Precisely how did Essentials kill 4e?

>>51861397
It didn't. They ran out of ideas to keep selling books so rebooted so they could sell everyone the same 3 core books again like they do every 5ish years

>>51861397
As stated, it didn't.

Here's the birth, life, and death, of 4e:

Wizards makes 3.0 (Yes, we have to go back this far to show where things went wrong.) It was published under the OGL, meaning any game that wanted to use the same basic mechanics could do so.

This was something they started JUST before being purchased by Hasbro, and lead to an explosion of RPGs, with dozens of publishers adapting the core ruleset of D&D 3.0-3.5 to make their games.

Hasbro wasn't super pleased with this, since it meant that Wizards had essentially created its own competition. Further, Wizards was apparently not as profitable as they would like, so they started trimming things here and there. For about 4 years, the official magazines for D&D were made by another company, Paizo.

This is the foundation of the death of 4e.

(cont)

>>51861724

Then, around 2005, roughly 6 years after D&D 3.0 came out, Wizards says "hey, we're making a New Edition soon!". In 2007, they take the publishing rights for the magazines back.

Now, of course, to build excitement for the new edition, Wizards was releasing information about it. And here's the thing: it didn't look like 3rd Edition at all.

While we can argue whether the new design was better or not, and how honestly different it was versus how different it LOOKED, this was a problem to the thousands of consumers they had created for the D&D 3e experience.

As such, many voiced their concerns, or insisted they weren't going to switch to the new system.

Luckily for those people, there was another company there. A company that had just had 5 years of being the official voice for the game.


Two months before Wizards releases 4e, Paizo says "Hey, guys, if you don't want to switch to this weird new system, we've got you covered." They announce they'll be making an RPG to replicate 3.5, with some "tweaks". In the meantime, they'll continue to release these huge campaign supplements for 3.5.

SO they build up goodwill by continuing to support the system, they have the authority given them by the OGL and the legitimacy from their tenure as the magazine publishers.

So, Hasbro, in its efforts to stop a system creating their competitors, spawns a MASSIVE competitor.

This is the first major mistake that leads to the death of 4e.

(cont)

>>51861886
I remember Paizo's early promises

Those lies still sting

I remember how much everyone slagged 4e. There were articles with big red scare tactics lettering that said "ALL 4E CLASSES PLAY THE SAME" and Paizo had their banners with slogans like "3.5 dies? 3.5 thrives!"

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>>51861950
Change is always hated. And so the cycle continued

>>51861934
What did they promise exactly? I don't doubt you or anything, I still can't stand what Paizo is doing both game design-wise and fluff-wise.

>>51862011
I started with AD&D 2E as a kid and haven't switched since desu. I don't see anything I want from newer editions. The problems I have with 3(.5) are the same problems that everyone else has.

>>51862031

Started with B/X and saw no reason to switch to 1e or 2e. The more things change.

>>51862018
They promised, essentially, 3.5 but better

They promised monks would be able to compete, they promised clerics and druids having their overwhelming power reduced, they promised more features for classes with dead levels, they promised changes to skill mechanics.

>>51861397
Essentials was just the last nail in the coffin. 4e was killed by bad marketing, angry grognards, the obscenely influential effects of it's predecessor, failed online integration and freakishly bad luck. Esentials was just them admitting they had no faith left in their original product.

>>51862087
Essentials was MEARLS admitting he had no faith left in his product

Heinsoo still seems pretty proud of it

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>>51862087
4e fought the good fight and was taken from us too young...

>>51862102
As he should be.
Can't say I'm thrilled by his other work on 13th Age though

>>51861886

4e comes out, and yeah, it's fairly different than 3e, but it does have some cool ideas, there's been a ton of streamlining, it seems much easier to get into and get working with than 3e was.

But a series of flawed decisions, outright mistakes, and actual crimes crippled the game.

Let's address the most tragic: D&D 4e was intended to have, very shortly after launch, an impressive set of online tools: a virtual tabletop with custom design features, a character creator, monster designer, basically everything you would need to play D&D online.

The Senior Manager of Digital Technology Projects, discovered his wife had had an affair, bought a gun, and killed both her and himself.

This crippled the launch of the digital components, with the Virtual Tabletop never being realized, and the other programs being delayed.

One of the flawed decisions that plagued the game: a primary intent of the game was to be easier to get into for new players. Unfortunately, someone decided this should also mean, generally speaking, "easier". As such, the damage dice of monsters, and their health pools were balanced to provide 2 things: first, little risk of actual character death. And second: sufficient time for the players to use several of their "cooler" abilities.

This lead to fights that weren't exciting, because neither side was making appreciable progress. They eventually address this...2 years into the publication history.

Now, this could have been used, with proper marketing, as an upside. The release of D&D 3.5 didn't cripple 3e sales. They could have marketed it as a unlocking of the game's "hard mode" or so forth, releasing "optional upgrades" to the first few monster manuals "for the truly hardcore".

Instead, they just released the monster manual 3, using the new math, and tried to ignore the fact that they screwed up the math the first time.

(cont)

>>51862133
13th Age is a mix of really good ideas and really bad ideas

Which ideas came from which designers is impossible to tell, but I think the power discrepancy between "simple" and "complex" classes is probably Tweet's fault

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>>51862056

I think at this point 3.5 might be less bloated and busted than Pathfinder at this point, which I absolutely floors me.

>>51862138
>The Senior Manager of Digital Technology Projects, discovered his wife had had an affair, bought a gun, and killed both her and himself.
Actually, I believe they had divorced, he stalked her for some time, then finally snapped and ended it all

>>51862102
I thought by the point of Essentials it was out of his hands.

It's my understanding, knowing some folks associated with Hasbro, that they had far too high expectations and pretty much every year they weren't met (i.e. every year) they interfered more and more.

There are a lot of good ideas in 4e but they just never seem like they were properly pursued. It felt like one of those movies that the studio starts fucking around with it too much.

>>51862138
>This crippled the launch of the digital components, with the Virtual Tabletop never being realized, and the other programs being delayed.
What upset me the most is that the tabletop was functioning. I used the beta version of that. It worked just fine, and then they just announced they were ending development. It was the only tabletop app that had software to make my voice to sound like half-orc batman. I miss it.

>>51862168
I think it is in part of the "lesson" from 4e was "accessibility = simplicity = sales".

Much lilke 4e, 13th Age harbors some great ideas that just aren't hammered out properly into something really brilliant.

>>51862283
The problem is not that the 13th Age simple classes exist, it's that they are weak

The general power of a 13th Age class almost perfectly matches it's place on the list in the book scaling from simple to complex, with wizards being the most powerful class, and rangers just beating out barbarians for the weakest

>>51862224
>I thought by the point of Essentials it was out of his hands.
Mearls was made lead designer in 2009, a year before Essentials came out. Mearls is a rules-lite and story-focused DM by default, and that shows in Essentials and 5e.

So for an Anon that completely missed 4e and wants to try it, should I pick up the Essentials stuff?

>>51862329
Despite the hate, everything but the class design is an improvement. Many of the feats are staples for character building, and the expertise feats specifically lessen the pain of the feat taxes. The Monster Vault has the best versions of several monsters and some of the heroes books, like Heroes of the Feywild, have great fluff material.

I just wish someone was there to tell Mearls he can't design a class worth shit

>>51862314
My bad, my brain got confused a sec, had to double check:

It was Heinsoo who started 4e and then went to 13th Age. That's who I was referring to. He had a clear vision and then got interfered with until...

Mearls is the one that rode 4e into the ground and is much to blame for problems with 5e.

>>51862368
Yes, but the classes are really bad

Just... so bad

>>51862329
The 4e generals have a link to a mega collection of all of the 4e books

I don't have the link right now, but I know it exists

>>51862138

Speaking of bad math: the design teams had also somehow not noticed that their progressions were slightly off in regards to player attacks vs monster defense and vice versa: by the time players reached the epic tiers, monster defenses were higher than they had ever been in relation to attack bonuses, and their bonuses were higher than the character defenses.

Now, to be fair, this error was around only around 10%, meaning it could be fixed with a simple "Hey, at every level ending in 5, the characters get a +1 to attacks and defenses" and it would have sorted everything out. Simply release this as part of your "Fortune Favors the Bold" re-release of the maths, and you cover it all up.

Instead, they released feats to cover the gap, which reinforced a continued discussion of all these decisions and the edition as a whole being because "Wizards is greedy".

At this point, 4e's sales are nowhere near 3e's, for all of these reasons and more. So Hasbro and Mearls think "Well, if we make something a little more like 3e, maybe we can sway some of our lost lambs back."

This is what birthed Essentials. And instead of doing what they hoped, it instead gets touted as Wizards recanting/selling out/giving up, in general being counted as the final blow.

So claiming Essentials killed D&D 4e is a vast oversimplification.

For one thing, data is still mixed based on sources for if 4e was a commercial failure, or if it simply wasn't AS successful as Hasbro wanted. Some reports show the only time Pathfinder beat 4e was during a couple months where 4e didn't release anything, others claim it was selling better from the get-go. It's hard to prove either way.

Let's use an over-extended analogy to illustrate my point from a subject I know /tg/ loves: sports movies.

>>51862409

Imagine D&D 4e was Rocky Balboa, and this is the equivalent situation: His manager, after years of training Apollo Creed, says he's going to manage Rocky. People start calling him a sell-out, so Rocky's image is a little tarnished by proxy. Creed's son, who Rocky has been training, openly takes his father's side, to the approval of the masses.

Then, two days before the big fight, Adrian kills herself, leaving Rocky to deal with this tragedy, AND the last two days of training, on his own.

Rocky beats Creed, but now Creed's son is making a push for Champion. He knows Rocky's style, so he's making headlines, calling him out. The fans are with him, making Rocky feel alone, isolated.

Eventually, Rocky knows he'll have to fight YC, and knows his Rope-a-dope may not work, so he goes into his next title fight with a more aggressive style, to no real success. He's an older man, he can't box like Young Creed can.

