Who has ruined Dungeons and Dragons (and tabletop games by extension)

>>53858529
Lorraine Williams came first and began the whole downward spiral. Without her, Cook could never have gotten such a foothold.

She is ultimately responsible for it all.

Mearls

>>53858555
Lorraine didn't hold Cook's hand when he was writing third edition to be as awful as possible

>>53858529
Anyone who has a different opinion than you.

There, now you can delete the thread

Lorraine. Cook sucked but he didn't literally put TSR out of business.

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>>53858529
I figure Lorraine did more damage to the brand than Monte, but I think the real problem is the people who were just a little TOO into 3.x and played it as their first and only game. They've given D&D players an even worse name than they had before, but now RPG communities have to deal with faggots like them who refuse to play anything else.

3.x fans are like the FF7 fans of tabletop. They got into it only when it became popular, keep trying to push it as the best one despite its deep flaws and ridiculous balance, and refuse to move on to better games.

>mfw yet another "run it in 3.pf or I won't join" player comes barging in to a game I'm starting

>>53858529
Mike Mearls

>>53858529

Gary Gygax, for turning his literal shitty homebrew into a worldwide media empire in the first place. Having Marc Miller or either Steve Jackson in the "father of gaming" role would have been better for the hobby.

I know that everyone is talking about how all the new interests in the hobby from Matt Mercer's live streams are leading to a "renaissance" in the gaming scene, but does anyone else feel like this is going to be a really bad thing in the long run?

Lorraine: Actively hates the hobby and the gamers, tries arbitrarily to fuck everything over.
Cook: Badwrongfun.

>>53860402
Too bad they would have never taken the first step without Arneson and his assistant Gygax.

>>53860421
Dude, I lived through the horrendous "Gray Goo"/"Scorched Earth" nonsense that 3e brought in.

How could it be a really bad thing? Its a foregone conclusion that it won't be worse than Everything Is D20 faggotry.

How can d&d be ruined when 5e is the best it's ever been?

>>53860469
>How is D&D ruined when 5e is more popular than ever?
>How is gaming ruined when Call of Duty is more popular than ever?

Use your brain

>>53860500
Every single edition of D&D can be a Call of Duty comparison.

>>53860512
Call of Dungeons: Dragon Warfare

>>53858529
This is fun, but you need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room that is 4e. It's like comparing neighborhood bullies to ISIS.

One thing some people don't know about TSR during Lorraine's tenure was that they sent out a lot of cease-and-desist letters when people tried to publish homebrew adventures. At one point they even threatened to sue a man for using the word "dwarves" in his homebrew, as they considered it to infringe on a similar product. Wizards created the OGL to settle this so that they could focus on minting money with MtG and PokemonCG, which is part of why we can post things instead of emailing it around via listservs. TSR had become dangerously toxic, and the chilling effects threatened the hobby more than a bunch of weeaboos looking to act out in much the same way as the mock satanist rpgers had done a generation before.

>>53860684
but 4e did nothing wrong.

Ditching all the sacred cow baggage from previous editions was the best possible move, the only ones that disagreed were the muh 3.5 is the only game grognards, and trying to please that crowd gets you the shambling mass that is Pathfinder.

>>53860500
I didn't say popular, I said best

>>53860745
4e was a flawed turn-based combat videogame. While it did bring good changes, most of it was gangrenous trash and wasn't meant for tabletop nor roleplaying.

>>53860894
Literally the only problem with 4E was that it used the D&D name for something that was highly dissimilar from previous versions

>>53860894
>flawed
as 3.5 was too
>turn-based combat
*stare*
>videogame
Unless you do shit like in PTU where you do crunch normally done by computers, you don't call TTRPGs videogames.

>>53860745
4e did plenty wrong, it listened to people who started with 3.pf and saw all the flaws that system had. Naturally those people wanted them gone and to enjoy a better RPG.
What they did not know was that there were editions before 3.pf which didn't have many of its issues.
So for example, idiots complain about caster supremacy in 3.pf, 4e works to solve that. Does it try using to return to a system that was tested and worked fine at containing them? Nah, it goes its own way and makes up a bunch of new mechanics, it deserves all the hate it gets, because I'm trying to play DnD.
Since it's way easier to convince people to play with rules that exist instead of homebrewing your fixes, I can't just get everyone to play ADnD but with some changes, which was exactly what 4e should've been and failed miserably at.

>>53861001
>Does it try using to return to a system that was tested and worked fine at containing them?
Grampa, your old system didn't work fine, it was just in an era before nerds had the internet with which to easily point out the issues.

>>53861001
Casters were frequently of similar power as 3e in AD&D. In many cases they didn't allow saves.

>>53860432
>Of course 4chan considers Grand Autist Arneson to be the real innovator
That fat asshole just sat in the corner bitching about how nobody could keep up with him while writing increasingly incomprehensible notes on scratch paper.

