D&D Fluff Wars: 4e vs 5e

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

So, 5e has proven a hugely successful "win back the crowd" move by WoTC, as can easily be discerned by just taking a look at pretty much anywhere online, and all on the strength of its mechanics. But what about its fluff? Although mechanically it's a throwback to AD&D & 3e in a lot of ways, fluff-wise, it's pretty much as big of a change from the lore of those editions as 4e was. But, I was wondering; comparing 4e lore to 5e, which lore do you folks prefer?

For me, except in a few rare occasions, which I'd actually have to think about before I could specify, 4e fluff wins hand's down. In fact, my preferred "default" world is basically 4e but salvaging various bits and pieces I like from Pathfinder (Hags & Changelings, Kytons, etc) and 5e (Succubi as an independent fiendish race). I've actually got some huge rambling near-rants on just what it is I love about 4th edition, but I won't clutter the thread up with them just yet.

[Honest Tiefling]

I think that's not an easy question to answer. 4e's default setting was...A mess, to put it bluntly, where it tried to awkwardly merge a bunch of ideas onto an older setting. Some of these ideas I thought were great (Dragonborn, Shardmind, Elemental Chaos, Raven Queen, neutral angels), but they weren't Forgotten Realms. I am neither a fan of Forgotten Realms or steak, but I don't really think you should just start putting things I do like onto them randomly. A steak topped with cheesecake is just plain weird. But some of the ideas 4e tried were really fun and cool.

5e is just an update to older settings. I don't even know if anything about Dragonlance or Eberron has even been changed. I don't know if anything about Forgotten Realms got changed. So it is really a question of: Were you a fan of these settings, or do you prefer the ideas that 4e tried to do, but messed up by stitching it together with an established setting? My honest answer is 4e without the Forgotten Realms stuff. I am just not a fan of that setting.

[Millstone85]

4e's default setting was...A mess, to put it bluntly, where it tried to awkwardly merge a bunch of ideas onto an older setting. Some of these ideas I thought were great (Dragonborn, Shardmind, Elemental Chaos, Raven Queen, neutral angels), but they weren't Forgotten Realms.
My honest answer is 4e without the Forgotten Realms stuff.Uh, "4e without the FR stuff" was 4e's default setting, sometimes known as Points of Light.

They did awkwardly force concepts unto the 4e version of Forgotten Realms so it would be more like Points of Light. Notably, PoL had the World Axis cosmology, where the Elemental Chaos had always been the only elemental plane and the Abyss was created at its bottom, so FR had to explain how the elemental planes and the Abyss ended up tangled together. It was indeed a mess, but only for FR.

And as far as I know, the Raven Queen was never mentioned in FR lore.


I don't know if anything about Forgotten Realms got changed.Everything that happened in 4e FR is canon to 5e FR, just largely undone by an event called the Sundering.

For example, 4e FR saw Halruaa disappear from the map. The whole country was shifted into another world, leaving a wasteland of wild magic in its place. In 5e FR, Halruaa is back. But the fact that it was gone for years is now part of its mystery.

[SharkForce]

i've not been particularly impressed with *any* edition of D&D's core rulebook fluff. they've all been (probably by design) fairly generic.

now, setting-specific fluff, well... i'm not a fan of the forgotten realms. but if i was, i'd be absolutely *furious* about what they did to forgotten realms in 4e. and the fact that 5e basically has "just kidding, ignore everything we did in 4th edition, everything is back to the way it was before", tells me how well it went over with people who are FR fans.

generally speaking, i think 5e's approach of "this is what people like, i propose that we don't tell them they're having badwrongfun" is better, so to the extent that we really even *have* fluff to compare, i think 5e's is better.

but truthfully, what that really means is more along the lines of the editions before 4th being better, and more probably the original versions of the settings being better, as those are the settings that people liked enough to want them to come back in the first place. or, in other words, i think you're comparing the wrong editions... 5e did it better because it didn't try to change everything from the edition that actually had the fluff that won people over in the first place, not because the 5e fluff was particularly good.

[Kane0]

I respect 4e for trying out a different cosmology to the default great wheel, but in the end I do prefer the great wheel, especially the babushka doll aspect.

But what annoys me is 5es apparently religious adherence to FR's Sword Coast. 4e tried to awkwardly mash canon together from a bundle of sources but at least it introduced some fun stuff. How much i'd give for some fresh, new content instead of more recycled 80s/90s material that we can just read up on ourselves because it already slots right in.

[Millstone85]

Okay so, I tried to collect my thoughts on this, but the truth is that I don't even know what 5e lore is.

I had initially convinced myself that there was no 5e lore, that the PHB, MM and DMG were as neutral as it gets toward settings.

Later, I started to see them as Forgotten Realms books that didn't say their name.

But playing in FR does demand a few changes from what is described in the core books, especially if you are a paladin.

So... Can 5e be considered to have an unnamed default setting, like what eventually got known as Points of Light in 4e? That doesn't feel correct either.

[EvilAnagram]

Honestly, I'm a big fan of the Points of Light cosmology. I dislike objective, defined alignment planes, and I enjoy the more dualistic Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea, with the prime material stuck in between order and chaos.

[DragonSorcererX]

I like the Dragonborn, but I would like them to go back to the 3.5 "pseudo-template" and a Dragonspawn clone of the dragonborn for Tiamat.

Not fluff, but mechanically, I liked how elemental and magical the giants were in 4e and I find it hard to implement that in 5e without breaking coherence with the rest of the system.

The elemental archons were cool, and they are back but with another name and a different fluff (in PotA), so it's cool.

The Points of Light setting is good for a lazy DM like me, but I don't like the decadent and desolated LotR feel it has.

[Millstone85]

Something I can comment on is the inclusion of the Elemental Chaos, the Feywild and the Shadowfell, all names from the 4e World Axis cosmology, into the 5e Great Wheel.

When I first saw that, it made me happy. But now, I am disappointed.

The Elemental Chaos

In 4e, the Elemental Chaos was basically a fusion of all the Inner Planes and Limbo, none of which existed as such. The Abyss was also found in there, but it retained a distinct identity. In the Points of Light setting, that was pretty much the way the planes had always been, whereas Forgotten Realms had to explain the change in-universe.

In 5e, the Inner Planes, Limbo and the Abyss are all back. What's more, the Elemental Chaos is now described as a place where even elementals feel uncomfortable, as vast expanses of pure fire/water/etc. collide with each other.

So, what purpose does the plane serve in a 5e campaign? You can't go on an adventure in the Elemental Chaos, nor can it be the source of anything that wouldn't more easily be found in another plane. Well, except maybe for the ultimate hybrid elemental. Was that the point of Princes of the Apocalypse and, if yes, did it really help to have a whole plane for it?

The Feywild

Included for completeness, but no complaint here.

The Shadowfell

In 4e Points of Light, there were two major aspects to the Shadowfell. It was a dark reflection of the mortal world, full of necrotic energy, and it was a purgatory through which all souls would transit before being reborn among the Exalted or the Damned in a divine realm, or before being reincarnated in the mortal world again, or before reaching an even more mysterious afterlife.

Other settings struggled with that double concept. In 4e Forgotten Realms, Shar created a dark twin of Toril, called the Shadowfell, but it was not the same as the Fugue Plane. In 4e Eberron, there was Mabar the Endless Night, which was not the same as Dolurrh the Realm of the Dead, and here it is Dolurrh that got called the Shadowfell.

I don't know what to make of the Shadowfell in 5e. I guess it is mostly like the 4e FR version, a place of darkness and more darkness. Maybe you can go proto-Ravenloft / Silent Hill with it, since the Domains of Dread are still supposed to be reachable from the Shadowfell. If WotC follows on the UA with the Raven Queen, the Shadowfell might once more be about what happens when you die, which I think would be cool.

[Ralanr]

I'm honestly a bit tired of FR being the main setting currently.

And I miss shardminds.

[Honest Tiefling]

I'm honestly a bit tired of FR being the main setting currently.

And I miss shardminds.

I really don't want to have to describe FR to non-white people to be perfectly frank, nor do I like the setting. I don't even think it's a good setting for generic games due to the high powered NPCs and weird stuff from the Sundering and other catastrophes. At least it has plenty of races.

[Ralanr]

I really don't want to have to describe FR to non-white people to be perfectly frank, nor do I like the setting. I don't even think it's a good setting for generic games due to the high powered NPCs and weird stuff from the Sundering and other catastrophes. At least it has plenty of races.

Yeah but Wizards has to force new races in. Like the Dragonborn, who I actually like.

[Dr paradox]

I guess that kind of depends on what one means by "fluff?" As WRITTEN, I think I like the idea of the Points of Light setting better than forgotten realms. PoL seems better geared for players and home campaigns to take center stage, while Forgotten Realms always seemed far too managed as a brand to really make the best of the wild possibilities of D&D. I don't doubt that it's a fine setting for books and computer games (though I always found it a little too flashy for my tastes), but for Tabletop games, PoL's wild frontier seemed like a better fit.

BUT, I like the aesthetic design of 5e way better than 4e. It's both more grounded, and more expressive, in a way that evokes the best kind of fantasy fiction. The ultra-high magic "anything goes" design of 4e fluff never sat well with me, and I like the way 5e positions itself as more sword and sorcery than the almost technological take on magic that 4e presented.

Additionally, I like the monster presentation better in 5e. In 4e, the art and description mostly seemed to exist to present the creatures as "Awesome," while 5e makes them scary, which is just how I like feeling when fighting a monster. It's a kind of nebulous distinction, I know, but I like being intimidated by beasts more than I like thinking how rad they are. It's no surprise that I think the best original monster from 4e was the Banderhobb, and it seems like a great fit to have been ported to 5e.

Oh, one last thing about the art. I like the diversity in 5e's art, and the lack of cheesecake. Even when female characters are lightly dressed, they never look like they're posing. I remember being really put off by an image in one of the core 4e books that had a female paladin in that ridiculously overbuilt 4e full plate, with a boob window to present cleavage you could lose a ten foot pole in.

[Honest Tiefling]

Yeah but Wizards has to force new races in. Like the Dragonborn, who I actually like.

So instead of the dimension-hopping scaley saurials, we have the dimension-hopping scaley Dragonborn? Yeah, I guess they were forced in, but I find it hard to complain, considering...

Through I think we can all agree that all three editions encouraged horrible names. Alias? Finder? Woe? Agony? How do these people get drinks at a bar without the bar tender just deciding to quit right then and there?

[Zanos]

I really don't want to have to describe FR to non-white people
https://media.giphy.com/media/srTYyZ1BjBtGU/giphy.gif
Do go on.

[Millstone85]

Everything that happened in 4e FR is canon to 5e FR, just largely undone by an event called the Sundering.

For example, 4e FR saw Halruaa disappear from the map. The whole country was shifted into another world, leaving a wasteland of wild magic in its place. In 5e FR, Halruaa is back. But the fact that it was gone for years is now part of its mystery.I have to correct myself a little.

According to 4e lore, Halruaa was almost entirely destroyed and turned into a wild magic wasteland. The fact that much of it was actually shifted to another world was only revealed in 5e.

So it is not just the Sundering that put things back the way they were. The good old Retconning was at work too.

[Honest Tiefling]

Do go on.

I don't really want to derail the thread, but I have had awkward moments talking about the campaign to other people for that reason.

[2D8HP]

I'm not married to "The Realms" because I can barely read the type in the SCAG, and I just don't like The Factions.
Assasins and Thieves Guilds are OK, and I can't quite articulate why, but these international continent spanning Avenger/Hydra/Superfriends/CONTROL/KAOS/MI--7/SPECTRA-ish claptrap bug me.
I'd prefer a setting without the "Factions".

I like set-ups like:
“In the Year of the Behemoth, the Month of the Hedgehog, The Day of the Toad."

"Satisfied that they your near the goal of your quest, you think of how you had slit the interesting-looking vellum page from the ancient book on architecture that reposed in the library of the rapacious and overbearing Lord Rannarsh."

“It was a page of thick vellum, ancient and curiously greenish. Three edges were frayed and worn; the fourth showed a clean and recent cut. It was inscribed with the intricate hieroglyphs of Lankhmarian writing, done in the black ink of the squid. Reading":
"Let kings stack their treasure houses ceiling-high, and merchants burst their vaults with hoarded coin, and fools envy them. I have a treasure that outvalues theirs. A diamond as big as a man's skull. Twelve rubies each as big as the skull of a cat. Seventeen emeralds each as big as the skull of a mole. And certain rods of crystal and bars of orichalcum. Let Overlords swagger jewel-bedecked and queens load themselves with gems, and fools adore them. I have a treasure that will outlast theirs. A treasure house have I builded for it in the far southern forest, where the two hills hump double, like sleeping camels, a day's ride beyond the village of Soreev.

"A great treasure house with a high tower, fit for a king's dwelling—yet no king may dwell there. Immediately below the keystone of the chief dome my treasure lies hid, eternal as the glittering stars. It will outlast me and my name,"

And what first got me hooked on RPG's was this set-up:

100 years ago the sorcerer Zenopus built a tower on the low hills overlooking Portown. The tower was close to the sea cliffs west of the town and, appropriately, next door to the graveyard.
Rumor has it that the magician made extensive cellars and tunnels underneath the tower. The town is located on the ruins of a much older city of doubtful history and Zenopus was said to excavate in his cellars in search of ancient treasures.

Fifty years ago, on a cold wintry night, the wizard's tower was suddenly engulfed in green flame. Several of his human servants escaped the holocaust, saying their rnaster had been destroyed by some powerful force he had unleashed in the depths of the tower.
Needless to say the tower stood vacant fora while afterthis, but then the neighbors and the night watchmen comploined that ghostly blue lights appeared in the windows at night, that ghastly screams could be heard emanating from the tower ot all hours, and goblin figures could be seen dancina on the tower roof in the moonlight. Finally the authorities had a catapult rolled through the streets of the town and the tower was battered to rubble. This stopped the hauntings but the townsfolk continue to shun the ruins. The entrance to the old dungeons can be easily located as a flight of broad stone steps leading down into darkness, but the few adventurous souls who hove descended into crypts below the ruin have either reported only empty stone corridors or have failed to return at all.
Other magic-users have moved into the town but the site of the old tower remains abandoned.
Whispered tales are told of fabulous treasure and unspeakable monsters in the underground passages below the hilltop, and the story tellers are always careful to point out that the reputed dungeons lie in close proximity to the foundations of the older, pre-human city, to the graveyard, and to the sea.
Portown is a small but busy city 'linking the caravan routes from the south to the merchscant ships that dare the pirate-infested waters of the Northern Sea. Humans and non-humans from all over the globe meet here.
At he Green Dragon Inn, the players of the game gather their characters for an assault on the fabulous passages beneath the ruined Wizard's tower.


A quick web-search of "D&D points of light", shows me that yes the 4e default fluff does look cooler.

[toapat]

Avenger/Hydra/Superfriends/CONTROL/KAOS/MI--7/SPECTRA-ish claptrap bug me.
I'd prefer a setting without the "Factions".

Ahem

White (http://mtg.gamepedia.com/White)
Blue (http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Blue)
Black (http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Black)
Red (http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Red)
Green (http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Green)

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

Since I started this, I figured I should get off my high horse and share my own opinions. Sorry, but I have trouble mapping things out, so this is going to be pretty stream-of-consciousness rambly, and for that I apologize.

I'll be blunt: although there's some gems hidden in 5e's fluff - I really like that it's the first edition since AD&D to put the Flumph into the MM, even if I do think that I prefer Pathfinder's take on the Flumph a little more - as a general rule of thumb, I prefer 4th edition.

Quick personal history lesson: coming from rural Australia, with limited funding and unwittingly getting hooked on Warhammer Fantasy & 40K (until I realized years too late that GW was basically determined to run it into the ground), I never had a lot of a chance to bury myself as deeply into D&D as I could. I absorbed all that I could find online, including ravenously chasing after uploaded copies of official D&D stuff. I'm not a world class expert on a lot of D&D things, but I do know a few things.

Although I cut my official D&D teeth on the Forgotten Realms, the wider world beyond the small segments presented by Baldur's Gate and the Sword Coast never really drew me in - ironically, I found my imagination more excited by the vaguely 1e-inspired setting of the D&D cartoon, which was still airing in my neck of the woods when I was a kid.

So, needless to say, I found the Nentir Vale setting to push all the right buttons for me. Ancient, fallen empires, lost civilizations, a world of adventure, darkness and hope... the Forgotten Realms were wonderfully detailed, but, at the same time, they never really excited me to think about playing in - they were more a world for reading in than for playing in.

As for Dragonlance, my other major D&D insight? ...Don't get me started. The Draconians were a brilliant idea, and I did read some books for it that I enjoyed, and it does deserve credit for being both the first setting to portray Minotaurs as a civilized species and for giving us viable Half-Dwarf and Half-Goblin species. But, between Kender, Tinker Gnomes, and especially that damn backstory with the Cataclysm... no, I have no love for Dragonlance.

The Nentir Vale spoke to me in a way I couldn't really recall any other setting doing so before. How it did so? Well, let's see if I can't try and arrange my thoughts together...


Races
The addition of Dragonborn as a core PHB, especially after having lost their rather awkward "Races of the Dragon" fluff, really was a huge upside to me. When I read the "Races & Classes" preview book, I found myself nodding along with the book talking about how dragon-men were an obvious niche to fill and just inherently cool - but then, I've never been a huge fan of the bog-standard "Tolkien rip-off" flavor of the classic races, and fond of monstrous humanoids as something more than just enemies to kill.

Actually, that brings me to something else: I love the way many classic races were tinkered with and redefined in 4th edition. Each step from Basic took the "classics" a little further away from just straight-up ripoffs of Tolkien's work, but 4th edition was the cleanest cut of all - and yet they all still felt "right" to me.

Dwarves... well, okay, dwarves didn't change that much, but they still felt richer and deeper to me. I also liked the shedding of Tolkienisms like bearded females (which was mostly something that people laughed at) or rarer females.

The Elf/Eladrin split made a huge amount of sense to me; the Elf archetype in D&D has always basically been two ideas stuffed crudely into the same space, ultimately contradicting themselves. I mean, we've got a race that is simultaneously described in a very druidic fashion and supposed to be incredibly talented arcanists, despite the fact that druids and wizards are traditionally enemies. There's a reason why a Dragon Magazine article on magical plants points out that engineering life in such a way runs antithetical to druidic beliefs. A clean seperation made both stronger, as now they could stand on their own.

Gnomes! Oh, where do I start with gnomes? I never liked gnomes prior to 4th edition; they were always just lazy amalgamations of dwarf and elf traits, with no clear identity of their own. The closest we got were the Tinker Gnomes of Krynn, who were, like the Kender and Gully Dwarves, essentially a disastrous attempt at a "comic relief race". 4th edition was the first time I actually saw gnomes having any sort of value.

Half-Orcs dropping the default rape baby assumption was a huge step up. It was an ugly and limiting assumption, and didn't really add anything to the game.

Halflings finally dropping all vestiges of their hobbit ancestry and becoming new and unique was a huge leap forward, although I will admit that 3e had already made some pretty good steps in this department from their 2e portrayal.

Add in that the various new races of 4e tended to be so interesting - angels who forsook the heavens to live amongst mortals! Sapient fragments of a gate against the Far Realm! - and, all in all, 4th edition was a huge breath of fresh air in terms of racial fluff.


Monsters
I love a lot of the various lore we got for monsters in 4th edition. It's hard to really point to any one thing in particular, but a few things that stand out...

The "Playing Gnolls" article in Dragon Magazine was a huge thing for me. I always liked the idea of gnolls, but they've been traditionally one of the less represented "savage" races - despite their long history of being playable at the same time. This Dragon article gave them some of the best and most well-thought-out fluff they've ever had, and I was bitterly disappointed that it didn't make it into the Dragon magazine Annual, even when the goofy "Santa Dragon" mini-adventure did. Playing Gnolls gave this race, which has been around since at least The Orcs of Thar, and playable throughout its history, one of the deepest and most interesting writeups they ever got. Torn between the beast and the demon, lured to evil but not incapable of salvation, creatures of the wild but not necessarily savage in their nature. It gave them a flavor all of their own and let them finally be workable as "monstrous adventurers" in a way that orcs, goblinoids and even minotaurs had been before them. 5e reducing them to little more than empty shells filled with Yeenoghu's hunger was an atrocity against their 4e fluff.

The Shadar-Kai were an incredibly interesting race from surprisingly stale beginnings. I mean, let's face it; the 3.5 Shadar-Kai's fluff, from their "Ecology Of" article, is that basically they're fairies who migrated to the Plane of Shadow to get away from the icky humans, found it backfired on them, and vowed revenge on humans because they're self-righteous pricks (you know, a lot like 5e's Tritons, but then I think they've always been that way), turning to self-mutilation in order to preserve their own existence. In 4e, what were they instead? Why, humans who sought immortality, and got it... at a price they didn't expect. But did they start moaning and bitching about it? Nope! They got up and embraced it, because carpe diem, baby! Better to live fast and hard, because dying in a blaze of glory is better than fading into nothing. The 4e Shadar-Kai are awesome and work wonderfully for a planar race, even if they do get a little Cenobitish in some interpretations..

Dragons were a huge upgrade, to me. When the designers decided to stick with the idea that "no monster actually in the monster manual should be Good, else what are your reasonable expectations of using it", that led to characterization of the dragons that I found more enjoyable than what they had before. All these editions, and the Metallic Dragons made no sense to me - so, they're supposed to be the Good Dragons, and yet, everything I read about them suggests they're just as arrogant and controlling as the Chromatics. Changing them to Unaligned really was a huge step up.

