took the hybrid one (but streamlined it a bit) . So ir camt be that bad when other games copied it ;)
Another point worth mentioning along these lines is how Clerics in particular are actually more flexible and varied both in combat and in leveling than they were in previous editions. They always have their Healing Word, sure, but it kind of stays in the background as a minor action so they can have more to do even at low levels than just wait for someone to take damage. They have a range of options to choose from as a front line weapon user, ranged prayer-caster, or exclusive support/healer, and they’ll still have that baseline function of healing without feeling forced to ignore other things.
I really loved thqt in all the leaders. You are not a healbot. You can heal but a limited number of times and you do it on the siee your main action is foe soing something cool on your own!
To me, 4e providing the terminology and gaming language to properly quantify some of the systems was amazing
Exactly as you said, you don’t need specific classes in a party to play, but it helps if you have a balanced party
But then again, I’ve run games without leaders and without defenders before and we always made it work: players gotta be smarter if they have gaps in their talent lineup, which can be fun itself!
Love your 4e content. I recently (re)discovered 4e. Made a one shot with my players and they were all very pleasantly surprised how good it was.
Great to hear! Its so great that more and more people get the chance to have good 4e experiences.
Love 4th edition! Keep the videos coming!
Love Friday 4E days. I'm hoping to get my players to get into it after we finish our Savage Tide for 3.5.
I do agree lots of early modules had player recommendations like B5 Horror on the Hill for things such as number of players and even HP. However, A0 Danger at Darkshelf Quarry is actually a modern addition released in 2013 for the Against the Slave lords series that started in 1980.
It is, but it still has a party make up recommendation.
I like how different classes have different approaches to the different roles... Defenders in particular are sweet in their differences . I think there might be more roles the Warlords approach is so vastly different than other leaders.
I feel like the defenders had the best defined role with the most divers differenr specific mechanics, while the controller lacked a clear controller mechanic they were defined over their abilities. I also liked some of the later strikers though. Monk was really differenr as an example with more mobility and area damage focus
@@tigriscallidus4477 I did think monk was about a stones throw from being a martial controller and shows how effects could be delivered as an "attack on the run" to inflict more interesting area of effect instead of just adjacent enemies.
@@LanceDyas I agree. The monk definitly was close to a controller. Especially the later material where one of his glurry of bloes had more reach.
The hunter ranger works decently for a martial controller and I like it (but I think would have needed a bit more power later).
@@tigriscallidus4477 yeh umm hunter being essentials hurt it (they made everything martial scale worse)
People: 4e madet he rules too "gamey"
Yeah, it is a game. God forbid the rules are clear.
I hate reading a spell in 5e, i need to go through 3 paragraphs of fluff to know if the spell has a saving throw or what damage it does.
(and the books are gorgeous)
Thanks for posting these vids. My exposure to 4e was brief and didn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth. That could have come down to my mindset at the time, the DM who was running the game or any other number of factors. Point is that though I've said for years that 4e just didn't work for me, I fully accept that my knowledge of it is far too shallow to give an informed opinion on the system as a whole. This is really helping to develop that blind spot for me.
I went through something similar with 2nd Edition AD&D. As I've always said, not every edition will be to everyone's taste and that's okay. We're all gamers here!
Same. Tried two sessions then decided I didn't like it. I'm in a 4e campaign now and I'm enjoying it a lot, though. I don't think I went in with the right mindset before, either, and didn't give it a fair shake.
One difference may be that at the time, I literally only played DnD 3.5. Since then, I've played lots of rpg's, and broadened my tastes, so that's probably helped open my mind somewhat since I've first tried it. Videos like these also help me a lot with coming in with a more positive mindset.
The game may "encourage" players to fill different roles, but a DM can always tweak a module/campaign/homebrew to better fit a party if you have multiple players wanting to fill the same role and leave some party roles unfulfilled.
No one wants to play a rogue or they're not into puzzle solving? Cut back the amounts of traps and puzzles. No one wants to play a frontliner? Scale back the amount/CR of enemies a bit. Etc, rinse, repeat.
