D&D is good.

>>48725431
4e is great, but isn't d&d.

>>48725431
That's an opinion I can get behind.
4e fulfills the criterion of "at least decent", too, because proper game design went into it. Just commits the crime of being "not D&D" by virtue of not obfuscating mechanics and actually owning up to being a game.

>>48725603
Agreed. It's like pathfinder, 13th age, the various d20 hacks and retroclones in that it shares a lot of DNA with D&D, but it's still a separate game.
Having said that, most of those games aren't quite as good as 4e.

>>48725662
Pathfinder is 3.5 with the serial numbers filed off and a few "fixes". It is even an official OGL product.

>>48725431
I've played 4e. It works. It's just a bit too game-y.

>>48725431
I'm intrigued; was 2e AD&D really that big of an improvement from 1e AD&D?
In what ways?

Isn't 1e AD&D the thing that all the retroclones are copying?

>>48725806
>Game-y

In what way? I ask this question every time I see this complaint and yet to get an answer as to why.

>>48727454
I feel like 1e added a lot of complexity that wasn't necessary for the shit that it added (hence why OD&D with all the supplements feels like a streamlined AD&D1). 2e added a lot of shit that felt like it justified the complexity. Also, 2e had some of the coolest settings (Dark Sun, Sigil).
>>48727500
I think a lot of people feel like the fact that the game elements are more directly in-your-face (for example, "once per encounter" things that feel more explicitly like cooldowns) during dungeons and such is distracting when they want to roleplay. By contrast, in other editions the most gamey elements happened during rests or when in town.

>>48727500
As in, more akin to a board game.
I played a lot of 4e and it's mad board gamey.
I mostly enjoyed it though.

>>48727537
5e "recharge on short rest" abilities are literally cooldowns, and are worse than the "once per encounter" ones.

4e is just more in your face about it.

>>48727500
Clearly and obviously stated mechanics not obfuscated by "natural language", on top of unified class structure and good formatting.

As I said before, 4e actually owned up to being a game, which many people found very disagreeable for some reason.
Although I have a distinct feeling they're the same people railing against muh storygaems for ignoring the "game" part of RPGs.

>>48727585
Sounds identical to my 3.PF experience desu.

>>48727589
Nah. 5e justifies the recharge as taking a breather. 4e assumes your shit comes back just because you got into another fight.

>>48727613
Nope. 4e also requires resting.

>>48727589
>4e is just more in your face about it.
Which is EXACTLY what people mean when they say it's "gamey." They mean it reminds you constantly that it is a game, and this is offputting to them when they're trying to get engrossed.
>>48727597
I don't hate 4e for doing it. I do think it feels less like "D&D" as people had experienced it up until that point. I also don't hate storygames, but I would rather play a game where story is emergent (like OSR stuff) or where story is the point (like a storygame) than some middle-of-the-road thing.

3rd edition was a dramatic improvement over 2e, which had rules that are justifiably called archaic in this day and age. 2e had great lore, and good mechanics for its day, but it severely needed updating, and 3rd edition did an amazing job taking the game into the new millennium. It was the ideal game for the dawn of the internet age.

It had an incredibly firm mechanical foundation that made even small changes matter, which made it incredibly fun to work with, tweak, and homebrew, since the system's core was simple and open. That's largely why the system remains popular to this day, because it is a system that actually is mechanically rewarding to work with.

This might also be the main reason it gets a lot of flack from trolls these days, because trolls like to focus on the mechanical issues of 3rd edition (while ignoring all the mechanical issues of previous and later editions) without recognizing that the firm mechanics are what made the [easily fixable] errors actually seen and felt. Compared to the softer, more story-oriented games that are currently in vogue, 3rd edition was a system where even small changes could be felt, and this is why a fair amount of people liked it. It was a good, long distance away from freeform while exploring the boundary of excessive complexity. but ultimately most groups that still play it found it to exist in the sweet spot of having the rules to make the mechanics tangible without them being overbearing.

Some people disagree. I myself find it to be rather outdated, and Pathfinder to have failed to truly modernize the system in the same way that 5e has.

But, to pretend that it's not a decent system is just being unfair. It was actually a great system for its time, easily well worth the various awards, acclaim, and popularity it earned during its lifespan, and even now it still holds a fantastic skeleton with hundreds of different organs to mess around with.

>>48727500
Reading the PHB, pretty much all the classes' (except the wizard's) powers quickly start to blend together. Most divine powers are variants on "make enemy easier to hit", "make ally harder to hit", "turn undead", and "heal ally". Rogues and fighters have similar problems. This along with classifying them in roles like "controller" or "defender" make them seem more like chess pieces than characters that have a variety of archetypal abilities. And really, shouldn't a warlord just be a high-level fighter?
I mean, you can work with it, and I've heard of some great games run with it. Other editions just seem to balance game stuff with roleplay stuff better.

>>48728441
So it's basically exactly like 3.x then. Because you're describing my experiences with it to a tee.

>>48727838
I think people are unfairly hard on 3.x, but I don't think it was an improvement on AD&D 2e. However, I do think much of the problem with 3.5 was the community who played it getting access to every splat and then insisting they be able to play anything and everything or else the DM was somehow violating the rules of the game, and the fact that, for some reason, during that era players ran rampant over DMs much of the time, which I think comes partly from the sheer overload of shit that became available, and the fact that Faerun was the "in" setting, and it has everything, so DMs often didn't know the mechanics behind the classes they were allowing.

That said, I think story-oriented games are fine, too, and I would rather play OD&D/S&W, 5e, or a "narrative" game over 3.5/Pathfinder any day of the week.

If 5e hadn't come out, I probably never would have bothered with an official D&D game again.

>>48728455
Only ever played 4e and 5e. So that's a definite maybe.
I did read the 3.5 monster manual at the library, though. It was pretty rad.

>>48727838
Out of curiosity, given your comment about "archaic" rules, how do you feel about the Old School Renaissance?