More than that, the switch-over from Brass & Bronze to Iron and Adamantine was a huge improvement. The Copper Alloy Dragons never really felt that different from each other, and only slightly from their Copper Dragon kin. Iron Dragons were great as a Metallic analogue to the White Dragon; thuggish, brutish, feral critters looked down upon as the black sheep of the family. Plus, really, Adamantine/Gold/Silver/Copper/Iron just feels so much more natural than the original writeup.

And Orium Dragons were awesome. I mean, serpentine scholars of long-lost civilizations, rebuilders of ancient ruins, how is that not cool?

Angels! Oh, I loved the change in Angels. The Celestials of old were... well, they tried, but they never really stuck out to me. Part of that was just my general distaste for the alignment, part of it was bad artwork (seriously, I say this as an actual fan of anthros: the 3e Guardinals were hideous), part of it was just a generally bland feeling they gave off. 4e's Angels, however, were everything I could have wanted in a standard Celestial. 4e's design paradigm of "if it's only Good, it doesn't really warrant stats in a monster manual" led to one of the most interesting and sincerely "angelic" Angels; aloof, powerful, and concerned only with the will of the gods.

Likewise, the elementals of 4e were a huge upgrade. Prior to 4e, elementals were... well, boring. For creatures as iconically fantastical as they're supposed to be, pre-4e elementals are just bland. I don't know who they are or waht they do, and I could care less. The most interesting things in the Elemental Planes were always "sub-elementals", like Genies and Azers and Salamanders and Tritons. 4th edition changed that. It gave us so many new and varied forms of elemental, all with their own distinctive forms and abilities, and really sold the beauty of the Elemental Chaos. Best part? You could still have your vanilla elementals, both as themselves and as the awesome "elemental soldiers of destruction" that were Archons.

I think the biggest reason I loved the Elemental Planes changeover in 4e was that it made so much more interesting creatures possible. In anything prior to 4e, I can't have my Primordial Blots - embryonic, sapient planets, just waiting to be kindled into whole new worlds. I mean, how awesome is that? I can't have my Diamondstorm Reapers, which are Air-Mineral Elemental hybrids that can rip you apart in a shimmering swirl of gale-force winds and diamong teeth, because the Air and Mineral Planes don't co-mingle. We had so many unique and interesting hybrid elementals, with both "pure" elementals coming later and the archons of 4e standing from the beginning, that I can't understand why their presence is seen as a detriment and not an advantage.

I will admit that Volo's Guide fleshed out the individual giants more than 4e, but the Ordning still doesn't feel good to me. I loved their 4e fluff, where the giants are the weaker imitations of the titans, the life wrought by the Primordials themselves in imitation of the Gods. A giant is fundamentally opposed to the world of mortals because it carries within it a spark of that ancient time, when the world was raw and untamed, and it wants to shatter the laws the gods put in place to make it different.

The Slaadi... I'll be honest, if I ever thought about the old Slaadi, it was with a level of disdain. Not just because they were Chaotic Stupid incarnate, but because they couldn't even be interesting in the bargain! Modrons were Lawful Stupid to the core, it was the very foundation of who they were, but they still had an intriguing culture, and more importantly, they could be something more. Rogue Modrons were by their default fluff a little monodimensional, but still, there's a lot of ways you can explore individuality developing in a member of what was once a hive race. Poor little Nordom was one of the most awesome characters to come out of Black Isle's D&D games. But the Slaad? They were never anything more than "I'z randumb! Iz funny!" The 4e version was... well, alright, I'll be honest, they're still not the most interesting of races to me - I find their niche pretty amply filled by foulspawn, aberrations and demons, thank you - but it was still a step up from the Chaotic Stupid parasitic frogs of 1st edition.

The Fiendish races... what I have to say here is probably the most controversial thing I'm going to say in this entire post.

First and foremost: the Blood War. I hated the Blood War in AD&D. It was pretty much the Big Thing of Planescape, almost equal to Sigil and its portals in prominence, and I thought it was absolute rubbish. The basic idea of demons fighting devils was, in itself, interesting, but the setting gave it far too much importance. The worst part of it was the portrayal of the Blood War as the one thing that made the infinite Upper Planes, the bastions of goodness and right, as infinite in numbers and equally powerful if not superior to either type of fiend, tremble in their little white darned socks because they knew they'd fall if the Blood War ever stopped and the fiends could assault them.

Really? Seriously? Legions of frothing mad lunatics that can barely coordinate their own thoughts, never mind with their allies (demons) marching alongside selfish nihilists who want to stab everyone else in the back for their own profit and advancement (daemons) marching alongside a brutal tyranny divided near equally between mindless drones, treacherous underlings willing to thwart their own goals to make their immediate bosses/rivals look back, and paranoid tyrants doing their best to get rivals and skilled underlings alike killed off (devils). These are the Enemy. Standing against them, the united forces of Good - you know, the embodiments of cooperation, tolerance, friendship, camaraderie and unity? And, somehow, the united forces of Good, who cooperate with their fellows like it's second nature and who work together for the greater good, are supposed to be doomed to fail in the face of a horde of Evil that probably spends more time fighting amongst itself than fighting them? Pull the other (censored) one!

It's not as if the Blood War doesn't still exist in 4e. Demons hate Devils, who despise them in turn, and Daemons don't care who's winning so long as they get to butcher everyone else. It's just not the only damn thing in the meta-political newspapers. The Blood War sometimes goes cold as a result of the cataclysmic casualties it inflicts on the two races... that honestly makes more sense to me. It's not like it keeps me from using the "Blood War is raging" plothooks. Hell, it just means I can now use the "ceasefire is coming!" and "the Blood War is going hot again!" campaign hooks.

Speaking of Demons and Devils, I really like the changes to their overall lore. If alignment works for you, I get how they might have been fine before, but to me, they were always pretty interchangable - there's a reason that, prior to 4e, my homebrew settings would basically dump Abyss and Baator alike for the Infernum, a 3rd party setting who presented a far more interesting and compelling fiendish race than any of the three canon D&D fiends. But, 4e actually made me take an interest in them, as it finally presented very clear, non-ideology-based, differences between the two.

Devils are Fallen Angels. Corrupt angels who murdered their patron god and who have been punished by the other gods for it. They want to harvest mortal souls, using sin and suffering to fuel war machines to break their ancient bonds and take revenge on the heavens, enslaving all reality.

Demons are Corruption Elementals. Avatars of entropy and corruption manifest, living errors in reality that want to befoul everything pure. They are the virus invading the cosmos' bloodstream, and they won't stop until they have brought everything that exists to share in their own ruination.

Now, I know there are people who felt the Lawful Evil/Chaotic Evil before characterized them just fine. But, to me? This does the job far more clearly, far more elegantly, and far more interestingly.


Planes
I think I can start this by saying that what really made me understand just how much I loved the World Axis was a topic I read elsewhere. The opening poster asked a simple question: if you had to boil down your extraplanar cosmology to just 5 planes beyond the material plane, what planes would those be? Immediately, I answered that I would use the five planes of the World Axis cosmology - Astral Sea, Feywild, Shadowfell, Elemental Chaos + Abyss, and Far Realm - because these five planes contained absolutely everything I could ever hope to need in a planewalking campaign. Then I stopped, and I looked at what I wrote, and what I'd actually said finally sunk into me.

I've never really liked the Great Wheel. Why? Well, to be blunt, it falls into two reasons: grid-filling and blandness.

The Great Wheel is an enormous piece of work. The most iconic parts of it, the Outer Planes, number 17 planes in total, covering the 9 core alignments and the 8 intermediary alignments (Lawful Good/Neutral Good, Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral, and so forth) - and the only reason we didn't end up with even more is because TSR couldn't figure out how to squeeze at the least the four Neutral Intermediary Outer Planes (Neutral Good/True Neutral, Neutral Evil/True Neutral, Lawful Neutral/True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral/True Neutral) into that grind, having just run out of ideas. On top of that, you've got the 21 Inner Planes, consisting of 16 Elemental Planes, the 2 Energy Planes, the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, and the Shadow Plane.

And yet, somehow, despite all that... the Great Wheel is boring. 37 planes, and none of them really manage to be interesting. There are interesting locations, plenty of those, but they're spread over so much territory that it ultimately spoils the whole affair.

I've used this term before, and I'll use it again: what the Great Wheel boils down to, overly, is "grid filling". It's a rather sterile way of looking at a project, believing that gaps have to be filled just because they exist, and is the biggest issue I have with the cosmology as a whole. Leaving out alignment's role in the whole mess, it's quite obvious even from a glance that the Great Wheel was made to fill out a list of checkboxes, and that just gives the whole thing a sterile sort of feeling.

The World Axis, in comparison was organic. It was fluid, it flowed smoothly, it felt real, not forced into place to make up for everything. You had the classical but never really explored by D&D Worlds of the Dead and the Fae. You had the Astral Sea, which holds all the dominions of the gods together - and the dominions are brilliant, because they let you recreate and emulate the better ideas of the Great Wheel, like the clockpunk world-engine of Mechanus, without having to force them into fitting the framework of alignment. You have the awe-inspiring Elemental Chaos, with some of the most fantastic vistas ever seen in D&D and which would have been impossible under the old cosmology.

All in all, I just like the World Axis so much more than the Great Wheel. I'll give the 5e version of it credit for trying to make the Elemental Planes more interesting by adding the Chaos as a buffer between them and the Outer Planes, making them physically coterminus, and styling them more after Exalted's Poles of Creations, but... well, frankly, the World Axis just does it so much better.

This is particularly noticeable when one gets to the Elemental Planes. A huge issue with the Elemental Planes is... well, they're homogenous to the point of being dull as dishwater. Way back in 1st edition, each Elemental Plane was effectively nothing more than an infinite 3-dimensional expanse of its chosen element. Even TSR realised just how boring this was and started sneaking in bits and pieces of other elements, so you could have things like the famous City of Brass on the Plane of Fire. Even then, it's still a blatant fact that the Elemental Planes are mostly "gotcha!" fuel - the City of Brass, the most interesting place I can name from the Plane of Fire, is an enormous city-state of white-hot brass with parks of burning trees and fields of ash amongst lakes of ocean. A stunning vista... and immediately fatal if you don't just happen to have the magical trinkets needed to survive here.

The World Axis doesn't have this problem.

As a whole, the World Axis cosmology is built from the ground up to serve a singular purpose: being fun. "Is this a place you can realistically go and adventure?" is the defining question asked repeatedly through the development of this cosmology, and you can tell, because it works. There's a breathing, organic nature to the whole affair, resulting in a cosmology that's easy to grasp and vistas that inspire and excite.

Ironically, even though the Great Wheel actively said that real-world pantheons had their various city-state dominions across the multiverse, the World Axis feels more like an actual mythos that people would really come up with. You have the primordial chaos that separates into the worlds of Spirit (Astral Sea) and Matter (Elemental Chaos), you have the Land of the Fae (Feywild), the Land of the Dead (Shadowfell), the Realm of Evil (Abyss) and the Place That Should Not Be (Far Realm). It's a simple, elegant formula, with so much potential to explore and practically calling out to be fleshed out.

Let's start somewhere fairly close to home. The best part of the Feywild and Shadowfell combined, in my eyes, is that they make the material plane so much more magical. Portals to everywhere in the cosmos is Sigil's schtick, and I'm comfortable with that (or with whatever multiversial metropolis I replace Sigil with, if I feel there's too much baggage to put up with this time), but the World Axis brings to life the idea of planar rifts and gates and weaves them into the very fabric of the landscape. The materium of the World Axis is a world where you can enter a shining, faerie-haunted wood just by stepping through a ring of mushrooms or walking under an ancient tree whilst whistling a woodcutter's song. It's a place where you know that if you have the courage, you can smear a handprint of your own blood on the first headstone in the cemetery, close your eyes, and open them to find yourself in the land of the dead. It's a place where shining cities can rise from the banks of frozen rivers in the deepest winter, vanishing with the first dawn of spring, and where the dead may hold midnight revelries in the dark woods.

The Feywild is such an obvious fit for any fantasy setting I'm baffled how D&D didn't have it before. Then I remind myself that it did, it's just the "land of the fae" concept was shared over at least three planes, Elysium, Arborea and Ysgard, and so I never had the clearest "picture" of how to fit it together. It's a wondrous place, where beauty, terror, glamor and madness all boil together into a single glorious whole. It's a land where shining cities of magical elves fight desperate battles against hideous formorians, promoted by this edition into magical and masterful giants whose deformed minds and twisted bodies don't stint their ambition. It's an untamed wilderness in which the most primordial beasts roam, even those that have long passed from the world of mortals. The Isles of Dread and of the Ape lie here. Formorians plot to conquer the lands of faeries and mortals alike from their subterranean fastness of Mag Tureah. The great Murkendraw, a swamp big enough to swallow cities, sprawls for unchecked miles, its shadowy depths home to warring tribes of goblins and plotting covens of hags. It's a strange land, an alien land, full of whimsy and lunacy - and it can be just a step away from the mortal world.

The Shadowfell, meanwhile, fills another obvious gap that the Great Wheel didn't have: the mythical Land of the Dead. Unlike its closest counterpart, the Negative Energy Plane, this is not a "gotcha" world, where stepping in is death. Nor is it a simple "the mundane world, but unrelentingly dark" like the Shadow Plane. This is the material world cast in a darkened looking glass, a place of gloom and the macabre, but also not without its charms. Cities of the undead, marching legions of souls moving with absolute silence towards their judgement by the Lord of the Dead and their progression to the next stage of their afterlives, dark metropoli full of lunatics and monsters, all of these can be found here. It can be a place for horror, or a place to let your Tim Burton fan out. The sample locations here are intriguing enough - The House of Black Lanterns; an ancient roadside inn in the depths of the Shadowfell, the Plain of Sighing Stones, the Nightwyrm Fortress that guards secrets and treasures until the end of time, Moil, Letherna, and the fantasy expy of Dark City that is Gloomwrought - but it's also just begging for new locations and creepy events to encounter. Especially since it's eaten the concept of the "Domains of Dread" used in Ravenloft.

If I want to run an expy of Cold Stark House, a Warhammer short story revolving around an isolated mansion full of lunatics who endlessly plot against each other, loving and murdering and scheming, all of them victims of a curse that draws unwitting guests to become puppets in the eternal melodrama of the depraved undying noble who watches the madness and laughs from his bed, I can. Far more easily than I could have done in the Great Wheel. Maybe there's a plane I could have put it on, I'm not sure. In the World Axis? It fits the Shadowfell like a silken glove.

The Shadowfell also stands head and shoulders over the old Plane of Shadow for me because of a simple reason; it's nowhere near as monodimensional as its "basic" planes. The Plane of Negative Energy was basically the ultimate "Gotcha!" Inner Plane, being a featureless, empty void that sucked out levels by the second. The Plane of Shadow was essentially a mirror image of the material world, but if you turned off all of the lights. The Shadowfell is more than the sum of its parts... still dark, gloomy, creepy, and full of dead people, but there's a mythic feel to it. When I think of the Shadowfell, I think of the scenes from Disney's Night on Bald Mountain, where ghosts are rising from their graves, with a dash of Tim Burton's gothic works, like Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas.

The Elemental Chaos! Oh, how I love it so. When elemental matter all swirls together without rhyme or reason, the most fantastic vistas are born. Forests of silver trees with crackling lightning dancing amidst their boughs growing on the banks of a lake of liquid ice, as an island volcano that spews liquid metal drifts majestically through the skies above. The Elemental Planes of old had always been forced to have some admixture to make them remotely interesting; the Chaos simply accepts that mixing them altogether works out best. The Brazen Bazaaar, a traveling caravan of efreeti merchants that roams the planes, that's something that would have fit the old Plane of Fire.

But Canaughlin Bog, a continent-sized island covered in swamp where hillocks of ice and stone jut from waters that swirl in physics-defying currents over caustic mud? Nowhere in the old Elemental Wheel could I have that - oh, I wish I could post its picture from "The Plane Below"; a deep, dark swamp, where normal and crystal-encrusted trees stand amongst lush, green water with icy mounds bobbing merrily across its depths. Gloamnull, the perfect place for a fantasy noir story; a cursed city of genasi doomed by a pact with Dagon, a giant floating city locked under eternal rainstorms that drifts eerily across the sky. The Riverweb, a multi-layered web-like structure of free-floating waterways that stretches in all directions - I couldn't have this in the old Elemental System, and this is much cooler than just an infinite expanse of water that goes in all three dimensions.

And, even with all of this, the Elemental Chaos is no "gotcha!" world. There are places where magical protection is necessary, but the odds of dying just by stepping through the portal aren't 100%. Plus, the elemental molding attribute, the ability to reshape the elements around you through sheer force of will, that's awesomely flavorful. The Elemental Chaos is a world where a sage can turn a pebble into a tree and freeze a fireball solid... to me, that just screams fantasy.

The Abyss? Well, it hasn't really changed, beyond being literally at the bottom of the Chaos, and I honestly like it that way. I'll touch on the whole mess with demons and devils later in this rant, but the idea of the Abyss as this very literal sinkhole of creation, an infected wound in reality itself that is trying to devour all things above it and spread until it has consumed everything in its own putrescence... that's a powerful image, to me.

The Astral Sea. Perhaps my favorite of the reimagined planes. The old Astral Plane was... well, honestly, it was just kind of dull. I know, it had all the dead gods floating in it and the githyanki raiders and stuff, but still, it never came off as more than a glorified speedway around the Great Wheel. The Astral Sea, on the other hand, just has so much more of an epic feel to it - and I think that's because it uses itself to house the best parts of the old Great Wheel. If I want to go to Mechanus, I can - I sail the Astral Sea, enter what looks like a mere tower or floating city from the outside, and inside is an entire world of clockwork gizzards. Gears the size of continents rotating through their endless cycles, everything that made Mechanus of old interesting, but allowed to explore itself as something more. The Astral Sea is still the way to get to many other planes, but since there's no longer a grid to fill, I can flesh out the Astral Sea with all the dominions I want there to be.


Misc
The settings outside of Nentir Vale... well, I can't really call myself able to play that game either way, seeing as how I didn't have the huge investment in Forgotten Realms, Eberron or Dark Sun that others did.

Honestly, I kind of liked the Spellplague and the loss of many of the more "novel-gluing" characters for FR, but I can understand people being annoyed at what they saw as a rather hamfisted rehash of the Time of Troubles.

For Dark Sun, though, I was pretty much in favor of everything that happened there. Tweaking defiling into a constant temptation for all casters felt so much more right than just making it another wizard subclass. As for the loss of mul sterility... I'll be honest; I've never seen any believable justification for there not being half-dwarves that didn't boil down to "but Tolkein never had them!" Beyond that, I also object to grimderp - a bit of darkness or edginess can do wonders, especially in the right setting, but making muls sterile and usually kill their moms in childbirth felt like just trying too hard to be edgy.

One of the things I loved was the little tweaking between gods and their followers. We have Invokers, which are essentially divine sorcerers come prophets, who draw upon the most fundamental energies of a patron deity, and we have Avengers, who practice esoteric rituals as, literally, "holy killers". And none of this is alignment based. You can have an Avenger devoted to Sune or Wee Jas or any other god of beauty who's out to kill all sources of ugliness. You can have an Invoker of Lolth or Lamashtu who is Good aligned and seeks to redeem her patron goddess. You couldn't have that in 3e or AD&D - although, to be fair, you can still kind of have it in 5e, as it at least maintained 4e's attitude of "mechanically enforced alignment sucks and is counterproductive for interesting characters".

I don't know if I can legitimately talk about the gods or not, but 4e had some really awesome god ideas. Torog, in particular, was incredible. The King That Crawls, master of the Underdark, the force that makes even Lolth tremble in her little webbed stockings. And the picture of him was just... eurgh! Horrific, but cool.

Still on the cosmological scale, the Primal Spirits from 4e were an awesome addition to the pantheon of gods, elementals, fiends and faeries. In all honesty, I never really liked the druid; like the monk, it reeked of token culturalism, an almost obligatory "Celtic" addition alongside the monk's "oriental" addition, but whereas the monk filled its own niche as a bad-ass barefist kung fu warrior, the druid was just an awful jumbled up mess, not quite sure if it was some sort of wilderness wizard or a nature priest. What really made it seem like a tacked-on addition was when actual nature-god priests became a thing in their own right, leaving you wondering just what the hell was the point of the druid.

The Primal Spirits answered that. They finally presented an "Old Religion" that really felt different to just "the resident rural deities" of the bog-standard pantheon. They gave a flavor to druids that made them stand apart, rather than just feeling like they were given the barest of handwaves to explain it.

[hamishspence]

The "Playing Gnolls" article in Dragon Magazine was a huge thing for me. I always liked the idea of gnolls, but they've been traditionally one of the less represented "savage" races - despite their long history of being playable at the same time. This Dragon article gave them some of the best and most well-thought-out fluff they've ever had, and I was bitterly disappointed that it didn't make it into the Dragon magazine Annual, even when the goofy "Santa Dragon" mini-adventure did. Playing Gnolls gave this race, which has been around since at least The Orcs of Thar, and playable throughout its history, one of the deepest and most interesting writeups they ever got. Torn between the beast and the demon, lured to evil but not incapable of salvation, creatures of the wild but not necessarily savage in their nature. It gave them a flavor all of their own and let them finally be workable as "monstrous adventurers" in a way that orcs, goblinoids and even minotaurs had been before them. 5e reducing them to little more than empty shells filled with Yeenoghu's hunger was an atrocity against their 4e fluff.


"Santa dragon" was in Dungeon Annual, not Dragon Annual. Dragon Annual got Demonomicon: Yeenoghu with a lot of gnoll fluff too - but it's a pity it focused only on gnolls as adversaries and not on playing them.

[EvilAnagram]

snip

This is why I get annoyed by 4e haters. The 4e fluff set fire to the imagination in a way that rehashing the old cosmology just didn't. Without the constraints of arbitrarily sticking to old ideas because they're old, the writers were able to create amazing, inventive worlds that continue to inspire good games.