>>53861226
They were balanced around needing more effort to get the ball rolling. 4e makes them balanced instead of allowing a stronger but riskier character choice to exist.

>>53861226
>>53861001
Oh, and the main distinction being: Initiative. A lot of people FUCKIN HATE AD&D style inits, but the way casters can be fucked up by inits was the balancing factor.

See, many people hated and hate the inits minigame... but that was what kept casters in line

Simply accept alle ditions are their own thing and move on.

>>53861116
>it was just in an era before the nerds who got driven out of the local gaming scene for being shitty people had the internet with which to band together and make the world a worse place
Fixed the typos.

>>53861273

There are unambiguously more and less risky chars in 4e.

Although I like AD&D, the way the game tends to weigh on casters for mirror image adn stoneskin and die almost immediately without them just isn't good game design and I don't mind new eds not being based off that.

Also, the forced movement and role minigame in 4e is extremely fun.

>>53861289
We all know that 3aboos are shit, that doesn't make the stuff that came before magically better.

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>>53860402
>Marc Miller
Hahaha! Yeah, no, I wouldn't have wanted the world's most popular RPG to force you to do 50 pages of random life event rolls which could result in your PC dying before even finishing chargen.

Traveller kind of works for space opera, but it would have been a death knell for fantasy roleplaying.

>>53860564
Not even gonna lie, I'd play a fantasy CoD.

>>53861273

>They were balanced around needing more effort to get the ball rolling. 4e makes them balanced instead of allowing a stronger but riskier character choice to exist.

'You get to kick the other players in the balls later' is not balanced by 'You get kicked by the other players in the balls now'. It ignores the fact that RPGs don't all start at 1 and go to 20. A game that starts at 1 and goes to 3 should be as fine as one that starts at 18 and goes to 20 balance-wise.

>>53862066
That is a form of balance, or averaging, around long-term investment, in the same way that investing in a law degree will eventually get you more power than investing in becoming a military operator. But it's not a guarantee, nothing in life or character advancement should be. You could die as a 2nd level wizard in the same way you could become a low-paid country lawyer. Or you might go from lawyer to president of the USA.

This wasn't even by accident; Gygax specifically designed it this way. Same with different XP tables for different classes; it was a way to modulate the power level. Initiative segments; interruptable spellcasting; hideously difficult ways to make magic items. All these balancing mechanisms were jettisoned out the window by the idiots who designed 3E.

>>53862148

>That is a form of balance, or averaging, around long-term investment, in the same way that investing in a law degree will eventually get you more power than investing in becoming a military operator. But it's not a guarantee, nothing in life or character advancement should be. You could die as a 2nd level wizard in the same way you could become a low-paid country lawyer. Or you might go from lawyer to president of the USA.

The issue there is that it only works if you assume a game will go from 1-20. Most games don't (Heck, most don't even go to 10). A game should be balanced no matter which levels you start or finish at.

>>53860894

What makes it a video game? Or heck, not for roleplaying.

>>53862148
>This wasn't even by accident; Gygax specifically designed it this way. Same with different XP tables for different classes; it was a way to modulate the power level. Initiative segments; interruptable spellcasting; hideously difficult ways to make magic items. All these balancing mechanisms were jettisoned out the window by the idiots who designed 3E.
Actually, Gygax just didn't understand why people would want to play anything that isn't a human fighter, so he made all other choices worse. Just listen to Tim Kask

>>53860964
I.e. it's a good game, but not a good D&D game. Happens a lot everywhere.

>>53861959
What would fantasy CoD entail? A non-complicated setting with clear black-and-white morals drawn mainly on political lines that allows one to go shooting with no consequences...I dunno, sounds like a dungeon crawl of some sort with more hoorah.

>>53858529
>and tabletop games by extension
grt troll, m8

>>53863089
multiplayer involves being dragons shooting other dragons with breath weapons, obviously

>>53863126

Nah, a dragon is your kill streak reward. Better hope someone on your team has a staff of destruction to bring it down.

ITT: Retards don't understand older editions of D&D, bitch about them.

>implying casters were easy to level up
>implying casters had universal access to their spell lists at all times
>implying spells weren't more and more likely to be resisted as characters leveled up
>implying the game is supposed to be about "le epic story" and not dungeon crawling
>implying the game wasn't designed around having adventuring parties filled with characters of different levels
>implying that hit point bloat existed nearly as badly as it does in modern editions

>>53863243
>implying the game is supposed to be about "le epic story" and not dungeon crawling
if that was all that D&D is, D&D wouldn't remain popular. it may be good enough for you but it would become boring for most anyone else rather quickly

>>53859939
This.

>>53863243

>implying the game is supposed to be about "le epic story" and not dungeon crawling

Wait, isn't the complaint about 4e that it's bad at stories rather than just doing murderhobos in dungeons?

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>>53858529
Williams was worse, but honestly, the d20 open license did far more damage than either of them. The OGL was what propagated the d20 system into hundreds of other games, which flooded the market with low quality shit, making it difficult for other games to emerge and gain market share, and depressing the industry for several years.

