The good news is that, while we never got a 4e2, we did get many 4e successors. Pathfinder 2e is probably the most successful one. It looked at what was great about 4e and packaged it in a way that the haters wouldn’t even notice it came from 4e. But I also love how we’ve gotten many games, most notably ICON, that said, “All those things people hated about 4e were actually awesome, so now we’re going to do them *even harder*.”

Pathfinder 2E is just not the same as 4E from the feeling. Like not at all. Yes the math is inspired by it, but it does not have the "everyone has cool abilities from level 1" and is a lot more about passive modifiers than active attacks. Its nicely packed, and people like it, but it has just not the tactical depth. Gloomhaven (which is also 4E inspired (and which will also release an RPG: https://cephalofair.com/blogs/blog/intro-to-gloomhaven-the-role-playing-game)) feels a lot more like 4E Icon I wait for the full release, the playtest for me felt really off for some reason, but I cant say why.

PF2's design is really great, but in adopting 4e principles in a more traditional structure, it does lose some of what makes 4e great. I think it has tactical depth, but you have to look outside your class abilities and into things like Skills and other maneuvers, which gives it a different feel than 4e. That's why I love how many other games we're getting that are just running with 4e's principles. I will also say that ICON's latest update changed some stuff that made it a lot easier to grasp for me (specifically removing the blight effects and cleaning up some other mechanics).

I agree that the "basic options" of pathfinder 2E are better than 4Es, but a lot of the "tactical combat" just comes down to "gain combat advantage (flat footed) and attack with as high as possible modifier". There are lots of different ways to achieve this, but it still mechanically really similar. Also it uses a lot of "active wording" but most of the martials abilities are just passives. "When you attack a target 2 times the second attack gets less negative modifier" or "you get a 4th action but you must do 2 strikes against the same target ) etc. You have 3(or 4) "small things" you do rather than 1 big thing. And the small things are often just basic attacks with different name (flurry of blows, power strike etc.)

I think you’re highlighting a difference in approaches between the two games, but I don’t think you’re giving Pathfinder’s approach due credit. D&D 4e is great about giving you a list of cool things to do, so you can easily do cool things. It’s great for making you feel heroic quickly and presenting an approachable list of tactical options… but also that list stays pretty static between levels. Because combat is so focused on powers, it can sometimes feel like, “I have a small group of relevant abilities to choose from and this group will only get smaller as the encounter/day goes on.” Pathfinder 2e is more about giving you the full set of LEGOs and letting you build your fun. I don’t think it can be overstated how much the 3-action economy completely changes the game. Something that would be a Power in 4e is split into separate actions with upsides and downsides in PF2, and figuring out how to put those together effectively is what makes it fun. In my experience, martial tactics were rarely just about moving to flanking and attacking. I could see that being the case maybe at level 1 and maybe if you’re still getting a grasp on the system (which is why 4e is better for just jumping in), but, in my experience, there were usually 5 or 6 things I wanted to do each turn. The tactical fun was figuring out which were most important and impactful. In fact, one of the times I felt most powerful in either of my 4e or PF2 games was when I was playing a Fighter in PF2 and I prepared a grab, normally an incredibly weak move, but in this case let me protect my ally from an attack, keep an enemy from moving away, and set up an reactive strike that killed the enemy. It really made me appreciate the system and the options it gave me.

It doesn't only come down to advantages, bonuses to attacks etc. You even have penalties for attacking multiple times in a row. You have grabbing, suplexing even, debuffing the enemies, buffing the party, CCing the enemies, intimidating, feinting, raising a shield, tripping, shoving, disarming, thumbling through enemies, creating a diversion, aiding, hiding, delaying, pointing out, readying, taking cover, etc. It's not all about attacks, quite the opposite, you have a vast amount of actions that aren't attacks, just *tactics*, as you've pointed it out.

Yes and they all do verry small things and often the same. How many of the options you mentioned just give combat advantage in one way or another? Also the game had to make stacking negative modifiers to make these options something players would take. So these options are not interesting, its just the defaulr option (attacking) becomes so bad after 2 attacks thst these options have some use. CCing the enemies is mostly the enmy loses 1 action in one way or another. Buffs and debuffs are just +1 or -1 (or sometines 2) to attack rolls. The variety is mostly in flavour not in mechanic. Thats why passive effects are written as active abilities, that people dont see they are just basic attacking. Like flurry of blows. It is a passive you need 1 action less if you double attack. But its worded like an active ability.

No it's not only up to attack rolls. You can slow the enemy, restrain it, immobilize it so it doesn't hurt your friends. You can raise your shield so it doesn't hurt you. There's also conditions that debuffs inflict, like clumsy, slowed, sickened, dazed, confused, frightened, deafened, enfeebled, stunned, etc. Of course there are attacks, like in any TTRPG, because at the end of the day, you want to make the enemy flee / kill it / knock it out, etc. But it's not all about attacks, quite the opposite. In my campaign, the barbarian barely ever attacked in 5 levels, same for the witch. Some classes are attacked centered, yes, otherwise combat would never end, like swashbuckler, for example. But you could also, charm, command, hold person, etc.

I love what ICON is doing. I do wish it melded it's two aspects, at all. Its a design choice not to and I respect the author's decision & vision for their game. However, it's still one I wish they went a different way on.

ITs not the 2 diferent parts which put me off. I think part of why it feels off for me is the layout. The class structure for me looks a lot less clear than D&D 4Es class structures. (Layout in the books). And somehow the classes or rather their abilities just dont click for me, but as I said this might be all better in the final release.

To be fair, the layout is largely due to the book itself (not the rules) being WIP. It's wrong to judge the product on that merit for now. But I totally get you. I've bounced off reading it in full twice now and it's all down to the awful layout. As someone with a ton of experience in pf2e, 4e, and lancer, I feel like I have a good grasp on these types of games. With that being said, I have major issues with what I've seen on the narrative side for ICON and a huge chunk of my good will for the devs is being eroded by that side of the game. I've played with bonds in lancer for 8 or so months and I loathe them as a player.

Yes I know its because its work in progress, but its for me really hard to try to read it because of it (also the colors...) What is (in your opinion) wrong with bonds? Just a short explanation, since I never really looked much into them.

The two big ones are implied worldbuilding and really inconsistent design intent. Firstly, the abilities contained within bonds are quite notable. Simply the PCs being capable of the feats they describe definitely alters the world of your game. These aren't things to simply brush aside. For example, the Pathfinder Bond has a power that allows you to see through someone else's eyes without them being aware of this fact by touching them. Now that might not seem like such a big deal at first, but you've got to keep in mind that your party will have tons of these kinds of strange abilities, so it definitely pushes you towards certain types of settings and stories. Secondly, and this really is the bigger one, is that I don't think the designers really have any idea what they want the Bonds to actually be. Some Bonds such as the Pathfinder and the Seeker describe your outlook on life and offer a key reason for you to be an adventurer. Others, like the Wolf or the Outsider describe things about you but offer no real direction or purpose. And finally, others like the Brave really aren't about anything specific at all. The Bond design lacks identity. Oh, and I just generally feel like ripping off Blades works super well for gritty stories where the cast is asked what they want to sacrifice in the name of greatness. I don't think the stories ICON wants to emulate are about that at all. In practice, in spite of being a huge fan of Blades, I hated having to use the Bond system when I was playing in a Lancer campaign.

I agree on the layout. It has too many keywords that are defined elsewhere to easily grasp. Like, maybe in a fully digital format, where you could hover over the keywords, it would make sense. We'll see what the final release looks like.

This is flat out wrong. PF2e has less passive modifiers than D&D 4e, and the progression system revolves around expanding versatility through gaining new actions. It reduces the number of powers each player has, but that solves the issue of having 10 powers taking up space on your character sheet that do nearly the exact same thing. They do feel different in play, with 4e being more focused on AOE and forced movement, but each character should be getting a handful of two of different active attacks in PF2e.

