ISieferVII

I converted a 5e module to 4e recently and so far it's working pretty well. I think I'll just keep doing that if I keep playing this edition lol.

I think I may need to up the difficulty slightly, though. Basically, I need to follow 4e encounter guidelines rather than just converting the monsters. 4e characters are more capable so they're just running through these encounters pretty easily. At least it looks like it from where I'm sitting. But now that I think of it, they're having fun, need some healing every now and then, and it means I can make the last bosses of the encounter more difficult, so maybe it's fine actually. It probably helps that it's from Where Evil Lives, the MCDM boss and boss lair book, and Matt Coville's design philosophy seems to mesh well with 4th edition.

Same with Fantasy Grounds.

I bet a VTT would help a lot, but I just enjoy in person play too much at the moment. We're using those colored circles from soda bottles to keep track of conditions and it's working pretty well.

I have heard a lot of the 4e modules weren't well made, although I wouldn't count that as a weakness of the system so much as the products chosen at the time to publish and their writing process.

Does anyone know of there's a way to fix that? Can I just convert people's favorite 3.5, PF, or 5e modules to 4e with equivalent level Monsters from the Monster Vault and MM3 on a card, or does 4e need more modules made specifically for it that can take advantage of its unique strengths (and that aren't just combat after combat, despite combat being a strength of 4th edition)?

Mine never loads. I can't believe we're the only ones having this problem because it happens so often for me. It's strange I don't see other people talk about it, though.

Good responses! I probably need to do a better job of telling players they can do anything, because new players tend to just refer to their powers and character sheet without thinking through all the other possibilities of what they can do.

What did people not like about the lore changes? I recall thinking that it seemed pretty similar as last editions but with some cool additions, like the Raven Queen.

I've been wondering about that popularity point. Thanks for this. Really interesting blog post, too.

You have any recommendations to improve the experience of rituals? I was going to try to encourage them by handing out ritual components in my treasure hoards when I DM. I was also going to use a magic item system probably closer to 5e, that is a combination of intrinsic bonuses and handing them out more through adventuring than magic item shops to keep them special in-universe, so gold wouldn't be necessary to keep on the magic item treadmill and hopefully encouraging players to spend it more. (Hell, in 5e, I find gold almost useless, except for bribes and stronghold rules once I started implementing those from MCDM's book.)

I agree with everything you said (and I love the way you said it lol), just want to emphasize a couple points.

4e's non-combat mechanics suck, but also every single other edition's non-combat mechanic sucks, unless you consider 3.PF's "99.9% of this system is spells and since spells can do literally anything, then this counts as non-combat mechanics."

This seems to be the crux of that argument, doesn't it? The only difference is that 5e, 3.5, and PF1 have a long list of spells at the end, and that seems to be what people mean when they say non-combat mechanics - the existence of out of combat utility in these super long lists of spells. But it's a system only like half the classes get to engage with.

In 4e, most of it was folded into rituals (and later martial practices and alchemy) so it's not like they don't exist. I'm sure the most egregious ones were probably removed, but that is probably better for the game anyway. The high level utility spells are what made running later level games really difficult and unwieldy anyway, because they literally let you do anything. Apparently a lot of groups didn't use rituals, but it's probably more fun to solve your problems with cleverness and skill challenges everyone has access to anyway, which encourage teamwork, rather than finding which button on your character sheet solves the current problem. I plan on encouraging them in my next game I DM with sprinkling in ritual components worth X gp in treasure, but if the players don't latch onto it and still have fun, I guess that's fine too.

Can 4e have more words on how to avoid these? Definitely. For all of its praise, the 4e DMG can always just be a better book.

I just got a physical copy of the 4e DMG and damn is it a good book. I see why it gets a lot of praise. I'm sure each part could be expounded on more, but for the page count, it's pretty impressive how much they pack into each little section.

