People seem to forget that you DO get encounter powers back if the encounter goes on long enough. The idea is it's just a power you can't do super often, same as the daily power. Honestly, I'll always love how balanced 4th edition was, it was really hard to break and become crazy overpowered in, at least relative to the other players. I've always seen 4th edition as the "hero" edition, where you get to have a full power trip. As for RP and flavor.... that's up to the DM and players to do. I learned to roleplay from 4th edition in a year long campaign I was in as my intro to D&D. While I do understand people prefering 5th edition (I haven't played 3rd or 3.5), I still have a special place in my heart for this game.
We played our own home written RPG for years (and even published it to great failure). Skills got better by spending time and rolling (higher skill the harder to increase it). HP was constant, Size plus Con. No levels or alignments. We had classes that affected ease of learning various skills. It was quite cool but also number crunchy (not quite Hero system level though). The interesting part was we would do an adventure or two with the goal of getting money to train then take 6 months off adventuring to improve a few skills. We actually moved the campaign calendar and watched the sweep of time make changes to the world.
That sounds like Chaosiums Basic Role Play Series. Runequest, Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu, and Mythras all work like that. They’re percentile skill based games, but they work a lot like that. Jackals by Osprey has some of those mechanics too, I think.
interesting watching this in 2022. as someone who played 1st, 2nd, 3rd….then 4th…i gotta say that after every 4 ed session i dm’d i always felt..,kinda hollow. The “head down” description was spot on! No longer did my players make insane, wild, and unpredictable decisions that upended all my plans
4e (and Matt Coville) fixed my 5e combat encounters with it's concept of roles. Sometimes you just want some goblins, but it's so much more interesting when you have a goblin shaman, goblin archers, and goblin warg riders all in the same group. It can get weird and gamey if you do that all the time (sometimes a pack of wolves is just a pack of wolves), but I have learned to make so many more interesting combats using concepts from 4e. And morale. You have to use morale... But I don't think I'd ever initiate playing 4e.
Thank you. The youtube comments section seems a bit messed up. I could see that people had commented on my videos earlier, but couldn't see their comments.. but now I can. Must be a youtube thing. You should be able to comment now!
My group and I played Hero system for years. Until 6th edition it was a playable system. Yes there was a bit of math but it's balanced out by playable rules and a fun setting.
4th edition was popular in japan. I think this is because thier P&P RPGs like Dragon Arms, Sword World and Tenra Bansho are heavily influenced by computer titles which ironically are influenced by dungeons and dragons. Overlord was written by a 4th edition player.
The best place to learn D&D would be Basic D&D, 3rd edition or 5th edition, 1st and 2nd are complex with so many optional rules and many systems at odds with one another, and 4th is a tabletop minis combat game, Basic set out to teach new players, DMs and all how to play a game with compatible well thought out systems, 3rd edition gives a nice solid system to learn how to play the game with minis or you can use theater of the mind and just focus on making interesting characters, player choice was the name of the game with 3rd edition, and 5th edition takes many of the best parts of 3rd and 4th edition and makes them work in a solid, cohesive way. I wouldn't suggest starting with AD&D or 4th edition, those are the ones you try after you have a handle on what D&D really is.
Your comment about 4e playing like a video game was spot on. I had heard before that they designed the game like that to to try to capitalize on the popularity of mmorpgs (World of Warcraft). Interesting idea but I am glad that they went back to their roots with 5e.
I had an RPGA official group that played 4th ed. for well over a year. I spent hundreds and hundreds on the 4th editions books. I did everything I could to make it have flavor but it was just so blah. It either felt like it was too heroic, meaning characters could get away with anything or completely bland in that it didn't matter what you called the power because you could use it once an encounter and it did 3(W) it might as well been called 3(W). The kicker for all of us was the 4th edition Tomb of horrors. As a bonus we got this module because of heavy RPGA play. I warned them that this module was a killer in previous editions. We played it. The module couldn't kill any one. I have played through S4 in 1st, 2nd and a newer version in 3rd. It always cost characters when someone made a bad decision. The 4th edition version was pathetic. There was no bite to it, no sense of real danger. That was the last straw. Ultimately we just started playing my own homebrew system which you would hate because it is crunchy but point being you are right; 4th edition killed D&D for the entire group and none of them play it now.
Regarding the "dated" elements of D&D, I have always wondered, coming out of the old Chainmail miniatures battle rules as the game did, how in heck rolling for stats was selected for character creation? Armies were bought with points, in order to create balance in the scenario. Yet when the commanders of the fantasy variations of Chainmail were isolated for use in the very first tabletop RPGs, their characteristics were randomized. Never did get that. That was why I embraced the Hero System so readily. Yes, there were numbers to crunch, but it was less a matter of math complexity, and more a matter of numerous lines of simple math. The only time things got complicated was when using modifiers on powers, and even then, if my fading memory isn't playing tricks on me, I'm pretty sure there were handy reference charts showing the totals for base points with X modifiers, for those who preferred not to mess with fractions. Still my one and only go-to system. I *like* being able to build whatever I want to play, knowing that the core of the game tends to balance things out between characters (assuming the GM keeps an eye on what the players are up to). Sadly, Hero has never had the flavor of D&D, perhaps because "nobody plays it," leaving it up to the few who do to create their own settings (or to adapt existing ones). Character classes are a handy tool for neophyte players in need of a starting point, and to keep more experienced players from playing the same min-maxed character, a problem with free-form systems like Hero. Even Hero had "Package Deals" to help set a handy baseline for character concepts. Levels as an abstract are a handy way to gauge character power, but I can hand my players a few character points and get the same reaction when they can finally buy the skill or power they've been saving up for as they once did when they leveled up in D&D. However, that is all apples and oranges. Both are tasty RPG fruit, but not the same. The fact that I can happily cadge scenarios, monsters, and settings from D&D means that I can enjoy both, playing a game whose most recent changes actually constitute *simplification* of some rules. =^[.]^=
@ 12:34 Bloodied doesn't give combat advantage, unless if you have a specific power which enables that. Bloodied just means they're down below 50% health.
I commented a while ago on your Blueholme video and mentioned how I lost interest in the game as it became seemingly more cumbersome over the years starting with AD&D first edition. I just watched your 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition reviews and you completely confirmed everything I was feeling about the game! I thought I was perhaps just being lazy in not wanting to relearn and adapt... but no, I think trying to remain a fan though all that would have been a bit of a nightmare for me. Off to hear what you have to say about 5th edition! Hope it’s good news.
You know, you are onto something, mate. I've been following along this whole time with each new edition... and have recently started heading backwards. With the 2020 Coronavirus Quarantine, my wife and I turned to the D&D Rules Cyclopedia for a game we could run from couches. Doing so made me realize how much freedom I have lost as a DM over the years. How much creativity during play has been lost as well. I have no real point to this... other than I wanted you to know that I get ya! Simplicity is awesome!
Christopher, I looked into getting a vintage copy of that very book, but not long ago decided to invest in the Old School Essentials Black Box set and love it. I like how it’s organized and consolidated.
@@murdockscott I've seen that set! I am most interested in grabbing a copy myself... if I can ever find one! The editing and layout of the older stuff has always been THE hurdle for many players... it's why some claim that 4th edition is easier to learn!
I unfortunately owned 4th ed D&D and even more unfortunately I also ran it. Fortunately I only ran it twice. Then with gratitude I sold my entire set. Best thing I ever did :-).
I have to disagree with a lot of that. 4e was way more enjoyable to run then previous edition and I had no need mod the game, because it just worked so well. For me, the rules of 4e didn't get in the way of the role playing like the prior editions. Every character had a role, everything just worked. Characters were easy to put together and the game way easier to run. I was hesitant when it first came out too, but when I gave it real honest try at 4e, its effect based system was leagues ahead of earlier editions. Think people forget, those "video games" they spoke of, a lot of those were based on D&D in the first place. It is false criticism at best.
Even the designers of the game admit that they worked to balance the classes and stream the levels,adding abilities and skills that emulated the MMO situation at the time of the game's release. The game was designed to work on a VTT,and much of the games mechanics were meant to be integrated as part of the VTT's automation. This is a FACT of the game's design from the designers themselves. One of the main factors in 4E's failure that many of the game's luminaries share is that the failure of the promised VTT from WOTC to materialize lead to its decline. While I agree that there were many good points to 4E it was such a vast departure from the previous editions that it fractured the game community, this is also an unequivocal fact. OSR and Pathfinder rose in reaction to 4E. That's not to say, 'you're having fun wrong'. If you had fun, that's great,but overall 4E was not good for Dungeons and Dragons, and saw a vast decline. There are most definitely a number of very passionate supporters of the game, but those numbers were not sufficient to make the edition sustainable. On the bright side, there is a lot of 4E material, much of it very inexpensive on ebay! Thanks for commenting! :)
I was already ill about a new edition of D&D coming out and that they still had loads of 3.5 books on the shelf. I had even purchased a few of them BEFORE I FOUND OUT ABOUT 4th edition. So one day I walked into a Barns & Noble and picked up the shiny new 4E PHB and found a nice and comfortable chair and jumped in. When I was done, I closed the book and put it back on the shelf and shook my head and said to myself no just no. I walked away from this and I was more then happy to D&D it up with 1st and 2nd edition or B/X or BECM I have no use for the Immortal rules. Finding Castles & Crusades was a true blessing. I left the game I love in a sense but I still had my gaming collection to enjoy. I didn't really give Pathfinder a good look because I did suffer from 3.5 burn out. A few years down the road and out comes 5e and I was just not feeling it then my youngest daughter of all people talked to me about 5e having an old school vibe to go with the new school spit and polish. So back to the Barns & Noble and have a look see. I was hooked and I love 5e and I still love my old stuff too. As for 4e? Nope, not having it not to mention what 4e did to the Realms. Thanks to Matt I did get the 4e monster manual to spice up my 5e monster bad guys. So...... Game on Cap
Thank you for the thoughtful post! I enjoy 5E myself. And just like you I have a PDF of the 4E monster Manual to 'spice up' the 5E Monsters, but you echo my own feelings on the subject very well. Game on!
Great videos, mate. Even if I am 6 years late in commenting. LOL When people say that 4e was "easier" than previous editions, I think what they really means was that it was more accessible. From online resources and podcasts, to just the layout and readability. Thank goodness for the OSR movement in providing more readable throwback games, eh?
Captcorajus, you make an excellent point by comparing 4E, and I would add 5E, to a video game. It is sad that new players do not get the thrill of having the fear that you could die at any moment during an adventure. I am actually switching to Castles and Crusades is a great game.
I don't think 5 I resembles a video game at all. Its structure is far more similar to traditional D&D. I do DM quite a bit of 5E with some old school tweaks and its pretty deadly.
@@captcorajus I probably should of said that most players I DM 5e do see it as a video game. I too use some tweaks here and there to make it a bit more old school.
I have said since I first played 4e in high school in 2008(and quickly proceeded to resell the books), that 4e would be a great game to strip role-playing game elements(both the tabletop RPG elements and the video game RPG elements) out of and sell as a standalone board game, such as in the vein of HeroQuest or Dragon Strike(especially if it came with a cheesy video that didn't actually teach you how to play the game but was super entertaining like Dragon Strike did). If you strip the massive bloat of numbers and crunch, the level system that doesn't matter because it's intended to always have the same balance, and the RPG aspects that only exist functionally to sell it as an RPG, where you can keep producing new material for it to sell(which becomes redundant once players & DMs alike realize that all classes of one role are carbon copies with different names, same with monsters), it is a fully serviceable dungeon crawling board game. Add.: I think a major issue of the game wasn't just that the game was redundant as an RPG, but that WotC simply didn't deliver on the experience they were pushing for. It feels like the game was designed to be used 100% in junction with the planned virtual tabletop, which never materialized. Had it been created & released, a metric ton of the crunch could be sped up by the programming of the VTT, such as pretty much any RPG on a VTT works these days, but in 2008, VTTs weren't particularly robust in design, especially when it came to automation and macros. Another problem was D&D Insider existing and offering some rules, but not the full source books in an attempt(in vain) to prevent digital piracy. It just wasn't worth the money. I think if D&D Insider had been a combination of today's D&D Beyond - giving players & DMs access to the complete books, creation tools, etc. - and a Roll20-style VTT, and had been that way since the day the first 4e core books dropped, 4e wouldn't have been received nearly as poorly as it did. I think it would still be considered the "failed" edition of D&D, but I don't think it would've lead to the mea culpa that was the two-year D&D Next play test, and 5e probably would've been quite a bit different if D&D Insider had been fully fleshed out and WotC had even a small fraction of 3.x players paying for D&D Insider, even if not actively playing 4e very frequently.
Most of these points made in the video can be applied to the D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder editions. They really have nothing in common with AD&D 1st or 2nd edition. It comes down to role play vs. roll play !!
I'm sorry, but I will have to humbly disagree. The fundamental difference between AD&D 1 and 2 versus 3.x is that all the various conflicting sub systems were eliminated in favor of a unified core mechanic. Roll a d20. Armor Class was inverted, and feats were added. While I will say that the feat system has problems of its own, its fundamentally in spirit with the D&D rules. Conversely, 4e introduces a whole host of dynamic game mechanic changes that have no relationship to previous editions. The creation of POWERS for every class, Arcane, Divine, and Martial clearly simulates a video game like environment. Character sheets for 1st level characters are 2 to 3 pages long when you print them out with the 'power cards'. Digital tools for character and monster creation are almost a necessity, and the creation of original monsters is a massive undertaking... that is unless you have the monster tool. Furthermore, combat plays like a war game. I've been playing for 35 years, as well as others in our group. We are role players from way back. I'm a Dee Jay, my one friend is an IT tech, and my other friend runs his own software company. Game wise, we play complex strategy games like Star Fleet Battles, Guns of August, and Battle Tech. Each of us, over the years have won a variety of gaming awards and tournaments. We aren't dummies. But even with a computer handling initiative, combat took up a significant amount of a five hour play session. DM wise, I found trying to prepare a session using original material way to demanding on my time, and exhausting. 'burn out' was an issue. Thus, 'roll play' versus 'role play' doesn't even enter into the picture.
I love your stuff but I come to the opposite conclusion about 4th edition. I started playing D&D '83 and have played every edition of D&D and many other systems as well. I found 3.0, 3.5, and especially 3.75 (Pathfinder) way too cumbersome and crunchy. It became who can game the system the best, making the DMs gob very difficult. So, I found 4th a breath of fresh air! I found it so easy to introduce to new players. It was quick and easy to create balanced encounters. Classes and characters were more balanced with each other. It bothers me when someone says this system or that system gets in the way of role playing. Because all these systems are is rules for conflict resolution. So you use them if you can not resolve it through role play. The people who play the game make it what it is. I have had great role play sessions with 4th. I have also had bad roll play session with 5th (and 3rrd). I respect your perspective even though it differs from mine on 4th. Please Keep up the good work as I said before I love it.
I did not find it 'quick and easy'. I found it a chore, and burnt out on the game in about 6 months. Matt Coleville said it way better thn me. In any RPG there's the gamey aspects and then there's the 'downtime' away from them. 4E tended to blur the line between them. I know a lot of people liked 4E and I'm certainly not the person to tell anyone the 'proper way' to have fun, and would NEVER be so presumptuous. My primary conclusion however was regardless of whether you loved 4E or hated it, before 4E the number 1 RPG for the last 30 years was Dungeons and Dragons. After 4E it was Pathfinder. From WOTC's perspective, that's a problem. Thank you for your comment, and the kind words!! Game on!
I wanted to add: After all, I said before it does not mean that I did not play the heck out of 3 and Pathfinder, and I loved every minute of it. I like Matt Colville but you said it just as well.
The advertising for the game during 4e went from "World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game" to "World's Slowest Game of World of Warcraft Played Sans Computer," if I recall correctly.
I know it's pointless to comment on a video that is 8 years old, but on this I must: the Hero System is a really good system. It's not perfect, has its faults, etc, but I dig it. And there is a surprising amount of the math that is formulaic, and this non-mathist got so he could do many of the day-to-day calculations in his head. And later editions had tables to cross reference anyway if that was too much for you. I went straight from ad&d (1e) to Champions (Hero system) and never looked back. Well, not for years. No, sorry, Hero System has alot of very devoted players.
And I'm happy to play, and in fact I was just like your GM after years of running Champions and Fantasy Hero, I can calculate any power, ability, with advantages, perks, and disadvantages in my head to wrote, at least at one time I could. I had a player of mine want to take over GM duties from Fantasy Hero one time, to play some champions. I was so down for that! So, we had 275 points, and I asked what the parameters were. I asked about building a character with a cosmic power pool (We were playing 4th edition), as I wanted to create a 'Dr. Strange' type character. He said yes. So I created 'Magus' sorcerer supreme! He started of with the kidnapping of our DNPCs. This did not work out well for him. Magus had a 75 point COSMIC power pool. I mind scanned the city for my DNPC... found out where she was located and the teleported the entire super group to their lair. This was the first 15 minutes.. lol. We destroyed his super team, and my cosmic power flexibility with my magic allowed me to adapt to anything he threw at me. Needless to say, after that scenario, he was like, "Okay, we need to talk." LOVE the hero system. That said, its appeal is limited by its complexity. Your casual gamer simply will not get, or WANT to get the system.
I actually learn like that, when i was seven teachers despaired of my reading then one day i could read anythi g, my friend taught me poker and after struggling one rou d it just clicked
I completely agree with the split I stopped playing all together until 5th came out I didn't even know there were spinoffs other then 3.75. Sadly I did not have a interest in 3.75 because I was burnt out on 3.5.