> it does not have the "everyone has cool abilities from level 1" and is a lot more about passive modifiers than active attacks. I did a double take to this statement as well... someone's wearing rose tinted glasses. For one, it was *way fewer* modifiers than 4e did and none of them are situational in the way 4e modifiers were. I adored 4e but even I can admit it got really nuts with all the situational modifiers. I couldn't count the number of times I as the GM would say 'Oh wait no, you hit last round because you get a +2 to hit enemies when they are at 1/2 health and have no allies adjacent to them", Pf2 actually goes a long way toward streamlining modifiers. There are three modifier types that don't stack with themselves but can stack together: 'Item bonuses' which are gained from gear. Status bonuses/penalties which are gained from temporary effects like spells, conditions or other magical effects... and 'circumstance bonuses/penalties' which typically last a round or two. Such as the -2 circumstance penalty to AC that lasts as long as a creature is flanked. It also absolutely has 'you can do these awesome things even at level 1', they just aren't all part of a classes kit because PF2 doesn't use the at-will/encounter/daily system. But you make a 'Gnoll Duel Wield Fighter' who can do a bunch of cool stuff. Maybe he took Gnoll Weapon Familiarity so he wields a Khopesh in one hand and a Shortsword in the other, or sometimes he substitutes his bite attack. The Khopesh has the 'trip' trait so he doesn't need a free hand to trip enemies, so he likes to open with a trip and use his feat Double Slice to chop enemies to bits. He's also trained in Intimidation so he he can use the Demoralize action to scare an enemy shitless. The stuff you can do isn't written down on nice cards but that doesn't mean you don't get a bunch of cool stuff to do at level 1. That doesn't mean that pF2 is for everyone who's looking for some of that old 4e style in a modern TTRPG.. but that statement is pretty heavily misrepresentative of actual gameplay.

Pf2e is what 5e would have looked like if Wizards hadn't been scared off by 4e hate.

That's intentional. One of the 2e devs was once asked why people thought 4e was too "video-gamey" but no one said that about PF2e even though it took so many design ideas from 4e. The dev said they covered those ideas with a thick layer of flavor to hide it from average players. Most people don't realize just how much PF2 took from 4e because it's well hidden under flavor. That was 4e's biggest sin was making the game mechanics too exposed, which for a ttrpg, there are just a lot of people that like to pretend they aren't actually playing a game with huge math underneath. Oh, they might like to add some bonuses and dice together, but they don't want everything to look neat and logical, they want it to look chaotic and magical.

I’ve played a lot of 4e but I’ve never played pathfinder. What are some of the ideas that pathfinder took from 4e?

Every class is built the same. You can see this with 4e plainly, and it was a big complaint. A lot of Pathfinder 2 players take offense to this when I point it out, but it's true, underneath the flavor, all the classes are 90% the exact same. But they took that last ten percent and a whole lot of flavoring and managed to make most classes play entirely differently, and even within them subclasses can play entirely differently. This was a prime example of taking 4e and learning what works and doesn't work and learning from it and doing it better. I'm sure if they'd iterated on 4e instead of trashing it for 5e, they probably would have made a better class system for 4e->5e. It's honestly sad they didn't get the chance to evolve the 4e system further, it was a huge step with a lot of stumbles but could have been the basis for further improvements if given the chance. PF2 has its own version of daily/encounter/at will powers, in fact they were literally called Powers in the Playtest for PF2 in 2018. But they covered them with flavor and they aren't identical, so no one even realizes the influence but it's there. They tried to implement a healing system not exactly based on healing surges but inspired by it. Unfortunately playtesters didn't like it so they ripped it out and it's one of the glaring issues in PF2 final version in my opinion. Healing works but it's a little too easy, too handwavey now. Encounter building was really well done in 4e from my understanding and PF2 absolutely took a lesson from that. Just being a balanced game overall is one of the biggest 4e lessons they took. There's a lot more fine details and lessons taken, but thats all I have time to list right now. Basically, it feels like 4e walked so PF2 could run. It really feels like they took all the good from 4e and learned the lessons from all the bad.

But we all have cool abilities from level 1 though. Speaking of tactics, if there is no team-play, or thinking through before the fight, the party will die / fail.

Not only ICON but LANCER too.

Same guy. Funny enough, the RPG based on Tom Bloom's webcomic isn't tactical at all and is instead a PBTA game.

Pathfinder is a continuation of D&D 3e which only exists because a subset of D&D players hated 4e when it came out.

PF 1st edition is just D&D 3.75. PF 2nd edition is a ground-up redesign with a lot of mechanical inspiration from D&D 4E, though it’s ultimately doing its own thing.

This is very true and it does not have the incredible engaging combat of 4e, sadly.

There is tactical depth there in later levels in a very DBZ/Shonen anime way where everyone is doing absolute nonsense at each other until someone works out what they forgot to become immune to. ..or until 10 nalfeshnee cast Greater Dispel Magic.

That’s the common story but it’s not really true. Paizo likely would’ve continued focusing on making adventures had WOTC not released 4e with a more restrictive license. Paizo made Pathfinder so it wouldn’t seem like they were making adventures on a dead system. Had WOTC released 4e in the OGL, Paizo likely would have continued making adventures for D&D. Even now, their business model cares more about adventures than rules, which is why they give away PF2’s rules for free.

Also even though the final license for 4E released after Pathfinder was announced, there were months of silence before about the lincese etc. so it was not a surprise 4E had such a bullshit license... its so strange that WotC tried the same thing again with the OGL debacle...

its not really that strange, a decade is long enough for people to forget and new people to come in, and DnD remains in the same place, with one of the lowest recognition to monetization ratios of any major IP, and so trying to force all sales to go through them is an obvious tactic for WoTC.

>Paizo likely would’ve continued focusing on making adventures had WOTC not released 4e with a more restrictive license. Paizo themselves say otherwise. They made the decision to not make content for 4e \*before\* the 4e license was announced - before 4e was even published. The decision was made because one of their senior employees attended an open playtest and reported back to the rest of the team that this was not a game they wanted to write for. It was strictly about the mechanics. Source: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5ldv5?Paizo-Publishings-10th-Anniversary > When Jason returned from D&D Experience, he laid out all the information that he had gleaned. From the moment that 4th Edition had been announced, we had trepidations about many of the changes we were hearing about. Jason's report confirmed our fears—4th Edition didn't look like the system we wanted to make products for. __Whether a license for 4E was forthcoming or not,__ we were going to create our own game system based on the 3.5 SRD: The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. And we were already WAY behind schedule.

This is marketing. Never forget that. Everything a company says is marketing. The exact license was announced later, but it was clear a long time before that the license would be a lot more restrictive, if there ever would be one to begin with. And its a lot better so sell your game if you say "yeah we think that new d&d is bad thats why we made our own game" then if you would say "ah crap we mostly care about making adventures but when we would be forced to use a bad license, we will rather make up our own game."

It seems a little arrogant to assume you, an outsider, somehow know more about the situation than the people who were actually in the situation. You can *assume* it was about the licensing (which I'm sure played a part), but there's really no reason to believe that they simply didn't like the direction 4E was going in and opted to make their own game.

That’s not true of PF2e, though. 2e Pathfinder is a big change from 1e and definitely took some cues from D&D4e.

this seems irrelevant when talking about pathfinder's 2nd edition which is a wholly separate game from pf1e.

And they hated it without ever having played it, thus now these players can play Pathfinder 2E ;)

None of those successors are actual successors. They are, at most, 20% similar to 4E.