[Ralanr]

"Santa dragon" was in Dungeon Annual, not Dragon Annual. Dragon Annual got Demonomicon: Yeenoghu with a lot of gnoll fluff too - but it's a pity it focused only on gnolls as adversaries and not on playing them.

I guess Wizards felt that one of the monster races needed to fill the "always chaotic evil" classification since Drow and Orcs have been slowly getting out of that for years.

I mean, it's not like we have beings that are literal entities of these alignments.

Oh wait...

[SharkForce]

This is why I get annoyed by 4e haters. The 4e fluff set fire to the imagination in a way that rehashing the old cosmology just didn't. Without the constraints of arbitrarily sticking to old ideas because they're old, the writers were able to create amazing, inventive worlds that continue to inspire good games.

it is one thing to invent something new from nothing. no problems there. it is another thing entirely to change the thing that already exists and which they like into something else. it is the difference between painting a new painting over a blank canvas, and taking someone's favourite work of art and painting a new painting over it. the new art might be good, but it's still not cool to wreck someone's favourite painting instead of using a blank canvas like a decent person would do.

also, quite frankly i wasn't all that impressed by the 4e fluff i read. it didn't seem particularly inspiring for me at least (different strokes for different folks i guess). and all too often their crunch didn't do a good job of supporting what fluff there was.

[EvilAnagram]

it is one thing to invent something new from nothing. no problems there. it is another thing entirely to change the thing that already exists and which they like into something else. it is the difference between painting a new painting over a blank canvas, and taking someone's favourite work of art and painting a new painting over it. the new art might be good, but it's still not cool to wreck someone's favourite painting instead of using a blank canvas like a decent person would do.

also, quite frankly i wasn't all that impressed by the 4e fluff i read. it didn't seem particularly inspiring for me at least (different strokes for different folks i guess). and all too often their crunch didn't do a good job of supporting what fluff there was.

I see your point there, and screwing with the Forgotten Realms cosmology was a pretty terrible idea, but I think the 4e fluff did a great job presenting different thematic approaches to the different roles within a party, and it created a world system that was fluid and expansive enough to encapsulate the various adventures a table might want to explore.

[SharkForce]

I see your point there, and screwing with the Forgotten Realms cosmology was a pretty terrible idea, but I think the 4e fluff did a great job presenting different thematic approaches to the different roles within a party, and it created a world system that was fluid and expansive enough to encapsulate the various adventures a table might want to explore.

from my perspective, certain roles were eliminated entirely. i understand *why* they did it... the way casters were in other editions of D&D, it was *really hard* to balance them with fighters in the long term. 3.x certainly was the worst for that, but it was true in other editions as well, just to a lesser extent (a 2nd edition fighter was comparatively much stronger than a 3.x fighter - and much more worthwhile to buff, for that matter - but a 2nd edition wizard was still completely bonkers OP once you got to higher levels).

and so most spellcasters got nerfed down to being magical fighters (and most martials got buffed up to i can't believe it's not magic! versions of themselves). oh, they were different *kinds* of magical fighters. there was the AoE-focused magical fighter, the defense-focused magical fighter, the single-target damage-focused magical fighter, and the healing magical fighter... but they were pretty much all magical fighters (or, as i said, i can't believe it's not magic! fighters).

and when you do that, it's a heck of a lot easier to balance, because there's a lot less variation in what different classes can do. and i even agree with some of the decisions (like giving fighters a bunch of cool things they can do, that's a great idea, i just wish it didn't come paired with the idea that spellcasters need to lose most of the things i liked about them and focus almost entirely on in-combat things they can do just like the warriors were).

it wasn't a terrible game. but it sure didn't feel like the game i'd come to love to me.

but again, that's more of a crunch thing, which is mostly only relevant to the topic to the extent that i feel like the crunch often did a poor job of supporting the fluff.

[Honest Tiefling]

it is one thing to invent something new from nothing. no problems there. it is another thing entirely to change the thing that already exists and which they like into something else. it is the difference between painting a new painting over a blank canvas, and taking someone's favourite work of art and painting a new painting over it. the new art might be good, but it's still not cool to wreck someone's favourite painting instead of using a blank canvas like a decent person would do.

This. I agree with Shadow_in_the_Mist, except for the idea that the spell plague. Forgotten Realms was fine for people who aren't me. They loved it. I don't like it. If you staple Nentir Vale onto it, those who liked the Realms the way they are will get annoyed, and those who want nothing to do with it will get annoyed that a perfectly good setting was ruined by not getting expanded upon in its own right.

I don't like steak, but tossing it onto sushi and ruining both really isn't helping.

Really, the whole mess seemed more like they realized they didn't have the Forgotten Realms OR Greyhawk brand on the setting, so slap that baby on for brand recognition! Screw your original ideas, that logo will move copies!

[EvilAnagram]

from my perspective, certain roles were eliminated entirely. i understand *why* they did it... the way casters were in other editions of D&D, it was *really hard* to balance them with fighters in the long term. 3.x certainly was the worst for that, but it was true in other editions as well, just to a lesser extent (a 2nd edition fighter was comparatively much stronger than a 3.x fighter - and much more worthwhile to buff, for that matter - but a 2nd edition wizard was still completely bonkers OP once you got to higher levels).

and so most spellcasters got nerfed down to being magical fighters (and most martials got buffed up to i can't believe it's not magic! versions of themselves). oh, they were different *kinds* of magical fighters. there was the AoE-focused magical fighter, the defense-focused magical fighter, the single-target damage-focused magical fighter, and the healing magical fighter... but they were pretty much all magical fighters (or, as i said, i can't believe it's not magic! fighters).

and when you do that, it's a heck of a lot easier to balance, because there's a lot less variation in what different classes can do. and i even agree with some of the decisions (like giving fighters a bunch of cool things they can do, that's a great idea, i just wish it didn't come paired with the idea that spellcasters need to lose most of the things i liked about them and focus almost entirely on in-combat things they can do just like the warriors were).

it wasn't a terrible game. but it sure didn't feel like the game i'd come to love to me.

but again, that's more of a crunch thing, which is mostly only relevant to the topic to the extent that i feel like the crunch often did a poor job of supporting the fluff.

That is entirely crunch. I still felt like a wizard when my mage mind controlled a spider web golem in and out of two firey zone effects I'd created over the previous rounds, single-handedly preventing a TPK. I still felt like a wilde mage when my chaos bolt killed every single minion guarding a corrupt guard captain, or when my attempts to put out a fire caused more fire to erupt. I still felt like a powerful warrior when my fighter hopped into a swarm of six nasties and pinned them all beneath a rain of blows. I still felt like a bard when my skald realized he'd been led into a trap and Errol Flynned his way out with a minor teleport and some swordplay.

The fact that the crunch did not fit past conceptions of what these roles were does not mean that it did not fit the fluff of the classes. And as you said, your dissatisfaction with 4e as a game is off-topic.

[Knaight]

So... Can 5e be considered to have an unnamed default setting, like what eventually got known as Points of Light in 4e? That doesn't feel correct either.

I usually use the term "implicit setting" for this, and 5e absolutely has one. Take the very specific magic system and what that says about how magic works in the world, consider the equipment section and what that implies about available technology (not to mention what it says about available plants and animals), consider both the use of monsters as a big thing at all and the specific monsters in use, look at the terrains that do and don't get detailed, glance through the races section, so on and so forth. All that, on its own says a lot about the setting, and that's without bringing in the more overt elements - the decision to have planes and what those planes are, the very existence of the underdark, and the inclusion of a pantheon come to mind. D&D is not and has never been a generic fantasy system, there has always been an implicit setting, and while that setting does vary by edition and is more overtly specific in some editions than others it's always been there.

As for the specific settings, while I don't particularly like any of them (elves, dwarves, monsters, other planes, etc. are all things that make me less interested in a fantasy work, not more), I dislike the 4e setting least of the implicit settings. The Feywild and Shadowfell are emblematic of the best planar system I've seen in D&D, with the bloat of the great wheel all but excised. It acknowledges the weirdness of its setting and shows cultures adapting to it (e.g. the armor list and the heavy use of monster parts for paragon and epic armors) instead of having that weirdness alongside a set of cultures that minimally interact with it and never adapt to it.

[D.U.P.A.]

I liked some ideas from 4e cosmology, like Avernus being basically a planet in Astral sea, making it somehow equivalent to space traveling.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

"Santa dragon" was in Dungeon Annual, not Dragon Annual. Dragon Annual got Demonomicon: Yeenoghu with a lot of gnoll fluff too - but it's a pity it focused only on gnolls as adversaries and not on playing them.

Sorry, but I'm afraid you're mistaken: The Longest Night, the Xmas-themed mini-adventure against a Red Dragon, appears in Dragon Annual, from page 106 to page 110, between the D&D Gladiators article and the Playing Dhampyr article.

[SharkForce]

That is entirely crunch. I still felt like a wizard when my mage mind controlled a spider web golem in and out of two firey zone effects I'd created over the previous rounds, single-handedly preventing a TPK. I still felt like a wilde mage when my chaos bolt killed every single minion guarding a corrupt guard captain, or when my attempts to put out a fire caused more fire to erupt. I still felt like a powerful warrior when my fighter hopped into a swarm of six nasties and pinned them all beneath a rain of blows. I still felt like a bard when my skald realized he'd been led into a trap and Errol Flynned his way out with a minor teleport and some swordplay.

The fact that the crunch did not fit past conceptions of what these roles were does not mean that it did not fit the fluff of the classes. And as you said, your dissatisfaction with 4e as a game is off-topic.

to be clear: I am not dissatisfied with 4e as a game. I've played 4e and even enjoyed it with a group of friends (though I suspect that had at least as much to do with the group of friends as the game). I'm dissatisfied with it as an edition of D&D. and I notice all of things you talked about are very restricted to in-combat. 4e killed things like long-lasting charms, spells that can last for hours or even days in general, and took a lot of stuff that was difficult to quantify out. for example, something like the enlarge/reduce spell where it basically just says you can make something bigger or smaller, tells you how the size and weight change, gives a brief mention of how it impacts damage when you cast it on someone, and then leaves the rest up to you to figure out I feel would not have fit in 4th edition.

[Millstone85]

The Elf/Eladrin split made a huge amount of sense to me; the Elf archetype in D&D has always basically been two ideas stuffed crudely into the same space, ultimately contradicting themselves. I mean, we've got a race that is simultaneously described in a very druidic fashion and supposed to be incredibly talented arcanists, despite the fact that druids and wizards are traditionally enemies. There's a reason why a Dragon Magazine article on magical plants points out that engineering life in such a way runs antithetical to druidic beliefs. A clean seperation made both stronger, as now they could stand on their own.Weren't wood elves and high elves already among the basic divisions of the race before 4e?

And I think 4e actually made the problem worse, by introducing an entire plane that was both the triumph of wild life and an arcane spellcaster's utopia. Interestingly, wood elves were said to have severed their ties with the Feywild, while high elves continued to live between it and the Material. I guess wood elves saw the Feywild as a giant version of a wizard's garden.

And now the 5e DMG suggests to make "eladrin" and "high elf" no longer synonymous. Yes, I know that has been the case before, when there was no Feywild and "eladrin" was a type of celestial. Well, the 5e DMG wants eladrins to be elves mostly encountered in the Feywild.


I guess Wizards felt that one of the monster races needed to fill the "always chaotic evil" classification since Drow and Orcs have been slowly getting out of that for years.

I mean, it's not like we have beings that are literal entities of these alignments.

Oh wait...Sorry but I do believe we need monsters that are truly monstrous, including humanoid ones. I also think they should be encounterable in the wilderness or on a battlefield without your adventurers immediately having to worry about planes of cosmic evil.

And I found it smart of WotC to go with the demonic spawn angle. Yes, these creatures have the mind of evil incarnate, but they haven't necessarily seen a true demon recently.

But maybe gnolls were the wrong candidates for this. I am surprised so many here want to befriend one.


I usually use the term "implicit setting" for this, and 5e absolutely has one. Take the very specific magic system and what that says about how magic works in the world, consider the equipment section and what that implies about available technology (not to mention what it says about available plants and animals), consider both the use of monsters as a big thing at all and the specific monsters in use, look at the terrains that do and don't get detailed, glance through the races section, so on and so forth. All that, on its own says a lot about the setting, and that's without bringing in the more overt elements - the decision to have planes and what those planes are, the very existence of the underdark, and the inclusion of a pantheon come to mind. D&D is not and has never been a generic fantasy system, there has always been an implicit setting, and while that setting does vary by edition and is more overtly specific in some editions than others it's always been there.D&D may never have been generic fantasy, but how does the 5e PHB rate as generic D&D fantasy?


I liked some ideas from 4e cosmology, like Avernus being basically a planet in Astral sea, making it somehow equivalent to space traveling.The Astral Sea had color veils just like the Astral Plane has color pools. Going through the veil of Celestia, you would appear on the shiny waters surrounding a mountainous island. Going through the veil of Baator, you would appear in the sky and, very symbolically (or comically), fall toward the plains of Avernus, unless you came with a proper aircraft. But yeah, you would indeed get a glimpse of a regular round planet during your descent, and I liked that.

[Ralanr]

Gnolls can be one of the more interesting humanoid animal races.

Or it's because of furries. Idk, I'm probably biased because I used them as a main race in my novel.

[Honest Tiefling]

Or it's because of furries. Idk, I'm probably biased because I used them as a main race in my novel.

If you let that stop you from using an interesting race, you probably don't want to do a google search on drow...

[Ralanr]

If you let that stop you from using an interesting race, you probably don't want to do a google search on drow...

Stop me? I wrote it years ago. Still editing actually.

I hate editing.

[Honest Tiefling]

Stop me? I wrote it years ago. Still editing actually.

I hate editing.

So...Does this story have a title or something? Or is that being worked on as well?

[hamishspence]

Sorry, but I'm afraid you're mistaken: The Longest Night, the Xmas-themed mini-adventure against a Red Dragon, appears in Dragon Annual, from page 106 to page 110, between the D&D Gladiators article and the Playing Dhampyr article.

Fair enough - I thought mini-adventures didn't belong in Dragon, only in Dungeon. I remembered there being multiple winter-themed adventures in Dungeon - didn't realise that wasn't one of them.

[Ralanr]

So...Does this story have a title or something? Or is that being worked on as well?

Hyena Queen.

[NecroDancer]

I'm a big fan of planescape so I love the great wheel (and how they give some lore to the planes). However the 4e lore has some nice things like the Raven Queen, Asmodeus, the Primordials, and the warlock pact ideas.

The main problem of 4e lore is that they tried to force it into every setting.

I also miss the blood war even though it's stupid I still think it's awesome if they tweak it a bit (such as what the heck the celestials are doing during it?).

4e had some good ideas like every setting but those ideas become annoying when they are forced into every other setting when they didn't need to be.

[Creyzi4j]

And as far as I know, the Raven Queen was never mentioned in FR lore.


I think I remember in the Netherese trilogy some barbarian named Sunbright.
I think it wasentioned on their tribe worshipping the Raven Queen

[Knaight]

D&D may never have been generic fantasy, but how does the 5e PHB rate as generic D&D fantasy?

It's pretty standard. There are a few ways it's less medieval Europe focused (e.g. the easy inclusion of elephants), there's a few ways it's marginally less of a Tolkien ripoff (a slightly broader set of races and classes in core, from a thematic perspective), but other than that it's pretty much the standard D&D setting, where 4e was a bit more of a departure.

[Honest Tiefling]

I think I remember in the Netherese trilogy some barbarian named Sunbright.
I think it wasentioned on their tribe worshipping the Raven Queen

According to this (http://www.sageadvice.eu/2017/03/18/is-the-raven-queen-part-of-forgotten-realms-lore/), she is not, and the proper name for the Nentir Vale setting is the Dawn War setting.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

So, I've been browsing the 5e Monster Manual "Let's Read" thread, and it reminded me of some of the things I really liked about 4e's fluff that I much prefer to 5e's, especially once I checked out Wizards Presents: Worlds & Monsters for confirmation.

For starters, I'm a huge fan of how the Nentir Vale setting was presented. It's helped me finally cement my relationship with the "Classic Settings":
Greyhawk has always felt to me like it insists on being an "Alt Medieval Europe" setting with grudging nods to the fantastical elements. I get that it's popular - Game of Thrones is a more modern example of the same kind of fantasy setting - but to me, this feels boring: it's pretty much the go-to approach for any fantasy setting and I'm tired of it. I want something more fantastical out of m D&D. Dragonlance is better than Greyhawk because it actually feels like someone tried to assimilate the fantasy into the setting, but hindered by the fact that the setting's underlying moral philosophy and theology are so screwed up. Forgotten Realms starts with the "Fantasy Medieval Europe" as a base, but then embrace its fantasy side, which is why I actually like it best of the three.

None of them, however, are equal to the Nentir Vale in my eyes. The Vale was built from the ground up taking what many players assume about D&D into account - it's not "Medieval Europe with magic tacked on", it's a world all of its own, alive and breathing and making sense. It's very much like how Eberron was made, and that's why the Nentir Vale shines through.

Speaking of which, the Nentir Vale fluff on the ground level really gets my respect because it pulls off being done abstracly very well. Nothing is directly forced into being used, but it paints a picture of the world and the things in it, really building up something that I can enjoy and take for my own.

Especially locations. Why the hell do I care for Historically Accurate Castle #237 when I can have Hrak Azuul, the Fungal Forest? I cut my eyeteeth on The Realms of Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid; forests of fungi, rivers that rain upside down, things like this are what I want to see in a fantasy world.

This will probably surprise folks, seeing as how I mentioned my hate for the 5e gnolls before, but I actually quite like the story of the fall of Nerath. What I love about 4e is that it supports the idea that gnolls can be good OR evil, even if most of them do fall to evil, which is actually in-line with their portrayal from 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions. Plus, it's the first time that gnolls have ever been the big bad guy! Normally, empire-breaking hordes are left to orcs or, at best, hobgoblins; the description of Nerath's final days actually makes me think a little of Warhammer, and it really paints a compelling picture that gnolls can be something more than just orcs with a reskin and a couple more hit points to burn.

Picking a topic at random, let's talk about giants: I loved the 4e take on giants. The idea that these are all different models of humanoid created by the Primordials as their assistants is just so much deeper than "they're really big beings who've been around for ever". They're not united - far from it - but they share a fundamental understanding because they were all born from the same source. Titans are all but juvenile primordials themselves; a glacier that walks, a mountain that gets up and goes for a stroll, a living storm bound to the earth, and giants are the weaker, watered down versions. In a way, this makes even the humble hill/mountain giant something to respect. Far from a mindless, overweight caveman, it's being of elemental earth and stone, slowly growing over the decades until it reaches the power of the Earth Titan. There can never really be any peace between giants and mortals, but there can be respect.

This is far deeper, in my opinion, than a backstory that amounts to being given created by a one god and given a divine pecking order that ultimately boils down to "biggest is best" when it comes to inter-giant relationships.

Furthermore, this lore builds on the traditional dwarf/giant enmity and gives it a reason: the gargantuan buildings and monuments of the giants were actually constructed predominantly by legions of dwarf slaves. It's not so much that giants are incapable of constructing anything else themselves as that some fundamental spiritual flaw, born of their connection to the Elemental Chaos, prevents them from fully realizing it without the aid of mortal minions. This gives giants and dwarves a real reason to hate each other and war with each other: the giants want dwarves back because they literally can't rebuild their empire without them, and the dwarves refuse to be slaves.

This also leads to a minor elemental race getting a much-needed revamp. In older editions, the azers were fire elementals who just so happened to look like dwarves. Not very interesting. 5e's version is literally pilfered from Pathfinder, making them elementals slash self-aware constructs who just so happen to look like fire-haired dwarves made of bronze. Again, kind of dull. In 4e? Azers look like dwarves... because they were dwarves, once. Generations of slavery to fire giants contaminated their souls; something about their masters poisoned their bodies and minds and hearts, until they became just like them where it mattered most. Not necessarily compelled to serve them, but remade in their image.

To me, that's a powerful image and fertile ground to build from - especially as fire giants have traditionally been described as looking like black-skinned, red-haired dwarves scaled up to enormous proportions. Imagine tying the two races even further together; what if Fire Giants no longer reproduce on their own and instead the most powerful and authoritative of Azers grow strong enough, turning first into Fire Giants and then into Fire Titans, god-kings and queens literally made in the image of their people, but dependent upon preserving their people in order to maintain their powers.

On the topic of giants, let's talk about Cyclopses and Formorians. These two races have... well, they've never really been very lucky in D&D. The cyclops was, and went back to being, essentially a slighty beefier ogre or an inferior hill giant. The Formorian was a smarter, uglier hill giant. Both got a huge upgrade in this edition. Formorians actually drew real strength from their real-world roots and became the dominant threat of the Feywild; mad, twisted, magical tyrants who seek to conquer and destroy, cursed by the very power that they wield. Cyclops, meanwhile, became something more than just one-eyed ogres; they became disciplined and organized, a civilized race who have achieved something no other giants have done... and have wasted it all by swearing racial allegiance to the Formorians, which itself is great ground for sowing plot hooks in - why do cyclops worship formorians? Can they be persuaded to break the treaty?

One last thing before I go; I loved the thought they put into the how and why of undead necrology in 4e. The division between body, animus and soul really made the various kinds of undead feel distinct, and yet clearly unified.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

Well, considering the fluff was the reason I decided not to buy any 4th edition books and I own at least six 5th edtion ones, it seems fairly obvious to me.

Admittedly, 5th still kept a few of the annoying aspects of 4th (Shadowfell and Feywild are lame names, for example), so it's not as good as 2nd but it's many steps up. For one thing I have Lawful Evil devils again. That's great.