>>48728652
>3.5 was the community who played it getting access to every splat and then insisting they be able to play anything and everything or else the DM was somehow violating the rules of the game
The most BROKEN things in 3.5 are the the classes in the core books and almost everything directly interfacing with that content.

The splatbooks(such as the XPH and Tome of Battle) and alternate casters(Beguiler, Warmage, and Neromancer) were much more balanced and enjoyable to play and GM for.

>>48725796
>It is even an official OGL product.
That statement's sort of meaningless, though. OGL is a license that literally anybody can use.
It's not like you have to qualify for something, or there's some verification process.

Fate and FUDGE are OGL games for instance.

>>48727500
It's a UX problem in the end. The game openly addresses nearly everything on a player level rather than a narrative one, so it has to be much more of a conscious decision by the players to, for lack of a better word, sublimate the narrative through the mechanics over the course of play.

It's not something you normally have to consciously make an effort for in most games. It's also a big part of why people compare it to MMOs, or claim that it's worse for RP.

>>48729239
D20 OGL. The 3.5 one. Happy?

>>48729396
No? The Open Games License is always the Open Games License because it has a really specific clause saying you can't retract it after using it, that still doesn't mean anything.
Do you mean the SRD? Because even then that doesn't confer some sort of special pedigree. Literally anybody can take OGC and run with it, and it's 'official' by default.
Fantasy Craft does the same thing, and the more you learn about it the less it resembles 3.5 or Pathfinder.

>>48728722
That's something I always hated most about 3.5. They relegated design fixes to band-aid character options that they'd bolt on, and then make you pay for a more functional game piecemeal.

>>48727838
>3rd edition was a dramatic improvement over 2e
It really, really wasn't. It was designed by people who didn't understand why 2E worked the way it did and it shows - nobody with a brain would ever introduce a mechanic like full attacking.

>generic 3.5 hate thread
yawn

>>48725603
It is literally D&D, it's just not a clone of previous or successive D&D games. 5th is no more D&D than 4E. 5th is in a lot of ways much more accurate to D&D than 3rd and 4th were, if you insist that older D&D = what D&D should look like.

>>48730559
>if you insist that older D&D = what D&D should look like.
I'm not that anon, but the word "insist," when applied to other people, is often used in a very condescending word, to suggest that the person's opinion is purely an emotional/poorly thought-out one. I do think older D&D is what D&D should look like, because I think older D&D was better than the third or fourth editions, and I have yet to see a vision of D&D which is better than the kind of game which older versions seemed to be going for.

If you think D&D should be different, why don't you give an example of a game which is more like you think D&D should be than D&D (from the beginning through AD&D 2e, plus 5e) is?

>>48730533
Fantastic argument, I am glad to see you really contributing to the thread

>>48730685
Okay.

>>48727838

Action economy was a bit fucked and SoDs are shitty. But the core ideas of it were good and it was a step forward.

I play it because it's what I have and it offers so much customization. I'll take lack of balance over being able to build whatever character I want. Also I don't play with powergamers, and I do play with people who know the rules (and thus know the lmiitaions of spells) so that helps a lot.

So fucking sick of the guy who thought being a 3.5 changeling meant he could turn his arms into tentacles and strangle me automatically. When he did that I pointed out the changeling mimicked a spell with limits and he couldn't do that. Then he tried to grapple me and I slashed his shit for a good 15 damage in one hit (with a shortsword) and he backed off.

>>48730533
I'm the OP, and I wasn't really trying to shit on 3.5 so much as just defend other editions of D&D without defending it.

>>48730729
Honestly, that was my last meh before putting dungeons and dragons in my filter.

You can not have a decent thread about any edition without half of it going to "urr edition a shit" "no, u a shit".

Fuck, most of the 3.5, pf and 4e crowd moved on after they got tired of it being the same shit for 2 years.

>>48730729

OP, you're a bit of a fuckhead and an idiot.

>>48730799
Okay.
>>48730838
I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by happening to not like the same game that a lot of other people don't like, and by having to refer to it in order to avoid it being conspicuously absent when I start talking about almost every other edition. Let's be honest, you'd be just as butthurt if I'd said "OD&D, BD&D, AD&D, and 5e are good games" and failed to mention 3.5 entirely.

>>48730861
No, you're a fuckhead because you're just trying to stir up the same lame trolls who've been acting like the same kind of idiot that you are, pretending that 3.5 is the game equivalent of the antichrist while it's a pretty good, if dated, system.

We get it. You're still butthurt about 3rd edition still being popular. That's why you're an eternally triggered bitch anon, and, like the word eternally suggests, you always will be.

Now, go ahead, and proceed to bitch about all the "reasons" you hate it, like a whiny faggot so that your friends can start up your cute little circlejerk already.

>>48730939
Jesus Christ. Are all 3aboos this salty all the goddamn time?

I seriously was trying to defend other editions from people who scream "D&D sucks" and then raise criticisms that only apply to 3.x or that only apply to 3.x and later.

I seriously don't mind that some people still play D&D 3.5. That's fine. I've had fun with it, and if the right people invited me, I would play it again. The only thing that bothers me is what I said before: This idea that it's the only edition of D&D, or that all the editions are so similar to it that any complaints they have about it apply to every edition.

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>>48730939
And yet you don't present a single argument why that universally panned edition has any merit. Can you please just stop posting now?

>>48731100
It's a common trend. I honestly wholeheartedly agree with OP, every version of D&D is playable and can be fun with the right group.

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I feel like D&D is not a game anymore.
Or rather, it is a game so broken (in a literal sense) that it cannot function as a game anymore.

D&D began as a wargame (Chainmail) that had many of its wargame elements snipped off in favor of shared emergent narrative. It retained vestigial wargame elements, but over time these either distrophied or were amputated by changing sensibilities among the fanbase.

We lost the domain management endgame.
We lost morale rules.
We lost henchment & hirelings.
We lost reaction rolls.
We lost XP for GP.