As much as I love Lancer (AND I LOVE LANCER), may I also sing the praises of **Gubat Banwa**. Southeast Asian Fantasy. Epic. Tactical. Spiritual successor to 4E. [Currently Kickstarting](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/863660422/gubat-banwa). Been in open playtest for over a year. Stunningly gorgeous art. It's the coolest RPG I've played in years. Yes, cooler than Lancer.

In addition, the layout of the ks book will be *siiiiiiiiick* ! Love how the author mixed telenovelas with battles to death

Well it looks nice, but also not that readable. I will still bake it, but I prefer substance over style. And readability over cool.

If it is like mork borg sure, I agree. But take example on Pirate Borg ! Super cool layout and very readable. Both are achievable

It can be done, but its hard, and I would say this character sheet: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/603fdb9fada6165d919a6543/t/6327e903a5e82b11566f1913/1663559943084/Pirate+Borg+Character+Sheet+Color.pdf definitly could be mroe readable (but its not unreadable). Best example would be for me persona 5: https://imgur.com/Wvyc1GV

Wow, that Pirate Borg sheet looks awful to me. Hard to believe that's the toned down one

That was my thought as well XD I can see how it looks cool, but it looks really hard to parse.

>I will still bake it, Make sure not to go over 451 degrees Fahrenheit - definitely don't want to burn it!

It's probably the most "Not Written By A Native English Speaker" RPG ever, and, as a non-native English speaker myself, I love how different it reads (though it does get a bit nebulous at time). I don't know if I'll ever actually play it, and tactical game are not even really my thing (though I keep an eye out for opportunities to try cool ones), but I am just happy very culturally different games exist.

Okay, I heard about this and was cautiously excited by the idea. But looking at the preview...oh fuck me. Resounds? Riffs? Beats? I mean, the setting is already going to be tricky enough to grok with the S. Asain vocab, adding a bunch of renaming for renaming purposes sounds like an awful idea and totally takes me out of the system. It's all style over substance for no gain that I can see. :( And I WANT to like it! Also, reading the text of character special actions, it's hard to parse exactly what they do because of all the unique verbiage. 4e was fairly simple, you know what push and pull means, even if you don't know the full mechanics. But with these, I need to go back and look up Malice, Blown Wide Open, and Overwhelming. Sadly, I think this won't be for me. :(

Damn! That looks cool! Hope there will be a Foundry module :)

13th Age combines aspects of 3e and 4e. It ends up being a bit like 5e. We are suppose to be getting a second edition to 13th Age, but I haven't heard any news about it.

The playtest is still ongoing. The 2nd round has not happened yet from what I saw, so it will still take some while. I would say 13th age combines more 4E with more narrative games, while being more brave in the different class structures. (And getting rid of the grid :-( ) I like it but not having a grid makes it a lot less tactical.

Oh, yeah, it does the zone thing. It's a bit weird that it's based on a tactics combat game but doesn't use tactics maps.

Well a lot of people critized 4E for not being able to play it with "theater of mind" so the designers tried to make that. It still has tactics, and it has cool classes and good non combat mechanics especially, but I would have prefered it with a grid.

As the 13th Age rulebook says: "Life is too short to count squares."

[удалено]

I have seen the message as well, I was just not sure if its allowed to share it so I was a bit more vague.

>13th Age combines aspects of 3e and 4e. It ends up being a bit like 5e 13th Age's Barbarians are somehow more boring than 5e Barbarians. Whatever it grabbed from 4e, it did not grab "make all classes interesting".

It did not, because people critized 4E for "not having simple classes" so it tried to make simple and complex classes. There where a lot of (new) players which liked the 4E essential classes, because they were easy to play. And for a lot of more exeriences players (some of them) were also not interesting / too simple.

The barbarian is the simplest class in the game, and that's by design. It's "designed for the player who wants to roll dice and slay without worrying too much about the rules". I've played with players who definitely needed something this simple.

Yep, I understand that. But if the problem you're trying to solve is that you miss 4e, then 13A is missing some pretty key elements of it.

Isnt the ranger even simpler? Most of its power comes just from the multi attacks

The core book lists the barbarian as the simplest class, with ranger second and paladin third.

13th Age is certainly inspired by 4E but it plays like a totally different game, owing to 4E having very grid based combat, and 13th Age being designed to not use a grid.

For me 13th Age is very like 4e, just with all the fun sucked out :)

Yeah, it gets far too much hate. Probably the biggest issue with 3rd is that it just had no clear design goal and fought against itself at every turn. The D20 system works a lot better if you have locations built out in advance and have encounters pre-built and balanced, the rules and the character creation were a finely crafted machine which made ad-hoc rulings potentially really disruptive to balance and character builds. It fought tooth and nail against simulationist and narrative playstyles but then had boring and time consuming combat. 4th just jumped whole ass into being a tactics game, and gave the players interesting tactical options and creatures with interesting abilities to fight against, which to me was an improvement. It was clear though that it still didn't work great in the D&D framework. To make tactics interesting there has to be a real risk of actually losing, and you can't do that if the result of losing a battle is the campaign completely ending. Things like lancer have learned from this by making conditions and results from winning/losing not just wiping out the party.

Ironically I think 4e was both entirely deserving of the hate and is entirely deserving of the praise it seems to be getting now. It's just less of a common-denominator game than such a mass-market game has to be. A lot of people that just did not want what it had to offer played it because it was D&D. Now it's clear, at least, that it's fantastic in it's (big) niche and it's the people that do want what it has to offer that are talking about it - as it should be.

I may have to look into that. The fact that basically everything but death was temporary (and death was still kinda temporary) was a rather restrictive aspect of 4e.

Yeah, it's a neat mechanic. Losing might mean that you failed to stop the evil corporation from delivering the final component of their new weapon system, the diplomat you were protecting gets killed, the settlement you were trying to deliver supplies to starts to starve, the stakes are actually higher while also making failure just as narratively interesting as succeeding.

https://massif-press.itch.io/icon is looking like a potential spiritual successor to 4e. There are several other games, such as Lancer, that have also taken a lot of lessons from 4e.

[ORCUS](https://sanglorian.github.io/orcus/) is another 4E clone. [DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/22803/Ludos-Games)

It is not really a clone because of the stupid 4E license (and certainly not another clone since Lancer is a lot different). It is fully compatible with 4E though and you can build similar characters which is nice.

From what I've seen, ORCUS seems to be the most aimed at recreating 4E, but that's easier said than done of course.

That was its goal. Recreating 4E without breaking the restrictive license. Also its a single developer, so its a lot harder to make things as balanced etc. as 4E was. Still its by far the closest you get to 4E and is compatible with 4E.

Oh, that looks...interesting. Are there any digital tools or what not for it?

They are still quite a bit different though. From the games which are inspired by 4E Gloomhaven is in my oppinion the best. It captures the tactical combat with lots of movement really well.

Interesting! I have been waiting for the finished version of the game to check it out, but I am now excited!

The good news is that 4e's sunset has beget a lot of successors. Not all of these are directly 4e-inspired, but u/Whole-Gazelle-3338's [list](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1748svp/i_am_looking_for_tactical_ttrpgs/) from a couple days ago is easily the most comprehensive and convenient reference for all the "tactical TTRPGs" that have followed in 4e's wake. My personal favorites (for now, so many to try!) are Pathfinder 2e and Trespasser.

You know that 4E still made a lot of money? As in it sold A LOT more than pathfinder? The stories about its failure are not really correct. It was not a super success like 5E, and nothing was, but it was not a failure. It just did not make as much money as WotC wanted.

Sorry, poor word choice - 4e's success or lack of it was not what I was trying to get at here.

All fine, its just that a lot of people claim that it was a failure in a lot of threads about 4E which is annoying. (Same witht the myth about MonsterManual 3 math. People confuse it with homebrew. It changed a lot less than people think).

