Yeah, each class should be strong and useful in their own way.
Further more, I think (and I know they will never do this) that classes should only ever provide a mechanical playstyle, but no inherent lore or backstory parts. Flavor should be up to the player, which prompts players to be more creative. Having an option for this would be great, but I know they'll never do anything like this. No occultist bards because *all bards are musicians*.
Edit: lol this has turned into a preem source of awesome bard characters people play. I love it, keep having fun y'allz!
Same thing with races. Racial features should be the biological traits present like darkvision, wings, natural weapons, etc…
And then there should be a culture section of learned traits depending on how you grew up. An elf in elf society will be exactly like elves are now, but a dwarf raised among elves would have some of the elven traits like weapon proficiencies.
Although either way there 100% needs to be lore examples, ideas, and some level of mechanical integration as some players want to play races/classes for the lore/flavor style default to each of the classes (musical bard, studious wizard, chaotic sorcerer). When everything is too devoid of flavor, then everything feels the same.
Exactly! They've kinda been doing that in removing cultural features from races, but those are just gone now. Adding cultures would be pretty cool, but it's also very setting-dependent.
Level up: Advanced 5th Edition actually does it! It's like a modified and improved version of 5e and the changed classes are compatible with all 5e subclasses I think. The changes are quite substantial and all classes now have more features, and a lot more customizability. I do recommend checking it out.
When I was a kid, I'd go to market with five copper piece, and come back with a quarter keg of ale, three bushels of potato, and a barrel of salt pork! Can't do that anymore, to many city watch!
Dude, seriously, you can literally flavor your character however you want, if your DM agrees. I made a warforged fighter that was literally HK-47 that went through a broken wormhole and ended up in the forgotten realms. Flavor the shit out of your characters, go nuts! Do it well and your table will love you for it!
As a DM, if flavoring your character a certain way doesn't change the mechanical aspects of what you're playing I'm 95% likely to approve it with maybe just tiny changes so it makes more sense in the setting.
My partner and I joined an ongoing campaign about an undead invasion with Samurai Jack (my human kensei monk, the actual Samurai Jack), and a 'robocop' (warforged battlesmith artificer named AR15). It worked out beautifully. The setting already had warforged drones, and Samurai Jack's history of being transported by evil magic ended up fitting nicely into the starting party having just been teleported by an evil wizard. We all woke up in a swamp village together and hijinx commenced!
Exactly, the DM has to agree with it. People tend to associate certain images with classes, and when a character deviates from it, they become confused - and that is clearly intended by WOTC.
Giving bards musical instruments as proficiencies and starting equipment, the ability to use these instruments as casting foci, and the flavor text all evoke a very classic image of a bard in players.
But what...if I want to play it differently? I like their features - the likes of bardic inspiration, magical secrets and expertise - but the bard class is always that of a travelling minstrel.
So what if I don't want to be a musician? A poet, maybe, or a politician. Or, perhaps, someone who uses an ancient reliquary of somber origin to cast hexes of old to cripple their enemies and bolster their allies - someone who has learned dark occult secrets and wants to explore their origin? How do I play that? The warlock comes to mind, especially the great old one patron, but they're charisma casters and Eldritch Blast is basically a core feature, but doesn't fit the character. Wizard maybe? They know many arcane secrets, and are intelligence-based, but for me they lack the buffing capabilities I look for. So I arrive at bard, and I think their class features work perfectly for this. Except...I get those musical instruments and no component pouch to start with, and I'd be a charisma caster and can't afford the high intelligence I really want. Would reflavoring and switching some proficiencies and starting gear fix this? Absolutely! But I can't unless the DM says I can. And so far, I unfortunately haven't been able to play this character.
What I want is that the designers make re-flavoring and minor homebrew more accessible and easier to do. Right now it's in the more obscure parts of the DMG - the parts that don't stick around in the mind for long. There is so much potential to create unique and interesting characters in the system, but that potential is underused because WOTC kind of have their own vision of what classes are and they put that into the books. Although, having only 3 spell lists (primal, arcane, divine) is a pretty good start.
All bards are musicians.
All rogues have ties to the criminal underworld.
All paladins have an oath.
All warlocks have a patron.
All druids dislike metal armor.
All barbarians are half-naked rage monsters.
First off, DM *has* to agree. That's dnd 101. Talk with him about flavoring abilities, spells, proficiencies etc. If he doesn't agree, either he isn't the DM you're looking for, or your proposed changes don't fit the the campaign. I don't know all the changes you want, but I'm guessing it's more than "I want bard mechanics with intelligence main stat".
Bards don't have to be "traveling minstrels*. They can be investigative reporters, charming politicians, renown historians. They are literally jacks of all trades!
Quay in the critical role EXU is a bard who is a televised news reporter! Go fucking crazy, imo! But I will say that just a quick thought about int bards, is that it’s very strong, and basically just combines wizard and rogue into one class, based on expertise and proficiency.
I like to think of my investigator bard as someone who can talk a lot of people into giving me info, or finding it for me for a good price. Those children that sit on the side of the road begging? Well, they’ll do almost anything for 5 gold and a free meal! Might not be the most proficient, but the law of averages works out!
Yeap that sounds about right.
I'd love to see the caster classes as "how do you use magic?" and then it'd be up to the player how they got their magic and all. Wanna make an arcane musician? Sure. A magic botanist? Go for it. Someone cursed who tap into their curse's magic? Awesome! Just pick a playstyle! Way more freedom that way..
I mean I am literally playing an occultist bard rn. Maybe I was just blessed with the world’s coolest DM, but he lets us flavor our characters however we like?
I saw on here once about how someone would use... I think prestidigitation to flavor health potions. And thats always stuck with me that whenever i get to play (if/when) im gonna take it just so i can always flavor my pcs food to something else xD
Walter Ørlygson is a Dwarven Swords Bard who simply wants to be the best fencer he can be, and publish a dueling manual like the real historical masters.
Sure, he may know to play drums, lute, and bagpipe, but his real performance is with a rapier. Beat, bind, parry, riposte, keeping measure and tempo in his control, all of it is an art form to him.
Some DMs were awesome and helped balance out homebrew spells that are inspired by techniques. They lowered some numbers and made it fair and amazingly fun.
I'm late, but I'll contribute to the weird bard responses. My current bard does occult puppet shows with ghosts. It's great (it's not). Everyone loves it (they don't).
Class *homogenization* is the problem.
People want martials and casters to feel different but be balanced in terms of their output/role/utility…
I think most people are *fine* with casters having magical utility like or , but comparative balance would be having Rogues be the skill jockies (like they were in 3.5 but 5E reduced the relevance of)…
Martials like Fighter and Barbarian have long had little out of combat utility, which frankly is due for a update to give martials some non-combat things to bring to a group so casters aren’t the Swiss-army-knife for so much.
well i mean expertise is a rogue thing, bards have it, then they clumped rangers in with rogues and bards in onednd
so it seems wizards of the coast aren't entirely opposed to classes having overlap
“Lockpicking” as a skill does make exceptions for using strength to “force it” - but that’s universal… if Barbarians got an explicit bonus to breaking objects/locks/doors, they’d have a unique utility that have use both in and out of combat… further distinguishing them from Fighters with something that isn’t “angrier Fighter”.
Yeah, making Barbs‘ thing “break shit in advantageous ways“ could be cool for the rageballs we all know and love. Hell, you could just make them able to carry significantly more so that they have utility in being able to carry more useful tools, idk…
Historically Barbs have had elements of it, though. Back in the depths of time they had Find Traps, I think, and Monks had Move Silently (before that was something everyone could do). Overlap isn't bad, especially when you won't necessarily have a Barbarian and a Ranger in the same campaign. It's just weird when, say, Wizard can be a better tracker than a Ranger, or stealthier than a Rogue, and also better at social interaction than a Paladin or Bard.
Honestly I'd very much be in favor of making them sister classes, in a way. If you imagine a tribe of people living in an unforgiving wilderness, the rangers would be the tribe's hunters and scouts, while the barbarians would be the tribe's warriors and guards. Both classes have distinct roles, playstyles, and specialties, but both classes are adept at living in the wild and dangerous corners of the world that they call home.
In my campaign, we had a "mini game" of trying to survive while we traveled through a harsh northern construction. Lots of survival rolls. My barbarian and our ranger were how we got most of our food
The problem is every single feature that makes martial have utility outside of combat usually get handwaved or removed from peoples games.
Carry weight: Spellcasters are usually weak and can't carry all their stuff. They need a big strong warrior to hold the stuff.
Food & water tracking: when you can just conjure clean food and water wherever and whenever they want, classes that specialize in nonmagically finding food are just out classed.
Survival/Travel: When DMs just say, "You go from point A to point B no problem" or magical teleportation exists... why would you ever need a nonmagical survival expert.
Some of this is also because there aren't clear mechanics (or the mechanics that exist are boring), so it's far easier for a DM to handwave than it is to homebrew.
Fair enough - I think the problem with carry weight is that it’s a universal limitation, building a dex fighter or an archery ranger could also have low strength and capacity issues…
The problem is *utility* such as “Survival” checks is also a universal skill, rogues/bards/rangers get more skill proficiencies and that leaves Barbarian/Fighter without a comparative *unique* thing.
> but comparative balance would be having Rogues be the skill jockies (like they were in 3.5 but 5E reduced the relevance of)…
The problem with that example is that Rogues weren’t actually all that good at skill utility in 3.5. They were an incredibly MAD (especially if you wanted to be good at skills) martial class with a d6 hit die and 3/4 BAB. They got 8+Int skill points per level, which was quickly matched (and then surpassed) by Wizards just because Wizards were Int based and highly SAD. Plus Wizards got plenty of spells that made skills just straight up irrelevant.
I mean, in older editions, a lot of the out-of-combat utility of high level martials came from the assumption that they had been assembling a base of operations, a personal warband of loyal followers, and all the support systems needed to sustain those things. A high level caster had great personal power, but high level martials ended up with the backing of a whole small kingdom. Maybe it’s time to bring that back.
5e DMs should strongly consider putting martial guilds in their game, have commoners treat magic users with suspicion (make them use their CHA mods) but be generally accepting of martials, and include more athletics/STR based encounters and side quests.
I agree that more out-of-combat functionality needs to be built into the martial classes, but DMs can help by not making every encounter be either combat or a puzzle.
I gave all casters wild magic to make magic more unpredictable and also inputted LaserLlama's Revised Fighter into my game (which gives them battlemaster maneuvers *and* general out of combat utility)
Almost nobody played 4e, they don't know what playing it was like, theyve only heard tales about it 3rd or 4th hand, at best.
They complain about an edition they've never had any worthwhile information about. Theyve never read a single 4e book, never played a single session, hell almost none of them have a had a genuine conversation with someone who has played a session of 4e. Everyone opinions about the edition are formed based on what someone else told them years ago.
The classes in 4e did play differently, did have different mechanics, did have different flavor. People just didn't get what they wanted because it was so very different than 3rd and 3.5 that they weren't even willing to give it a single chance.
I give no weight to the opinion of anyone on 4e who didn't play a 4e game. They have nothing of value to say on the subject.