With Pathfinder, many groups don't even use experience points; the GM just levels the party up ever N number of sessions. And the GM has to make sure to award the party X amount of treasure in order to keep up with the Wealth By Level tables.
Many groups don't even use rules for death & dying in their game; or rather, they fudge the rules so that nobody ever dies.

We have a huge segment of the fanbase that sneers at the concept of game balance.

"It's too game-y" is considered by many to be a valid criticism against roleplaying games.

"It's too much like a boardgame" is a common complaint against games where you sit around a table and role dice.

"It's too much like a wargame" is a common complaint against games that trace their origins from wargames.

And it's not just D&D. You see this all over.

It's like... there's a very vocal part of the TTRPG crowd that wants to strip the game component from roleplaying games.

>>48731197
I agreed with everything up until I got to "It's too game-y" is considered...

I generally play OSR because I like all those things you say "we lost," but I think those criticisms can be valid. War game elements were stripped in order to make it into an RPG initially, so the criticism "it's too much like a wargame" can be completely valid if the other elements introduced by Gygax and Arneson are ignored in favor of all combat, all the time. Likewise, "it's too much like a board game" can be valid if there isn't room for a DM to make a game their own, and if players don't feel like they can get immersed enough that an emergent narrative starts to appear.

As far as your last line, I think, and this might be controversial, but I think roleplaying games without the "game" element (at least insofar as games are defined by challenges to be overcome) are fine, though I don't want them to entirely replace or supplant much more challenge-oriented systems like old school D&D.

But seriously, just play you some OSR.

>>48731197
I was kinda disappointed about this part of 5e.
I can agree with not using XP because people are engrossed in a story, but there's a certain amount of D&D that has to be played or you might as well just roll a d20 every time something happens and then consult a set of charts from likelihood of it happening that tells you whether it happened or not.
Which is a thing in DM-less systems, funny enough.
I'm probably going to look into OSR, but I just don't think 5e placed it in the sweet spot of gameplay rules and roleplaying opportunity. It doesn't seem to have enough crunch to be a gamist system or enough fluff to be a complete narrative system.
Maybe that's just failed intuition on my part, but it's still my gut feeling on the edition.

>>48731273

I absolutely play OSR. I play OSR because I like the tighter wargame rules. That's also why I enjoy 4E.

I mean, when I play a roleplaying game, what I want is a functional game that also generates an emergent narrative. Ideally, both the game and the narrative should be enjoyable, but if I'm stuck playing with a bunch of hammy thespians who think good roleplaying means talking in a silly voice and "I'm only doing what my character would do!" I would rather that the game mechanics themselves at least be enjoyable.

Also, I often find that the game mechanics create much more interesting narratives than what players themselves can come up with.
When the rules ensure that everybody has a chance of dying (and that death is something with actual weight) you are more likely to end up with some exciting Game of Thrones shit. But if you just let everybody decide when their characters should die "just because I felt it was time for my character's saga to come to a close" you are more likely to end up with some stagnant fucking garbage where death doesn't actually have any real weight at all.

Nah D&D is crap. It's core concepts are charming but have been badly implemented pretty much every time. This is mostly because of a constant shift in design focus; no two editions have had the same design goal. The identity and fanbase of the game are so fragmented that I can pretty much list the game's core attributes in a few lines of greentext

> Armor Class
> hit points increasing by level
> alignment
> classes (fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard, ranger, paladin, druid, etc.)
> races (at least the core elf-dwarf-hobbit-orc)
> ???
> hit dice

That's really the only thing the different editions have in common at this point. Sure there are other vague similarities, but hell even 4e dropped hit dice then added them back later. It's like a book written by four different authors that makes zero fucking sense. Each new edition is an entire different game, unlike GURPS 4th Edition which is a literal upgrade.

D&D is the most schizophrenic game out there. It has had five editions now and STILL can't get things right (though 5e is a pretty good game). And they chuck out the baby with the bathwater every time they had a good idea. 3.5 just needed some fixing at the core and it would have been excellent; yet 5e is completely different and is more similar to 4e than 3.5 at this point.

>>48731197

This is so true it hurts. D&D as a game is basically dead. I stick with a mix of 3.5 and 5e depending on my mood but I have long given up on the game actually improving more than a tiny step at a time, while taking a leap backward in four or five other ways. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

>>48731338

You on discord? I'm looking to run a sandbox OSR game sometime this month. Got a couple of players interested.

>>48731390
Not usually, but I can be. What should I be looking for?

>>48731407

Go to this link.
https://discord.gg/rwJGG
Go to Looking-for-Group.
Search for the phrase "The shadows lengthen in Carcosa."
Send me a friend's request.
A white raven will arrive at your window carrying a rhododendron flower...

>>48731387
Name a game that does high-lethality dungeon crawls with heavy resource management elements, overworld exploration, and eventually becoming wealthy and renowned enough to gain control of your own domain, better than old school D&D.

>>48731468
I think I got it.

>>48731488

Dungeon World

JK, but Swords and Wizardry and many of those other OSR games have literally improved AD&D.

>>48731678
Yeah, I was counting OSR as D&D in the same way that people often lump Pathfinder in with 3.5.

I agree with you, but S&W is literally just OD&D with the supplements, reprinted and organized a bit better, with a few common houserules and the option to use ascending AC.

>>48728441
>And really, shouldn't a warlord just be a high-level fighter?
Why? They do different things.

>>48732906

... actually, can't a warlord be low level.

And be in low level games?

That seems like a pretty major difference.

>>48731273
Gygax himself said that D&D was a game first and those must be the first considerations made when designing anything

>>48733005
>when designing anything
When designing any new edition of D&D, sure. Why does being the co-creator of the RPG mean he gets to decide what people do in making every single RPG after it, though?

Again, I like and play OSR (specifically, S&W Complete). But another favorite RPG is Misspent Youth, where you don't even have stats and the whole game is basically the telling of a story with dice rolls that determine which direction the story shifts.

>>48725431

4e Warlord was my favorite class in anything goddamn I fucking loved 4th ed.