After the fight, he announces his retirement. Normally, it'd be nothing remarkable. He's an older man, faced some tragedies, better to bow out now than lose his dignity later. But the sheer NUMBER of things that went wrong continue to spark conversation for years. Which of the problems were the ones that took him down? The answer is: All of them.

>>51862176
My research shows they had not yet divorced, but were in process of it, initiated when he revealed his knowledge of the affair, and revealed that he had bought a gun. (June 5, literally the day before 4e was released.)

She moved out, and he stalked her for a little over a month, culminating in their deaths. (July 28th)

>>51862499
Surprisingly fitting analogy

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>>51862312

This is not the problem with 13th Age's class scaling at all. The classes are actually fairly even with one another... at levels 1 and 2. At level 3 onward, the scaling gets much more dubious.

I go into this further here:
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/51201312/#51211223

>>51862329
http://pastebin.com/85Hm56k5

Here, 4e resources

It was a break from the 4e formula and also bad. Accusing Mearls of intentionally trying to kill 4e with it may be a bit of a stretch, but it really fucking shows that he simply did not like the game as it was and wanted to push his own agenda, with the cover story of recapturing the audience they lost to PF.

Unsurprisingly, the fans of 4e didn't like this, and those who disliked 4e either didn't care or considered it vindication.

>>51862499
Weren't the changes to the Forgotten Realms a pretty big hit to their credibility as well? I can't think of anyone that liked those changes.

>>51863774
oh man, they were so bad. Not that FR was great to begin with but still. Conversely, I think 4e had the best default setting out of all editions, "points of light" was pretty cool and left a lot of room open for the DM to make shit up.

>>51862011
>AD&D has been taken over by people who prefer other game systems

Truer words were never spoken. All these fags whining about balance and "traps" and championing 5E like it's the 2nd Coming. Ugh, letting normies into hobbies fucking ruins everything.

>>51863906
Let's be fair, 5e is a pretty big shift away from 3.x and a push towards moving back into the realm of 2e. Which isn't saying much considering that 2e was a big enough change from 1e that it was directly responsible for creating 3e in the first place.

So we're either going to see 6e go full into OSR territory or just become 3.6e.

Didn't Wotc fired many 4e developers each year after its launch?

Also, I don't get why Mearls kept his job, btw.

>>51863932
>6e
It'll have "powered by GURPS" across the bottom the front cover.

>>51862138
>And second: sufficient time for the players to use several of their "cooler" abilities.
You mean it made damage over time effects and status effects that weren't "you are crippled and lose" effective instead of a total waste of time.

The real problem was that you could still do that without having HP at the level 4E did, which later printings, and especially constant damage boosts from better feats and powers adding up over time, proved. Oh, and 5E carried that over, arguably making it worse than it ever was in 4E, while not having the tactical combat that justifies its existence like 4E. Fuck that.

>>51864016
>Oh, and 5E carried that over, arguably making it worse than it ever was in 4E, while not having the tactical combat that justifies its existence like 4E. Fuck that.

This.

5e either needs to tone down on the HP or up the tactical combat back up. It can't really do either without a .5 though.

>>51864044
The frustrating part is that it wasn't in the playtest. I knew something was wrong when it took my Fighter 5 swings to kill an ogre, but it really didn't click until I ran the math and found out that 5E Fighters were less effective against 5E monsters than all Strikers but the Assassin and Vampire. What in the fuck would possess you to do that?

>>51862499
You forgot the insulting PR speeches they made at events which customers of course took personally, and the clawback of access to all legally purchased PDFs, which some more of us took personally.

And oh god is 4e Faerun terrible.

It was a confluence of bad business decisions and terrible PR.

So I spent 4e avoiding spending money on them, and instead bought games from other publishers and buying older D&D books on eBay. When the subject came up, I would say why.

There were lots of reasons, without even touching on how I felt about the game mechanics.

I heard from many others who had similar experiences.

Wizbro shat the bed.

>>51864101
4e Faerun is terrible, but 4e Dark Sun is on par with 2e Dark Sun and 4e Eberron is the best Eberron out there. Not to mention the points of light setting, which is surprisngly rich.

>>51863849
This. They shat on Forgotten Realms and fucked it over to 'modernize it' or whatever, destroying it's unique cosmology and such to make it more like PoLand when PoLand was pretty much perfect.

It should be noted that Kieth Baker, guy who made Eberron, loved 4e and I think he still uses it for his home games...

>>51864115
>>51864117
4e dark sun is okay, and I've heard 4e Eberron is better than 3e. I hated PoL and 4e Faerun though.

>>51863774
It wasn't just FR. A lot of people including myself took the removal of the Great Wheel pretty hard.

>>51863774
I'll have to confess to a mild amount of user bias in regards to that:

While you are correct, I was never a particularly big fan of the Forgotten Realms lore, and didn't actually start playing 4e until long after that was relevant, so I just completely forgot it.

But yes, one of the first product lines launched in 4e MASSIVELY changed a well-beloved setting in ways not generally approved of, and that definitely didn't help with their "They're ruining the spirit of D&D!" detractors

>>51864016
I'd argue that most of your damage over time and status effects were part and parcel of your "cooler" abilities.

And, arguably, damage over time effects and so on gain MORE power the less HP an enemy has, since it represents a longer proportion spent impaired.

I'd argue that a lot of things like "5 ongoing damage (save ends)" DIDN'T feel effective in vanilla 4e because of the increased health pools, and the likelihood of a save.

But I do see your point in regards to letting those abilities be showcased. Slowing a monster, for instance, doesn't mean anything if it dies in the first round.

>>51863980
No one knows why Mearls has a job. Especially anyone who plays 5e. Realistically he should be blacklisted from ever working in TTRPGs again, but sadly it isn't the case.

The man is a bigger hack than fucking Monte Cook.

>>51864128
It's insane to look at Eberron actually

The setting was custom built for 3e, and yet it fits so perfectly with 4e, or at least was adapted so perfectly for 4e, that it looks like it was built for 4e and the 3e version of it is a adaptation

>>51864164
>And, arguably, damage over time effects and so on gain MORE power the less HP an enemy has
What no

If you can kill an enemy quickly without even bothering with damage over time it's 100% worthless to even attempt and classes like Warlock lose their relevance compared to Rangers and especially Rogues as the latter has a similar role setup but does their damage upfront.

>>51862409
>Some reports show the only time Pathfinder beat 4e was during a couple months where 4e didn't release anything, others claim it was selling better from the get-go.
It's AoS vs Fantasy all over again. Grognards will shill and lie till the cows come home to force their narrative on everyone.

>>51864128
Why do you hate PoLand? It's like the perfect setting. Fuck, when I recently ran Curse of Strahd for 5e I started my players out in the Nentir Vale and had them do a few missions there to get them to level 3 fighting down 'creatures of the night' BS to set the mood before the mists rolled in.

>>51864179
Mostly because 4e is actually a fixed 3.5.

I have been saying this, but both 4e and 5e are products of 3.5. 4e took a look at what 3.5 become, and fixed/perfected it, with its tactical combat, and loads of magic items, and high flying action. 5e took a look at what 3.5 was trying/claiming to be, and tried perfecting that.

>>51864179
I think the thing about 4e is kind of funny.

See Eberron wasn't built to be what 3e thought it was. 3e Eborron was built around what 3e ended up being, where magic items are common place and where the ancient wilds hide untold riches.

4e though as a system was built around what 3e was and making that work as intended and so made Eberron more fitting for the system, as well as adopting the custom rule-hacks the setting had for 3.5 and making them core.

>>51864101

I considered bringing up the flawed attitudes present in the early 4e PR and marketing, but I didn't want to do that without producing evidence, and when my first google search didn't grab me anything quickly enough, I decided it wasn't worth discussing.

I will say that I personally was put-off by the edition early on, and didn't actually play it until roughly 2 years after its release. Once I did, I actually found I liked it well enough, and played in several campaigns.

In the end, I slightly prefer it to 3rd edition, and maybe even 5e, but fully understand if you never felt like trying it, or didn't like it.

It was perhaps the perfect example of a mishandled edition release. It's hard to think of how much more could possibly go wrong.

>>51864164
Personally, I liked every change they made to the FR, and it was their backpedaling that hurt it the most. A massive plague goes across the multiverse and simplifies everything for better games and making it not a clusterfuck of lore noone cares about... But every named character survived because people complained. Made it look like shit desu.

>>51864196
But rogue damage over time abilities are the best damage over time abilities in the game

Bloodbath + brutal wound + bleeding backstab + backstabber deals 25.5 ongoing damage on average at level 11, when most classes are extremely lucky if they can deal 10 ongoing damage

>>51864175
Monte cook writes good adventures, even if his rules aren't great. Ptolus is fantastic. Better if you downplay the chaositech though.

But yeah. No idea why Mearls is still employed.

>>51864089
You're talking about HP bloat, yeah? How many turns do you think enemies should last? Is damage from monsters also off?

>>51864215
I want either a detailed setting like FR, or no setting at all, and I'll make shit up (down to the races allowed).

I don't like vague partial-settings.

I hate the nwod setting too.

So if I wanted to play 4e nowadays, how would I go about it? Essentials, but using the classes from the initial core books?

>>51864263
funin.space

>>51864258
The thing about PoL is that it is a full setting

Just a difficult to handle full setting because the full details of the setting are spread across a whole bunch of books rather than all being put together in one place

>>51864217
Matter of opinion.

4e is t4 3.5 with a shortage of utility abilities, and more emphasis on the poorly explained n/time period abilities that I tolerated but disliked in 3.x.

It's weaker than 3.x mages, and stronger than 3.x fighters.

As a result, it doesn't do what mage players like, and fighter fans complain about "muh everyone is a wizard".

>>51863932
5e is pretty much a watered down 3.5 to my eyes

>>51864265
Thanks, that site seems great, but I require a bit of context. Am I supposed to use this with the 4e base rules?

>>51864286
Yes.

>>51864292
Thanks. Now on to convincing some folks.