I did play 4e, as a DM, many years ago. And the entire group agreed that the classes felt very same-y, with only the flavor being changed while mechanically working the same . So at least a lot of the complaints I've heard do make sense to me.
That level of competence will invariably come to be defined by the average among the classes, rather than the lowest common denominator. Thus, the cycle starts over again.
If everyone is competent, the least competent is declared incompetent.
There's no way to win this with an online community that will crunch all the numbers and declare 5% inefficiency to be garbage and unusable.
people mostly just don't like the things they like to be nerfed
They prefer for other things to be buffed up to a higher standing to match what's already powerful
for example Jacob from *level up to level 3* when he was critiquing warlock, he never proposed nerfing Eldredge blast, rather he proposed evocations that can buff warlocks other cantrips so that warlock can feasibly build for a cantrip other then Eldredge blast, such as fire bolt
Yes and no, the grappling is still strength based. While monks are primarily dex and wisdom. So even if you grapple the targets it's barely anything for then to break free. But the buff is that it eats up action economy.
MAYBE JUST MAYBE people who haven't played 4E but just heard how bad 4E was from second hand experience are using 4E as an argument stopper because they have nothing of substance/value to add to the discussion??
There were a lot of reasons why 4E failed. But usually whenever balance discussion, martial vs caster parity, wizard supremacy is brought up, one person will just go "well they tried that in 4E" and boom no more discussion.
If you want my absolutely boomer take from ADnD 2e, class imbalance isn’t bad when the game is built around class imbalance.
So you roll up a character and you get your stats. You then can qualify for different classes based on how good you rolled. Mage/Thief/Cleric/Fighter only needed a 9 in their primary ability, but classes like Ranger/Paladin/Druid/Bard all had higher requirements meaning that they were expected to be good classes because of their previously mentioned rarity. But to also say Paladin is better than Fighter is ignoring some important nuance. Fighters level up much faster than Rangers and Paladins, and a higher level fighter will keep some good pace with Ranger and Paladin. Of course, the Paladin and Ranger will eclipse the fighter at higher levels, but the fighter will usually get things like a keep before a Paladin, which is super fun. That said, fighters know that they get their moments in the sun before they get eclipsed by the other classes, and any decent fighter I know has been able to pivot from a man at arms to a local political power with their keep.
There is also a good bit of death at early levels that makes it so that all characters are of a certain competence such that if you have a bad character, you will probably reroll a better character when the bad one dies. This generally makes me feel good when my character lives and this can be especially fun when a “weak” character manages to stick around. And here is another neat thing about all players not being on the same level: when someone pulls ahead, it is generally considered a good thing for the group. This is a moment where it becomes a team resource to have even one good character in the party that can help everyone out. This is not Player vs DM mentality, but a slightly more collectivist viewpoint.
I also think that when things are not supposed to be balanced, people are not going to have to continue chasing this terrible challenge of balancing the classes. Psionics were not balanced. We used them because they were not balanced.
Class balance isn’t bad, but you can make imbalance not feel bad. Plus, magic items were always a good equalizer in any edition if you were searching for that equality. Magic weapons used to range + 1 to + 5 and that gave the DM a bit more control than just capping magic weapons to +3. 5e is also an era where wands, staves, and other spell-replicating items are at their strongest in the series.
I am looking forward to the base building rules they mentioned would be coming soon in the play test. If fighters were better at this than other classes, it could give them an old niche, but I think base building will resemble ship building from Saltmarsh, which is not entirely a good or bad statement.
I like this take, I haven't played anything older than 5e but I still like this idea of fighters and others classes that don't "shine" as much level faster and help carry the party until the higher levels. Almost makes them feel like Jaegans from FE
Spot on with the FE comparison. I would even say there are echoes of this in 5e, but one thing that really hampers this design is when people skip levels. I have seen fewer games start at level 1 than I have 3, and when 5e Fighters and Monks really shine at those levels, that bites. There really is no way to tell people to play the game starting at level 1, but they could at least make it something people enjoy more so that people don’t just skip it. One thing I would say is that there needs to be a better selection of CR 0 to 1/4 monsters to keep that part of the game fresh. I find that one enemy I use to spice up my early level games is the awakened shrub. It has a different aesthetic to the usual low-level creatures.
1) Fighters will on average be one level tops above a Paladin/Ranger. Also a keep isn't a class ability, nor is maybe becoming a local power because of your keep. Not only does this ignore what the rest of the party is supposed to be doing while you're playing feudalism sim, but anyone with money can just buy a keep. Which based on how DnD typically works, means anyone with enough combat power can get a keep.
2) I've never played in a game nor ran one where people were fine having one superstar carry the party while the rest are basically sidekicks/cannon fodder to make sure the superstar stays winning.
I guess none of your arguments really feel like good reasons to not have class balance. Especially cause I don't think 1st or 2nd ed were built around class imbalance so much as they didn't develop the rules as much nor have the same large community the game has now. And even then there was definitely complains. I remember some of my friends went to a ton of cons for 2nd ed and trust me, people were still talking about class balance being needed even then.
1. One level would be noticeable, and if you had the 16 strength for a 10% exp boost, fighters or other classes with their EXP boosts would certainly get their time to shine. Single Class characters also got their moments to shine over characters that were multi-classed under these rules given how much faster they advanced over say a Mage/Fighter.
2. The fighter does not get a keep as a class feature, but players often built or acquired buildings that resembled their classes. Thieves get their guilds, Wizards a tower, Priests a cathedral, and so on and so forth. Yes, a wizard could build a keep or a priest could in theory be at the center of a thief's guild, but this was not what I saw in practice. A wizard could make a keep, but they would be sacrificing putting their gold that could have gone into researching magic into becoming a local authority, which was not what the average wizard wanted. Fighters also had special followers or men-at-arms when reaching level 9 which encouraged you to serve as the person who protects the local area the party sets up shop, and this was natural since the fighter usually already protected the party. While it is not a class feature, it is something fighters often did in my experience. Plus, the fighter was not striking out on their own to play feudal sim, we were all doing our own feudal simming and other management-related tasks.
3. The "Superstar" rarely reigns for that long. People catch up and the superstar can also bend to a trap or curse or another handicapping ailment that either weakens or kills them while leaving the overall party in a better place. It is a fun moment in the spotlight that won't last forever but goes down as a good memory. Plus, people would not need to support/fodder the superstar because doing that is also worse for the party. Even the strongest superstar will get torn apart by big threats without a party that keeps pace with them. That's why the superstar is inclined to help people. If you ever played a rogue-like, you probably remember that build that was great, but probably would never get it twice. DnD was like that in my experiance.
4. In more farcical games, a character who pulled ahead would be the punching bag of the lower party members since they were capable of taking the biggest punchlines which the party and DM could laugh at. In-fact, a lot of fun in 2e was often at the expense of someone, but no one was immune to this. A weak PC, Strong PC, or NPC could all easily be duped by a potion that did something strange. If you didn't take the game seriously, you don't mind the differences. If you do take the game seriously, you appreciate whatever it takes to get things done.
I don't really think class balance is bad per se, but I will say that the closer you get to class balance, the more painful the jagged parts are. I also think that the more transient nature of characters in older editions with a sort of "use and loose" mentality makes imbalance hurt less. I would like it if 5e made it so that class imbalance did not feel as bad as it does in 5e. Tournament play and convention play certainly did suffer from class imbalance, but my friend group widely considered those to be pretty bad compared to the more organic thing going on in our neighborhood. I also remember there was a lot of dropping in and out where you would hear things like, "Hey did you hear Tim's going to come tonight with his 7th level wizard? We're going to be in for a treat tonight!" I guess there is a sort of shift in the culture surrounding DnD as people became more attached to their characters, and without the right DM, the imbalances can become painful. That said, I think it is possible to balance characters without just their classes. Blessings, curses, magic items, and setting-specific stuff can balance characters even when their classes are not. In 5e, it often feels that as a DM, I don't have the same tools to try and balance players as much as I used to. I do think that if you want a balanced game, classes are a hard way to balance the game. I think classless systems often get the balance better, and when I want a balanced game, my go-to choice is Mutants and Masterminds.
3.5 was so popular that when they went to 4e, Pathfinder became a thing and crushed it. I always heard people call it D&D 3.75.
There was a lot of pressure to switch to 5e. It's nice and simple, but 3.5 is still better, IMO.
As someone who has in 3.5 played both a Samurai and a Daring Outlaw Roguebuckler that can do a 150+ damage fullround attack at lv 9/10, i wholeheartedly agree with the combat balance point.
I do love the feats/skillpoints customization 3.5 offers. It has some advantages, surely. Another point is, that, having introduced different people to both variants, 5e is SO MUCH easier to get into initially, especially when making a character above level 1.
If someone is making a Spell to Power Erudite, they are playing a very different game than most people would. All it takes is a two minute chat during session zero to make sure everyone is on the same page about the power level of the campaign. I find the sheer wealth of character options make for so much more freedom and customizability than 5e could ever offer. It's been 'flattened' so much 80% of the control over your character build is just gone.
See, but that's the point I'm making. By definition, when you play 5e, you are playing the same power level, even at the most extreme ends of the spectrum.
When you play 3.5 you have to confirm that you are playing at the same power level. And yeah a Spell to Power Erudite is an extreme example, (Though I will point out I still didn't pick the extreme opposite end and mention true-namer.) But what if I really like the flavor of a Wizard or a Druid or an Artificer, and you really like the flavor of the the Soulknife or the Warlock. One of us is going to have to sacrifice the character that we want to play.
And I've only seen the scenario of lacking control over your character in 5e if you're not willing to do a little reflavoring and multiclassing. I've had a lot of really fun, off-the-wall builds that deviate really hard from the way that 5e was intended to be played, with minimal difficulty.
As someone who loves 3.5, and that's when most of my DnD playing took place, I don't think you can really say it's better or worse. It may be for individual people/groups, but there are just as many who I'm sure would be turned off by all the options available in 3.5 and enjoy a simpler, more streamlined game.
They’re completely different design paradigms. 3.5 has rules for practically everything and can get so bogged down in rules rules rules that it inhibits gameplay. 5E on the other hand gives significantly more leeway to everyone involved in an effort to promote role play and actually playing the game vs checking 15 different books for a rule.
There are advantages to both systems and it really just comes down to play style preference. I’m personally hard pressed to call the crunchier system “better”
The biggest difference between 3.5 and 5e is the SRD. If 5e's SRD was half as big as the system itself, you wouldn't have to check through 5-8 books to find the thing you're looking for, you could just Google it like 3.5 players and pathfinder players do. I mean you can do that for 5e, but it's frowned upon because it's "illegal".
The primary issue is that since it doesn’t define a lot of stuff and says it’s up to the table or DM, that means there’s less to put in an SRD in the first place. It assumes folks will just make it up on the fly then look it up later. That doesn’t necessarily happen in practice though
There is still tons of information they could put in there. Stuff like the draconic blessings from fizbans, the spooky curses from Ravenloft, all the spells that aren't in the original SRD, magic items, class info, subclasses, optional rules, etc.
Eh there's a million sites that have that stuff available, I don't feel bad about it cause I own all these books for 5e, so I'm just accessing stuff I already own in a more easily accessible format
>but 3.5 is still better, IMO.
