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For starters, I have been a long time player and I stopped for awhile after 3.5. I was wondering if the latest version was any good. I am considering picking up again and was wondering what the general opinion of it was.

Well, you may want to wait, now. 5th edition is on the horizon, apparently.

Having played 3.5th and 4th, it's... different. I can tell you that it's perfect for people who have never role-played, since it's mechanics work very much like a video game, with each class having 'powers'. So, it's a bit more fun in that the fighter doesn't just hit stuff while the wizard flies around shooting magical lasers from his crotch.

You'll also have to be wary of 4th and Essentials (basically, 4.5th edition). Also, don't listen to people who say that 4th edition doesn't allow for actual role-playing.

Fifth is on the way as infinite mentioned so investing serious money into a controversial edition that has half a foot in the grave might not be the best idea if you're looking to get some longevity from your purchase.

Well, I do have the DM's Guide, first Monster Manual, all 3 players guide, a 1st level adventure, and the rules manual that I may consider selling.

IF you want to mess around with it while waiting for fifth the Essentials books are quite cheap online ($12-13 a piece) and there are only a few books.

Heroes of the Forgotten Lands
Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms
Essentials Rulebook*
Monster Vault


*There is a "DM Kit" that has the Rulebook and a little adventure, map tiles, and some counters. Overall you just need the Rulebook but if want the extra stuff go for it, but you don't need both.

4th has some great ideas, and a very 'clean' and usable presentation... Unfortunatyely, the presentation is so clean and sterile that this has turned many of. The 'powers' structure does remind a few of a computer game, and combats work best when using a grid map, but it's a neat system.

My only personal complaint, really, is the math can get a bit silly. At high levels it seems like you're rolling 1d20+38 for basic to-hit rolls, so it's a little wonky.

The 'powers' system is a bit of a shift from previous editions, but the main thing is it works! it makes character classes much more balanced: Everyone has neat, interesting stuff to do each turn, rarely forced to either fall-back to "I hit them with my sword!" or trying a stunt that relies on GM whim, as was common in previous editions.

The Essentials material adds some more varied classes from the base by disrupting the 'standard' power structure from the main books. What this means is the 'core' versions of classes have similar progressions: You get a couple at-wills, an encounter, and a daily to start, then a power a level as you advance. Some of the essentials versions might get more at-wills at the cost of encounters, or vice-versa, that changes things a bit. For example, the Essentials version of the Ranger is based around stances, a concept in which the character can be under one stance at a time that provides certain bonuses... But the character has less 'big hit' Encounter or Daily powers to select from.

It's a good system. I'm a bit annoyed about some details, but it's pretty solid. A core 'philosophy' is that mechanically, the world is a prop for the PCs to interact with. Instead of 3.0's interesting but sometimes overly complex system where PCs and monsters 'played by the same rules' there's trimmed-down rules to make monsters interesting (Unique powers, including space for special powers that trigger when seriously wounded, etc.) and more fun and manageable for the GM (Minions (one-hit monsters to make massive hordes viable); Monsters generally are built with 'encounter' abilities as they're expected to be around for one scene at a time and what they do of-camera is no one's business; there's multiple variants of most monsters to fulfill basic roles like melee, long-range, etc.)

Not perfect, but very interesting. I'm hopeful 5th edition (2013 release) won't listen too much to the negative press and throw away all the good parts.

Havok210 wrote:For starters, I have been a long time player and I stopped for awhile after 3.5. I was wondering if the latest version was any good. I am considering picking up again and was wondering what the general opinion of it was.

Really all depends. 4th is very different from 3.5. The combat rules are very clearly written. There is more direct balance between the various classes. The only probably I've had with it is the obsession people have with completing a certain number of combat encounters in a session as opposed to role playing. Many people have slipped back to more of a hack and slash approach since the rules are more combat focused now. I disliked 4th for some time because of this. I am now running a 4th edition campaign myself, since it was easier to get everyone on the same page for the game wiht 4th edition books still readily available. I am running it just like I always do: Heavy on roleplaying with combat there when appropriate and not the sole focus of things. With the clear combat rules, combat is no longer muddled or confused in anyway either, so it is good on that front. I am actually really enjoying it now. Never thought that would happen.