Although, I will admit Greyhawk has always seemed like the most boring D&D setting, but that's why Mystara, Planescape, and Eberron exist.
EDIT:

I'm a big fan of planescape so I love the great wheel (and how they give some lore to the planes). However the 4e lore has some nice things like the Raven Queen, Asmodeus, the Primordials, and the warlock pact ideas.
Wait, did 4th edition actually introduce anything new about Asmodeus? I guess that might be the edition where he got promoted to full on god. I think a lot of Asmodeus' backstory was already codified by the end of third, though.

I'm a sucker for mortals overthrowing gods, so I'll admit to liking the Raven Queen as an idea.

[Hackulator]

4th edition was a good game, it just wasn't D&D. This extends to both the system AND the fluff.

[EvilAnagram]

4th edition was a good game, it just wasn't D&D. This extends to both the system AND the fluff.

That's a tired old meme that amounts to little more than an ill-tempered whine. "They changed it! Now it's not even D&D!" Nevermind that the core mechanic is essentially unchanged. Nevermind that you can port several creatures from fourth edition to fifth without actually having to change the math. Nevermind that there are more differences between 2e and 3e than there are between 3.5 and 4e. No, it's different from what you expected, so it's not D&D. We all know it isn't D&D unless the only classes are Fighting Man, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf.

As for applying that same tired argument to the fluff, that's pure nonsense. Before 4e came out, there had already been at least seven official settings with wildly different lore, creatures, and magics. I might as well say that Forgotten Realms just isn't D&D. If it doesn't take place on Greyhawk, it's a completely different game. Oh? 4e has lore that provides a new take on the old tropes that 3.5 assumed? Fortunately, neither had THAC0 to begin with, so they weren't D&D.

[Knaight]

That's a tired old meme that amounts to little more than an ill-tempered whine. "They changed it! Now it's not even D&D!" Nevermind that the core mechanic is essentially unchanged. Nevermind that you can port several creatures from fourth edition to fifth without actually having to change the math. Nevermind that there are more differences between 2e and 3e than there are between 3.5 and 4e. No, it's different from what you expected, so it's not D&D. We all know it isn't D&D unless the only classes are Fighting Man, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf.

The 2e and 3e shift was smaller in a lot of ways - looking at D&D as a whole, there are some major ways that 4e is distinct from the rest. The biggest of these is the AEDU system and the way implementing it meant scrapping a spell system that has been fairly similar since the beginning (pseudo-vancian magic, spells go to 9th level with some quirks around high level characters, classes less overtly magic focused than the wizard/magic user, and similar things). There's a distinct feel there, and while calling it not D&D is a bit hyperbolic it's a way of expressing that distinct feel.

With that said, as someone who tends to play not-D&D, the accusation is a bit hilarious. You've got a class and level based system with a focus on exploring dungeons, killing monsters, and getting useful loot, and a lot of the D&D specifics such as the particular attributes, armor class, the core d20 system, the hit dice and HP system, and the actual names and general flavor of the classes are pretty similar to other D&D editions.

[Waterdeep Merch]

The 2e and 3e shift was smaller in a lot of ways - looking at D&D as a whole, there are some major ways that 4e is distinct from the rest. The biggest of these is the AEDU system and the way implementing it meant scrapping a spell system that has been fairly similar since the beginning (pseudo-vancian magic, spells go to 9th level with some quirks around high level characters, classes less overtly magic focused than the wizard/magic user, and similar things). There's a distinct feel there, and while calling it not D&D is a bit hyperbolic it's a way of expressing that distinct feel.

With that said, as someone who tends to play not-D&D, the accusation is a bit hilarious. You've got a class and level based system with a focus on exploring dungeons, killing monsters, and getting useful loot, and a lot of the D&D specifics such as the particular attributes, armor class, the core d20 system, the hit dice and HP system, and the actual names and general flavor of the classes are pretty similar to other D&D editions.

This was kind of my thought. I was actually very excited about 4e when it first hit. Combat seemed more interesting than 3.5, a lot of the things that had started to annoy me about 3.5 weren't present (high level spellcasters breaking the game, the skill system being all-or-nothing unless you wanted to fall behind scaling, certain classes being gimped into uselessness, byzantine rules that could derail games with endless rules lawyering, trap options masquerading as the ones with good fluff, etc.)

Then 4e's problems slowly started to surface. Combats quickly devolved into sumo wrestling matches, roles were so locked that there was little you could do to break them without throwing off your party's capabilities, defense weaknesses practically didn't exist if you were playing it as written and broken if you didn't, option bloat became a total nightmare that necessitated the online service if you didn't want to restrict the players to one or two books, out of combat you might as well just not have rules (though the skill challenge system was still excellent), and the effects everything together had on the world was that it felt too much like a game by wrecking verisimilitude on every level.

These things eventually got on my nerves so much that a very beloved campaign I was running in 4e died pretty much the moment 5e hit. My players still lament it.

Back on the fluff, I actually liked some of the structured nuance but it felt a bit flat and unfulfilling. It wasn't perfect or even great, but it could scratch an itch. Nentir Vale was to Greyhawk what New Coke was to Coke.

[EvilAnagram]

The 2e and 3e shift was smaller in a lot of ways - looking at D&D as a whole, there are some major ways that 4e is distinct from the rest. The biggest of these is the AEDU system and the way implementing it meant scrapping a spell system that has been fairly similar since the beginning (pseudo-vancian magic, spells go to 9th level with some quirks around high level characters, classes less overtly magic focused than the wizard/magic user, and similar things). There's a distinct feel there, and while calling it not D&D is a bit hyperbolic it's a way of expressing that distinct feel.

With that said, as someone who tends to play not-D&D, the accusation is a bit hilarious. You've got a class and level based system with a focus on exploring dungeons, killing monsters, and getting useful loot, and a lot of the D&D specifics such as the particular attributes, armor class, the core d20 system, the hit dice and HP system, and the actual names and general flavor of the classes are pretty similar to other D&D editions.

I agree that the magic system changed pretty drastically, but on the other hand the shift from 2e to 3e involved upending the core mechanic of the game.

[Knaight]

I agree that the magic system changed pretty drastically, but on the other hand the shift from 2e to 3e involved upending the core mechanic of the game.

It involved pushing a few things to one side or the other of basically the same equation, and changing how attributes worked. This is particularly true in combat, where BAB and THAC0 are the exact same equation depicted differently. Upending the core mechanic would be something like switching to a dice pool system.

[BoutsofInsanity]

Oooooohhhh! I can answer this. I have relevant experience.

Quickly as to why. My players were in one of my homebrew settings in 5e. Frankly, I didn't really enjoy the fluff aspects from the monster manual, I was more likely to take a creature and just change it to my own setting then I was to take inspiration and the spirit of the creature and convert it. The same went for the gods and heroes in the setting.

So we got bored after a bit and decided to switch to something different. After I rolled a natural 20 on my diplomacy check, I convinced them to endeavor into an Astral Sea inspired adventure in 4e. Somehow, they agreed.

So a book reading I went. I knew that there were tons of 4e books that dealt with classes, monsters, themes, worlds and other settings. So a devouring I went.

Guys, guys, can we be real for a second. The art, the fluff, the different thematic and tonal shifts you could play Dungeons and Dragons, I was inspired. I devoured the Elemental Chaos book. Destroyed the Heroes of Shadow and Shadowfell books, demolished the Dark Sun campaign setting and read up on the PHB 1, 2 and Martial power.

There is so much to pull from. I can have a dark, gritty game set in Athas, and have tons of books support it, or I can read about the Underdark and Shadowfell and have books there. I loved the fluff, the writing, it was inspirational and gave me an understanding to be able to make a Astral Sea inspired adventure filled with these locations and cultures. I love it.

I love 5e, but I haven't felt drawn into the worlds they have yet. Volo's guide is the first book to really grab me along with maybe the new Annihilation Setting. But for 4e, I had so much to go off. Dragonborn, Tieflings, The Raven Queen.

FOR FREAKS SAKE, they had statted out the gods! I could put the gods in the world, and have them walk around and be super bosses if they wanted. I liked it.

[Hackulator]

That's a tired old meme that amounts to little more than an ill-tempered whine. "They changed it! Now it's not even D&D!" Nevermind that the core mechanic is essentially unchanged. Nevermind that you can port several creatures from fourth edition to fifth without actually having to change the math. Nevermind that there are more differences between 2e and 3e than there are between 3.5 and 4e. No, it's different from what you expected, so it's not D&D. We all know it isn't D&D unless the only classes are Fighting Man, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf.

As for applying that same tired argument to the fluff, that's pure nonsense. Before 4e came out, there had already been at least seven official settings with wildly different lore, creatures, and magics. I might as well say that Forgotten Realms just isn't D&D. If it doesn't take place on Greyhawk, it's a completely different game. Oh? 4e has lore that provides a new take on the old tropes that 3.5 assumed? Fortunately, neither had THAC0 to begin with, so they weren't D&D.

I feel like you don't understand the meaning of "ill-tempered" or "whine". I was not complaining, I was stating my opinion about the game. In fact, I stated that I thought it was a good game. Your overwhelming need to be both rude and correct on the internet notwithstanding, an RPG is about feel more than system, and the way powers were used and tracked felt very different from previous versions and didn't feel like D&D to me or to the majority of other people.

In short, you succeeded at the rude part, but the correct is still far, far out of reach since this is an issue of opinion.

[EvilAnagram]

I feel like you don't understand the meaning of "ill-tempered" or "whine". I was not complaining, I was stating my opinion about the game. In fact, I stated that I thought it was a good game. Your overwhelming need to be both rude and correct on the internet notwithstanding, an RPG is about feel more than system, and the way powers were used and tracked felt very different from previous versions and didn't feel like D&D to me or to the majority of other people.

In short, you succeeded at the rude part, but the correct is still far, far out of reach since this is an issue of opinion.

To say that it just wasn't D&D is absolutely a whine. It comes with the implication that it fails to satisfy the itch it set out to scratch, and it often implies that it is worse for having described itself as D&D. While you say you thought it was a good game, you're still complaining that it "didn't feel" right, which is as indistinct a complaint as you could possibly muster. As a common, nonspecific complaint that is often regurgitated en masse with little critical thought, it falls squarely within the second definition in Merriam-Webster under whine (n): a complaint uttered with or as if with a [high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry]. It is a frequent and ridiculous enough complaint to be irritating as if spoken with a high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry. The fact that in your opinion this whine is correct does not make it less of a whine. If a toddler is of the opinion that he should absolutely have chocolate provided to him immediately, it is no less of a whine when he expresses that opinion through tears at the checkout.

Finally, you don't speak for a majority of people, and while I've heard many thoughts on 4e, to say that the fluff was not D&D is certainly not one that is remotely popular, not that popularity is really an indicator of the truthfulness of a position.

P.S.: When you devoted a major part of your post to chastising me for wanting to be correct on the internet, were you even aware of the irony of your posting that? Irony so staggering it would have never made it into an Alanis Morissette song? Irony so thick a dwarf would have trouble shaping it? More irony than doctors recommend in a pregnant woman's diet?

[Hackulator]

To say that it just wasn't D&D is absolutely a whine. It comes with the implication that it fails to satisfy the itch it set out to scratch, and it often implies that it is worse for having described itself as D&D. While you say you thought it was a good game, you're still complaining that it "didn't feel" right, which is as indistinct a complaint as you could possibly muster. As a common, nonspecific complaint that is often regurgitated en masse with little critical thought, it falls squarely within the second definition in Merriam-Webster under whine (n): a complaint uttered with or as if with a [high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry]. It is a frequent and ridiculous enough complaint to be irritating as if spoken with a high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry. The fact that in your opinion this whine is correct does not make it less of a whine. If a toddler is of the opinion that he should absolutely have chocolate provided to him immediately, it is no less of a whine when he expresses that opinion through tears at the checkout.

Finally, you don't speak for a majority of people, and while I've heard many thoughts on 4e, to say that the fluff was not D&D is certainly not one that is remotely popular, not that popularity is really an indicator of the truthfulness of a position.

P.S.: When you devoted a major part of your post to chastising me for wanting to be correct on the internet, were you even aware of the irony of your posting that? Irony so staggering it would have never made it into an Alanis Morissette song? Irony so thick a dwarf would have trouble shaping it? More irony than doctors recommend in a pregnant woman's diet?

Actually, I was chastising you for being rude and not understanding what I was saying. I also noted that your desire to be correct on the internet was part of your motivation. Feel free to request further clarification if necessary.

[Knaight]

To say that it just wasn't D&D is absolutely a whine. It comes with the implication that it fails to satisfy the itch it set out to scratch, and it often implies that it is worse for having described itself as D&D. While you say you thought it was a good game, you're still complaining that it "didn't feel" right, which is as indistinct a complaint as you could possibly muster. As a common, nonspecific complaint that is often regurgitated en masse with little critical thought, it falls squarely within the second definition in Merriam-Webster under whine (n): a complaint uttered with or as if with a [high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry]. It is a frequent and ridiculous enough complaint to be irritating as if spoken with a high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry. The fact that in your opinion this whine is correct does not make it less of a whine. If a toddler is of the opinion that he should absolutely have chocolate provided to him immediately, it is no less of a whine when he expresses that opinion through tears at the checkout.

It's imprecise, but it's criticism. It's also entirely possible for something to both be a good work and to be bad at being a particular kind of work. Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Trilogy is a good series. It's well written, it has interesting characters and plot, and there's thematic depth to it that is held together by the strong fundamentals of being well written with interesting characters and plot. It's also nominally a historical series and a King Arthur series, and here it starts getting worse - it's got all sorts of weirdness where the history is just wrong, starting with fundamental failures to understand the material culture of 5th century Britain, where the critical praise is clearly coming from critics with a limited historical understanding. It's also questionable as a King Arthur series, given the weird changes to some characters that certainly don't come from trying to be more historical, with the inclusion of Lancelot as a useless fop with a gift for PR being tonally incongruous while also having really bad historical underpinnings, as that's one of the characters most certainly not based on an actual figure.

It takes a certain level of familiarity with both the history and the literature to phrase things that way though, so with a lower level one might say "It's a good story, but not a good historical or King Arthur story". That's still totally valid criticism, even if the specifics are hard to articulate. The same thing applies to 4e D&D not feeling like D&D, while not being able to pinpoint particular changes that altered that feel. All that's needed to feel it is to play multiple editions and experience 4e differently consistently, and that's there for a lot of people; I say this as someone who both feels that a little and considers it drastically less strong than the feel that this is still D&D and not something else based on experience with various things in the something else category.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

FOR FREAKS SAKE, they had statted out the gods! I could put the gods in the world, and have them walk around and be super bosses if they wanted. I liked it.

Well, in fairness, 5th edition is actually the first edition where "fight the gods or take your place amongst them!" hasn't actually been viable, to my knowledge.

In Basic, you had the Immortals boxset, which discussed the gods-yet-not of Mystara and how to become them.

Deities and Demigods provided statistics for all manner of deities, D&D-born, fiction-based (Cthulhu Mythos, Elric of Melnibone) and real-world-born in Advanced D&D, although I couldn't tell you if it was for AD&D 1e or 2e, or where the "become a god" rules where.

In 3rd edition, the whole point of the Epic Level Handbook was to get to the point of battling and replacing gods.

4e? Built epic level play into the core rulebooks.

5th edition is the first one where "the gods are beyond mortal kind's ability to surpass" has been the ground assumption, and personally, I'm not sure that's a change for the better.

[Ralanr]

Idk. I kinda like the fact that the gods aren't statted yet. Once you stat it, you can kill it and it feels weird for your adventures to kill a god.

[EvilAnagram]

It's imprecise, but it's criticism. It's also entirely possible for something to both be a good work and to be bad at being a particular kind of work. Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Trilogy is a good series. It's well written, it has interesting characters and plot, and there's thematic depth to it that is held together by the strong fundamentals of being well written with interesting characters and plot. It's also nominally a historical series and a King Arthur series, and here it starts getting worse - it's got all sorts of weirdness where the history is just wrong, starting with fundamental failures to understand the material culture of 5th century Britain, where the critical praise is clearly coming from critics with a limited historical understanding. It's also questionable as a King Arthur series, given the weird changes to some characters that certainly don't come from trying to be more historical, with the inclusion of Lancelot as a useless fop with a gift for PR being tonally incongruous while also having really bad historical underpinnings, as that's one of the characters most certainly not based on an actual figure.

It takes a certain level of familiarity with both the history and the literature to phrase things that way though, so with a lower level one might say "It's a good story, but not a good historical or King Arthur story". That's still totally valid criticism, even if the specifics are hard to articulate. The same thing applies to 4e D&D not feeling like D&D, while not being able to pinpoint particular changes that altered that feel. All that's needed to feel it is to play multiple editions and experience 4e differently consistently, and that's there for a lot of people; I say this as someone who both feels that a little and considers it drastically less strong than the feel that this is still D&D and not something else based on experience with various things in the something else category.

I see your point, but I think that for the argument to have merit, the general feeling of wrongness needs that clarification. Even if you don't want to go into the specifics of the serious and dedicated, but ultimately tragic character of Lancelot, you can still articulate in simple terms that the Lancelot in the book is completely at odds with the Lancelot of legend or his historical inspirations.

Contrast this with the complaint that 4e is not D&D. Sure, the action system is completely different from the Vancian spell systems of bygone days, but there is much more to the game than the Vancian magic system, and to claim that the entirety of D&D is wrapped up in the Vancian magic system is simply wrong. The similarities in tone, basic structure, and even mechanics vastly outweighs this single, albeit significant, difference. To me, that's like reading T.H. White and claiming that any depiction of Lancelot by a handsome actor is inherently wrong and destroys the whole story.

The point when the critique (the difference in how players use actions creates a sense of disjointment) becomes a whine is when it's used as a sweeping dismissal of 4e as not at all D&D, often without even a pretense of argument. It exaggerates the position to the point of ridiculousness, and its frequent use as a placeholder for an actual argument is intensely annoying.

[EvilAnagram]

You know what I liked? Hammerfast. It's one of the few dwarven cities that has any thematic flavor outside of "underground city with a mine" in D&D. I loved the necropolis filled with ghosts and the potential for both intrigue and spookiness, possibly even spooky intrigue. It's probably the best thing about the actual Nentir Vale.

[Psikerlord]

I dont remember there being much 4e fluff. It was almost all crunch as I recall. I like 13th Age better.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

I dont remember there being much 4e fluff. It was almost all crunch as I recall. I like 13th Age better.

...There were two "Wizards Presents" mini-sourcebooks that provide a detailed insight into both the mechanical and fluff development 4th edition underwent. "Setting" sourcebooks like Underdark, Manual of the Planes, Shadowfell, and the Planes Above & Below were 90% fluff to crunch. Dungeon & Dragon magazines continued producing official fluff, on everything from existant to historical realms & settings to things like dead gods - I so want to bring Nusemnee to life in one of my games. The "X Power" books began delving into fluff-expansion as well as crunch expansion; Psionic Power and Primal Power in particular contain massive amounts of fluff, such as psionic philosophies and the identities of precise primal spirits.

Heck, even the Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies all had some level of fluff to them, especially the latter. I just can't understand anyone who can't find inspiration in ideas like "You become a master general of such acumen that you are taken to a heavenly realm where you will test your mettle against the greatest military geniuses in all of history", or "you become a Demiurge, transcending mortality to give life to an entire universe all of your own creation", or "you turn into a dragon or a god or a primal spirit or a primordial", or "you become a living bastion, an impenetrable defender that stands against the invasion of the Far Realm/Hell/Abyss for all eternity".

[Millstone85]

I'm a big fan of planescape so I love the great wheel (and how they give some lore to the planes). However the 4e lore has some nice things like the Raven Queen, Asmodeus, the Primordials, and the warlock pact ideas.
Wait, did 4th edition actually introduce anything new about Asmodeus? I guess that might be the edition where he got promoted to full on god. I think a lot of Asmodeus' backstory was already codified by the end of third, though.I think he was talking about PoL Asmodeus, the angel who rebelled against its god and actually won. That was a pretty cool backstory, but probably not compatible with that of FR Asmodeus.

But I think you are right about this being the edition where FR Asmodeus got promoted to full on god.

*Sigh*, I really really really wish PoL hadn't done that with the gods' names. The 5e DMG acknowledges that "The Raven Queen is akin to the Norse pantheon's Hel and Greyhawk's Wee Jas", but imagine if PoL had actually called her Wee Jas like it did with Asmodeus, Bane and so on. It is hard enough to find lore on these characters without having to worry if it applies to PoL Corellon or FR Corellon.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

The similarities in tone, basic structure, and even mechanics vastly outweighs this single, albeit significant, difference. To me, that's like reading T.H. White and claiming that any depiction of Lancelot by a handsome actor is inherently wrong and destroys the whole story.

Hm... I'm going to have a hard time articulating it but 4th didn't really feel like D&D to me either. Some of that was fluff but a lot of it was mechanics. And the way the two integrated. And mechanics is the right term, it felt too mechanical and less organic. For example: When I frighten a monster in other editions of D&D (all other editions) with a spell, it moves away from me at the monster's speed. When I do it in 4th edition it moves away a set number of spaces based on the effect I used, even if the monster can't move at all for some reason. And it wasn't just this one thing, everything felt kind of simplified and blandly identical. It felt like it had been restricted to easily fit a board game or an MMORPG instead of taking advantage of the possibilities of pen and paper. Except even World of Warcraft had more normal fear effects.

Still, I could have lived with that, it was the alignment/planar/setting changes that ended up getting to me. And I'm still living with the residue of some of those irritants (was there ever a good reason to make all tieflings have the same fiendish features?).


*Sigh*, I really really really wish PoL hadn't done that with the gods' names.
That does seem pretty confusing.

[Scots Dragon]

In my opinion, it's pretty clear that D&D 4E loses out because it was so fundamentally and radically different to literally everything that had come before on nearly every level.

