How D&D 4e is FIXING Dungeons and Dragons

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It seems some of the problems they are trying to fix with D&D 5e are being addressed with things that already existing in D&D 4e. Let's take a look at what Dungeons and Dragons 4e is, what it did well, and how it is being used in the new games.

Whether it is Dungeons and Dragons, Tales of the Valiant, or any number of other Tabletop Roleplaying Games, I want to talk about them.

00:00 Intro
00:23 The evolution of D&D
01:40 The goals of D&D 4e
04:38 How different was 4e
06:20 How D&D 4e is influencing new games
10:31 Conclusion

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This is an unpretentious, inclusive community of people that love tabletop roleplaying games including ALL versions of Dungeons and Dragons.

#dnd4e #ttrpg #ogl #dnd5e #dnd #ttrpg #koboldpress #projectblackflag #talesofthevaliant

[josephcarriveau]

My favorite thing about 4E was how it managed to *feel heroic* from level 1 all the way to the end. That intro adventure, the one with the hatchling white dragon, might be the best in-book sample adventure they'll ever release.

[oxybe]

One thing to note about the Virtual tabletop & character builder for 4e is the events around them. Specifically why the VTT never happened and why the character builder was late.

For those online and active in the D&D / MtG space at the time, you'll remember WotC's Gleemax well... if not, google "The Failure of Gleemax" you'll get an idea of it's most glorious rollout.

And the head of the Gleemax project was in charge of the 4e tools.

From what I gathered the guy wasn't a good project lead: he kept ideas close to his chest, didn't give direction, was bad at communicating and didn't really have goals set. He was also going through a messy divorce at the time.

Now's where things get dark. Real dark.

Our project lead, one evening, stalked his ex, locked themselves in a room, and committed murder-suicide. Wikipedia has information and links to news articles if you want more info, search "Joseph and Melissa Batten".

This caused WotC to cancel the Gleemax project and after bringing in an outside source to comb through Joseph's work for anything salvageable, the end result was they decided to scrap everything and work from scratch, as reverse engineering his work would take just as long, if not longer. They basically had to work full tilt to get just the character builder out, scrapping the VTT entirely, and it still wasn't ready for the release date of 4e.

4e had a messy, messy development cycle if you look more into it and hasbro/wotc policies of the time and i'm honestly amazed what came out was actually good. flawed, and could use a bit more time in the oven, sure, but it was good.

[AwkwardGMCorbin]

4e combat encounter and monster building tools were my favorite. It was sad to see them gone in 5e.

[SneakyNinjaDog]

The way you as the DM could add traps and obstacles to an encounter and count them towards your "encounter budget" was great.

[Arcboltkonrad]

4e caught so much flak by people who just never played it. I've managed to convince a number of people over the years to just sit down and play it (or at least READ the books) and they all came away with "wow, this is way better than I was led to believe." That more modern games are trying to snipe bits and ends from it is no surprise because of just how solid and good a system it was.

[pacecory]

honestly 4th edition was my first experience with TTRPGs, and it was and is still one of my all time favorite games

[strixvaria]

I recall an interview with Chris Perkins were he said something to the effect that 4e was his best work. Can’t find the receipt though.
I agree with Ol’Old. As my friends and I have watched the 5.5e rollout, we’ve said the same thing, and we taken every opportunity to remind our 5e friends that they are getting 4e features in their game. 😂

[cpvest]

I thought the 4e character builder was fantastic, it made character creation so much easier. My wife still picks 4e, my friend has always loved warriors and will choose a 4e fighter every time.. lol.

[shweppy]

Our group ran a full 4e campaign from 1-30 a few years back. I absolutely LOVED it!! I am running a 5e game now, and while it moves faster, there are less "I AM A BADASS" cinematic moments, particularly for martial characters. Martial characters feel absolutely amazing in 4e. I also loved all the variations of monsters in 4e with the different roles (soldier, stalker, striker, etc), not to mention the absolute genius inclusion of minions to pad out the ranks. Every battle required a degree of tactical thinking.

I will admit 4e is not for everyone, but for people who really enjoy crunchy power gaming character construction and cinematic combat where each character can have epic moments, I think 4e is the definitive edition. It has its flaws, but if you are willing to put up with those, it can create some wonderful memories for your gaming group that will last a lifetime.

[ClockworkBard]

A lot of the 4e criticisms boiled down to "I have 3e buy in and will hate on 4e to validate staying with the game I like". Empty claims like "it's just trying to be World of Warcraft" are still hilarious when stated in defense of the edition AD&D players called "just trying to be Diablo". (A comparison not helped by WotC producing actual official 3e Diablo books! They're very interesting byproducts of early 3e with a decidedly TSR vibe. Highly recommended as an academic read.)

I have my pain points over 4e, but they came about from years of running it and feeling out through experience where its limits lie. It's not "we can't roleplay." It's more things like "small encounters don't impact player resources, so I feel more pressured to make every encounter challenging". I'm glad to see people rediscovering 4e and hope it leads to someone polishing up a new take on its style.