You can also find ways of getting players to fulfill different roles and trying new classes by explaining how they can do similar things to what they have in mind with other classes. Best example: you have multiple players who want to play a knight kind of character, so they all show up with a fighter. But more than just fighters can be a knight - the most obvious alternative is a paladin, but they could also play a cleric as a Crusades Hospitalier style knight, you could probably flavor a barbarian as a berzerker, Mountain Who Rides kind of knight, they could flavor a sword and bow ranger as an Aragorn/Faramir style knight of the frontier, and in Pathfinder 1e you also have the cavalier class, which flavor wise is about the closest you can get to true medieval knight.
That is very well put. I absolutely agree with tailoring the game to what the PC's can do, rather than punish them for what class they didn't choose.
Hit the like before the video even started😅
Same!!😅
Thank you for making this videos about dnd 4e
Dave we need to start up a 4E game, never played it, I want to scratch it off my bucket list!
Oh, we'll get there!
I think that many of fourth editions problems came down to bad wording and a perceived lack of flavour.
I have seen so much complaining about encounter powes but almost everyone loves focus spells from Pathfinder 2e. They are spells which you can recharge with a 10 minute refocus activity. So they are basically Encouter abilities.
The same goes for the critique that 4e is only a combat simulation. Dnd is traditionally very rules light when it comes to social interactions. You can do the same amount of role playing in 4e compared to 1st Edition.
I think you could rebrand 4e and release it today with much success. ( I mean Pathfinder 2e is half DnD 4e)
Encounter Powers for martials are very easily seen as tricks that once revealed are much harder to pull off (PF2e even has feats written explicitly that way). 4e allows one to envision the limits on powers the way you want. A priest might be performing a purification ritual in the short rest after every encounter. A druid might be waiting for nature to basically cool down and refresh from the manipulations they did.
For instance you could picture the wizard as a "true vancian" and ironically that is the flavor text provided. The Wizards encounter spells are ones you can easily refresh by looking at your book during a short rest. (which is closer to Jack Vances writing where one could only have one instance of the same spell)
4e was ahead of its time, for sure
The main “issue” I see many people claim as to why it is maligned is because they called it “D&D 4e” and not something like “D&D Tactics” or something like that
Why does the 4e art look so similar to PF?
Because Pathfinder (especially pathfinder 2) did steal lot of inspiration from 4E.
I'd say it's likely because that style was popular at the time. Comics and anime were going through a resurgence of popularity around that period.
@@tigriscallidus4477Ok but Pathfinder 2e Artwork follows no design direction. Current Paizo is famous for letting their artists work with their own art style. This is the reason why PF2e art is super inconsistent.
Artist, Wayne Reynolds, was on a number of projects... 3e, 4e, Pathfinder, and many, many others.
Well, I think some of the flak the fourth edition got came from revealing "how the sausage is made". The descriptions of classes you've read here got don't evoke characters from fantasy books, but rather combat assignments in a WoW raid.
In contrast 5e descriptions sound more like someone praising heroes of a saga.
I agree with your first point, but he's just reading the blurb at the top of what the characters do in the game. One really nice thing about 4e, imo, is that it separates flavor from actually important text, in ways like this or in powers. It's a godsend when you're playing with new players, trying to quickly roll up a new character or read a power in play, and you just want to know what it does so you can pick the right one! In an instant you get an idea, so then you can read the next one.
There are paragraphs of other text about how cool the class is from a story point of view, like in 5e. You can sorta see them in the book in the video but it would've made the video take forever if he read them lol.
@@SeiferVII I also prefer 4e's formatting, but I can't deny it's less immersive.
I had a very bad introduction to it when 4e first came out. Played 5 games the first week of release with "official" dnd dms and had such a terrible time as they hard pushed for all of us to buy the books multiple times during the badly directed adventure. Liked the dragonborn but didn't like the push of tieflings and no aasimars.
I really appreciate you bringing the receipts here. I think you’re misrepresenting the need for roles in early editions slightly. When an old module tells you to bring a thief/rogue, it is always because of the need for their special abilities concerning locks, traps, pockets, climbing, sneaking, thieves were not strikers and fighters consistently had better damage output than thieves.
