No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.

[RedMage125]

I believe that was me who said that.

I was too lazy to do a search, lol. But it stuck with me, so...pat yourself on the back for your words being impactful on at least one person.

Basically, 5e has to be looked at with fresh eyes for best results. People who expect lots of carryover from 3e (mechanically or philosophically) tend to get disappointed.

Hard Agree.

My group and I pretty much skipped 4th edition entirely. Here is yet another way in which that appears to have been a wise decision on our part.

4e is actually a very good game. And a lot can be done to make it still "feel like D&D" to the players, even veteran 3e players. But from behind the DM screen, it is VERY apparent how different it is. The funny thing? That was WAY better. 4e, unlike 3e, didn't feel the need for all monsters and NPCs to be built using the same mechanics as heroes. The addition of Minion, Elite, and Solo monsters was AMAZING.

Some criticisms were valid though. Because "cinematic combat" was a design goal, combat DID take a lot longer. But to me, that was a worthwhile tradeoff for the ability to use Elites and stuff to give extra "oomph" to otherwise squishy combatants that would not have lasted as long using 3e mechanics. And doing so without some kind of DM-fiat or deus ex machina.

For me as a PLAYER? I prefer 5e > 3.P > 4e

As a DM? 4e > 5e > 3.P
By a long shot.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I was too lazy to do a search, lol. But it stuck with me, so...pat yourself on the back for your words being impactful on at least one person.

I'm just shocked someone remembered something I said!

4e is actually a very good game. And a lot can be done to make it still "feel like D&D" to the players, even veteran 3e players. But from behind the DM screen, it is VERY apparent how different it is. The funny thing? That was WAY better. 4e, unlike 3e, didn't feel the need for all monsters and NPCs to be built using the same mechanics as heroes. The addition of Minion, Elite, and Solo monsters was AMAZING.

Some criticisms were valid though. Because "cinematic combat" was a design goal, combat DID take a lot longer. But to me, that was a worthwhile tradeoff for the ability to use Elites and stuff to give extra "oomph" to otherwise squishy combatants that would not have lasted as long using 3e mechanics. And doing so without some kind of DM-fiat or deus ex machina.

For me as a PLAYER? I prefer 5e > 3.P > 4e

As a DM? 4e > 5e > 3.P
By a long shot.

I mostly agree. My exact ordering differs though.

Player: 5e >> 3.P ~ 4e.
DM: 5e > 4e >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...>>>>> 3.P Ain't got time to learn all that content or deal with that level of mechanical cruft.

I'd love to play a game of 4e with someone who knew what they were doing though. I only DM'd it, and that was, well, a mess. Mainly because I was trying to fit a coherent game into 30-minute, 1x/week lunch sessions with players who knew nothing. And I was brand new at the whole tabletop thing and to 4e. We dropped about half the rules pretty fast. Transitioning to 5e was a major lifesaver for me.

Although I strongly prefer the cosmology of 4e (World axis?) to that of 3e/5e (Great Wheel). I HATE the Great Wheel, especially the Outer Planes. My own setting, built originally during 4e then transitioned forcibly to 5e, uses a hybrid (ie bashed to heck and back) version of the World Axis with a lot of tweaks. Including the complete lack of alignment-as-cosmology and all planes being non-infinite. As in the total size of the universe is about 4 astronomical units, basically the size of the Inner Solar System. And all the planes (except my liminal plane) have 1:1 correspondence between Mortal (not Material) and Plane X.

[RedMage125]

I'm just shocked someone remembered something I said!

It amused me greatly. Like I said, it's droll, but not inaccurate.

I mostly agree. My exact ordering differs though.

Player: 5e >> 3.P ~ 4e.
DM: 5e > 4e >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...>>>>> 3.P Ain't got time to learn all that content or deal with that level of mechanical cruft.

I'd love to play a game of 4e with someone who knew what they were doing though. I only DM'd it, and that was, well, a mess. Mainly because I was trying to fit a coherent game into 30-minute, 1x/week lunch sessions with players who knew nothing. And I was brand new at the whole tabletop thing and to 4e. We dropped about half the rules pretty fast. Transitioning to 5e was a major lifesaver for me.