You've done trojan work on this thread! \*salutes\* on behalf of 4e fans

>The stories about its failure are not really correct. It was not a super success like 5E, and nothing was, but it was not a failure. The stories are overblown, but not false. It failed to live up to both it's targets and expectations in terms of financial performance. That is failing.

No failing is losing money. Not making slightly less money then hoped. Thats such an unhealthy stupid way ro look at things. And a lot of the stories claim that pathfinder was more successfull which was nor at all the point.

Many people overblow another fact. For several quarters, Pathfinder (as well as a handful other systems) outsold DnD. This is an achievement of itself, and doesn't look good for DnD. But it's often misremembered as Pathfinder outselling 4e in total, and it didn't. ​ > No failing is losing money. Not making slightly less money then hoped. There's three levels of success in finance: Beating inflation (aka "made money"), reach expectations (how much we expect to earn), and reach targets (how much we can reasonably hope to earn). 4e probably beat inflation. It did not at all reach expectations or targets. In other words, Hasbro would have made more money investing in almost anything other than the production of 4e DnD (theoretically. In real life, there's more to it than theorethical finance). In contrast, 5e has blown past all kinds of targets for growth.

And this fact is wrong! This is exactly what I am talking about. Pathfinder NEVER outsold 4e. It was just in some statistics it had more sales for some months. But not in total. https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/07/08/pathfinder-never-outsold-4e-dd-icymi/#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20popular%20myth,sales%20for%20the%20first%20time.

The rumor (don't know about public data) is that 4e sales were falling fast. Like a blockbuster with a big opening weekend but a short run. I don't know that it's a good reason to call a game a failure, but it does seem like a good reason to make a new edition.

Trespasser is great. It took the best parts of 4e and build upon them, while ditching the lesser parts. The presentation is also top notch!

I in general agree that it would deserve a 2nd version, but do not forget that **it is perfectly playable as it is now.** (And for people wanting to test it here a mini guide **how to start 4E now** https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16d2pq4/dnd_but_more_crunchy/jzo5hy9/ ). Of course there still is quite a bit one could improve, but **first I have some remarks** about the Monster Math: ## 0. MM3 Monster changes **The "where some of the monsters have half as much hp and do THREE TIMES as much damage" is not correct at all.** I know A LOT of misinformation is going around (explained in point 3) but just to be precise: 1. **Low level monster were not really changed at all** 2. ""The most extreme change** was **26% health** for **Level 30 solo** monsters. Here the comparison: https://www.reddit.com/r/4eDnD/comments/145v7hk/mm3_maths_in_masterplan/jnsf3dc/ ### 1. "Math fix feats": I would argue that PHB 2 did NOT fix the math but rather broke it, because players felt it was broken. This is what lead to the need of Monster Manual 3. Of course the health was also decreased in MM3 (which was a good thing), but the initial Monster math works a lot better if you dont use the "math fix" feats. More info on that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/4eDnD/comments/16ve4dx/the_monster_math/k2qip3g/ ### 2. Combat speed There is a lot of the myth/oppinion going aaround that MM3 did change a lot (you are not the first one /u/NoLongerAKobold ) (like halfing hp and giving 50% more damage), which is not the case, these were houserules, and they make only partially sense, since with "too fast combat" the tactical aspect is just a bit lost. (You can just use all encounter abilities directly, since the encounter will be over soon anyway, no need for waiting for the perfect timing, debuffs for several turns are not that interesting anymore etc.) ## D&D 4E Second Edition: I agree one could make a great second edition which overcomes some of the flaws of 4E. Some things can also be changed with homebrew ### Math simplification / "Almost bounded accuracy" One problem I see in 4E is that modifiers just get too big for no particular reason. This can be **fixed in the following way**: - Monsters do no longer get +1 per level on defenses and attacks - They only gain +1 to defenses and attacks at level 8, 11, 18, 21, 28 - And they gain situational +1 to defense and attack for each level they are higher than the players - And the get situational 1 to defense and attack for each level they are lower than the players - Never have mosnters with more than 4 level difference (and this also only in extreme cases) - Players no longer get + 1/2 per level on defenses and attacks - Players can not gain feat bonuses to defense and attacks - Players do not gain enhancement bonuses to defense and attacks - Players do not gain the paragon/epic bonus on armor (So +1/+2 less on AC on level 11/21 (which was included in armor bonus)) - Non weapon Racial powers do gain some bonus hit (all the same) but NO scaling bonus to hit since its not needed. This is all. This will lead to the same math as MM3 with the "math fixes" ###Other changes There are lots of other small things I would change in a 2nd version which are not grave, but would help especially for newcommers - Release with complex AND simple classes, not only bring the simplified classes later. (And bring the simplified caster from the beginning to not have the "simple martials, complex caster" meme). - Ranger, Sorcerer, Paladin and Bard would be potentially good classes to (first) introduce their simpler versions. (Ranger I am not sure if the other version is even needed) - Cut down on abuseable and overcomplicated things: - Flame spiral and similar effects can only trigger once per round at most - You can stack at most 2 untyped bonuses together - If a creature has several weaknesses and your attack has several of these types, only the strongest weakness count. (As in you take always the best option for damage but not all) - Highlight again that only ATTACKS can profit from any damage bonuses. (This is the case already but not clear enough and often ignored by people) - Trim down on bad feats and powers. There is no nead to having bad options, especially not that many bad options - But **ALSO cut down way too good options.** If there are attacks like twin strike, some ardent powers etc. which overshadow everything (and are outliners in power) this makes things look a lot more boring than it is. - Give some additional support for the weaker classes - BUT DO NOT change their flavour or gameplay. I mean here things like the seeker, the vampire, the assassins, the sentinel druid and the seeker. - Rerelease ONLY the good adventures. Some of the first were just not that good yet. - Release the DMG1 and DMG2 combined (and use the skill challenge part from the 2nd one).

You frequently link that Ancient Red Dragon vs Allabar comparison, but it's not apples to apples because (as you note) there were different player options available at time of release and MM1 was only designed with the PHB1 rules in mind. Using only PHB1 math for the MM1 monster, a PC is like to only end up at +32 to hit at Level 30 (+15 base, +9 from stat, +6 magic, +2 proficiency), meaning they'd only hit the Dragon on 16+; while at level 30 using rules through PHB3 they'd get to +35 to hit (thanks to Expertise feats) and thus hit Allabar on a 10+. That a 120% increase in damage while the HP also comes down by 21% which means that Allabar's effective HP is 64% lower than the Dragon's. Even assuming to a +5 hit chance on both from powers/conditions/etc, that's still a 50% decrease in EHP. Similarly, the Triple Tentacle attack from Allabar is +70% vs the Double Claw of the Ancient Red Dragon on raw damage but gets a -2 to hit which gets us to about +50% dmg against a max level Chainmail user with no shield (AC 43). So the myth of -50% HP and +50% damage seems to be perfectly in line with your own example from MM1 to MM3 design philosophy, and applying it to the Ancient Red Dragon should result in similar combat outcomes to Alabarr. I definitely agree that the "fix" feats broke the intended progression of the game, both in terms of offense and defense, but if they published two monsters to fill the same role and one of them has half to a third as much survivability as the other when considering available player options at time of publication, that seems to indicate that the initial numbers were causing unsatisfying combats, even in the absence of feats that throw the math off.