I'm a self-made cuban dm. I started with 2nd edition and it didn't made sense to me. I dm a very stripped version of 3.5 and I received 4e with eagerness. I wasn't disappointed by it but I must say I outgrown it. Since I had tried every edition and my current favorite is becmi. I agree with your conclusions but not with your specifics. The "unrealistic" of the power system didn't bothered me as I come from a more superhero background as Gary Gygax himself declared in dragon magazine regarding the origin of dnd players were. I could totally see common, uncommon and rare feats of action by the player. Also 4e IS easier to learn and to teach than 3e (but not the others) as is MODULAR. Players and DMs learn as they play. You really need very few to start playing and you can refer players to specific parts as they appear. 3e edition demands knowledge of lots of rules or lot of handwaving. Rules in 4e were pretty straightforward. My native language is not English and we had to translate the books for our non English-speaking friends. Later we translated pathfinder and difference in bulk translation is visible. In my experience people who comes from a ad&d background and enjoyed 3e are bound to dislike 4e as they fixed some of the 3e stiffness with their experience and 4e asked for too much. I felt the stiffness of 4e after 6 years dungeon mastering it but now I feel the stiffness in 3e too.
I’m from a small collage town an hour out of a major city. No names, you can look on my profile if you care that much. Well, UA-cam may have nuked my user info so who knows. I had picked up older D&D books before to look at, 4E wasn't just my first attempt to play. It was the first D&D game I could get past the system and have fun in. WOTC are the only ones blameless in all of this, because no one wants to make a crap game, and they didn't. They were trying to bring in new blood to the hobby and they did. It wasn't the PC\console crowd. They were, . . . I guess you call them jocks, preps, skaters or . . . I don’t know hang-gliders, whatever. People, who would have never played D&D, sat down for 4E. Point is a small game store got to the point of having 2 large tables of 6 to 7 people a piece and still not being able to accommodate all the people walking in to play. We could have 3 tables if we had another GM. This went on for months. Then the passive aggressive crud from the ‘old guard’ started to wear thin. I’m not calling everyone the ‘Old Guard,’ you are all smart enough to know what I mean. The new players were having fun or they wouldn't have come back a second night. But every game night they had a little more reason not to come back. I know, I saw and felt it. The ‘Old Guard’ tolled many peoples first gaming experience. On a system that was designed to bring new people in. They drove people way from the hobby. I don’t care what you excuse is, that sucks!
And commenting on my own post for word count cap, yeah. I had to go to Pathfinder after 4E had to be dropped from organized play. After viewing your vid I have to say every major change you mentioned was an improvement on the D&D system. Please don’t ask me to give 3.5 or 5E a try, that is a slap in the face to everyone who loved 4th edition.
DesBJM Huge part of D&D is nostalgia. It is hard to argue with retro emotions cemented in youth ;-) Some people never let them go and rather come up with justifications for their opinions. 4e was different, a lot of the old guard didn’t like it for that and they will forever try to justify their emotions. For example I used to hate Duke Nukem 3D back in the day. I was more of a Wolfenstein/Quake kind of guy. But I could never come up with a ‘logical’ explanation for that (as far as I remember).
WotC tried to do something different. It pulled a lot of people into Tabletop RPGs. Some peole didn't like it, and that's fine. We talk about estrangement like 4th Edition came along and shredded their existing 3rd ed or AD&D books. I really lost my patience for edition wars while at the famous Compleat Strategist in NYC I overheard a "fan" complaining that 4th Edition was an atrocity, and Wizards needed to answer for it. I was in a mood that day, and for some reason the Darfur Genocide jumped into my head, and I remember railing into this kid about how privileged and easy his life must be that there could be ongoing genocide on another contienent, but he's gonna waste time in his day calling an edition of D&D an atrocity.
I rather enjoyed 4th edition, it is my most-played edition. That said, I am well aware of it's flaws. So much so that, if I were to go back to it, I would probably only play it as Character-driven Chainmail. Roleplaying wise, I'm currently ooh-ing and ahh-ing at BECMI Basic...or 13th Age if I have to go for something Modern (3.Xe+)...
As someone who has played numerous systems and different editions of D&D, 4e was solid and fun. While I won't say it's perfect, it's perfectly playable. I played in a game for around 2 years and I have to say it always was fun. A fair number of issues with the system are that it was too focused on maintaining a balance between all of the classes (which was needed when the previous edition had created the dreaded "linear fighter & quadratic wizard" and "CoDzilla" issues) and that it played too much like a video game (ironic since many if not most video games are either directly or indirectly influenced by D&D). Near the end of it's life cycle they even went back and tweaked the monsters (MM3 and the Monster Vault games) to make combat faster. I think another issue would be the terminology used in the game. You reference in your video the idea that the characters could just go combat to combat and basically spam encounter powers and healing surges when one could only spend healing surges in combat via second wind or have the healer grant them the ability to or use a specific item (which the DM could limit as needed and wanted) and encounter powers could not be spammed combat to combat unless the party performed a short rest between every combat. A sizeable dungeon or series of combats can and should be quite taxing on the players who would need to be cautious the further they delved. As for this false belief that player death was something few people would encounter from the enlarge HP gain at 1st level and on, I can vouch from my own experience from playing and running the game that that just is not so. Characters died often if they don't play smart or run away. Hell, I lost three character over 4 sessions from it. Now, it is labor intensive to book keep, that's a problem for many games (GURPS for instance), but with ready access to the character builder and a printer (my workplace allows me to print anything I want so long as it isn't political or hate speech or something for instance) then that becomes a thing of the past. And most of the issues regarding the online tabletop and suite of online tools becoming vaporware? The guide heading the development for that was involved in a murder-suicide and the team was shocked and disgusted and almost completely dropped all of it but were finally goaded by WotC to at least get a compendium, character builder and monster/foe creator up and off the ground. Do I think it should still be something paid for? No, but they are really handy to have and everytime I get a chance to do one of those surveys for D&D I beg them to drop the DDI pay-wall for them so me and my group can dive back in and enjoy the game again. Rant done for 4e specifically. I will say that I do greatly enjoy your videos, captcorajus (the glaring mispronunciation aside, I make mistakes too quite often) and feel that it is definitely in the top 5 of RPG review and news channels on UA-cam. Have you looked into doing proper reviews for other OSR games like Basic Fantasy RPG, Dark Dungeons, and others? How about the 4e "knock-off" (really it mimics some things but uses other things quite handily too) "Strike! RPG"? I think it'd be up your alley to do so!
Thanks for the length and concise reply! The rating of praise is much appreciated, thank you. I played 4E for a year, and gave it a genuine try. I had a LOT of books. PHB 1 and 2. DMG 1 and 2. MM 1,2,3, each. My perspective comes from the fact that two of my players have as much D&D experience as I do... 30+ years, and they utilize resources and play very tactically, and are very effective with their character builds. Getting a 5 minute rest really isn't that difficult, unless all your dungeons are gauntlets. lol. The 'sameness' between the different characters I kind of noticed right away, but put it to the back of my mind in a genuine effort to give it a good go, as it were. As I've always said 4E wasn't a bad game. What it was, was a massive departure from what had come before, and that led to a serious backlash in the gaming community. Pathfinder exists, and thrives due to that back lash, as do a bunch of other D&D clones. As far as reviewing other fantasy RPGs, my reviews are directly related to things I've spent time playing extensively. I think this gives my videos a genuine, and earnest perspective, and allows me to speak intelligently on the subject...lol.. which I think is the appeal they have for other people. I couldn't give that perspective to the other games you mentioned, which is why I haven't review them. Thanks for the comment, and thanks for watching!!
When 4e came out I was really enthusiastic about it. I had played 3 and 3.5 extensively, but bailed on it before it had run its course because of power creep, bloat and imbalance. Of course, 4e eventually fell prey to the creep and bloat as well, but at least initially it was a clean slate. And it was always mostly balanced. We played 4e for quite a while. I even ran the published series of modules all the way to 30th level. During that time we found a lot of both good and bad in the system. A lot of the things it is criticized for, including many things cited in this video, I disregard completely because they are based on irrelevant assumptions. I don't expect a new edition to play exactly like the previous ones, I'm fine with treating it as a new game on its own merits. That said, there are two things that killed 4e for me and my gaming group. Number one is handling time. Combats simply took too long. Number two, the fact that after level 10 it was really really hard to challenge players. At least if they were any kind of power gamers, and could find the optimal combos. The poor monsters were so outmatched it wasn't even funny. Now, there are always ways to houserule problems like this, but in the case of 4e that required taking an axe and chopping away huge chunks of the game. Haven't played much 5e yet, though I ran a brief series of adventures during the Next playtest, so I think I have some idea how it will run. And I'm optimistic. Especially since one year into the edition they haven't published any overpowered splatbooks yet. Just a lot of adventures that I don't care about - so I've saved money as well!
Once again, I'm commenting early on (I have Such a short attention span lately ^_^), but.... While I agree with your initial thoughts about 4th edition, I'm beginning to think that Pathfinder is running into the same 'too much flexibility' wall. Admittedly, if you want to play the 'vanilla' game all you need is the Core Rulebook, and maybe one Beastiary. However, since its inception in 2009, there have been so many 'Splat Books' made for it that the character options available is just staggering, to me anyway. That being said, I haven't heard any flame wars about various rules combinations making for an 'unkillable' character, like I did for 3rd and 4th edition D&D.
Pathfinder is definitely running into issues, because there were core issues with 3.5 that caused the need for a new addition to begin with. Its already nicknamed 'Mathfinder' for a reason. Yes, you can do complex builds, but as I've said, time and time again, that complexity comes at a price. To many moving pieces makes for a difficult to run machine. At higher levels the number of attacks, and positive modifiers become crazy, with +38s, etc. 4E was too 'gamey'. with abilities that moved opponents or allies one square, this way or that, making playing without a grid next to impossible. IMHO, 5E has been a nice course correction for the game.
I thought I was going to love 4th. Bought a lot of the books. It took a while before I realized I didn't like it. I thought I was just not getting it. Unfortunately I did get it and I was in denial. I LOVE miniatures. I play with mini's almost every session. But there comes a time when you just want a quick combat done using abstract description. The first time I tried this I discovered you cannot NOT use the miniatures. Again, I like miniatures but not every single encounter every single time? It can bog down play. I found myself dreading combat but not just for that reason. Then there was the combat itself. I was so burned out on constantly keeping track of all my special little abilities which often looked like copy paste jobs of other class abilities that I decided to play a fighter. Just your basic hack and slash fighter that stood up front and tanked. And then this conversation happened... Me: OK, dose an 18 hit? DM: What ability are you using? Me: I'm swinging my sword. DM: But HOW are you swinging your sword? Me: With my arm? DM: Which ability are you using to swing your sword? Me: THE ONE THAT LETS ME SWING MY ******* SWORD!!!!!! Really? This is the only edition were I dreaded leveling up. Leveling up meant I got new powers and abilities...on top of ALL the abilities I already had and could not keep up with. At will, daily, encounter powers? Which one did I already use again? AAAUUUG! I found myself trying to talk my way out of every situation just so I wouldn't have to fight.
This was the thing that switched my entire friend group of about 12 people over to Pathfinder lmao. Most of us are back now that 5e is out but some of us never recovered.
Trevor, I didn't particularly care for 4E... Too many weird things, like monsters moving you 1 square this way or that. It played too much like a war game. I also didn't like that... in all honesty you needed that subscription... I mean, it was soooo much easier to have the character sheets print out automatically with all your pertinent cards, and if you wanted to create a monster, the monster creator made things much, much quicker. .... otherwise, it was a pain to DM. I burned out on it rather quickly. That said, I know a lot of people enjoyed it, and I can't honestly say it was a bad game... but as I said in the video... bottom line... before 4e, most people were playing Dungeons & Dragons, and now they're not. That's a fact, and that divide was not good for the industry, D&D, or games in general. So far, I like 5E, though, as I play it, I'm finding some things I don't care for as well, though, I have a feeling much of that will be addressed when the new DMG comes out. Thanks for watching and commenting!
It's been 4 years since i made this video, and my opinion on 4th hasn't eased, and in fact, the REASONS why I didn't care for it have only solidified for me. D&D has like two time frames: the 'regular time' that you are just conversing and role playing, and the micro time when you are in rounds, doing combat or some other action dependent moment. 4E blurred the line between these to reference frames. I don't think that makes for a good role playing game. As I said, 4E wasn't a 'bad' game. It was really quite a good 'miniatures' game, and, its divergence from what was 'D&D' was so drastic that it fractured the community. Before 4E, we were all pretty much playing D&D.. after 4E we weren't. Its that simple. If people enjoy, and that's their game, then I'm no one to say, "This is how you have fun.'. I agree with you on 5E. I like it a lot, and have been playing it pretty much since it was released. Thanks for the detailed comment!
Hey. Semi-neutral edition fan here (my bias is for older editions). This video is 5 years old but you still seem dead-set on your opinion, even now. Therefore, I shall make a case for 4e. Everyone has their tastes and certainly your taste lies well within the vocal majority. Since you said "my points will be accentuated with logic and specifics", I want to reply to some criticisms and grievances you hold against 4e: 1. Many of your points apply to 3e as well, a system you hold in high esteem. For example, the video game nature of role-playing is trademark Wizards, absent from TSR editions. Every class has the same experience totals, and you can dip in a multiclass for no role-playing reason whatsoever. Being a weird race that nobody has heard of before and a multiclass wizard druid rogue cleric? That sounds like 3e to me. The system was so game-y and unrealistic, in fact, old-school fans tend to call 3e a "rollplay" system instead of "roleplay" (rolling even for knowledge checks and social situations). Furthermore, most of the skills related to combat in a strong way and your character build was more important than how you played your character. I guess you could say the 3e system was kind of like a video game. 2. You say that "4e deviates from D&D to the point where it is no longer recognizable". All the tropes of D&D are met: the 6 ability scores, alignment system, system crunch over fluff, major races and classes represented, class more important than race, magical item progression, strong emphasis on combat in terms of the character ability, combat is highly tactical, combat is recognizably still D&D (each system had a dramatic change in the combat system, making 4e the closest combat to 3e before 5e came out), very little in terms of "social combat", binary "pass/fail" skill resolution (no "partial success"), divine/arcane magic, saving throws, "to hit" scales with increasing AC of monsters, AC makes you harder to hit instead of easier to hit and absorbing damage (a carry-over from wargaming roots), virtually everything but not having 9 levels of spells and solving the "linear fighter, quadratic spellcasters" problem. 3. You say whether or not 4e is good, it doesn't matter because it broke the fanbase. A splintered fanbase does not prove 4e is any less of a D&D game or was a wrong decision. It simply proves the system is not popular or was poorly marketed, particularly among fans of 3e. The fact that people flock to OSRIC or PathFinder merely proves they either wanted an extension of old-school gaming (like myself) or wanted a continuation of 3e (like you). As you know, sales are mostly out of the hands of role-playing system publishers. Unless you are willing to say 2e brought about the collapse of TSR and therefore also doesn't matter whether or not fans like it, this argument makes zero sense. 5. You didn't like 4e for being too much like a wargaming system, but yet, D&D started as a supplement for Chainmail, a miniatures wargame by Gary Gygax. I have to admit, this criticism confused me the most. 6. You claim that 4e is difficult to run when compared to 3e, especially when it comes to combat. Are you sure this review isn't about 3e? Making 16 balanced encounters with calculated experience point totals and estimated wealth per level? Combat that has effects that lasted for a certain number of rounds you have to track? Rules complications in combat caused by feats? 4e is much, much easier to create encounters for, and doesn't have very much to track. Maybe occasional ongoing damage and a few status effects. Add in skills challenges, and you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to obstacles for your players to overcome. I know you consider 4e a blight on the world of D&D like many other fans of 3e. That's fine. People should play whatever systems they prefer. But if you recognized and played to the system's strengths instead of trying to play it like it was 3.99e you might have understood 4e a little better. A person that says 4e has nothing in common with other D&D systems has not thoroughly examined 4e. I detail this further in a Google doc I made. I hear this argument so much, even this year, that I decided to outline why I think some players really don't understand the appeal of 4e, and why even if they don't like it, they should at least stop trying to say it's "not real D&D". If you have time, feel free to read it. I'd love feedback on it. Despite my counter-points, I enjoy your reviews and hope to catch more of your content. Thanks for reading!
4th Edition Shows how the people from Wizards dont respect players and dont understand about their business. Ad&d players feel the same we classic d&d and casual gamers feel when our game was abandoned. (at least Paizo made Pathfinder) WOTC say that they want to attract videogame players. They dont know that all rpg videogames come from D&D and the thing to attract players is target turn based rpgs, a guy who play Final Fantasy Tactics is the kind of people who will be attracted to pen and paper rpg, not a guy who play action. How Pathfinder showed they just needed to stay in TSR path. Launch new campaigns, modules and adventures, not more rule sets. They target just a small group of people who played D&D.
If that's the bubble you want to live in, rock on! Facts are what they are, the video speaks for itself. Before 4E most of the community was playing D&D.. after 4E they weren't. WOTC failed to bring to the table all the support elements needed to make the game viable, and that's why it failed. Was it a good game? Yes. Was it the best edition? The BEST edition is the one you have the most fun playing.