More damaging than that, it created a generation of gamers who came up when basically every game you could find used the same system. The system, like all systems, has numerous flaws and limitations, and this generation, because they were exposed to little else, has largely assimilated those flaws and limitations into their own play style, which has created various systemic issues that you still find in the hobby today. And that generation was extremely resistant to experimentation, and has become frequently hostile toward innovations and changes in the community, because they were conditioned to expect the hobby would always conform to the same mechanics and behaviors, regardless of whether they were appropriate for what was being done.

I mean, a lot of people like the d20 system, and that's fine. I don't hate it myself. But no matter what system you're talking about, it isn't going to be the best fit for every game, and the OGL basically created a whole generation of gamers who do not really understand that.

>>53858589
Mearls, yes.

>>53860402
Every time the hobby sees an influx of players, whether they come in from Vampire or anime, from the broader appeal of 4th edition or the fans of YouTuber shows, it is going to have both positive and negative results. And, in a few years, most of the new players it brought in will have left, and the hobby will not have changed in any earth shattering way. There will be some new games and new players that stayed with us, some of them good, some of them bad.

>>53863243
>when people forget that clerics have to petition their gods for whatever cheese spell combination they're run across
>when people forget that that means that the GM has unlimited veto power over the cleric's spell list on a daily basis

>>53860564
I'd play the fuck outta that

>>53859939
Yeah... Have to agree with this dude here. Most of the people I know who play D&D, they stick to 3E because it's the first one they played, and basically refuse other shit because it's what they know and think it's the best.

>>53863631
And because they think that learning any other system will be as big a pain in the ass.
You forgot that part.

>>53861226
Not even comparable. They had their spells, that was it, what they didn't have was the million and five other options that could be layer on top, or 3.5's vast library of ridiculous spells.

>>53861378
There's nothing really magical about it. Old school D&D has a solid, easy to run base, that manages to present almost none of 3e's glaring issues.

>>53863631

Yeah. That I think is pretty safe to call one of the major failings for 4e's release. If I had to put names to the main causes of failure I'd go with:

>Very devoted 3e fanbase.
It made any change away from 3e and it's design a very, very risky move. Not undealable but it wasn't going to be easy. 3e had been about for a staggeringly long time for an RPG so many people had only known it. It's the reason sacred cows have become such a major part of game design parlance and killing so many of them at once, while understandable, was the first 'Not my D&D' stop.

>Death of the Open Licence.
The open licence was a terrible idea. It came from some good places but the implementation was terrible, giving WOTC basically zero creative control or ability to pull products they didn't approve of. There was no way in hell it could survive to the next edition but taking away something people had with them for so many years got massive backlash.

Worst of all for them, it's lack of control allowed Paizo to just release Pathfinder to give the people who wanted more 3e exactly that under a new name. This gave birth to an alternative to 4e that had serious inertia as people playing 3e were basically already playing it. Convincing people to not change something is easier than convincing them to change.

>>53863899
>or 3.5's vast library of ridiculous spells.
They had that, have you not seen the Wizard's/Priest's Spell Compendium series of books?

>>53863959

>Very poorly handled marketing.
4e's marketing was not very well handled as it focused more on 'Suddenly, things will change for the better' rather than 'This is the same D&D you've always loved with an updated edition'. It banked more on the fact that the 3e fanbase knew the flaws of it's own system and were willing to joke about with them than it did on brand loyalty. With Pathfinder being able to steal brand loyalty out from under them, this led to people to not engaging with marketing (Or if they did, in bad ways. Basically no one used Gnomes in games but dammit they were in the 3e handbook so they were D&D!)

>Murder-Suicide makes everything worse.
4e's design was rather tied into the modern idea that computers could help you do stuff better. A lot of tools were advertised to help make stuff easier and simpler for GMs and players. Then they were unable to deliver on them when the developer working on the killed himself and his wife.

>Could have used a little more baking for the monsters.
4e's developers were working with a completely new system and completely new monster design but were still working with some 3e ideas. In 3e it was fine for a monster to just be HP and damage, that's what a lot of big brute monsters like giants were. However, 4e's higher focus on the complexity of a character didn't mesh well with that. Monsters had too much HP and too few abilities. They didn't use immediate actions well or have on-death effects for minions yet.

It didn't make the game unable to be played but it led to a dullness in initial monsters when they really needed a running start to get people interested after the other issues. If it was the only D&D on the block, it would have been able to afford a slow build up but with Paizo in the running it cost them badly.

>>53863959
>3e had been about for a staggeringly long time for an RPG so many people had only known it.
8 years is not 'a staggeringly long time'. 2e was out for 11 years, 1e was out for somewhere between 10 and 12 depending on when you start counting, BECMI was out for 12, Classic Traveller was out for 10...