>>48734550

My niggest.

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>>48727500
>almost all abilities are samey
>no real distinction between magic/fighting
>shouting at someone real hard and shooting magic at them is mechanically identical
>a bunch of mechanical skills that make no narrative sense (DURR, CLANG)
>language that constantly reinforced the game aspect
>Encounter powers don't even have a flimsy narrative justification like "You regain the ability to use it after a recuperative short rest"
>strict grid system reinforced by grid-based movement powers
>focus on battle game balance more than anything else
If you never got an answer to why, maybe you need to lurk more. This shit was fucking constantly discussed when 4E came out and for many months afterward.

>>48734702
>This shit was fucking constantly discussed when 4E came out and for many months afterward.

Only because no amount of debunking them could stop trolls from regurgitating this shit.

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>>48734748
>Only because no amount of debunking them could stop trolls from regurgitating this shit.
Just because you got into the hobby with 4E and don't know your ass from your mouth-hole doesn't mean you know what the fuck you're talking about.

>>48734793
I got into the hobby with MERP.

Not that me getting into the hobby with FATAL would make >>48734702 any less stupid.

>>48734702
>>Encounter powers don't even have a flimsy narrative justification like "You regain the ability to use it after a recuperative short rest"

But they explicitly do.
Like...a short rest is exactly how you gain encounter powers ba-

>a bunch of mechanical skills that make no narrative sense (DURR, CLANG)

Ah, I see. My bad for taking the bait.

>>48725662
I do consider retroclones D&D though. Nobody says "I'm playing Labyrinth Lord" they say "I'm playing D&D using Labyrinth Lord rules".

>>48734848
>Nobody says "I'm playing Labyrinth Lord" they say "I'm playing D&D using Labyrinth Lord rules".

Personally, I never had that happen.

>>48728690
I'm not him, but I find 1e and 2e to have very archaic mechanics, and most OSR stuff to not have archaic mechanics at all. The OSR stuff isn't trying to be innovative in the rules department, but it is actively trying to cut out the fat and get rid of the unnecessary rules. The unnecessary rules being what was making ad&d feel archaic.

>>48734702
>>almost all abilities are samey
I never understood this. How's a defender mark the same as striker bonus damage? How is a warlord power that incites a gang beatdown the same as a wizard's power that immobilizes x amount of targets?

What is the basis for it? I know it's bait, but surely it couldn't have become so pervasive if it was the exact opposite of the truth

>>48734748
Let's not forget that every encounter and daily power runs off completely separate power sources from everything else.

>use up every single daily power you have
>encounter powers are completely unaffected
>use a shield bash once
>can't do it again until after the fight ends because it's an encounter power
>all other encounter powers are completely unaffected

Somehow, they managed to make the power system in 4e even more retarded than Vancian Casting.

I've heard people say in response to things like the shield bash retardation that they're specific tactics and you can't use them more than once in a single fight because nobody would fall for the same trick twice. However, I have to wonder: if it's just that an enemy will know what to expect and be better prepared to avoid the attack, then why can't you try at a penalty? Why doesn't the same thing apply to basic attacks or at will powers? Why can't you use it on a different enemy if the justification is that nobody falls for the same trick twice (and no, unless the enemy was fighting you specifically, they won't be properly prepared because they were focusing on another party member)?

That's literally the only justification I've ever heard for the way 4e powers worked that came close to making sense, but even then there's massive holes in it. If you have to make justifications for how something works and even your best attempt at making them has such big holes in it, I'd say that the mechanic is logically retarded.

Sure, it works and functions, but it's completely fucking retarded, and that causes a pretty bad disconnect for a lot of people.

On top of that, the mere existence of dedicated utility powers creates the perception that everything else is combat only and unless somebody tells you, I don't think you're likely to stumble upon it on your own.

It's those two reasons why I think 4e is not very conducive to anything but combat.

>>48734614

>that feel when you accidentally create lazylord by picking the moves that you think are the best.

I made the fighter go full Akuma on a boss once and it was amazing.

>>48734913

All the powers are presented in the same format. 3.X and 5e both present class mechanics in a half-measure between rule and fluff, then have a whole seperate section for spells.
Then there's 4e, where all powers are presented in the same format. A lot of people just skimmed through the powers and marked them as samey, boiling them down to 'damage + effect'. Now the fact those effects were variously different didn't register that clearly because of the language used. Consider how the spell Suggestion is presented in 3.X compared to how the dominated condition in 4e is presented.

TL; DR it all comes down to formatting.

>>48734972

Lazylord was fucking amazing. One of my most fondly remembered characters was a lazy good-for-nothing noble who never lifted a finger in combat, but was so gifted at tactics and manipulation that he turned everyone else into hypereffective killing machines.

Being a lazylord didn't really help when he got assassinated after becoming a baron, though.

>>48734968
But Vancian Casting is cool. You are hunting through old books to find semi-sentient formulae, imprisoning them in your labyrinthine mind palace and only allowing them to leave in exchange for performing a service (the spell effect) for you.

>>48734968

>Encounter powers make no sense
>HP exists in all versions of D&D

The combat/non-combat power thing is a mind fuck I agree with you but people love Final Fantasy so I don't see how 4e can't fill the same niche. If you want to use stuff out of combat then just house-rule it.

>>48735016

loool

My Lazylord was actually a guy who was legit fired up for combat and martial prowess but always seemed to miss abilities that were "Don't roll shit, someone else does everything"

It was awesome cuz the team had a lot of martial people though once the DM thought it would be cool for my guy to 1v1 a dude. (I realized I could outrun him and literally ran in circles until the DM had to fiat an ending #victoryatanycost)

>>48734968
>I've heard people say in response to things like the shield bash retardation that they're specific tactics and you can't use them more than once in a single fight because nobody would fall for the same trick twice

Actually the way martial exploits (like your shield bash example, which I'd add isn't good because Tide of Iron is at-will) work is that each exploit is a major expenditure of physical energy. Think of it like sprinting. You can't make a sprinter sprint (insert X arbitrary distance here) over and over all day without him getting exhausted, but he may be able to manage a different distance. Now its arguable 4e could have added in some mechanics to represent you running low on your reserves as you burn through encounter powers, but in-play running low on powers is bad enough.