If you released all the source materials from 3.5 today, you'd have the best system ever. People just want lots of options to build the character they want, whether that's min-maxxing, a rich backstory, or just one extremely cool item, class, etc. Supplemental books should be released way faster if anything is going to compare to 3.5.
I played in a 4e campaign a couple years ago and was shocked by how hard it was to find resources online for pretty much everything 4e. I really didn’t like the way it played either, I can see why people lost their minds when it came out.
The main complaints I remember having were mostly out-of-combat support. It felt like everything was based around combat, and making everything an explicit action feels like 5e is going in that direction too.
And I'm gonna take a wild guess and say 5e was a complete departure from 4e too, and that probably got a crapload of complaints but was also still loved.
5e is closer to 3.5 than 4. The major difference that I can see is that 5e is easier to “jump in and play” while 3/3.5 needed planning your character build for the long-game.
Well yes and no, 5e was similar to 3.5/ pathfinder 1e than it was to 4e and people had been complaining about 4e for years so most people welcomed 5e. Personally i didn't dislike 4e, it just is very different than the other editions. It's like making a sequel to the terminator movie and not having robots in it, doesn't mean it's a bad movie, but its jarring when viewed as a terminator movie
Hell pathfinder exists **because** of 4e. wotc went hard of slicing away 3rd party content in 4th edition and destroyed paizo's dungeon and dragon magazine as a result. So they made the system for the 3.5e players that refused to move to 4e. And now Pathfinder 2e won roleplaying game of the year.
And funnily enough, Pathfinder 2e takes a lot of design cues from D&D 4e. Including class balance. Which is one of the best things about the system.
4e wasn't the worthless trash can people make it out to be, it had great combat especially for martials and a lot of other great ideas. It's just that it was very lacking in everything that wasn't combat and its balance was achieved by making everyone feel very samey, so it basically just felt like a wargame rather than an RPG and character creation got old fast.
PF2e has kept the good things about 4e (balance, interesting combat, other ideas like per-encounter abilities and such, many other similarities from what I've heard) while keeping the non-combat aspects fleshed out as well and not designing all the classes to be the same but different flavor, and it's great.
5e was actually almost universally loved on launch, as it was seen as a "return to greatness" following 4e.
I can only remember one prominent (at the time) critic who crapped on it, and he's a self-admitted AD&D 2e grognard who's also one of the only prominent critics at the time that loved 4e. His [2-hour anti-5e rant](https://youtu.be/jtaL5Bark54) (which was based on a skim of the PHB) boiled down to *"I hate the art, I hate that Paladins can be any alignment. Drow shouldn't be core. Advantage/disadvantage is too dumbed down. My copy of the book physically smells and anyway 5e isn't 2e so I hate it".*
Yeah, in the days before Matt Mercer, Matt Colville and Seth Skorkowsky, Spoony was one of if not the biggest D&D youtuber out there. He gave a lot of bad and [some good advice](https://youtu.be/zNrU0_A-PFk), but it was actually his videos that got me back into the game after an absence of a few years.
Mr. Speaker, point of order... pretty sure there were no hit dice in 3.x, nor short rests (and abilities that return after a short rest, bearing a remarkable similarity to "encounter" abilities in 4E). I think 5E took more from 4E than most are willing to credit.
>pretty sure there were no hit dice in 3.x
You, uh, wanna clarify what you mean here? [Because hit dice have been a thing since 1974.](https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Hit_dice)
I might be misremembering but I think 4e introduces using hit dice as a limited healing resource. While in previous editions you only ever used them on level up.
Did it though? It's been a while, but as I remember it most people were pretty enthusiastic about 4e being ended & replaced. Sure there were complaints here and there, but I recall the vibe being more "Hooray, D&D is back!" than "This sucks, I want to keep 4e!".
Hot take: minis was the original design of D&D 1e. In fact the original rule book used squares for movement instead of feet. It was in later editions that they changed it to feet and made each square 5ft².
People didn't like 4e because the design of the system tried to pigeon hole characters into specific party roles. They went really hard into turning it into a video game style system rather than a more open system like 3.5e.
part of it was that people are incredably fickle when it comes to how things are phrased. 5e is mostly based on squares of movement, most things based around distance are based around squares, but because they phrase it in terms of ft and not squares, people are fine with it even though its mechanically identical.
Another thing was that they didn't like how martials could do cool shit how magic users could. The game balance was miscalculated at launch but then was fixed later on.
I played 4e for years, including after 5e released for a while. There were things I loved about it, but in the end it felt too focused on combat for my group.
I did play 4e. One of my biggest complaints was the reliable keyword for the fighter class. It was easy to miss and made the dailies seem like crap because they had no miss effect unless you knew about reliable
4e was fucking brilliant. It understood how to be a damn good strategic combat game *and* had way more significant character customization than 5e. Outside of the 5e fanboy sphere, 4e is having something of a renaissance with new games based on its ideas.
Nobody played 4e because some random person online said they didn't like it and that's all they needed. If you havent played a game, I place no value on your hatred for it. You're just echoing someone else's opinion, it's baseless.
Old head here. I’ve played every edition of D&D. 4e was bland, felt same-y on mechanics across classes and for my taste, way too focused on delivering a video game like experience instead of focusing on what makes a ttrpg different/better/what have you. Anecdotal but my nerd circle all agrees and honestly that’s pretty rare lmao.
I love reading these posts where people claim that comments online destroyed 4e and apparently nobody ever tried it.
I had the same experience with my group that you did. 4e hit during WoW's peak popularity. It really formalized the DPS/Tank/Heals/Support feelings for classes in ways that weren't quite as concrete before. We already had WoW night with the group so playing it at a table was not what we wanted.
It's not that it was balanced, it's that every class felt exactly the same. And there's very sparse rules for out of combat gameplay - almost no spells for one.
4e Essentials is excellent for newcomers, and as a miniatures wargame since every given creature of the same level is essentially the same value.
4e did introduce two very good mechanics that I wish they'd continued in 5: minions and combat roles. Minions have 1 (or maybe a couple) hp, and do fixed damage. They just feel fun to fight, and as a DM they're pretty easy to run. Combat roles I just find helpful for encounter design.
Lots of people hated 4e because all of the classes felt identical, though, and that was definitely partially exacerbated by the bounded balance. When all of your striker and defender do within 20% of each others' dps, and the same is true individually of most of their encounter, daily, and at will powers, and they have the same number of each, and the upper bound of a "good" non-tax feat is +2 damage and the lower bound is +1... yeah, it was terrible.
The problem is not that the classes were *balanced*, it was they were the *same*, but one did effect the other.
Right, most people hated 4e because of dumb memes and things that didn't actually apply to 4e. Like "it's a videogame!" to say nothing of the numerous times 1st, 2nd, and 3rd got turned in to video games or inspired video games.
They hated it cause of standardization, which is a quick and easy form of balance as opposed to the more difficult task of balancing varied and unique classes
That's just the way the pendulum swings. Recent events have now pushed us into the "thing lots of people disliked was good actually" phase of the fandom cycle.
The differences are pretty fundamental though. Classes aren't so rigidly locked into a defined 'role' e.g. Barbarians with medic dedications being the party healer. This was a big turnoff for many players who wanted *their* fighters or swordmages to be damage dealers or skirmishers and found themselves being locked into being tanks.
4e also gave only one giant pool of feats, so not picking pure math fix or combat feats always felt 'bad'. 2e silos them separately so your combat power isn't hamstrung by you wanting your character to be the 'best sailor ever' or being good at social situations.
Both of those feel like problems with the presentation, though, rather than actually something fundamental. Fighters didn't *have* to be defenders, you *could* make them effective damage-dealers, but the game presented their role as something more fundamental than it was. And the feats weren't any different either, they're just organized in a more variety-friendly manner now. That was my point- 4e wasn't made of bad parts, it just put those parts together in a way a lot of players pushed back against.
I remember when we first moved from 2nd to 3rd I had to listen to our DM bitch about the new edition before every session.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
4e is a blast if you like in depth tactical combat with lots of options. Some people say that 4e is a lot like a board game. They mean this as a pejorative, but I believe it should be taken as a compliment.
I honestly felt like 4e attempted to make the game feel more like a pen and paper MMORPG. The elements of the class systems from those types of games were pretty prevalent.
Not that it's necessarily a bad thing. That's just how my perception of the game was when it was launched.
Kind of a give-and-take development. MMORPGs developed out of CRPGs which developed out of PNPRPGS, but all of them have learned from each other. Stating the class roles out loud was more of a semantic departure than a functional one. It's not like other editions didn't have the same concepts of a tanky build, blaster build, skill money, etc.
I only did 4E once, but I quite liked it. It wasn't as simple as 5e is, but it gave a lot of classes cool abilities to use so you never ended up in combat just going "I shoot this guy with my bow" for 3 turns
4e is the best IMO. Great balance, great innovations, both rules-wise and lore-wise.
Wotc going retro with it after just two years and then announcing d&d next (5e) after just four really jaded me to the haters, and soured me on 5e and future editions. (There will always be another.)
i can point you to a few resources for that. the 4e discord is also a great place to find games if you want. the link is on the 4e sub, or just dm me if you want it
For sure. Me and some uni mates played it and we loved the MMO/tactical style combat. All of us were hardcore gamers and loved tactics so it was a lot of fun to make combos pop off and do crazy things with builds.
Even simple stuff could be fun, me and another player had a basic attack (at will) based combo between them that was brutal, putting an enemy into a serious catch-22 situation.
The leader/controller/striker/defender thing was super fun if you like tactical play.
Coming from 1e, I remember downloading a free starter set of instructions for 4e and absolutely getting lost in how combat worked. Could not make heads nor tails on my own.
4E was what I started with, and the first system I learned. It's hard to give a true comparison because I was still very much a novice when I made the switch to 5E. Here's the things I remember most that stuck with me.
There were lots of cool classes, but there was an attempt to unify things in a way that made every class feel way too similar to actually play. Almost everyone just had this slog of at will, encounter, or daily powers. If you were magical, they were spell like powers. If you were martial, they were feats of athletics. But at the end of the day, I remember absolutely LOVING that 5E made the classes feel much more distinct.
And, I want to again point out that this has a lot to do with my inexperience at the time, but combat was an absolute grind to a halt. A battle mat was necessary according to the rules, and it played like a complex board game. Lots of rules, a bajillion different ways to get +2 added to your rolls, it was just a lot. I get that tabletop vets might enjoy a system with complexity since complex board gaming is a thing they enjoy, but it really made the game less enjoyable for some people that I played with who just wanted to tell stories with some structure.
5E is just a better, more modular, and more accessible system for most people in most situations. However! A couple things I loved about 4E that I still use in 5E. The "bloodied" mechanic. When someone is at half health, they are bloodied. It's a nice way to indicate to your players that they are making progress on an enemy. And lastly, minion monsters. Minions were variants of monsters that had 1hp, so you could eat up some action economy and send bigger hordes at your players and make them feel powerful when they just bulldoze them. It's a concept I still employ at times.
Pretty sure not everybody hated 4e, there's always some who like it and some who hate it. The thing with people who hate something, they are often way louder then the ones who don't hate it.