If you go with 4th, stay away from essentials. Essentials was supposed to "fix" the complains people had with 4th and instead dumbed down and limited things even more extremely. The regular 4th edition rules have enough options available that multiple people can play the same class and have completely different powers. In essentials pretty much every character of a given class has the same abilities as any other. BOR-ING!!

All that said, 5th edition is in the works. I have not seen it or investigated it much. At this point in life, having owned every D&D and AD&D version since Chainmail so many years ago I have no intention of my buying 5th edition. Just don't see the need to reboot yet again. Unsure how close we are to 5th ediiton at this point, so it is unknown if buying into 4th edition now is a good plan or not.

Skriker

Havok210 wrote:For starters, I have been a long time player and I stopped for awhile after 3.5. I was wondering if the latest version was any good. I am considering picking up again and was wondering what the general opinion of it was.

I didn't care for 4th edition, and my group refused to play it.

If you enjoyed 3.5, then Pathfinder by paizo might be a good idea. It modified the 3.5 rules a bit, and they have a bunch of support right now. Plenty of modules and players guides. Our group is really enjoying it.

However, a lot of people don't like the setting. You should check out some of the threads on it here, if you're at all interested.

Balance wrote:4th has some great ideas, and a very 'clean' and usable presentation... Unfortunatyely, the presentation is so clean and sterile that this has turned many of. The 'powers' structure does remind a few of a computer game, and combats work best when using a grid map, but it's a neat system.

By "works best with map" Balance means to say, that the powers are actually defined in terms of how many "squares" they affect. Most characters have at least one "power" that affects a 3 X 3 square area that you can declare somewhere in the battlefield. Even the rogue has a "throw lots of knives" power that somehow ends up having a 3x3 area effect cloud, and has no actual bearing on the number of knives said character might or might not be carrying. It's very much a miniatures game with world setting loosely attached. As always you can roleplay without any rules at all, but if you choose to use rules, the way they are written will always have some impact on the way your players approach the world. This is why you see far more running and jumping in, say, 7th Sea than you do in 4th Edition D&D.

Redeemer wrote:
By "works best with map" Balance means to say, that the powers are actually defined in terms of how many "squares" they affect. Most characters have at least one "power" that affects a 3 X 3 square area that you can declare somewhere in the battlefield. Even the rogue has a "throw lots of knives" power that somehow ends up having a 3x3 area effect cloud, and has no actual bearing on the number of knives said character might or might not be carrying. It's very much a miniatures game with world setting loosely attached. As always you can roleplay without any rules at all, but if you choose to use rules, the way they are written will always have some impact on the way your players approach the world. This is why you see far more running and jumping in, say, 7th Sea than you do in 4th Edition D&D.

OTOH, certain characters in 4th edition D&D only 'work' in combat if they stay mobile. It's definitely a pretty 'detail-oriented' tactical combat system. The fighter-types (Defenders as a catch-all 'role') are often a bit stationary, and some powers may reward this, but others may be more rewarded for moving and taking chances. Rogues go from pitiful damage to massive damage if they can backstab, which often requires setting up attacks.

Many monsters get special bonuses if they're in groups. Players can get these, too, but not quite as strongly. As such, it is often in the player character's best interest to use abilities to push/pull/slide/teleport opponents around. Break up a shield wall, or pull an enemy so he's between two allies and set him up for an an attack with benefits.

It's a system that does reward thinking a few steps ahead and working as a team. A great combat was when I realized my Druid could 'chain' a few moves together to create a Zone effect (Catch-all for stationary effects like cloudkill, ice storm, etc.) that caused damage 'when opponents left the zone' then used another ability (which required my Druid wild shaping into his dog... he's his own best friend) to 'pull' enemies from the zone, so they took damage a couple times over.