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>>53858529
Short answer: WotC marketing, with some help from Monte Cook

Long answer: Tabletop games are shit now, but not because of the actual games. There are tons and tons of good games out there. No, tabletop is shit because its playerbase is shit, and it's playerbase is shit because 3.5 was too fucking popular.

But, 3.5 became popular largely because of its business model, not because of Monte Cook's shitty design philosophy. 3.5 was cheap/inexpensive, and all the necessary information could be found online thanks to the OGL. At the same time, 3.5 had a very healthy line of preset adventure paths, and those are a new DM's best friend.

In the end, you're left with a potent combination of a really popular product that dominates the market, with a shitty design whose presence can still be felt 10 years after the product was discontinued.

>>53860894
>4e was a flawed turn-based combat videogame
Agreed, introducing turn-based combat to D&D was unforgivable. It's been years and my immersion STILL hasn't recovered. I may never be immersed in a verisimilitudinous roleplaying ~experience~ ever again... damn you to hell, 4e!

>>53863960
They had their own library of ridiculous spells, but the difference is that these were explicitly put in at GM whim; there wasn't even a mechanic for finding them randomly in the core books, and players don't get agency in choosing spells in AD&D.

They also didn't have shit like greater shivering touch, or the celerity spells.

>>53864117
>and players don't get agency in choosing spells in AD&D.
Well, they kind of do. They get one spell on level-up (assumed to be from research they've been doing suddenly coagulating into a new spell), but they only get to choose that if they're okay with making the learning roll (and possibly getting no spells at all that level if they fail) otherwise they get a GM-determined spell they're guaranteed to learn.

>>53864032
>and it's playerbase is shit because 3.5 was too fucking popular.
>my secret club reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

uh-huh.

>>53864155
I think he's referring more to the mindset and expectations 3.5 created.

>>53864155
The popularity is fine. It's just that all those people 3.5 brought in either...
>only want to play 3.P and nothing else
>still play other RPGs with the bad habits they got from 3.5
It's a fucking mess.

>>53864169
Got it in one.

>>53864027

Mind you, at the same time shadowrun's longest was 7 years between 3e and 4e, World of Darkness got a new game line every year or two, Call of Cthulhu had a new version pop out every couple of years and Runequest was generally 3 years (Excluding the gap between 3e and the Mongoose version).

D&D has really long editions.

>>53864203
Speaking of long editions, SLA Industries probably takes the cake. Given that 1.1 is just an errata'd version of 1.0 with some new fluff stories and art, and Redux is just 1.0 with 1.1's stories, AND it's still getting new releases you could argue that it's been one edition for 24 years.

>>53864147
Ah, it's been a while. Regardless, you didn't have free reign through the splats.

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ITT: Captain Hindsight and his sidekick Cynical Lad tear apart a massively popular game that's 15 years old.

Gee whiz guys, tell us some more about how the edition that got millions of people into role-playing games isn't perfect and can't accommodate your particular playstyle!

I'd be willing to bet most of you weren't even old enough to read in the year 2000. But please, do continue to act like 60-yr-old men shitting on a scapegoat because things today aren't like, "the good ol' days"

>>53864734
The edition that got millions of people into role-playing left them with terrible taste, bad habits, and an inability to play any RPG that isn't 3.P.

t. an anon who is eternally regretful that he started tabletop with 3.5

>>53862856
>Actually, Gygax just didn't understand why people would want to play anything that isn't a human fighter, so he made all other choices worse. Just listen to Tim Kask
And yet his group was made up of like 8 wizard PCs.

Gygax was the one who ruined RPGs

>>53860894
>Turn based combat
It's fucking d&d it's all turn based you moron

Next you're going to complain about how it made everyone into classes even though everyone naturally did that.

In 2e nobody looked at the guy who rolled 16 strength, 12 dex, and 14 con and said "okay you're gonna sit in the back with a bow" you threw on the heaviest armor you could, grabbed a longsword, and became the party's tank.

>>53865589
Don't speak badly of the dead, anon. Not even in jest.

>>53865715
What if the dead fuck up?

>>53865896
Ghosts are assholes so I still wouldn't risk it.

>>53864954
Ditto.

>>53863976
>Then they were unable to deliver on them when the developer working on the killed himself and his wife.
Wow, is that really what happened? I always wondered why they dropped the ball so hard on all the online shit they had talked about. It seemed to kill a lot of momentum for that whole edition.

>>53864027
>8 years is not 'a staggeringly long time'.
It is a long time though in the life of a game. Keep in mind that every couple of years, an entire new generation of kids hits the age that they start getting into gaming, and that's where most new players come from. Some of those players might be around for the next 40 years, but that is still the generation they arrived in, and it still shapes their perspective.

>>53866191

Yeah, thought I was slightly mistaken there. It was himself and his ex-wife.

Unfortunately, people who are in the sort of mood to get involved in murder suicide are not great at commenting or leaving documentation so even when they did get access to his work, it took forever to get anyone else working on it.

>>53863631
You know, I don't really play D&D but I feel like it should be noted, to my knowledge, that "editions" are not a natural thing.