>>51864285
Lots of people who played 3.5 first thought that. I think it looks a lot like a modernized 2e. That doesn't necessarily mean good, but it does mean easier to get into, with clean editing and more detailed and consistent rules. And then modern 'enhancements' like Advantage for that narrative feel.

>>51864197
>AoShills actually think their steaming pile has longevity.

The only difference between 4e D&D and AoS is that WotC actually had the balls to scrap their abortion and start over after only 4 years. Enjoy shoveling down excrement for the next 30 years.

>>51864270
Gotcha covered! Some guy over at the Piazza has trawled every 4e book, magazine, etc and put this together

http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=15210

>>51864196
I feel like you're misrepresenting/misunderstanding the options.

Here's the point I was making:

Let's say your rogue does an average of 10 dpr.

My fighter has 7.5 dpr, but has a daily that inflicts 5 ongoing damage.

Sure, my ability is useless against any enemy with, say, 51 or lower health, since it will die in 3 turns, and my extra damage won't change that.

But against an enemy with, say 100 health, opening with my daily will let us kill the creature in 5 turns rather than 6 (assuming it continually fails/there is no save)

The problem is that base 4e started with that monster set at 200 health, expecting us to enjoy that it took us 2 fewer rounds with all of my bonus damage.

Sure, my DoT did more damage, and even trimmed an extra round off the time, but the damage it was dealing was a bigger proportion of the enemy's health at 100.

I'm not saying high-health enemies didn't have their place, but there's a reason the designers of the game say 'Yeah, you can just halve all the health totals published before MM3"

>>51864215
Fucked up cosmology. I was furious when I first read the description, but tried to keep an open mind and get into it nonetheless. Nope. Primitive shit. Give me back old Forgotten Realms any day of the week.

>>51864222
This doesn't make any sense, does it really? There's very little correspondence between fantasy lore and rule set.

>>51864298
You're the abortion, please scrap yourself away from my eyes.

>>51863980
>>51864175
>>51864248
Mearls writes good fluff. He's clearly a better DM than game designer

>>51864229
I did eventually try it for a 1 yr campaign.

I liked it less than PF. Both lower power, and I hated the scarcity of flexible utility powers, and how far separated the game mechanics felt from the in-character setting.

It's got a bit of a FFT feel to it, but not close enough that I'd actually want to use it for that FFT campaign I've always wanted to play/run.

>>51864248
In 5E terms? For anything that's appropriate to fight short of a boss, 2 rounds in a 1v1 against a Fighter who's not spending their resources, 3 if the Fighter's unlucky, maybe 1 if the Fighter crits with every attack. If the Fighter goes all in on them, they should drop dead in a single round in all but the worst case scenario of luck.
>Is damage from monsters also off?
No. There's a discrepancy between monster HP/damage and player HP/damage that I noted as soon as the first adventure out. Consider what the bugbear can do to a PC of the level you are when you get to him in a single attack.

>>51864327
My group simply houseruled you got 2 utility powers when they came up but you had to go at least 2 rounds of combat between using them unless you spend your action point.

Worked fine with my group and remember, you never really retrain them except on the levels where you can go back and change them (I think it was every 4 levels you were allowed to change your powers if you wanted to, not sure) so with 2 rather than 1 you had far more versatility.

>>51864306
I hated 3.5 cosmology. 4e cosmos was a breath of fresh air

>>51864347
Agreed.

>>51864316

Man I don't know, they made some aide races and monsters kind of retarded in 5e, like Gnolls.

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>>51864315
Whatever you say GW

>>51864230
They nuked the continent, and kept the novel characters. But yes.

4e Faerun was designed in a way that excised everything people liked about the setting, while hanging onto a handful of the most powerful novel characters to keep novel characters around. Presumably in hopes of attracting more new fans than they discarded.

5e rollbacks made Fr playable again, but more diminished than it's ever been before 4e. The rollback didn't go nearly far enough. They should have straight up forked the timeline around 1374, and made 4e into a "what if".

4e was a stillborn.
The game had is math wrong and they fixed it only after years.
Most people I know don’t know how to use Skills Challenges even now. And most of them were laugable at best from a mathematical point of view.
It didn’t killed enough sacred cow, just enough to make people angry but not enough to make people think different.
The whole PDF issue was ridiculous, especially since an idiot and retarded like Steve Jackson sell is GURPS shit without even putting a watermark there. And they took away my Rules Cyclopedia and Red Box PDF too. For frag sake you don’t even sell that thing anymore.
The Game has a clear GNS design, it was Gamist and yet the Fucking Dungeon Master books were filled to the brim of second generation shit. Be Forge or not be Forge don’t try putting your foot in two different kind of shoes.
Dragonborn boobs.

>>51864316
Be careful what you're saying, that means he's basically Gygax.

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>>51864376
>Dragonborn boobs.

>>51864285
>>51864295
I think it looks like 3.5e with better balance, and action economy that isn't dogshit.

Which is to say, I think it looks like the way some groups played AD&D.

>>51862011
>Change is always hated. And so the cycle continued

I still remember some of the batshit letters at the end of 2E

Multiclass Monk/Sorcerers would be the best most OP characters

On turn 1, everybody would spend their action on "refocus" to get the highest initiative

Letting Clerics use other spells to heal would turn Cleric super OP
(OK that one kind of happened but not by freeing up heal slots)

>>51864327
>I hated the scarcity of flexible utility powers
What qualifies as this? They had lists and lists of class/skill based utility powers, and the only thing I can think of equivalent to other editions exists in rituals and in just using skills. You can't argue this gave martials somehow less utility

>>51864423
The action economy is pretty shitty in 5e.
>shared actions

>>51864281
>4e is t4 3.5 with a shortage of utility abilities, and more emphasis on the poorly explained n/time period abilities that I tolerated but disliked in 3.x.

By 3.5 tiers, 4e classes are pretty smack dab middle of t3. Classes can all handle themselves in combat and have access to ample non-combat options (not in the least because 4e skill system doesn't suck or get bypassed/cockblocked by spells or weirdly specific limits placed on them). They are basically all bard/BoNS tier.

>>51864423
It looks like a more balanced core 3.5.

>>51864229
>I considered bringing up the flawed attitudes present in the early 4e PR and marketing

The "Races and Classes" book preview ended Wotc D&D for me.
The designers carefully explained their focus on stuff I don't care about, their fixes on things that were not a problem for me, the wrong fixes on problematic stuff, and the divergent taste for specific flavours.

Is comically catastrophic.

>>51864359
There's some good, some bad. Even the gnolls are good if you're looking to fill the always evil race slot.
Mearls did primal power and heroes of the feywild, so I can't believe he's all bad

>>51864376
>especially since an idiot and retarded like Steve Jackson sell is GURPS shit without even putting a watermark there
I'm usually pretty good at deciphering low IQ posts, but this is beyond my skill level.

>>51864347
>I hated 3.5 cosmology. 4e cosmos was a breath of fresh air

The Planescape cosmology was a very *specific* cosmology that didn't really lend itself well to a more grounded style.

This doesn't make Planescape *bad* - I have played many good games that used this cosmology - but it does mean that the type of games you could play in pre-4E cosmology was more limited.

4E was much better for what I'd call "traditional fantasy."

>>51864436
Do you mean group skill checks?
Those work fine if you use them only when they make sense; that is, when the group succeeds or fails as a whole.

They're best used sparingly, but my DM has done some cool things with them, like let the two high stealth guys in the party "scout out a route" for the rest of us to use, thus allowing the party to actually sneak into a place together despite having very different dex scores.
Not how I'd run it, but clearly the option can be used for good things.

I don't see it in play very often though; situations where a group pools their effort like that don't really come up a lot unless the PC party is really putting effort into trying to make it work.

>>51864475
>Do you mean group skill checks?

I think he means Warlock/Ranger animal companions.

>>51864464
Yeah, same with me. I really tried, but ultimately just had to give up and sit there with the oddly coppery taste of stupid in my mouth.

>>51864475
My DM used it for downtime/preparation activities, like when we were trying to get chummy with the local noble faction or aid in a town's fortification efforts. Made those time spans we'd normally fast forward over a bit more variable and interesting

>>51864300
Huh. I'll check that out then.

>>51864336
Monsters do less damage than PCs in 5e,in addition to having more hp. It's an issue, particularly if PvP breaks out. PvP ends up way more rocket taggy than expected.

>>51864431
I'm arguing it gave casters less utility. The martials being shitty doesn't matter if you don't use them.

>>51864464

WOTC got rid of their PDF sales and at the same time stole access to all purchased PDFs because 'muh fear of piracy'. SJG has a clause preventing companies from doing this in their contracts, guaranteeing anything you buy from the SJG site is yours forever, and they don't even watermark their PDFs.
It was a pretty clear post. I understood it just fine.

>>51864467
You can never go right with cutting all the cool elements to make for more standardisation. If you break off all the decorations from a baroque palace, it will turn into a commieblock. It sounds good in the discussions of detached engineers, because it allows for drastically cut costs and mass production. But in real life, these houses bring nothing but depression and low standards of living to those who live there, and these neighbourhoods quickly turn into ghettos.

>>51864501
>Monsters do less damage than PCs in 5e,
PCs have much less HP than monsters, though, so they end up having more effective damage than PCs do unless it's against scrub monsters.

>>51864459

Interesting.

Races and Classes + Worlds and Monsters are some of my favorite 4E books.

>>51864501
>I'm arguing it gave casters less utility. The martials being shitty doesn't matter if you don't use them.

Okay, lets just cut this short.

Are you the guy who got told last 4e thread? About rituals and utilities and waterwalk and shit?

If not, would you be willing to read that thread, if I hunted it down?

>>51864503

Sure, but 4E cosmology isn't "Planescape except less so," it is a radically different cosmology that I find is more conducive to the kind of games I want to DM.

>>51864503
I thought 4e cosmology actually added the decorations back since it focused on interesting places where you can have adventures instead of places full of water/rocks/floating rocks/hot rocks?

