The End of 4e D&D.

[TheFlatline]

Eberron is also now the default D&D setting, which means we get dragon kin and golems as PCs rammed down our throats even if we don't think this is anything at all like D&D.

No it's not. And the dragonborn weren't even from Eberron originally, and didn't appear in Eberron until 4e made them. Also, "what is like D&D" hugely varies from person to person - D&D has rarely been "one thing", and is more just a mess of jumbled ideas from whatever is popular at the time.

I distinctly remember WotC announcing that Eberron was going to be *the* official setting for D&D about two months after the setting won that competition. I'll go look for a link, but that was years ago and I might not find it.

And I will stand corrected, you're right, dragonborn are 4th ed. I was thinking warforged.

However, that being said, if you're going to sit there and say that 4th edition is not a major, extreme paradigm change from D&D's previous editions, you're smoking something. 3rd edition was a major paradigm shift mechanically, but still kept the basic spirit of D&D. It *felt* like D&D. Nobody I've talked to who has played 4th ed can honestly say it *feels* like D&D.

[Crissa]

Wizards was convinced that OGL stuff was what they were competing with.

But any store owner would have told them that was a complete crock.

-Crissa

[DragonChild]

I distinctly remember WotC announcing that Eberron was going to be *the* official setting for D&D about two months after the setting won that competition.

Yes and no. It's "the" setting when it came to video games and whatnot, but it's not like everything ever printed was for Eberron or even had an Eberron focus.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What does 'feel like D&D' mean like to you? Even as a big-time 4E hater I eschew that phrase, because it doesn't explain donkey dick.

Here's what 'feels like D&D means to me'.

• A rapid advancement system where in the span of 2 years with a little luck Steve the Crap-Covered Farmer advances to Steve, the Bully of Hercules.
• A treasure system with wild and woolly gadgets polluting the planes which have powerful and awe-inspiring effects.
• A system where powerful factions are in constant fantasy-era warfare with each other
• An Enlightenment-age European-cultured society with a few modern-era trappings to make the setting more bearable--non-existent sexism, really tamped-down racism, and slavery is seen as an evil that people don't want to put up with but do anyway because they're disenfranchised, man.
• A world economy where people with the 'ins' can easily travel and disseminate information between each other while the lower and middle-class people take it in the shorts.
• A society where dragonborn and blink dogs hanging out in Bilbo's Hobbit Tavern is seen as unusual, but not a big deal.
• Magic is treated in the same way as technology is from the modern era. It's great to have if you have access to it, but the people who benefit from it take it for granted. People who don't see a lot of it or who get oppressed by it live in fear.
• A morality system that is mostly White and Grey, with room for some occasional black in it.
• A world in transition from being a land of unending darkness to something that people are beginning to conquer and understand.
• Along with some other shit.

3rd Edition more-or-less fulfilled most of the things that make D&D 'feel' like D&D to me and 4th Edition came along and changed much of that. But for me to say that 4E doesn't 'feel like D&D' wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to me because I know a couple of posters on these very boards disagree with a lot of my assumptions.

[K]

Eberron is also now the default D&D setting, which means we get dragon kin and golems as PCs rammed down our throats even if we don't think this is anything at all like D&D.

No it's not. And the dragonborn weren't even from Eberron originally, and didn't appear in Eberron until 4e made them. Also, "what is like D&D" hugely varies from person to person - D&D has rarely been "one thing", and is more just a mess of jumbled ideas from whatever is popular at the time.

Dragonborn are from 3e. Races of the Dragon. 4e changed the backstory a bit, but the name and concept are the same.

[erik]

Dragonborn are from 3e. Races of the Dragon. 4e changed the backstory a bit, but the name and concept are the same.

How about Dragonborn went from an obscure and largely unused expansion book race in 3e... to a largely unused core book race in 4e? =-)


That list is pretty similar to my sentiments Lago.

DnD for me has been:

• Hack and slash, dungeon delving.

• Hero story where the players advance from almost ordinary folk into powerhouses that can rule nations and defeat powerful creatures of myth.

• The protection of civilization usually extends not much farther than the city-state where a high level character protects the inhabitants.

• As such, monsters can be found in untamed wild lands not terribly far from civilization.

• Magic items that do neat story stuff, often found in stories.

• Magic spells that do neat story stuff.

• Black and White, evil and good where the enemies actually have detectable flags.

An Enlightenment-age European-cultured society with a few modern-era trappings to make the setting more bearable--non-existent sexism, really tamped-down racism, and slavery is seen as an evil that people don't want to put up with but do anyway because they're disenfranchised, man.

• Yeah, what he said.

[Koumei]

How about Dragonborn went from an obscure and largely unused expansion book race in 3e... to a largely unused core book race in 4e? =-)

Now, I haven't paid the tiniest bit of attention to 4e for a while now, but I thought Dragonborn Paladongs (or was it Warlocks?) were the supreme Bullysaurus race, ideal for Intimidating enemies into submission as soon as they're bloodied, to cut fights down from 3 hours to just 1 and a half?