Now, you can argue back and forth about how good they are in isolation, but the fact that they're called Dungeons & Dragons and not something else entirely means that you kind of have to judge them in context of what they choose to be called. And I'm going to be honest here; I opened the 4E books really hoping to see something I liked, but what I saw was a complete removal of elements that for me described what Dungeons & Dragons actually was. It would have been one thing if the rules were the only thing I disliked and I could just ignore those and backport the fluff to work with the editions I did happen to like on a mechanical level, and I was fully prepared to do that, but ultimately that's not what I saw when I opened the rulebooks and browsed through the monster manual.

What I saw instead was a lot of words I recognised, but not a lot of concepts that seemed to match what those words meant in my head. They described things which were at their core very different ideas to the ones I was used to, and the worst thing was that these changes were enforced upon existing campaign settings such as the Forgotten Realms so as to render them nearly unrecognisable as what they once were. The biggest thing in that regard was the complete loss of moon elves and gold elves — or if you prefer high elves and grey elves — with all previous iterations of those being referred to now as eladrin, previously a term which would have described a type of chaotic good celestial native to Arborea.

You have no idea how much of a loop I was thrown for when I read about Evereska suddenly being an 'eladrin' city state. I'll not get into that much more than I already have because the treatment of the Forgotten Realms in D&D 4E was basically a direct insult to the setting and its fans.

The next thing that jumped out at me was the alignment grid, reduced from the nine iconic alignments to five more simplified options; gone were chaotic good, lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, and lawful evil and in their place were the more simplified good, unaligned, and evil. To this day I have no idea why this change was made, but to me it presents a very different picture of alignments and what they're intended for.

Then there was the complete removal of the Great Wheel, a concept brought into the game originally by Gary Gygax himself and detailed in a single-digit issue of Dragon Magazine before being expanded upon in the AD&D 1E Player's Handbook. It wasn't actually arranged in a circular manner just yet, but the basic sixteen planes were already present there, with the seventeenth 'Concordant Opposition' plane and the wheel arrangement being established in Deities & Demigods in 1980. In its place we had an over-simplified mess that obviously didn't respect either the nature of the alignment system or its relation to the setting's cosmological outlook.

I did know the reason for this, though. They said that it was because Mount Celestia was boring to visit, which is incidentally the same reason why there are no aasimar in Dungeons & Dragons 4E, and no I do not count the devas. They're just using the terminology established for another monster race and subverting it to mean something else entirely. A type of angel in fact.

Oh, and that brings me to the tieflings. Gone were the variable tieflings who could have been descended from any number of fiends, who could have had any visual trait from horns to tails to cloven feet to catlike features to backwards hands to simply just seeming kinda weird, and instead we had them as uniform; they had horns-and-tails with reddish pink skin. They were an entirely established race now, and not just a smattering of individuals whose only unifying factor was that they were humans with fiendish heritage. And in contrast to nearly every major tiefling prior being descended from demons, particularly succubi, cambions, and alu-fiends, apparently they were all devil-blooded now.

The monster manual was a cornucopia of 'delights' as well. Suddenly the word 'archon' didn't mean 'lawful good celestial', and instead it meant a chaotic evil servant of the Primordials. A new term that was introduced to describe the four elemental lords that were present in previous editions but I couldn't have told you exactly why that decision was made. Angels were no longer celestials in fact and were now direct divine servants, a concept that seemed utterly unnecessary to me because in previous iterations of the game the deities already had direct servants chosen amongst specific types of outsider; there was no need for a generic angel when lawful good deities were already served by archons, lawful neutral deities called upon modrons and inevitables, and chaotic evil deities called upon demons.

There were no longer any metallic dragons because including 'good' monsters was deemed as pointless, and dragons were spellcasters no longer and instead were just big lizards who breathed fire or ice or lightning, something that within the context of Dungeons & Dragons had never been true. Even the weakest and dumbest dragons in earlier editions could cast a small selection of spells.

And the assumed setting itself bothered me. It was like D&D 3E's scavenging and poaching of iconic Greyhawk elements but made a hundred times worse. And which poached elements from the Forgotten Realms as well for some asinine reason, and ignored the connection deities like Sehanine, Moradin, and Corellon had to elves and dwarves. Ignorance that probably only made sense because there weren't really a fully united race of elves any more, but instead the eladrin had made that all-too complicated.

Nonetheless, I forged on. I spent quite a lot of time negotiating with D&D 4E and seeing if I could find some lore that could make the edition change even remotely worth it in my eyes.

Instead I happened upon the Underdark book, where one of the most iconic parts of Dungeons & Dragons now had an entirely new fundamentally-important deity who had never been mentioned previously but who was mentioned on nearly every page. It led to a running joke between me and a few friends which went 'Who the [censored] is Torog?' after my attempt to read through it had me declaring as such loudly, multiple times over. I wanted to read about Lolth and the drow, and instead what I got was a needless creation myth that utterly minimised everything that I liked and which was interesting about the Underdark in favour of making it some kind of prison for an edgelord cenobite-wannabe.

Dungeons & Dragons 4E was a betrayal or violation of everything I loved and continue to love about Dungeons & Dragons. The lore might be well done, but it's really hard to notice that when it's just plain the wrong lore.


Which brings me to D&D 5E, the edition I still only hypothetically like and in mechanical terms don't really rate all that highly at all. However, in the back of my D&D 5E Player's Handbook is none other than the Great Wheel, in my Monster Manual the angels are good aligned celestials, the alignments are now the nine-point grid that I literally grew up with. The tieflings and their origins as being part of some devil pact and ancient empire is massaged over and some other books even provide detail on tieflings of non-devil heritages. The aasimar were restored in the Dungeon Master's Guide and expanded on in Volo's Guide to Monsters. The Underdark was allowed to just plain be the Underdark again with nary a mention of Torog. The eladrin appear in the DMG but it's no longer assumed that they're a default type of elf.

Certainly there are still things that don't particularly gel with my view of Dungeons & Dragons, but it was far more obviously the set of worlds I grew up reading about, and for that reason alone this is a pretty clear-cut choice to me. Even if D&D 5E isn't especially well-handled Dungeons & Dragons, it's far more recognisable as Dungeons & Dragons than its predecessor.

[Laurefindel]

I really don't want to have to describe FR to non-white people to be perfectly frank (...)

I'm curious because FR is the WotC/TSR setting i know best, but is it better in Greyhawk/Dragonlance/Eberron/Darksun? Of the little I've seen, these other worlds were pretty white-European dominant too, with non-european cultures represented by distinct humanoid races. Perhaps I'm not familiar enough?

[EvilAnagram]

In my opinion, it's pretty clear that D&D 4E loses out because it was so fundamentally and radically different to literally everything that had come before on nearly every level.
Different does not equal worse. More importantly, differences crop up in every single edition, and these differences are often quite severe. HEll, before the original TSR gnoll was described as a cross between gnomes and trolls. Angels, which you complain about at length, didn't even exist until 3.5, and even then they were tacked on celestials that didn't fit the regimented differences between Law, Chaos, and Neutrality in the Good-aligned plains. They were nothing creatures, completely uninteresting in every respect, and then 4e came along and said, "What if we made these creatures something other than bland?"

I agree with you that they shouldn't have tried to apply the fluff of 4e to the Forgotten Realms (the way they constantly introduce new elements into the Forgotten Realms with each new edition is one reason why I don't enjoy the setting), but the fact that aspects of certain creatures and how they relate to each other has changed between editions is not evidence of some great betrayal. Are you honestly torn up about the fact that 4e made angels unalaigned outsiders who serve the gods for whatever purpose is given them? Because that sounds a lot more interesting to me than, "basically good guys with wings."

As for the alignment system, Great Wheel, and specific names being used for different things, I honestly see your point here. The alignment system was central to how some people saw the game, while others saw it as a tumor that needed excising. What actually needed excising, and what 5e has kept, was the effect alignment had on mechanics. Whether or not 4e threw the baby out with the bathwater in getting rid of alignments and all the planes that went with them is a matter of preference. Personally, I find the Great Wheel boring, but I'm fond of the more nuanced alignment grid.

And you're right about other things. They threw gods together in a hodgepodge and set it to boil. They fundamentally changed aspects of the underdark, got rid of creatures that had formerly found homes in the Great Wheel, and repurposed others. But it's worth looking at why they did that: They wanted people to explore different approaches to the game, so they borrowed bits and pieces from different settings, coming up with a few new gods and creatures, then said, "Here, you can build something like this." But people genuinely enjoyed this hodgepodge setting, so they came up with more and more fluff for it, including Torog and his palace formed from the still living body of his ancient enemy, whom his servants carve away at endlessly to prevent his regeneration.

You don't like that they did that, but many others did. I think it's worth asking if that is really a betrayal. Sure, the Forgotten Realms shouldn't have been drastically changed like it was, but is the existence of a setting with Torog's underdark, tieflings descended from the scions of ancient evil houses, and a less regimented planar system really a betrayal? Is it really such a crime that angels are not wholesome? That some malevolent elementals in this setting share a name with servants of the gods in another?

Is it a betrayal of everything D&D means to you that people sit around a table, make jokes, kill imaginary monsters, and sell imaginary loot to get imaginary swag, but do so with a few differences in the world they're imagining?

[hamishspence]

I noticed that 5E seems to be keeping "Elemental Archons" (Princes of the Apocalypse)- it just calls them something different (myrmidons) and moves their alignment to Neutral. The basic idea, of an elemental soldier with armour, still holds.

[EvilAnagram]

I noticed that 5E seems to be keeping "Elemental Archons" (Princes of the Apocalypse)- it just calls them something different (myrmidons) and moves their alignment to Neutral. The basic idea, of an elemental soldier with armour, still holds.

I'm quite fond of them. At the very least, they make interesting models to paint.

[hamishspence]

There were no longer any metallic dragons because including 'good' monsters was deemed as pointless, and dragons were spellcasters no longer and instead were just big lizards who breathed fire or ice or lightning, something that within the context of Dungeons & Dragons had never been true. Even the weakest and dumbest dragons in earlier editions could cast a small selection of spells.


Not in the first MM - but they came in with the second MM.

In BECMI D&D, while they had a chance of being able to cast spells, aside from Gold Dragons, there wasn't a guarantee of it.

And it was possible to create a 5e spellcasting dragon - just apply the Elite template from Draconomicon II (downgrading them from a Solo to an Elite) then apply the appropriate NPC template.

It required a bit of work - but it was possible to use the 5e ruleset for older adventures, and still capture some of the "feel" of them.

[Scots Dragon]

Different does not equal worse. More importantly, differences crop up in every single edition, and these differences are often quite severe. HEll, before the original TSR gnoll was described as a cross between gnomes and trolls. Angels, which you complain about at length, didn't even exist until 3.5, and even then they were tacked on celestials that didn't fit the regimented differences between Law, Chaos, and Neutrality in the Good-aligned plains. They were nothing creatures, completely uninteresting in every respect, and then 4e came along and said, "What if we made these creatures something other than bland?"

They were in Planescape from pretty much the word go under the title 'aasimon', so... I think you ought to check that one again. Beyond that, trying honestly to describe the angels in Dungeons & Dragons 4E as literally anything other than bland and flavourless is at best hilarious. Especially when you put them next to the solars and planetars, which are some of the coolest creatures to have ever graced Dungeons & Dragons, but maybe I'm speaking from the overly-biased position of someone who used to play an aasimar paladin descended from a planetar and thus should probably be ignored when it comes to my opinions on that front.

Granted D&D 4E seemed geared towards ignoring literally everyone who liked aasimar, by making fun of their name, not including them at all, and saying that Ave Maria wasn't as cool as Night on Bald Mountain so they were less interesting than tieflings. I use Dies Irae (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFFHaz9GsY) as a refutation.

And honestly, it makes sense that the good-aligned planes would have a type of universal outsider that the evil aligned planes would not. There is no greater evil to work together towards, but there is such thing as a greater good. So while archons, guardinals, and eladrin would have their more individual aspects, there would be those celestials who exist as a unifying force of good even beyond that which the guardinals provide because they can be any type of good and not just lawful, neutral, or chaotic. Naturally though if you want someone to make an evil opposite to the angel which can exist as a more pure any-type-of-evil I'd not be opposed to that.


Is it a betrayal of everything D&D means to you that people sit around a table, make jokes, kill imaginary monsters, and sell imaginary loot to get imaginary swag, but do so with a few differences in the world they're imagining?

The thing is, that's not all that Dungeons & Dragons is. Otherwise that definition would mean that many, many other role-playing games are also basically Dungeons & Dragons, including Tunnels & Trolls, the Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Rolemaster, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and a myriad of countless others. What they did with Dungeons & Dragons 4E was throw away the specific defining elements that made it Dungeons & Dragons and not one of dozens of other fantasy role-playing games. You can't change the way the cosmology, alignments, classes, monsters, spells, magic items, settings, races, deities, and literally everything else you could care to mention works and not expect people to view it as something that might as well be an entirely different game as a result.


Not in the first MM - but they came in with the second MM.

In BECMI D&D, while they had a chance of being able to cast spells, aside from Gold Dragons, there wasn't a guarantee of it.

And it was possible to create a 5e spellcasting dragon - just apply the Elite template from Draconomicon II (downgrading them from a Solo to an Elite) then apply the appropriate NPC template.

It required a bit of work - but it was possible to use the 5e ruleset for older adventures, and still capture some of the "feel" of them.

Firstly, all dragons had a percentage chance of casting spells in the original AD&D 1E Monster Manual. Even white dragons could gain a single first level spell for every two age categories they had.

And secondly, why should I have to completely and radically alter a system to recapture the feel of an earlier system when I could just play that earlier system?

[EvilAnagram]

The thing is, that's not all that Dungeons & Dragons is. Otherwise that definition would mean that many, many other role-playing games are also basically Dungeons & Dragons, including Tunnels & Trolls, the Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Rolemaster, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and a myriad of countless others. What they did with Dungeons & Dragons 4E was throw away the specific defining elements that made it Dungeons & Dragons and not one of dozens of other fantasy role-playing games. You can't change the way the cosmology, alignments, classes, monsters, spells, magic items, settings, races, deities, and literally everything else you could care to mention works and not expect people to view it as something that might as well be an entirely different game as a result.
I think you absolutely can change all of those things. Moreover, I think just about every homebrew setting does change those things quite regularly. 4e was simply reflecting the fact that a massive portion of the player base has always opted to build and explore their own world's rather than the official ones, so they developed that edition's fluff as a template to reflect that. That's why the gods are a grab bag, that's why the cosmology isn't so regimented, and that's why the creatures are rarely tied to specific planes (outside of demons, devils, and elementals). The whole point of reconstituting the way things worked was to step away from Greyhawk and say, "You guys should play around with your settings and make the game your own," and they were met with a chorus of people shouting, "How dare you alter the setting?"

And look where those complaints have put us: eight books set in boring old Forgotten Realms, with another two on the way. There's a whole thread of people asking when we'll get something else, and the answer is not anytime soon because the Forgotten Realms are now Wizards' sacred cow.

[hamishspence]

Firstly, all dragons had a percentage chance of casting spells in the original AD&D 1E Monster Manual. Even white dragons could gain a single first level spell for every two age categories they had.

And secondly, why should I have to completely and radically alter a system to recapture the feel of an earlier system when I could just play that earlier system?

I was thinking more for people who want to use the 5e ruleset to play a 3e adventure, and want their dragons to cast spells - the system does allow it - just not "out of the box".

The point I was making was - if the white dragon rolled badly - they might get no spells at all - just like an unmodified 4e dragon (and aren't 5e dragons spell-less, too?)

4e threw away some things - but it didn't throw away everything. Many of the "purely D&D monsters" (owl bears, rust monsters, beholders, etc) are still around, as are purely D&D deities like Lolth. I felt when reading 4e splatbooks that it was still D&D-ish enough, to pass.

The more 4e content came in, the more "classic" stuff got referenced.

[Scots Dragon]

I think you absolutely can change all of those things. Moreover, I think just about every homebrew setting does change those things quite regularly. 4e was simply reflecting the fact that a massive portion of the player base has always opted to build and explore their own world's rather than the official ones, so they developed that edition's fluff as a template to reflect that. That's why the gods are a grab bag, that's why the cosmology isn't so regimented, and that's why the creatures are rarely tied to specific planes (outside of demons, devils, and elementals). The whole point of reconstituting the way things worked was to step away from Greyhawk and say, "You guys should play around with your settings and make the game your own," and they were met with a chorus of people shouting, "How dare you alter the setting?"

Maybe because, and this is important, people who didn't use the core settings wouldn't really care one way or the other. Thus all you'd do is irritate the people who did use the core settings.

And honestly, we're not all that rare. There are many people like me who came to Dungeons & Dragons through novels like Dragons of Autumn Twilight or the Dark Elf trilogy, as well as games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights and Planescape: Torment, and thus had as much of an investment in the existing settings as the game itself and actually made use of them. By changing up the details that had absolutely no bearing on people who didn't care because they already weren't using the previous material, it really, really annoyed those of us who did because we actually already were using the previous material and were suddenly told that the material we liked was bad. Repeatedly. There's technically no wrong way to play an edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but disregarding half of the fan base in making your new edition is the exact wrong way to make an edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

One thing I've actually been curious about is the potential people who started out as fans of D&D 4E's lore and concepts and are suddenly now shaken up quite a bit by just how much their favourite lore has changed in returning to previous concepts. Which I also blame Wizards of the Coast for, since if they hadn't written themselves into that corner in the first place it wouldn't be a problem.


And look where those complaints have put us: eight books set in boring old Forgotten Realms, with another two on the way. There's a whole thread of people asking when we'll get something else, and the answer is not anytime soon because the Forgotten Realms are now Wizards' sacred cow.

Yes and the complaints about the Forgotten Realms during the third edition led to that setting basically being literally annihilated and anything interesting or memorable stripped away so that they could make it into a shallow 'Points of Light' setting. Them treating the Forgotten Realms with respect again basically redeems all of my problems with D&D 5E, because it's what got me into Dungeons & Dragons to begin with.

[hamishspence]

Weren't there a lot of complaints from 2e players about the move from "Great Wheel" to "World Tree + Styx" for the Realms?

In that respect, the World Axis doesn't look so aberrant.

[Scots Dragon]

Weren't there a lot of complaints from 2e players about the move from "Great Wheel" to "World Tree + Styx" for the Realms?

In that respect, the World Axis doesn't look so aberrant.

Yeah, I didn't like that about the D&D 3E Forgotten Realms, but honestly it could safely be ignored without too much of a problem and didn't consist of an entire edition's worth of material.

And that's the problem. My issue isn't any one of these changes in isolation; it's all of them at once.

[KorvinStarmast]

FOR FREAKS SAKE, they had statted out the gods! I could put the gods in the world, and have them walk around and be super bosses if they wanted. I liked it. The original effort of "statting a deity" included a point regarding the absurdity of super high level characters.

This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously? (Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes) Tim Kask, 1976, foreward) I prefer Gods without stats, since Heracles (one of the great heroes of Greek Mythology) only ever got to demi-god status when he was more or less raised by the Gods to the heavens. (Depending upon which flavor of Greek Mythology you prefer).

Statting the Gods was not, IMO, a positive decision.

Of course, a few years later as Frank Menzter put together the B/E/C/M/I family of D&D (and Mystara, an enjoyable world) the move toward multiverse shaking high level play became a standard concept to folded into the game.
5th edition is the first one where "the gods are beyond mortal kind's ability to surpass" has been the ground assumption, and personally, I'm not sure that's a change for the better. That takes us back to the pre AD&D game, pre GD&H game: OD&D, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry.
At that point, the Gods were "powers" beyond numbers and stats, and part of the existential cosmic struggle between law and chaos (a la Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock). Conan's Crom fit in with those gods perfectly. The Valar likewise.

That's where I'd rather have the deities: I realize that more graspable deities are enjoyable by many gamers.

[Millstone85]

One thing I've actually been curious about is the potential people who started out as fans of D&D 4E's lore and concepts and are suddenly now shaken up quite a bit by just how much their favourite lore has changed in returning to previous concepts. Which I also blame Wizards of the Coast for, since if they hadn't written themselves into that corner in the first place it wouldn't be a problem.As someone who started playing D&D with 4e, my perspective might interest you.

Like I explained in a previous post, I am disappointed with the inclusion of the Elemental Chaos and the Shadowfell into the Great Wheel. Not because these bear the 4e taint, but quite on the contrary because they have lost what made them interesting in that edition. The Elemental Chaos is simply not needed if the cosmology already includes Limbo and the Inner Planes, and 5e also turned it into an instant death plane. As for the 5e Shadowfell, it takes mostly after the 4e FR Shadowfell instead of the vastly superior 4e PoL Shadowfell.

But when it really comes to putting things back the way they were before 4e... On the whole, I feel like I am basking in the nostalgia for a D&D I never knew, if that makes any sense. I often find myself thinking "Is that how it used to be? That's actually better!".


And honestly, it makes sense that the good-aligned planes would have a type of universal outsider that the evil aligned planes would not. There is no greater evil to work together towards, but there is such thing as a greater good. So while archons, guardinals, and eladrin would have their more individual aspects, there would be those celestials who exist as a unifying force of good even beyond that which the guardinals provide because they can be any type of good and not just lawful, neutral, or chaotic. Naturally though if you want someone to make an evil opposite to the angel which can exist as a more pure any-type-of-evil I'd not be opposed to that.Interestingly, 5e describes an angel as a lawful good celestial that can be found in the service of a god of any good alignment.

I think I like that. There is no need for a celestial that is more true good than even the neutral good ones. All celestials should be able to recognize the Upper Planes as a more cohesive whole than any other set of planes in the Wheel, and angels being lawful good suits my vision of them as "devotion paladin: the race".

And speaking of angels...