>>51864512
I save only the Willam o' Connor sketches.
I love that guy, i prefer a delicate design for fantasy like what he does or, or Rebecca Guay.

>>51864501
>I'm arguing it gave casters less utility.
That's the fucking *point* because 3.5 casters could roflstomp all over every single noncombat aspect of the game if they felt like it. Why is this not a good thing?

>>51864501
>I'm arguing it gave casters less utility.
Caster utility was a problem though. They could shortcut problems other classes were designed to handle or end encounters with a button. Virtually all the old utility still exists anyway, just as rituals that can't auto-win battles or be spammed without cost

>>51864526
Some people even now believe that Monte Cook was right. That Casters should be Gods in mortal guise and curbstomplmao everyone else.

>>51864485
The warlock animal companion is a Familiar, and thus has its own actions. You can just send it more actions (if you're an idiot; it's a nonfeature basically, but having an extra-good-stats familiar is great for scouting.)

The PHB ranger as a whole was honesty an abortion; the beastmaster worst of all. The revised ranger base class they released in UA is pretty good though, and its animal companion gets to take its own turns.

The revised ranger actually looks like it was designed by other people than the rest of the UA content; UA is usually way more spotty and unfinished quality-wise.

(Just compare it to the UA Artificer base class, which is like, 3 good ideas and 2 terrible ideas, all of which are underdeveloped and crammed together in a package that is neither balanced, nor manages to fully satisfy the fantasy of being an artificer or alchemist. Neither of their specialities scale properly, and they didn't even care to explain if you can fully heal your mechanical bear with Mending, or if Healing Potions work on it. Only healing spells actually say they don't work on constructs and undeads, thus further complicating the question.
The UA Artificer is honestly significantly worse than my DM's homebrew stuff. The UA Revised Ranger looks like it should've been in the PHB.)

>>51864525
I love the guy's dragons and beast designs but I wasn't terribly fond with his work on actual adventurers. seeing some of his design process in races and classes almost makes me forgive that, almost

>>51864523
That's just the elemental planes, and even they were more complex than you describe. In Planescape, you could make up any place, no matter how surreal, and find a plane where it would fit naturally.

>>51861397
Mike Mearls decided that martials shouldn't have nice things, so he wrote Essentials to take away all the nice things that 4e had given them.

It's no surprise that when 5e rolled around, martials didn't get their nice things backs.

>>51864545
>UA is usually way more spotty and unfinished quality-wise.

You can thank Mearls for that

>>51864545
>The warlock animal companion is a Familiar, and thus has its own actions. You can just send it more actions (if you're an idiot; it's a nonfeature basically, but having an extra-good-stats familiar is great for scouting.)

Nope, you need to spend your own action for it to attack (using its reaction) it can not attack on its own. It's a familiar, but it has special rules.

>>51864523
>I thought 4e cosmology actually added the decorations back since it focused on interesting places where you can have adventures instead of places full of water/rocks/floating rocks/hot rocks?

I for sure used the Elemental Chaos a lot more in my campaign than I ever used any of the planes that they smashed together to make it (Limbo, Elemental planes, Abyss) and I used the Feywild and the Shadowfell more than I used Aboria and the Plane of Shadows

>>51864506
Not debating that. I agree.

I'm saying monsters should be toned down to PC levels of HP, and either monsters should do PC levels of damage, or PCs should do monster levels of damage.

>>51864514
No I wasn't the water walk guy, but I did read that thread without posting. He had some sentiments I agreed with but not the specifics.

>>51864526
>>51864542
Some of us *like* ALL-caster d&d.

>>51864532
Sure there are rituals. Many of those rituals are what I look for as combat spells, and many of them ate spells you only used when you were in a hurry, and now you can't because the cast to is so long.

>>51864591
>Sure there are rituals. Many of those rituals are what I look for as combat spells, and many of them ate spells you only used when you were in a hurry, and now you can't because the cast to is so long.

You can just grab that ritualist PP (or was it ED?) then that lets you instant cast rituals.

>>51864552
There is a pic somewhere of an elvish warrior entering a wood or something.

The eerie light, the falling leaves and the light sources create an hell of atmosfere.

>>51864501
>>51864506
>Monsters do less damage than PCs in 5e
This is technically incorrect. It's true that there are more monsters of the "high resilience low damage" type, but there are plenty monsters are the opposite.

Monster CR is calculated by taking their damage potential and their toughness into consideration, and then averaging them out to produce the final CR.
That means that monsters fall into a spectrum from "high damage toughness" to "high toughness low damage".
And the monsters in the MM vary a LOT more than player characters do on that front, even if there are more high-toughness ones.

IIRC things like mummy lords have an insanely high offensive challenge rating, and very weak defensive challenge rating: their final CR ends up in the middle but they will fuck your players up if they don't take it out superfast.

>>51864563
>Mike Mearls decided that martials shouldn't have nice things, so he wrote Essentials to take away all the nice things that 4e had given them.
>It's no surprise that when 5e rolled around, martials didn't get their nice things backs.

I'd be happy with even the Essentials version of Fighter but even THAT much Defender was Too Much Defender for Mearls :(

>>51864591
>Some of us *like* ALL-caster d&d.
Then fuck off and don't come back.

>>51864583
Feywild is just so good, it feels like it's always been a part of the game. I can't remember how elves worked before that

>>51864591
>Some of us *like* ALL-caster d&d.
And there is a special place in hell for you, we get it!

>>51861397
capitulated to grog sensibilities (no martial dailies, generic encounter abilities etc) and was essentially more rehashing of already covered ground. Also broke several existing options due to mono-stat abuse.

I bought basically every book prior to the essentials line but they made it abundantly clear they weren't interested in supporting the game they'd already built, and I really never purchased anything after that point.

It also doesn't hurt that a lot of the new material like vampire options sucked dick.

>>51864577
No, it is literally a Familiar. They get the Find Familiar spell, and then some minor alterations that add on top of it. It's just that familiars could never attack on their own.

Pact of the Chain familiars aren't voidwalkers m8.

>>51864614
>And there is a special place in hell for you
That place is third edition.

>it's another 3.PF bashing thread because casters were good
>by people who never played a high leveled 1e caster and realized they were even more powerful

Caster supremacy has always been a thing, fucking deal with it. Find a new zero magic system if you don't like wizards being gods. D&D was not made for you.

>>51864591
All-casters D&D is not the same thing as single caster classes being able to do everything.

An all-Arcane/Divine game of 4E works just fine if you're not expecting to be able to fuck the game into submission at every turn, and let me tell you right now that GMing 3.5 for a full T1 party is fucking horrible and an exponentially larger load on the GM than any other tier.

>>51864633
>by people who never played a high leveled 1e caster and realized they were even more powerful
They were not by any metric you want to use.

>>51864591
>Some of us *like* ALL-caster d&d.
Well everyone is casters in 4e so you should love it

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>>51864628

>>51864597
I was not aware of that particular option.

One fewer gripe with 4e. Doesn't fix the other various things I didn't like about it, like the nonscaling powers you have to upgrade or replace, or just how gamist it is (as mentioned, more gamist than I'd like), and the whole ton of individually tracked 1/time period ability gimmick.

I can see that it grew out of 3.x, but it grew out of the parts of 3.x I liked the least.

>>51864611
>Then fuck off and don't come back.
Aww. You're salty. How cute.

>>51864614
Is that place mid-high level Pathfinder? Because we play it sometimes. It's fun.

Other times we play other games, including d20 Conan and 5e and shadowrun and Runequest.

>>51864641
Been there. I agree it's not easy to DM for t1 parties. They have a lot of hard answers to stuff. Can still be a lot of fun though.

>>51864666
>Reading comprehension
Clearly describing t1/t2 casters.

>>51864641
Arcane, Divine, Spirit, Psionic, Chi, Shadow are nothing but special effects.
You are not playing an All-Casters. You still need a Defender, a Leader, a Controller and one or more Strikers. Is like Martials just a different paint job.

>>51864633
My problem with 3.5e wasn't that casters were good, but that martials were overly restricted.
Unless your DM flat out ignored the rules for action economy and skill checks, and arguably also how feats were implemented (can't do the thing without the feat; after all, why would you take the feat? Ergo: wiping your ass requires 12 levels of investment into a feat tree where two of them gives you +1 to hit or damage and provide nothing of interest for you to spend actions doing.)

In 5e all martials can break up their movement as they wish between attacks, make a solid attempt at trips, shoves, disarms, grapple, and so on.
That means describing interesting actions and stunts is actually on the table for those guys in 5e. Right out of the gate.

>>51864294
Use what's here

>>51862587

>>51864693
>dropping fireballs and summoning demons and giant hands of ice
>not spellcasting
Okay.

>>51864693
You never NEED a controller, and depending on arrangement you can possibly maybe survive without a leader

>>51864693
>arcane defender is teleporting around the battlefield to protect allies while throwing lightning and farting rainbows
>this is the same as the fighter being an immovable ball and chain

>>51864702
>Right out of the gate.
You mean they have to subject themselves to opposed rolls, which is a nightmare no thanks to how compressed bonuses are, and unless they're BM Fighter, have to give up damage for it in a game where dealing damage might as well be the only way to deal with enemies.

>>51864653
1e fighter progression
>1st level
>swing your sword
>20th level
>swing your sword
1e wizard progression
>1st level
>die endlessly with your d4 hit dice until you get lucky enough to survive to 5th+ level and have a fighting chance
>20th level
>turn into the exact same battlefield controlling wizard that everyone complains about in 3.PF


3.PF had more options for martials than 1e but yet 3.PF is the sole target for caster supremacy bashers. It's only because no one managed to survive long enough as a wizard in 1e to see how broken they were, and because the game was centered around dungeon crawling you hardly got to see them bending reality in non combat encounters (which they also excelled at, just like in 3.PF).

This game was made and designed with wizards as the center of attention. Deal with it.