They've never been something the public has cried out for. They're a marketing invention. An excuse to keep pushing out published works for consumption in a game system that is naturally inclined towards an unprofitable buy for life model.

Editions came out of an accident in an IP fight between Gygax and TSR where it made sense to just reboot the whole franchise to stamp a new companies ownership on the new fresh version of not Gygax D&D. Then in another fight. Then companies noticed that the public was going along with these mega-reboots and slated them to happen every couple of years. Except we've only gone through around 5 in all that time.

There was never any guarantee that the public would actually put up with this forever. That people actually like having their books, and world's and communities thrown into the trash every couple of years for the sake of a constant revenue stream for some company.

>>53866314

>They've never been something the public has cried out for. They're a marketing invention. An excuse to keep pushing out published works for consumption in a game system that is naturally inclined towards an unprofitable buy for life model.

Eh, editions have a lot of uses once a game has gone on for several years. It prevents games becoming utterly arcane due to more errata than original word count and allows for more dramatic core mechanic improvements than errata or optional rules would allow.

>>53858529
To be honest, Gary Gygax ruined D&D, but hey, that's just my vote. I hate it.

>>53866314
Its actually the perfect product from a marketing stand point.
People like novelty nostalgia and sex so naturally a shiny new version of their favourite book with tits on the cover is a gold mine.

>>53858529
>I hate D&D 3.x
>Pathfinder is da best!
Poor child. You are all the same, whining and hating instead of enjoying some games.

>>But the normies are ruining it all!
There is no "normies". You are not special. None of you.

>>53863545
>when people complain that high level AD&D wizards were much much stronger than high level fighters
>when people forget that a high level fighter worth his salt ought to have a castle, an army and a full set of magical gear and armour while a wizard has a few wands and scroll because he spent all his money on spell components

>>53858935
/thread

>>53858529
Gary Gygax after he had a fall-off with Dave Arneson

It all started back then.

>>53859939
This.

It's especially ridiculous where I live, since 3.X was barely published and skipped by the RPG scene, BUT as the years passed new kids who come into the hobby and know it from the internet only heard about 3.X and 3.PF as the "superior games", so despite NEVER PLAYING they come at table and start pushing 3.X

That's the higher tier of pathological damage done by 3.X to not just D&D, but tabletop RPG in general

>>53866824
... how is any of this related with OP's post?

Rolled 4, 3 = 7 (2d6)

>>53858529

Me

>>53863921
>Old school D&D has a solid, easy to run base
How many pages are your houserules? Or are they so internalized at this point you don't even realize they aren't the written ones?

It may not have had the same glaring issues as 3e, but glaring issues it had.

>>53860964
Same as 3.PF. In D&D combat was a fail state, that's why most of XP came from gold. WotC thought that combat was the main thing.

And lets not enter the whole dungeon crawl subject...

>>53862148
A horizontal balance as you describe is SHIT. Balance should be vertical.

>>53863921
>Old school D&D has a solid, easy to run base
ONLY if you play modern games that sell themselves as "oldschool D&D experience". The actual, real deal is as much a clusterfuck as 3e. If not bigger, but that depends if you cound first edition of AD&D as "oldschool" or not. Either way, 0D&D wasn't easy to run nor was it solid base.

>3.X haters still holding their little pity parties

It's kind of sad that you come to this website just to find the three other sad fucks who hate the 2nd most popular system of all time and hold these little sessions.

>>53867773
>Trying this hard
We get it, you never played anything else, you sad fuck and get butthurt, since numbers of your group are dvindling each year and at this pace in next decade you will be still trying to play 3.X, but there won't be anyone left to play with.

>>53867357
Zero. I'm just not stupid, I can handle basic math.

>>53867511
I've run second edition, and it was extremely easy to run. Guess you're just dumb.

>>53867773
What the fuck are you trying to say?
Some people just dislike 3.x or even D&D, what is wrong with that?

>>53867773
>2nd most popular system of all time

out of curiosity, what's the first?

>>53866531
Depending on your definition of what constitutes a new edition, simply issuing "revised" or whatever versions of the books every now and then could solve that problem.

That still doesn't solve the problem of splatbook accumulation, though, or finding major flaws that can't reasonably be fixed with a little errata.

>>53870778
New editions bring new game design. I always understood THAC0, but loved BAB when it came.

New editions should bring NEW. Not revised. 3.0, 3.5, 3.PF are monsters. The scientific type of monsters, the one scientists create at labs wanting to do good but bringing mayhem instead.

>>53870980
>I always understood THAC0, but loved BAB when it came.
Same, but that's the sort of thing that could easily be brought in with revised books. It's literally just changing the way something is described, the only thing that makes it inappropriate for simple errata is because a huge number of entries would need to be changed.

New editions, in my opinion, constitute major changes like switching to (or from) 4e's AEDU setup or baking feats into the entire system (rather than AD&D's splatbook based approach to that sort of thing).