I noticed that 5E seems to be keeping "Elemental Archons" (Princes of the Apocalypse)- it just calls them something different (myrmidons) and moves their alignment to Neutral. The basic idea, of an elemental soldier with armour, still holds.Something that annoyed me in 4e was that you could end up with...

... this angel of valor...
http://940ee6dce6677fa01d25-0f55c9129972ac85d6b1f4e703468e6b.r99.cf2.rackcdn.c om/products/thumbnails/282054.jpg

... fighting this fire archon...
http://www.rpglocker.com/product_images/DOD50.jpg

... and while that's an extreme example, it does illustrate how "armored astral stuff fighting armored elemental stuff" may not have been such an inspiring concept.

I also find that design to be better suited for an elemental creature, so I guess 5e got it right.

[NecroDancer]

Firstly, all dragons had a percentage chance of casting spells in the original AD&D 1E Monster Manual. Even white dragons could gain a single first level spell for every two age categories they had.

And secondly, why should I have to completely and radically alter a system to recapture the feel of an earlier system when I could just play that earlier system?

and 5e has a variant rule in the Monster Manuel to give dragons magic. You don't need any other system.

[Scots Dragon]

As someone who started playing D&D with 4e, my perspective might interest you.

Like I explained in a previous post, I am disappointed with the inclusion of the Elemental Chaos and the Shadowfell into the Great Wheel. Not because these bear the 4e taint, but quite on the contrary because they have lost what made them interesting in that edition. The Elemental Chaos is simply not needed if the cosmology already includes Limbo and the Inner Planes, and 5e also turned it into an instant death plane. As for the 5e Shadowfell, it takes mostly after the 4e FR Shadowfell instead of the vastly superior 4e PoL Shadowfell.

I personally ignore the inclusion of the Elemental Chaos, Feywild and Shadowfell in favour of simply using the older Great Wheel without any alterations, with the closest thing to the Shadowfell being the previous Plane of Shadow. Admittedly that's closer to the current Shadowfell. Back in the Day™ the basic idea was that the Plane of Shadow was just that; an inner plane filled largely with shadowy reflections of the Prime Material Plane and it was similar in many ways to the Ethereal Plane.

The Elemental Chaos was also something that didn't exist, but instead you had a whole variety of para-elemental planes that existed between the various elemental planes, and quasi-elemental planes between the positive or negative energy plane and one of the primary elemental planes. So you had the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lightning between the Positive Energy Plane and the Plane of Air, or the Para-Elemental Plane of Magma between the Elemental Planes of Earth and Fire. Naturally you could encounter elementals from those planes, such as lightning, magma, ice, steam, etc. elementals, though they were much less common than the primary fire, water, earth, and air elementals.

The Feywild was something that was never really established all that well outside of a vague notion of there being a place called Faerie, but never really given much detail, and for the most part fey creatures were entirely found within the material planes, living in forests or marshes or what have you rather than having any real need for an extraplanar realm unto themselves. The major note is that a lot of creatures lumped in with the fey previously weren't. The elves were unambiguously humanoids and while they had a vague connection to the fey at times it was never really made even remotely explicit beyond a vague friendliness that arose from both inhabiting forests.

The eladrin in particular were actually a type of chaotic good celestial, specifically native to the plane of Arborea and often in service to elven deities. The closest you got to eladrin as a playable race and not literal outright embodiments of goodness and freedom was the occasional eladrin-blooded 'elven aasimar'. They were the direct basis for Pathfinder's azata.


But when it really comes to putting things back the way they were before 4e... On the whole, I feel like I am basking in the nostalgia for a D&D I never knew, if that makes any sense. I often find myself thinking "Is that how it used to be? That's actually better!".

It's really worth looking into some of those older editions, even if only for the sake of lore. The Planescape material for instance is amazing.


Interestingly, 5e describes an angel as a lawful good celestial that can be found in the service of a god of any good alignment.

I think I like that. There is no need for a celestial that is more true good than even the neutral good ones. All celestials should be able to recognize the Upper Planes as a more cohesive whole than any other set of planes in the Wheel, and angels being lawful good suits my vision of them as "devotion paladin: the race".

That's what Archons were for, though they were specifically lawful good. Most angels, or aasimon, in previous editions could be any good alignment. Also there were several types of deva, including astral, monadic, and movanic.


and 5e has a variant rule in the Monster Manuel to give dragons magic. You don't need any other system.

Y'know, I think I'll be my own judge when it comes to whatever gaming systems I need.

[EvilAnagram]

Maybe because, and this is important, people who didn't use the core settings wouldn't really care one way or the other. Thus all you'd do is irritate the people who did use the core settings.
Or, and this might surprise you, the people who don't use core settings tended to look at the 4e fluff as guidelines for their own settings (Matt Mercer did this for Critical Role's setting) while those who tended to use premade material embraced the PoL setting wholly. And players in any setting are free to ignore changes when they want to. The only people with legitimate grievances are the fans of FR, and that's only because they were dumb enough to shift the setting in all media.

Seriously, on the table, what does it matter? When I played an urban campaign in Baldur's Gate, did it matter that Asmodeus was slightly different? No! Nor did it matter that the structure of the universe had been altered to incorporate a new elemental plane. I didn't care, as I was busy utterly failing to stop a Thieves Guild from destroying massive sections of Baldur's Gate. These horrible atrocities against the setting did not affect any of my Forgotten Realms games whatsoever. Even when we went up the against the Asmodai, it did not matter what Asmodeus had been up to. At that moment, we were trying to stop a cult from doing crazy cult things, not pondering his recent history.


One thing I've actually been curious about is the potential people who started out as fans of D&D 4E's lore and concepts and are suddenly now shaken up quite a bit by just how much their favourite lore has changed in returning to previous concepts. Which I also blame Wizards of the Coast for, since if they hadn't written themselves into that corner in the first place it wouldn't be a problem.
While it wasn't my first RPG, it was my first D&D. I've played both 2nd edition and 3rd edition since then, but I started with 4th. As one of the people you're talking about, I could not care less. It does not matter to me that a lot of 5th edition's fluff has changed. What I like in 5e, I will keep. What I like in 4e, I will keep. I have no qualms about picking and choosing what I like, nor will I dedicate any of my time to the bemoaning the changes that have happened. After all, my first edition of D&D taught me to be fluid with my setting.


Yes and the complaints about the Forgotten Realms during the third edition led to that setting basically being literally annihilated and anything interesting or memorable stripped away so that they could make it into a shallow 'Points of Light' setting. Them treating the Forgotten Realms with respect again basically redeems all of my problems with D&D 5E, because it's what got me into Dungeons & Dragons to begin with.
I'm glad you're enjoying the FR books. I still hope they stop releasing FR books.

[Scots Dragon]

Or, and this might surprise you, the people who don't use core settings tensed to look at the 4e fluff as guidelines for their own settings (Matt Mercer did this for Critical Role's setting) while those who tended to use premade material embraced the PoL setting wholly. And players in any setting are free to ignore changes when they want to. The only people with legitimate grievances are the fans of FR, and that's only because they were dumb enough to shift the setting in all media.

Seriously, on the table, what does it matter? When I played an urban campaign in Baldur's Gate, did it matter that Asmodeus was slightly different? No! Nor did it matter that the structure of the universe had been altered to incorporate a new elemental plane. I didn't care, as I was busy utterly failing to stop a Thieves Guild from destroying massive sections of Baldur's Gate. These horrible atrocities against the setting did not affect any of my Forgotten Realms games whatsoever. Even when we went up the against the Asmodai, it did not matter what Asmodeus had been up to. At that moment, we were trying to stop a cult from doing crazy cult things, not pondering his recent history.

That's good for you. I wound up having to deliberately set most of my games in earlier time periods so that half of the nations and deities I commonly made use of actually still existed in the setting, and the other half hadn't had their dominant races renamed for no apparent reason.

Not every gaming table is the same, and my being angry at how one of my favourite settings literally got blasted apart is I believe a perfectly valid reaction.

[Millstone85]

Back in the Day™ the basic idea was that the Plane of Shadow was just that; an inner plane filled largely with shadowy reflections of the Prime Material Plane and it was similar in many ways to the Ethereal Plane.Well, that sounds almost as boring as a duplicate of the Material Plane with the lights off.

What I liked about the PoL Shadowfell was how it served as the antechamber of the afterlife, with souls trying to find the way to their gods, to the great beyond or to another rebirth. It was easy to extrapolate toward something Burtonesque, and it did make a great counterpart to the land of the fey.


The elves were unambiguously humanoids and while they had a vague connection to the fey at times it was never really made even remotely explicit beyond a vague friendliness that arose from both inhabiting forests.

The eladrin in particular were actually a type of chaotic good celestial, specifically native to the plane of Arborea and often in service to elven deities.I agree it was a misuse of the word "eladrin", given its previous D&D history. But elves ought to have a strong fey ancestry. That still makes sense to me.


So you had the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lightning between the Positive Energy Plane and the Plane of Air, or the Para-Elemental Plane of Magma between the Elemental Planes of Earth and Fire.According to the 5e DMG, the planes of Ash, Ice, Magma and Ooze are still here. The 5e PHB's map of the planes is just simplified in that regard.

The Positive and Negative planes are weird this edition. They seem to be more outer than the Outer Planes, and I am not sure what else they do.


Also there were several types of deva, including astral, monadic, and movanic.So that was the joke with the bureaucratic deva.

[Millstone85]

FOR FREAKS SAKE, they had statted out the gods! I could put the gods in the world, and have them walk around and be super bosses if they wanted. I liked it.
5th edition is the first one where "the gods are beyond mortal kind's ability to surpass" has been the ground assumption, and personally, I'm not sure that's a change for the better.
Idk. I kinda like the fact that the gods aren't statted yet. Once you stat it, you can kill it and it feels weird for your adventures to kill a god.
At that point, the Gods were "powers" beyond numbers and stats, and part of the existential cosmic struggle between law and chaos (a la Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock). Conan's Crom fit in with those gods perfectly. The Valar likewise.

That's where I'd rather have the deities: I realize that more graspable deities are enjoyable by many gamers.The 5e DMG has something to say on this.


Greater deities are beyond mortal understanding. They can't be summoned, and they are almost always removed from direct involvement in mortal affairs. On very rare occasions they manifest avatars similar to lesser deities, but slaying a greater god's avatar has no effect on the god itself.
Lesser deities are embodied somewhere in the planes. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, as does the unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms and the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss. Such deities can be encountered by mortals.I do not know how well that has been translated into the rest of the game. Yeah, the MM doesn't have god stats, but I hear adventure books do. Also, none of the pantheon tables indicates divine ranks.

I am surprised to see Lolth given as an example of a lesser deity, as she was a greater goddess in 4e FR.

[Scots Dragon]

I am surprised to see Lolth given as an example of a lesser deity, as she was a greater goddess in 4e FR.

She must have lost some of her power and influence when the other drow deities returned to a state of actually existing again.

[oxybe]

Many gods in D&D have often played musical chairs when a new edition came around.

Some got the comfy chairs, some got the stupid plastic ones and some had to sit out until the next round.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

The whole point of reconstituting the way things worked was to step away from Greyhawk and say, "You guys should play around with your settings and make the game your own," and they were met with a chorus of people shouting, "How dare you alter the setting?

Do you have a source on that, because a lot of the changes to existing settings don't seem to have any relation to encouraging people to make their own. Unless it was by offending fans of existing settings so they had to go make their own, I suppose, but that's hardly the best way to go about things.

In fact, if the idea was to encourage people to make their own settings, there's no point in making any changes to default settings, since people would be assumed not to be playing those. You hardly need to go into great detail on that stupid Spell Plague if no one's using Faerun as written in your book.

[EvilAnagram]

That's good for you. I wound up having to deliberately set most of my games in earlier time periods so that half of the nations and deities I commonly made use of actually still existed in the setting, and the other half hadn't had their dominant races renamed for no apparent reason.

Not every gaming table is the same, and my being angry at how one of my favourite settings literally got blasted apart is I believe a perfectly valid reaction.

I understand that you believe it's a valid reaction, but let's look at it another way:

You didn't like the 4e take on the Forgotten Realms, so you set your game in a time period you did like and had a fun game. It seems to me like 4e had little real effect on how you played your game, and it seems odd to me that you would continue to be angry about something that, at most, barely had any impact on your life.


Do you have a source on that, because a lot of the changes to existing settings don't seem to have any relation to encouraging people to make their own. Unless it was by offending fans of existing settings so they had to go make their own, I suppose, but that's hardly the best way to go about things.

In fact, if the idea was to encourage people to make their own settings, there's no point in making any changes to default settings, since people would be assumed not to be playing those. You hardly need to go into great detail on that stupid Spell Plague if no one's using Faerun as written in your book.

The basic setting in the DMG and MM is explicitly stated to be a template for people to construct their own setting, even including suggestions on how to alter the core assumptions of how the game world should work to fall more in line with what players want out of their home game. As you could tell if you wanted to bother actually reading my post, I was explicitly talking about the grab bag basic setting of 4e, not the existing campaign settings.

I don't know why you're trying to extend my description of one thing to cover something else, but I'll go ahead and assume that you misread something, rather than that you're a disingenuous gadfly.

If you're genuinely interested in their reasoning, I would imagine that WotC was trying to push things into alignment with the new alignment system and all its planar implications, but the simple fact is that they should have known that people don't read or play in the Forgotten Realms because they enjoy changes or the unfamiliar.

[Millstone85]

She must have lost some of her power and influence when the other drow deities returned to a state of actually existing again.That's a good point.

I like the Dark Seldarine. They are like a familial adventuring party. There is mommy cleric, brother rogue, sister bard, the little fighter, auntie necromancer and uncle warlock.

http://i.imgur.com/qxanDbM.png

I was explicitly talking about the grab bag basic setting of 4e, not the existing campaign settings.I think you have got the right idea. But at the same time, it is not that easy a distinction to make. For example...


Instead I happened upon the Underdark book, where one of the most iconic parts of Dungeons & Dragons now had an entirely new fundamentally-important deity who had never been mentioned previously but who was mentioned on nearly every page. It led to a running joke between me and a few friends which went 'Who the [censored] is Torog?' after my attempt to read through it had me declaring as such loudly, multiple times over. I wanted to read about Lolth and the drow, and instead what I got was a needless creation myth that utterly minimised everything that I liked and which was interesting about the Underdark in favour of making it some kind of prison for an edgelord cenobite-wannabe.The 4e book called Underdark was a PoL book, not a FR one. And I do believe Torog was nowhere to be found in the 4e FR books. So it shouldn't be a problem that Torog had never been mentioned previously, since PoL was a new setting with a new mythology.

I am not bothered either by the world of PoL having an underdark. I can see a lot of D&D worlds having an underdark.

But then... Lolth.

Yes, there is a Lolth in PoL. And yes, she is the demon goddess of the drow, who really likes spiders.

So, a deity from another world, no big deal, right?

Nuh-uh, different canon. Don't assume anything you know from FR holds true for that Lolth. Did she ever have rebellious children? I don't know.

Not only is that really confusing, it also gives the impression a setting you know is being overwritten, even when it technically isn't.

[Scots Dragon]

I understand that you believe it's a valid reaction, but let's look at it another way:

You didn't like the 4e take on the Forgotten Realms, so you set your game in a time period you did like and had a fun game. It seems to me like 4e had little real effect on how you played your game, and it seems odd to me that you would continue to be angry about something that, at most, barely had any impact on your life.

So that thing where looking forward to future novels and material would now be impossible has absolutely no bearing. I mean, it didn't ruin my life or anything but it really bloody irritated me in the same way that various other setting reboots and setting-ruining 'big event stories' shoehorned into the various other shared universes that I tend to follow irritated me.

Imagine it this way. You follow something as a dutiful fan for literally years, and you're actually looking forward to this newly announced big and supposedly exciting edition they're coming out with... only it ruins your favourite class, destroys the nation that the character whose class that was is from, explicitly gets rid of your favourite campaign setting and most of the elements central to that, and treats all of the previous material as if it was terrible and you're supposedly stupid for liking it. This is what happened with Dungeons & Dragons 4E for me.

There were actually jokes in some of the previews to the effect of 'lol, aasimar, more like ASS-imar amirite?', and I'm not actually joking there. To quote the Wizards Present Races and Classes booklet they released in the lead-up to the edition.


Celestials
— Rob Heinsoo

If you're a long-time D&D fan, odds are that you've already noticed that the tieflings' promotion to first-rank player character race has left another race behind: the race that was the tieflings' light side counterpart, a race of golden humans descended from angels — the aasimar.

Even now I struggle to type that word without spelling it like buttocks.

You know, if I'd read these at the time rather than simply waiting for the books to be out, I would likely not have bothered and ignored D&D 4E entirely, but nonetheless I reserve the right to be ever-so-slightly irritated at this stuff.

[EvilAnagram]

So that thing where looking forward to future novels and material would now be impossible has absolutely no bearing. I mean, it didn't ruin my life or anything but it really bloody irritated me in the same way that various other setting reboots and setting-ruining 'big event stories' shoehorned into the various other shared universes that I tend to follow irritated me.

Imagine it this way. You follow something as a dutiful fan for literally years, and you're actually looking forward to this newly announced big and supposedly exciting edition they're coming out with... only it ruins your favourite class, destroys the nation that the character whose class that was is from, explicitly gets rid of your favourite campaign setting and most of the elements central to that, and treats all of the previous material as if it was terrible and you're supposedly stupid for liking it. This is what happened with Dungeons & Dragons 4E for me.

This is a pretty fair point, and it's why I do think that fundamentally altering the Forgotten Realms cosmology was a bad idea. I think throwing it for a loop with the Spellplague wasn't a terrible idea in and of itself, but they cut out so much material in doing so, which was pretty terrible. As far as the table top goes, I don't think it matters, but for authors to throw out huge chunks of their continuity is a pretty clear affront.

[ZorroGames]

Guess coming from homebrew mandatory for a campaign I do not understand this thread all that well. If you like version 5, 4, 3.5, 3, 2, 1, 0... better - than just play that? What matters if you like spicy or sweet tasting foods or the fluff of different versions or games?

To me D&D is best when you create your own world or at least your own version of a "classical" setting but I don't see a problem with playing a standardized game setting if it pleases you whatever its feel/flavor/fluff.

[Glorthindel]

So that thing where looking forward to future novels and material would now be impossible has absolutely no bearing. I mean, it didn't ruin my life or anything but it really bloody irritated me in the same way that various other setting reboots and setting-ruining 'big event stories' shoehorned into the various other shared universes that I tend to follow irritated me.

Imagine it this way. You follow something as a dutiful fan for literally years, and you're actually looking forward to this newly announced big and supposedly exciting edition they're coming out with... only it ruins your favourite class, destroys the nation that the character whose class that was is from, explicitly gets rid of your favourite campaign setting and most of the elements central to that, and treats all of the previous material as if it was terrible and you're supposedly stupid for liking it. This is what happened with Dungeons & Dragons 4E for me.


This is something I can definitely support; as someone who has played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (and the associated table games) for the better part of 25 years, I still can't look at a single thing Games Workshop branded without seething inside over what they did to the Warhammer World. Sure, you can just "pretend it didn't happen, and play along with your version of the world" but that **** hurts somewhere deep inside to see something you have followed avidly for decades get ripped up in front of you and spat upon with such utter contempt.

Its worse when it is so needless. The Realms didn't need to get crapped all over just to create a new setting, just as much as the Warhammer World didn't need to be set on fire to just so GW could release a fantasy skirmish game :smallfrown:

[Scots Dragon]

This is something I can definitely support; as someone who has played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (and the associated table games) for the better part of 25 years, I still can't look at a single thing Games Workshop branded without seething inside over what they did to the Warhammer World. Sure, you can just "pretend it didn't happen, and play along with your version of the world" but that **** hurts somewhere deep inside to see something you have followed avidly for decades get ripped up in front of you and spat upon with such utter contempt.

Aw jeez, yeah. Despite what my nationality might indicate, I've always been more into D&D related stuff than Warhammer stuff, but I felt a knowing amount of proxy sympathy for fans when the whole Age of Sigmar stuff was anounced.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

The basic setting in the DMG and MM is explicitly stated to be a template for people to construct their own setting, even including suggestions on how to alter the core assumptions of how the game world should work to fall more in line with what players want out of their home game. As you could tell if you wanted to bother actually reading my post, I was explicitly talking about the grab bag basic setting of 4e, not the existing campaign settings.

I don't know why you're trying to extend my description of one thing to cover something else, but I'll go ahead and assume that you misread something, rather than that you're a disingenuous gadfly.
I might have misinterpreted your statementt " and they were met with a chorus of people shouting, "How dare you alter the setting?" Did you mean people were shouting about the new setting or that they were upset about the changes to the existing settings? Because the most vociferous complaints I've seen were usually the latter.

As for not playing Forgotten Realms because they like change or the unusual, I could counter that when I order a chicken sandwich I am not looking for a 'new or unusual' fish one, no matter how good. Well, I'd make that argument were any of the changes to the Forgotten Realms 'good'. Or the changes to the alignment system, for that matter, which impacted all the settings. Or the loss of spell schools. Or the new planar cosmology.

And I say this as someone who doesn't even really like the Forgotten Realms that much. It's not in my top 5 official D&D settings, anyway and there aren't that many of those.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

You know, seeing as how the Dark Sun and Eberron conversions were actually pretty well received - from what I understand, the majority of Dark Sun players actually loved the 4e Dark Sun, for de-canonizing the Prism Pentad novels and the "Mindlords of the Last Sea" content - I can't help but wonder if 4e would have been received better as a whole if WoTC hadn't just said "y'know what, we put out dozens of Forgotten Realms splatbooks ourselves for 3.5, how about we focus on some of the more obscure settings instead?" and left Faerun alone.