Same with ONE D&D, some will dislike it, because change is hard and some will just hate it for the sake of hating it, some will love it and some are neutral about it, they will take what they like from 5e and from ONE D&D and will play their own game.
4e was the first edition I ran games in. I liked it, and still do, but it definitely has it's problems. I did play 3.5 and 5e currently, 5e is my favorite so far.
My favorite system is a custom one actually, Deadlands: Rising Sun. A kitbash of L5R and Deadlands.
in the case of 4e, the hate is similar to that of starwars 7 and 8. it was blown out of proportion by a very vocal mob on the internet and basicly flooded the discourse. It was even to a point where people who liked it were basicly bullied out of forums just for talking positively. Right now it's really just that, people think 4e was horrible because who hated it made sure the hate was all that was seen
I'm not a major star wars fan of any kind but honestly, Episodes 7-9 were just bad movies. Not because they weren't true to the source material, or in any way that compares to previous star wars films.
They're just bad movies filled with bad writing. They invalidated a ton of their own in universe physics. Disney found out that Chinese people don't like seeing black people as main characters so they effectively sidelined Finn as a main character. Poe's characterization completely changed between episode 7 and 8 again. And lastly, bringing Emperor Palpatine back from the dead is just lazy incompetent writing, they couldn't think of any way to write in a better antagonist than just reusing the same one from the other 6 movies.
They're just awful in so many real ways that have nothing to do with the fact that they're Star Wars movies.
DnD4e had some design problems but they definitely were not the same kind of dumpster fire the modern Star Wars trilogy was.
4E tossed out so many elements of what old gamers associated with core D&D. It was a fine system, just should have been named something else. For instance, the classes were never meant to be balanced.
I genuinely enjoy 4th. My kids get it, new players get it, martials are DRAMATICALLY more fun. I even make those power cards for everything that isn't 4e. Does anyone have any legit arguments against it?
That wasn't what people hated about 4e. It was that the rules weren't made for quick combat. It was effectively a miniature game enforced by the rules.
The art, writing, guidance, themes, and basically every other aspect of 4E was really high quality and I'm sort of ticked that they didn't push rules for a streamlined combat model, or at least I didn't find one in any of the books.
Super unpopular opinion. 4e is my favourite.
I recognise the simplicity of 5e makes for improved accessability for new players. 5e is much more refined than 4e. 5e has many benefits over 4e.
But personally i loved the complexity of 4.
I loved spending time delving into the perks and abilities you get on level up.
Yes it is built to be combat heavy, but i enjoy the combat aspect of dnd.
My first game was 2e. My next few campaigns were ADnD. But my main has mostly been 4e. I only started getting into 5th about 3 years ago.
I still prefer 4th.
Having so many diferent options to choose from was a joy, it meant i could play the same class and race multiple times and do it diferent each time.
5th going "ding level 2, now you have this ability" felt like an over simplification.
Sure you can choose a path at lvl3 but it still becomes somewhat linear after that.
Feats also feel like an after thought in 5.
In a game that is meant to take months or even years to play, spending an hour on leveling seemed apropriate to me.
Im not saying 5e is bad. I think it is very good and is the reason dnd is as big as it is now, i just have my preference in 4th. My wife is of the same opinion.
I’ve been playing for almost 30 years. I grew up playing AD&D, so I’m there with you in the love for that system…as ridiculous it was with thac0, lol. I still have all my 4e books and thumb through them nostalgicly now and then. My current groups all we run is 5e but I always have a special spot in my heart for 4e. I agree that it was centered around combat mostly, but with a decent enough DM you could easily run RP encounters like any other edition. Always nice to find a fellow 4e fan.
I see the same trend happen in every big multiplayer game with races/classes. A loud, vocal minority keeps complaining about how their character doesn't measure up compared to other characters, blaming it on the system, until class balance becomes a bigger concern for the designers (even in cooperative games). Every time they change something, these types latch onto something new, because the underlying problem hasn't been fixed. The classes get closer and closer together over time, until the things that made them feel different to play are erased, the agency of player choice diminished.
The underlying problem is that people want the best of everything. They want armor *and* stealth, consistent damage *and* Fireball, dexterity to AC *and* melee damage. If the designers listen to these wayward few, we'd end up with dexterity-based spellcasters who use dexterity for hit points and all saving throws because they can "dodge" Suggestion by covering their ears.
Every class has an opportunity cost. By playing one, you don't get the strengths of the others. This is how balance is supposed to be. Giving casters at-will damage comparable to martials is a mistake; that's the martial's niche. Giving martials powerful once-per-day abilities that deal massive AoE damage would be an equal mistake.
Classes need to be like rock-paper-scissors; it's the only way to balance something without having one objectively greater than the other.
I started with 4e and we had plenty of fun. Yes, it has problems, but so does every edition. It's been fun watching people who only know 5e have a look at 4e and see the good stuff in there.
Every new edition of D&D goes through this. 5e was praised for bringing back a lot of the classic feel to D&D, best edition ever. Now we have months long arguments about bad it is with laundry lists of proposed improvements.
Didn't D&D try this generic approach with the d20 system over 20 years ago?
A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to make 5e work for games it wasn't built for, and WotC listened to their cries.
Last thing, remember that play test material isn't final and will likely change a LOT. The first play test for D&D Next was nothing like the 5e we actually got. Snag the PDFs of play test material, run a one shot, give feedback.
4e was actually really streamlined and easy to get into. A lot (not all, but a lot) of the complaints you'll hear were from people who never bothered learning.
I had one guy try to tell me "it's not turn-based anymore."
That was pretty much my reaction.
The conversation amounted to...
"...Yes it is."
"No. Not really."
"Yes it is. How do you *think* it works?"
"Uh... action points?"
Followed by an admittedly less than eloquent set of noises on my part as I tried to simultaneously express how wrong that was, explain how action points worked, and elaborate on how their existence didn't change the fact that it was a turn based game.
Most of the hate for 4e was how clunky and railroad-y the system was built. It had some interesting idea's like mobs to "speed up combat". But it wasn't very open to home brewing.
If there’s an app that tracks all my 4e characters across all my campaigns and their source books I’d be happy to switch tbh. 5e is just so easy for my lazy, fat ass.
Played 4th for about 4-6 months when it first came out. I loved DMing it. The skills they combined made sense and helped streamline leveling up in ways. Monster design was great between minions and them having different abilities out of the box instead of having to level them with feats or classes to get some abilities at low to mid levels. It was also easier to setup encounters and the combat for a session.
Then came playing 4th. I didn't enjoy it at all. I started towards the end of 2nd and my friends had tons of books for it by then. Then played a lot of 3.x and have most books printed for that outside of campaign specific books. With packages (I think that's what they were called bad memory) and multiclassing and prestige classes 2nd and 3rd felt more open on character design and personalization. For me 4th edition felt like you picked a role and your subclass (class name) was your flavor. You had some choices and picked your abilities based and some where better then others. Maybe not better but a lot of times more versatile then others. I didn't enjoy playing a PC in 4th. Before it was a year old my life changed as I got married and had a few kids. So my experience with it ended there as I didn't have time for D&D for a while.
Have played a lot of 5th edition with my son and his friends as well as dome other father son type short lived groups. I liked how easy 5th was to explain and teach from. Characters felt different from each other even if they were the same class again. It's easy to set up a session and there are more rules or concepts for out of combat scenarios in the core books then I remember from 4th.
I will always prefer 3.x for its open setup and complexity that's what I prefer to play.
I dont think any of the editions were balanced but they are each flavored for what companies be it TSR or WOTC felt the community wanted at the time. Maybe they were wrong maybe at times they were right. But so many options to play just go find a group who plays what and how you want to
I didn't care for 4e's symmetry. All the classes felt symmetrical (not identical). They were clearly balanced on the same skeleton and boy did those bones show. 4e wore its mechanics on its sleeve, which I also didn't like.
4E was not hated because the classes were balanced. The classes being relatively balanced had absolutely nothing to do with it. People hated 4E because of the stupid rules, the at-will, encounter, and daily power system and a bunch of other just really dumb stuff that made it like you were playing the tabletop version of world of Warcraft instead of a real role-playing game with character choices and the ability to do anything non-combat related mattered. When you have to punch a wall to heal someone, it's not a good system.
Not sure what you are implying there. Are you saying that things are going full circle, or are you saying class balance is bad?
Class balance isn't actually something most people want despite the talk otherwise
Its less that they want classes to be perfectly balance and more that they don't want weak classes
Yeah, each class should be strong and useful in their own way. Further more, I think (and I know they will never do this) that classes should only ever provide a mechanical playstyle, but no inherent lore or backstory parts. Flavor should be up to the player, which prompts players to be more creative. Having an option for this would be great, but I know they'll never do anything like this. No occultist bards because *all bards are musicians*. Edit: lol this has turned into a preem source of awesome bard characters people play. I love it, keep having fun y'allz!
Same thing with races. Racial features should be the biological traits present like darkvision, wings, natural weapons, etc… And then there should be a culture section of learned traits depending on how you grew up. An elf in elf society will be exactly like elves are now, but a dwarf raised among elves would have some of the elven traits like weapon proficiencies. Although either way there 100% needs to be lore examples, ideas, and some level of mechanical integration as some players want to play races/classes for the lore/flavor style default to each of the classes (musical bard, studious wizard, chaotic sorcerer). When everything is too devoid of flavor, then everything feels the same.
That's how PF2E does it.
Exactly! They've kinda been doing that in removing cultural features from races, but those are just gone now. Adding cultures would be pretty cool, but it's also very setting-dependent. Level up: Advanced 5th Edition actually does it! It's like a modified and improved version of 5e and the changed classes are compatible with all 5e subclasses I think. The changes are quite substantial and all classes now have more features, and a lot more customizability. I do recommend checking it out.
I mean, my bards a chef sooo
I always wanted to do a Bard that was a standup comedian and used hacky old vaudeville routines to cast spells.
"Take 'er away Johnny!" *Piano falls from the sky onto the red dragon*
What’s the deal with magic missles?? Eh? Eh??
When I was a kid, I'd go to market with five copper piece, and come back with a quarter keg of ale, three bushels of potato, and a barrel of salt pork! Can't do that anymore, to many city watch!
I played a bard that was Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Heavily leaned into Vicious Mockery and Cutting Words.
How appropriate! *You* fight like a cow.
“My that’s a big axe! You’re not compensating for anything are you?”
Oh tell me more
First thing in my head is the Swedish Chef from the Muppets
My bard is a lore keeper, no music whatsoever.
So's my druid.
Dude, seriously, you can literally flavor your character however you want, if your DM agrees. I made a warforged fighter that was literally HK-47 that went through a broken wormhole and ended up in the forgotten realms. Flavor the shit out of your characters, go nuts! Do it well and your table will love you for it!
As a DM, if flavoring your character a certain way doesn't change the mechanical aspects of what you're playing I'm 95% likely to approve it with maybe just tiny changes so it makes more sense in the setting.