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>>51864702
>He thinks 5e grappling is worth a shit
don't fall for the trap

>>51864728
>turn into the exact same battlefield controlling wizard that everyone complains about in 3.PF
You mean
>run facefirst into greater and greater amounts of spell resistance, which you can't ignore like you can in 3.5, and the saving throw mechanic that makes you far less likely to land crowd control spells as levels go up
But yeah, I can pretend that core mechanics aren't important too.

>>51864718
And the rouge could Jump like Superman and throw knife out of his butt while doing so. In the End is the Role that matter. This is why 4 e should have killed Class too and make only Roles matter, letting player calling themself Wizards or Fighter out of fancies but withotu any true game effect.

>>51864716
Noononono

Leader is the most important role, you can survive without a striker, a defender or a controller, but every party should have a leader

>>51864749
>And the rouge could Jump like Superman and throw knife out of his butt while doing so.
Which makes them a caster... how?
>In the End is the Role that matter.
No, not really, even the two classes that are objectively the closest together in role and subrole, Rogue and Warlock, have access to completely different effects from each other.

>>51864759
Playing launch 4E without a Leader is the worst experience I've ever had playing D&D, and that's saying a lot because I also tangled with 3.0 when it came out.

>>51861397
It didn't kill it, the classes just had a baseline power of ~ a 85% super optimised "vanilla" 4e class, so the original classes outside extremely specific builds became just plain inferior.

>>51864759
It's simple to survive without a leader: if it isn't dead in two rounds run away

>>51861397
>>Precisely how did Essentials kill 4e?
It didn't kill it, it was just an unnecessary re-release. Instead of sticking to their guns they looked at the past sales and decided to print new 4E books to try to backpedal and please the 3E/PF fans that didn't like 4E's original state.

Granted the original state wasn't flawless by far but there were plenty of improvements done, with Essentials they just did the classic marketing move of re-releasing the same thing in a more compact package. They added new OP features too to try to make sure the 4E fans also buy into it.

In short it was nothing but a thinly disguised cashgrab.

>>51864762
>Which makes them a caster... how?
Caster can cast jump and cloud of daggers
Caasters can be anything

>>51864783
That doesn't make any fucking sense.

>>51864783
Then how are you a non-caster?

I mean, does that make me a caster? Casters can surely sit at a desk and post on an anonymous imageboard, right?

>>51864545
To go along with supporting the revised UA Ranger, I had a player join who is totally new to D&D and was looking to do a Beastmaster Ranger as she was looking through the PHB.

The MOMENT she said, "Beastmaster Ranger," I pulled up the UA on my laptop and flipped it over to her, with the words being something to the effect of, "use this, it'll actually do what you imagine the class should do/play out, compared to the PHB version."

>>51864724
Monsters have very few skill proficiencies. Most have none whatsoever, and practically only a few humanoids have Athletics.

>>51864850
It's a shame that the bonuses are still way too low for that or that might mean something.

>>51864814
You're a wizard, anon.

>>51864739
>saving throw mechanic that makes you far less likely to land crowd control spells as levels go up

Except some of the strongest wizard spells don't even let you make a saving throw. Imprisonment? Temporal Stasis? PWK/PWS? No save allowed.

And who needs actual throw required CC when you can cut off enemies the same way you do in 3.PF - via walls etc.

>>51864591
>Some of us *like* ALL-caster d&d.

That's fair but it's not what D&D was about pre-3E and it shouldn't be what D&D is about post-3E

>>51864732
>He hasn't grabbed someone with his second attack at level 5 and pulled someone in and out of a Cloud of Daggers repeatedly while wailing on them. Possibly with Advantage, due to how the Advantage/Disadvantage rules allow the DM to apply it based on common sense rulings.

>>51864767
>Playing launch 4E without a Leader

That just sounds bonkers to me

I had to turn down a party of 3 Warlords + 2 Fighters

I mean, I'm sure that's not the experience you had but man.

>>51864865
Sure. I don't disagree with you. When I want that I have 3.x.

I only even had to bring it up after some chucklefuck threw a fit at me claiming that 4e doesn't satisfy the same gameplay desire 3.x does if you enjoy 3.x casters.

A statement which I thought was fairly obvious.

>>51864867
>He hasn't just stunned a guy and wailed on his face four times
Your game of grab ass is fun the first couple times, until you realize fucking monks already do it much better without all the headache

>>51864880
>I had to turn down a party of 3 Warlords + 2 Fighters

I think that could work. 1 warlord repositions, everyone else just strikes the shit out of everyone. Pick up some crowd control cleaves/stances and it sounds like a party that is also a blender.

>>51864880
>>51864894
Multiple warlords are not as redundant as you would expect.

>>51864910
The ultimate meme party of 4e would be all lazylords and a single overworked slayer fighter or thief rogue.

>>51864910
Multiple warlords would be obscene. Hail of Steel every turn, enemy tries to attack anyone and vengeance is mine is guaranteed. it just wouldn't be fair

>>51864894
>I think that could work.
>>51864910
>Multiple warlords are not as redundant as you would expect.

Tell me that in 2008 and I'll get back to you on how the campaign went :^)

Today I'd absolutely allow a 5xWarlord party, especially in the face of the Archer Warlord from Martial Power giving the team some ranged capability.

>>51864933
Vengeance is Mine is the greatest power to ever grace the face of D&D in the history of ever.

>>51864926
The all Warlord party in 4e is not entirely unlike the all cleric party in Pathfinder.

>>51864889
It sure sounds more fun than [Grab attack] [Heavy punch] [Heavy punch] [Heavy punch] [Heavy punch]

>>51864859
A grapple only costs one attack to attempt.
Even attempting to escape from a successful grapple eats an entire Action.
If you've got something good to do with your grapple (environmental hazards, spell zones, pits, traps, using an enemy for cover for a wounded ally, moving an enemy away from a wounded ally and pulling them into Attack of Opportunity range of one of your melee buddies, whatever) then grapple is a sweet fucking deal.

>bonuses are still way too low
As someone who actually does the math on this shit, you seem to have fallen for a shit meme and clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

If you're trying to grapple and you've got a high strength score and proficiency, you're at someone between +6 and +11 over the target, minus their strength modifier which is practically always going to be lower than yours - especially if you pick your grapple target properly.
And that's just grapple with no particular investment in it other than Athletics proficiency.

It's at the point where multiclassing for expertise (which is only a piddling extra proficiency bonus, after all?) on a fighter basically breaks the game because grapples don't just succeed very often at that point, they become practically inescapable.

>>51864981
Valor Bards make great grapplers too. Mostly because extra attacks and expertise in any skill.

>>51864926
The true "radiant mafia" build consisted of 4 warlords and one avenger spamming overwhelming strike with a radiant weapon

>>51864981
>As someone who actually does the math on this shit, you seem to have fallen for a shit meme and clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Pretty sure he meant monsters having athletics aren't going to save them, because the bonus from athletics prof is still too low.

>>51864739
>saving throw mechanic that makes you far less likely to land crowd control spells as levels go up
This is completely and objectively wrong.
The opposite is true.

1) Monsters usually have zero saving throw proficiencies. Since you're always going to have proficiency and a high casting ability score, hitting an enemy's saving throw that they are not proficient in has your success chance go up dramatically as you increase in levels even if you're fighting monsters of an equivalent CR relative to you.

2) While the trend is that monsters do have more saving throw proficiencies on average at higher CR, even at the end game they still typically only have quite few, and casters get more and more spells to choose from with which to target low saves. And that's ignoring that there are many excellent spells that require no save whatsoever.

>>51862106
Don't worry, anon. My group runs 4e and has loads of fun with it.

>>51864981
>pulling them into Attack of Opportunity range of one of your melee buddies
But...they're grappled. They can't trigger OAs
>minus their strength modifier which is practically always going to be lower than yours
What? STR monsters are lik 3/4ths of the book. The only advantage you have over them is your athletics, which can be too low early on to really be impactful. You need that expertise for it to be worth it

>>51865040
You're talking about a completely different game you idiot.

>>51865013
The bonus from Athletics proficiency is enormous, so he would be wrong.

>>51865058
+2 sure is enormous.

>>51865061
by lvl 5, when grappling isn't insanely retarded, it's +3, and expertise makes it +6. That is very good. Of course, there are monsters that just won't care or would've died faster if you just dealt damage instead, but such is the life of a grappler

>>51865049
Having pulled them into OA range of allies is just tactically useful later on if you want/need to go elsewhere (either for managing your health, or if it turns out that there's another priority target or something.)
It's something to do with your movement, after all. No reason to stand still and NOT pull your enemy into a tactically advantageous position.

My grapplin' dream is to one day fight someone who has a Shield Guardian. CR 7 construct that obeys whoever is holding a particular amulet.

>>51864702
Cannot speak for 5e - I love 3.X and PF but this is true. The feats not scaling and the need to "improve asswiping" to wipe your own ass are disconcerting.

This was not the original intention I think - in some online designer's note, the authors stated that "expanded" uses for feats were welcomed. Like, say, quidraw to get weapons as a free action from the ground or the wall, perhaps with some additional test.
But the memo got lost in the splatbook craze, and guess which direction PF got.

>>51864101

I'm honestly ok with 4e Faerun. I think it gets a worse rap than it deserves.

Is it a good setting? Eh, not really.

But you can clearly tell they were trying to fix the issue that people complained about with the setting.

>The world is too stagnant
>It's all plotted out and no real mystery any more.
>There are too many powerful NPCs and organisations, PCs matter less.

That and well...FR does have rather a history of 'New edition change, time to fuck everything sideways'. A dramatic spell plague wasn't too much weirder than 'We cast all the gods down as mortals for a while' and 'Killing Mystra' is a FR edition change classic.

The issue they ran into was 'People who bitch about FR...mostly are D&D fans who don't like the setting and play OTHER settings'. So they alienated the hardcore FR fans without actually drawing the fans of other settings in.

>>51865061
Oh yeah buddy I'm sure you wouldn't care whether you had a 12 or a 16 in an ability score either.
And it sure as fuck doesn't remain +2.

>>51864179

The new dragonmarks were a thing of beauty and wonder in 4e. So much better than the 3.5 ones.