I was surprised how much advice I found on running 4e online is right in here in black and white. But I bet a lot of people skip those parts of the DMG every release, or just rely on their previous DMing experience, while 4e does look like it benefits with a bit more thought behind the setting of its encounters because every class has cool powers that interact with the grid even more than other editions, not just the wizard or sorcerer in the party. I wonder how much that tripped up GM's early in the life of 4e that still colors people's perceptions of the game today, like the hit points issue this person brings up.

I heard rumors in some Enworld thread or something that they were ordered from on high to release early to take advantage of something, I think WoW being released or something like that? But I can't find anything like that when I'm searching similar terms, nor can I find the thread now that I'm looking for it, so I might be wrong. It was the same thread I heard that right before it was released, someone jacked up a lot of the monster hit points without having time to playtest them.

But anyway, it's very believable, isn't it? I totally buy that corpo suits would force Wizards to release before they were ready and that it caused some of the common issues, like too many hit points on monsters.

It's tradition for the corporate owners of D&D to sabotage it, all the way back to TSR.

That might be true, but it's hard to fault a game for not coming out with its next revision immediately. It's like me critizing 5e for not releasing Tasha's immediately. If anything, maybe Essentials needed more time to shine and support before they jumped to 5e, or they should've kept pushing for a 4.5, like the 5.5 that it looks like OneDnD will be.

Great list! What I was hoping to see when I posted this.

I will say I mentioned in reply to someone else that even in a featureless grid, forced movement can be useful if you got controllers making zones and defenders. It's just not something you'd notice reading the book front to back, one class at a time. You need to actually play it with other players in full teamwork mode to notice cool stuff like that.

Also, dungeon crawls are the one thing people expect most from D&D so hopefully it can do that. I don't see why it couldn't, because there's still some resource attrition with healing surges and dailies. It's not full on OSR or Shadowdark, but neither is base 5e.

Speaking of, there's plenty of game modes people expect from D&D that 3.5 or 5e can't do either, like wilderness travel, like the LOTR characters would do. In 5e, Goodberry, a ranger, or the right background, you can go through without having to make a single roll on a wilderness trek, reducing the whole "game" aspect of that. In 3.5 it would be things like Endless Water, or similar spells I'm sure. In those games, non-combat interaction just means there is a spell to solve every problem you might run into, so if the spell caster prepared the right spell no one has to be creative. That's different from spell casting in the earlier editions, as I've been told (I started in 3.0 so can't say for sure). Oh and maybe some martial characters can break down a door, pick a lock, disarm a trap, or talk to someone, but that's about it, the rest of the game is for spell casters (those are all things characters can do 4e too, BTW). Plus, there are spells to replace all those, too, if you want to outshine the other relevant character (Knock, Charm Person, Glibness, etc). I love the rituals as a solution to this problem, because those spells still exist, but they cost more time and money, and anyone can do them, some people are just better with them like wizards.

I love these itemized responses, like yours and u/Analogmon gave and the way you guys address basically each point. You stay fair, like there's one or two things that may be true, it's not a perfect game, but they're either fixable or were fixed over time anyway, or the same or better than other D&D editions.

I just ordered the DMG2 recently because I heard such good things about it being one of the best DMG's in D&D. I can't wait for it to arrive!

I will say one thing: you don't have to be a tactical genius to play 4e from what I can tell so far. Like, it helps, but also, the game kind of makes you feel like a tactical genius just from playing. This is because each player knows their own character better than everyone else's. I've only played a couple sessions, but I had players who were nervous to get the spotlight and completely new to role playing games speak up and start suggesting tactics, just because they know that if an enemy is slid to X space, or if they can go before Y player, they can do Z. You don't need to be Napoleon to look at your character sheet and look at the field, but just small things like that I've noticed can make players feel smarter, and I have really enjoyed watching that.

Haha no problem. If you've been running into opinions like the one I linked for years, I get it.

I don't really agree with the article. I just wanted to crowdsource rebuttals to it as I was sure this community could help me do. I'm quite new to 4e and not the best at debating. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. I've updated my main response and added an edit addendum at the end to make that more clear.