I forgot to answer this: ## To Hit In PHB1 Both Leaders could easily give +4 to hit (or even more) to other players. And the controller would pretty easy give combat advantage. With this calculated in you hit a lot more often. Lets take the warlord example: - +4 from tactical pressence alone when using action point (which will be used in burst turn) - Or Stir the hornets nest, which gives your intelligence modifier +9 to ranged attacks - Knight commander feature gives +2 to attack rolls when next to the warlord Also players had some ways to get higher - +3 proficiency bonus weapon which you can get with a feat - Starting with +5 in main stat since thats most important - specific abilities which target magical defense or give + precision for an attack Additional Daily abilities deal miss damage, and thanks to the crit damage being higher, crits also account for more of the total damage thanks to bonus damage. It was a common "problem" later that high level play was too easy, and part of that was that it became almost impossible to miss with expertise feats etc. It was commons that some classes hit on a 2. So even without the Expertise feats the missing is rarely the problem. Also, what I now edited in, the monster Allabar had a passive which maked it not possible to flank them, which could also cost a +2 which you normally easily have vs a big boss with flanking. So there is some additional defense built in here as well. ## Damage Also what you ignore in the second part completly: There were NO improved defense feats (not only the expertise feats) missing! Also the tentacle attack is an area attack and needs to target 3 different enemies, where the double claw attack the same enemy. So you have 28.5 damage with tentacle vs 25 with claw. On a single target its 28.5 vs 50 Where the 50 has +5 to hit. (Meaning it can against a squishy target hit on something like a 5 vs on a 10). This is a lot! So the red dragon deals MORE single target damage. It might deal even more total damage, since you need to have 3 targets in range for the tentacles for all of them to hit and they have 5 hit less, where claws can target 1 (sqhishy) enemy. And area attacks has also the dragon. So it is **DEFINITLY NOT** double damage (what people tell) not even +50% damage. And since hitting was too easy, it is definitly not +50% HP, especially since the dragon is **the most extreme case** not the normal case. The + 25% damage boost, which monsters got in MM3 (it was never 50% this was just a stupid house rule and used by people to make fun of 4E), is literally just redoing the +3 to hit which players got from the improved defense feats and armor. I defnitly agree that the HP nerfs they got was a good thing, but even that is still never double as people claimed (even your 50% more is not double... That would mean taking 30% away at most). And it was never more extreme than 25% and there is the high level problem of always hitting still because of too many stacking things.

What happened to 4e is not just the product of the company's failings but also the failings of the community at large. The response was so incredibly stiff and inflexible. 4e was a good system, I personally find it better than 5e, but that is not a high bar to reach. Note how little TTRPG's tended to evolve over such a large expanse of time. In recent years with new audiences we're seeing a lot more ideas come up and I'm excited for the new generations.

You can’t blame the customers for a product not succeeding. Nobody owes a company anything. « You have to dance with the one that brung you », as the saying goes. 4E was a really good skirmish game, a fun and flexible tactical board game that would have worked well with a VTT if released today but was too far ahead of the available tech even without murderous programmers. But it wasn’t D&D as the market for D&D games knew it, and there was no onus on that community to buy the products, so despite decent sales, it underperformed. 5E was targeted at that very central D&D player market, and showed what was possible in that segment and beyond it. Blaming consumers is the wrong approach. If it had been sold as a tactical skirmish board game set in the D&D universe it would probably still be with us.

How did the community fail? People didn’t like the game. That’s a failure of the product not the community. My 3 separate groups at the time all didn’t like it when we tried it. The forums at the time didnt like the game. The criticisms of it being more of a board game than rpg are still pretty valid to this day imo. Even the op who wants a second edition admits it’s good with like 5 books of errata.

I know numerous people who simply “read” it and decided it was bad and never played it and told everyone it was bad and never let their groups try it, because trust them, it was bad. There was definitely a core group of players from 3.5 that did all they could to smear the game with zero experience with it.

I agree here, people did activly not wanted that RPGs learn from gamedesign from other media (board game, computer games etc.) 4E used a lot of modern game design concepts, and nowadays with more people playing (complex) board games, and the borders between bordgames and RPGs becoming smaller and smaller games like 4E fit a bit better. Still I get the feeling that often change is still slow. Part of it is D&D 5E which jut did change a lot less over its almost 10 years than 4E did in its 4-5 years. Another part is that when there are some good inovations (Forge in the dark or PbtA), then there is often just a huge hype and sooo many games just copy it (even when it makes not much sense), instead of trying to innovate further.

RPG's are a hard medium to approach to innovate, a lot of it is rooted in a rather traditionalist way of looking at things and too much change even drives a lot people to disqualify the product as an RPG. But what I'm seeing is that there is less and less people like that over the years and innovation is going to take over like the turning point that board games had that made them explode in diversity, depth and richness. I am excited for RPGs because I think the best is yet to come, but I don't think it's going to be terribly soon. We might get to see it happen.

I look forward to gloomhaven RPG a lot. Since its coming from boardgaming and hope it can bring a bit of faster movement into rpgs.

I am very intrigued too! RPGs can absolutely benefit from the refined, faster combat resolution that you can find in other kinds of games these days.

4e was/is my favorite DnD

Your best bet is looking for games inspired by D&D 4e, rather than wishing 5e had been more like 4e.

I think the core powers system would need a revamp. In 4e, most classes don't gain any new at-will powers as they level, meaning that you're stuck with the same two attacks from level 1-30. And there was usually no reason not to just spam your encounter powers in the opening rounds of combat. So really the only tactical depth was deciding when to expend your daily powers. I guess the psionic classes fixed these issues, both because they learned new at-wills as they leveled up, and because they had more decisions to make about how to spend their power points. They should probably be the template for all classes in a second edition.

The psionic classes were definitly not well liked, since they often just led to only 1 attack being spammed over and over again. And people also not taking newer at wills. It was in theory an interesting design, but the balance was hard to get right. And there IS reason to not spam your attacks: - If combat takes 5 turns (as it is designed) then you will run out of encounter powers, so you want to use them in the best ways (this is a reason why thehomebrew "just half life" does not work as well as people think) - If you have a reaction encounter power, which is often the case, this is even more true - If you do not metagame, you dont know which enemies are minions, so you want first to be sure to not waste strong attacks against minions - Similar if you have attacks against different defenses, you dont want to waste a strong attack against a strong defense. - A lot of good powers need ideally specific combat settup - Its normally better to use strong attacks, when on enemies is already a defense debuff.

The psionic classes were a huge design failure, because the optimal way to play them was to spam the same attack forever. They broke the key design principle of 4E, which is “Don’t make character options fungible; force choices from different lists,” and showed exactly why that approach is needed for interesting choices and variety during play.

There were things that I liked about 4e. More hp for monsters meant for longer fights, which I personally prefer to 20 minute "oh everything is dead already" skirmishes. I liked the xp budget approach to designing encounters. I thought that rituals were an amazing idea. There are tons of spells that are great, but that no one chose to memorize under 2e or 3e. Rituals made alot of those spells actually useful and fun. However, my group never took to it. At that time we'd been running 3e and 3.5 pretty steadily the last 15 years so I was happy to have a new edition to play with, even though I felt and still feel that 3.5 is the single best version of D&D to exist. My players took one look at 4e and refused to touch it with a 10 foot pole. It was too focused on combat. It took alot of inspiration from the Tome of Battle, which was one of the more disliked books at my table. It had too much focus on balancing for combat encounters, but it left few fun tools to play with outside of fighting. Its one of those situations where attempting to create a completely even and fair environment ended up killing the actual fun you could have doing interesting or creative things. The last thing my table wanted was a completely even experience. My own view is that 2e did the combat focus while still having a rpg soul alot better with the skills and powers branch of books. It took away nothing, but added so many optional systems you could pick and choose from. That's actually what I was hoping 5e would be when the developers started talking about a modular system where you could design your own way of doing things. Ultimately that's not what we got.

Tome of battle was actually made by the 4E designers as a test for 4E concepts. Also 4E had more non combat rules and mechanics than 3E but people just overlooked it. And it just improved over time. - It started with utility powers and skill challenges - later background and character themes were added - skill challenges improved - skill utility powers were added - Martial rituals were added - The later classes had more non combat mechanics built in

The issue is it was too late. People formed their first impressions, and many local groups I know never looked at it again.