If I look back on what I'd think if I was the GM and saw that, I think I'd be happy as it wasn't a spammable effect, it was very situational, and was damaging without being overpowering. And, the important thing, it was fun.

kronk wrote:

Havok210 wrote:For starters, I have been a long time player and I stopped for awhile after 3.5. I was wondering if the latest version was any good. I am considering picking up again and was wondering what the general opinion of it was.

I didn't care for 4th edition, and my group refused to play it.

If you enjoyed 3.5, then Pathfinder by paizo might be a good idea. It modified the 3.5 rules a bit, and they have a bunch of support right now. Plenty of modules and players guides. Our group is really enjoying it.

However, a lot of people don't like the setting. You should check out some of the threads on it here, if you're at all interested.

This. My group has thoroughly enjoyed Pathfinder, and the Adventure Modules are a ton of fun, for a new and experienced groups a like.

Redeemer wrote:

Balance wrote:4th has some great ideas, and a very 'clean' and usable presentation... Unfortunatyely, the presentation is so clean and sterile that this has turned many of. The 'powers' structure does remind a few of a computer game, and combats work best when using a grid map, but it's a neat system.

By "works best with map" Balance means to say, that the powers are actually defined in terms of how many "squares" they affect. Most characters have at least one "power" that affects a 3 X 3 square area that you can declare somewhere in the battlefield. Even the rogue has a "throw lots of knives" power that somehow ends up having a 3x3 area effect cloud, and has no actual bearing on the number of knives said character might or might not be carrying. It's very much a miniatures game with world setting loosely attached. As always you can roleplay without any rules at all, but if you choose to use rules, the way they are written will always have some impact on the way your players approach the world. This is why you see far more running and jumping in, say, 7th Sea than you do in 4th Edition D&D.

Just to point out, there is a line in there somewhere commenting that multiple target attacks required a weapon/ammo per target. Don't have my books at work, so I can't exactly give you a page quote, but it came up for my rogue once.

streamdragon wrote:
Just to point out, there is a line in there somewhere commenting that multiple target attacks required a weapon/ammo per target. Don't have my books at work, so I can't exactly give you a page quote, but it came up for my rogue once.

Really? I may have missed that. The 4e rules just aren't "casual read friendly" to me (combined with my current general lack of free time) but in general there's a "Ammo tracking isn't fun" philosophy, especially since most of the wizard expensive components have been removed, abstracted (ritual costs/residuum), etc. Making melee-types track arrows when the wizard can at-will magic missiles seems very against the 43 design philosophy. We've always treated it as requiring the character have bought arrows, at some point, but tracking individual arrows is a pain and encourages not-fun stuff like policing rooms after fight scenes to recover spent arrows, etc.

I will track it down this evening and give you a page reference. I did find it sort of odd that the requirement was made for martial characters, but it made some sort of sense at the time.

I remember our ranger basically kept track of arrows by their equivalent copper value. If you played FF6 (or FF3 if you prefer the US numbering), you may remember Setzer having a special attack that required you lob money at your enemies; same concept. Made my Fullblade fighter feel a bit better about his damage when it didn't cost him 3cp per enemy.

4th plays a lot like an MMO. I dont care for it as much as 3.5 cause it really stepped away from roleplaying and became more of a battle system and that's not really the only point of dnd. That being said, I'm pretty biased. I love 3.5, I have a feff-ton of books. Even if 5th ed is the best thing since slided toasties, I'll be hardpressed to walk away from my massive 3.5 collection.

streamdragon wrote:I will track it down this evening and give you a page reference. I did find it sort of odd that the requirement was made for martial characters, but it made some sort of sense at the time.

It'd be interesting. We certainly didn't do that, but I am not saying we did everything 100% strictly to the rules.

One thing I do hope D&D Next takes from 4th is a strong 'reskinning' philosophy. While not unknown in earlier editions, there was a big push in 4 to say "OK, you want to play some weird class variant there's no rules for... let's find the closest variant we can and go from there."

For example, my DM's setting has a 'first one' kind of race that died out millenia ago... A character we wanted to bring back from games in a previous edition used the Deva race description with minor tweaks, and it worked great! Another idea was to use the Goliath for a subset of humans that were wild brawler-types.