Something no one else has mentioned yet : The art.

My players just fucking hated the "style" of 4E for some reason and pushed back on it hard.

>>51865101
The 4e siberys dragonmarks are pretty damn cool too

Even if they're all lumped together under the same epic destiny and don't require the dragonmark feats as a prerequisite for some reason

>>51865106
I liked 4e but hated the art, so I get where they're coming from.

>>51865106
Even as a hardcore 4e fan i can only agree with this.

Too... "Belty", though already by 3e they had asymmetrical armour and similar bad habits 4e really took it to an extreme.

>>51864583

I think part of it is that so many planes are 'Not places people can survive'. You need a heap of work to just get there and have an adventure, let alone do stuff.

4e went more for 'Each plane is a place you can adventure without preparing like it's a nasa mission' which I appreciate.

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>>51865106
>>51865127

>>51865170
They really did though.

Dragonborn and Tiefling in particular.

>>51865095
>>51865183
Fucking dragon tits and goat heads

>>51865183
I don't mind the underlying visual design of the dragonborn and tiefling, but I hate the cartoony art style they put them in.

If you kept the red skin, tail, and browhorns of the tiefling but put it in a more realistic style with proper shading and perhaps just made them slightly creepy looking, that'd be perfect for me.

>>51864934

My only annoyance with the Archer Warlord is that it didn't let them use Dexterity rather than Strength for attacks. It would have been great to open that up to Elves and other traditional archery races.

>>51865201
They're half human. It's exactly as wrong to give them tits as it would be to not give them tits.

Beyond that, it's a tossup what to do with it, so the tiebreaker ends up being populism.

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>>51865183
The point is that the art is just fluff, and most fluff can be changed if it doesn't mesh with you with little consequence.

I like my tieflings cute.

>>51865125

Yeah, that's a bit of an oddity. Likely an editing error that never got patched up.

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>>51865183
>>51865201
I like goat heads dammit

>>51865201

Well, Points of Light Tieflings are all tied to a single demon lord (The one that made the pact with the nation) and he does the very traditional devil look.

It makes sense for them.

>>51862087
more than anything I'd say it was the murder-suicide that torpedoed their Online Tools plans that ended up dooming 4E

>>51865229
No, not an error, an intentional decision seeing as they make reference to it in the description for the ED in question

>>51865218
They could still best warlords. They didn't have hard secondary requirements, so going for that 18 pre racials wasn't total insanity

>>51865239
I don't mind them either. They seem startrekky to me for some reason, and I like that.
I don't like the cartoony style, though.

Also IIRC 5e gave them black sclera which looks a lot better. I may be wrong though.

>>51865251

Yeah, it's a very minor thing at most. It's just a little personal preference/liking options being opened up.

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>>51865252
Official art always had them with solid orb eys like eladrin, ranging from black to red to gold. Personally I prefer the black eyes on elves; makes them look sort of like forest animals

>>51865263
Personally I'm just happy there is an option in the game to make a strength-based bow-user

>>51862329
Essentials DM stuff is for the most part excellent, and some of the new player stuff(mostly racial stuff and some of the new class options, mostly for magic classes) is good too, although in my opinion the best thing about the Essentials line is the way the actual physical books were designed(at least for the initial line before they reverted to the standard 4E book style for the last couple of Essentials books), as they are some of the best looking and feeling ones that the D&D franchise has ever had

>>51865296

That's the counterpoint, yeah.

Honestly, archery is something 4e could have done with more of in general. Only a few classes really do it. One Str-based, a couple of dex and one Int (Artificer does a mean crossbow job)

Though it's not suprising. You run into the issue of 'Archery is competing with implements for ranged stuff' while melee doesn't really have something trying to fight it for territory too much save the monk.

Jesus fucking christ, can't any of you just move on and play the newer editions and let go of your autistic baggage?

>>51865239
>>51865243

I'm a planescape guy. I like them as descendants of a wide variety of fiends comings with humans.

Bonus points if I get different tiefling breeds.

Sure PoL may be doing its own weird thing, but I like the 2e styled fluff for them, and I just hate the 4e/5e tiefling look, as well.

>>51865314
>newer editions
You mean like 5e and 4e?

>>51862138

>The Senior Manager of Digital Technology Projects, discovered his wife had had an affair, bought a gun, and killed both her and himself.

Alright then

This story I had not heard before

>>51865222
>Art is just fluff.
>Fluff doesn't matter.
People get up in arms if you start changing it, so I am inclined to disagree.

Plus, wrt art, unless there are art-free versions of the books, if you don't like it, too bad, there it is, shitting up your books.

>>51865314
Nope.

I want my 2e era fluff, with or without slight timeline updates.

4e fluff a shit.

>>51863774
4E would have been better off abandoning Forgotten Realms entirely, and making it the default setting for 5E was similarly a terrible idea on WOTC's part(still don't understand how anyone can like that setting, it's so boring yet convoluted)

>>51865314

Newer editions? 4e is the second most recent edition. It IS one of the 'Newer editions'.

>>51865316

Yeah, they did later on have a few articles on stuff like that when they covered non-Points of Light settings. Like how they had an entire article for using Dragonborn as Krynn Draconians and the slight changes you'd need there.

It just runs into 'Points of Light is the flagship setting for 4e, so most art will be of Points of Light Tieflings'. Sorta like how 5e has very few images of Dark Sun Elves or Halflings.

>>51865329
Right, what's the point of whinging and claiming you (general you) suffered emotional and psychologic damage because it wasn't what you expected and it personally offended you?
It's a fucking game, get over it.

>>51865342
Those people don't matter. If you don't like how I run my game, shut up and don't play.

>>51865353
Use the 4e mechanics and keep the 2e fluff, that's not fucking hard.

>>51865363
4e got killed off because of autists, no fun allowed shits and general littleshits Hasbro is included in that, it was a good albeit flawed system.

>>51865372
Life is a fucking game too.

>>51865354
Favorite setting, personally. I like the morally grey setting with tons of factions and interesting countries and detailed histories.

5e FR doesn't make a ton of sense given how they've basically discontinued all their settings at this point, and 5e Fr is an I'll defined mess in many ways, which also keeps the century timeskip and doesn't restore all the destroyed countries and religions, or fill in the history gaps. Basically all the realms fans at this point, regardless of which edition they play, ignore all FR content published after about 2005 or so, because it's just not the same setting. At least after the many retcons, the 5e adventures can be largely placed earlier in the timeline without too many major changes.

5e should have forked the timeline off of late 1374, mid 3e era, before they tossed it into the meat grinder.

4e should have skipped it entirely. It was a terrible fit for the edition mechanically, and the version they included was designed to appeal to people who either don't like published settings, or like different published settings, at the cost of the people who like FR.

Lots of stupid decisions.

>>51865414
>comparing D&D to real life
Are you fucking mentally deficient?

>>51865427
FR wasn't morally grey at all, everything was neatly pigeonholed into black and white definitions of good and evil.
Eberron and Dark Sun and Planescape are the morally grey settings, to name a few.

>>51864300
neat

>>51865222
Art is the first thing to grab the attention of John Q Normie to buy your product.

>>51865427
Not morally grey, but good and evil act both retarded as fuck, the Harpers are current America torture enthusiasts who tread on your personal rights and freedoms, and the Zhentarim who are comically retarded.

>>51864512
>Races and Classes + Worlds and Monsters are some of my favorite 4E books.
agreed

>>51865404
Nah.

It's sometimes doable (except for the wildly different magic system and different player races). You could at least convert the races if you waited until 4e was at the end of its life and knew how to edit cbuilder using cbloader and a text editor (a lot of ifs), but 4e players tend to assume the 4e fluff applies, and they drag that baggage into games.

I've seen several "we're using the 2e fluff" campaigns, and there always seemed to be someone new to gaming who got really confused because they read the 4e fluff and didn't bother to read the fluff that applied to the campaign, and their confusion caused varying degrees of headaches, from weird in character decisions based on assumptions of the world that turned out to be false, to confusion that was able to be cleared up (multiple times) because the confused player asked the right questions.

"Ignore all fluff in all the 4e books" does not work, unless your players only have artless, fluff-less books.

>>51865472
I don't think I have those books

I thought I had all the 4e books

>>51865456
The harpers are good and neutral terrorists who fight to preserve the status quo, with some seriously questionable methods.

That is a country run by evil wizards, but a very large percentage of its people are neutral and good, while still being loyal to Thay.

The setting has some clear cut factions, and lots of moral ambiguity.

>>51861886
>>51862138
Don't forget that Wizards seemed convinced that they could market their new system by mocking and insulting consumers unhappy with with the change.

Remember the "if you dun like 4e, ur a troll LOL DRAGON SHIT ON YOU." video short they released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azcn84IIDVg

>>51865427
>I like the morally grey setting with tons of factions and interesting countries and detailed histories.
I dunno, every time I try to read anything FR related(except a couple of the 2e books relating to some of the more interesting gods) I end up losing all interest within a couple pages/minuts(whichever comes first), I think at least part of it is that most names in the setting whether for people or places are just plain awful, so my brain just immediately forgets everything about FR outside of a couple details within minutes of me reading anything about it

>>51865493
they were released before 4E proper might be part of it

>>51865472
>>51865493
Yeah, seconded. I played through most of the 4e cycle and I've never heard of those.

>>51865505
Ah yes, that too.

Fuck does Wizbro make some retarded business/PR decisions.

>>51865512
Never will I ever run a setting where I have to memorize dozens of celebrity NPCs and like twenty pages of "and then this happened and then this happened" history to do it any justice.

FR isn't just boring, it's boring and bloated.

I wonder why people got so upset over 4e and its marketing campaign, I mean wat.

>>51865534
If a setting doesn't have a decent history and the major NPCs of each region mapped out for me, it's not helpful, and I'd rather ignore it in its entirety and make up something completely from scratch, from races to nations to history to the town the PCs are in.

>>51865549
Dismissive ads and hostile business decisions, following aggressively insulting hostile in-person behavior, towards existing customers. It's all spelled out pretty clearly in this thread, but you would have to actually read it.