Fourth edition pushed our group towards pathfinder however pathfinder 2.0 while better in some areas as many of the same flaws 4.0 had there seems to be a movement towards video game mechanics away from realism
I looked into this and didn't like it. I ended up sticking with 3.0 until 5th Edition was released. I feel like I made the right choice. As some who has been playing since the red box Basic Set in 1984 this edition did not feel like dungeons and dragons.
I think that's the general consensus. It was such a deviation from what came before it was rejected by a lot of people... and then WOTC didn't follow up with the promised VTT, and all the digital tools that were suppose to be made became vaporware spelled the end of it. Though it does have a loyal following still.
Is there any chance of you making a commentary video on Basic D&D? My first D&D experiences came courtesy of the Rules Cyclopedia and some of the following modules and Gazetteers, and it would be nice to hear your thoughts on it.
I loved the rules cyclopedia, and the Gazetteers are just absolute classics. I actually run the Kingdom of Karamiekos, though I use Castles and Crusades. But, yes, definitely on my to do list of reviews, so please look for it, and thank you for the share.
captcorajus You're welcome! Definitely loved this series of the classic D&D iterations. To this day I hold most RPGs I get to look over in comparison to the monster that was the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. Looking forward to your thoughts on the series.
4th edition is a great minis/combat game. What it isn't is a good RPG, yes, a good DM and a good party can inject plenty of roleplay into it, but there is pretty much nothing in the mechanics for it.
if u hate 4e so much why even talk about? why aren't u talking more about the pathfinder u really love? it's nice u talk about the different editions but u talk about each one with a negative slant that is clearly biased and quite off putting. there are other channels that talk about rpg's with NO negative or positive slant, and are full of energy and excitement, and leave the opinions up to the viewer.
So you're suggesting that I should only talk about things I like? Fundamentally, that's the silliest comment I've ever heard. Sorry. I listed FACTS my friend. Sorry they don't line up with your preferred narrative. I was hardly negative. I said 4E was a good game, you apparently missed that part in your need to rage at me. Thanks for your comment. :)
The criticism of 4th edition drives me crazy. 4th got me back into role-playing after a 20 year absence (besides a few one offs). I hadn't purchased anything related to RPG's for nearly that long. As a board gamer I loved the aesthetic and mechanical options that Wizards brought to 4e. Finally, here was an edition of D&D there was sufficiently structured so that both a compelling story and gameplay experience could be crafted. For me the "game" portion of a role-playing game is the most critical. Otherwise I feel like I am just a bit player in the DM's story to himself.
Crazylooneybin Certainly, your feelings on the matter are valid, given your feelings on game mechanics. However, there is a large camp of people who feel the exact opposite of you. That game mechanics are less important, than maintaining a story driven narrative. If you are in the latter camp, and I can tell you that I most definitely am, then that criticism is certainly valid. But, that's okay. If you enjoyed it, and it fit your style of play, then play it and have fun and don't worry about what other people think of it. That's the beauty of this hobby. You do what suits your tastes. As far as being a 'bit player' in the DM's story, that's certainly a valid concern, and many inexperienced DM's fall into that trap. However, that's completely in the realm of DM's prerogative. A lot of the fun of being a DM is being a storyteller, but the game mechanics need to be intuitive, and not get in the way of a good story. Its a delicate balance to be sure. My personal feelings, and industry data supports this conclusion, is that 4e tipped that balance in the wrong direction, and in doing so fractured the RPG community in a way that was negative to the hobby. All that being said, there is a TON of resource material out there for 4E and a lot of players who enjoyed it. Best of all, a lot of it is now available on ebay at significantly discounted prices. If you like 4E, then take full advantage of that fact! Best wishes, and Game on!
+Crazylooneybin I like 4E but I think it takes a certain type of DM to run it. I like it and find it easy to use. Tracking stuff isn't that hard but.... then again not everyone has a Project-able table that you can use dry erase markers to keep track of stuff like my group.
+Crazylooneybin 4e, in my opinion, was/is a fun game. But it isn't D&D. It is something else. You are right, it is a board game mixed with an MMO. But that isn't, or wasn't D&D. The stories that came from 4e, IMO, were nonsense. Granted, a world with flying lizards and magic isn't real, but at least in previous editions of D&D some tie to how this stuff really works was made. 4e removed that. VERY glad to see 5e come and basically forget that 4e ever happened. :-)
Disagree on the storytelling aspect. Storytelling that emerges from gameplay is usually more immersive and compelling then a story simply dictated by the DM and players. 4e represented a huge step forward in this regard. I like the new 5e too but ultimately what sets it apart from the other versions?
Crazylooneybin What sets 5e apart from other version is its flexibility and the way it utilizes aspects of all previous editions as well as adding new ideas (advantage/ disadvantage, backgrounds). 5E also also allows you to alter rules to suit your group's desires. 4E was so exacting that it simply did not offer that level of flexibility. It was amazingly balanced, but realistically you couldn't alter that without upsetting that balance. My viewpoint that from a game mechanics standpoint balance is great. From an RPG standpoint, not so much.
I have 0 interest in playing the game but I thought the dragons were interesting, and I'm sad I never got to see what they were going to do with scourge dragons/linnorms. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a homebrew or clone version of them floating around, but 4e is so universally despised that there's just not. After 3.x took away Linnorm's status as true dragons (and hacked their numbers down to a measley 3) it would have been cool to see them get a little respect and a full on dedicated book in the form of Draconomicon IV, but nevermind I guess. Hell, even the catastrophic dragons got their due in the electronic issues of dragon magazine. But scourge? Nope. And 5e is allergic to monsters, and it especially hates dragons of all sorts, so bleh. I think d&d died the moment they decided it needed to work on a console cycle where you buy into a new version every 6 years. That's kind of... stupid? Like I already have the game, there's nothing wrong with it, it doesn't need any tweaking, but you want me to drop 150 dollars on something that's not even going to give me gem dragons or psionics or a dedicated sourcebook about hell? Fuck no. FUCK. NO. There is literally no reason to not keep playing 3rd edition or pathfinder. Literally none. They need to stop fucking with it and just keep the books in print. And I'm sure as fuck not buying 6th edition when it comes out next year or 7th edition the year after that or 8th or 9th... fucking christ dude I HAVE THE GAME ALREADY STOP IT.
I agree with 99% of what you are saying in the video, but i'd like to point out the "irony", that now that 5e is out, 4e is the only other D&D edition or D&D clone making sense playing instead of D&D 5e.
Let me put it that way 1) if you like to play a more clean, simple, smooth, streamlined, polished and very open ended game focusing on story telling go for 5e 2) if you like more (mechanical) options, more statistics and a deeper and more evolved combat system in general focusing on tactics and strategy go for 4e. P.S. With the "not many options" being the main argument against 5e i'd like to say that after playing it for 2+ years now, i have seen a wider and more diverse array of characters than any other system. P.S.2. Sry for my bad english :/
I tried to run 4th ed. There were some rules I didn't like, so I tried to house rule some things. The more I changed, the more I had to change as the rules are so interdependant that the whole thing starts to unravel if you change anything. That put me off, as well as the statements in the dmg about making encounters. The idea of just throwing crazy stuff into an encounter because it was fantasy and doesn't have to make sense was what turned me off 4th completely.
I was a huge 2nd edition guy. but that was 20 years ago. i wanted to prove to my 12 year old that tabletop beats the hell out of WoW any day of the week...even though we both play WoW. So i made a very rudimentary character sheet, rolled up a very basic warrior, found a die webpage and put him through a 30 minute mini adventure. my son started out rolling his eyes but after 10 minutes, he was INTO it. dad is right once again. my question is, do i dig up the old 2nd ed books (judging by your videos i'm guessing no)? what edition do you think we should play? thanks in advance CC.
Well, as it turns out, 5e is just being released. If you think this might turn into a regular thing, I would go that route. 5e is a nice amalgam of 2, 3 and 4e. If you are wanting to stay more 'old skool' then check out Castles and Crusades. Its a great amalgam of 1 and 3e. Very basic but a lot of fun. All you need there is the player's handbook and the monsters and treasure guide from troll lords. Yeah, both my daughters play in my regular campaign.
Strange. I was wondering why it took you 6 minutes of a 19 min vid to finally start your review. HP, Level progression, and classes have a basis in “real life”. So other editions of D&D make more sense than 4th because “at will, encounter, and daily powers don’t make sense. So what do you call 5th Edition cantrips? At will powers? What about daily spells? Are they, wait for it, daily powers? Also, I find other editions of D&D are much more prone to the “bat-winged ninja elf that wields a katana and cast spells” than does 4th edition. The “video game” aspect of 4th edition is it’s strength in that players take on roles (tank, healer, dps) and are rewarded for working together like a like a sports team. The warlord shifts players and enemies around, gets the rogue into flanking position, rogue gets their backstab, paladin forces the monster to attack it instead of the softer targets, etc. It’s a great team game. But, then again, I’ve played a lot of video games, which by the way were heavily influenced by D&D; one of my earlier favourites was “Eye of the Beholder”. Anyways, back to 4th and the powers. Finally, it’s not all about the wizards or clerics, finally other classes have “cool powers” to use rather than swinging their sword over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, only doing 1d8+5 damage each and every time, fight after fight, encounter after encounter. Whereas the wizards and clerics got cooler and cooler spells to use. I’d be curious how a DM manages to convince players to take up the fighter and thief roles while their friends get all the cool stuff. Powers are too weird? Let’s forget for a moment we’re in a world of wizards, dragons, and gods. Forcing your opponents into disadvantageous positions and helping your allies get into position are hallmarks of martial combat (“cover me, I’m going in”). Hit Points are abstract? It represents luck, skill, and resourcefulness? Right? So, what’s wrong with a fighter using his skill and resourcefulness to get some back? Get a good hit on a foe, feel invigorated, and get some HP back. Makes sense to me. Attrition of resources. Healing Surges are resources; you need a long rest to get them back (and a safe place to rest). This, along with daily powers, are just of the many resources that needs to be managed by a group. You can’t just keep going through encounter after encounter as you’ll eventually run out of healing surges and die. Dude, you know that you can’t use healing surges duing a fight except with second wind, some daily powers, and the healer’s 2 per encounter power. You can have 1,000 healing surges and still die because you can’t access/use them. So…your point again? How will you argue they’re not resources like potions of healing, or cleric heal light wound spells? Hmm? How did your players keep going and going like the energizer bunny? All the battles I ran and I participated as a player would usually use up 3-4 healing surges for each player (including healing after battle). Heck, even for a fighter that means they could only do 3-4 encounters before needing a rest. I’m serious, how were they going more than that? Encounters too easy? Taking a long rest in the middle of a dungeon? I’m curious? Please tell us. How were your players not on death’s door most encounters? Also, players can easily die in 4th edition, monsters do a lot of damage and access to healing surges during a battle is limited. Getting back 7 HP using your second wind when you have 30 HP as a fighter isn’t going to help when 1st level monsters do 1d6+4 damage (7 average) per attack). Then there’s traps, spheres of annihilation, etc.
It turned me off RPing for years. I first played the 3.5 starter set with friends. Found it a bit dear and didn't progress because of it. Bought the fourth ed starter a a few years later and hated it. Everyone was bored before we finished character creation and I really disliked it.
I agree with almost everything you said in this video. Where you and I differ is that every time you said 4th edition, I would have said 3rd Edition. I know you don't like 2nd Edition, I have seen your video on it. In it you skip over everything that was great about it. I just feel that what you call innovation, for me felt like a whole different game, designed to sell books to the players and not just the DM. But like I said I do agree with you 4th Edition is the all time low for D&D. Its a table top battle game not a true RPG.
I never played 4e. Just read through the books. I rather pass on it. Too much effort. 5e works easier for me. Rules can be light or intense. Twerk it for whatever.
"Whether or not 4th edition is a good game, it doesn't matter." Wow. Loss for words. I have no idea why this common train of thought is considered logic. I say to each his own. WOTC is doing a good job supporting most editions of D&D with special edition books and even the occasional new adventure in their online Dragon and Dungeon magazines, go grab one and go! I personally enjoy playing D&D in any form, rpg, board game, video game, etc. The board games aren't exactly D&D either, but I love playing most of them, and they are just new ways to experience an old favorite. Other than this critique, great videos, appreciate the effort.
Well, that quote by itself isn't exactly fair. My point was that 4e had been divisive with the community, and that before 4e most of us were still playing D&D by WOTC and now we are not. and that's a true statement and I stand by it. However... thank you for your kind words. These are my opinions after all, all opinions and ideas are welcome! :)
First of all I have to tell that I played 4e once and DMed the whole campaign (about year long). I had great group and thanks to them the game was great. But I struggled hardly with mechanics to bring the mood I wanted. Almost everything in mechanics is sticked to the combat. When we wanted to role play, we had to forget about rules. There were sessions focused on role-play and the only mechanics we used were skill checks and maybe skill challenges. I managed to build characters without calculator or any software ;D But I have MS degree so don't count me in, please :D I think the concept of powers was the main thing way everyone is speaking this is video-gamy. Instead of describing actions players could just pick this power or other (especially when almost all powers where combat-related). It felt almost like choosing powers in wow to hit the monster with. The great amounts of HP didn't help here. (I strike him with my mighty ultra striking power! Ok. It hits! some awesome description Great! 20 damage! And.. 80 HP left.. ) I definetly agree that this edition is not less clunky than 3.5 was. To track all of those bonuses and penalties to track.. Argh! I also don't like Healing Surges. It damages my immersive so badly! And forget to play any combat without grid and miniatures (I have D&D Board game, the D&D 4e felt like extension to - yet admirable ;) ). Most of powers can be more or less reduced to : deal damage + side effect, when side effect can be bonus to some defense, hit chance, skill, damage, move for the power user or his ally or in negative for his opponent. Maybe it is just my feeling but most classes under the same party role have similar powers. Streamlined rules are not friend for originality. Skill challenges? Nice idea but it only adds some kind of mechanical structure to the set of skill checks. I think that well utilized skill challenge can bring quite nice mixture of mechanics and roleplaying. Still there are better systems in that. i. e. How about Genesis (or Warhammer 3rd) with some fine side effects added to almost any of dice roll? I really didn't like the Monster Manual. Come on.. Where are descriptions? From AD&D2 to D&D3 the descriptions became poorer but still they stimulated imagination. In 4th? Each monster has 2-4 sentences of description. The book was like compendium of mobs to kill. It didn't helped me as a DM to set up stories. Compare it to the for example Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition's Old World Bestiary - More than half of the book is full of the descriptions only. On each monster you could build up fascinating story. Different types of cobolts? Yeah, wonderful.. ;) Although, IMHO, statistics were better organised than in any other edition. To be honest. I like D&D 4e but more as the role playing + board game mixture than anything story telling heavy system. What I liked about the system? Dungeon Masters Guide IMO is much better written than in 3.5. Instead of boring to death descriptions of doors, walls etc. There are meaningful tips for running story, how to handle particular types of players and so on. Another thing I liked was the balance - I had one power gamer in group and there wasn't feeling that he overwhelms the rest with min-maxed character. Monster creation was really nicely done. @captcorajus - great work with the movies! I enjoy them. Especially those about older systems. I think I would like to try 1st AD&D thanks to them ;D
I looked into 4e when it came out. What I saw was a way to sell minis and tiles as they seemed to be required. Didn't have that kind of cash to invest.
4E is definitely not an RPG; it's a tactical skirmish game. Which to me was really hammered home by the ridiculous way 4E insists on categorizing encounters. Like encounters can only ever be one type of encounter. We're either in a fight. Or a talking session. Or a travel session. But only one at a time. Life doesn't work that way, 4E.
This is not the worst argumented review I have ever listened to - oh wait, it is. Having played D&D since early 1980's and suffered through all the horrible, unbalanced and incomplete rules, 4ed. is by far the most concise and balanced of the lot - including Pathfinder and 5ed. which is probably the least balanced of them all. If you can't create a 4ed character with the book and a pencil and roleplay the character, you lack math- and roleplaying skills, not computer programs or other crutches.
This is not the worst argued response I've ever heard, oh wait, it is. Where I listed specific, undisputed facts: 1) The system fractured the community 2) the system deviated greatly from what came before 3) The game while good, tended to mingle the line of exactly WHEN measured encounters ended and free role play began. Essentially, the game was over codified and that sent people away. I said, yes.. you can role play, but with a less codified game, for many people, its easier to get to the RP part of the game. I never said 4E a bad game, but for the specific reasons I listed it wasn't a great role playing game. Conversely, your argument is 4E is BEST because ... bark, bark, bark, um.. reasons. You like 4E? Awesome, play it, no one is saying you can't, and if you're having fun, then more power to you. That's not what the review was about.
1. The community fractured the community. WotC send out a new game - arguably a whole new game - people could have stuck to 3.5 if they wanted an unbalanced game with more frosting. 2. The system was partly new, yes. Why would one continue the mistakes of 1, 2, 3 and 3.5 ? Because they had seriously bad and boring combat and hugely unbalanced characters. 3. I had my reservations because of the many bonusses across the board as well as some other issues, like the healing surges - but it vastly preferable to having a wizard standing around for 8 rounds being useless - or being killed by a goblin child with a rock - until the powers shifted vastly the casters way. But please, mouse on, squeek, squeek.....
Of course 4e is balanced. Everyone plays the same character with a different skin. Doesn't matter where your at will power comes from, you still get it....
To each his own. For me, 3x was the low point of the series, and I've played since the basic box. My group has tried every version and we all agree that 4e is our favorite, and none of us are video game players. "Players aren't challenged to think for themselves" in 4e? That's silly. And 3x required MUCH more character planning for later levels than 4e.