ZombieJoe wrote:4th plays a lot like an MMO. I dont care for it as much as 3.5 cause it really stepped away from roleplaying and became more of a battle system and that's not really the only point of dnd. That being said, I'm pretty biased. I love 3.5, I have a feff-ton of books. Even if 5th ed is the best thing since slided toasties, I'll be hardpressed to walk away from my massive 3.5 collection.

Please, explain to me how 4.0 played any more like an mmo than 3.0/3.5 did. I have posed this question to multiple people, and none have been able to give me a satisfactory answer beyond 'because'.

Balance wrote:

streamdragon wrote:I will track it down this evening and give you a page reference. I did find it sort of odd that the requirement was made for martial characters, but it made some sort of sense at the time.

It'd be interesting. We certainly didn't do that, but I am not saying we did everything 100% strictly to the rules.

One thing I do hope D&D Next takes from 4th is a strong 'reskinning' philosophy. While not unknown in earlier editions, there was a big push in 4 to say "OK, you want to play some weird class variant there's no rules for... let's find the closest variant we can and go from there."

For example, my DM's setting has a 'first one' kind of race that died out millenia ago... A character we wanted to bring back from games in a previous edition used the Deva race description with minor tweaks, and it worked great! Another idea was to use the Goliath for a subset of humans that were wild brawler-types.

Few games tend to be 100% strictly by the rules, in my experience. In 2.0 we certainly did not roll stats using 3d6 straight down the line. In 3.0/3.5 we allowed people to choose between average and rolling for HP (I always took average, because dice hate me), and 4.0 we didn't use RAW in regards to haggling and a few other things.

As to the reskinning, I agree it's awesome and I agree 4e's leniency with some of its concepts was a big draw. My biggest love for 4e was that you could play martial characters without being almost completely redundant to caster types. Fighters actually had the tools to do their job, rather than relying on a DM to finesse a monster's actions. I mean, in earlier versions, why wouldn't the dragon just destroy the mage first? What's the fighter going to do about it? At least 4e gave the fighter some abilities to make that an actual question.

streamdragon wrote:

ZombieJoe wrote:4th plays a lot like an MMO. I dont care for it as much as 3.5 cause it really stepped away from roleplaying and became more of a battle system and that's not really the only point of dnd. That being said, I'm pretty biased. I love 3.5, I have a feff-ton of books. Even if 5th ed is the best thing since slided toasties, I'll be hardpressed to walk away from my massive 3.5 collection.

Please, explain to me how 4.0 played any more like an mmo than 3.0/3.5 did. I have posed this question to multiple people, and none have been able to give me a satisfactory answer beyond 'because'.

"It is known, Khal."

I have been trying to avoid this thread because it is the same tired edition wars that always comes up. Sigh. It is okay to play different versions of D&D without bashing on others.

pretre wrote:

streamdragon wrote:

ZombieJoe wrote:4th plays a lot like an MMO. I dont care for it as much as 3.5 cause it really stepped away from roleplaying and became more of a battle system and that's not really the only point of dnd. That being said, I'm pretty biased. I love 3.5, I have a feff-ton of books. Even if 5th ed is the best thing since slided toasties, I'll be hardpressed to walk away from my massive 3.5 collection.

Please, explain to me how 4.0 played any more like an mmo than 3.0/3.5 did. I have posed this question to multiple people, and none have been able to give me a satisfactory answer beyond 'because'.

"It is known, Khal."

I have been trying to avoid this thread because it is the same tired edition wars that always comes up. Sigh. It is okay to play different versions of D&D without bashing on others.

I'm not trying to launch an edition war. I played 3.0/3.5 for years and enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. I'm not saying 4.0 >>>>> 3.5 or anything else, I'm simply asking someone to explain a comment, that's all. It's not meant to be a trap, there's no secret meaning. To me, there were few major style changes between the editions. The essence of the game didn't change. Someone once described it to me this way:

"At it's root, D&D is all about kicking in someone's door, killing them and taking their stuff".