Because, really, that was probably the main cause of anti-4e backlash: the World Axis switchover wouldn't have been quite that big of a deal on its own, since Planescape's a pretty forgotten setting nowadays (if better off than Spelljammer), but changing up the Realms was just pouring gasoline on the flames.

[Zardnaar]

4E fluff (Netir Vale) was not to bad by itself. I liked it better than some of the TSR/WotC worlds and I would rate it roughly in the middle of the pack I suppose.

Don't get me started on 4E Realms and Darksun though.

[EvilAnagram]

4E fluff (Netir Vale) was not to bad by itself. I liked it better than some of the TSR/WotC worlds and I would rate it roughly in the middle of the pack I suppose.

Don't get me started on 4E Realms and Darksun though.

I'm getting you started because I loved 4e Darksun.

[Zardnaar]

I'm getting you started because I loved 4e Darksun.

Did you have/paly the original?

If you never played DS I would get that the 4E one was attractive. 4E one had decent art etc and it did some things right like the timeline they picked.

Just putting things like Dregoth and The Dray in there was a bad idea.

[hamishspence]

They probably thought they needed to ensure that those 4e players who had a strong preference for Dragonborn characters, would not be repelled by their being absent in Dark Sun.

[EvilAnagram]

Did you have/paly the oringal?

If you never played DS I would get that the 4E one was attractive. 4E one had decent art etc and it did some things right like the timeline they picked.

Just putting things like Dregoth and The Dray in there was a bad idea.
That is, in fact, the case.

[Zardnaar]

That is, in fact, the case.

Might explain it a bit. You did not play 2E DS just to be clear?

Long story short I think 4E mechanics and some of the races undermined what made DS interesting to begin with. It was about survival and the past was quite shrouded. Basically Dregoth was a hidden menace that you would have to go discover along with the Dray. Clerics were elemental powered and tied to a major part of the worlds history, similar with the Templars (they were not arcane users AKA refluffed warlocks).


Shoehorning in Dragonborn for example would be lie sticking Kender in another world.

[RedWarlock]

Might explain it a bit. You did not play 2E DS just to be clear?

Long story short I think 4E mechanics and some of the races undermined what made DS interesting to begin with. It was about survival and the past was quite shrouded. Basically Dregoth was a hidden menace that you would have to go discover along with the Dray. Clerics were elemental powered and tied to a major part of the worlds history, similar with the Templars (they were not arcane users AKA refluffed warlocks).


Shoehorning in Dragonborn for example would be lie sticking Kender in another world.

Sacrifice for the core races in 4e, since the Dray/Dragonborn were near-analogous physically. Maybe slightly mangled, but I thought it was better handled there than the Eladrin, which I liked just fine. (I got into DS a bit in 3e, never played, but I knew a fair bit from Dragon articles and such.)

Clerics were a wash because there was so much riding on the Divine power source which was by DS's definition excluded. If they'd had more time with the edition, I could see them putting out custom alternates for Elemental Clerics or even making an original class that incorporated it (something in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, for instance), but I think they knew 4e was already looking grim, DS was just before Essentials, and Heroes of EC was IIRC the last book before the end.

[Zardnaar]

Sacrifice for the core races in 4e, since the Dray/Dragonborn were near-analogous physically. Maybe slightly mangled, but I thought it was better handled there than the Eladrin, which I liked just fine. (I got into DS a bit in 3e, never played, but I knew a fair bit from Dragon articles and such.)

Clerics were a wash because there was so much riding on the Divine power source which was by DS's definition excluded. If they'd had more time with the edition, I could see them putting out custom alternates for Elemental Clerics or even making an original class that incorporated it (something in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, for instance), but I think they knew 4e was already looking grim, DS was just before Essentials, and Heroes of EC was IIRC the last book before the end.

2E core cleric was kind of divine but they were talking about clerics powered by other power sources in 2E, not just Darksun. Things such as philosophy for example, basically if enough people believe in it or whatever you believe in can grant spells (spirists, nature, planar things) you got your spells.

This was in 1990 or so before Darksun landed. You did not need to tie clerics to the divine power source and 4E did it when 2E moved away form it and similar to 3E where you did not need to have a god (except on FR)

I'm fine with some races being excluded in campaign setting, they are opt in after all. Krynn for example lacks halflings and half orcs. Just because its in a PHB doesn't mean you need to stick it in a camapign setting thats what things like Eberron, FR, Spelljammer, Nentir Vale are for.

[ZorroGames]

2E core cleric was kind of divine but they were talking about clerics powered by other power sources in 2E, not just Darksun. Things such as philosophy for example, basically if enough people believe in it or whatever you believe in can grant spells (spirists, nature, planar things) you got your spells.

This was in 1990 or so before Darksun landed. You did not need to tie clerics to the divine power source and 4E did it when 2E moved away form it and similar to 3E where you did not need to have a god (except on FR)

I'm fine with some races being excluded in campaign setting, they are opt in after all. Krynn for example lacks halflings and half orcs. Just because its in a PHB doesn't mean you need to stick it in a camapign setting thats what things like Eberron, FR, Spelljammer, Nentir Vale are for.

Philosophy as faith, I remember oohing over that.

Sadly, shortly after 2nd Edition came out I had to set FRPGs and even war games aside for a while. Years in the case of the latter, decades for the former (late 1980s/1990s through this year when I read about 5th Edition.) 2017 - 1992 (+/-) is 25. Wow, seemed like forever.

[2D8HP]

...Sadly, shortly after 2nd Edition came out I had to set FRPGs and even war games aside for a while. Years in the case of the latter, decades for the former (late 1980s/1990s through this year when I read about 5th Edition.) 2017 - 1992 (+/-) is 25. Wow, seemed like forever.


1992?

That's also the year I walked away from FRP's as well.

I didn't like Unearthed Arcana, but I would have loved to still play pre-UA AD&D, OD&D, or B/X in 1992, and the more I learn about 2e the better it sounds to me (why didn't TSR say that they undid UA?).

I was also real excited to try Pendragon, but alas it was not to be.

What was available to actually play in '92?

Champions, Cyberpunk, and Vampire.
:yuk:

I don't know 3.x very well, and other than they went back to a 5 point alignment system like 1977 D&D, I really don't know 4e at all, but 5e seems to me like a combination of (mostly) Champions, and old D&D with a smidge of Vampire (and RuneQuest!).

It's not perfect but it's a lot better than '92!

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

On the Elemental Cleric, here's the thing about 4th edition that I feel a lot of people who didn't get into it failed to realize: 4th edition was not afraid to divorce fluff from mechanics.

Indeed, the whole point of the Warlord class was to exemplify this. Many people had, before then, complained that clerics were obligatory - you had to have one, or you couldn't survive in D&D. Warlords and the Leader role presented a way to break from the "required" classes and give greater freedom to settings and players alike.

You want a 4e Elemental Priest? Take the Elemental Priest character theme, and/or be a Shaman - a character class whose entire fluff schtick boils down to communing with and drawing power from the entities who make up the fundaments of reality - including elementals.

You want to be a classic Dark Sun Druid? Well, the Druid's still there, and there's a Primal Guardian theme whose entire point is to portray the "spirits & elementals worshipping defender of what's left of life in the wilderness". If anything, I'd argue that a Primal Guardian Warden is probably closer to evoking the spirit of the Athasian Druid than the actual druid was in past editions!

Insisting that the 4e Element Priest isn't a priest because it's not a Cleric reskin is refusing to see the forest for the trees. 4th edition literally made titles and mechanics separate from each other, and the fluff benefited hugely from it.

Why would you want Clerics in Dark Sun with just the handwave "they're calling on the elements rather than the gods", when you can literally take the Elemental Priest Theme and/or the Shaman class and get the same fluff AND similar mechanical abilities? Even in AD&D, Elemental Priests of Athas had unusual powers like immunity to fire, earth-gliding or Gating to the elemental planes, once they got their levels.

As for Templars being a new Warlock... honestly, that made more sense. Don't forget, Templars were literally only a class in the very first version of the Dark Sun, and were rendered unplayable in the Revised Edition that came out after the Prism Pentad quintilogy was published. Even when they were a thing, the Templar class's only real distinction from a priest was that A: it worshipped a Sorcerer-King instead of a god, and B: they gained spellcasting slots more slowly than the conventional Cleric, but had much more spellslots available to them by the time they maxed out their class. They also had more "mage-like" abilities, in the form of creating scrolls & potions, and unlimited weapon training options. They fit very well into the Warlock's conceptual space, especially Athas is supposed to be a world where there are no gods, and even The Dragon isn't really a deity yet, despite being an epic monster.

And on that topic... I saw this brought up elsewhere, with someone complaining that the 4e Dragon isn't "really" The Dragon because it doesn't have all of the spells and psionic powers of the 2e version. All I can say to that is that you haven't paid attention to either the 4e monster mechanics or its actual 4e statblock at all. The Dragon of Tyr is one of the nastiest monsters in 4th edition; it's level 33 - higher than some Demon Princes and Primordials! - and gets three turns to the party's one. It can claw, bite, lash with its tail, wield two different kinds of breath weapons, produce telekinetic pulses, use telekinesis to augment its speed, and suck the life from anyone near it at-will with defiling. Add in the fact that design mechanics for monsters in 4e have, from the beginning, stated that statblocks cover their in-battle abilities and DMs can give them whatever out-of-combat stuff they need just because, and it really doesn't need to be any more complex.

The Dragon of Tyr has every anti-scry and die countermeasure you feel necessary. Which shouldn't be many because 4e went out of its way to make the ever-annoying scry & die play-style impossible.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

Every time I go looking back through Dragon and other, later 4e publications, I find something new to reminisce about. The Star Pact might be considered unfitting in 5e, due to the existence of the Great Old One patron, but the "Malign Stars" were actually pretty awesome if you could track down their fluff.

Dragon #381 really sold us some interesting Patron ideas, including Yorgrix; Weaver of the Poison Web (Dark Pact), The Eochaid (Fey Pact), The Prisoner in Iron (Infernal Pact) and the Bleak Guide (Vestige Pact), but Ulban, who had been mentioned much earlier in #366, really sparks my imagination.

In a nutshell, Ulban is the last surviving intelligence after the universe's annihilation in the distant future. It has flung itself desperately back in time in search of something - or someone - that will help it achieve its one single driving goal: to prevent the end of all that is, was, and ever might be.

How can you not love an idea like that?!

[Zardnaar]

On the Elemental Cleric, here's the thing about 4th edition that I feel a lot of people who didn't get into it failed to realize: 4th edition was not afraid to divorce fluff from mechanics.

Indeed, the whole point of the Warlord class was to exemplify this. Many people had, before then, complained that clerics were obligatory - you had to have one, or you couldn't survive in D&D. Warlords and the Leader role presented a way to break from the "required" classes and give greater freedom to settings and players alike.

You want a 4e Elemental Priest? Take the Elemental Priest character theme, and/or be a Shaman - a character class whose entire fluff schtick boils down to communing with and drawing power from the entities who make up the fundaments of reality - including elementals.

You want to be a classic Dark Sun Druid? Well, the Druid's still there, and there's a Primal Guardian theme whose entire point is to portray the "spirits & elementals worshipping defender of what's left of life in the wilderness". If anything, I'd argue that a Primal Guardian Warden is probably closer to evoking the spirit of the Athasian Druid than the actual druid was in past editions!

Insisting that the 4e Element Priest isn't a priest because it's not a Cleric reskin is refusing to see the forest for the trees. 4th edition literally made titles and mechanics separate from each other, and the fluff benefited hugely from it.

Why would you want Clerics in Dark Sun with just the handwave "they're calling on the elements rather than the gods", when you can literally take the Elemental Priest Theme and/or the Shaman class and get the same fluff AND similar mechanical abilities? Even in AD&D, Elemental Priests of Athas had unusual powers like immunity to fire, earth-gliding or Gating to the elemental planes, once they got their levels.

As for Templars being a new Warlock... honestly, that made more sense. Don't forget, Templars were literally only a class in the very first version of the Dark Sun, and were rendered unplayable in the Revised Edition that came out after the Prism Pentad quintilogy was published. Even when they were a thing, the Templar class's only real distinction from a priest was that A: it worshipped a Sorcerer-King instead of a god, and B: they gained spellcasting slots more slowly than the conventional Cleric, but had much more spellslots available to them by the time they maxed out their class. They also had more "mage-like" abilities, in the form of creating scrolls & potions, and unlimited weapon training options. They fit very well into the Warlock's conceptual space, especially Athas is supposed to be a world where there are no gods, and even The Dragon isn't really a deity yet, despite being an epic monster.

And on that topic... I saw this brought up elsewhere, with someone complaining that the 4e Dragon isn't "really" The Dragon because it doesn't have all of the spells and psionic powers of the 2e version. All I can say to that is that you haven't paid attention to either the 4e monster mechanics or its actual 4e statblock at all. The Dragon of Tyr is one of the nastiest monsters in 4th edition; it's level 33 - higher than some Demon Princes and Primordials! - and gets three turns to the party's one. It can claw, bite, lash with its tail, wield two different kinds of breath weapons, produce telekinetic pulses, use telekinesis to augment its speed, and suck the life from anyone near it at-will with defiling. Add in the fact that design mechanics for monsters in 4e have, from the beginning, stated that statblocks cover their in-battle abilities and DMs can give them whatever out-of-combat stuff they need just because, and it really doesn't need to be any more complex.

The Dragon of Tyr has every anti-scry and die countermeasure you feel necessary. Which shouldn't be many because 4e went out of its way to make the ever-annoying scry & die play-style impossible.

To me it just came off more as lazy AKLA we can't be bothered designing Elemental Clerics. Also because they had the moronic idea that clerics are divine power source, even 2E had innovated past that.

Dragonborn as Dray was also lame on multiple levels. 1 The Dray were actually different, 2. The Dray did exist but they were not iterating with the world at large and 3. Dregoth was a hidden menace.

The art for 4E DS was also way to cartoony although some pieces were very good. Healing surges also did not fit the vibe of Darksun, 2E was 1d3 per day and clerics could not cast healing spells over 3rd level (in the 1st boxed set). This was in an edition where cure moderate wounds did not exist until late 2E. Refluffing Goliaths as Half Giants was also ultra lame and 4E Kreen were also meh kind of like 4E Drow due to the pursuit of "baance" at all costs. The original DS was not balanced as such was not meant to be and that was part of the appeal as it was very different.


I suppose the best way I cold describe it would be WoTC re releasing Nerath and getting rid of Dragonborn, Warlocks and Warlords or shoehorning Dragonborn into Dragonlance as Draconian substitutes.

4E DS was not as good plot wise as the oriingal early DS material, it was better than the Prism Pentad events and going back to just after Kalaks death was better than some of the actual 2E material released. DS got screwed by TSR metaplot and the collapse of TSR.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

To me it just came off more as lazy AKLA we can't be bothered designing Elemental Clerics. Also because they had the moronic idea that clerics are divine power source, even 2E had innovated past that.
Except that even in 2e, "philosophical" clerics were STILL tapping into the "ineffable forces of the divine". Even the Athar, whose entire Faction was founded on the idea that The Powers Are Frauds, still had Clerics who were still trapping into "true divinity". It's just that "divine" did not necessarily have to equal "godly".

Hells, the whole point of the Primal Power Source was to try and shake up the perception that Nature Magic and Cleric Magic are absolutely one and the same, making Druids finally feel like something more than just a variant Cleric with different class abilities.

So, my point stands. Priest =/= Cleric. The Themes and the Primal Classes already did everything needed to portray the Elemental Priest; why reinvent the wheel?

Yes, they could have invented "elemental themed" powers and paragon paths for the Cleric. But why bother? The powers of the Elemental Priest theme already cover that field nicely - and the fact that the Theme's powers were overlaid on top of the existing class powers better meshed with the actual lore that the Priests did everything they could to hide their power from the resentful eyes of the Sorcerer-Kings and their Templar Minions.

Priest theme not enough? Then be a Shaman! It's literally made for the kind of primeval, non-divine clerical archetype that the Elemental Priests of 2e were filling! You roam the world guided by your elemental master, who literally fights alongside you to promote its field of influence. How is that not an Elemental Priest?


Dragonborn as Dray was also lame on multiple levels. 1 The Dray were actually different, 2. The Dray did exist but they were not iterating with the world at large and 3. Dregoth was a hidden menace.
Here's the thing: the Dray didn't show up until the very last published Dark Sun adventure module. That was literally their only appearance in all of D&D. Unless you bought that adventure, you never knew they existed. Even the official 3.5 update for Dark Sun in Dragon #319 didn't acknowledge their existence, and it had every single race from the Dark Sun Revised Campaign Setting, plus the Elan and Maenad.

You're right, mechanically, the Dragonborn are very different to Dray - I have actually tried my hand at a 5e conversion of the latter, just to exercise my homebrewing skills.

Just because the 4e version was different, does not make it bad. Especially as te majority of players probably couldn't tell you what the original dray were like in the first place!

But, in a world literally defined by the fact that the various kings are turning themselves into dragons, the dragonborn do fit a thematic niche. And it's certainly better than just retconning Dregoth out of existence!


Healing surges also did not fit the vibe of Darksun, 2E was 1d3 per day and clerics could not cast healing spells over 3rd level (in the 1st boxed set). This was in an edition where cure moderate wounds did not exist until late 2E.
Except the healing surge idea actually blends in very well with the idea of Dark Sun being a Conan-esque "Sword & Sorcery" setting, where people survive or die based on their inherent toughness and their ability to take a licking and keep on kicking. Athasian PCs were supposed to start at level 3 not just because Dark Sun is dangerous, but to emphasize that anyone willing to head out into the wasteland is an exceptional individual.

Besides that, the DMG provides rules for modifying healing surge rules and the Dark Sun Campaign provides its own rules on surviving in the wasteland, which actually make being out in the wilderness a real challenge for people. You might not die the moment you run into a spider cactus, but you can and will starve to death very, very quickly if you don't play it smart.


Refluffing Goliaths as Half Giants was also ultra lame.
Half-Giants were ultra-lame to begin with, being Chaotic Stupid dumb muscle bruisers. Goliaths fit the mechanical bill of a "huge, powerfully built humanoid" and actually redeemed the fluff in the bargain, especially since half-orcs weren't supposed to be present in the setting.


4E Kreen were also meh kind of like 4E Drow due to the pursuit of "baance" at all costs. The original DS was not balanced as such was not meant to be and that was part of the appeal as it was very different.
Dark Sun was unbalanced because AD&D in general was unbalanced. I've read more than my share of AD&D and BD&D races and I can tell you for nothing that TSR didn't so much consider balance unimportant as they were just no good at it. You're right, it didn't necessarily keep the game from being fun, but it didn't make it fun either. Ask the countless players who found their fighters, rangers, thieves and other martial classes reduced to standing around and twiddling their thumbs as the casters did everything.

WoTC didn't just contract some mental illness and become obsessed with balance out of nowhere; imbalance was a real problem for a significant majority of the player population. Most people would rather be capable of contributing equally to the party than be superfluous or steal the spotlight. Most of those who feel otherwise tend to want to be the overpowered ones so they can make it all about them, and are not the sort of people you tend to have a lot of fun playing with.

4e Thri-Kreen were no stronger than any other race. But they were still unique. They did things only they could do, they played in ways only they could play. They had good fluff, they had interesting hooks. And that makes them a good race. Not their ability to outperform every other race in D&D at the role of quad-wielding fighter.

[Zardnaar]

Except that even in 2e, "philosophical" clerics were STILL tapping into the "ineffable forces of the divine". Even the Athar, whose entire Faction was founded on the idea that The Powers Are Frauds, still had Clerics who were still trapping into "true divinity". It's just that "divine" did not necessarily have to equal "godly".

Hells, the whole point of the Primal Power Source was to try and shake up the perception that Nature Magic and Cleric Magic are absolutely one and the same, making Druids finally feel like something more than just a variant Cleric with different class abilities.

So, my point stands. Priest =/= Cleric. The Themes and the Primal Classes already did everything needed to portray the Elemental Priest; why reinvent the wheel?

Yes, they could have invented "elemental themed" powers and paragon paths for the Cleric. But why bother? The powers of the Elemental Priest theme already cover that field nicely - and the fact that the Theme's powers were overlaid on top of the existing class powers better meshed with the actual lore that the Priests did everything they could to hide their power from the resentful eyes of the Sorcerer-Kings and their Templar Minions.

Priest theme not enough? Then be a Shaman! It's literally made for the kind of primeval, non-divine clerical archetype that the Elemental Priests of 2e were filling! You roam the world guided by your elemental master, who literally fights alongside you to promote its field of influence. How is that not an Elemental Priest?


Here's the thing: the Dray didn't show up until the very last published Dark Sun adventure module. That was literally their only appearance in all of D&D. Unless you bought that adventure, you never knew they existed. Even the official 3.5 update for Dark Sun in Dragon #319 didn't acknowledge their existence, and it had every single race from the Dark Sun Revised Campaign Setting, plus the Elan and Maenad.

You're right, mechanically, the Dragonborn are very different to Dray - I have actually tried my hand at a 5e conversion of the latter, just to exercise my homebrewing skills.

Just because the 4e version was different, does not make it bad. Especially as te majority of players probably couldn't tell you what the original dray were like in the first place!

But, in a world literally defined by the fact that the various kings are turning themselves into dragons, the dragonborn do fit a thematic niche. And it's certainly better than just retconning Dregoth out of existence!


Except the healing surge idea actually blends in very well with the idea of Dark Sun being a Conan-esque "Sword & Sorcery" setting, where people survive or die based on their inherent toughness and their ability to take a licking and keep on kicking. Athasian PCs were supposed to start at level 3 not just because Dark Sun is dangerous, but to emphasize that anyone willing to head out into the wasteland is an exceptional individual.