>>53870488
It's okay to dislike it. Nothing wrong with that.
But there are four guys here who literally can't stop shitposting about how it's the worst game of all time, like they think they'll ever convince anyone.
It's one thing to dislike a system, it's another to be seeped in hatred to the point where the mere mention of the game triggers you.

Most people here have learned to just avoid talking to them, because all they do is repeat the same defeated arguments over and over again.

>>53863409
4e is bad at doing dungeons. 4e is good at doing miniatures combat.

>>53860745
This was a pretty good troll, you fooled many a prepubescent young man.

Anyone new to the controversy should just sit down and ask themselves, "Would I want to play an MMO as a pencil-and-paper game?", and they'll be ahead of you.

>>53870496
5E, obviously.

>>53877674
>trotting out the 4e = mmo meme
You aren't even trying at this point

>>53870437
Guess you never played 0D&D

>>53871961
Are they by chance named Huey, Dewey, Louie and Trish?

>>53877779
It's a meme because it's based in fact.

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>>53860745
I know you. and you're still wrong.

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>>53861273
"Balance" was never a real issue, and 4e's "balance" was nonexistent from the start. even 4e players admit the system is imbalanced - now that their system has been revealed as the shittily made mess it always was to the general public.

4e created it's own sacred cows, and then slaughtered them.

>>53874915

What part of dungeons is 4e bad at?

>>53878450

>Can't be satisfying as a tactics game because there is no opponent to match wits with.

Right, I'll go tell people that playing Fire Emblem isn't really fun because it's single player.

>It isn't immersive role-playing because it's centred around combat

About as much as any edition of D&D, yes. Every single edition has had more rules for combat than non-combat.

>>53878520
Not him, but the post of your picture makes less sense with each following sentence. By the end it's barely coherent at all.
>inb4 4rry
I've just learned that' the term. And the only D&D I've ever played was a single game of AD&D about 12 years ago. But I do like to read the constant edition wars on /tg/, since it's kind of amusing how much virtol people can throw into arguing which version of class-and-level based game is less/more shit.

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>>53878615
>About as much as any edition of D&D

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>>53860423

this.

also, who is the Pathfinder fag who fetish-waifus his NPC's

fuck that guy

>>53879351

In which areas does it not?

>>53863335
>if that was all that D&D is, D&D wouldn't remain popular.
It certainly wouldn't be as big as it is, but that's what it's designed for, and many of the problems of the game come from trying to apply it outside of that niche. It's like everybody's using the back end of a screwdriver to hammer in nails.

>>53882203
>In which areas does it not?

to answer for him: not enough OP magic spells.

I honestly don't know how that relates, but without fail whenever the question comes up, that's always the answer. "Well in 3.5 the wizard could just cast X spell. They took that spell out of 4e and I can't think of any other way to get around problems except using a single magic spell to solve it by myself, so the only recourse is combat every time." Wash, rinse, repeat.

Presumably it's literally impossible to roleplay in a game system that has no magic at all.

>>53867511
>The actual, real deal is as much a clusterfuck as 3e. If not bigger, but that depends if you cound first edition of AD&D as "oldschool" or not.
I don't know any definition by which 1st edition AD&D doesn't qualify as old school. In any case, AD&D is needlessly convoluted, and like all old school shit, has a bunch of subsystems that work in different ways, but if you ignore some of the nonsense (as absolutely every game I've ever played or seen does), the core of it is a lot simpler than 3.x. Of course, all that unnecessary clutter is why I tend to prefer Moldvay Basic. It's not perfect, and your mechanical options for character building are severely limited (even compared to base-level 1e), but what's there is streamlined and straightforward.

>>53878335
>Guess you never played 0D&D

is there any reason to play the original, rather than one of the basic sets? Seems like a lot of the stuff from Basic & Expert is just the stuff from the original books, but in a format that's ten times easier to parse.

>>53878335
Base-level OD&D (just the LBB without the supplements) is actually really simple... when you can figure out what the rules for shit actually are, anyway. There's too much shit that is un- or ill-defined. But if you're playing with a group that has already figured shit out / made rulings, that shouldn't be a big problem. But then that's more or less what B/X did: make the game comprehensible.

>>53883141
>OP magic spells
>OP
Not even that, anon. Shit like rope trick and ghost sound and prestidigitation isn't OP. It doesn't break the game, but I can't even begin to list how many times it's been useful.
Utility abilities in general got a pathetic amount of design space in 4e, for ALL classes. The fact that the vast majority of Powers could only be used during structured time is indicative.

>>53871781
>It's literally just changing the way something is described
Yeah but if you do that then everyone complains because martials have spells now?

>>53878520
>"Balance" was never a real issue, and 4e's "balance" was nonexistent from the start. even 4e players admit the system is imbalanced
At this point I don't even know what you mean when you use the word 'balance'. There's like three different interpretations you could be using here.

>>53883239
>Shit like rope trick and ghost sound and prestidigitation isn't OP.