At will powers, encounter powers, daily powers, skills, and feats. 4E characters are stuffed with crunchy abilities... abilities that frequently make little sense, and have no correlation to common experience except inside a video game. Character sheets for 1st level characters can be 3 or 4 pages long, and the character creator from D&D insider is almost a necessity to make sense of it all. With so much focus on character crunchiness players all too frequently start PAGING through their character sheets for the solution to problems rather than doing the brain work... what is silly is the video game like mechanics, and focus on system crunchiness. 4E is an exercise in over complication. So, when you say something like "3x was the low point of the series", and that "you've played since basic... blah blah.." I'm going to challenge that. What your are saying doesn't correlate to reality. Whether you've played video games or not has no bearing on the fact that the mechanics are 'video game like.' In fact, if your not into video games like WOW, Everquest, etc, you are hardly in a position to evaluate and compare the mechanics of 4e to such. Your claims appear disingenuous at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst. As far as character planning and prestige classes in 3x, I'm right there with you. At higher levels 3e was a mess. However, with POWERS for every class, combat conditions, and so on, 4E was a mess at every level. If wargame like precision in an RPG is your thing, that's great. You and your group have fun, and more power to you, but from a story telling point of view such detail is a hindrance to story progression per game session.
Well, I will 100% agree with you there. I played my first 5e game Sunday, and we had a blast. As I write this, I'm actually organizing my player's handbook video review which I hope to post tonight or tomorrow. 5e is awesome!
I come from a 3rd world country with almost no access to internet, online payment and such. The subscription was never an option, and we played 4e since day one, thanks to the magic of friendship outside the country. And it was never an issue. Was it crunchy? Yes. We hate it for that? No. Was it intensive on the DM? Oh yeah. And guess what, every RPG is that on its on way. It was easier to learn and to teach, because even if it had lot of stuff, the way you handled it was well paced, and players were introduced step by step to the mechanics. They were not force to a buckload of rules. Powers, specially on the lower levels, were easy to understand, and as you can infer for my no Internet access back then, MMO were not a background to us. Movies, cartoons, anime and manga were, though. So powers made a lot of sense. My players loved to call the powers and perform their actions, and yeah, describe a lot. Monster creation was easy as a breeze. Now, full monster creation, like something completely unusual was trickier. But for the most part, you just browse the references, found a similar monster, tweak it, and that's it. I eventually was able to do it on the fly. Campaigns were fast, not as faster as with 2nd ed and such, but fast. And when they were slow, we weren't suffering for it, we were having fun. Capt, like you say on the alignment, you never really got 4e, as many others. Eventually became way to crunchy for me, but guess what, by then 3rd ed was way to crunchy for me too. I tested every D&D under the sun, and I can say now that 1st ed and BECMI / RC are my favorites. 4e will always be my nostalgic edition
I've played 3E, 3.5, 4E, 5E (just started) and Pathfinder, along with a couple other D20 based games. 4E was the simplest to implement, the easiest to give new players an entry into this genre of gaming, and was completely a D&D game. At no time did I think "gee, this just doesn't feel like D&D." Hell. This helped me get back into RPGs after a 15 year hiatus. They did an awesome job with this game. Sure, there were flaws. And yes, it was divisive. But that doesn't make it a bad game because nerd rage got its panties in a bunch.
Your experience is not shared by most people. Sorry. I would only point to the fracture of the community in response to it. Pathfinder would not be the game that it is, were it not for 4E. Furthermore, I never said 4E wasn't a good game, I said it deviated from D&D so vastly that it split the D&D community, and while the OSR was there, 4E sent players to these clone games in droves. Before 4E we were all mostly playing D&D, after 4E we weren't. 4E's design was heavily meant to be played in a VTT environment. Many of the design choices were made with that in mind. When the VTT did not materialize that spelled the death of the game.
captcorajus so its main flaw was being about 6 or 7 years ahead of it's time? Because lots of people are using VTTs now and playing over skype/hangout/twitch. I wonder how many would be willing to give it another go now that this is a more prevalent way of playing the game.
Its main flaw was its deviation from what was traditionally D&D. Every class now had 'powers' and for many, the various abilities were bizarre, and you must admit, it was near impossible to play without employing the use of a grid. Powers that 'move the enemy 1 square' or 'move an ally 1 square', etc. There is a large section of players that do not enjoy using miniatures and a grid. Thus, that entire segment of players avoided the game. Second, all the classes were TOO balanced. It really didn't matter what class you took, the damage output by level was was predetermined. Whether you were a mage or a fighter, it made no difference. Three, the characters were essentially 'superheroes' with superhero powers and abilities. For many, a low fantasy approach was preferred. That is, above average, skilled individuals. That was the core of D&D. You start off relatively weak, and build up in power. You don't start off a 'superhero'. Five. I'm simply going to have to disagree with you on 4E accessibility to newer players. That was not my experience at all. I found it exceptionally difficult to indoctrinate the novice, and the character creation tools indispensable to the play of the game, especially for new people trying to create their characters. To do it from the book alone? A nightmare. Six. Magic items became something inconsequential to the game. the game system expects magic items of a certain power level to fall into the hands of the characters, and even says to just let the players PICK what magic items they want! lol.. that's a bit crazy.. at least it is for an OSR guy like myself, and clearly I'm not alone in this. So, for these reasons, I do not foresee people returning to 4E, especially since 5E has eclipsed the game in popularity, and the flood of new gamers coming to the hobby. Once again, that's not to say that the game isn't good, and that you can't have fun playing it. If you're having a good time with it, and that's how you're enjoying the game, I say go for it. My core criticism goes directly to the way the edition fractured the community. It wasn't good for the hobby in many respects, and I'm happy that WOTC saw their error and with 5E worked to created a system with broader appeal.
I can agree that the grid was kind of necessary in regards to pushing an pulling effects. I enjoyed making terrains for the big fights though (See DM Scotty's DM's Craft channel). My only real gripe about 4E was the length of combats. But I was starting to really change how those were handled as well, so that a potential 2 hour fight was somewhere closer to a half an hour. My concern is that, from what I have seen so far, 5E has a problem where a good min-maxxed character, or players who want to "game" the system and use odd pairings of abilities/feats/spells, can ruin an entire encounter by taking one action, negating any real threat to the party. Forcing the DM to work that much harder to come up with new more ridiculous ways to combat the party (in very specific ways that negate their little snowflake's powers). With 4E I was able to throw a lot of different things at them with the role combinations and adding in traps and special terrains. I'm hoping the same can be done with 5E. We'll see.
Yeah, I forgot to mention the length of combats. That drove me a bit crazy. But, once again, I think if things were automated on the VTT that would have cut the time down significantly.
Healing surges, at-will powers and resource attrition in earlier versions: Let's be honest here. The majority of the gaming groups of earlier editions had a four minute work day, with a daily Rest after each encounter, as the Wizard had blown his load in one encounter like an adolescent getting lucky for the first time. Similarly with the Cleric. There was no differentiation beween short rests and extended rests, it was all or nothing. At least 8 hours of uniterrupted rest and only once every 24 hours. It made caster classes either ridiculously overpowered in higher levels (assuming your standard 4 minute work day) or basically unplayable (assuming no rests at all during an average dungeon crawl). 4e, while far from a perfect or even good system has substantially more ressource managment and attrition than any of the previous versions.
I've never said that 4e was a bad game. However, it played more like a miniatures game or a video game rather than an RPG. That is its main issue. While it may be semantics, its also verisimilitude. A one hour rest, or an 8 hour rest makes more sense from a logic standpoint than say.. a five minute one?
More sense? I have to disagree on that one. Why would it make more sense? The five minute rest was "let's take a quick breather, before we venture on" and allowed for a quick resource recovery (encounter powers and hit points at the cost of surges) and you could find a way to take a five minute break during a dungeon run (looting usually takes that long at least) most of the time. Taking a one hour break is simply not feasible under normal circumstances (dungeon crawl) and as such poses no real meaningful difference to an eight hour rest. Both won't be plausible while you are still in the dungeon, crawling away. So, I ask again: why would it be more logical? Which logical standpoint are you referring to? And please don't mistake that as a diss on your review of 4e. Different people have different opinons. But when you use the words "logic" and "logical standpoint" you move away from a personal opinion to something you claim to be objectively true or at least verifyable. That's a bold claim and requires ample justification.
TheGreatDeceiver42 Okay, I will justify my reasoning. "So, I ask again: why would it be more logical?" There is a fundamental incongruity in regards to the amount of resources recovered in comparison to the amount of time rested. In five minutes you potentially get back not only almost all your hit points, but some relatively powerful character powers as well, (remember, we aren't just talking spells here). This is more than just a 'breather'. While I understand that we are talking about a fantastic world of dragons and magic, there is an internal logic required in order to maintain verisimilitude. From a logic stand point it is reasonable to equate a greater expenditure of resources with a longer amount of time needed to recover them. That is how the real world works, and in order to maintain suspension of disbelief in the game, some things do need to be rooted in real world mechanics. So, yes, its my opinion, but its a sound opinion because its based on reason, information, and logic. And certainly I encourage discussion, so no offense taken in the least. :)
Okay, that makes your point clearer to me, thanks for taking the time to answer. I still disagree with your assessment, though. Juat look at the "powers" that you get to recover: Rain of Blows (two or three hits with your weapon), Hurricane of Steel (a furious assault with your weapon), Low Slash (a swift attack against the lower legs of your opponent). Or let's look at the more fantastical powers available: Tyranny of Flame (force your pponent to the ground and keep them pinned until they succeed their save), Spiteful Darts (fling a cloud of deadly shards at your opponent), Lightning Bolt (fling a bolt of lighting at your target). Even the more fantastical ones are short manoeuvers, not extensive resources. Is it really logical to have to rest for an hour to remember how to unleash a flurry of blows against your foe again? Is it really logical that you have to rest for an hour to remember to go for the hamstring of your opponent? To me it appears that five minutes is ample time to recuperate those resources. Why would it have to take an hour? And then there is one more thing: if a game mechanic does not add to the game, the story and/or the fun of it, it is worthless. I can see no functional difference between a one hour rest and an eight hour rest, so why have both of them in the game? In my two 4e groups, we had plenty of scenarios, where we ran out of surges and had to abandon a dungeon and come back the next day, with enemy reinforcements already waiting for us, so Healing Surges alone certainly don't make you an unstoppable killing machine, especially with opponents like Wights who can drain your surges quite easily. On the other hand, I can't remember a single D&D 1st, AD&D or D&D 3.5 Adventure, where we did not stop after each fight with a full 8 hour rest. We just had to ignore time associated with it, as the base scenarios were unplayable unless you were at full strength. Comparing the two, it appears to me that 4e had the better resource management. 4e still has massive problems, but then again there hasn't been a single D&D ruleset that was any good. We all don't play D&D for the rules, we play it for the familiar settings, the nostalgia and the great memeories we have of our past gaming groups and friends, playing the game. And sorry for my long reply, I kind of got lost in my thoughts there =/
TheGreatDeceiver42 Well... lol... all the abilities you mentioned just seem silly, and video game like. I guess for some people all of that is fun, and great! But to me its a fundamental issue with the game. It clearly requires significant commitment to put all of that together during combat. Meh... just makes my head hurt thinking about it. But then, there are you talking about all these really... outrageous abilities... completely nonsensical... but... rest for five minutes and I can do it again. Verisimilitude. Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal. I just have no desire to try and design a scenario for a bunch of players with this diverse ability spread. I've done it.. DM burn out sets in quickly. This is relax time for me... too much like work to run it. lol. I'm old school. RPGs are about being presented with problems and obstacles and overcoming them, and interacting with the NPCs through conversation and dialogue. Who has time for that when you're looking at your character sheet trying to decide whether or not to unleash flurry of blows, or Hurricane of steel? I remember when we went from 4e to C&C. Before combats were taking most of the game session. After... a few minutes to resolve. We were all like... ahhhhhh. That's better. There's my D&D. And that, my friend encapsulates my objections to 4e. lol.
I think i made my points clear enough. The game failed due to its extreme deviation from what came before and its wargame like precision that blurred the lines between what was in round time and free rp time. Seems rather straight forward.
I get it. You didn’t like it but they are right s you are two ! I started back in the day and stopped at 2nd (not cause it was bad but was doing Sci-fi and White wolf and a slew of other interests) so I finally got hit with nostalgia and came back a year or so ago. Blown away with 5th. And so many people said avoid the 4th and pathfinder was better. Pathfinder is okay and so is the 4th. This is my review: 1) pro- balance is king not Wizards. I know this seems odd but this alone makes me want to stand up and applaud. They did. It break. Thing and made it so everyone has a time in the sun. Magic is covered and you can not have to worry about magic items under preforming and if you follow the rules they keep everything out track. And they had a lot of improvement even in the add on books 📚. They even had a nice rip book in series theme players catch up so really happy with the efforts here. 2) con - the language and terminology use is different and certainly through people off but the ideas and terms are the SAME as established by D&D First though the lens of computer games. So takes some time and some may not be able to adapt 3) Pro/con - made for a digital game. So in. Digital game board it is fast and fun. ( it what you are talking about but in terms of ranges and movement. M All I would do is push back to fall back so. I one goes 100 battles in. Day. I don’t see your issues as a problem to me as most deadly fights will just as easily happen in all the editions).if they had programmed it to wirk like all the electronic playgrounds out now it would have been fine. With out that and using minis it can be complicated and eats time. It is strategic and that can be fun or not depending on how you like your fun! You can make any game you like and you may or may not like the new lore (some was great and some sucked). however, a lot is what is inside can give DM and players inspiration and thus it is worth the time to look though it. 4 out of 5 for me(I like strategy and have played lots of games) 2 out 5 for casual and a lot of pre 4th players.
I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 1982, with the Moldvey BX set. Played all the editions in which I ran as a DM. 3.5 was the best in my opinion. I had a strong group that campaigned for several years until 4th ed. came out. We tried it but, didn't last long. Not a fan. Our group broke up for several months because we were jaded because of 4th ed. The game had to much control over spell selection for leveling up etc. Healing surges didn't make sense. The only thing I liked about it was that it made first level character's survival rate a little higher. It was like video game progression. Luckily our group came back for 5th ed. and is going strong. I think 4th ed. almost killed Wizards of Coast and the D&D franchise. I compare what 4th ed. did to D&D to what The Last Jedi did to Star Wars...
Just go and buy AD&D 1st Edition (my favorite), AD&D 2nd Edition or if you have to D&D 3.0/3.5. To hell with DnD 4th Edition and DnD Next (they are so desperate aren't they).
+captcorajus Sorry let me start by saying i really enjoyed your video and totally agree. I'm merely nitpicking. At roughly :39 seconds in you spelled 4th as forth. Just pointing it out. No harm intended.
kyle anderson Lol... No big. I made this video two years, and 38 videos ago, and for the life of me couldn't remember where I used forth rather than 4th. Thanks.
We don't talk about the edition that must not be named... It never happened... They went straight from 3.5 to 5e... Do not destroy my reality with your heretical lies of a forbidden history!
Thanks for this series, learned a ton! I started with 1e and then got back to it with 5e so seems like I missed a lot :)
Can I just say, these are fantastic videos. I've loved your analogies on the different editions of D&D. :D
People seem to forget that you DO get encounter powers back if the encounter goes on long enough. The idea is it's just a power you can't do super often, same as the daily power. Honestly, I'll always love how balanced 4th edition was, it was really hard to break and become crazy overpowered in, at least relative to the other players. I've always seen 4th edition as the "hero" edition, where you get to have a full power trip. As for RP and flavor.... that's up to the DM and players to do. I learned to roleplay from 4th edition in a year long campaign I was in as my intro to D&D. While I do understand people prefering 5th edition (I haven't played 3rd or 3.5), I still have a special place in my heart for this game.
We played our own home written RPG for years (and even published it to great failure). Skills got better by spending time and rolling (higher skill the harder to increase it). HP was constant, Size plus Con. No levels or alignments. We had classes that affected ease of learning various skills. It was quite cool but also number crunchy (not quite Hero system level though). The interesting part was we would do an adventure or two with the goal of getting money to train then take 6 months off adventuring to improve a few skills. We actually moved the campaign calendar and watched the sweep of time make changes to the world.
Is there a pdf online?
That sounds like Chaosiums Basic Role Play Series. Runequest, Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu, and Mythras all work like that. They’re percentile skill based games, but they work a lot like that. Jackals by Osprey has some of those mechanics too, I think.
4th edition is the only time I ever returned my books to the game store.
Brother. You said it all.
Dungeon of DragonCraft
interesting watching this in 2022. as someone who played 1st, 2nd, 3rd….then 4th…i gotta say that after every 4 ed session i dm’d i always felt..,kinda hollow. The “head down” description was spot on! No longer did my players make insane, wild, and unpredictable decisions that upended all my plans
4e (and Matt Coville) fixed my 5e combat encounters with it's concept of roles. Sometimes you just want some goblins, but it's so much more interesting when you have a goblin shaman, goblin archers, and goblin warg riders all in the same group. It can get weird and gamey if you do that all the time (sometimes a pack of wolves is just a pack of wolves), but I have learned to make so many more interesting combats using concepts from 4e. And morale. You have to use morale...
But I don't think I'd ever initiate playing 4e.
My greatest gaming regret: selling my 3.5 books to buy 4th because of hype and my group being curious. Worst idea ever.