Obviously that's a bit simplistic and not descriptive of every campaign, but it is fairly to the heart of D&D.

I'm not placing blame, just saying that multiple posts (not necessarily yours) are promoting the (often inaccurate) stereotypes of multiple editions and that never ends well. I completely agree with your quote though.

streamdragon wrote:

pretre wrote:

streamdragon wrote:

ZombieJoe wrote:4th plays a lot like an MMO. I dont care for it as much as 3.5 cause it really stepped away from roleplaying and became more of a battle system and that's not really the only point of dnd. That being said, I'm pretty biased. I love 3.5, I have a feff-ton of books. Even if 5th ed is the best thing since slided toasties, I'll be hardpressed to walk away from my massive 3.5 collection.

Please, explain to me how 4.0 played any more like an mmo than 3.0/3.5 did. I have posed this question to multiple people, and none have been able to give me a satisfactory answer beyond 'because'.

"It is known, Khal."

I have been trying to avoid this thread because it is the same tired edition wars that always comes up. Sigh. It is okay to play different versions of D&D without bashing on others.

I'm not trying to launch an edition war. I played 3.0/3.5 for years and enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. I'm not saying 4.0 >>>>> 3.5 or anything else, I'm simply asking someone to explain a comment, that's all. It's not meant to be a trap, there's no secret meaning. To me, there were few major style changes between the editions. The essence of the game didn't change. Someone once described it to me this way:

"At it's root, D&D is all about kicking in someone's door, killing them and taking their stuff".

Obviously that's a bit simplistic and not descriptive of every campaign, but it is fairly to the heart of D&D.

OMG! HOW STUPID R U!? 4.0 IS TOTAL TRASH AND YOU ARE TRASH FOR LIKING IT! LOL JK,

Sorry I couldn't resist.

The reason I view 4.0 as an MMO-esk game is for the following.

1. The daily/encounter powers. This is very much like any MMO ability system, completely with cool downs and all. In 3.5, you didn't have many of these. Honestly, they were very far and few between.
2. They tried to increase the amount of "combat" stuff and decrease the roleplay. That is why you got those fancy "powers" in the first place, and they down played roleplaying. MMO's do not focus on roleplay at all...usually. So, in an MMO you only have powers and that is all you consider when you level up. This similarity exhists between 4.0 and, say, WOW.
3. The tear system is VERY MMO. The whole, idea of paragon paths and epic levels (which yes I know you can draw parallels between epic level and prestige classing in 3.5) felt more derivative of WOW then of 3.5. Plus the whole tear system as a whole was MMO based. In an MMO, you pick your powers and abilities based on the "PATH" or "TEARS" you choose, each comes with a set of choices. 3.5, this was not the case. You got the abilities outlined in your class profile. You could then pick from a very long list of magics and feats as needed. In that way, 3.5 gave you more options than 4.0.
4. Just look at the art! Take a 4.0 book and some WOW cover art and if you cannot see the similarities then you might just be choosing not to.
5. The whole bloodied and healing surges felt very MMO based. It added an entire new element to the game to reduce the need for parties and make the game more standalone. This is not automatically a bad thing, but there again it focused the game into a monstermashing system more than anything else. A big thing to come out of 4.0 was battle session. People getting together to just battle monsters and cave crawl. This was not nearly as prevalent in 3.5. If you play MMO's then you'd know that this is pretty much the nature of them.

That's mostly it. There are more, and when I actually played 4.0 I had an even longer list of arguments. Seriously, there are elements of 4.0 that feel ripped right out of an MMO. But, these are the basics. Take 'em or leave 'em. I don't hate 4.0, its just not better than 3.5 in my eyes.

I find most of those reasons not well considered or very compelling, but to each his own.

DnD has never been a RP heavy/Combat Light system. Where that idea germinated I am uncertain.

Ahtman wrote:I find most of those reasons not well considered or very compelling, but to each his own.

DnD has never been a RP heavy/Combat Light system. Where that idea germinated I am uncertain.

We see what we choose to.

ZombieJoe wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I find most of those reasons not well considered or very compelling, but to each his own.