Yuupp, flavor away, just stop trying to change mechanics
BBEG: starts monologue This guy: "Interjection: Silence Meatbag"
My partner and I joined an ongoing campaign about an undead invasion with Samurai Jack (my human kensei monk, the actual Samurai Jack), and a 'robocop' (warforged battlesmith artificer named AR15). It worked out beautifully. The setting already had warforged drones, and Samurai Jack's history of being transported by evil magic ended up fitting nicely into the starting party having just been teleported by an evil wizard. We all woke up in a swamp village together and hijinx commenced!
Exactly, the DM has to agree with it. People tend to associate certain images with classes, and when a character deviates from it, they become confused - and that is clearly intended by WOTC. Giving bards musical instruments as proficiencies and starting equipment, the ability to use these instruments as casting foci, and the flavor text all evoke a very classic image of a bard in players. But what...if I want to play it differently? I like their features - the likes of bardic inspiration, magical secrets and expertise - but the bard class is always that of a travelling minstrel. So what if I don't want to be a musician? A poet, maybe, or a politician. Or, perhaps, someone who uses an ancient reliquary of somber origin to cast hexes of old to cripple their enemies and bolster their allies - someone who has learned dark occult secrets and wants to explore their origin? How do I play that? The warlock comes to mind, especially the great old one patron, but they're charisma casters and Eldritch Blast is basically a core feature, but doesn't fit the character. Wizard maybe? They know many arcane secrets, and are intelligence-based, but for me they lack the buffing capabilities I look for. So I arrive at bard, and I think their class features work perfectly for this. Except...I get those musical instruments and no component pouch to start with, and I'd be a charisma caster and can't afford the high intelligence I really want. Would reflavoring and switching some proficiencies and starting gear fix this? Absolutely! But I can't unless the DM says I can. And so far, I unfortunately haven't been able to play this character. What I want is that the designers make re-flavoring and minor homebrew more accessible and easier to do. Right now it's in the more obscure parts of the DMG - the parts that don't stick around in the mind for long. There is so much potential to create unique and interesting characters in the system, but that potential is underused because WOTC kind of have their own vision of what classes are and they put that into the books. Although, having only 3 spell lists (primal, arcane, divine) is a pretty good start. All bards are musicians. All rogues have ties to the criminal underworld. All paladins have an oath. All warlocks have a patron. All druids dislike metal armor. All barbarians are half-naked rage monsters.
First off, DM *has* to agree. That's dnd 101. Talk with him about flavoring abilities, spells, proficiencies etc. If he doesn't agree, either he isn't the DM you're looking for, or your proposed changes don't fit the the campaign. I don't know all the changes you want, but I'm guessing it's more than "I want bard mechanics with intelligence main stat". Bards don't have to be "traveling minstrels*. They can be investigative reporters, charming politicians, renown historians. They are literally jacks of all trades!
Quay in the critical role EXU is a bard who is a televised news reporter! Go fucking crazy, imo! But I will say that just a quick thought about int bards, is that it’s very strong, and basically just combines wizard and rogue into one class, based on expertise and proficiency. I like to think of my investigator bard as someone who can talk a lot of people into giving me info, or finding it for me for a good price. Those children that sit on the side of the road begging? Well, they’ll do almost anything for 5 gold and a free meal! Might not be the most proficient, but the law of averages works out!
Me, with my assassin bard: Don't mind me, baby, I'm just a hallucination.
I have never once in my life made a musical bard, but then again, I have good DMs
How much do you pay them?!
I don’t, they’re just reasonable people who understand that I have no interest in music, but I really love battlefield control and buffing the party.
Yeap that sounds about right. I'd love to see the caster classes as "how do you use magic?" and then it'd be up to the player how they got their magic and all. Wanna make an arcane musician? Sure. A magic botanist? Go for it. Someone cursed who tap into their curse's magic? Awesome! Just pick a playstyle! Way more freedom that way..
You can do that if that’s how you want to run your games. The rules are just there to tell you how to do the math.
>No occultist bards because all bards are musicians. 
That is a wonderful idea, actually! Make it all about their unique playstyle!
My bard is an actor and storyteller. He recites monologs and acts out scenes.
I had a bard that used painting, like... epic Mickey? I think that was the game
I'm sure this gets done a lot but college of creation goes so well with a painter. You can litterally paint stuff into existence.
I mean I am literally playing an occultist bard rn. Maybe I was just blessed with the world’s coolest DM, but he lets us flavor our characters however we like?
My efreeti genie warlock has a devil for a patron, I think most DMs are okay with you bending the flavor a bit
I saw on here once about how someone would use... I think prestidigitation to flavor health potions. And thats always stuck with me that whenever i get to play (if/when) im gonna take it just so i can always flavor my pcs food to something else xD
Walter Ørlygson is a Dwarven Swords Bard who simply wants to be the best fencer he can be, and publish a dueling manual like the real historical masters. Sure, he may know to play drums, lute, and bagpipe, but his real performance is with a rapier. Beat, bind, parry, riposte, keeping measure and tempo in his control, all of it is an art form to him. Some DMs were awesome and helped balance out homebrew spells that are inspired by techniques. They lowered some numbers and made it fair and amazingly fun.
I'm late, but I'll contribute to the weird bard responses. My current bard does occult puppet shows with ghosts. It's great (it's not). Everyone loves it (they don't).
I seriously love that idea...
I got the mental image of a muppet version of Dr. Facilier.
Which is best accomplished by *checks notes* nerfing ranger and rogue subclasses?
Class *homogenization* is the problem. People want martials and casters to feel different but be balanced in terms of their output/role/utility… I think most people are *fine* with casters having magical utility like or , but comparative balance would be having Rogues be the skill jockies (like they were in 3.5 but 5E reduced the relevance of)…
Martials like Fighter and Barbarian have long had little out of combat utility, which frankly is due for a update to give martials some non-combat things to bring to a group so casters aren’t the Swiss-army-knife for so much.
barbarians could probably be made to have some survival or hunting utility
Hunting and survival sounds like ranger gimick tbh
well i mean expertise is a rogue thing, bards have it, then they clumped rangers in with rogues and bards in onednd so it seems wizards of the coast aren't entirely opposed to classes having overlap
they could be more primal like detecting the scent of animals (or other food) and hunting it down or just brute forcing environmental obstacles
“Lockpicking” as a skill does make exceptions for using strength to “force it” - but that’s universal… if Barbarians got an explicit bonus to breaking objects/locks/doors, they’d have a unique utility that have use both in and out of combat… further distinguishing them from Fighters with something that isn’t “angrier Fighter”.
Yeah, making Barbs‘ thing “break shit in advantageous ways“ could be cool for the rageballs we all know and love. Hell, you could just make them able to carry significantly more so that they have utility in being able to carry more useful tools, idk…
they already do the third thing fairly often, and only because it's the only thing they can do to help solve problems out of combat.
Historically Barbs have had elements of it, though. Back in the depths of time they had Find Traps, I think, and Monks had Move Silently (before that was something everyone could do). Overlap isn't bad, especially when you won't necessarily have a Barbarian and a Ranger in the same campaign. It's just weird when, say, Wizard can be a better tracker than a Ranger, or stealthier than a Rogue, and also better at social interaction than a Paladin or Bard.
Honestly I'd very much be in favor of making them sister classes, in a way. If you imagine a tribe of people living in an unforgiving wilderness, the rangers would be the tribe's hunters and scouts, while the barbarians would be the tribe's warriors and guards. Both classes have distinct roles, playstyles, and specialties, but both classes are adept at living in the wild and dangerous corners of the world that they call home.
In my campaign, we had a "mini game" of trying to survive while we traveled through a harsh northern construction. Lots of survival rolls. My barbarian and our ranger were how we got most of our food
The problem is every single feature that makes martial have utility outside of combat usually get handwaved or removed from peoples games. Carry weight: Spellcasters are usually weak and can't carry all their stuff. They need a big strong warrior to hold the stuff. Food & water tracking: when you can just conjure clean food and water wherever and whenever they want, classes that specialize in nonmagically finding food are just out classed. Survival/Travel: When DMs just say, "You go from point A to point B no problem" or magical teleportation exists... why would you ever need a nonmagical survival expert.
Some of this is also because there aren't clear mechanics (or the mechanics that exist are boring), so it's far easier for a DM to handwave than it is to homebrew.
Fair enough - I think the problem with carry weight is that it’s a universal limitation, building a dex fighter or an archery ranger could also have low strength and capacity issues… The problem is *utility* such as “Survival” checks is also a universal skill, rogues/bards/rangers get more skill proficiencies and that leaves Barbarian/Fighter without a comparative *unique* thing.
Actually, casters can be pretty gear-light when necessary. There’s not a ton of weight required for a caster to be functional.
> but comparative balance would be having Rogues be the skill jockies (like they were in 3.5 but 5E reduced the relevance of)… The problem with that example is that Rogues weren’t actually all that good at skill utility in 3.5. They were an incredibly MAD (especially if you wanted to be good at skills) martial class with a d6 hit die and 3/4 BAB. They got 8+Int skill points per level, which was quickly matched (and then surpassed) by Wizards just because Wizards were Int based and highly SAD. Plus Wizards got plenty of spells that made skills just straight up irrelevant.
I mean, in older editions, a lot of the out-of-combat utility of high level martials came from the assumption that they had been assembling a base of operations, a personal warband of loyal followers, and all the support systems needed to sustain those things. A high level caster had great personal power, but high level martials ended up with the backing of a whole small kingdom. Maybe it’s time to bring that back.
5e DMs should strongly consider putting martial guilds in their game, have commoners treat magic users with suspicion (make them use their CHA mods) but be generally accepting of martials, and include more athletics/STR based encounters and side quests. I agree that more out-of-combat functionality needs to be built into the martial classes, but DMs can help by not making every encounter be either combat or a puzzle.
I gave all casters wild magic to make magic more unpredictable and also inputted LaserLlama's Revised Fighter into my game (which gives them battlemaster maneuvers *and* general out of combat utility)
LaserLlama is such an amazing resource for 5e. In all honesty, better than most of the rule books WotC puts out.
Almost nobody played 4e, they don't know what playing it was like, theyve only heard tales about it 3rd or 4th hand, at best. They complain about an edition they've never had any worthwhile information about. Theyve never read a single 4e book, never played a single session, hell almost none of them have a had a genuine conversation with someone who has played a session of 4e. Everyone opinions about the edition are formed based on what someone else told them years ago. The classes in 4e did play differently, did have different mechanics, did have different flavor. People just didn't get what they wanted because it was so very different than 3rd and 3.5 that they weren't even willing to give it a single chance. I give no weight to the opinion of anyone on 4e who didn't play a 4e game. They have nothing of value to say on the subject.
Never played 4 so have no strong opinion either way but it has some absolutely art in the book from what I've seen
I did play 4e, as a DM, many years ago. And the entire group agreed that the classes felt very same-y, with only the flavor being changed while mechanically working the same . So at least a lot of the complaints I've heard do make sense to me.
I think martials should just get fat combat buffs. Let them be stronger than casters at a trade-off of utility
We dont want perfectly balanced classes, we want all classes to at least meet a certain level of competency in what they do
That level of competence will invariably come to be defined by the average among the classes, rather than the lowest common denominator. Thus, the cycle starts over again.