Awww man. Yeah, that stinks. We ended up going to Castle and Crusades
Wow, just finished watching the first 4 D&D edition reviews (BTW I cant seem to comment on the first) and yes I 110% agree with what you said here :)
Thank you. The youtube comments section seems a bit messed up. I could see that people had commented on my videos earlier, but couldn't see their comments.. but now I can. Must be a youtube thing. You should be able to comment now!
got ya back on this one cap , well done ! loving the videos mate , be lucky !
I printed out the pdf file today of D&D Basic Moldvey. Good enough for me right now. :)
My group and I played Hero system for years. Until 6th edition it was a playable system. Yes there was a bit of math but it's balanced out by playable rules and a fun setting.
I loved the Hero System. Played Fantasy Hero for a few years in the 90s.
4th edition was popular in japan. I think this is because thier P&P RPGs like Dragon Arms, Sword World and Tenra Bansho are heavily influenced by computer titles which ironically are influenced by dungeons and dragons. Overlord was written by a 4th edition player.
The best place to learn D&D would be Basic D&D, 3rd edition or 5th edition, 1st and 2nd are complex with so many optional rules and many systems at odds with one another, and 4th is a tabletop minis combat game, Basic set out to teach new players, DMs and all how to play a game with compatible well thought out systems, 3rd edition gives a nice solid system to learn how to play the game with minis or you can use theater of the mind and just focus on making interesting characters, player choice was the name of the game with 3rd edition, and 5th edition takes many of the best parts of 3rd and 4th edition and makes them work in a solid, cohesive way. I wouldn't suggest starting with AD&D or 4th edition, those are the ones you try after you have a handle on what D&D really is.
Your comment about 4e playing like a video game was spot on. I had heard before that they designed the game like that to to try to capitalize on the popularity of mmorpgs (World of Warcraft). Interesting idea but I am glad that they went back to their roots with 5e.
I had an RPGA official group that played 4th ed. for well over a year. I spent hundreds and hundreds on the 4th editions books. I did everything I could to make it have flavor but it was just so blah. It either felt like it was too heroic, meaning characters could get away with anything or completely bland in that it didn't matter what you called the power because you could use it once an encounter and it did 3(W) it might as well been called 3(W). The kicker for all of us was the 4th edition Tomb of horrors. As a bonus we got this module because of heavy RPGA play. I warned them that this module was a killer in previous editions. We played it. The module couldn't kill any one. I have played through S4 in 1st, 2nd and a newer version in 3rd. It always cost characters when someone made a bad decision. The 4th edition version was pathetic. There was no bite to it, no sense of real danger. That was the last straw. Ultimately we just started playing my own homebrew system which you would hate because it is crunchy but point being you are right; 4th edition killed D&D for the entire group and none of them play it now.
Regarding the "dated" elements of D&D, I have always wondered, coming out of the old Chainmail miniatures battle rules as the game did, how in heck rolling for stats was selected for character creation? Armies were bought with points, in order to create balance in the scenario. Yet when the commanders of the fantasy variations of Chainmail were isolated for use in the very first tabletop RPGs, their characteristics were randomized. Never did get that. That was why I embraced the Hero System so readily. Yes, there were numbers to crunch, but it was less a matter of math complexity, and more a matter of numerous lines of simple math. The only time things got complicated was when using modifiers on powers, and even then, if my fading memory isn't playing tricks on me, I'm pretty sure there were handy reference charts showing the totals for base points with X modifiers, for those who preferred not to mess with fractions. Still my one and only go-to system. I *like* being able to build whatever I want to play, knowing that the core of the game tends to balance things out between characters (assuming the GM keeps an eye on what the players are up to). Sadly, Hero has never had the flavor of D&D, perhaps because "nobody plays it," leaving it up to the few who do to create their own settings (or to adapt existing ones).
Character classes are a handy tool for neophyte players in need of a starting point, and to keep more experienced players from playing the same min-maxed character, a problem with free-form systems like Hero. Even Hero had "Package Deals" to help set a handy baseline for character concepts. Levels as an abstract are a handy way to gauge character power, but I can hand my players a few character points and get the same reaction when they can finally buy the skill or power they've been saving up for as they once did when they leveled up in D&D. However, that is all apples and oranges. Both are tasty RPG fruit, but not the same. The fact that I can happily cadge scenarios, monsters, and settings from D&D means that I can enjoy both, playing a game whose most recent changes actually constitute *simplification* of some rules. =^[.]^=
Your closing lines brought tears to my eyes, bravo.
Well done. Agreed. Although I am more of a 2nd Ed guy.
@ 12:34 Bloodied doesn't give combat advantage, unless if you have a specific power which enables that. Bloodied just means they're down below 50% health.
I commented a while ago on your Blueholme video and mentioned how I lost interest in the game as it became seemingly more cumbersome over the years starting with AD&D first edition. I just watched your 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition reviews and you completely confirmed everything I was feeling about the game! I thought I was perhaps just being lazy in not wanting to relearn and adapt... but no, I think trying to remain a fan though all that would have been a bit of a nightmare for me. Off to hear what you have to say about 5th edition! Hope it’s good news.
You know, you are onto something, mate. I've been following along this whole time with each new edition... and have recently started heading backwards.
With the 2020 Coronavirus Quarantine, my wife and I turned to the D&D Rules Cyclopedia for a game we could run from couches. Doing so made me realize how much freedom I have lost as a DM over the years. How much creativity during play has been lost as well.
I have no real point to this... other than I wanted you to know that I get ya! Simplicity is awesome!
Christopher, I looked into getting a vintage copy of that very book, but not long ago decided to invest in the Old School Essentials Black Box set and love it. I like how it’s organized and consolidated.
@@murdockscott I've seen that set!
I am most interested in grabbing a copy myself... if I can ever find one!
The editing and layout of the older stuff has always been THE hurdle for many players... it's why some claim that 4th edition is easier to learn!
Such passion!!
He is very passionate about RPG's, that's for certain.
I unfortunately owned 4th ed D&D and even more unfortunately I also ran it. Fortunately I only ran it twice. Then with gratitude I sold my entire set. Best thing I ever did :-).
I have to disagree with a lot of that. 4e was way more enjoyable to run then previous edition and I had no need mod the game, because it just worked so well. For me, the rules of 4e didn't get in the way of the role playing like the prior editions. Every character had a role, everything just worked. Characters were easy to put together and the game way easier to run. I was hesitant when it first came out too, but when I gave it real honest try at 4e, its effect based system was leagues ahead of earlier editions. Think people forget, those "video games" they spoke of, a lot of those were based on D&D in the first place. It is false criticism at best.
Even the designers of the game admit that they worked to balance the classes and stream the levels,adding abilities and skills that emulated the MMO situation at the time of the game's release. The game was designed to work on a VTT,and much of the games mechanics were meant to be integrated as part of the VTT's automation. This is a FACT of the game's design from the designers themselves. One of the main factors in 4E's failure that many of the game's luminaries share is that the failure of the promised VTT from WOTC to materialize lead to its decline.
While I agree that there were many good points to 4E it was such a vast departure from the previous editions that it fractured the game community, this is also an unequivocal fact. OSR and Pathfinder rose in reaction to 4E.
That's not to say, 'you're having fun wrong'. If you had fun, that's great,but overall 4E was not good for Dungeons and Dragons, and saw a vast decline. There are most definitely a number of very passionate supporters of the game, but those numbers were not sufficient to make the edition sustainable.
On the bright side, there is a lot of 4E material, much of it very inexpensive on ebay!
Thanks for commenting! :)
I was already ill about a new edition of D&D coming out and that they still had loads of 3.5 books on the shelf.
I had even purchased a few of them BEFORE I FOUND OUT ABOUT 4th edition.
So one day I walked into a Barns & Noble and picked up the shiny new 4E PHB and found a nice and comfortable chair and jumped in.
When I was done, I closed the book and put it back on the shelf and shook my head and said to myself no just no.
I walked away from this and I was more then happy to D&D it up with 1st and 2nd edition or B/X or BECM I have no use for the Immortal rules. Finding Castles & Crusades was a true blessing. I left the game I love in a sense but I still had my gaming collection to enjoy. I didn't really give Pathfinder a good look because I did suffer from 3.5 burn out. A few years down the road and out comes 5e and I was just not feeling it then my youngest daughter of all people talked to me about 5e having an old school vibe to go with the new school spit and polish. So back to the Barns & Noble and have a look see. I was hooked and I love 5e and I still love my old stuff too. As for 4e? Nope, not having it not to mention what 4e did to the Realms. Thanks to Matt I did get the 4e monster manual to spice up my 5e monster bad guys. So...... Game on Cap
Thank you for the thoughtful post! I enjoy 5E myself. And just like you I have a PDF of the 4E monster Manual to 'spice up' the 5E Monsters, but you echo my own feelings on the subject very well.
Game on!
You will find more nerds who like Highlander 2, toy story 4, later seasons of Simpsons/Family Guy, and Batman and Robin than D&D 4E.
People bitch about 4th edition being video game-ish, and they are right, but 3.5 was basically epic level abilities without actually being epic level.
Great videos, mate. Even if I am 6 years late in commenting. LOL
When people say that 4e was "easier" than previous editions, I think what they really means was that it was more accessible. From online resources and podcasts, to just the layout and readability. Thank goodness for the OSR movement in providing more readable throwback games, eh?
Captcorajus, you make an excellent point by comparing 4E, and I would add 5E, to a video game. It is sad that new players do not get the thrill of having the fear that you could die at any moment during an adventure. I am actually switching to Castles and Crusades is a great game.
I don't think 5 I resembles a video game at all. Its structure is far more similar to traditional D&D. I do DM quite a bit of 5E with some old school tweaks and its pretty deadly.
@@captcorajus I probably should of said that most players I DM 5e do see it as a video game. I too use some tweaks here and there to make it a bit more old school.
I have said since I first played 4e in high school in 2008(and quickly proceeded to resell the books), that 4e would be a great game to strip role-playing game elements(both the tabletop RPG elements and the video game RPG elements) out of and sell as a standalone board game, such as in the vein of HeroQuest or Dragon Strike(especially if it came with a cheesy video that didn't actually teach you how to play the game but was super entertaining like Dragon Strike did). If you strip the massive bloat of numbers and crunch, the level system that doesn't matter because it's intended to always have the same balance, and the RPG aspects that only exist functionally to sell it as an RPG, where you can keep producing new material for it to sell(which becomes redundant once players & DMs alike realize that all classes of one role are carbon copies with different names, same with monsters), it is a fully serviceable dungeon crawling board game.
Add.: I think a major issue of the game wasn't just that the game was redundant as an RPG, but that WotC simply didn't deliver on the experience they were pushing for. It feels like the game was designed to be used 100% in junction with the planned virtual tabletop, which never materialized. Had it been created & released, a metric ton of the crunch could be sped up by the programming of the VTT, such as pretty much any RPG on a VTT works these days, but in 2008, VTTs weren't particularly robust in design, especially when it came to automation and macros. Another problem was D&D Insider existing and offering some rules, but not the full source books in an attempt(in vain) to prevent digital piracy. It just wasn't worth the money. I think if D&D Insider had been a combination of today's D&D Beyond - giving players & DMs access to the complete books, creation tools, etc. - and a Roll20-style VTT, and had been that way since the day the first 4e core books dropped, 4e wouldn't have been received nearly as poorly as it did. I think it would still be considered the "failed" edition of D&D, but I don't think it would've lead to the mea culpa that was the two-year D&D Next play test, and 5e probably would've been quite a bit different if D&D Insider had been fully fleshed out and WotC had even a small fraction of 3.x players paying for D&D Insider, even if not actively playing 4e very frequently.
Most of these points made in the video can be applied to the D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder editions. They really have nothing in common with AD&D 1st or 2nd edition. It comes down to role play vs. roll play !!
I'm sorry, but I will have to humbly disagree. The fundamental difference between AD&D 1 and 2 versus 3.x is that all the various conflicting sub systems were eliminated in favor of a unified core mechanic. Roll a d20. Armor Class was inverted, and feats were added. While I will say that the feat system has problems of its own, its fundamentally in spirit with the D&D rules.
Conversely, 4e introduces a whole host of dynamic game mechanic changes that have no relationship to previous editions. The creation of POWERS for every class, Arcane, Divine, and Martial clearly simulates a video game like environment. Character sheets for 1st level characters are 2 to 3 pages long when you print them out with the 'power cards'. Digital tools for character and monster creation are almost a necessity, and the creation of original monsters is a massive undertaking... that is unless you have the monster tool.
Furthermore, combat plays like a war game. I've been playing for 35 years, as well as others in our group. We are role players from way back. I'm a Dee Jay, my one friend is an IT tech, and my other friend runs his own software company. Game wise, we play complex strategy games like Star Fleet Battles, Guns of August, and Battle Tech. Each of us, over the years have won a variety of gaming awards and tournaments. We aren't dummies. But even with a computer handling initiative, combat took up a significant amount of a five hour play session.
DM wise, I found trying to prepare a session using original material way to demanding on my time, and exhausting. 'burn out' was an issue.
Thus, 'roll play' versus 'role play' doesn't even enter into the picture.
I love your stuff but I come to the opposite conclusion about 4th edition. I started playing D&D '83 and have played every edition of D&D and many other systems as well. I found 3.0, 3.5, and especially 3.75 (Pathfinder) way too cumbersome and crunchy. It became who can game the system the best, making the DMs gob very difficult. So, I found 4th a breath of fresh air! I found it so easy to introduce to new players. It was quick and easy to create balanced encounters. Classes and characters were more balanced with each other. It bothers me when someone says this system or that system gets in the way of role playing. Because all these systems are is rules for conflict resolution. So you use them if you can not resolve it through role play. The people who play the game make it what it is. I have had great role play sessions with 4th. I have also had bad roll play session with 5th (and 3rrd). I respect your perspective even though it differs from mine on 4th. Please Keep up the good work as I said before I love it.
I did not find it 'quick and easy'. I found it a chore, and burnt out on the game in about 6 months.
Matt Coleville said it way better thn me. In any RPG there's the gamey aspects and then there's the 'downtime' away from them. 4E tended to blur the line between them.
I know a lot of people liked 4E and I'm certainly not the person to tell anyone the 'proper way' to have fun, and would NEVER be so presumptuous.
My primary conclusion however was regardless of whether you loved 4E or hated it, before 4E the number 1 RPG for the last 30 years was Dungeons and Dragons. After 4E it was Pathfinder. From WOTC's perspective, that's a problem.
Thank you for your comment, and the kind words!! Game on!
@@captcorajus It might be that I gust grok 4th. Thank you for all you bring to the hobby, it is much appreciated!
I wanted to add: After all, I said before it does not mean that I did not play the heck out of 3 and Pathfinder, and I loved every minute of it. I like Matt Colville but you said it just as well.
@@LukeMasouras Awww, thanks!!
4E convinced me to move to Castles and Crusades. Gaming was FUN again!
lol, yup, after 8 months we also moved to Castles and Crusades. I have several C&C reviews on this channel. Love that game.
@@captcorajus The Adventure Modules at Dragonsfoot are actually pretty solid as well.
Spot on in my view
Now that many people switch to pathfinder 2e will can’t help but feel that the focus on combat balance feels like 4e
4th edition is what happens when you try to get WoW players into D&D but all they wanna do is play WoW by themselves.
The advertising for the game during 4e went from "World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game" to "World's Slowest Game of World of Warcraft Played Sans Computer," if I recall correctly.
I know it's pointless to comment on a video that is 8 years old, but on this I must: the Hero System is a really good system. It's not perfect, has its faults, etc, but I dig it. And there is a surprising amount of the math that is formulaic, and this non-mathist got so he could do many of the day-to-day calculations in his head. And later editions had tables to cross reference anyway if that was too much for you. I went straight from ad&d (1e) to Champions (Hero system) and never looked back. Well, not for years. No, sorry, Hero System has alot of very devoted players.
And I'm happy to play, and in fact I was just like your GM after years of running Champions and Fantasy Hero, I can calculate any power, ability, with advantages, perks, and disadvantages in my head to wrote, at least at one time I could.
I had a player of mine want to take over GM duties from Fantasy Hero one time, to play some champions. I was so down for that!
So, we had 275 points, and I asked what the parameters were. I asked about building a character with a cosmic power pool (We were playing 4th edition), as I wanted to create a 'Dr. Strange' type character. He said yes.
So I created 'Magus' sorcerer supreme! He started of with the kidnapping of our DNPCs.
This did not work out well for him. Magus had a 75 point COSMIC power pool. I mind scanned the city for my DNPC... found out where she was located and the teleported the entire super group to their lair. This was the first 15 minutes.. lol. We destroyed his super team, and my cosmic power flexibility with my magic allowed me to adapt to anything he threw at me.
Needless to say, after that scenario, he was like, "Okay, we need to talk."
LOVE the hero system.
That said, its appeal is limited by its complexity. Your casual gamer simply will not get, or WANT to get the system.
I actually learn like that, when i was seven teachers despaired of my reading then one day i could read anythi g, my friend taught me poker and after struggling one rou d it just clicked
I love playing me some 4th Edition. Play it more than any other
I was so not a part of 4e. Gated the books never played. I was 3.x pathfinder until I went to savage worlds
I completely agree with the split I stopped playing all together until 5th came out I didn't even know there were spinoffs other then 3.75. Sadly I did not have a interest in 3.75 because I was burnt out on 3.5.
strange my group roleplays just fine in 4e. and live the story.
I do like to think of it as the heroic edition of DND.