Although I strongly prefer the cosmology of 4e (World axis?) to that of 3e/5e (Great Wheel). I HATE the Great Wheel, especially the Outer Planes. My own setting, built originally during 4e then transitioned forcibly to 5e, uses a hybrid (ie bashed to heck and back) version of the World Axis with a lot of tweaks. Including the complete lack of alignment-as-cosmology and all planes being non-infinite. As in the total size of the universe is about 4 astronomical units, basically the size of the Inner Solar System. And all the planes (except my liminal plane) have 1:1 correspondence between Mortal (not Material) and Plane X.

Spoiler: My game

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So, my home world originally sprung up a few areas at a time, because I has this ONE storyline I wanted to run, and I made the world for what I needed...and immediate surroundings. I was, at the time, just using FR's pantheon. As the game ran on, I would expand on it more and more, filling in extra details, even if they would never come up during that storyline. I eventually realized I had my own campaign world, and decided I needed my own gods, too. I created my own pantheon (although because of the Paladin and Cleric in my group, I did model 2 gods closely off FR). I kept the demihuman pantheons though. And I used the Great Wheel Cosmology.

When 4e came about, I liked a lot of the story changes. I liked the Dawn War, but I didn't like how they just crammed it in sideways to FR ("oh...yeah, the titans were always a thing from the ancient past, we just never mentioned them before"). So I took one last page out of FR's book to (ironically) wipe the last vestiges from my world. I moved my timeline forward, but almost 500 years.

One of the events that had occurred during that time (near the beginning of it) was the Godswar. The Titans (which were a new threat, at the time). During this conflict, the Titans, which were strange elemental beings, wielded strange and unforseen magicks. One of the things they did was combine all the Inner Planes, creating the Elemental Chaos. This took the "spokes" out of the Great Wheel, casting the rest of it into disarray. The planes starting breaking apart, leaving many mortal planar races (gith, genasi, aasimar/deva, and tieflings) to flee to the Prime. The gods raised the Astral Plane above the Elemental Chaos, becoming the Astral Sea. Mostly, only the demesnes of deities and other powerful beings survived as Astral Domains.

During the Godswar, the Titans had powerful magic that killed some gods. Others, when they were infected with this "poison", found that their own divinity was killing them. Some passed their portfolios to other gods. If they did this, they were able to survive (essentially they were just immortal outsiders, but not deities anymore). Some gods died, a few other gods rose. The demihuman pantheons all gave up their power to the heads of their pantheons, who also absorbed some of the "race-neutral" gods. In this way, I adopted one of the 4e deity tenets. Moradin is now the god of creation and invention for ALL races. Corellon is the god of Springtime, Art, and Music for ALL races. Sehanine of the elven pantheon is also a full god in her own right (one of my previous deities was her daughter, and she gave her mother her power).

So basically, I went from about 20 something deities plus demihuman pantheons, to 15 deities total (5 some kind of Good, 5 some kind of Evil, and 5 Unaligned). I created a narrative that showed the change between Great Wheel to World Axis. It also explained some of the newer races (or races that were previously VERY rare, like tieflings). There's an explanation for dragonborn related there, but not relevant to THIS point.

Now, in 5e, I kept all the 4e story changes, save one. I actually do like the Great Wheel. So the story is now that during the Godswar, the planes were unstable, so the "planar refugees" fled to the Prime. But they've been stabilizing for a few centuries now, and many of them returned to their ancestral homes. The Great Wheel eventually repaired itself.

Just thought I'd share because you did.

[Jason]

4e is actually a very good game.

I'm afraid that's a matter of taste. It can be "good" in the sense that "the game mechanics work well" without being "good" in the sense of "I would enjoy playing it."
From what I can tell from my limited experience with it, yes it was "good" in that the mechanics worked as intended. Unfortunately the designer intent was not a very good match with what I or my group wanted from a D&D game. We played one session and never picked it up again.