As for the title of the post I just went with the name of the blog post and Reddit won't let me update it now unfortunately like Lemmy let's me do.

That's hilarious. I hope that happens to some of my friends. I think a lot of people got caught in their gaming bubbles, like my group. We switched to Pathfinder, and I think a lot of groups just assumed everybody else did, too. When maybe D&D just maybe caught up the more casual fans that weren't in rpg forums and so groups like mine never knew.

Ive been playing 4th edition with some people, one person played 4th in college but preferred 3.5, half never played D&D ever, and then there's me who's played a lot of 3.5,PF,and 5e but came wanting to give this game a chance because of seeing Matt Coville's Dusk campaign run smoothly. I think half the group being new helped them to come to the table with an open mind and they don't seem to complain about not being able to RP or anything. Now I want to see if I can get my other more experienced friends to try a one-shot or something, but they bring up the same criticisms as always ("Oh ya, I remember that game. It was just too much like a video game or WoW. Not very immersive."). The fact that you pulled it off gives me a little hope lol. Also seeing people's rebuffs to this blog post in this very thread will give me a little more ammunition.

Thanks for the extra context on some of their claims too. They have a source but no link to it, so it would take some work to track down and verify or disprove what they said about game popularity. I appreciate that you challenged even the base assumptions of the article.

I didn't post this, another person did. The blog post I linked. I just wanted to get people's opinions on it and I used a controversial post title to do so lol.

They name a source in the blog post for number of players in 2021, but there isn't a link so I'd have to around looking for the source of why they think 4e is so much less popular. I might do it later, but I was too lazy right now, especially since I'm technically at work. Maybe it's got more popular since then, but not sure. It does strike me as a game that probably has a lot of staying power beyond the other games they mentioned. If it had a different license, I bet even more so.

I think the only thing people like this author can say 5e does better than 4e in terms of combat is that 5e combat is shorter. And I guess the simplified modifiers into advantage/disadvantage was a good idea, too. Unfortunately, part of the reason is that 4e has more options each turn, so while I think it will always have longer combat, imo it's worth it to make combat a more interesting experience than like you said, "I attack" every turn. Plus, if the players get used to their powers and you cut enemy hit points, I'm sure it can become a comparable speed for a good number of levels. I'm not positive since me and my players are still knew at this game, but it's true for normal board games.

4e is really a game you have to play to understand. I remember dismissing it when it came out, too. And even when I started giving it another chance recently, I couldn't tell what the point of the pushing powers was. I had the same criticisms as them. "Okay, I push them, now what? No damage when pushing them against walls except for certain powers, so then what's the point?" But now that I've played a couple sessions I get it. Once you see the game in play and everyone else's powers come online during combat then it finally starts to make sense. One or two encounters is all it takes imo.

You can push someone to get a free space to move without an Attack of Opportunity, you can do it to give your ally a chance to move, you can push an enemy into a zone your ally made to slow them down or damage them, you can push them off a cliff, into dangerous terrain, or into traps or hazards, you can do it to help your team escape a bad situation, push enemies into a narrow corridor so that you can fight other enemies, or maybe to give some room for another melee character to get an attack off without being blocked by an ally, make it harder for enemies to flank, make it easier for allies to flank, etc. Even in a large, blank plane, if you're playing with a controller in your party, who can often make zones and stuff, forced movement can still be useful.

But it's hard to understand that when you're just reading through the book, one class at a time. You have to actually get a group together to play and see enemies move around and see both you and allies shoot off their spells and exploits before it all comes together. At least that's what it was like for me.

I do wish there was more different ability zones besides blasts, bursts, and walls, like lines or cones, just to encourage different angles of moving around of yourself and enemies to find the perfect shot. But it's a small criticism overall, and would've been easily fixed if they had kept making more books and content with classes and powers that kept introducing interesting concepts, instead of "retreating" to Essentials and then 5e (like the Avenger and it's isolation specialization, a mark difference from wanting enemies grouped up or focused down).