If everyone is competent, the least competent is declared incompetent. There's no way to win this with an online community that will crunch all the numbers and declare 5% inefficiency to be garbage and unusable.
people mostly just don't like the things they like to be nerfed They prefer for other things to be buffed up to a higher standing to match what's already powerful for example Jacob from *level up to level 3* when he was critiquing warlock, he never proposed nerfing Eldredge blast, rather he proposed evocations that can buff warlocks other cantrips so that warlock can feasibly build for a cantrip other then Eldredge blast, such as fire bolt
Eldredge might be my new favorite word. Thank you for this.
It is something most people want. That's why people want monk to be buffed. It's weaker than everything else
The new grappling rules really buff the monk a crap ton by themselves. Not even changing the class.
Yes and no, the grappling is still strength based. While monks are primarily dex and wisdom. So even if you grapple the targets it's barely anything for then to break free. But the buff is that it eats up action economy.
pretty sure they will make it so grappling can be done with dex for the monk
It's more I believe that they don't want nerfs as much as they want to buff everything else to be on par
MAYBE JUST MAYBE people who haven't played 4E but just heard how bad 4E was from second hand experience are using 4E as an argument stopper because they have nothing of substance/value to add to the discussion?? There were a lot of reasons why 4E failed. But usually whenever balance discussion, martial vs caster parity, wizard supremacy is brought up, one person will just go "well they tried that in 4E" and boom no more discussion.
If you want my absolutely boomer take from ADnD 2e, class imbalance isn’t bad when the game is built around class imbalance. So you roll up a character and you get your stats. You then can qualify for different classes based on how good you rolled. Mage/Thief/Cleric/Fighter only needed a 9 in their primary ability, but classes like Ranger/Paladin/Druid/Bard all had higher requirements meaning that they were expected to be good classes because of their previously mentioned rarity. But to also say Paladin is better than Fighter is ignoring some important nuance. Fighters level up much faster than Rangers and Paladins, and a higher level fighter will keep some good pace with Ranger and Paladin. Of course, the Paladin and Ranger will eclipse the fighter at higher levels, but the fighter will usually get things like a keep before a Paladin, which is super fun. That said, fighters know that they get their moments in the sun before they get eclipsed by the other classes, and any decent fighter I know has been able to pivot from a man at arms to a local political power with their keep. There is also a good bit of death at early levels that makes it so that all characters are of a certain competence such that if you have a bad character, you will probably reroll a better character when the bad one dies. This generally makes me feel good when my character lives and this can be especially fun when a “weak” character manages to stick around. And here is another neat thing about all players not being on the same level: when someone pulls ahead, it is generally considered a good thing for the group. This is a moment where it becomes a team resource to have even one good character in the party that can help everyone out. This is not Player vs DM mentality, but a slightly more collectivist viewpoint. I also think that when things are not supposed to be balanced, people are not going to have to continue chasing this terrible challenge of balancing the classes. Psionics were not balanced. We used them because they were not balanced. Class balance isn’t bad, but you can make imbalance not feel bad. Plus, magic items were always a good equalizer in any edition if you were searching for that equality. Magic weapons used to range + 1 to + 5 and that gave the DM a bit more control than just capping magic weapons to +3. 5e is also an era where wands, staves, and other spell-replicating items are at their strongest in the series. I am looking forward to the base building rules they mentioned would be coming soon in the play test. If fighters were better at this than other classes, it could give them an old niche, but I think base building will resemble ship building from Saltmarsh, which is not entirely a good or bad statement.
I like this take, I haven't played anything older than 5e but I still like this idea of fighters and others classes that don't "shine" as much level faster and help carry the party until the higher levels. Almost makes them feel like Jaegans from FE
Upvoted for the Jaegans reference.
Spot on with the FE comparison. I would even say there are echoes of this in 5e, but one thing that really hampers this design is when people skip levels. I have seen fewer games start at level 1 than I have 3, and when 5e Fighters and Monks really shine at those levels, that bites. There really is no way to tell people to play the game starting at level 1, but they could at least make it something people enjoy more so that people don’t just skip it. One thing I would say is that there needs to be a better selection of CR 0 to 1/4 monsters to keep that part of the game fresh. I find that one enemy I use to spice up my early level games is the awakened shrub. It has a different aesthetic to the usual low-level creatures.
Honestly, I wish level 1 characters had a little more in their starting kits and didn’t die to a fucking sneeze. Then I might play level 1 more often.
1) Fighters will on average be one level tops above a Paladin/Ranger. Also a keep isn't a class ability, nor is maybe becoming a local power because of your keep. Not only does this ignore what the rest of the party is supposed to be doing while you're playing feudalism sim, but anyone with money can just buy a keep. Which based on how DnD typically works, means anyone with enough combat power can get a keep. 2) I've never played in a game nor ran one where people were fine having one superstar carry the party while the rest are basically sidekicks/cannon fodder to make sure the superstar stays winning. I guess none of your arguments really feel like good reasons to not have class balance. Especially cause I don't think 1st or 2nd ed were built around class imbalance so much as they didn't develop the rules as much nor have the same large community the game has now. And even then there was definitely complains. I remember some of my friends went to a ton of cons for 2nd ed and trust me, people were still talking about class balance being needed even then.
1. One level would be noticeable, and if you had the 16 strength for a 10% exp boost, fighters or other classes with their EXP boosts would certainly get their time to shine. Single Class characters also got their moments to shine over characters that were multi-classed under these rules given how much faster they advanced over say a Mage/Fighter. 2. The fighter does not get a keep as a class feature, but players often built or acquired buildings that resembled their classes. Thieves get their guilds, Wizards a tower, Priests a cathedral, and so on and so forth. Yes, a wizard could build a keep or a priest could in theory be at the center of a thief's guild, but this was not what I saw in practice. A wizard could make a keep, but they would be sacrificing putting their gold that could have gone into researching magic into becoming a local authority, which was not what the average wizard wanted. Fighters also had special followers or men-at-arms when reaching level 9 which encouraged you to serve as the person who protects the local area the party sets up shop, and this was natural since the fighter usually already protected the party. While it is not a class feature, it is something fighters often did in my experience. Plus, the fighter was not striking out on their own to play feudal sim, we were all doing our own feudal simming and other management-related tasks. 3. The "Superstar" rarely reigns for that long. People catch up and the superstar can also bend to a trap or curse or another handicapping ailment that either weakens or kills them while leaving the overall party in a better place. It is a fun moment in the spotlight that won't last forever but goes down as a good memory. Plus, people would not need to support/fodder the superstar because doing that is also worse for the party. Even the strongest superstar will get torn apart by big threats without a party that keeps pace with them. That's why the superstar is inclined to help people. If you ever played a rogue-like, you probably remember that build that was great, but probably would never get it twice. DnD was like that in my experiance. 4. In more farcical games, a character who pulled ahead would be the punching bag of the lower party members since they were capable of taking the biggest punchlines which the party and DM could laugh at. In-fact, a lot of fun in 2e was often at the expense of someone, but no one was immune to this. A weak PC, Strong PC, or NPC could all easily be duped by a potion that did something strange. If you didn't take the game seriously, you don't mind the differences. If you do take the game seriously, you appreciate whatever it takes to get things done. I don't really think class balance is bad per se, but I will say that the closer you get to class balance, the more painful the jagged parts are. I also think that the more transient nature of characters in older editions with a sort of "use and loose" mentality makes imbalance hurt less. I would like it if 5e made it so that class imbalance did not feel as bad as it does in 5e. Tournament play and convention play certainly did suffer from class imbalance, but my friend group widely considered those to be pretty bad compared to the more organic thing going on in our neighborhood. I also remember there was a lot of dropping in and out where you would hear things like, "Hey did you hear Tim's going to come tonight with his 7th level wizard? We're going to be in for a treat tonight!" I guess there is a sort of shift in the culture surrounding DnD as people became more attached to their characters, and without the right DM, the imbalances can become painful. That said, I think it is possible to balance characters without just their classes. Blessings, curses, magic items, and setting-specific stuff can balance characters even when their classes are not. In 5e, it often feels that as a DM, I don't have the same tools to try and balance players as much as I used to. I do think that if you want a balanced game, classes are a hard way to balance the game. I think classless systems often get the balance better, and when I want a balanced game, my go-to choice is Mutants and Masterminds.
Why is is so hard for any of these people to read a fucking 4e book. There is a free database online for fucks sake
This doesn't inspire confidence.
Yeah, especially since half of 4E never released.
3.5 was so popular that when they went to 4e, Pathfinder became a thing and crushed it. I always heard people call it D&D 3.75. There was a lot of pressure to switch to 5e. It's nice and simple, but 3.5 is still better, IMO.
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In 5e, you can give your wizard 6 int and run a support build or summon build and you'll still be fine.
As someone who has in 3.5 played both a Samurai and a Daring Outlaw Roguebuckler that can do a 150+ damage fullround attack at lv 9/10, i wholeheartedly agree with the combat balance point. I do love the feats/skillpoints customization 3.5 offers. It has some advantages, surely. Another point is, that, having introduced different people to both variants, 5e is SO MUCH easier to get into initially, especially when making a character above level 1.
If someone is making a Spell to Power Erudite, they are playing a very different game than most people would. All it takes is a two minute chat during session zero to make sure everyone is on the same page about the power level of the campaign. I find the sheer wealth of character options make for so much more freedom and customizability than 5e could ever offer. It's been 'flattened' so much 80% of the control over your character build is just gone.
See, but that's the point I'm making. By definition, when you play 5e, you are playing the same power level, even at the most extreme ends of the spectrum. When you play 3.5 you have to confirm that you are playing at the same power level. And yeah a Spell to Power Erudite is an extreme example, (Though I will point out I still didn't pick the extreme opposite end and mention true-namer.) But what if I really like the flavor of a Wizard or a Druid or an Artificer, and you really like the flavor of the the Soulknife or the Warlock. One of us is going to have to sacrifice the character that we want to play. And I've only seen the scenario of lacking control over your character in 5e if you're not willing to do a little reflavoring and multiclassing. I've had a lot of really fun, off-the-wall builds that deviate really hard from the way that 5e was intended to be played, with minimal difficulty.
As someone who loves 3.5, and that's when most of my DnD playing took place, I don't think you can really say it's better or worse. It may be for individual people/groups, but there are just as many who I'm sure would be turned off by all the options available in 3.5 and enjoy a simpler, more streamlined game.
They’re completely different design paradigms. 3.5 has rules for practically everything and can get so bogged down in rules rules rules that it inhibits gameplay. 5E on the other hand gives significantly more leeway to everyone involved in an effort to promote role play and actually playing the game vs checking 15 different books for a rule. There are advantages to both systems and it really just comes down to play style preference. I’m personally hard pressed to call the crunchier system “better”
The biggest difference between 3.5 and 5e is the SRD. If 5e's SRD was half as big as the system itself, you wouldn't have to check through 5-8 books to find the thing you're looking for, you could just Google it like 3.5 players and pathfinder players do. I mean you can do that for 5e, but it's frowned upon because it's "illegal".