Arcane magic is expending spells (either prepared in the case of a wizard or swordmage, or personal energy in a sorcerer) while prayers work like they've always worked.

>
On top of that, the mere existence of dedicated utility powers creates the perception that everything else is combat only and unless somebody tells you, I don't think you're likely to stumble upon it on your own.

It only creates this perception in people who don't read the book. Which is why 5e bardhorse was a meme for so long. Rituals, nigga.

>>48735075

Rituals are fucking amazing and not enough DMs and Players use them in their games.

Or at least my games god damn I love finding a way to use those things.

>>48735137

My biggest problem with them is their cost, but I tend to houserule the prices in my games.

>>48734968
This is sort of a legitimate complaint (seguing into a strawman; at least at the current time nobody is making the argument "nobody falls twice for encounter powers!" in this thread).

The problem with it is two fold; first off, the same arguments could be applied to any edition of D&D where martial encounter or daily powers exist (and in some form they do in both 3.x and 5th, and I even recall the Thief backstab ability starting with "Once per combat..." in one of the OD&Ds, so yeah, not even that's safe), so singling out 4e for it is plain silly.

Second, the point of the at-will/encounter/daily paradigm is to sidestep all the fiddliness of shit like

>if it's just that an enemy will know what to expect and be better prepared to avoid the attack, then why can't you try at a penalty?

A strong paradigm of 4e is to move away from fiddly modifiers in the name of simulationism (see: condensing down all kinds of situations into combat advantage). It's not really trying to simulate anything resembling real life phyisics/exhaustion/etc, although, that's a valid way to fluff it. It's a gamist/narrative contrivance so that fights are exciting (the same way vancian casting is a gamist/narrative contrivance so magic is a limited resource).

You can choose to not accept this, but then you may as well choose to not accept D&D on the whole.

>>48735030
You don't even have to house-rule it in, you can use your powers any time anyway.

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>>48735030
>>The combat/non-combat power thing is a mind fuck I agree with you but people love Final Fantasy so I don't see how 4e can't fill the same niche.

I've said it in these threads before and I'll say it again: 4e wasn't a bad system. It just wasn't D&D. If it was called something like 'D&D Tactics' or something like that, I'd have absolutely no beef with it.

>People still believe you can't use non-utility powers outside of combat
>People still think encounter powers just recharge the minute you enter combat and don't know where short rests came from

Literally how. It's been 8 years. You've had 8 years to read the fucking manual. Why does this keep happening with every edition of DnD?

>>48735026
I like the concept of Vancian Casting, but I think the execution is pretty dumb. Why have 9 different resources to cast from instead of just one?

>>48735030
To be honest, HP is probably not as retarded in 4e as it is in other editions, seeing as the Bloodied condition exists once you get down to half (even though the effect is more of a "hey I can do cool shit now"). It's still pretty weird, but I'd argue it's not nearly as weird as being limited to one shield bash per battle just because.

As far as Final Fantasy goes, if they wanted to go down that route they should just have a handful of broadly defined spells and techniques (Fire, Thunder, Cure, Rapid Fire, Focus, etc) and give them MP or SP or whatever costs instead. I think that's probably what the various Final Fantasy inspired systems do, actually.

Thing is, the 4e devs have gone on record saying they took inspiration from World of Warcraft, so it's likely they were trying to capture cooldowns instead, which I don't think is very good for a tabletop RPG.

>>48735075
>You can't make a sprinter sprint (insert X arbitrary distance here) over and over all day without him getting exhausted, but he may be able to manage a different distance.

To be honest, if you want to capture that, you're better off using a Stamina pool than giving every single encounter/daily a separate, independent limit. In general, if you're spending any sort of store of energy on your powers, then it would be best represented by a single stamina pool.

>>48735213

>which I don't think is very good for a tabletop RPG

If it wouldn't be it would only be in the perspective of ze-uber-shystem

>>48735213
>To be honest, if you want to capture that, you're better off using a Stamina pool than giving every single encounter/daily a separate, independent limit. In general, if you're spending any sort of store of energy on your powers, then it would be best represented by a single stamina pool.

In a narrative sense, I think that'd be a neat idea, but in an actual sense I'm pretty happy with how 4e handled it.

>
Thing is, the 4e devs have gone on record saying they took inspiration from World of Warcraft, so it's likely they were trying to capture cooldowns instead, which I don't think is very good for a tabletop RPG.

But cooldowns in 4e function entirely different than WoW, and the actual WoW RPG uses 3.X mechanics. (Which actually capture the game better -martial and caster disparity aside-because most of your shit is usable at will.)

>>48735213
>so it's likely they were trying to capture cooldowns instead

Bullshit, cooldowns in WoW let you re-use your powers multiple times in the same combat. If powers had 1-2-3 turn cooldowns then this'd be valid, but as is, the whole encounter/daily thing is just bringing the resource management from previous editions and spreading it around.

> and give them MP or SP or whatever costs instead.
>Stamina pool

Single, static pools don't work out for varied gameplay ever. When was the last time in FF you didn't just use the strongest spell you had?

>>48735213

>As far as Final Fantasy goes, if they wanted to go down that route they should just have a handful of broadly defined spells and techniques

Homie I was using a different analogy.

And that analogy is "Most of the shit you do in combat you can't do out of combat aside from a few exceptions."

>>48735253
>"Most of the shit you do in combat you can't do out of combat aside from a few exceptions."

'You can use a power whenever you are able to take the action the power requires. (Certain conditions, as defined in Chapter 9, prohibit you from taking actions.) Your DM might rule that you can't use powers in special circumstances, such as when your hands are tied.'

4th edition player's handbook, page 54.

Pls stop this 'only powers in combat' meme, it hurts my soul.