>>51865480
Why is it such a difficult concept? You're not translating it into the other system 100%, this isn't is how system conversions work.

>>51865497
This is honestly the product of poor writing than anything.
Thay's folks have never been good, maybe neutral for the majority, but never good.

And that's not lots of moral ambiguity in the setting.

>>51865568
Please provide examples so I may gasp in shock at their vile and loathsome words.

>>51865505
I thought it was funny

>>51865584
Been 10 years. Quotes are hard to find these days, and I was not invested enough to save them. But you asked, so I summed up what I heard over and over (sometimes with direct quotes) for like 3 years.

>>51865480
>there always seemed to be someone new to gaming who got really confused because they read the 4e fluff and didn't bother to read the fluff that applied to the campaign
Funny, cause I get new players who don't bother to even read the fluff in the fucking books and make assumptions based on whatever their favorite fantasy media is.

Players are subhumans.

Since there are a ton of people with DnD Background here:

Was the decision ever justified why characters had saving throws and not passive defense values?

And

Why are there 3 saving throws when having 1 for each stat would GREATLY increase immersion, differentiation and the ability to simulate, could be used for stuff like grapple and pretty much create no additional work as it could replace all the special opposed d20+stat+soome random modifier checcks.

>>51865505
That voice acting is fucking atrocious and excruciating to listen to, but to claim it mocks and insults consumers is fucking stretching it.

>>51865610
Looking forward to reading it.

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>>51865584
I thought their ad campaign was funny

>>51865639
Heh, yeah, if you took this seriously and as an insult there's something massively wrong with you.

>>51865630
>Was the decision ever justified why characters had saving throws and not passive defense values?

Because that's how it's always been, basically.

See: 4e going to passive defences and 5e backflipping on that.

>>51865639

Honestly, I still find that funny and it touches very closely on the actual complaints some people had at the time about 'Why isn't there rules for X' when the devs were clearly going for a much more focus on 'The skill system is there. Work out what skill applies to it'.

>>51864467
>3.5 cosmology
>Planescape
I'm upset.

>>51865630
>Was the decision ever justified why characters had saving throws and not passive defense values?
To distinguish spells from regular attacks

>Why are there 3 saving throws when having 1 for each stat would GREATLY increase immersion, differentiation and the ability to simulate
Because 4e is not trying to be simulationist, nor does more saves equal more immersion.
The bigger question is why 4e didn't go all the way and reduce the game to three stats and corresponding saves. Would've solved the "classes with stats in the same defense" issue

>>51862329

The Monster Vault/Monster Manual 3 are pretty good. I'd stay away from the class books. They range from 'utterly useless' to 'what the hell, seriously?', and aren't really compatible back to the previously established formats.

>>51865659
I felt Wizards was justified in mocking those who reacted saying 4e was too simplified and felt too samey and played like an mmorpg. It was good how they mocked autists and retards, and these retards and autists are kept playing Pathfinder.

>>51865574
>Why is it such a difficult concept?
>You're not translating it 100%, that's not how system conversions work
You need to convert it enough that it is a 1:1 representation. That's how system conversions work. With magic you're SoL. It's not viable, either you accept that the setting will have different magic entirely or give up on the conversion entirely.

If you can accept the magic system, you still may have to contend with different playable races than you likely want.

And if you want to actually convert them, well, it's 4e. You basically need to be able to put it into the offline cbuilder or your players will pitch a fit. If it's not in the app it effectively isn't available.

IME They also don't seem to take kindly to being told certain cbuilder options are unavailable.

I'm assuming you skipped the bit regarding the problems that come from "ignore all fluff in the 4e books".

In short "Just use different fluff" is a hell of a lot easier when there's no default fluff to have to fight against, and when homebrewing doesn't require game modding software.

>>51865630
>Was the decision ever justified why characters had saving throws and not passive defense values?

Yeah, wargaming roots. Since dice were shit, you sometimes rolled under, sometimes rolled over, to keep things 'fair'. It also mirrors the way ability score/skill checks worked.

>Why are there 3 saving throws when having 1 for each stat would GREATLY increase immersion, differentiation and the ability to simulate, could be used for stuff like grapple and pretty much create no additional work as it could replace all the special opposed d20+stat+soome random modifier checks.

Leaves too many holes and fractures attack types too many ways. Heck, I think having both reflex and AC is kinda redundant (although the way 4e used Reflex as a stand-in for touch kinda works).

It's also hard to justify why something is a particular defense out of CHA/INT/WIS, instead of another one (i.e. why is illusion targeting INT instead of WIS? Would Charm effects be WIS or CHA?), but that's more because the stats themselves aren't that well designed..

>>51865674

God, 4e killed enough sacred cows as it is to make people scream to the high heavens.

Imagine the sheer amount of rage that would have happened if they strayed from the traditional D&D stats.

Sorta like how 4e went hard on HP not being meat points but it would have likely served that purpose better to rename it Stamina or something...but that also ran into the fact that HP is classic D&D terminology.

>>51865683

Yeah, see the issues 5e has on that front. Where Int/Str/Cha saves barely exist and 99% of stuff runs on Ref/Wis/Con still despite supposedly 6 save types.

>>51865674
>The bigger question is why 4e didn't go all the way and reduce the game to three stats and corresponding saves. Would've solved the "classes with stats in the same defense" issue

That would have been great, but you can only sacrifice so many holy cows per edition. Since we've gone backwards we're at least 2-3 editions away now.

>>51865630
"1 for each stat" is what 5e has

Except it doesn't really, because the number of abilities that take intelligence or charisma saves to avoid are statistically insignificant, and the number of abilities that take strength saves are only slightly more common. So really it's just the same three saves as before

>>51865682
By your own words, you need to "convert it enough", that's all it takes, anything else is just a bonus.

Why is that 4e Eberron and Dark Sun would work so great in 4e and using 4e? One was designed for 3.5 sure, but Dark Sun was a 2e setting.

And with system conversions, it's not 1:1 representation, see all the docs on how to convert chars from 2e to 3e, 3e to 4e, other systems into 5e: this is actually how system conversions work, not whatever you're on about.

>>51865615
Ugh. That's bad, but it seems to be worse when they insist they're informed, and the GM is "wrong", because he's using different setting material than what they read in the books they were told we not in use for setting material.

Ran a greyhawk game in Pathfinder one time, and one player kept going on a on about how I was running goblins wrong because they weren't retarded football headed baby eating pyromaniacs.

Fuck players, man.

>>51865638
I'm not going to search for it for you just because I summed up what other anons said in this thread because you were too lazy to read it, and mentioned that it's old news.

Look for D&D news and reactions between 2007 and 2009. Find it yourself. Have fun.

Don't ask for answers to questions if you want proof and are unwilling to double check the answers yourself. That's retarded.

>>51865363
>the slight changes you'd need there.
Six weird on-death abilities are slight changes?

>>51865738
>claiming Wizards were bullies and mocked and belittled me and my kin.
>nah, you just have to take our word for it.
Okay, whatever you say, autist.

>>51865740
Yes, actually. Players are not expected to die very frequently

>>51865722
>Whatever you're on about
Setting conversions?

>>51865738
The burden's on you to back up that claim, you realize, I can take it as you shits just overreacting and making yourselves looking like asses.

>>51865757
You were taking about system conversions with replicating the magic from the editions, don't replicate 100%, that's fucking retarded.

>>51865750
>Bait him into looking shit up for me.
You asked why people were upset. I told you the things people were upset about.

Don't take my word for it, look it up yourself. You now know what to look up.

Why in the fuck would I save records for or spend time looking up news I haven't given even the vaguest of fucks about for like 9 years?

You now know what the claims are, validate or refute them yourself if you want proof one way or the other.

>>51865711

The one I'd have really liked to have seen killed for 4e? Racial Stat Bonuses. They always end up with 'X class wants Y and Z races because they have a bonus to the primary stat'. 4e, I feel, did a very good job of making races feel different even without having stats affect it.

>Dwarves
>Tough, Enduring little bastards
>Minor Action Second Wind
>Bonus to Endurance
>Get pushed less distance
>Move at full speed in armour.

>Elves
>Agile, perceptive and gracefully skillful.
>Higher movement speed
>Shift at full speed in difficult terrain
>1/encounter reroll an attack.
>Bonus to perception and make allies better at it in turn.

Two of the most iconic D&D races and even without stat bonuses they very clearly fit into their iconic areas.

>>51865784
For some settings, the magic is integral to the setting itself. Witcher, and forgotten realms come to mind.

>>51865791
I'm not baiting you, you fucking retard. I would like to see proof of this mocking and belittling because frankly I'm not seeing it. And if you're so thin-skinned as to feel insult over it, then you're better off in your hugbox playing Pathfinder.

Stop typing like a robot.

>>51865791
>>51865773
And if you don't care about what actually happened, you now know what the claim is of what happened, and can go on thinking whatever the fuck you like.

>>51865806
It's still a system's issue than a setting's one.

>>51865817
Then I would advise you all to get over it, it's just a game.

>>51865808
>Typing like a robot.
What the fuck does that even mean, am I using words you're too thick to understand?

>>51865833
Sorry, I'll use words you'll understand, you're acting like an autist.

>>51865828
I'm more or less over it. A little annoyed I haven't gotten access to all my PDFs I purchased a decade ago back, but they've started giving them back as they start selling them again.

And when I want to play d&d, I bust out 5e or Pathfinder.

>>51865841
>Generic /tg/ insult for people whom you disagree with.
Gotcha.

>>51865851
If you're still bitching about it, then you're still not over it, it's being what, several fucking years now.

I hear they're putting some of the pdfs on DMsGuild or someshit.

>>51865859
>crying fat tears
They are delicious.

If you're still this assblasted about something that may or may not have happened several fucking years ago, just wat.

>>51865863
Yes, they have returned some of the stolen PDFs.
Yes. Some people are still salty about being robbed of their purchased games 10 years ago.