Besides that, the DMG provides rules for modifying healing surge rules and the Dark Sun Campaign provides its own rules on surviving in the wasteland, which actually make being out in the wilderness a real challenge for people. You might not die the moment you run into a spider cactus, but you can and will starve to death very, very quickly if you don't play it smart.


Half-Giants were ultra-lame to begin with, being Chaotic Stupid dumb muscle bruisers. Goliaths fit the mechanical bill of a "huge, powerfully built humanoid" and actually redeemed the fluff in the bargain, especially since half-orcs weren't supposed to be present in the setting.


Dark Sun was unbalanced because AD&D in general was unbalanced. I've read more than my share of AD&D and BD&D races and I can tell you for nothing that TSR didn't so much consider balance unimportant as they were just no good at it. You're right, it didn't necessarily keep the game from being fun, but it didn't make it fun either. Ask the countless players who found their fighters, rangers, thieves and other martial classes reduced to standing around and twiddling their thumbs as the casters did everything.

WoTC didn't just contract some mental illness and become obsessed with balance out of nowhere; imbalance was a real problem for a significant majority of the player population. Most people would rather be capable of contributing equally to the party than be superfluous or steal the spotlight. Most of those who feel otherwise tend to want to be the overpowered ones so they can make it all about them, and are not the sort of people you tend to have a lot of fun playing with.

4e Thri-Kreen were no stronger than any other race. But they were still unique. They did things only they could do, they played in ways only they could play. They had good fluff, they had interesting hooks. And that makes them a good race. Not their ability to outperform every other race in D&D at the role of quad-wielding fighter.

Can you at least comprehend why AD&D players did not like 4E Darksun?
If they ever redo Nerath I hope they pick up from where 4E left it or reboot back to early 4E .

These days I prefer reboots back to original material so y
its easier to ignore metaplot as you can still use it if you like it.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

Can you at least comprehend why AD&D players did not like 4E Darksun?
If they ever redo Nerath I hope they pick up from where 4E left it or reboot back to early 4E .

These days I prefer reboots back to original material so y
its easier to ignore metaplot as you can still use it if you like it.

Okay, firstly, the 4e Generic Setting is not called "Nerath". The Empire of Nerath is a historical element in the 4e Generic Setting, like Arkhosia and Bael-Turath and Nihilath.

Secondly, of course I can understand that some AD&D players may not like 4e iterations of (insert relevant lore here). I may disagree with Narsil on some particulars, but I fully understand that the Spellplague was a very drastic and probably unnecessary change to make, which probably only came about because of how tightly Faerun has always been with its novels.

However, if you're going to post complaints here, you cannot be surprised when people challenge you on it.

But let's not take my word for it... Dark Sun Fans! Share your opinions on the matter.

[SharkForce]

2e thieves i can understand complaining about class balance being against them.

2e fighters? you're... you're joking, right?

i've seen well-buffed 2nd edition fighters do over 80 damage every round at level 7 (quite a bit more on a good round), which was about enough to kill a typical 18 hit die creature, and they danged near never miss. at higher levels, their damage increases further and they become resistant to everything. like, if there is a thing that could theoretically happen (apart from regular melee attacks), your level 15 fighter probably has a 75% or better chance of resisting it,even if the only thing they were wearing was a blindfold. give them some remotely decent gear and the tiniest bit of buff support and there are not a lot of things they can't kill in a single round. i mean, wizards were crazy stupid powerful too, but fighters were killing machines. also, thanks to magic resistance, while the wizard could probably do a better job of changing the world, there were plenty of things that they were basically helpless against without a perfect spell loadout (and some things where the perfect spell loadout was whatever helped you run away), and by the time they could cast all those spells the fighter would probably have killed whatever it was anyways.

people think the 5e fighter is powerful in combat, but they're nothing compared to the fighters i remember.

of course, that's not a 4e vs 5e fluff comment, but... i can understand not liking fighters as much (i didn't either), but thinking they were weak? really? you must have been playing a different game than me or something...

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

One of the sad drawbacks of 4e's approach to monster-making is that, not only did the MM1 suffer from what was ultimately revealed to be bad math, but the sheer number of statblocks required for the most essential monsters of D&D didn't leave a lot of room for fluff. Which is a shame, because when 4e could expand upon its monster fluff, the results could be pretty impressive.

Take, for example, these descriptions of the Catastrophic Dragons... I don't know about anyone else, but just these little titbits alone were inspiring to me, and cemented a place for Catastrophic Dragons in my heart that Bronze and Brass have never managed to achieve in 5 editions of trying...

Avalanche Dragon
“I’ve seen plenty of rock slides down this pass, but one I won’t ever forget. I saw something dance in the crushing boulders. I saw a dragon with wings of stone, coming for me. It haunts my dreams.” —Jak Ironwheel, caravan guard

The rolling boom of falling rocks ricochets down the pass like the lament of a brutal wind, distant but drawing closer. The echoes of crashing boulders accumulate, growing in intensity. In a deafening flood of smothering debris, the avalanche hurtles downward— and in its dance of crushing stones, the image of a dragon writhes. Its wings are the vanguard of the pounding stone. Its voice is the bellow of suffocating rock, its lashing tail the enveloping pall of dust that settles like a shroud on all those in its path.

Avalanche dragons are known as “deathslide dragons” to mountain orc tribes, and as “smothering dragons” to the goliaths that live below the peaks where they lair. An elemental accumulation of jagged stone shards and blinding dust, an avalanche dragon shows its draconic form only in broad outline. Its wings are twin clouds of dust and glittering sand. Its eyes, fangs, and claws are crystal shards, flashing with static discharge. An avalanche dragon is constantly shrouded in a shifting mass of stone and rock, the sound of which cracks and booms whenever it wakes from its watchful quiescence.

Blizzard Dragon
After the death of Io, a number of disaffected dragons received guidance from Umboras, Lord of the Rimefire. This primordial attracted those dragons who had cold, cruel hearts, who enjoyed toying with their prey before destroying the unfortunate morsels. Umboras carried them away to the deepest reaches of the Elemental Chaos, where neither sun nor volcano could heat the air. The ice coated their bodies, entombing them in hoarfrost. Umboras took his time, working terrible magic to transform the creatures in his image. After a year and a day, the dragons emerged from their frosty tombs, transformed into blizzard dragons.

Earthquake Dragon
When the ground tremors start, most mortals breathe whispered prayers to the gods or make offerings to the primal spirits to quiet the earth. When people begin disappearing on the fringes of a settlement, the remaining inhabitants begin to suspect a more sinister cause. The arrival of an earthquake dragon in a region is heralded by minor tremors. In subsequent days, the shaking grows increasingly violent Soon buildings are crumbling and people are disappearing into chasms that spontaneously appear in roads and fields.

Earthquake dragons are menaces to civilization. They move from settlement to settlement, hunting mortals as much for sport as for food . An earthquake dragon might leave a town in ruins for no other reason than the fact that it can. Once it has ruined a city and chased away or eaten the inhabitants, an earthquake dragon might dwell in the ruins for months, digesting its food and basking in the destruction it has wrought Then, when it tires of this sedentary activity, it moves on to the next region to repeat the process.

Typhoon Dragon
“Typhoon dragon? Pshaw. I’ve faced down fire-breathers, poison-spitters, beasts of the frozen tundra. What’s a little rain going to—” —Last words of Kaltho Vadarris, dragon slayer

As insatiable and capricious as the sea and its storms, the typhoon dragon is a harbinger of destruction. It delights in carnage, leaving death and mayhem in its wake. Like the hurricane, its approach is always forewarned—and as with those caught in the path of a hurricane, that warning avails its victims little. Where a typhoon dragon appears, nothing remains but wind-scoured coastline, the shattered remains of settlements, and the bones of the dead scattered across the uncaring sands.

The typhoon dragon has a sinuous and clearly draconic shape, but its substance is strangely fluid. Seen close up, a typhoon dragon appears to be formed of water held in place by unseen forces. Where the flesh of other creatures might stretch or wrinkle as they move, the typhoon dragon’s joints and spines ripple like the liquid they are.

Tornado Dragon
“Friend, there ain’t no reason to go to Gallowston. It’s gone. Something tore a hole in the sky, and the wound bled dark, angry clouds. As the winds howled, a demon rode that storm. It danced in the lightning, and where it flew, death followed it.” —Renard, wilderness scout

Thunder shatters the silence. Black clouds scud across an olive sky, loosing random droplets to spatter and splash, but the rain stops as soon as it starts. The air goes still. The world holds its breath. Then the chilling quiet surrenders to a rising roar, as the churning clouds overhead unsheathe a black blade. The tornado descends to cut a ruinous swath across plain and forest, village and city—and within it swirls a draconic form, its roar eclipsing the wind’s howl to herald the coming destruction.

A tornado dragon has a draconic shape, but its resemblance to chromatic and metallic dragons ends there. This monstrous thing is formed from black clouds, icy hail, and savage winds. Its eyes flash with lightning, and when it roars, it reveals teeth formed of white ice. When one takes to the air, it is hard to tell where the dragon begins and the storms stop.

Volcanic Dragon
Volcanic dragons are foul-tempered, cruel, hateful, and ambitious. They are as destructive as earthquake dragons, but they veil their lust for devastation with the pursuit of a more lofty goal, such as rulership over a kingdom in the Elemental Chaos or revenge for a petty slight half a century in the past. In the end, these goals are all justifications. The volcanic dragons' true credo is: All things burn, and nothing burns more sweetly than flesh.

Wildfire Dragon
“Fire lives but briefly. The dragon is its reincarnation.” —Ang-tur, high shaman of Imix

A spark is struck on a bone-dry plain, touching off the sere fields in a sudden blaze. Smoke towers against the sky as flames push toward the nearby trees. Before long, an entire forest is aflame, its panicked creatures in flight. Embers fall on thatched roofs, igniting villages and cities in the ravenous fire’s path. But more fearsome than the conflagration is the creature that spawned it. From the wildfire’s heart rises a serpentine form, spreading blazing wings in mockery of the phoenix’s rebirth. It sings with the roar of devouring flame and the savage joy of incineration.

A wildfire dragon appears to spring to life from the intense heat of a forest fire or the storm of smoke and flame that rises over a burning city. An observer can scarcely distinguish whether the dragon creates the flames or is summoned by them. Its wavering shape of flame is wreathed in cinders and smoke, barely constrained by a draconic form. While quiescent, a wildfire dragon’s heat is encased in mounds of embers, deceptively calm. But in a flash, its monstrous flames explode to all-consuming fury.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

I can't help but wonder if 4e would have flourished more if WoTC had thought to put out some kind of official setting book for the Nentir Vale, because, really, there's a freaking huge amount of lore hidden through splatbooks, Dragon issues, Dungeon issues, and sidebars in the most unexpected of places...

I found this whilst browsing around, and as far as I can tell, it's a near-encyclopediac reference to every bit of setting lore that the core 4e setting had, focusing mostly on a historical timeline.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2mLfpEGKv-Sb29tN2tBYVBWZzA/view

[toapat]

I can't help but wonder if 4e would have flourished more if WoTC had thought to put out some kind of official setting book for the Nentir Vale, because, really, there's a freaking huge amount of lore hidden through splatbooks, Dragon issues, Dungeon issues, and sidebars in the most unexpected of places...

WotC would have done better to not actively attempt to kill 3.5 and to not have called 4E a DnD game.

[Millstone85]

I can't help but wonder if 4e would have flourished more if WoTC had thought to put out some kind of official setting book for the Nentir Vale, because, really, there's a freaking huge amount of lore hidden through splatbooks, Dragon issues, Dungeon issues, and sidebars in the most unexpected of places...I am not sure how that would work.

I mean, in 4e, when you bought Underdark, it wasn't about the underdark you would find below Faerûn. That's why Torog was there. It was a book about the Nentir Vale underdark.

Same with Manual of the Planes, The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea, The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos, Player's Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, Player's Option: Heroes of Shadow, Player's Option: Heroes of the Feywild, and so on... because while Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Dark Sun were modified to have the same sort of cosmology as Nentir Vale, they could not coexist within one canon. Those were all Nentir Vale books.

How many more books could Nentir Vale get? Unless you mean Nentir Vale - Nentir Vale, and the rest of the surface of the mortal world? Well, the PHBs and splatbooks were kinda that, though I think they purposedly left as much free space as possible.

But I certainly would have been less confused, when I started playing D&D, if any of that had had "Nentir Vale" in the title.


I found this whilst browsing around, and as far as I can tell, it's a near-encyclopediac reference to every bit of setting lore that the core 4e setting had, focusing mostly on a historical timeline.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2mLfpEGKv-Sb29tN2tBYVBWZzA/viewNice find. I will read it. It might change my opinion.

[Tetrasodium]

"Santa dragon" was in Dungeon Annual, not Dragon Annual. Dragon Annual got Demonomicon: Yeenoghu with a lot of gnoll fluff too - but it's a pity it focused only on gnolls as adversaries and not on playing them.


This (http://www.wizards.com/files/367_Playing_Gnolls.pdf) one?... I'd say that it did that not because it was a 4e thing, but rather because it was written by Keith Baker (http://keith-baker.com/) (creator of eberron) & because he has put a lot of time & effort into thinking about/weaving a picture of how a stable society of monstrous races could exist as something other than a maurading band of thugs try doing a search for droaam, monster, or monstrous, & the like on http://keith-baker.com/ or read some of his dragonshards articles http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/archeb/ds for more.

[EvilAnagram]

WotC would have done better to not actively attempt to kill 3.5 and to not have called 4E a DnD game.

Killing 3.5 was the best thing that ever happened to tabletop gaming.

D&D excised itself of a bloated, cancerous edition, other companies were free to pick at its corpse and make a more balanced and fun version for people who like its style, and pruning that weed allowed many other game systems to finally grab a bigger market share. Even leaving aside the fact that 4e is a more fun system, killing 3.5 was a great move.

Tabletop gaming would not be experiencing a new wave of popularity if they hadn't killed 3.5.

[Knaight]

Killing 3.5 was the best thing that ever happened to tabletop gaming.

Given that 3.5 is by no means dead (not least because Pathfinder is basically the same game), WotC can't be said to have killed it.

[EvilAnagram]

Given that 3.5 is by no means dead (not least because Pathfinder is basically the same game), WotC can't be said to have killed it.

I added to my answer above. One of the reasons killing 3.5 was great is that Pathfinder improved it.

[toapat]

I added to my answer above. One of the reasons killing 3.5 was great is that Pathfinder improved it.

The only thing that pathfinder improved at all was grapple and they merged some numbers on the char-sheet that were already identical. The action economy is almost entirely locked off from the mundanes and feats are entirely worse than in 3.5

so dont lie about a company improving 3.5 when they objectively made the feats problem worse, the action disparity alone, and the bonus stacking infinite

And resume praising a company who actually created 2 very different systems both of which are very well balanced in both 4E and 5E

[Scots Dragon]

The only thing that pathfinder improved at all was grapple and they merged some numbers on the char-sheet that were already identical. The action economy is almost entirely locked off from the mundanes and feats are entirely worse than in 3.5

so dont lie about a company improving 3.5 when they objectively made the feats problem worse, the action disparity alone, and the bonus stacking infinite

And resume praising a company who actually created 2 very different systems both of which are very well balanced in both 4E and 5E

Y'know, I'm gonna just stay here in my grognard land and praise TSR's editions for not exactly being balanced but for being less utterly ridiculous in their unbalance than D&D 3E while still being extremely interesting in terms of what you can do with them. Also for not shoehorning in certain entirely new spellcasting classes that still to an extent don't really feel like they fit.

[EvilAnagram]

Y'know, I'm gonna just stay here in my grognard land and praise TSR's editions for not exactly being balanced but for being less utterly ridiculous in their unbalance than D&D 3E while still being extremely interesting in terms of what you can do with them. Also for not shoehorning in certain entirely new spellcasting classes that still to an extent don't really feel like they fit.

The TSR editions were fun, but much less intuitive on design than 4e or 5e. THAC0 was just too difficult to get your head around until you got it. I love those old Greyhawk modules, though.

[toapat]

Y'know, I'm gonna just stay here in my grognard land and praise TSR's editions for not exactly being balanced but for being less utterly ridiculous in their unbalance than D&D 3E while still being extremely interesting in terms of what you can do with them. Also for not shoehorning in certain entirely new spellcasting classes that still to an extent don't really feel like they fit.

to be fair, i wouldnt call the dumpster fire that is 3/.5 wholly of WotC's own fault. Blizzard North had a very significant impact on the design of the game, and essentially created the magic item system that partially defined 3, 3.5, 4, and 4E

i honestly think that WotC wanted to continue modular equipment into 5E but could not solve the core problem that it brought up involving the balance of items.

I feel like the fact that 3rd ed was released and developed during the "Third era" of the internet didnt help. Evolving while the internet allowed so much faster transfer of information while not really offering the resources to research the information against lead to the situations such as Incarnum and Binding being virtually the same spell system and the "All but literal name" Initiation combat for mundanes spellcasting that is Tome of Battle.

some quick research shows that feats were also a new technology for 3rd ed.

Looking at what major new systems were added, i can see why 3rd ed went so wrong

[Scots Dragon]

The TSR editions were fun, but much less intuitive on design than 4e or 5e. THAC0 was just too difficult to get your head around until you got it. I love those old Greyhawk modules, though.

I despise D&D 4E with the intensity of a thousand suns, but I will admit that 5E does have a lot of aspects that I've been tempted to steal for my own house rules. Mostly advantage/disadvantage, and the more unified proficiency system. That being said, the latter was actually something that Castles & Crusades did first, so... not too much of a stretch on my part to use it.

That being said, I tend not to actually properly use THAC0; I use the to-hit matrices in the AD&D 1E DMG for the most part. All the player has to do is roll and add their bonuses.


to be fair, i wouldnt call the dumpster fire that is 3/.5 wholly of WotC's own fault. Blizzard North had a very significant impact on the design of the game, and essentially created the magic item system that partially defined 3, 3.5, 4, and 4E

It's extremely telling that Wizards of the Coast was releasing a Diablo-based adaptation of AD&D exactly as D&D 3E was in development.

[toapat]

It's extremely telling that Wizards of the Coast was releasing a Diablo-based adaptation of AD&D exactly as D&D 3E was in development.

Other than diablo being a bad PnP experience, making the Diablo books probably helped significantly with making 3rd ed not completely terrible because of the poison that is using a newly developed customization system or 4

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

You know, for the most part, I've never really dug the gods in D&D. I'll generally give them credit for being more interesting (at least, usually) than just sticking the gods from real world polytheistic pantheons in, but playing a divine character has never really been my schtick.

4e made me change my mind on that with one particular goddess: Nusemnee. True, she's canonically a dead god, but you're given all you need to either bring her back or just retcon her into not being dead.

Why does she resonate with me so much? Because she's the 4e Goddess of Redemption and she's portrayed so well that I find her genuinely likeable and admirable, something a lot of "Good" gods of D&D have tended to fail for me. Seriously, St. Cuthbert can go stick that cudgel of his where the sun don't shine. Nusemnee, on the other hand, is sincere, honest, straight-forward and encourging - exactly what I'd want a deity with a portfolio like hers to be. Her tenets really speak for themselves; there's no judgment here, no harsh criticism, just acceptance and encouragement:


It is never too late to seek redemption.
True heroism does not come from good deeds. It comes from doing good when it matters.
Nobody is perfect. Those who seek to be perfect will fail. It is not a shame to fail, and it is not a waste to try.
Open your heart to possibilities. Never give up hope.


Beyond this... I'm a huge fan of Monster Adventurers, and Nusemnee is the picture-perfect deity to encourage the presence of such in-setting.

Now, I know what people are going to say: "but what about Elistaree!?"

To which I reply; 1, Elistaree is far more narrowly focused on the redemption of the drow, and 2... let's be honest, Elistaree is far more famous for the fan-service than for being a redeemer.

I won't be a hypocrite and say I don't like the image of curvaceous drow maidens sensually dancing naked beneath the moonlight... but, it's not the same kind of powerful, evocative image as a hulking ogre facing down a zombie army to protect a village, Nusemnee tenets inscribed on his sword, or a kobold curled protectively around a holy symbol and repeating the tenets of the Horned Daughter to give him courage, or a scarred orc praying beneath the rising sun for Nusemnee to give him the strength to shed his past, or a tiefling paladin seeking to use her goddess' example to show others that they do not need to let the darkness of their past define them.

Do you get where I'm coming from? She's a powerful idea, and one I personally find incredibly inspiring.

On the opposite side of the fence, we have the demon prince Codricuhn, the Blood Storm. One of the first arch-fiends to be unique to 4e, he's basically Apocalyptic Godzilla. I mean, seriously, look at him!

https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/nuntonlibrary/images/d/d6/Codricuhn.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110926012029

I admit not everyone will get that impression from this art, but to me, this picture conveys a sense of monstrousness. This a creature unlike anything you'll ever face in the mortal world, immense and powerful, unflinching and unstoppable, a truly titanic threat.

It helped that Codricuhn's Demonomicon entry had some of the most evocative writing I've ever enjoyed, painting a picture of what an abomination this is. A creature that carries its own personal hell with it wherever it goes, a storm of lightning and wind and toxic rains that lashes around it, sundering the very earth, with six demon-infested moons circling around its immensity in an endless orbit. Codricuhn, we are told, will climb and climb until it clambers free of the Abyss. And when that happens, the multiverse will fall. It is a being so terrible that even arch-devils and demon princes have tried to stand in its path, but all that remains of them now are bones tangled in the chains wreathing its tortured form.

And yet... in many ways, Codricuhn is a pitiable creature, because it did not want this, and it knows all too well what a tool of evil it has become. Its old mind is still there, it just can't do anything to stop itself, leaving it to sink into despair until the promised peace of oblivion is all that it has.

Now, I don't know about you guys. But this is an end-game creature I could really see myself using.