True, I didn't go into enough explanation on the Rogue. Traps and locked treasure chests are still a big part of 4E. I think a better Role would be Utility characters, since many of the Striker classes also have an emphasis on skills that can be helpful outside of combat.
Whether it's "mine sweeping" Rogues, or Rangers scouting ahead or setting Traps and ambush points. Skirmishers fill those roles well.
@ Good point, and it helps to explain both why Warlocks can take Thievery and why it took so long to introduce the Slayer (Fighter Striker).
1e thieves were indeed not strikers they were just terrible *you had to design really stupid trap dungeons and the chance of failing was huge... they were just not competent at anything.
They say they feel they're shoehorned in, with an emphasis on "feel". The way 4e presented character roles made it sound (and perhaps play, never played 4e so idk) like it's the only thing you do, maybe unless you're a hybrid class.
(Sidenote: you might enjoy Final Fantasy 14 TTRPG that came out recently. It's clearly made by 4e fans.)
@@mslabo102s2 Well even if you had a role like leader oe controller oe defender you would still do damage as one example. Alao different classes were differenr good in secondary roles. Like an elementalist sorcerer can be good as secondary controller if they choose the ice elemental or they can choose fire and focus more on damage. There was still lot of choice involved in how to play a class. Itw just you have 1 role qkd all the tools to make aure you can do that job but you can and will eo also other things. Also there are different ways to fulfill that job. A warlord might be lazy and not attack themselves or fight in the frontline with the others. A wizard can try to debuff the steongest (single) enemies with strong spells or controll the battlefield with creation of damaging zones.
In later books, they started explicitly saying the secondary roles of classes in the PHB. Looking back, they probably should've done that from the beginning. Because basically every class can fulfill different roles depending on the powers you select, not just the PHB2 and beyond ones.
For example, in my party, our druid picked some healing powers to help our bard with the leader role, and the Paladin already comes with Lay on Hands. We have no Striker but our Paladin picked some high damage abilities and so did our fighter and our party is doing fine. It's just like past editions in that regard. But for some reason the codifying of roles made people think that's the only thing you can do.
I really love your videos dude but could you please remove the automated translation? It´s so confusing because on each videos it´s showed to me in my language and it´s so confusing. I prefer in english. tx
I was unaware that was even a thing. Sorry about that, I'll see what I can do.
@@DravenSwiftbow Haha yeah it was the same for me I was also confused XD
4E isn't a bad game. I think where it went wrong was branding. Its so mechanically different from every other edition (powers vs class abilities or spells) that traditionalists balked at the "D&D title". If WotC had called it anything else (make up a name), it would likely still be in circulation.
The number of camps in this hobby, especially D&D, where "X edition is best. The rest suck" is ridiculous. I've played this game since 79, having missed out on 3.5 and 4. With the right group at the right table, any game is fun. I refuse to discount an edition of any game.
I can remember starting 2E and seeing my beloved half-orc race missing. Talked to my DM, and we worked it out. We didn't blame the edition. We found a solution.
So, having never played 4E, I'm no judge. I have listed to Acq Inc since season 1 and it was born is 4E, and stayed that way until Rothfuss joined. I've heard its mechanics over and over. Seems fine, if a bit technical and obscure when defining how a power works. But, like most games out there, it just needs better editing.
D&D 4e had the best editing of any edition by far. If you look at the books etc formatting wording everything is quite clear. The language is consistent for powrrs its just different to D&D before (inspired by magic the gathering). Every single power had also a flavour text. I would really recolmend you to look into some D&D 4e books they are all on drivethru. The "monster vault threats to nentir vale" is especially good when you want to see good editing and layout.
I dabbled in 4E and liked a lot of it , but the idea of Roles turned me off. It did seem to be trying to pigeon hole your character into acting a certain way, mainly in combat. And the labels seemed more fitting to starting up a soccer club than a fantasy adventuring party.
Whenever teamwork is involved its most efficient to have different roles. The teamplay was inspired by football which I think is nice.