[erik]

But does anybody really do that?

[Roy]

But does anybody really do that?

Depends on if you would like to grind on one mob this evening or two.

[hogarth]

• A rapid advancement system where in the span of 2 years with a little luck Steve the Crap-Covered Farmer advances to Steve, the Bully of Hercules.

[..]

3rd Edition more-or-less fulfilled most of the things that make D&D 'feel' like D&D to me[..].

Uh...say what? From the list of "D&D-like" things above, the "rapid advancement" comment makes it painfully obvious that you never played tabletop D&D before 3E. So isn't it a tautology to say that 3E fulfilled your idea of D&D when your idea of D&D came from 3E?

[Doom]

Now, I haven't paid the tiniest bit of attention to 4e for a while now, but I thought Dragonborn Paladongs (or was it Warlocks?) were the supreme Bullysaurus race, ideal for Intimidating enemies into submission as soon as they're bloodied, to cut fights down from 3 hours to just 1 and a half?

Intimidation was more of a rules quirk, pretty sure that was unintended.

On the other hand, there was a particularly obnoxious thing about Dragonborn, when the game first came out. They were the ONLY strength-bonus race, which made them damn near the only option for Fighters, the 'showcase' class of 4e since Fighters have an amazingly powerful influence on 4e combat, starting right at first level.

It was a blatant a pandering as the baby unicorn and barbarian boy in the D&D cartoon.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Uh...say what? From the list of "D&D-like" things above, the "rapid advancement" comment makes it painfully obvious that you never played tabletop D&D before 3E. So isn't it a tautology to say that 3E fulfilled your idea of D&D when your idea of D&D came from 3E?

1) Stick your 'painfully obvious that you never played tabletop D&D before 3E comment' in your ear you smug fuck. Everyone has to start somewhere; I happened to pick up tabletop gaming in 2000 rather than the eighties or nineties.

2) Yes, a person's first experience with something will color all of their experiences from then on out. Thanks for pointing this out!

3) Even beyond that people have preconceptions of what D&D is like. It's a cultural icon at this point and if you ask cRPG/jRPG fans who haven't actually played the game what it's like (I have played several D&D video games before this) you're still going to have some idea as to what D&D is all about.

4) Most importantly, I don't need to play the other editions to have an idea as to what the other editions are like; as far as I personally am concerned I can say that 1E-2E is a pile of fail, 3E hit the jackpot, and 4E is another pile of fail.

For the record, I have the 2E and 1E rulebooks on hand and read them many years after I started playing 3E. I think that while they do a better job of recreating what D&D means for me than 4E they have mechanical quirks that make them unfun.

[magnuskn]

For the record, I have the 2E and 1E rulebooks on hand and read them many years after I started playing 3E. I think that while they do a better job of recreating what D&D means for me than 4E they have mechanical quirks that make them unfun.

... like "Roll an 18(high number) or suck" for the Fighter. Oh, yeah, I remember that well.

[Doom]

It was more of a 'relative suck' thing, for the fighter. There were a few magic items (Gauntlets of Ogre Power) that could pretty much negate a low strength, and 'to hit' improvement for the fighter in AD&D was so rapid that a fighter could reasonably hit most everything before he got into double digit levels, even without much of a strength bonus.

[hogarth]

Uh...say what? From the list of "D&D-like" things above, the "rapid advancement" comment makes it painfully obvious that you never played tabletop D&D before 3E. So isn't it a tautology to say that 3E fulfilled your idea of D&D when your idea of D&D came from 3E?

1) Stick your 'painfully obvious that you never played tabletop D&D before 3E comment' in your ear you smug fuck. Everyone has to start somewhere; I happened to pick up tabletop gaming in 2000 rather than the eighties or nineties.

Whoa, sonny! No need to have a spazz attack. I think the year 2000 was a great time to start playing D&D. I just thought it was weird to say (in essence): "I started playing D&D in 3E, and 3E fulfilled my idea of playing D&D."

[RandomCasualty2]

1) Stick your 'painfully obvious that you never played tabletop D&D before 3E comment' in your ear you smug fuck. Everyone has to start somewhere; I happened to pick up tabletop gaming in 2000 rather than the eighties or nineties.

Well hogarth has a point. It doesn't really say much saying that "All my conceptions of D&D came from 3E" and then speak as though 3E was some kind of miracle game that fulfilled all your expected it to.

[Lago PARANOIA]

"I started playing D&D in 3E, and 3E fulfilled my idea of playing D&D."

Well hogarth has a point. It doesn't really say much saying that "All my conceptions of D&D came from 3E" and then speak as though 3E was some kind of miracle game that fulfilled all your expected it to.