I'm a self-made cuban dm. I started with 2nd edition and it didn't made sense to me. I dm a very stripped version of 3.5 and I received 4e with eagerness. I wasn't disappointed by it but I must say I outgrown it. Since I had tried every edition and my current favorite is becmi. I agree with your conclusions but not with your specifics. The "unrealistic" of the power system didn't bothered me as I come from a more superhero background as Gary Gygax himself declared in dragon magazine regarding the origin of dnd players were. I could totally see common, uncommon and rare feats of action by the player. Also 4e IS easier to learn and to teach than 3e (but not the others) as is MODULAR. Players and DMs learn as they play. You really need very few to start playing and you can refer players to specific parts as they appear. 3e edition demands knowledge of lots of rules or lot of handwaving. Rules in 4e were pretty straightforward. My native language is not English and we had to translate the books for our non English-speaking friends. Later we translated pathfinder and difference in bulk translation is visible. In my experience people who comes from a ad&d background and enjoyed 3e are bound to dislike 4e as they fixed some of the 3e stiffness with their experience and 4e asked for too much. I felt the stiffness of 4e after 6 years dungeon mastering it but now I feel the stiffness in 3e too.
LoL, I never would have pegged the Swamper as a 4th edition fan. I always pictured him as an OSR guy.
I’m from a small collage town an hour out of a major city. No names, you can look on my profile if you care that much. Well, UA-cam may have nuked my user info so who knows.
I had picked up older D&D books before to look at, 4E wasn't just my first attempt to play. It was the first D&D game I could get past the system and have fun in.
WOTC are the only ones blameless in all of this, because no one wants to make a crap game, and they didn't. They were trying to bring in new blood to the hobby and they did. It wasn't the PC\console crowd. They were, . . . I guess you call them jocks, preps, skaters or . . . I don’t know hang-gliders, whatever. People, who would have never played D&D, sat down for 4E.
Point is a small game store got to the point of having 2 large tables of 6 to 7 people a piece and still not being able to accommodate all the people walking in to play. We could have 3 tables if we had another GM. This went on for months.
Then the passive aggressive crud from the ‘old guard’ started to wear thin. I’m not calling everyone the ‘Old Guard,’ you are all smart enough to know what I mean. The new players were having fun or they wouldn't have come back a second night. But every game night they had a little more reason not to come back. I know, I saw and felt it.
The ‘Old Guard’ tolled many peoples first gaming experience. On a system that was designed to bring new people in. They drove people way from the hobby. I don’t care what you excuse is, that sucks!
And commenting on my own post for word count cap, yeah.
I had to go to Pathfinder after 4E had to be dropped from organized play. After viewing your vid I have to say every major change you mentioned was an improvement on the D&D system.
Please don’t ask me to give 3.5 or 5E a try, that is a slap in the face to everyone who loved 4th edition.
DesBJM Huge part of D&D is nostalgia. It is hard to argue with retro emotions cemented in youth ;-) Some people never let them go and rather come up with justifications for their opinions. 4e was different, a lot of the old guard didn’t like it for that and they will forever try to justify their emotions.
For example I used to hate Duke Nukem 3D back in the day. I was more of a Wolfenstein/Quake kind of guy. But I could never come up with a ‘logical’ explanation for that (as far as I remember).
WotC tried to do something different. It pulled a lot of people into Tabletop RPGs. Some peole didn't like it, and that's fine. We talk about estrangement like 4th Edition came along and shredded their existing 3rd ed or AD&D books.
I really lost my patience for edition wars while at the famous Compleat Strategist in NYC I overheard a "fan" complaining that 4th Edition was an atrocity, and Wizards needed to answer for it. I was in a mood that day, and for some reason the Darfur Genocide jumped into my head, and I remember railing into this kid about how privileged and easy his life must be that there could be ongoing genocide on another contienent, but he's gonna waste time in his day calling an edition of D&D an atrocity.
4th edition was really fun when my group used it as a Heroquest rule replacement... But other than that it wasn't that great.
i love the videos. I just hope for 5th edition they bring back some of the worlds they had in 2nd like birthright, and dark sun.
I rather enjoyed 4th edition, it is my most-played edition. That said, I am well aware of it's flaws. So much so that, if I were to go back to it, I would probably only play it as Character-driven Chainmail. Roleplaying wise, I'm currently ooh-ing and ahh-ing at BECMI Basic...or 13th Age if I have to go for something Modern (3.Xe+)...
As someone who has played numerous systems and different editions of D&D, 4e was solid and fun. While I won't say it's perfect, it's perfectly playable. I played in a game for around 2 years and I have to say it always was fun.
A fair number of issues with the system are that it was too focused on maintaining a balance between all of the classes (which was needed when the previous edition had created the dreaded "linear fighter & quadratic wizard" and "CoDzilla" issues) and that it played too much like a video game (ironic since many if not most video games are either directly or indirectly influenced by D&D). Near the end of it's life cycle they even went back and tweaked the monsters (MM3 and the Monster Vault games) to make combat faster.
I think another issue would be the terminology used in the game. You reference in your video the idea that the characters could just go combat to combat and basically spam encounter powers and healing surges when one could only spend healing surges in combat via second wind or have the healer grant them the ability to or use a specific item (which the DM could limit as needed and wanted) and encounter powers could not be spammed combat to combat unless the party performed a short rest between every combat. A sizeable dungeon or series of combats can and should be quite taxing on the players who would need to be cautious the further they delved.
As for this false belief that player death was something few people would encounter from the enlarge HP gain at 1st level and on, I can vouch from my own experience from playing and running the game that that just is not so. Characters died often if they don't play smart or run away. Hell, I lost three character over 4 sessions from it.
Now, it is labor intensive to book keep, that's a problem for many games (GURPS for instance), but with ready access to the character builder and a printer (my workplace allows me to print anything I want so long as it isn't political or hate speech or something for instance) then that becomes a thing of the past.
And most of the issues regarding the online tabletop and suite of online tools becoming vaporware? The guide heading the development for that was involved in a murder-suicide and the team was shocked and disgusted and almost completely dropped all of it but were finally goaded by WotC to at least get a compendium, character builder and monster/foe creator up and off the ground. Do I think it should still be something paid for? No, but they are really handy to have and everytime I get a chance to do one of those surveys for D&D I beg them to drop the DDI pay-wall for them so me and my group can dive back in and enjoy the game again.
Rant done for 4e specifically. I will say that I do greatly enjoy your videos, captcorajus (the glaring mispronunciation aside, I make mistakes too quite often) and feel that it is definitely in the top 5 of RPG review and news channels on UA-cam. Have you looked into doing proper reviews for other OSR games like Basic Fantasy RPG, Dark Dungeons, and others? How about the 4e "knock-off" (really it mimics some things but uses other things quite handily too) "Strike! RPG"? I think it'd be up your alley to do so!
Thanks for the length and concise reply! The rating of praise is much appreciated, thank you. I played 4E for a year, and gave it a genuine try. I had a LOT of books. PHB 1 and 2. DMG 1 and 2. MM 1,2,3, each. My perspective comes from the fact that two of my players have as much D&D experience as I do... 30+ years, and they utilize resources and play very tactically, and are very effective with their character builds. Getting a 5 minute rest really isn't that difficult, unless all your dungeons are gauntlets. lol.
The 'sameness' between the different characters I kind of noticed right away, but put it to the back of my mind in a genuine effort to give it a good go, as it were.
As I've always said 4E wasn't a bad game. What it was, was a massive departure from what had come before, and that led to a serious backlash in the gaming community. Pathfinder exists, and thrives due to that back lash, as do a bunch of other D&D clones.
As far as reviewing other fantasy RPGs, my reviews are directly related to things I've spent time playing extensively. I think this gives my videos a genuine, and earnest perspective, and allows me to speak intelligently on the subject...lol.. which I think is the appeal they have for other people. I couldn't give that perspective to the other games you mentioned, which is why I haven't review them.
Thanks for the comment, and thanks for watching!!
When 4e came out I was really enthusiastic about it. I had played 3 and 3.5 extensively, but bailed on it before it had run its course because of power creep, bloat and imbalance. Of course, 4e eventually fell prey to the creep and bloat as well, but at least initially it was a clean slate. And it was always mostly balanced.
We played 4e for quite a while. I even ran the published series of modules all the way to 30th level. During that time we found a lot of both good and bad in the system. A lot of the things it is criticized for, including many things cited in this video, I disregard completely because they are based on irrelevant assumptions. I don't expect a new edition to play exactly like the previous ones, I'm fine with treating it as a new game on its own merits.
That said, there are two things that killed 4e for me and my gaming group. Number one is handling time. Combats simply took too long. Number two, the fact that after level 10 it was really really hard to challenge players. At least if they were any kind of power gamers, and could find the optimal combos. The poor monsters were so outmatched it wasn't even funny. Now, there are always ways to houserule problems like this, but in the case of 4e that required taking an axe and chopping away huge chunks of the game.
Haven't played much 5e yet, though I ran a brief series of adventures during the Next playtest, so I think I have some idea how it will run. And I'm optimistic. Especially since one year into the edition they haven't published any overpowered splatbooks yet. Just a lot of adventures that I don't care about - so I've saved money as well!
I just discovered Swords and wizardry, it's AWESOME! And its just what I was looking for!
4E was not D&D, it was a war gaming system with D&D stamped on the front.
The game now, is too easy for players. To see a player lose 80% of his/her HPs,, then rest ONE night and get ALL their HPs back, is bullshit.
Well, that is definitely one way to express it. lol... but yes.
Once again, I'm commenting early on (I have Such a short attention span lately ^_^), but....
While I agree with your initial thoughts about 4th edition, I'm beginning to think that Pathfinder is running into the same 'too much flexibility' wall.
Admittedly, if you want to play the 'vanilla' game all you need is the Core Rulebook, and maybe one Beastiary. However, since its inception in 2009, there have been so many 'Splat Books' made for it that the character options available is just staggering, to me anyway. That being said, I haven't heard any flame wars about various rules combinations making for an 'unkillable' character, like I did for 3rd and 4th edition D&D.
Pathfinder is definitely running into issues, because there were core issues with 3.5 that caused the need for a new addition to begin with. Its already nicknamed 'Mathfinder' for a reason. Yes, you can do complex builds, but as I've said, time and time again, that complexity comes at a price. To many moving pieces makes for a difficult to run machine. At higher levels the number of attacks, and positive modifiers become crazy, with +38s, etc.
4E was too 'gamey'. with abilities that moved opponents or allies one square, this way or that, making playing without a grid next to impossible.
IMHO, 5E has been a nice course correction for the game.
I thought I was going to love 4th. Bought a lot of the books. It took a while before I realized I didn't like it. I thought I was just not getting it. Unfortunately I did get it and I was in denial.
I LOVE miniatures. I play with mini's almost every session. But there comes a time when you just want a quick combat done using abstract description. The first time I tried this I discovered you cannot NOT use the miniatures. Again, I like miniatures but not every single encounter every single time? It can bog down play. I found myself dreading combat but not just for that reason.
Then there was the combat itself. I was so burned out on constantly keeping track of all my special little abilities which often looked like copy paste jobs of other class abilities that I decided to play a fighter. Just your basic hack and slash fighter that stood up front and tanked. And then this conversation happened...
Me: OK, dose an 18 hit?
DM: What ability are you using?
Me: I'm swinging my sword.
DM: But HOW are you swinging your sword?
Me: With my arm?
DM: Which ability are you using to swing your sword?
Me: THE ONE THAT LETS ME SWING MY ******* SWORD!!!!!!
Really? This is the only edition were I dreaded leveling up. Leveling up meant I got new powers and abilities...on top of ALL the abilities I already had and could not keep up with. At will, daily, encounter powers? Which one did I already use again? AAAUUUG! I found myself trying to talk my way out of every situation just so I wouldn't have to fight.
This was the thing that switched my entire friend group of about 12 people over to Pathfinder lmao. Most of us are back now that 5e is out but some of us never recovered.
Trevor, I didn't particularly care for 4E... Too many weird things, like monsters moving you 1 square this way or that. It played too much like a war game. I also didn't like that... in all honesty you needed that subscription... I mean, it was soooo much easier to have the character sheets print out automatically with all your pertinent cards, and if you wanted to create a monster, the monster creator made things much, much quicker. .... otherwise, it was a pain to DM. I burned out on it rather quickly.
That said, I know a lot of people enjoyed it, and I can't honestly say it was a bad game... but as I said in the video... bottom line... before 4e, most people were playing Dungeons & Dragons, and now they're not. That's a fact, and that divide was not good for the industry, D&D, or games in general.
So far, I like 5E, though, as I play it, I'm finding some things I don't care for as well, though, I have a feeling much of that will be addressed when the new DMG comes out.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
It's been 4 years since i made this video, and my opinion on 4th hasn't eased, and in fact, the REASONS why I didn't care for it have only solidified for me.
D&D has like two time frames: the 'regular time' that you are just conversing and role playing, and the micro time when you are in rounds, doing combat or some other action dependent moment. 4E blurred the line between these to reference frames. I don't think that makes for a good role playing game.
As I said, 4E wasn't a 'bad' game. It was really quite a good 'miniatures' game, and, its divergence from what was 'D&D' was so drastic that it fractured the community. Before 4E, we were all pretty much playing D&D.. after 4E we weren't. Its that simple. If people enjoy, and that's their game, then I'm no one to say, "This is how you have fun.'.
I agree with you on 5E. I like it a lot, and have been playing it pretty much since it was released.
Thanks for the detailed comment!
Hey. Semi-neutral edition fan here (my bias is for older editions). This video is 5 years old but you still seem dead-set on your opinion, even now. Therefore, I shall make a case for 4e.
Everyone has their tastes and certainly your taste lies well within the vocal majority. Since you said "my points will be accentuated with logic and specifics", I want to reply to some criticisms and grievances you hold against 4e:
1. Many of your points apply to 3e as well, a system you hold in high esteem. For example, the video game nature of role-playing is trademark Wizards, absent from TSR editions. Every class has the same experience totals, and you can dip in a multiclass for no role-playing reason whatsoever. Being a weird race that nobody has heard of before and a multiclass wizard druid rogue cleric? That sounds like 3e to me. The system was so game-y and unrealistic, in fact, old-school fans tend to call 3e a "rollplay" system instead of "roleplay" (rolling even for knowledge checks and social situations). Furthermore, most of the skills related to combat in a strong way and your character build was more important than how you played your character. I guess you could say the 3e system was kind of like a video game.
2. You say that "4e deviates from D&D to the point where it is no longer recognizable". All the tropes of D&D are met: the 6 ability scores, alignment system, system crunch over fluff, major races and classes represented, class more important than race, magical item progression, strong emphasis on combat in terms of the character ability, combat is highly tactical, combat is recognizably still D&D (each system had a dramatic change in the combat system, making 4e the closest combat to 3e before 5e came out), very little in terms of "social combat", binary "pass/fail" skill resolution (no "partial success"), divine/arcane magic, saving throws, "to hit" scales with increasing AC of monsters, AC makes you harder to hit instead of easier to hit and absorbing damage (a carry-over from wargaming roots), virtually everything but not having 9 levels of spells and solving the "linear fighter, quadratic spellcasters" problem.
3. You say whether or not 4e is good, it doesn't matter because it broke the fanbase. A splintered fanbase does not prove 4e is any less of a D&D game or was a wrong decision. It simply proves the system is not popular or was poorly marketed, particularly among fans of 3e. The fact that people flock to OSRIC or PathFinder merely proves they either wanted an extension of old-school gaming (like myself) or wanted a continuation of 3e (like you). As you know, sales are mostly out of the hands of role-playing system publishers. Unless you are willing to say 2e brought about the collapse of TSR and therefore also doesn't matter whether or not fans like it, this argument makes zero sense.
5. You didn't like 4e for being too much like a wargaming system, but yet, D&D started as a supplement for Chainmail, a miniatures wargame by Gary Gygax. I have to admit, this criticism confused me the most.
6. You claim that 4e is difficult to run when compared to 3e, especially when it comes to combat. Are you sure this review isn't about 3e? Making 16 balanced encounters with calculated experience point totals and estimated wealth per level? Combat that has effects that lasted for a certain number of rounds you have to track? Rules complications in combat caused by feats? 4e is much, much easier to create encounters for, and doesn't have very much to track. Maybe occasional ongoing damage and a few status effects. Add in skills challenges, and you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to obstacles for your players to overcome.
I know you consider 4e a blight on the world of D&D like many other fans of 3e. That's fine. People should play whatever systems they prefer. But if you recognized and played to the system's strengths instead of trying to play it like it was 3.99e you might have understood 4e a little better. A person that says 4e has nothing in common with other D&D systems has not thoroughly examined 4e.
I detail this further in a Google doc I made. I hear this argument so much, even this year, that I decided to outline why I think some players really don't understand the appeal of 4e, and why even if they don't like it, they should at least stop trying to say it's "not real D&D". If you have time, feel free to read it. I'd love feedback on it.
Despite my counter-points, I enjoy your reviews and hope to catch more of your content. Thanks for reading!
4th Edition Shows how the people from Wizards dont respect players and dont understand about their business.
Ad&d players feel the same we classic d&d and casual gamers feel when our game was abandoned.
(at least Paizo made Pathfinder)
WOTC say that they want to attract videogame players.
They dont know that all rpg videogames come from D&D and the thing to attract players is target turn based rpgs, a guy who play Final Fantasy Tactics is the kind of people who will be attracted to pen and paper rpg, not a guy who play action.
How Pathfinder showed they just needed to stay in TSR path.
Launch new campaigns, modules and adventures, not more rule sets.