What? Every single one of those is already a spell in 4e, although Rope Trick was moved to a supplement. And every single one can be used both in and out of combat.

>The fact that the vast majority of Powers could only be used during structured time

all powers can be used out of combat, although if you're a fighter then you're going to have to be creative to find ways to use most of your powers, with fewer non-combat utilities than wizards, who get a shitload. Even so, that's still more non-combat utility powers than fighters got in 3.5, which is zero.

>>53883239
>Not even that, anon. Shit like rope trick and ghost sound and prestidigitation isn't OP. It doesn't break the game, but I can't even begin to list how many times it's been useful.
When players start using ghost sound and prestidigitation to bluff their way through 3.x I start questioning that kind of analysis. Yeah, it's only a cantrip and the player is likely still going to have to roll checks, but you're effectively duplicating the effects of other spells with a fucking cantrip. Why bother spending slots on Minor Illusion if you can get your GM to let. you use cantrips instead?

>Utility abilities in general got a pathetic amount of design space in 4e, for ALL classes. The fact that the vast majority of Powers could only be used during structured time is indicative.
I agree that utilities were generally underutilized and later books did add more options that were less strictly combat-oriented, though they suffered by having to compete with combat options in a game that encourages combat. I would note that you didn't have to be in combat to use powers, you can declare objects as targets for your attacks or skip attack rolls to use the Effect line directly. The duration of encounter-long effects is defined at five minutes and you still have to rest to recover your abilities as appropriate.

It's a tough one between Cook and Mearls.

Cook still hasn't learned his lesson from 3e and keeps on making bad caster supremacy games.

Mearls shit on 4e's positive design principles and carried it forward to 5e.

>>53883239
>Shit like rope trick and ghost sound and prestidigitation isn't OP. It doesn't break the game,

Rope trick removes the single weakness wizards have, which is getting ganked while out of spells.

It removes a whole pretty important gameplay element of "find a safe place to rest", at the cost of a single slot.

I mean, I guess that's kinda just what magic does (bypass gameplay) but it still rubs me the wrong way.

>>53883388
>Every single one of those is already a spell in 4e
As generalizations or of-the-head examples, not actual arguments. You're not stupid, anon; you know what I was trying to say.

>more non-combat utility powers than fighters got in 3.5, which is zero
I literally just went through every fighter power in the 4e PHB, and couldn't find a single power that could reasonably be useful outside of combat. Don't pretend you have the higher ground here.

>>53883408
It's more than just cantrips and other minor shit that everyone forgets about. There are a great many decent spells that can be used in combat and out just as effectively. I've gotten a hell of a lot of milage from shit like Minor Image and Mount and even Unseen Servant, both in combat and out. And that's just level 1 spells.
And, if you look away from full casters, most other classes have extra utility that ends up useful in social situations, or in the wilderness, or in the non-combat parts of a dungeon, or literally anywhere else that isn't combat. You know, shit like Bards knowing almost anything, and Rangers having bonuses to basically every important skill in their favoured terrain.

The overwhelming focus 4e has on combat over everything else is so obvious, it hurts.

>>53883597
>complains about his examples being bad
>only focuses on PHB fighter powers which were admittedly (in the same post even) shite

> I've gotten a hell of a lot of milage from shit like Minor Image and Mount and even Unseen Servant, both in combat and out. And that's just level 1 spells.

Which still exist in 4e. IIRC minor image is a free cantrip you get, the other two are rituals.

You keep saying your of the hand examples don't count, but the thing is, 4e has about 90% of the shit in 3.5 (or any D&D really) covered... just not in the PHB.

>You know, shit like Bards knowing almost anything

Bards DO know almost everything. They have an ability to use basically any skill as if they were trained for a feat, as well as a bunch of class abilities that give them bonuses to knowledge.

They can also multiclass freely which makes them the true jack of all trades.

>and Rangers having bonuses to basically every important skill in their favoured terrain.

This one's missing (mostly because being focused on terrains when you are on a world romping adventure is fucking stupid) but in exchange they got other nature related stuff, and shit like being able to make ladders out of arrows or catching a falling ally with an arrow.

>>53883597
>It's more than just cantrips and other minor shit that everyone forgets about. There are a great many decent spells that can be used in combat and out just as effectively. I've gotten a hell of a lot of milage from shit like Minor Image and Mount and even Unseen Servant, both in combat and out. And that's just level 1 spells.
There's nothing strictly preventing them from being used in a similar fashion in 4e either, aside from a bunch of them not getting released until later books. DM is going to tell you to roll Arcana vs. whatever's appropriate, nothing's changed.

A lot of the 'missing' spells simply became rituals, and moving general utility stuff to rituals was a good idea in theory so now you can get your Waterbreathing without having to have a Wizard, although their execution was definitely lacking overall.