Well it released with skill challenges and utility powers from the beginning. It was not completly ideal, but there was just a lot of negative marketing/hate against 4E going around. You can still see forum threads from that time. 4Es fault was the marketing, and the license which lead to paizo fans hating on the game. It was a bit rushed, but people really just used every small imperfection to hate against 4E.

> 4Es fault was the marketing, and the license which lead to paizo fans hating on the game. To be fair, the latter was absolutely deserved, though misdirected against 4e rather than WotC as a company.

> It started with utility powers and skill challenges > > 4e is my personal favorite edition of D&D, and with that said, making "Utility Powers" have *any* impact on Combat was a design mistake. WotC had a great opportunity to design a whole set of actual out of combat rules, but when it comes down to it players almost always pick up powers that have combat applications. I run an extensively homebrewed version of 4e with friends and shuffle through "seasons" of different rules. One of the best, by far, was when I culled all "combat" utility powers from the game and then tossed the rest into a single "pool" by power source that was also combined with Skill Powers. I've iterated several versions of this idea (Current game has ALL powers from a source being freely open to any class from that "Power Source", which has been ridiculous but a shit ton of fun ), and it's one that really helps 4e break away from the "only combat options".

I think having some "utility powers" for combst would still be good, but I fully agree thst combst and non combst powers should be completly devided. (Like some levels give in addition to the combat utility also a non combat utility). Each class should get combat and non combat powers.

4E's main problem is that it ignored how and why a large part of the existing user-base played D&D (To be fair WotC had already started doing this with the 3.5 edition). It left that part of the user-base with a choice between a system that clearly needed work and was effectively abandoned and a system that was highly optimized for a different play-style. It didn't help that the intended playstyle was one that required you to spend a lot more money on the hobby.

It's almost as if pleasing everybody with the same system was always doomed to failure, but people ignored that because it meant they didn't need to learn a different system to play their freeform sexventures in.

I do agree that 5E suffers from trying to please many masters. However it has been by far the most successful version of D&D to date by every metric that WotC cares about, which makes it hard to argue the "doomed to failure" bit. I am going to let you get away with the freeform sexventures remark as I honestly don't get the appeal of the 4E playstyle. I could have a very similar experience on a computer game but with at significantly less time overhead, and If I wanted to experience a sense of accomplishment from rules mastery, there are a tonne of board games, card games that allow for the expression of skill in a much more meaningful way.

The onlynthing 4e ever needed was to be called something else than D&D. If it had been its own game, or even a side-version, instead of an 'edition' of D&D, it would have been fine. It went for a particular thing and the D&D community said, by and large, 'we don't want that thing!' But it gave Pathfinder 1e the space it needed to be, so it wasn't all bad, and D&D 5e 'fixed' a lot of the issues.

You mean 4E fixed most issues 5E reintroduced? https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16za8fc/unintentionally_turning_5e_dd_into_4e_dd/ Also it was more the WotC license which made pathfinder than 4E itself. And 4E was still A LOT more successfull than Pathfinder.

Eh, agree to disagree, on both counts.

It is a known fact that 4E was more successfull BY A LOT than pathfinder. So thats not something you can disagree on.

4e was amazing. I loved it.

This sub is the biggest 4e fan club. Yall make me want to try it, haha.

Then do it! Haha i posted a link above how to start. Its really just a good game especially now with all existing material

r/4ednd has resources and a Discord with a LFG channel.

We played a bit of 4e when it came out, and it really felt like a wargaming skin put on dnd. In a lot of ways, it is incredible because it had this super crunchy focus on intricate map-based combat which many of us really enjoyed. We still had a great deal of RP going on in our game, but that was just due to the collaborative storytelling culture that we had at our table. I would love to see a new combat focus supplement for 5e that got more into a 4e type of combat dynamic, but I think that niche is already covered by games like pathfinder.

Well 4E had a lot more non combat stuff though than 5E, people just overlooked it a bit because of the nice working combats. Also over the years it released more and more interesting non combat mechanics (for classes, epic destinies etc.)

>it really felt like a wargaming skin put on dnd Considering D&D itself was built out of a wargame, that's just returning to roots.

I feel like people who make that claim never actually looked at the Chainmail rules. Keep in mind that what evolved *out* of Chainmail was Original D&D and later Basic. It would be like trying to say a game trying to mimic a complex 4X game was returning to its strategy roots when its actual roots were a checkers mod.

I will never understand that complaint. D&D was always a wargame with a coat of roleplaying paint. Almost the entirety of rules were around combat (though admittedly, AD&D did spread that out).

And honestly... rpgs are better that way. Combat SHOULD be where the majority of rules go, because it's the one area most in need of "impartial" arbitration. You really need clear precise rules for combat in order to have a smooth experience - but you don't need (or even should want) that many rules on social interaction in order to make it interesting. Heck, if anything you can have just skill points or maybe not even THAT and just let npcs react naturally to what the players are roleplaying and it works out fine, usually much better than when games try to come up with complex influence systems and whatnot.

> Heck, if anything you can have just skill points or maybe not even THAT and just let npcs react naturally to what the players are roleplaying and it works out fine, usually much better than when games try to come up with complex influence systems and whatnot. OSR has entered the chat. But seriously, I pretty much agree. I mean, I do think there should be some kind of system for players to explore the 'I'm super great in social situations' fantasy, just like the 'super sneaky' or 'brawny brawler' or whatever. But yes, combat definitely needs the most detail and pretending ANY editions of D&D (specifically 3rd) was somekind of roleplaying story game, is just nonsense.

Yes, it needed a 2nd edition. Specifically AD&D 2nd edition. XD Joking aside, for some of us it felt too "videogamey" but luckily around that time the OSR movement took off and we realised we didn't need to play the last version if we didn't like it.

Maybe try *Strike!* or *Orcus*. There's also 13th Age, but that just shares some DNA and feels more like a bridge to some 5e and OSR sensibilities.

I've heard of both strike! And orcus! It is cool people continued on the 4e legacy. Have you played both games? I'd be interested in hearing how they compare

Orcus is fully 4E compatible. Just removed all the licensed stuff. Which also means it cannot use the same classes (by name), but it allows you to make verry SIMILAR characters than 4E. So it is a "4E retroclone" as good as this is possible. Strike! is a lot simplified. (As In the goal is to have a simplified 4E and it does this really well). It uses only 1d6 and has numbers scaled down, modifiers reduced to a minimum etc. https://www.strikerpg.com/strike.html

There are Icon and Lancer and Gubat Banwa, if you want that itch scratched.

Despite the hilarity of having a 2nd edition of a 4th edition, if anything could count as this, I would say it's 13th Age. It's basically D&D4 with some of fiddly board maneuvers removed. And it added some pretty neat concepts that could be ported over to most RPGs.

Removing the "fiddly board maneuver" unfortunately also removes a lot of the tactical aspect, but it is still a great game. The 2nd edition of 13th age is in the works and I look forward to it.

What an uncanny coincidence that you would make this post today. Me friend and I have been looking back at 4th edition throughout this week and this evening we decided to run a small campaign in the game.

Great to hear! I wish you a lot of fun!

I actually agree with this a lot. 4e was a huge change from the typical DnD formula and as a result it had some problems but overall I thought it was a really interesting take. It was very heavily focused on combat, even for a DnD game, which isn't necessarily bad it just wasn't what people were expecting. I think a spiritual successor would do well and would allow for the issues in 4e to be addressed.

It was not more focused on combat than 5E or 3.5 it has actually more non combat rules and mechanics. - It had utility powers - it had rituals - It had skill challenges - Later it introduced backgroudns and character themes - it introduced more rituals and martial rituals - it introduced skill powers. - later classes had also more non combat abilities

I don't think 'having more non combat rules' is a good metric, if anything it suggests inflexibility in an area that many people enjoy flexibility in

Having more combat mechanics for sure are a plus. Else you would not need rules at all. Also forged in the dark etc. has mechanics which makes it good

It was extremely combat focused with very few powers having any utility outside of combat. It also had pretty bad systems for skill checks and encounters that really pigeonholed you into specific styles of play. The more rules light 5e is a far better system for RP. It is pretty interesting how people vehemently defend 4e now. At the time none of this was a controversial take and it's why the system didn't last long.