>>48735154
>(seguing into a strawman; at least at the current time nobody is making the argument "nobody falls twice for encounter powers!" in this thread)

I'm mainly just bringing it up because that's the only explanation I've ever heard for 4e powers that remotely makes sense to me.

>so singling out 4e for it is plain silly.

4e is by far the most prolific offender of it is the thing. I do grant you that yes, it is retarded and it should be completely abolished - to my knowledge, 5e has almost completely done away with "X uses per day" in favor of things like superiority dice or specific circumstances for martial exploits (which is, imo, a definite step in the right direction). The only martial exploit I can think of that's still X uses per day is the Barbarian's rage, and once you leave you're fatigued.

>Second, the point of the at-will/encounter/daily paradigm is to sidestep all the fiddliness of shit like

>if it's just that an enemy will know what to expect and be better prepared to avoid the attack, then why can't you try at a penalty?

>A strong paradigm of 4e is to move away from fiddly modifiers in the name of simulationism (see: condensing down all kinds of situations into combat advantage).

Moving away from fiddly modifiers? Dude, there were shitloads of status effects flying around that gave tons of fiddly modifiers. On top of that, I remember lots and lots of powers giving modifiers as well. If you wanted to represent enemies being prepared for techniques they've already seen, another modifier wouldn't have hurt all that much. Or hell, they could've done like 5e and used disadvantage instead.

>It's not really trying to simulate anything resembling real life phyisics/exhaustion/etc, although, that's a valid way to fluff it. It's a gamist/narrative contrivance so that fights are exciting

Exactly. It works well for neat combat, but my point is that the logical inconsistencies make it fall apart for just about anything else.

>>48735266

I hear yah, just clarifying my point

>>48735213
A Spell's level indicates its age. The older spells are wiser and wilier and not so easily caught by a magician of even middling power. When a magician gains levels, in essence, they are devising better and more appealing traps and snares to capture older and older spells. The inter-corpal entities which are produced within a magicians god-gland busy themselves constructing these snares into the astral thought-space of a magicians consciousness--carving out the space like dwarves tunneling into a mountain. Naturally, when a magician thinks up a new devilishly cunning ruse to entrap an older spell than they are currently capable of imprisoning, the inter-corpals, like the good minions they are will devote more time to its construction, even if it means slowing or stopping production on previous containments.

>>48725431
>>BD&D has some of the most fun settings ever published, and is good as a system
BD&D only has one official setting.

>>48735289
>Exactly. It works well for neat combat, but my point is that the logical inconsistencies make it fall apart for just about anything else.


I think the idea is that you just don't think too hard about it and focus more on having fun than specific timetables and stuff.

>>48735298

Alright sorry for jumping down your throat. This is just a pet peeve of mine.

>>48735289
>The only martial exploit I can think of that's still X uses per day is the Barbarian's rage, and once you leave you're fatigued.
You are fatigued after a frenzy, not a rage. Frenzy is a stacking effect on rage
Also, I miss primal magic barbarians. Totems just don't cut it

>>48735289
>The only martial exploit I can think of that's still X uses per day is the Barbarian's rage, and once you leave you're fatigued.

What about encounter powers though? I thought that was your problem? The battlemaster fighter is loaded with it (also, it has second wind which IIRC is daily).

>>48735322
Seocnd wind is short rest. Everything a 5e fighter does is short rest recharge

>>48735248
That's because every spell in Final Fantasy is "damage of a few different types, healing, and a few buffs and debuffs" scaled to different power levels. When your only spells are Fire, Fira, Firaga, and the elemental counterparts, of course you'd only use the -ga level spells. Varied gameplay with spellcasting is a problem of spell design itself, not the resource you cast from. You can see that it's the exact same case with Final Fantasy 1 and 3, which both use spell slots and still have the "only use your most powerful spells" problem.

>>48735304
Okay you know what that made me laugh, I'll accept this just for the humor of it.

>>48735322
Superiority Dice are not like Encounter Powers. If you spend a superiority die on the Parry maneuver, that means you can't use your other powers as much as you could before. It's not as in depth as I would like, but it's a single resource spread across several different powers instead of a separate resource for every power.

>>48735337
My bad then.

Still, encounter and short rest powers are interchangable. There are like, 2 "encounter only" fighter variants in 4e, so if you are fine with that, you should logically be fine with those, if you want to keep consistent.

>>48735347
>Superiority Dice are not like Encounter Powers.

Yes they are. It's just an encounter power that can be used multiple times an encounter with more than one effect, like, say, the Slayer's or the Knight's bash from 4e.

Also, second wind and action surge still exist.

>>48735373
>Yes they are. It's just an encounter power that can be used multiple times an encounter with more than one effect, like, say, the Slayer's or the Knight's bash from 4e.

I have no fucking idea how that makes any sense at all. They are different powers that run off the same resource. That is what a Battlemaster Maneuver is.

An Encounter Power is a single power that has its own resource completely independent of every other power in your character's arsenal. They're very, very different. Not only that, Superiority Dice refresh with a long rest whereas Encounters refresh with a short rest.

>Second Wind and Action Surge still exist

Yeah, I'll grant you that, those slipped my mind. Doesn't make Encounter Powers any less dumb, though. Just means there are still dumb things in the new D&D.

>>48735426
Superiority die refresh on short rests.

Battlemaster maneuver is:
Choose X maneuvers from this list, you can use them Y times. You can use it Y times again after you finish a short or long rest.

The Slayers bash is:
You get X power. You can use this encounter power Y times in an encounter. You can expend a use to use modified versions of this power.

Battlemaster is literally the Slayer fighter with one or two token warlord abilities thrown into the mix.

>>48735426
>Superiority Dice refresh with a long rest
Superiority die refresh after a short rest. EVERYTHING A 5E FIGHTER DOES IS A SHORT REST RECHARGE.