>And, if you look away from full casters, most other classes have extra utility that ends up useful in social situations, or in the wilderness, or in the non-combat parts of a dungeon, or literally anywhere else that isn't combat. You know, shit like Bards knowing almost anything, and Rangers having bonuses to basically every important skill in their favoured terrain.
Bards get some of the best bonuses on skills, Rangers got simplified into free training in either Nature or Dungeoneering with the rest of their flavor coming through powers. This seems more like a 'this isn't matching my expectations of how it's supposed to work' issue than 'classes are no longer able to fulfill their described roles'.

>>53883597
>As generalizations or of-the-head examples, not actual arguments. You're not stupid, anon; you know what I was trying to say.
and it should tell you something if you tried to come up with three examples off the top of your head coincidentally each one was totally 100% wrong

> I've gotten a hell of a lot of milage from shit like Minor Image
>and even Unseen Servant,

are... are you doing this on purpose now? OK I'll give you mount, I can't remember off the top of my head if that exists anywhere. But 1 out of 6 is fucking dire, dude

>you know, shit like Bards knowing almost anything,
I play a bard in my game. skill versatility, multiclass versatility, song of rest, words of friendship, fast friends, hunter's tune, inspire competence, by level 2, and again not counting all of the powers which are combat oriented but have effects that work outside of combat

AND BEST OF ALL, the powers that I get are unique to my class. I don't just cast a subset of the exact same fucking spells that wizards and clerics get, so even my powers that are 100% combat-focused are still tailored to being a bard and give my class its flavor both in and out of fights

>>53883835
>are... are you doing this on purpose now? OK I'll give you mount, I can't remember off the top of my head if that exists anywhere. But 1 out of 6 is fucking dire, dude

Chevalier paladins get mount summoning as a class ability, and there's http://funin.space/compendium/ritual/Steed-Summons.html

I think that covers it.

>>53883884
yeah if you're willing to count rituals and other classes it's surprising how much carried over. Like Rogues get a Spider Climb-y power. A lot of it got toned down, and I still have my reservations with the entire Ritual system, but it's in there.

>>53883907
Hour-long casting time and the expectation of spending wealth to cast those rituals in a system with relatively tight wealth rules crippled it from the get-go. If they'd relaxed that it probably would have done much better, although I think they were seriously concerned about ritual spam without it.

Later classes got features that let you cast certain rituals for free so someone clearly recognized there was a problem, but in the end it didn't really fix anything.

>>53883957
>Hour-long casting time and the expectation of spending wealth to cast those rituals in a system with relatively tight wealth rules crippled it from the get-go.

You are supposed to recoup the losses on rituals, at least that's how we always played it. Money isn't burned on it forever, it's just "locked down" until the adventure is over.

>>53883957
that's what makes 5e so tragic. I find it a billion times more tolerable than 3.5, but I wish they'd kept the good from 4e and improved on what didn't work. I absolutely think 4e should've had more non-combat utilities and better rituals and more flavor text and so on. But instead they treated the whole edition like a radioactive waste dump.

anyway to get the thread back on topic, that's why the real answer to OP's question is Mike Fucking Mearls

>>53883597
>You know, shit like Bards knowing almost anything

Bards still have that. They get a hefty bonus to all untrained skills so they are NEARLY as good at everything as a trained expert.

>>53883988

I'm a big 4e fan and I will fully agree there.

My biggest annoyance with 5e? They took the exact wrong thing from Rituals.

4e Rituals: Anyone trained in rituals can do them.
5e Rituals: Wizards (Barely any ritual spells on other class lists) can get free castings of some of their spells.

Something they did later in 4e that I think would have been a GREAT basis for future stuff was having Healing Surges as a cost for rituals. It gives them a cost (As you'll be more tired afterwards than before) without them costing permanent resources.

I'd have gone with, for a redone ritual system:

>Rituals of 1/2 level or less - No cost, just time.
>Rituals between that and your level - Cost in healing surges.
>Rituals above your level - Extra healing surges AND a strict location requirement like a cathedral for raising the dead.

With a GP cost only for permanent effect rituals (Like making items or raising a castle)

That + Expand the skills used in rituals. You want to cast mass invisibility? Roll me some Stealth, as the dex 8 and no training wizard knows fuck all about being sneaky and is likely to leave shadows or not quiet footsteps or other mistakes like that.

>>53884055
too bad they shat all over healing surges too, that would have made another interesting resource management mechanic. OH WELL

>>53884333

4e has an interesting thing where over the course of it's life it went through a lot of extra innovation and patching up flawed initial ideas, since they didn't have long-time experience with the mechanics for it. A 5e based on it would have likely been very interesting.

>>53884353
To be fair, a similar thing happened to 3.5 as well; it did get things like ToB classes and skill-tricks later in its life cycle, it's just that the holes were a lot larger than in 4e.

>>53884379
>ToB classes
muh immersion

>>53884385
... is enhanced because all of the characters are now competing on a more level playing field instead of somehow having to believe that the guy whose only talent is poking things with his sword is somehow relevant when you are fighting demons?