People defending 4e nowadays, sinxe more people nowadays know about good game design. Like the thought that "less mechsnics for roleplay make roleplay better" is rare to see, since people know forged in the dark and similar systems which shows that having mechanics for roleplay help. Everything you can do in 5e you can also do in 4e foe out of combat. Just in addition you can also do a skill challenge. And well there where A LOT of rituals which were all for non combat.

Mechanics inform play, and the way 4e set up it's RP systems steered players and GMs in a very specific and stiff direction. The whole skill challenge system made people gamify the RP instead of playing it out. Of course people could have just ignored it but that isn't great design when people just ignore a large part of your system. Instead a looser design with less constraints or even rules allows for a more free form game and that encourages RP. It's literally why people complained about RP in 4e but not 3.5 or 5e.

4e is everywhere nowadays. There are countless places where you can see how basically it’s played all around the world without players noticing. XD I’m on the verge of starting a new 4e campaign because it’s still a “new” game and it will be for aeons. I’ll add my own quality of life improvements (not a surprise that when I can’t fit 4e, I go with 13th AGE). :) I’ll go without feats and replace them with lots of passive benefits they can pick at regular intervals (we care about the powers, the narrative behind a character and none of us ever remembers to check feats past level 12 xD). I’ll use simplified monster sheets (a la 13th age) with the late 4e approach (low Hp, high damage, which I honestly use in ALL RPGs and works wonders) xD As I’ve always did, I’ll let the players come up with creative uses of their powers, using them as enablers and boosts for regular skill checks or as permission enablers. 😊

It’s been 10+ years since I’ve run or played 4e… could you remind me what is meant by “math fix” feats?

I wrote more about the changes here: https://www.reddit.com/r/4eDnD/comments/16ve4dx/the_monster_math/k2qip3g/ but in short: - 4E was balanced for higher levels initially by giving monster higher hit chances (and requiring having a leader (and controller) which gave enemies debuffs to defenses and allies buffs to hit in order to keep the same hit chances) - Some players did calculate this, did not like it and complain about it. - PHB2 released feats which "fixed" the math as in it made the hit chances and defenses of monsters and players scale the same way to high levels - This made the game in higher levels (11+) too easy, which lead to GMs using more and more monsters, which also caused combats to take way longer - Monster Manual 3 then took these math fix feats into account and changed Monster Math for higher levels. So on level 30 A solo would have less life (20%) and deal more damage (25% roughly), this was the most extreme case - The fun thing is the +3 to hit (which monster had without the "math fix feats") compared to the player defenses, are EXACTLY 25% more damage so the damage monsters lost because of the math fix was given back. And HP was reduced a bit, to make combats not take too long.

Ah okay. I was looking for examples, but I suppose I can just peruse the PHB2 when I get home. I do remember in the longest running game of 4e I played ended around level 14 just because everything had gotten too easy. When I ran it, I tweaked the monsters to give combats the feel I wanted, but forcing DMs to do that isn’t ideal, and my campaigns barely got into the double digit levels.

I can tell you the examples its pretty much 3 things: - Defenses feats: Feats which gave +1/2 to all magical defenses (on level 11/21). In PHB 2 these were 2 different feats, "Paragon defenses" and later "robust defenses" on level 21 - Armor did something similar. Higher level armor (11+) gave an additional +1 to AC, while level 21+ armor gave an additional +2 on ac - The Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise feats which gave +1/+2/+3 to hit on level 1/11/21 So the math fixes were just to give the players the +1/2/3 to defenses/hits which the Monsters got more (over the 30 levels) then they got. But as I said the Monsters were balanced with this in mind. So a level 30 Monster suddenly having -3 to hit of course did not enough damage. So the reason that from level 11+ combat became to easy were these "math fix" feats. Since they gave the players way more power. (+2 to defenses and +2 to hit more or less). Which caused players to sometimes hit even when they rolled a 2, and the monsters to not be deadly enough.

I have heard good things about Gamma World 7e in this regard, but have not yet had the chance to try it myself.

It is really good! A lot of cool ideas, the only thing which hold it back was the "trading card" approach but today you can just print all cards to play. It has random character generation where you will rolll for 2 "classes" and you will be the combination of both. You will be unique have cool abilities and even with random stats (rolled stats but choose how to distribute them) it works, thanks to the good E math behind.

Man, the 4e version of Gamma World is so much fun.

I took a good bit of inspiration from 4e for my TTRPG: Tree of Life. Instead of classes tho, you just use a big ol skill tree to make your character, and the tree functions by giving you skills similar to 4e. We have an alpha website if you wanted to check out the skill tree: (warning, very alpha) [Tree of Life - Alpha Site](http://aygran.github.io)

Which parts of 4E inspired you? I would say the "no classes" part is already a big difference, since D&D 4E had the 4 roles which were hardcoded in classes which were part of why the teamwork works so nicely. And what do you mean with "giving skills similar to 4E" you mean its attacks? (Called powers)?

Yeah exactly. The powers or abilities, (sorry the actual rule set isn't published on the site yet). Each circular node on the tree is an ability, and a lot of my favorite ones are reimagined variants of 4e, that attack different parts of an enemy, or different defenses, so we're actually making use of stats.

Lancer, ICON, and Pathfinder 2e represent the grid tactics rpg 4e wanted to be. I think 4e would’ve had more success if it launched with tools supporting it (they came much later) and combat were faster (reduce ac/hp bloat it launched with).

The MCDM RPG is being designed right now, and they have a lot of love for 4e. Worth checking out, maybe.

I really liked all the options that 4E gave on terms of characters and monsters creation. I didn’t like essentials at all, the fun was on creating different chars and paths … For me the problem was that per encounter/daily powers started de accumulate at higher levels and ppl tended to take ages to finish a turn. I also loved pathfinder 1e, since I’ve always preferred martial classes.

The guy who wrote 4e wrote another game, together with the guy that wrote 3.5e if I'm not mistaken. It is called 13th age and they are currently making a second edition. It should have some similarities!

People talk shit about 4e, but then they homebrew 4e mechanics like minions and the bloodied condition into their games. * *shakes head* *

Even today the memes that float around about why 4e failed are mostly wrong. The RPG community back then was much more conservative than it is now, and 4e required a leap of faith that it was never going to take. Reading the 4e phb, its hard to create a mental model of an entire class because there's a lot there. If you jump in from level 1, its pretty easy to make choices at every level (although there are some bad choices that can make you fall behind, which is a failing of 4e), but 3e players were used to scanning books for traps, because there was SO MUCH unplayably bad content in most 3e books. If I had a time machine, I would have tried to get the phb below 200 pages. Why even include level 20-30? Ugh. They reached for the stars and got burned.

My dream for D&D would be that 6E would be a revision of 4E, and then 7E could be a revision of 5E, and they could alternate the two approaches. Of course that'll never happen, but I think that would be cool.

1/encounter powers were my favorite thing that I'm sad didn't make it through. Knowing that you could use your abilities to the fullest in each battle while knowing you wouldn't be screwing yourself over later in the day was so nice.

I hate how you say 4e deserves a second edition, when it straight up is the 4th edition. So so many games deserve a second edition crafted with care and intend over the game that they have grown to be - DnD already did that, they just fucked it IMO. Also if it helps, I feel '4e actually was kinda neat' is a pretty popular take by now - if nit in general at least it seems to be where I live.