Goddamn man, new edition and still no one reads the book

>>48735426
>I have no fucking idea how that makes any sense at all. They are different powers that run off the same resource. That is what a Battlemaster Maneuver is.
>An Encounter Power is a single power that has its own resource completely independent of every other power in your character's arsenal.

Not that anon, but I think he's saying that the Slayer's encounter power functions exactly like that.

And he's right, sort of. Slayer is a fighter variant that only has one encounter power that has a resource pool for its use.

>>48735480
>EVERYTHING A 5E FIGHTER DOES IS A SHORT REST RECHAR

Indomitable, but I feel you man.

>>48727500


Autist that cant handle clear written rules.

>>48732906
What I mean is that a warlord, whose shtick is being good at directing his allies in battle, would've made more sense as a high-level subclass of the fighter, given they're both archetypes that focus on hitting things with swords. Otherwise, it's like having a seperate version of the paladin that specializes in killing vampires.

>>48725603
4e has the BEST d&d-based comic.
And that's the only objective way to compare the editions.

>>48737072
You understand that you can make a very (possibly most) effective warlord that never ever raises his weapon?

>shtick is being good at directing his allies in battle
>both archetypes that focus on hitting things with swords

By the same token, you may as well roll rogue and ranger in there, since they are all about hitting things with weapons (in shadows and in forests, respectively).

It's almost as if they had some sort of underlying theme of martial prowess to unify them.

>>48735305
You're right. Though it is one of the most fun settings ever published.

>>48737172
>It's almost as if they had some sort of underlying theme of martial prowess to unify them.

You agree with me, yet you don't seem to think you do. Rangers are at least fluffed as being their own thing. Warlords are fluffed as highly experienced fighters.

>>48737802
He was poking fun at you for not knowing about Power Sources.

>>48737802
Fighters are fluffed as highly experienced fighters. This does not necessarily make them good tacticians. By the same token, being an experienced tactician doesn't make you a good fighter.

Warlords are tacticians and leaders, first and foremost. They just also happen to be able to sorta hold their own in a fight without the use magic. Some go a step further and lead by example, some take a step back and leave the fighting to the actual fighters while they coordinate the team effort from afar.

They are two distinct concepts.

This is why the fighter gets marking and weapon mastery style stuff, while the warlord gets leadership related abilities like auras.

>>48737878
>Fighters are fluffed as highly experienced fighters

I don't know why that made me chuckle.

I'm not sure why people have so much trouble distinguishing between Fighters and Warlords but not say rogues and rangers. There is probably even less to set them apart thematically, especially when you get into editions that let rogues and fighters be good with ranged weaponry.

>>48735248
>Single, static pools don't work out for varied gameplay ever.
>>48735347

Proof: Psionic Classes in 4E.

>>48735480
>Goddamn man, new edition and still no one reads the book
The terrible thing is the guy clearly hasn't read the 4E book or the 5E book.

>>48734968
>Somehow, they managed to make the power system in 4e even more retarded than Vancian Casting.
Technically, the structure of the power system is exactly identical to classic Vancian casting, for encounter and daily powers. In that respect, 4E is so D&D it uses the most D&D mechanic for every single one of its original run of classes. Not my fault no one likes Vancian casting. It's so D&D it hurts.

>That's literally the only justification I've ever heard for the way 4e powers worked that came close to making sense
As an explanation for the narrative, the martial exploits are player controlled meta-resources to use an ability that exploits a natural, uncommon, or rare opening in combat. You can't use it again because it doesn't come up that often, but you can use it when you want to use it because rolling to randomly determine what special move you can do isn't fun. Well, maybe it would be fun. But I doubt it.

There's also the idea that your stamina isn't a pool. You sprint until you can barely stand and you can still lie down and do bench presses. I know combat is a whole body exhaustion, just mentioning the other explanation I've seen.

>>48735248
>Single, static pools don't work out for varied gameplay ever.
Final Fantasy isn't D&D because you can't restore Power Points like you can restore MP.

Even in the Final Fantasy context, you would want to conserve MP in order to not blow your load and waste turns/resources filling back up.

I would rather 5e have made it so you gained your short-rest powers back after an hour of pretty much anything but things like 'being constantly tortured' or 'being held in an anti-magical prison'

Having to hound the party to stop for a rest if the DM doesn't explicitly put giant 'Rest stop here!' signs is a pain.

The rest system also forces the DM to structure things in such a way that players have to encounter several monsters in a row, or they'll be back to full working order the very next day unless one of the monsters infected someone with something ridiculous.

'Long rest' is fine enough. It's usually when everybody goes to sleep, but it suggests that you don't get long rest if you have to wake up in the night and do something and go back to sleep again, which is stupid. Maybe just a tool for DMs to say 'Lol, no long rest for you, a goblin comes and throws a stone at you!'

Short rests waste gametime when you could just say "Okay, you all gain short rest powers back now".

>>48738489
Though, it does say that the rest doesn't have to be sleeping. It can be simply a period of down-time and not doing a lot, so you could probably get away with it if you're doing a gentle walk.

Still, campaigns where DMs fail to manage to pace everything correctly get a bit frustrating.

>>48728652
>blah blah blah....so DMs often didn't know the mechanics behind the classes they were allowing.
Addressed, I know, but the problem was that the mechanics of the classes they were allowing were fucking rotten. Nobody at the table should have to go through with a sifter and a microscope to see whether each class is a 2E fighter (Does what it says, perhaps insanely well), a 2E thief (just utter crap), or a 2E wizard (I cast solve problem).

After the work's been done to discard 90% of everything ever officially printed, people try to say the system is good. But that's just glossing over the shitty systemic mechanics, like the absurd skill system and moving from a more fluid definition of what you can do on a turn to discrete actions for every activity (like going from classic X-com TUs to modern X-com's twoish actions.) Full-attack action blows.

Sometimes it makes me feel like ranting.

>>48731115
>universally panned edition
>being this delusional

It's the 2nd most popular game out there. Even after sixteen years.

And it was almost universally acclaimed during its print run, with an overwhelming share of the market that makes people like you STILL butthurt.