@@tigriscallidus4477 Original D&D roles Arneson indicated were derived from the Fireteam of US military. (And it related to the Chainmail being reflavored wargame). But even the front-line concept which has been around for so long is definitely football feeling. A 4e fighter being actually good at defending allies is not something you see anywhere else (except maybe 5e Cleric casting well supported Sprit Guardians LOL)
@@LanceDyas sorry I first responded to the wrong answer. (In case you saw the notification). I am also a bit sad that so phew games really learned from d&D 4e like the defender, however, I feel its getting better. Beacon a nee really well made rpg also took the 4e roles and the defenders there are acrually good at their job!
@@LanceDyasI don't even mind the comparison to football teams or military squads or whatever. To me it just implies that 4e is more teamwork oriented. And when it works, it's soooooo satisfying. There's nothing like watching a plan go off perfectly that everyone has contributed to.
@@SeiferVII exactly the team play element is very very nice.
This time I think you got the main point wrong, unfortunately.
Character roles in combat were definitely a 4e thing, at least up to when it was published. Nowadays, Pathfinder 2e has reprised the concept to some extent, even though not that strictly.
Before that, classes were defined by their type of abilities, not what role they played in combat. There were classes good at fighting, classes good at using magic, classes with special abilities, and so on. Those were not "roles", but more fields of expertise, which might have been required or not during an adventure or a campaign.
2nd edition's class grouping actually fits this concept very well: you have combat abilities, arcane magic, divine magic, special skills, and, a bit later, psionic abilities.
There is one thing I do not particularly like about 4e roles, that is their coming from the videogame world, especially the mmorpgs. This fact makes them quite not "realistic" when applied to a type of games that tends to portrait a living world.
For example, in a realistic setting there can be no "defender" role, because it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to force an enemy to attack you instead of the squishy and extremely dangerous spellcaster behind you except by physically blocking its path.
The "mark" mechanic 4e uses simply makes no sense in the reality of actual combat.
In more than a decade passed DMing 2nd edition, it never happened that one or two fighters would be able to stop the enemies from attacking the other characters past them, unless they were blocking a narrow corridor. They were not defenders at all, because they had no other ways to prevent that from happening.
But it was them who dealt most of the damage in combat, which by 4e standards would make them strikers, except they had formidable defenses and lots of hit points, so they weren't this role either.
Actually, there were no defined strikers in 2e. Thieves had a backstab ability, but its meager damage output was based on the crappy weapons they used and was incredibly hard to pull out. Some wizards may have been played as a classical glass cannon, but it was not a defining characteristic of the class, more like the result of a specific set of rolls, equipment, and spell learned.
And the same could be said about the other two roles, the leader and the controller. It all depended upon the build of certain characters, but even so, often it didn't reach the perfect fitting 4e gave to its classes.
What is really bad in most modern editions of D&D and similar games is how much they are built around combat and combat only. Combat is what gives you experience, combat is what gives you riches, combat is what provides you with special equipment, and so on.
And this is actually not 4e fault. It all started with 3.0, which monetized magic items and forced players and DMs to follow certain "expectations", such as having a definite amount of equivalent wealth at a certain level or gaining most if not all their experience points from standardized combat encounters.
Thanks for your perspective. Most of my DMing Experience comes from 3rd Edition forward so it's very helpful to hear from those with more hands on experience with the older editions.
Roles in combat I'm pretty sure were always a thing. I distinctly remember people saying things like "we need a healer" or "we need a tank" way back to like 2nd and 3rd when the party is making characters. They weren't codified, and there were some different ones like skill monkey or "face", but it doesn't mean there weren't any expectations about what people did in combat.
Fighters tanked by standing in front. Wizards would manipulate the situation with things like sleep and have had fireball forever. Cleric healed. Those areas of expertise you mentioned defined their roles, too. Divine magic implied healing and facing undead, arcane magic implied damage and control, fighter or warrior ability implied higher health and armor.
So I wouldn't say the roles came from video games. They're just a natural result of an evolution of the game. They codified something players already used and referenced, and made it more possible, which I would characterize as a good thing. Fighters can tank by just standing in front in a dungeon but when campaigns became bigger and more varied, which happened more often especially into 3rd, you had to do more than that. Similarily, Rogues sneak attack is just an evolution of the thief backstab, but made more capable, which then naturally leads to it being the damage class. 4e just made people more easily able to live out the fantasies they had come to expect from before.