They target just a small group of people who played D&D.
My issue with 4e is how it tends to allow the players in a group the ability to not need each other like tye other editions.
4th is pretty much the best edition. The naysayers are deluded.
If that's the bubble you want to live in, rock on! Facts are what they are, the video speaks for itself. Before 4E most of the community was playing D&D.. after 4E they weren't. WOTC failed to bring to the table all the support elements needed to make the game viable, and that's why it failed.
Was it a good game? Yes. Was it the best edition? The BEST edition is the one you have the most fun playing.
Fourth edition pushed our group towards pathfinder however pathfinder 2.0 while better in some areas as many of the same flaws 4.0 had there seems to be a movement towards video game mechanics away from realism
I looked into this and didn't like it. I ended up sticking with 3.0 until 5th Edition was released. I feel like I made the right choice. As some who has been playing since the red box Basic Set in 1984 this edition did not feel like dungeons and dragons.
I think that's the general consensus. It was such a deviation from what came before it was rejected by a lot of people... and then WOTC didn't follow up with the promised VTT, and all the digital tools that were suppose to be made became vaporware spelled the end of it. Though it does have a loyal following still.
Is there any chance of you making a commentary video on Basic D&D? My first D&D experiences came courtesy of the Rules Cyclopedia and some of the following modules and Gazetteers, and it would be nice to hear your thoughts on it.
I loved the rules cyclopedia, and the Gazetteers are just absolute classics. I actually run the Kingdom of Karamiekos, though I use Castles and Crusades. But, yes, definitely on my to do list of reviews, so please look for it, and thank you for the share.
captcorajus You're welcome! Definitely loved this series of the classic D&D iterations. To this day I hold most RPGs I get to look over in comparison to the monster that was the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. Looking forward to your thoughts on the series.
captcorajus If you hadn't heard yet, Aaron Allston passed away yesterday. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Allston
Wow, I hadn't heard! So sorry to hear that.
4th edition is a great minis/combat game. What it isn't is a good RPG, yes, a good DM and a good party can inject plenty of roleplay into it, but there is pretty much nothing in the mechanics for it.
if u hate 4e so much why even talk about? why aren't u talking more about the pathfinder u really love? it's nice u talk about the different editions but u talk about each one with a negative slant that is clearly biased and quite off putting. there are other channels that talk about rpg's with NO negative or positive slant, and are full of energy and excitement, and leave the opinions up to the viewer.
So you're suggesting that I should only talk about things I like? Fundamentally, that's the silliest comment I've ever heard. Sorry.
I listed FACTS my friend. Sorry they don't line up with your preferred narrative. I was hardly negative. I said 4E was a good game, you apparently missed that part in your need to rage at me.
Thanks for your comment. :)
Y'all need to just go play some old school D&D. OD&D, BECMI, 1E, or 2E. Holy crap.....
The criticism of 4th edition drives me crazy. 4th got me back into role-playing after a 20 year absence (besides a few one offs). I hadn't purchased anything related to RPG's for nearly that long.
As a board gamer I loved the aesthetic and mechanical options that Wizards brought to 4e. Finally, here was an edition of D&D there was sufficiently structured so that both a compelling story and gameplay experience could be crafted. For me the "game" portion of a role-playing game is the most critical. Otherwise I feel like I am just a bit player in the DM's story to himself.
Crazylooneybin Certainly, your feelings on the matter are valid, given your feelings on game mechanics. However, there is a large camp of people who feel the exact opposite of you. That game mechanics are less important, than maintaining a story driven narrative. If you are in the latter camp, and I can tell you that I most definitely am, then that criticism is certainly valid.
But, that's okay. If you enjoyed it, and it fit your style of play, then play it and have fun and don't worry about what other people think of it. That's the beauty of this hobby. You do what suits your tastes.
As far as being a 'bit player' in the DM's story, that's certainly a valid concern, and many inexperienced DM's fall into that trap. However, that's completely in the realm of DM's prerogative. A lot of the fun of being a DM is being a storyteller, but the game mechanics need to be intuitive, and not get in the way of a good story.
Its a delicate balance to be sure. My personal feelings, and industry data supports this conclusion, is that 4e tipped that balance in the wrong direction, and in doing so fractured the RPG community in a way that was negative to the hobby.
All that being said, there is a TON of resource material out there for 4E and a lot of players who enjoyed it. Best of all, a lot of it is now available on ebay at significantly discounted prices. If you like 4E, then take full advantage of that fact!
Best wishes, and Game on!
+Crazylooneybin I like 4E but I think it takes a certain type of DM to run it. I like it and find it easy to use. Tracking stuff isn't that hard but.... then again not everyone has a Project-able table that you can use dry erase markers to keep track of stuff like my group.
+Crazylooneybin 4e, in my opinion, was/is a fun game. But it isn't D&D. It is something else. You are right, it is a board game mixed with an MMO. But that isn't, or wasn't D&D. The stories that came from 4e, IMO, were nonsense. Granted, a world with flying lizards and magic isn't real, but at least in previous editions of D&D some tie to how this stuff really works was made. 4e removed that. VERY glad to see 5e come and basically forget that 4e ever happened. :-)
Disagree on the storytelling aspect. Storytelling that emerges from gameplay is usually more immersive and compelling then a story simply dictated by the DM and players. 4e represented a huge step forward in this regard. I like the new 5e too but ultimately what sets it apart from the other versions?
Crazylooneybin What sets 5e apart from other version is its flexibility and the way it utilizes aspects of all previous editions as well as adding new ideas (advantage/ disadvantage, backgrounds). 5E also also allows you to alter rules to suit your group's desires.
4E was so exacting that it simply did not offer that level of flexibility. It was amazingly balanced, but realistically you couldn't alter that without upsetting that balance.
My viewpoint that from a game mechanics standpoint balance is great. From an RPG standpoint, not so much.
fan of Fourth edition? so like Puffin Forest and litteraly nobody else.
You say that 4th made D&D like a video game. I say that's what they've been doing since 2.5.
What's a milyer?
milieu milˈyo͞o,milˈyə(r)/ Gygaxian for 'campaign setting. lol.
@@captcorajus thnx!
I have 0 interest in playing the game but I thought the dragons were interesting, and I'm sad I never got to see what they were going to do with scourge dragons/linnorms. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a homebrew or clone version of them floating around, but 4e is so universally despised that there's just not. After 3.x took away Linnorm's status as true dragons (and hacked their numbers down to a measley 3) it would have been cool to see them get a little respect and a full on dedicated book in the form of Draconomicon IV, but nevermind I guess. Hell, even the catastrophic dragons got their due in the electronic issues of dragon magazine. But scourge? Nope. And 5e is allergic to monsters, and it especially hates dragons of all sorts, so bleh.
I think d&d died the moment they decided it needed to work on a console cycle where you buy into a new version every 6 years. That's kind of... stupid? Like I already have the game, there's nothing wrong with it, it doesn't need any tweaking, but you want me to drop 150 dollars on something that's not even going to give me gem dragons or psionics or a dedicated sourcebook about hell? Fuck no. FUCK. NO.
There is literally no reason to not keep playing 3rd edition or pathfinder. Literally none. They need to stop fucking with it and just keep the books in print. And I'm sure as fuck not buying 6th edition when it comes out next year or 7th edition the year after that or 8th or 9th... fucking christ dude I HAVE THE GAME ALREADY STOP IT.
I agree with 99% of what you are saying in the video, but i'd like to point out the "irony", that now that 5e is out, 4e is the only other D&D edition or D&D clone making sense playing instead of D&D 5e.
I'm not sure what you mean. Are talking about how Pathfinder has gone off the rails in 'Mathfinder'?
Let me put it that way 1) if you like to play a more clean, simple, smooth, streamlined, polished and very open ended game focusing on story telling go for 5e 2) if you like more (mechanical) options, more statistics and a deeper and more evolved combat system in general focusing on tactics and strategy go for 4e.
P.S. With the "not many options" being the main argument against 5e i'd like to say that after playing it for 2+ years now, i have seen a wider and more diverse array of characters than any other system.
P.S.2. Sry for my bad english :/
I tried to run 4th ed. There were some rules I didn't like, so I tried to house rule some things. The more I changed, the more I had to change as the rules are so interdependant that the whole thing starts to unravel if you change anything. That put me off, as well as the statements in the dmg about making encounters. The idea of just throwing crazy stuff into an encounter because it was fantasy and doesn't have to make sense was what turned me off 4th completely.
4e > 5e
this video is pretty spot on,i prefer 2nd edition rules myself :]
I was a huge 2nd edition guy. but that was 20 years ago. i wanted to prove to my 12 year old that tabletop beats the hell out of WoW any day of the week...even though we both play WoW. So i made a very rudimentary character sheet, rolled up a very basic warrior, found a die webpage and put him through a 30 minute mini adventure. my son started out rolling his eyes but after 10 minutes, he was INTO it. dad is right once again. my question is, do i dig up the old 2nd ed books (judging by your videos i'm guessing no)? what edition do you think we should play? thanks in advance CC.
Well, as it turns out, 5e is just being released. If you think this might turn into a regular thing, I would go that route. 5e is a nice amalgam of 2, 3 and 4e. If you are wanting to stay more 'old skool' then check out Castles and Crusades. Its a great amalgam of 1 and 3e. Very basic but a lot of fun. All you need there is the player's handbook and the monsters and treasure guide from troll lords.
Yeah, both my daughters play in my regular campaign.
Strange. I was wondering why it took you 6 minutes of a 19 min vid to finally start your review. HP, Level progression, and classes have a basis in “real life”. So other editions of D&D make more sense than 4th because “at will, encounter, and daily powers don’t make sense. So what do you call 5th Edition cantrips? At will powers? What about daily spells? Are they, wait for it, daily powers?
Also, I find other editions of D&D are much more prone to the “bat-winged ninja elf that wields a katana and cast spells” than does 4th edition. The “video game” aspect of 4th edition is it’s strength in that players take on roles (tank, healer, dps) and are rewarded for working together like a like a sports team. The warlord shifts players and enemies around, gets the rogue into flanking position, rogue gets their backstab, paladin forces the monster to attack it instead of the softer targets, etc. It’s a great team game. But, then again, I’ve played a lot of video games, which by the way were heavily influenced by D&D; one of my earlier favourites was “Eye of the Beholder”.
Anyways, back to 4th and the powers. Finally, it’s not all about the wizards or clerics, finally other classes have “cool powers” to use rather than swinging their sword over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, only doing 1d8+5 damage each and every time, fight after fight, encounter after encounter. Whereas the wizards and clerics got cooler and cooler spells to use. I’d be curious how a DM manages to convince players to take up the fighter and thief roles while their friends get all the cool stuff.
Powers are too weird? Let’s forget for a moment we’re in a world of wizards, dragons, and gods. Forcing your opponents into disadvantageous positions and helping your allies get into position are hallmarks of martial combat (“cover me, I’m going in”). Hit Points are abstract? It represents luck, skill, and resourcefulness? Right? So, what’s wrong with a fighter using his skill and resourcefulness to get some back? Get a good hit on a foe, feel invigorated, and get some HP back. Makes sense to me.
Attrition of resources. Healing Surges are resources; you need a long rest to get them back (and a safe place to rest). This, along with daily powers, are just of the many resources that needs to be managed by a group. You can’t just keep going through encounter after encounter as you’ll eventually run out of healing surges and die. Dude, you know that you can’t use healing surges duing a fight except with second wind, some daily powers, and the healer’s 2 per encounter power. You can have 1,000 healing surges and still die because you can’t access/use them. So…your point again? How will you argue they’re not resources like potions of healing, or cleric heal light wound spells? Hmm? How did your players keep going and going like the energizer bunny? All the battles I ran and I participated as a player would usually use up 3-4 healing surges for each player (including healing after battle). Heck, even for a fighter that means they could only do 3-4 encounters before needing a rest. I’m serious, how were they going more than that? Encounters too easy? Taking a long rest in the middle of a dungeon? I’m curious? Please tell us. How were your players not on death’s door most encounters?
Also, players can easily die in 4th edition, monsters do a lot of damage and access to healing surges during a battle is limited. Getting back 7 HP using your second wind when you have 30 HP as a fighter isn’t going to help when 1st level monsters do 1d6+4 damage (7 average) per attack). Then there’s traps, spheres of annihilation, etc.
It turned me off RPing for years. I first played the 3.5 starter set with friends. Found it a bit dear and didn't progress because of it. Bought the fourth ed starter a a few years later and hated it.
Everyone was bored before we finished character creation and I really disliked it.
I agree with almost everything you said in this video. Where you and I differ is that every time you said 4th edition, I would have said 3rd Edition. I know you don't like 2nd Edition, I have seen your video on it. In it you skip over everything that was great about it. I just feel that what you call innovation, for me felt like a whole different game, designed to sell books to the players and not just the DM. But like I said I do agree with you 4th Edition is the all time low for D&D. Its a table top battle game not a true RPG.
I never played 4e. Just read through the books. I rather pass on it. Too much effort. 5e works easier for me. Rules can be light or intense. Twerk it for whatever.
Yeah, I played 4e for a few months and then passed on it.
And, yeah, I like it when the books shake their booties!! :P
This how I feel about games like pathfinder 2e and I think 3.5 and pathfinder shakel te DM to much and 4e and pathfinder 2e are to frat heavy
"Whether or not 4th edition is a good game, it doesn't matter." Wow. Loss for words. I have no idea why this common train of thought is considered logic. I say to each his own. WOTC is doing a good job supporting most editions of D&D with special edition books and even the occasional new adventure in their online Dragon and Dungeon magazines, go grab one and go!
I personally enjoy playing D&D in any form, rpg, board game, video game, etc. The board games aren't exactly D&D either, but I love playing most of them, and they are just new ways to experience an old favorite.
Other than this critique, great videos, appreciate the effort.
Well, that quote by itself isn't exactly fair. My point was that 4e had been divisive with the community, and that before 4e most of us were still playing D&D by WOTC and now we are not. and that's a true statement and I stand by it. However... thank you for your kind words. These are my opinions after all, all opinions and ideas are welcome! :)
First of all I have to tell that I played 4e once and DMed the whole campaign (about year long). I had great group and thanks to them the game was great. But I struggled hardly with mechanics to bring the mood I wanted. Almost everything in mechanics is sticked to the combat. When we wanted to role play, we had to forget about rules. There were sessions focused on role-play and the only mechanics we used were skill checks and maybe skill challenges.
I managed to build characters without calculator or any software ;D But I have MS degree so don't count me in, please :D
I think the concept of powers was the main thing way everyone is speaking this is video-gamy. Instead of describing actions players could just pick this power or other (especially when almost all powers where combat-related). It felt almost like choosing powers in wow to hit the monster with. The great amounts of HP didn't help here. (I strike him with my mighty ultra striking power! Ok. It hits! some awesome description Great! 20 damage! And.. 80 HP left.. )
I definetly agree that this edition is not less clunky than 3.5 was. To track all of those bonuses and penalties to track.. Argh! I also don't like Healing Surges. It damages my immersive so badly! And forget to play any combat without grid and miniatures (I have D&D Board game, the D&D 4e felt like extension to - yet admirable ;) ).
Most of powers can be more or less reduced to : deal damage + side effect, when side effect can be bonus to some defense, hit chance, skill, damage, move for the power user or his ally or in negative for his opponent. Maybe it is just my feeling but most classes under the same party role have similar powers. Streamlined rules are not friend for originality.
Skill challenges? Nice idea but it only adds some kind of mechanical structure to the set of skill checks. I think that well utilized skill challenge can bring quite nice mixture of mechanics and roleplaying. Still there are better systems in that. i. e. How about Genesis (or Warhammer 3rd) with some fine side effects added to almost any of dice roll?
I really didn't like the Monster Manual. Come on.. Where are descriptions? From AD&D2 to D&D3 the descriptions became poorer but still they stimulated imagination. In 4th? Each monster has 2-4 sentences of description. The book was like compendium of mobs to kill. It didn't helped me as a DM to set up stories. Compare it to the for example Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition's Old World Bestiary - More than half of the book is full of the descriptions only. On each monster you could build up fascinating story. Different types of cobolts? Yeah, wonderful.. ;)
Although, IMHO, statistics were better organised than in any other edition.
To be honest. I like D&D 4e but more as the role playing + board game mixture than anything story telling heavy system.
What I liked about the system? Dungeon Masters Guide IMO is much better written than in 3.5. Instead of boring to death descriptions of doors, walls etc. There are meaningful tips for running story, how to handle particular types of players and so on. Another thing I liked was the balance - I had one power gamer in group and there wasn't feeling that he overwhelms the rest with min-maxed character. Monster creation was really nicely done.
@captcorajus - great work with the movies! I enjoy them. Especially those about older systems. I think I would like to try 1st AD&D thanks to them ;D
I looked into 4e when it came out. What I saw was a way to sell minis and tiles as they seemed to be required. Didn't have that kind of cash to invest.
4E is definitely not an RPG; it's a tactical skirmish game. Which to me was really hammered home by the ridiculous way 4E insists on categorizing encounters. Like encounters can only ever be one type of encounter. We're either in a fight. Or a talking session. Or a travel session. But only one at a time. Life doesn't work that way, 4E.
This is not the worst argumented review I have ever listened to - oh wait, it is. Having played D&D since early 1980's and suffered through all the horrible, unbalanced and incomplete rules, 4ed. is by far the most concise and balanced of the lot - including Pathfinder and 5ed. which is probably the least balanced of them all. If you can't create a 4ed character with the book and a pencil and roleplay the character, you lack math- and roleplaying skills, not computer programs or other crutches.