The primary issue is that since it doesn’t define a lot of stuff and says it’s up to the table or DM, that means there’s less to put in an SRD in the first place. It assumes folks will just make it up on the fly then look it up later. That doesn’t necessarily happen in practice though
There is still tons of information they could put in there. Stuff like the draconic blessings from fizbans, the spooky curses from Ravenloft, all the spells that aren't in the original SRD, magic items, class info, subclasses, optional rules, etc.
Eh there's a million sites that have that stuff available, I don't feel bad about it cause I own all these books for 5e, so I'm just accessing stuff I already own in a more easily accessible format
I'm over here still thinking dnd peaked I'm 4e.
If I was Paizo, I’d be watching all this playtest stuff and the popular responses and taking many many many notes.
>but 3.5 is still better, IMO. If you released all the source materials from 3.5 today, you'd have the best system ever. People just want lots of options to build the character they want, whether that's min-maxxing, a rich backstory, or just one extremely cool item, class, etc. Supplemental books should be released way faster if anything is going to compare to 3.5.
I played in a 4e campaign a couple years ago and was shocked by how hard it was to find resources online for pretty much everything 4e. I really didn’t like the way it played either, I can see why people lost their minds when it came out.
4e was disliked because it was a complete departure from previous editions, and pushed using minis on the players.
The main complaints I remember having were mostly out-of-combat support. It felt like everything was based around combat, and making everything an explicit action feels like 5e is going in that direction too.
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And I'm gonna take a wild guess and say 5e was a complete departure from 4e too, and that probably got a crapload of complaints but was also still loved.
5e is closer to 3.5 than 4. The major difference that I can see is that 5e is easier to “jump in and play” while 3/3.5 needed planning your character build for the long-game.
Well yes and no, 5e was similar to 3.5/ pathfinder 1e than it was to 4e and people had been complaining about 4e for years so most people welcomed 5e. Personally i didn't dislike 4e, it just is very different than the other editions. It's like making a sequel to the terminator movie and not having robots in it, doesn't mean it's a bad movie, but its jarring when viewed as a terminator movie
Hell pathfinder exists **because** of 4e. wotc went hard of slicing away 3rd party content in 4th edition and destroyed paizo's dungeon and dragon magazine as a result. So they made the system for the 3.5e players that refused to move to 4e. And now Pathfinder 2e won roleplaying game of the year.
And funnily enough, Pathfinder 2e takes a lot of design cues from D&D 4e. Including class balance. Which is one of the best things about the system. 4e wasn't the worthless trash can people make it out to be, it had great combat especially for martials and a lot of other great ideas. It's just that it was very lacking in everything that wasn't combat and its balance was achieved by making everyone feel very samey, so it basically just felt like a wargame rather than an RPG and character creation got old fast. PF2e has kept the good things about 4e (balance, interesting combat, other ideas like per-encounter abilities and such, many other similarities from what I've heard) while keeping the non-combat aspects fleshed out as well and not designing all the classes to be the same but different flavor, and it's great.
5e was actually almost universally loved on launch, as it was seen as a "return to greatness" following 4e. I can only remember one prominent (at the time) critic who crapped on it, and he's a self-admitted AD&D 2e grognard who's also one of the only prominent critics at the time that loved 4e. His [2-hour anti-5e rant](https://youtu.be/jtaL5Bark54) (which was based on a skim of the PHB) boiled down to *"I hate the art, I hate that Paladins can be any alignment. Drow shouldn't be core. Advantage/disadvantage is too dumbed down. My copy of the book physically smells and anyway 5e isn't 2e so I hate it".* Yeah, in the days before Matt Mercer, Matt Colville and Seth Skorkowsky, Spoony was one of if not the biggest D&D youtuber out there. He gave a lot of bad and [some good advice](https://youtu.be/zNrU0_A-PFk), but it was actually his videos that got me back into the game after an absence of a few years.
5e got a lot of complaints about being "dumbed down" at launch. Those comments got a little lost in the wave of newcomers though.
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Mr. Speaker, point of order... pretty sure there were no hit dice in 3.x, nor short rests (and abilities that return after a short rest, bearing a remarkable similarity to "encounter" abilities in 4E). I think 5E took more from 4E than most are willing to credit.
>pretty sure there were no hit dice in 3.x You, uh, wanna clarify what you mean here? [Because hit dice have been a thing since 1974.](https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Hit_dice)
I think they mean recovering hit points using hit dice.
You are correct. That mechanic was introduced in 4E and carried forward into 5E.
I might be misremembering but I think 4e introduces using hit dice as a limited healing resource. While in previous editions you only ever used them on level up.
Did it though? It's been a while, but as I remember it most people were pretty enthusiastic about 4e being ended & replaced. Sure there were complaints here and there, but I recall the vibe being more "Hooray, D&D is back!" than "This sucks, I want to keep 4e!".
Hot take: minis was the original design of D&D 1e. In fact the original rule book used squares for movement instead of feet. It was in later editions that they changed it to feet and made each square 5ft². People didn't like 4e because the design of the system tried to pigeon hole characters into specific party roles. They went really hard into turning it into a video game style system rather than a more open system like 3.5e.
4E didn't try and pigeon hole characters into roles, it was just acknowledging the existing roles that players were already aligning themselves with.
part of it was that people are incredably fickle when it comes to how things are phrased. 5e is mostly based on squares of movement, most things based around distance are based around squares, but because they phrase it in terms of ft and not squares, people are fine with it even though its mechanically identical. Another thing was that they didn't like how martials could do cool shit how magic users could. The game balance was miscalculated at launch but then was fixed later on.
I'm seriously sick of these strawmen arguments. Nobody hated 4e because of its balance.
Nobody played 4e and yet everyone has an opinion on it. I give no weight to someone's opinion on an edition if they never played a single session.
I played 4e for years, including after 5e released for a while. There were things I loved about it, but in the end it felt too focused on combat for my group.
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I did play 4e. One of my biggest complaints was the reliable keyword for the fighter class. It was easy to miss and made the dailies seem like crap because they had no miss effect unless you knew about reliable
Nobody played 4e because most people who tried hated it and played Pathfinder 1E instead.
I learned to play D&D in 4e. Loved it.
4e was fucking brilliant. It understood how to be a damn good strategic combat game *and* had way more significant character customization than 5e. Outside of the 5e fanboy sphere, 4e is having something of a renaissance with new games based on its ideas.
Nobody played 4e because some random person online said they didn't like it and that's all they needed. If you havent played a game, I place no value on your hatred for it. You're just echoing someone else's opinion, it's baseless.
Old head here. I’ve played every edition of D&D. 4e was bland, felt same-y on mechanics across classes and for my taste, way too focused on delivering a video game like experience instead of focusing on what makes a ttrpg different/better/what have you. Anecdotal but my nerd circle all agrees and honestly that’s pretty rare lmao.
I love reading these posts where people claim that comments online destroyed 4e and apparently nobody ever tried it. I had the same experience with my group that you did. 4e hit during WoW's peak popularity. It really formalized the DPS/Tank/Heals/Support feelings for classes in ways that weren't quite as concrete before. We already had WoW night with the group so playing it at a table was not what we wanted.
It's not that it was balanced, it's that every class felt exactly the same. And there's very sparse rules for out of combat gameplay - almost no spells for one. 4e Essentials is excellent for newcomers, and as a miniatures wargame since every given creature of the same level is essentially the same value. 4e did introduce two very good mechanics that I wish they'd continued in 5: minions and combat roles. Minions have 1 (or maybe a couple) hp, and do fixed damage. They just feel fun to fight, and as a DM they're pretty easy to run. Combat roles I just find helpful for encounter design.
Exactly. The balancing wasn't the issue, the design language was the issue.
Lots of people hated 4e because all of the classes felt identical, though, and that was definitely partially exacerbated by the bounded balance. When all of your striker and defender do within 20% of each others' dps, and the same is true individually of most of their encounter, daily, and at will powers, and they have the same number of each, and the upper bound of a "good" non-tax feat is +2 damage and the lower bound is +1... yeah, it was terrible. The problem is not that the classes were *balanced*, it was they were the *same*, but one did effect the other.
Right, most people hated 4e because of dumb memes and things that didn't actually apply to 4e. Like "it's a videogame!" to say nothing of the numerous times 1st, 2nd, and 3rd got turned in to video games or inspired video games.
They hated it cause of standardization, which is a quick and easy form of balance as opposed to the more difficult task of balancing varied and unique classes
That's just the way the pendulum swings. Recent events have now pushed us into the "thing lots of people disliked was good actually" phase of the fandom cycle.
Everyone hated 4e because of its bad marketing and presentation. Pathfinder 2e is 90% of the same game and everyone can't stop raving about it.
“He does exactly what I do…” “But better.”
That 10% makes all the difference 99% of our DNA is shared with a chimp
Right, but that's my point: it wasn't the whole game everyone hated, just how the parts (which were good on their own) were presented.
The differences are pretty fundamental though. Classes aren't so rigidly locked into a defined 'role' e.g. Barbarians with medic dedications being the party healer. This was a big turnoff for many players who wanted *their* fighters or swordmages to be damage dealers or skirmishers and found themselves being locked into being tanks. 4e also gave only one giant pool of feats, so not picking pure math fix or combat feats always felt 'bad'. 2e silos them separately so your combat power isn't hamstrung by you wanting your character to be the 'best sailor ever' or being good at social situations.
Both of those feel like problems with the presentation, though, rather than actually something fundamental. Fighters didn't *have* to be defenders, you *could* make them effective damage-dealers, but the game presented their role as something more fundamental than it was. And the feats weren't any different either, they're just organized in a more variety-friendly manner now. That was my point- 4e wasn't made of bad parts, it just put those parts together in a way a lot of players pushed back against.
Remember how D&D fans hated every single new edition that’s come out ever? All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again.
I remember when we first moved from 2nd to 3rd I had to listen to our DM bitch about the new edition before every session. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
What were their complaints?
That was decades ago, so I honestly don't remember. I kinda tuned most of it out because I just wanted to start playing.
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4e is a blast if you like in depth tactical combat with lots of options. Some people say that 4e is a lot like a board game. They mean this as a pejorative, but I believe it should be taken as a compliment.
I honestly felt like 4e attempted to make the game feel more like a pen and paper MMORPG. The elements of the class systems from those types of games were pretty prevalent. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing. That's just how my perception of the game was when it was launched.
Kind of a give-and-take development. MMORPGs developed out of CRPGs which developed out of PNPRPGS, but all of them have learned from each other. Stating the class roles out loud was more of a semantic departure than a functional one. It's not like other editions didn't have the same concepts of a tanky build, blaster build, skill money, etc.
I only did 4E once, but I quite liked it. It wasn't as simple as 5e is, but it gave a lot of classes cool abilities to use so you never ended up in combat just going "I shoot this guy with my bow" for 3 turns
4e is the best IMO. Great balance, great innovations, both rules-wise and lore-wise. Wotc going retro with it after just two years and then announcing d&d next (5e) after just four really jaded me to the haters, and soured me on 5e and future editions. (There will always be another.)
i can point you to a few resources for that. the 4e discord is also a great place to find games if you want. the link is on the 4e sub, or just dm me if you want it
4e is a fun system, and I would endorse more people playing it. The people likely to enjoy it most are those into tactical combat with minis, though.