Some criticisms were valid though. Because "cinematic combat" was a design goal, combat DID take a lot longer. But to me, that was a worthwhile tradeoff for the ability to use Elites and stuff to give extra "oomph" to otherwise squishy combatants that would not have lasted as long using 3e mechanics. And doing so without some kind of DM-fiat or deus ex machina.

Writing the DM-fiat into the rules doesn't make it suddenly okay if it wasn't okay before.

2nd edition did not insist on having NPCs use PC mechanics (most monsters don't even have attribute scores), and it worked just fine. I have no problem seeing 5E go in that same direction, and I welcome how much easier it makes the DM's job to not have to do that.

[RedMage125]

Spoiler: starting to become tangential

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I'm afraid that's a matter of taste. It can be "good" in the sense that "the game mechanics work well" without being "good" in the sense of "I would enjoy playing it."
From what I can tell from my limited experience with it, yes it was "good" in that the mechanics worked as intended. Unfortunately the designer intent was not a very good match with what I or my group wanted from a D&D game. We played one session and never picked it up again.

That's fine, I was just letting you know it wasn't terrible or unplayable. To be fair, during the first year, a lot of the classes in PHB1 were too similar. The game really took off when the PHB2 was released. More classes, more power sources. Classes that were actually different from each other in meaningful ways. No more "V-shaped" classes...

Things were a little more bland when the game first came up.

Writing the DM-fiat into the rules doesn't make it suddenly okay if it wasn't okay before.

Not exactly the same. Let's say you have tribe of goblins, led by a spellcaster. In 3e, that spellcaster would have some kind of class levels, and likely have less AC and much less it points. If the players target him first, he goes down quickly.

Now in 4e, you could take some kind of goblin spellcaster from the MM, and add a template from the DMG. First of all, its hit points double, and its defenses get a small boost. The party can STILL target him first, but he won't go down ridiculously fast, and they're ignoring every other combatant.

Also Solo monsters. In 3e, I once ran a group of 5 level 15 players against a CR 18 or 19 red dragon. They stomped it a new mudhole due to action economy. Solos in 4e had plenty of out-of-turn actions, reactions, and interrupts that made them formidable. I've run dragon and beholder fights, and my players found them very satisfying. Challenging and exciting.

5e's "Legendary" and even "Lair" Actions are the successors to this. They work well to fulfill the same function.

Again, I get that the game design wasn't your bag. That's totally cool. I only mention it because of what 5e has actually inherited from it. Things that WERE good.

2nd edition did not insist on having NPCs use PC mechanics (most monsters don't even have attribute scores), and it worked just fine. I have no problem seeing 5E go in that same direction, and I welcome how much easier it makes the DM's job to not have to do that.

I cannot stress enough how much easier that made things for me. Honestly, DMing 4e even made me a better DM for 3e. There were lessons there that I absorbed and used no matter what edition.

For example: the idea that "random encounters" don't need to actually be truly random. Why build a chart of possible monster encounters are roll dice to see which one you get? No, decide in advance how many, if any encounters during travel are appropriate (and more importantly, fun), and make the encounters in advance. Make them good. And insert them when it will be fun and fit the story.

But for real, from a mechanics point of view DMing 4e was like "easy mode" compared to 5th, and especially compared to 3rd.

[Xervous]

I’ve seen the pitch a few times that 4e makes for a great Gundam game and that’s probably how I’ll run it the next time it comes around.

In terms of general use it’s probably for the best to shunt the alignment and cosmological stuff to the side. TSR dug its grave with niche products, so lowest denominator catering seems the logical choice for the industry leader.

Spoiler: Well all the cool kids are doing it

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GM: something that doesn’t use D20 > 3.5 = PF > 1&2&ADnD* > 4 > 5
Haven’t gotten to play the earlier editions but that’s where I expect them to fall. Hand me an edition and it won’t be long before I can spin out the front facing portions of appropriate challenge monsters. The actual moving parts can be supplied if needed, but it’s rare that PCs get to review the resumes of team monster.

Play: mostly as above but I have strong doubts on my ability to stay engaged with the tyranny of bounded accuracy looming.