This is not the worst argued response I've ever heard, oh wait, it is. Where I listed specific, undisputed facts: 1) The system fractured the community 2) the system deviated greatly from what came before 3) The game while good, tended to mingle the line of exactly WHEN measured encounters ended and free role play began. Essentially, the game was over codified and that sent people away. I said, yes.. you can role play, but with a less codified game, for many people, its easier to get to the RP part of the game.
I never said 4E a bad game, but for the specific reasons I listed it wasn't a great role playing game.
Conversely, your argument is 4E is BEST because ... bark, bark, bark, um.. reasons.
You like 4E? Awesome, play it, no one is saying you can't, and if you're having fun, then more power to you. That's not what the review was about.
1. The community fractured the community. WotC send out a new game - arguably a whole new game - people could have stuck to 3.5 if they wanted an unbalanced game with more frosting.
2. The system was partly new, yes. Why would one continue the mistakes of 1, 2, 3 and 3.5 ? Because they had seriously bad and boring combat and hugely unbalanced characters.
3. I had my reservations because of the many bonusses across the board as well as some other issues, like the healing surges - but it vastly preferable to having a wizard standing around for 8 rounds being useless - or being killed by a goblin child with a rock - until the powers shifted vastly the casters way.
But please, mouse on, squeek, squeek.....
Of course 4e is balanced. Everyone plays the same character with a different skin. Doesn't matter where your at will power comes from, you still get it....
actually, 4e was utter shit.
To each his own. For me, 3x was the low point of the series, and I've played since the basic box. My group has tried every version and we all agree that 4e is our favorite, and none of us are video game players.
"Players aren't challenged to think for themselves" in 4e? That's silly. And 3x required MUCH more character planning for later levels than 4e.
At will powers, encounter powers, daily powers, skills, and feats. 4E characters are stuffed with crunchy abilities... abilities that frequently make little sense, and have no correlation to common experience except inside a video game. Character sheets for 1st level characters can be 3 or 4 pages long, and the character creator from D&D insider is almost a necessity to make sense of it all. With so much focus on character crunchiness players all too frequently start PAGING through their character sheets for the solution to problems rather than doing the brain work... what is silly is the video game like mechanics, and focus on system crunchiness. 4E is an exercise in over complication. So, when you say something like "3x was the low point of the series", and that "you've played since basic... blah blah.." I'm going to challenge that. What your are saying doesn't correlate to reality. Whether you've played video games or not has no bearing on the fact that the mechanics are 'video game like.'
In fact, if your not into video games like WOW, Everquest, etc, you are hardly in a position to evaluate and compare the mechanics of 4e to such. Your claims appear disingenuous at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.
As far as character planning and prestige classes in 3x, I'm right there with you. At higher levels 3e was a mess. However, with POWERS for every class, combat conditions, and so on, 4E was a mess at every level. If wargame like precision in an RPG is your thing, that's great. You and your group have fun, and more power to you, but from a story telling point of view such detail is a hindrance to story progression per game session.
As of right now, I find 5e much better than 4e, although I did enjoy that for a time.
Well, I will 100% agree with you there. I played my first 5e game Sunday, and we had a blast. As I write this, I'm actually organizing my player's handbook video review which I hope to post tonight or tomorrow. 5e is awesome!
I come from a 3rd world country with almost no access to internet, online payment and such. The subscription was never an option, and we played 4e since day one, thanks to the magic of friendship outside the country. And it was never an issue. Was it crunchy? Yes. We hate it for that? No. Was it intensive on the DM? Oh yeah. And guess what, every RPG is that on its on way.
It was easier to learn and to teach, because even if it had lot of stuff, the way you handled it was well paced, and players were introduced step by step to the mechanics. They were not force to a buckload of rules. Powers, specially on the lower levels, were easy to understand, and as you can infer for my no Internet access back then, MMO were not a background to us.
Movies, cartoons, anime and manga were, though. So powers made a lot of sense. My players loved to call the powers and perform their actions, and yeah, describe a lot.
Monster creation was easy as a breeze. Now, full monster creation, like something completely unusual was trickier. But for the most part, you just browse the references, found a similar monster, tweak it, and that's it. I eventually was able to do it on the fly.
Campaigns were fast, not as faster as with 2nd ed and such, but fast. And when they were slow, we weren't suffering for it, we were having fun.
Capt, like you say on the alignment, you never really got 4e, as many others. Eventually became way to crunchy for me, but guess what, by then 3rd ed was way to crunchy for me too. I tested every D&D under the sun, and I can say now that 1st ed and BECMI / RC are my favorites. 4e will always be my nostalgic edition
I've played 3E, 3.5, 4E, 5E (just started) and Pathfinder, along with a couple other D20 based games. 4E was the simplest to implement, the easiest to give new players an entry into this genre of gaming, and was completely a D&D game. At no time did I think "gee, this just doesn't feel like D&D." Hell. This helped me get back into RPGs after a 15 year hiatus. They did an awesome job with this game. Sure, there were flaws. And yes, it was divisive. But that doesn't make it a bad game because nerd rage got its panties in a bunch.
Your experience is not shared by most people. Sorry. I would only point to the fracture of the community in response to it. Pathfinder would not be the game that it is, were it not for 4E. Furthermore, I never said 4E wasn't a good game, I said it deviated from D&D so vastly that it split the D&D community, and while the OSR was there, 4E sent players to these clone games in droves. Before 4E we were all mostly playing D&D, after 4E we weren't.
4E's design was heavily meant to be played in a VTT environment. Many of the design choices were made with that in mind. When the VTT did not materialize that spelled the death of the game.
captcorajus so its main flaw was being about 6 or 7 years ahead of it's time? Because lots of people are using VTTs now and playing over skype/hangout/twitch. I wonder how many would be willing to give it another go now that this is a more prevalent way of playing the game.
Its main flaw was its deviation from what was traditionally D&D. Every class now had 'powers' and for many, the various abilities were bizarre, and you must admit, it was near impossible to play without employing the use of a grid. Powers that 'move the enemy 1 square' or 'move an ally 1 square', etc. There is a large section of players that do not enjoy using miniatures and a grid. Thus, that entire segment of players avoided the game.
Second, all the classes were TOO balanced. It really didn't matter what class you took, the damage output by level was was predetermined. Whether you were a mage or a fighter, it made no difference.
Three, the characters were essentially 'superheroes' with superhero powers and abilities. For many, a low fantasy approach was preferred. That is, above average, skilled individuals. That was the core of D&D. You start off relatively weak, and build up in power. You don't start off a 'superhero'.
Five. I'm simply going to have to disagree with you on 4E accessibility to newer players. That was not my experience at all. I found it exceptionally difficult to indoctrinate the novice, and the character creation tools indispensable to the play of the game, especially for new people trying to create their characters. To do it from the book alone? A nightmare.
Six. Magic items became something inconsequential to the game. the game system expects magic items of a certain power level to fall into the hands of the characters, and even says to just let the players PICK what magic items they want! lol.. that's a bit crazy.. at least it is for an OSR guy like myself, and clearly I'm not alone in this.
So, for these reasons, I do not foresee people returning to 4E, especially since 5E has eclipsed the game in popularity, and the flood of new gamers coming to the hobby.
Once again, that's not to say that the game isn't good, and that you can't have fun playing it. If you're having a good time with it, and that's how you're enjoying the game, I say go for it. My core criticism goes directly to the way the edition fractured the community. It wasn't good for the hobby in many respects, and I'm happy that WOTC saw their error and with 5E worked to created a system with broader appeal.
I can agree that the grid was kind of necessary in regards to pushing an pulling effects. I enjoyed making terrains for the big fights though (See DM Scotty's DM's Craft channel). My only real gripe about 4E was the length of combats. But I was starting to really change how those were handled as well, so that a potential 2 hour fight was somewhere closer to a half an hour.
My concern is that, from what I have seen so far, 5E has a problem where a good min-maxxed character, or players who want to "game" the system and use odd pairings of abilities/feats/spells, can ruin an entire encounter by taking one action, negating any real threat to the party. Forcing the DM to work that much harder to come up with new more ridiculous ways to combat the party (in very specific ways that negate their little snowflake's powers). With 4E I was able to throw a lot of different things at them with the role combinations and adding in traps and special terrains. I'm hoping the same can be done with 5E. We'll see.
Yeah, I forgot to mention the length of combats. That drove me a bit crazy. But, once again, I think if things were automated on the VTT that would have cut the time down significantly.
Healing surges, at-will powers and resource attrition in earlier versions:
Let's be honest here. The majority of the gaming groups of earlier editions had a four minute work day, with a daily Rest after each encounter, as the Wizard had blown his load in one encounter like an adolescent getting lucky for the first time. Similarly with the Cleric. There was no differentiation beween short rests and extended rests, it was all or nothing. At least 8 hours of uniterrupted rest and only once every 24 hours. It made caster classes either ridiculously overpowered in higher levels (assuming your standard 4 minute work day) or basically unplayable (assuming no rests at all during an average dungeon crawl).
4e, while far from a perfect or even good system has substantially more ressource managment and attrition than any of the previous versions.
I've never said that 4e was a bad game. However, it played more like a miniatures game or a video game rather than an RPG. That is its main issue. While it may be semantics, its also verisimilitude. A one hour rest, or an 8 hour rest makes more sense from a logic standpoint than say.. a five minute one?
More sense? I have to disagree on that one. Why would it make more sense? The five minute rest was "let's take a quick breather, before we venture on" and allowed for a quick resource recovery (encounter powers and hit points at the cost of surges) and you could find a way to take a five minute break during a dungeon run (looting usually takes that long at least) most of the time. Taking a one hour break is simply not feasible under normal circumstances (dungeon crawl) and as such poses no real meaningful difference to an eight hour rest. Both won't be plausible while you are still in the dungeon, crawling away.
So, I ask again: why would it be more logical? Which logical standpoint are you referring to?
And please don't mistake that as a diss on your review of 4e. Different people have different opinons. But when you use the words "logic" and "logical standpoint" you move away from a personal opinion to something you claim to be objectively true or at least verifyable. That's a bold claim and requires ample justification.
TheGreatDeceiver42
Okay, I will justify my reasoning.
"So, I ask again: why would it be more logical?"
There is a fundamental incongruity in regards to the amount of resources recovered in comparison to the amount of time rested.
In five minutes you potentially get back not only almost all your hit points, but some relatively powerful character powers as well, (remember, we aren't just talking spells here). This is more than just a 'breather'.
While I understand that we are talking about a fantastic world of dragons and magic, there is an internal logic required in order to maintain verisimilitude.
From a logic stand point it is reasonable to equate a greater expenditure of resources with a longer amount of time needed to recover them. That is how the real world works, and in order to maintain suspension of disbelief in the game, some things do need to be rooted in real world mechanics.
So, yes, its my opinion, but its a sound opinion because its based on reason, information, and logic.
And certainly I encourage discussion, so no offense taken in the least. :)
Okay, that makes your point clearer to me, thanks for taking the time to answer.
I still disagree with your assessment, though. Juat look at the "powers" that you get to recover: Rain of Blows (two or three hits with your weapon), Hurricane of Steel (a furious assault with your weapon), Low Slash (a swift attack against the lower legs of your opponent). Or let's look at the more fantastical powers available: Tyranny of Flame (force your pponent to the ground and keep them pinned until they succeed their save), Spiteful Darts (fling a cloud of deadly shards at your opponent), Lightning Bolt (fling a bolt of lighting at your target).
Even the more fantastical ones are short manoeuvers, not extensive resources.
Is it really logical to have to rest for an hour to remember how to unleash a flurry of blows against your foe again? Is it really logical that you have to rest for an hour to remember to go for the hamstring of your opponent?
To me it appears that five minutes is ample time to recuperate those resources. Why would it have to take an hour?
And then there is one more thing: if a game mechanic does not add to the game, the story and/or the fun of it, it is worthless. I can see no functional difference between a one hour rest and an eight hour rest, so why have both of them in the game?
In my two 4e groups, we had plenty of scenarios, where we ran out of surges and had to abandon a dungeon and come back the next day, with enemy reinforcements already waiting for us, so Healing Surges alone certainly don't make you an unstoppable killing machine, especially with opponents like Wights who can drain your surges quite easily.
On the other hand, I can't remember a single D&D 1st, AD&D or D&D 3.5 Adventure, where we did not stop after each fight with a full 8 hour rest. We just had to ignore time associated with it, as the base scenarios were unplayable unless you were at full strength.
Comparing the two, it appears to me that 4e had the better resource management. 4e still has massive problems, but then again there hasn't been a single D&D ruleset that was any good. We all don't play D&D for the rules, we play it for the familiar settings, the nostalgia and the great memeories we have of our past gaming groups and friends, playing the game.
And sorry for my long reply, I kind of got lost in my thoughts there =/
TheGreatDeceiver42
Well... lol... all the abilities you mentioned just seem silly, and video game like. I guess for some people all of that is fun, and great! But to me its a fundamental issue with the game.
It clearly requires significant commitment to put all of that together during combat. Meh... just makes my head hurt thinking about it.
But then, there are you talking about all these really... outrageous abilities... completely nonsensical... but... rest for five minutes and I can do it again. Verisimilitude.
Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal. I just have no desire to try and design a scenario for a bunch of players with this diverse ability spread. I've done it.. DM burn out sets in quickly. This is relax time for me... too much like work to run it. lol.
I'm old school. RPGs are about being presented with problems and obstacles and overcoming them, and interacting with the NPCs through conversation and dialogue. Who has time for that when you're looking at your character sheet trying to decide whether or not to unleash flurry of blows, or Hurricane of steel?
I remember when we went from 4e to C&C. Before combats were taking most of the game session. After... a few minutes to resolve. We were all like... ahhhhhh. That's better. There's my D&D.
And that, my friend encapsulates my objections to 4e. lol.
Things change I mean did you literally want them to keep making the same D&D over and over never changing
I think i made my points clear enough. The game failed due to its extreme deviation from what came before and its wargame like precision that blurred the lines between what was in round time and free rp time.
Seems rather straight forward.
I get it. You didn’t like it but they are right s you are two !
I started back in the day and stopped at 2nd (not cause it was bad but was doing Sci-fi and White wolf and a slew of other interests) so I finally got hit with nostalgia and came back a year or so ago. Blown away with 5th. And so many people said avoid the 4th and pathfinder was better. Pathfinder is okay and so is the 4th.
This is my review:
1) pro- balance is king not Wizards. I know this seems odd but this alone makes me want to stand up and applaud. They did. It break. Thing and made it so everyone has a time in the sun. Magic is covered and you can not have to worry about magic items under preforming and if you follow the rules they keep everything out track. And they had a lot of improvement even in the add on books 📚. They even had a nice rip book in series theme players catch up so really happy with the efforts here.
2) con - the language and terminology use is different and certainly through people off but the ideas and terms are the SAME as established by D&D First though the lens of computer games. So takes some time and some may not be able to adapt
3) Pro/con - made for a digital game. So in. Digital game board it is fast and fun. ( it what you are talking about but in terms of ranges and movement. M All I would do is push back to fall back so. I one goes 100 battles in. Day. I don’t see your issues as a problem to me as most deadly fights will just as easily happen in all the editions).if they had programmed it to wirk like all the electronic playgrounds out now it would have been fine. With out that and using minis it can be complicated and eats time. It is strategic and that can be fun or not depending on how you like your fun!
You can make any game you like and you may or may not like the new lore (some was great and some sucked). however, a lot is what is inside can give DM and players inspiration and thus it is worth the time to look though it. 4 out of 5 for me(I like strategy and have played lots of games) 2 out 5 for casual and a lot of pre 4th players.
Luckily Pathfinder came along and gave folks an alternative.
True, although we went the Castles and Crusade route
I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 1982, with the Moldvey BX set. Played all the editions in which I ran as a DM. 3.5 was the best in my opinion. I had a strong group that campaigned for several years until 4th ed. came out. We tried it but, didn't last long. Not a fan. Our group broke up for several months because we were jaded because of 4th ed. The game had to much control over spell selection for leveling up etc. Healing surges didn't make sense. The only thing I liked about it was that it made first level character's survival rate a little higher. It was like video game progression. Luckily our group came back for 5th ed. and is going strong. I think 4th ed. almost killed Wizards of Coast and the D&D franchise. I compare what 4th ed. did to D&D to what The Last Jedi did to Star Wars...
Lmao you need infinite energy resource for at wills to make sense?
God some of these complaints are asinine
Just go and buy AD&D 1st Edition (my favorite), AD&D 2nd Edition or if you have to D&D 3.0/3.5.
To hell with DnD 4th Edition and DnD Next (they are so desperate aren't they).
It's Fourth not Forth fyi.
+kyle anderson ?
captcorajus It's Fourth edition not Forth. Fourth is a number in sequence Forth is something to come. Like forthcomin. Just pointing that out.
kyle anderson I understand.... my question is why are you telling me this?
+captcorajus Sorry let me start by saying i really enjoyed your video and totally agree. I'm merely nitpicking. At roughly :39 seconds in you spelled 4th as forth. Just pointing it out. No harm intended.
kyle anderson Lol... No big. I made this video two years, and 38 videos ago, and for the life of me couldn't remember where I used forth rather than 4th. Thanks.
We don't talk about the edition that must not be named... It never happened... They went straight from 3.5 to 5e... Do not destroy my reality with your heretical lies of a forbidden history!
lol