As for marking, that is definitely a thing in real life. You can see man-to-man defense in things like basketball or soccer, but also real combat. Distracting people by getting up close and harassing them works. You can see it in boffer battles or SCA war or events that allow big battles with multiple people and melee weapons. When you focus on one guy and poke him every time he averts his eyes, especially if you're a big guy, he will focus you, too, or get smacked by you when he looks away, which is basically the marking mechanic.
I also wouldn't say the roles are perfectly fit like you are implying either. Defenders may be able to mark enemies, but it's a -2 penalty, not some forced video game taunt. Enemies are free to ignore it. Also most classes have secondary or even tertiary roles. Fighters can put out near striker levels of damage if built for that. Druids are controllers but can do some tanking as an animal and some healing. Clerics can still wield some armor and can fight up front, giving them some tanking capabilities and they have some divine control abilities, too. Paladins still can tank, output high damage, and heal. It goes on. These are all the same as past editions, at least with what they can do in 3rd.
There are some assumptions of what each class will do, of course, but that's always existed. It's the whole point of class based rpg systems, or role-based cooperative games in general.
@@SeiferVII "Marking" as intended in videogames is far different from the one in real life. The latter is more like trying to interdict and block the path, while the former is actually dragging the enemies towards you.
A basketball or soccer player tries to avoid its marker, not to go against it.
Even giving a penalty to someone on the other side of the battlefield when that particular someone doesn't care about you doesn't make any actual sense.
That is the "tank" problem for me. There is no real "aggro", unless you really piss someone off, which requires a lot more effort than just use a few words or gestures.
As for the other roles, as I said, they were not as such either. We had things like the "frontliner", the "blaster", the "glass-cannon", the "healer", the "buffer", the "debuffer", the "scout", the "face", and so on.
They were more like titles given based on what a character could do.
"Tank" back then meant your character had a ton of hit points and defense, being able to resist a lot of punishment without dying, but it didn't mean he could "aggro" the foes. The fact it could dish out less damage than other builds was due to the fact that he tended to use a shield, and so was limited to his primary one-handed weapon as a mean of offense.
In 4e and in mmorpg, instead, the abilities are given to characters based on the role they were assigned beforehand. They work the other way around.
Of course you can somewhat adjust your power list to achieve a bit more versatility, but you will always lack the kind of abilities necessary to cover other roles.
I am not the only one that lamented this lack of flexibility at the time, and in fact they first introduced some "hybrid role" classes in other Player's Handbooks, and then, as a last resort, they published the Essentials line, with the first prototype of what in 5e would become the subclasses, capable of giving the classes a choice of roles instead of a fixed one.
I have some fondness for 4E, as the first ttrpg I played or ran. I wouldn't go back to it - I think the positives are better captured in other systems, particularly Pathfinder 2E, and I've moved away from very combat-centric rpgs in general.
i love first edition so much. but i dont get hating any edition. they are all good. its dungeons and dragons, how can it ever be bad?
I agree, every edition has strengths and weaknesses. Not every edition is going to appeal to everyone and that's okay. Like what you like and let others do the same. It really shouldn't be so difficult.
@@fingersmcoy I think there’s a case to be made not that 4e is objectively bad but that it’s misnamed. If it had been called Heroes & Hallways, there would have been more room for it to do its own thing, which it did very well. Wizards of the Coast obviously wasn’t going to do that because it would have sold a tiny fraction of what it did, but for a lot of people it made more sense to switch to Pathfinder as the “real” continuation of the D&D system.
@@DravenSwiftbow i got into this game to escape judgemental, rude people. it is an escape for me, and its a shame when the real world enters into what is supposed to be fantasy
@@joelpartee594 from what i have heard others say, 4e was the answer to the rush of role playing games like wow and such?
@@fingersmcoy There are certainly elements taken from CRPGs, most obviously the 4e Defenders being like CRPG “tanks”. I think of 4e as an RPG/Board Game hybrid, which does have precedent in the earliest versions. It was a great system for my players, who were all high school students (including my daughter) with computer game experience but no previous table top experience.