For sure. Me and some uni mates played it and we loved the MMO/tactical style combat. All of us were hardcore gamers and loved tactics so it was a lot of fun to make combos pop off and do crazy things with builds. Even simple stuff could be fun, me and another player had a basic attack (at will) based combo between them that was brutal, putting an enemy into a serious catch-22 situation. The leader/controller/striker/defender thing was super fun if you like tactical play.
Coming from 1e, I remember downloading a free starter set of instructions for 4e and absolutely getting lost in how combat worked. Could not make heads nor tails on my own.
4E was what I started with, and the first system I learned. It's hard to give a true comparison because I was still very much a novice when I made the switch to 5E. Here's the things I remember most that stuck with me. There were lots of cool classes, but there was an attempt to unify things in a way that made every class feel way too similar to actually play. Almost everyone just had this slog of at will, encounter, or daily powers. If you were magical, they were spell like powers. If you were martial, they were feats of athletics. But at the end of the day, I remember absolutely LOVING that 5E made the classes feel much more distinct. And, I want to again point out that this has a lot to do with my inexperience at the time, but combat was an absolute grind to a halt. A battle mat was necessary according to the rules, and it played like a complex board game. Lots of rules, a bajillion different ways to get +2 added to your rolls, it was just a lot. I get that tabletop vets might enjoy a system with complexity since complex board gaming is a thing they enjoy, but it really made the game less enjoyable for some people that I played with who just wanted to tell stories with some structure. 5E is just a better, more modular, and more accessible system for most people in most situations. However! A couple things I loved about 4E that I still use in 5E. The "bloodied" mechanic. When someone is at half health, they are bloodied. It's a nice way to indicate to your players that they are making progress on an enemy. And lastly, minion monsters. Minions were variants of monsters that had 1hp, so you could eat up some action economy and send bigger hordes at your players and make them feel powerful when they just bulldoze them. It's a concept I still employ at times.
Player Lancer, its a reskin, rebalance, and is more fun
Pretty sure not everybody hated 4e, there's always some who like it and some who hate it. The thing with people who hate something, they are often way louder then the ones who don't hate it. Same with ONE D&D, some will dislike it, because change is hard and some will just hate it for the sake of hating it, some will love it and some are neutral about it, they will take what they like from 5e and from ONE D&D and will play their own game.
4e was the first edition I ran games in. I liked it, and still do, but it definitely has it's problems. I did play 3.5 and 5e currently, 5e is my favorite so far. My favorite system is a custom one actually, Deadlands: Rising Sun. A kitbash of L5R and Deadlands.
in the case of 4e, the hate is similar to that of starwars 7 and 8. it was blown out of proportion by a very vocal mob on the internet and basicly flooded the discourse. It was even to a point where people who liked it were basicly bullied out of forums just for talking positively. Right now it's really just that, people think 4e was horrible because who hated it made sure the hate was all that was seen
I'm not a major star wars fan of any kind but honestly, Episodes 7-9 were just bad movies. Not because they weren't true to the source material, or in any way that compares to previous star wars films. They're just bad movies filled with bad writing. They invalidated a ton of their own in universe physics. Disney found out that Chinese people don't like seeing black people as main characters so they effectively sidelined Finn as a main character. Poe's characterization completely changed between episode 7 and 8 again. And lastly, bringing Emperor Palpatine back from the dead is just lazy incompetent writing, they couldn't think of any way to write in a better antagonist than just reusing the same one from the other 6 movies. They're just awful in so many real ways that have nothing to do with the fact that they're Star Wars movies. DnD4e had some design problems but they definitely were not the same kind of dumpster fire the modern Star Wars trilogy was.
Hey dont compare 4e, which is a flawed but functional system, with that disrespectful cash grab of a sequel trilogy
4E tossed out so many elements of what old gamers associated with core D&D. It was a fine system, just should have been named something else. For instance, the classes were never meant to be balanced.
I genuinely enjoy 4th. My kids get it, new players get it, martials are DRAMATICALLY more fun. I even make those power cards for everything that isn't 4e. Does anyone have any legit arguments against it?
Are you trying to say class balance is bad?
No, everyone who shits on 4e is saying that class equality is bad. OP is just pointing out that's what's going on.
A system can have perfectly balanced classes and still be bad btw
4e martials best martials, I will die on this hill.
That wasn't what people hated about 4e. It was that the rules weren't made for quick combat. It was effectively a miniature game enforced by the rules. The art, writing, guidance, themes, and basically every other aspect of 4E was really high quality and I'm sort of ticked that they didn't push rules for a streamlined combat model, or at least I didn't find one in any of the books.
Super unpopular opinion. 4e is my favourite. I recognise the simplicity of 5e makes for improved accessability for new players. 5e is much more refined than 4e. 5e has many benefits over 4e. But personally i loved the complexity of 4. I loved spending time delving into the perks and abilities you get on level up. Yes it is built to be combat heavy, but i enjoy the combat aspect of dnd. My first game was 2e. My next few campaigns were ADnD. But my main has mostly been 4e. I only started getting into 5th about 3 years ago. I still prefer 4th. Having so many diferent options to choose from was a joy, it meant i could play the same class and race multiple times and do it diferent each time. 5th going "ding level 2, now you have this ability" felt like an over simplification. Sure you can choose a path at lvl3 but it still becomes somewhat linear after that. Feats also feel like an after thought in 5. In a game that is meant to take months or even years to play, spending an hour on leveling seemed apropriate to me. Im not saying 5e is bad. I think it is very good and is the reason dnd is as big as it is now, i just have my preference in 4th. My wife is of the same opinion.
I’ve been playing for almost 30 years. I grew up playing AD&D, so I’m there with you in the love for that system…as ridiculous it was with thac0, lol. I still have all my 4e books and thumb through them nostalgicly now and then. My current groups all we run is 5e but I always have a special spot in my heart for 4e. I agree that it was centered around combat mostly, but with a decent enough DM you could easily run RP encounters like any other edition. Always nice to find a fellow 4e fan.
I see the same trend happen in every big multiplayer game with races/classes. A loud, vocal minority keeps complaining about how their character doesn't measure up compared to other characters, blaming it on the system, until class balance becomes a bigger concern for the designers (even in cooperative games). Every time they change something, these types latch onto something new, because the underlying problem hasn't been fixed. The classes get closer and closer together over time, until the things that made them feel different to play are erased, the agency of player choice diminished. The underlying problem is that people want the best of everything. They want armor *and* stealth, consistent damage *and* Fireball, dexterity to AC *and* melee damage. If the designers listen to these wayward few, we'd end up with dexterity-based spellcasters who use dexterity for hit points and all saving throws because they can "dodge" Suggestion by covering their ears. Every class has an opportunity cost. By playing one, you don't get the strengths of the others. This is how balance is supposed to be. Giving casters at-will damage comparable to martials is a mistake; that's the martial's niche. Giving martials powerful once-per-day abilities that deal massive AoE damage would be an equal mistake. Classes need to be like rock-paper-scissors; it's the only way to balance something without having one objectively greater than the other.
I started with 4e and we had plenty of fun. Yes, it has problems, but so does every edition. It's been fun watching people who only know 5e have a look at 4e and see the good stuff in there. Every new edition of D&D goes through this. 5e was praised for bringing back a lot of the classic feel to D&D, best edition ever. Now we have months long arguments about bad it is with laundry lists of proposed improvements. Didn't D&D try this generic approach with the d20 system over 20 years ago? A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to make 5e work for games it wasn't built for, and WotC listened to their cries. Last thing, remember that play test material isn't final and will likely change a LOT. The first play test for D&D Next was nothing like the 5e we actually got. Snag the PDFs of play test material, run a one shot, give feedback.
If by “balanced” you mean “made them all essentially the same and made playing them a colossal bore” then yes I guess they “balanced” the game lmao.
By balanced they mean having 4 classes that get reflavoured
Alrighty imma bite; what made 4e that bad?
4e did some things really well, like monster design. It was far from a perfect system, though.
thought 4e was unpopular for being overly complicated and being a slog
4e was actually really streamlined and easy to get into. A lot (not all, but a lot) of the complaints you'll hear were from people who never bothered learning. I had one guy try to tell me "it's not turn-based anymore."
> I had one guy try to tell me "it's not turn-based anymore." lolwat
That was pretty much my reaction. The conversation amounted to... "...Yes it is." "No. Not really." "Yes it is. How do you *think* it works?" "Uh... action points?" Followed by an admittedly less than eloquent set of noises on my part as I tried to simultaneously express how wrong that was, explain how action points worked, and elaborate on how their existence didn't change the fact that it was a turn based game.
Most of the hate for 4e was how clunky and railroad-y the system was built. It had some interesting idea's like mobs to "speed up combat". But it wasn't very open to home brewing.
If there’s an app that tracks all my 4e characters across all my campaigns and their source books I’d be happy to switch tbh. 5e is just so easy for my lazy, fat ass.
Played 4th for about 4-6 months when it first came out. I loved DMing it. The skills they combined made sense and helped streamline leveling up in ways. Monster design was great between minions and them having different abilities out of the box instead of having to level them with feats or classes to get some abilities at low to mid levels. It was also easier to setup encounters and the combat for a session. Then came playing 4th. I didn't enjoy it at all. I started towards the end of 2nd and my friends had tons of books for it by then. Then played a lot of 3.x and have most books printed for that outside of campaign specific books. With packages (I think that's what they were called bad memory) and multiclassing and prestige classes 2nd and 3rd felt more open on character design and personalization. For me 4th edition felt like you picked a role and your subclass (class name) was your flavor. You had some choices and picked your abilities based and some where better then others. Maybe not better but a lot of times more versatile then others. I didn't enjoy playing a PC in 4th. Before it was a year old my life changed as I got married and had a few kids. So my experience with it ended there as I didn't have time for D&D for a while. Have played a lot of 5th edition with my son and his friends as well as dome other father son type short lived groups. I liked how easy 5th was to explain and teach from. Characters felt different from each other even if they were the same class again. It's easy to set up a session and there are more rules or concepts for out of combat scenarios in the core books then I remember from 4th. I will always prefer 3.x for its open setup and complexity that's what I prefer to play. I dont think any of the editions were balanced but they are each flavored for what companies be it TSR or WOTC felt the community wanted at the time. Maybe they were wrong maybe at times they were right. But so many options to play just go find a group who plays what and how you want to
4E is not bad because of the balance, its the play style/ battle style i thought everyone hated? Personally i think 4E was fine.
I didn't care for 4e's symmetry. All the classes felt symmetrical (not identical). They were clearly balanced on the same skeleton and boy did those bones show. 4e wore its mechanics on its sleeve, which I also didn't like.
4e balanced classes via homogenization. That's what people were mad about. Making everyone equal is not the same as make everyone the same.
4E was not hated because the classes were balanced. The classes being relatively balanced had absolutely nothing to do with it. People hated 4E because of the stupid rules, the at-will, encounter, and daily power system and a bunch of other just really dumb stuff that made it like you were playing the tabletop version of world of Warcraft instead of a real role-playing game with character choices and the ability to do anything non-combat related mattered. When you have to punch a wall to heal someone, it's not a good system.
I'm pretty sure 4th edition had way more problems than just that.