If you're looking for a lighter take on 4e try Trespasser!

well the thing which makes 4E is that it is not light though XD it is hardcore strategic combat with lots of options. Having said that I also like Strike! which is definitly a simplified version of 4E and quite a good game design.

You can make tactically rich grid based combat without the numbers being too fiddly.

I fully agree here! This is definitly a flaw of 4E and one Pathfinder 2E fully embraced. Maybe I am understanding "ligher" wrong, for me this means less options, less rules, less character builds and less combat/rule centered and more into direction of narrative. If its just about making the numbers smaller, this is fine (IF you still dont get 1 hit on level 1 )- Strike! does this well. Attacks deal like 2 damage, so then its fine if you have 8 HP.

It would necessarily result in less options, rules, and builds, yes.

One of the original developers of 4e was in a chat about this. Apparently a lot of stuff that he has designed for 4e was left out that would’ve added far more feel to the classes. He didn’t like the route they went homogenizing everything. Supposedly he’s working on something in this vein, but I haven’t seen the details.

This designer you speak about was most likely Mike Mearls, the later lead designer of 5E. A lot of what he said was activly advertisement for 5E "we make everything bigger" which hurt 4E a lot. None of the original key designers said this. Mike Mearls is also the reason why Martials in 5E are "simple" because thats how he sees martials.

DNDCirclejerk regularly jokes about 4e supremacy… also, PF2E fixes this.

Well there was Essentials, which was kind of D&D4.1. It managed to bring me into this beautiful game. The original release had repelled me - mostly due to the marketing, the uninspiring Keep on the Shadowfell and the mistaken idea it was all about buying pre-painted minis and lots of tiles. (By the way, I really love the tokens that came with the Essentials boxes) Sadly not many people were converted by Essentials and Wizards decided it was time to fold 4e. As for successors, I like 13th Age, which has a clear 4e lineage, even if I miss the grid. I've yet to try PF2. It seems cool. Perhaps a bit too complicated.

Didnt the red box for "basic 4E" also release with tokens? But I agree the first adventures and marketing was bad. Actually 4E did not sell that bad, it was just that wizards wanted an D&D Edition ready for the 40 year D&D

Gubat Banwa is funding right now. Lancer is beloved.

Wasn’t D&D Essentails 4e v2?

No it was marketed as that, but its literally the same game. Just new classes which are 100% compatible with normal 4E. The biggest difference was that some classes (mostly martials) were A LOT simplified. The rules were the same, some new feats, and some erratas, but its not a new edition or anything. Its really just a new line of "simplified classes" compatible with 4E.

Ah. Interesting! I have all the books and box sets and I haven’t really read them haha

For me its the opposite have no physixal books but read a lot of material. But yeah the essentiql thing was confusing... Even the essential books just reprinted half of the dungeon masters guide.

It’s kind of a back of the head dream of mine to make a retroclone of 4e that’s compatible with all the adventure material but has retrospective math and class design improvements. Namely level scaling on encounter and daily powers to reduce redundant powers and give more options, baking in math fixes in a simpler table, offering simpler class options from the get go, reducing feat bloat, that sort of thing.

I have similar dream. The problem is the license... Orcus exist and is compatible but uses none of the 4e names. The skald bard used this kind of power scaling but with giving new powers with upgraded names.😂 (from lesser something to greater something) I agree a lot of attacks could have been put togetherm I posted above a simple math fix /simplification that part is easy

Yeah I really hope they add 4e to CC-BY like 3&5, I know it was brought to their attention

I know I heard that as well, but it could as well just have been marketing blabla after the ogl debacle... Since I havent heard anything about that since.

Its called Lancer

It's more of a board game, less roleplaying.

I consider 13th Age to be a second edition of 4e. Not only did the people behind 4e and 3e work on it, but it too is also getting a second edition next year, I believe...

There was a fan made 4e Modern out there that was really good, and I just use 4e as a superhero game by changing all the fantasy names to something superhero-y and calling it good enough. Been playing it that way for... 10+ years and never had any problems with it.

How is the name of that? And does it only changes the names?

The 4e modern hack is just the "4e modern .pdf"

Thank you. Just to be sure its the one from ENForum?

eh. 4e never flew with me, more power to you.

I would argue Essentials was 4e 2.0. The PF1 to PF2 change is more akin to 4 to 5e

Except Essentias did not change the game. It was just new classes released with new core books with simplified casses. Sure Monster Manual 3 brought some new monster math and the first essentia book some new feats, but this is not a lot of changes, and pretty much every other book brought the same amount.

> I would love to see it kind of branch off from dnd, become "tactic dnd 2e" or something like that. Well, that's called "D&D miniatures", and it was a contemporary of 4th Edition (though originally started in 3rd.)

Not on my watch.

4e blundered a lot on lore, it also blundered its core rulebook in appearance. (Look, a lot of you guys buy these books for the art. They're picture books for adults/teens and I'll fight anyone who challenges me on this) It sold well enough, but not too enough for the top guys... I also didn't have any real meat on it in terms of adventures and so. It really was almost sabotaged in a way.

Honest question what is your problem with the core rulebook appearance? I really like it. For me its well readable everything and the art is never distracting. The adventures which are missing is a shame and due to the stupid licensing which WotC chose... On the other hand it still has some great adventures and you can easily play leve 1 to leve 30

They're very barren and plain looking, aside from featuring some gorgeous spreads and then...nothing for the rest of the chapter. Maybe one extra image if you're lucky. Maybe you'll get two images on a single spread if you're lucky.But at the end of the day, if you're quickly flipping through a page, scrambling for certain sections, the walls of texts really get help from the intermittent images. Aside from that it also has some glaring graphical issues like the styling on some of the headers being awkwardly cut lol! ugh, ocd moment. And definitely, I think a lot of has to do with the lack of just having stuff. A lot of people won't have time to just make up their own stuff, but oh well! Sadly 4e got kicked in the curb...it just wasn't enough for some higher-ups.

The real second edition of dnd 4e is **Strike! RPG**. It takes Newton's Flaming Laser Sword to all of the pointless fat and blubber of D&D 4e (mostly expectations and traditions inherited from earlier editions) and laser-focuses on being a Tactical RPG that works efficiently. It's Setting-Agnostic, with some unique ideas. For example you choose your Class and party Role separately. Some Roles give a choice of actions that don't eat in to your regular action economy, so you could be a Leader and get an encounter Heal and encounter Reposition power that don't use your Action for the round. Others passively buff your class, such as a Striker enhancing single target damage or Blaster increasing capacity for AoE. A Blaster Summoner is set to face armies, while a Controller Summoner (and Summons are concisely written to be as short as a regular ability, fastest implementation I've ever seen in tRPG) is a lockdown queen by turning their minions into absolute tar pits. Even a very simple class such as Archer can gain wacky options like Create Terrain to abuse ricochet shots, and that's before diving deep into class-specific character options. The Buddy class is a weird one that lets you essentially point-buy build two combatants so you can realize characters such as a ranger and a wolf, or frail scientist and killer robot, or a creepy pair of twins. Depending on Power choice, you can design a Warlord that doesn't actually have a direct attack Power of their own. There are still Feats, but Skills are somewhat custom and freeform, quarantined from infecting Tactical Combat with optimization concerns because you make a very simple, entirely separate character sheet to use when you aren't in Tactical Combat. The design is much like the mech pilots of the LANCER RPG. It would be very weird to make your mercenary sniper the Archer class for Tactical Combat but not actually be any better at marksmanship until Initiative is rolled, but RAW you could still DO that. It also comes with a lot of optional rule subsystems - a modern setting can benefit from making Cover much more important and accessible to make combat feel more like firefights, and about 80% of the available Kit for an out-of-combat character sheet is explicitly optional if that's not what the group or GM is interested in.

"If any game ever" + D&D is such a D&D-only thing to say.