[nicklarocco]

4e was so far ahead of its time, new games are only starting to catch up to its ideas.

[kylemullen]

The only bad thing about 4e is the amount of Ongoing effects, so many situational bonuses like bloodied, flanking, it can get messy quick when something is taunted, bloodied, has slow and ongoing 5 damage
Balance was good, epic, and paragon tiers were awesome and you really felt like you where gaining power
Tons of magic items, balanced arround only being able to use so many a day
Lots of player choice everywhere

[DeathHawk]

I will go on the record to say 4th edition was good. I started with 3.5 not really understanding "editions" which would explain some of my confusion early on. Back then there was no online resources that would explain anything to me and I ended up with many 2nd edition and AD&D books and while they all seemed like they went together I still had no idea what was going on, reading the books cover to cover and I still had no clear idea what the rules were and had to keep making stuff up. Another complaint I had was there seemed there wasn't enough for players to do, casters had only a couple spells a day, then they stood around useless and martials would just hit stuff. Then came 4th edition and turned a table top game into a video game giving players a butt load of powers and abilities. I had to buy tons of blank cards for my players and write out every single ability they had and write out all the math formulas for them and when playing, it was like they had a deck of cards. Turns took forever as they had to flip through like 3 dozen cards to figure out what they wanted to do. Sure we could have made simpler characters but after 3.5 of not giving us abilities, we now wanted it all and keep hoarding powers. And lets not forget it had too many floating modifiers. This gives me +1 if I'm doing this, but that guy gave me a +1 also, oh wait I'm standing in shadow, which gives me another +1, or did I add that already??? Then I get +1 to only this attack but not that attack, oh wait there was another +1 in there somewhere I think, oh and I still have the +1 that hasn't worn off yet from last turn. Also, can't believe I'm going to say this, it had toooo many power ups. Before and now in 5E, a class can be summed up in like 3 to 4 pages, 4E each class had like 20 pages, about 1 page per level, it was too much. That being said, 4E is where I was able to finally get friends to play cause the rules made sense and we could figure things out (and a plethora of minis didn't hurt either) I was reluctant to switch to 5E but then I realized it was a fusion of 3.5 and 4 where it simplified and streamlined all the 10 billion powers, maybe too simple, but we can understand how to play it. I will say I do like some of the complexity I see from Pathfinder 2E, many of the choices they made designing it make sense but the system feels weighty to me. That being said I have yet to try it out and would love to one day.

[enragednerd]

4e remains the most balanced version ever. At 20th level in every other edition Wizards ar3 casting Wish and altering the very fabric of reality. Martial classes were there to be HP sponges. 4e fixed all of that by putti g everyone on a more balanced playing field.

Plus the creativity in 4e was so insane i had a Cleric of Love that had 0 damage spells and made the game so much more fun for the rest of the table with buffs, debuffs, and ridiculously cool heals.

Then 5e came out and it was like "Oh, look. Fighters suck again."

[mborel]

Wasn't one of the biggest complaints of 4e the fact that WotC refused to add it to the OGL? A lot of people who had begun to enjoy 3rd party content were all of a sudden being boxed in again to official products, and Paizo jumped at the chance to keep 3.5e alive as Pathfinder, which furthermore eroded support for 4e. Whether or not you agreed the 4e was better than 3.5e, WotC's transparent move to kill off 3rd party support upset many people, which lead to a lot of blowback from people who never even played 4e like you stated.

[Beastlango]

Love 4e the class, paragon path, and epic destiny was such an amazing system. It helped make the coolest character ever

[SomoneTookMyName]

4E is a really good system. I also feel that many just stuck their nose up in the air and never bothered with it. Honestly I feel that it is by far the most balanced of any edition still to date. I ran a couple full campaigns and it was great. I seen to many bitching about it not having the role-play element and that never sat well with me. Role-playing really has nothing to do with the system or any D&D system. That was something you brought to the table, Not the system. There were just so many complaints about it that made no sense and I wonder if those doing the nagging were those who never actually gave it a try.

[PaladinHD]

4E inspired a lot of the choices I made when designing my own game. I loved the focus on tactical gameplay and actually having a battlefield board.

[DolkkarToyznstuff]

I couldn't agree more, 4th for me, was phenomenal and my friends and I had a ton of fun with it. This was the same with AD&D, 2nd, 3rd edition, etc. Excellent post.

[numbrevn]

The thing I hated about 4th Edition the most (aside from what they did to the Forgotten Realms, don't even get me started) was the fact that combat seemed to take forever. In earlier editions, you could have a combat, wrap it up, and have time to advance the plot. 4th edition seemed to be all about having 2+ hour combats so that everyone would have a chance to show off their flashy At Will/Encounter/Daily Powers, which caused combats to drag on forever and slowed gameplay to a crawl.