Quit trying to project your personal opinion on a community that disagrees with you and the other autists that feel the need to act like annoying cunts just to pretend you're not a tiny minority.

Oh, what a distracting thread. Let me grab my shotgun.

>>48730682
I think comic-anon has it right. The edition represented by Fell's Five is the best D&D. I want a blending of 4E's and 5E's class balance, combat mechanics, feat/non-class-specific character modifiers, numeric accessibility, and ease/speed of play. Even with that as a base, I have to acknowledge >>48731197. There's a lot of things absent from modern D&D.

>>48734702
You know what? I'm hungry, but this still looks like bait.
>almost all abilities are samey
Consistent formatting. Clear language. Dwarven work, or the devil's plaything!?
>no real distinction between magic/fighting
There's literally the implement/weapon keyword to tell the difference at a glance.
>shouting at someone real hard and shooting magic at them is mechanically identical
If by shooting magic you mean praying, singing, empathying or spouting gibberish to use your class's version of healing word, then yes. There is little difference.
>a bunch of mechanical skills that make no narrative sense (DURR, CLANG)
I guarantee every power that you think makes little *simulationist* sense is mechanically designed to evoke a certain common narrative situation.
>Encounter powers don't even have a flimsy narrative justification like "You regain the ability to use it after a recuperative short rest"
Encounter powers are literally powers you regain after a short rest. I'm only including this because it's in my way. You aren't even trying.
>language that constantly reinforced the game aspect
>strict grid system reinforced by grid-based movement powers
>focus on battle game balance more than anything else
All at acceptable levels of true. 4E's game-ness is not an insult.

>>48734913
>surely it couldn't have become so pervasive if it was the exact opposite of the truth
This sweet, innocent incredulity applies to so much more than gaming.

>>48738846
Continued. I had to make it double barrel.

>>48735213
>Why have 9 different resources to cast from instead of just one?
Generally so that you cast 9 different spells instead of one spell 9 times.

>I think that's probably what the various Final Fantasy inspired systems do, actually.
Final Fantasy Tactics and 4E use a very similar style. Some classes just have Jump (Slayer), while the Samurai gives you a menu of options for Use Sword. They do use very different resource management systems.

>they took inspiration from World of Warcraft
I think they were talking about positional mechanics, low-health enrage modes, individual and team combo attacks, and of course getting people to pay $ every month to access an updating online world.

>>48735347
>Superiority Dice are not like Encounter Powers
Superiority dice are the stamina pool version of 4E's powers, except they don't represent stamina but some other vague concept and you always end up just using your best one over and over again. I wonder if opening a way to spend attacks/actions/other resources to regain dice would make it feel more unified with Action Surge/Second Wind or just make the "always do X" problem worse.

>>48737072
>What I mean is that a warlord, whose shtick is being good at directing his allies in battle, would've made more sense as a high-level subclass of the fighter, given they're both archetypes that focus on hitting things
I have more space, so let me make it very clear. Directing allies in battle is not the same as hitting things in battle. The two classes have different focuses, do different things. They are different classes. You don't graduate from hitting things with sticks to telling people how/when/to hit things with sticks. There's some overlap with the warlord powers where they actually do hit people, but there's whole categories of powers that are uniquely warlord, or at least distinctly not-fighter. That's because the classes are archetypes, not boxes. It's a venn diagram

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I'm surprised /tg/ is having a fairly balanced discussion about D&D stemming from an edition war shitpost.

>3.5 worse than 5e

kek

5e almost completely ignored 4e and just watered down 3.5 while putting up a veneer of a new game that is quickly peeled away to reveal its boring foundation

>>48739659
5e fixed most of the balance issues 3.5 had and streamlined some things. I'll admit it's basically 3.5 lite, but in this case, the diet version tastes better.

>>48739659
nice meme, but 5th edition blows 3.5 out of the fucking water

>>48739659
>edition war shitpost
It wasn't that.

>>48740550
It's even worse if the OP is genuinely that stupid.

>>48739064
>Generally so that you cast 9 different spells instead of one spell 9 times.
>When there is a high number of pre 5e spells that are just "That third level spell but more powerful"
>When the only thing differentiating different spell slots in 5e is how stronk they are

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AA8DjQzcw

>Final Fantasy Tactics and 4E use a very similar style. Some classes just have Jump (Slayer), while the Samurai gives you a menu of options for Use Sword. They do use very different resource management systems.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a video game. All it does is put traditional Final Fantasy combat (using MP instead of Encounter/Daily power weirdness for combat) on a grid and give you more than four characters. Unless there's a TTRPG Final Fantasy Tactics I'm missing out on.

>I think they were talking about positional mechanics, low-health enrage modes, individual and team combo attacks, and of course getting people to pay $ every month to access an updating online world.

Okay yeah, that sounds about right.

>>48740509
5e is the worst edition of D&D to date. That isn't to say the others are good either.

>>48740509

there's nothing it does that makes it unique or interesting and 3.5 has a lot of options and books that actually work if you know how to avoid the traps.

5e ignoring the most functional version of D&D in the last ~30 years (4e) was a terrible decision. However it gets lapped up even though there are plenty of other games that have come out in the last 10 years that do D&D better

>>48740243

>fixed most of the balance issues
>it's better

aha good joke

>>48740243
Did it really fix them, though? Fighter does a truckload of damage, other martials are on a sliding scale of being useless with a slightly changed order, full casters do the heavy lifting of fucking up action economy and PLOT. The exact numerical differences have been narrowed, but the problems that have always underpinned 3.5 are the exact same problems with 5e. And 5e doesn't look like it will get anywhere near the same level of support, so the chances of edition-saving splats is low. 5e is like 3.5 Training Wheels edition.

>>48743172
>there's nothing it does that makes it unique or interesting and 3.5 has a lot of options and books that actually work if you know how to avoid the traps.

This though.
4e is my favorite edition but I'd play 3.5 with a competent DM and party over 5e in a heartbeat.