>>51865907
This is why I avoid buying any PDFs through onebookshelf. Buy them from warehouse23 or Pirate them.

>>51865907
Companies fling shit and act severely fucking retarded over piracy, which is still a very contentious topic.

How were they robbed of their pdfs?

>>51862409
>At this point, 4e's sales are nowhere near 3e's

This isn't really true by any metric.

Hell, even fucking Mike Mearls has said that every edition outsold its predecessor, including 4e.

Also D&D Insider had a solid number of subscribers, each paying regular fees for access to digital content. (While Wizards doesn't release book sales, they DID give us DDI numbers.)

>>51862409
>So Hasbro and Mearls think "Well, if we make something a little more like 3e, maybe we can sway some of our lost lambs back."

This is also mostly false.

Mearls wormed his way to the D&D lead through office politics, ousting most of the guys who made 4e what it was in the process (kind of like when Gygax cut out Arneson for AD&D). Now Mearls doesn't and never did give a shit about market demographics, he's just a big fucking 3e fanboy and he took the opportunity to try and warp 4e into the game he though D&D "should" be, because in Mike Mearls' world fighters can't have special abilities and wizards HAVE to be better than other classes.

>>51865938
>This is also mostly false.
>Mearls wormed his way to the D&D lead through office politics, ousting most of the guys who made 4e what it was in the process (kind of like when Gygax cut out Arneson for AD&D). Now Mearls doesn't and never did give a shit about market demographics, he's just a big fucking 3e fanboy and he took the opportunity to try and warp 4e into the game he though D&D "should" be, because in Mike Mearls' world fighters can't have special abilities and wizards HAVE to be better than other classes.
Citation needed.

Mearls is fucking fugly as shit though, holy shit.

>>51865799
Just taking away penalties made a huge difference.

If it wasn't for the "math bug" you could make a dwarf rogue or wizard with a 16 starting stat and be just fine.

In 3.PF if you have a racial penalty it is crippling, especially for point buy, it essentially locked out classes to races. In 4e you just lose a +1 which isn't nearly so brutal.

As much as a imperfect creature that 4e is, I'll take it over 3.PF 9 out of 10 times, easy.

>>51865938

>Hell, even fucking Mike Mearls has said that every edition outsold its predecessor, including 4e.

Comparing sales of editions is a really stupid metric imo. The market for basically everything has increased dramatically over time due to higher populations/increased globalisation and games gain brand recognition with time so you can't really say 'X is higher than Y so that means better'

>>51865680

>That never happened
Proof
>It's good that it happened

Swear to God it's like arguing politics on tumblr some days

>>51865568
>Dismissive ads and hostile business decisions, following aggressively insulting hostile in-person behavior, towards existing customers. It's all spelled out pretty clearly in this thread, but you would have to actually read it.

>"This commercial hurt my fee-fees!"

Guess they should have added trigger warnings, eh?

>>51865929
Removed download access for customers who already purchased them, when dtrpg sells them with the understanding of ongoing download access in the future. Did not refund those purchases.

>>51865961

Oh yeah, removing penalties was a fantastic step in the right direction and I applaud it.

I just think it could have gone a bit further (And maybe give some of the races that are a big generic more abilities to help there)

>>51865970
There is more than one person in this thread. And look, dissenting opinions, that's almost what conscious minds should be doing.

>>51861397
4e was dead on arrival

>>51865974
Nah. But if you insult me, whether it "hurts my fee fees" or not, I'm unlikely to pay you for it. Why the fuck would I.


>I'm going to act like a twat, and if you don't give me lots of money it's because you're a crybaby!
Get your head out of your ass.

>>51865974
So many things trigger people nowadays, if they all carried trigger warnings, they'd be swamped under labels.

Just get them to harden the fuck up.

>>51865998
I'm really not seeing the hostility, so they made fun of people calling the system simplified. You need to call out the retards.

>>51865998
>Nah. But if you insult me, whether it "hurts my fee fees" or not, I'm unlikely to pay you for it. Why the fuck would I.

Because you are an intelligent individual who has the mental capacity to evaluate a product independent of the marketing attached?

I'm almost happy the botched 4e marketing kept out the people who did not possess said capacity. Almost.

>People are missing out on a great system because they're acting like crybabies
>Will continue to react like this rather than trying the system out
Okay.

>>51865998
And, if it was just "they acted like twats in public" that would be one thing, but combined with:

>Revoked access to games I purchased
>Trashed then stopped producing the books I was buying most
>Had little interest in the game's mechanics

Why the fuck would I buy shit I don't like, from a company who were *also* acting like twats.

>>51865791
>looking shit up

AKA providing citations for your bullshit

You may not have noticed that, Anon, but you're anonymous. Your words carry zero trust because I cannot recognize you.

You're the one who wants me to believe something new, as such, i, you'll have to provide sources. I'm not going to do the work for you, because I'm not the one who cares.

>>51866048

>Any complaint I don't agree with is just that the complainer being a "crybaby"
>I think this system is great, therefor it is objectively great
>My preferences are the only ones that are valid and everyone else is a lesser, sub-human non-person who should just think the same way that I do
t. literally you

>>51866053
Did you pirate their pdfs?

>>51866036
And I did. Spelled it out upthread.

They were rude dicks who discontinued products I enjoyed and revoked access to shit I purchased and put out a bunch of products I tried (with someone else's books) for a yearlong campaign and decided I did not enjoy the game.

It might have been different if I actually liked the mechanics. I didn't.

>>51865953
>Citation needed.

Hard to post proof about the office politics since it mostly comes from the word of guys like Heinsoo and others who got canned while Mearls got promoted. Several of the lead 4e designers were let go in Hasbro "Christmas layoffs" and then Mearls got the lead position. Admittedly, there might be a bit of salt involved in those recountings.

On the other hand, it's not like Mearls was involved in any fantastically successful 4e products that would warrant his promotion. The best-selling thing he worked on was, ironically, the Castle Ravenloft 4e boardgame (with Slavicsek, another 4e pioneer who was forced out of the company a couple of years after Mearls took lead).

>>51866085
>reading that much into it.
Well, I guess I can see how Wizards may have personally insulted you.

>>51865938
>he's just a big fucking 3e fanboy
I hate Mearls but what

>>51866093
That's only your opinion though, and not something they're actually said.

>>51866097
There would've been bad blood there and lots of grumbling, you don't think at all that their word would've carried bias?

>>51866071
>You're the one who wants me to believe something new, as such, i, you'll have to provide sources. I'm not going to do the work for you, because I'm not the one who cares.

>"Why should I examine my worldview? I'm so comfy in my delusions!"

>>51866071
>Burden of proof
>Want me to believe something.
There's the crux of the matter. Burden of proof only applies if you're trying to convince someone of something. I don't care what you believe, and I'm not trying to convince you of anything, so burden of proof doesn't apply.

If you care what happened, you've got the things I and others in this thread have said. You can look them up if you want to know. If you don't care enough to look them up, think what you want.

Maybe someone else cares what you believe about 10 year old news. I simply answered a question.

>>51866139
Why are you this delusional?

Also, have you pirated their pdfs?

Wow. This thread sure went to shit.

>>51866158
Just like 4e.

>>51866118
>I hate Mearls but what

When Mearls got the lead position on 4e, he made it more like 3e.

When Mearls got the chance to lead design on 5e, he copypasted his houseruled version of 3e.

>>51866089
WOTC?

After they revoked my purchased PDFs I did, yeah (2e and 3e stuff). Before that, I made a point to buy my PDFs so long as they were books you could buy PDFs for.

>>51866093
>>51866139
>>51866146
>the insults and the mocking and the belittling
>believe us guys, it was all there, I swear!
Hah, this just makes it seem you're all reaching and claiming something was written when it really wasn't.

>>51866154
>Why are you this delusional?

>"no u"

>>51866176
Then get off your moral high horse. You don't get one.

>>51866169
Chance of Mearls leaving before 6e?

>>51866146
>I don't care what you believe

Fair enough. The thread is also way better when it's about D&D than when it's about WotC.

>>51866186
Truly a comeback for the ages. I was staggered and left reeling from your devastating verbal lashing. Truly.

>>51866119
Of course it's my opinion that determined whether I bought the product. But them being dicks about things was one of the things on the list that formed that opinion.

>>51866209
All I'm really reading is >no, you guise, I'm being super serious, believe me, guise, really.

>>51866195
Nah. I don't have a high horse anymore. WOTC killed it when they took my PDFs and I realized buying anything digital from them was just throwing money away for literally nothing because they couldn't be trusted to honor their end of the purchase.

>>51866158
>>51866165
Didn't like hearing your delusions blown the shit out?

>>51866280
You need help.

>>51866169
Mearls hates the "simulation" (I know, I know) parts of 3.X. His rule-writing is absolutely abstract.
His post in ENworld back then evidenced it.

>>51866294
Is 2017. Simulation has never worked and will never work. The problem here is not the simulation is that Mearls is not Gamist enough.

>>51866233
your pet system sucked so badly a company of drooling retards like paizo could not only survive but even prosper next to it. Just kys, 4E drone.

>>51866315
>Simulation has never worked and will never work
u wot. 3.5 was simulationist as fuck and it's still played. GURPS is pretty simulationist and is massively successfull, so is Dark Heresy and its brethren. Even WoD abstains from meta currency and most plost powers. In fact, the only systems really trying for "gamist" that are huge are FATE and 4E and we know what happened with 4E...

>>51866315
>Is 2017
Kill yourself.
Also, you will never reach a perfect simulation but 4ed kills immersion sometimes and Mearls is fine with that.

>>51862225
>That digital miniature creator

And I bet my fucking ass that 4e would be smooth as shit to play in all the programs they showed. A game created to be D&D in digital form. I'd love to play that, I'd argue it could exist side by side with 5e or even 3e.

>>51866290
>thinking Wizards ran a smear campaign
Okay.

>>51866325
If you think about it, is an evidence of how much 4ed sucked.
Paizo is terribly amateurish and still managed to be more attractive.