1) All my conceptions of D&D did not just come from D&D. I had an AD&D boxed set that I read religiously but never got the chance to play and I played a ton of D&D cRPGs. I'm happy to say that when I gave 3E a chance after I was able to buy the books for $45 in a used bookstore (which was a fucking steal) it reinforced the positive images I had of the game while also showing me new positive things that I also liked.

2) Implying that all of my preconceptions of what D&D was like stemmed from 3E is getting the cart before the horse. See those things in my list? Those are things that I want from my setting. Some of them are a negative reaction to things that I have seen in other fantasy works, but most of them are extensions of personal preferences that I have in real life. 3E D&D fulfilled most of the things I wanted out of a fantasy tabletop game so it became the template for which I judge future and past versions of the game.

So ignoring the fact that I said that 'feels like D&D to me' is a useless phrase in the first place because it oversimplifies things, this means that I am going to say that 1E and 2E D&D feels less like D&D to me than 3E and 4E least of all. This also means that if they release a 5E or 6E D&D in my lifetime that I enjoy then those games will become the Dungeons and Dragons that 'feels like D&D the most to me'.

[Kaelik]

Hey all you dumb fucks.

You might have noticed that Lago's point is that different people have different conceptions of D&D, and that those conceptions are colored by their experience and desires?

Why are you complaining about his supporting evidence because it proves his point too well?

[Crissa]

When I first saw 3e, I thought the Fighter was a good idea, but kinda fail, but the basic idea - turning things into a straight addition line, getting rid of the tables as much as possible, prestige classes as a concept, etc.

So yes, 3e is the peak of D&D technology. But this as it should have been, and 4e should've built on that.

Only an idiot wouldn't.

-Crissa

[RobbyPants]

When I first saw 3e, I thought the Fighter was a good idea, but kinda fail, but the basic idea - turning things into a straight addition line, getting rid of the tables as much as possible, prestige classes as a concept, etc.

So yes, 3e is the peak of D&D technology. But this as it should have been, and 4e should've built on that.

Only an idiot wouldn't.

-Crissa

That was pretty much how I felt about 3E. It was stuff like "ooh, that's more simple!" and "hey, that's more robust!", and since I was used to 2E, I thought all those sacred cows were a good thing.

Then after eight years of 3.x and a bunch of time on various forums, I was hoping WotC would have learned from some of their mistakes. Oh well. The biggest thing I was hoping to see stripped away was the concept of WBL and the Magic Christmas Tree effect.

[Username17]

Yeah, 3e was a pretty clear "advance" over 2nd edition AD&D. THAC0 to BAB, a moderately functional skill system, comprehensible saving throws, unified difficulties, the whole bit. It had problems, huge problems, but coming from earlier editions you could totally see where they were going. And it was exciting.

Going in to 4e it sounded like they had a grasp on what those problems were. And they even promised to do something about them:

• Christmas Tree Effect (they actually promised to solve this!)
• Linear Warriors vs. Quadratic Wizards
• A lack of a skill challenge system
• Empty Levels
• RNG deviations

Seriously. They called out all of these problems by name and promised to fix them. Which means that at some point, someone identified what the actual problems were in 3.5 and started putting up ideas for how to fix them on the white board.

And then Wyatt, Mearls, and Collins decided that was too much work and it would be easier to just put down a six hundred thousand word pile of not addressing any of those.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

You have to give them credit though, Frank, for solving Linear Warriors vs. Quadratic Wizards!

Now we have Linear Warriors, Linear Wizards! That's balanced, right?! That's fair, right?!


Anyway, it's quite possible that 5E might be scads better than 4E if the successors realize the problems of that system and try to fix them. It's not as if the game designers are unaware of the problems--James Wyatt knows that the magical item and rituals are a load of fail. Mike Mearls knows that the skill challenge system sucks and that they screwed up the level treadmill in several key points.

But honestly, if they're going to redesign the game to such a degree (seriously, what actually WORKS in 4th Edition?) then they should just start from scratch a second time to eliminate the bad taste from our mouths.

[Doom]

To be fair, they DID address the "linear vs quadratic" thing. Granted, they used the Procrustes method, but it was a fix, not that 1/5 would be satisfactory anyway.

(edit--d'oh, damn ninjas. What Lago said!)

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's not much of a fix, though. I'd rather have only 40% of the PHB classes end up interesting after 12th level than 0% of them.

Of course, a lot of people don't really care what their character gets to/can do in absolute terms, just the fact that they're playing an 'epic-level fighter'. You'd be surprised at how often labels are more fetishized than actual abilities.

[Crissa]

Yeah, people actually shied away from D&D (who would actually play D&D) and it was usually:

1) WTF THAC0
2) 1001 nonweapon proficiencies
3) Can I have that package?
4) WTF is a wand save?
5) I wanna make magic items!

And those were actually addressed, and we moved onward.

-Crissa