DnD has never been a RP heavy/Combat Light system. Where that idea germinated I am uncertain.

We see what we choose to.

That is an incredibly silly response. Even more so since you seem not to apply it to your own statements. I didn't go into detail of why I find your reasons spurious because this is not an Edition War thread, but I'm not going to pretend that I think your reasons are well thought it.

ZombieJoe wrote:The reason I view 4.0 as an MMO-esk game is for the following.

1. The daily/encounter powers. This is very much like any MMO ability system, completely with cool downs and all. In 3.5, you didn't have many of these. Honestly, they were very far and few between.

You know that spells were all dailies in 1st/2nd/3rd ed, right? That 3rd ed had powers in the Tome of Battle for martial characters. That daily magic item powers have existed since 1st ed. Heck, even encounter based powers aren't new to 4th. They just simplified it so that everyone could get to them.

2. They tried to increase the amount of "combat" stuff and decrease the roleplay. That is why you got those fancy "powers" in the first place, and they down played roleplaying. MMO's do not focus on roleplay at all...usually. So, in an MMO you only have powers and that is all you consider when you level up. This similarity exhists between 4.0 and, say, WOW.

This is the one that I get the least. No system increases combat and decreases roleplay. THe players and DM increase combat and decrease RP. I played campaigns in 1st ed that were just monster manual lists. Heck, ever play Keep on the Borderlands? It is just a huge dungeon crawl. Where was the roleplay there?

3. The tear system is VERY MMO. The whole, idea of paragon paths and epic levels (which yes I know you can draw parallels between epic level and prestige classing in 3.5) felt more derivative of WOW then of 3.5. Plus the whole tear system as a whole was MMO based. In an MMO, you pick your powers and abilities based on the "PATH" or "TEARS" you choose, each comes with a set of choices. 3.5, this was not the case. You got the abilities outlined in your class profile. You could then pick from a very long list of magics and feats as needed. In that way, 3.5 gave you more options than 4.0.

Tear system? What is this from?

4. Just look at the art! Take a 4.0 book and some WOW cover art and if you cannot see the similarities then you might just be choosing not to.

Wait, so art evolved over time and they use similar art styles? Were you expecting pencil art like 1st ed?

5. The whole bloodied and healing surges felt very MMO based. It added an entire new element to the game to reduce the need for parties and make the game more standalone. This is not automatically a bad thing, but there again it focused the game into a monstermashing system more than anything else. A big thing to come out of 4.0 was battle session. People getting together to just battle monsters and cave crawl. This was not nearly as prevalent in 3.5. If you play MMO's then you'd know that this is pretty much the nature of them.

There has always been a roll vs role in D&D. If you think this is a new thing, you are sadly lacking in historical perspective.

That's mostly it. There are more, and when I actually played 4.0 I had an even longer list of arguments. Seriously, there are elements of 4.0 that feel ripped right out of an MMO. But, these are the basics. Take 'em or leave 'em. I don't hate 4.0, its just not better than 3.5 in my eyes.

The whole D&D ripped off MMOs is ridiculous. You know that MMOs ripped those things right out of RPGs, right? Nothing is new under the sun.

I'm not an MMO expert, but...

ZombieJoe wrote:
1. The daily/encounter powers. This is very much like any MMO ability system, completely with cool downs and all. In 3.5, you didn't have many of these. Honestly, they were very far and few between.

What, like wizards/magic users/mages from every other edition?
I also don't know of many MMOs with anything similar to 'Dailys' other than a few 'summoning' type abilities. Most MMO 'cool downs' seem to be more time-based.
"Resource management" is a pretty common game design theory. The AED powers is jsut one novel way of doing it.

ZombieJoe wrote:
2. They tried to increase the amount of "combat" stuff and decrease the roleplay. That is why you got those fancy "powers" in the first place, and they down played roleplaying. MMO's do not focus on roleplay at all...usually. So, in an MMO you only have powers and that is all you consider when you level up. This similarity exhists between 4.0 and, say, WOW.

A great quote I've heard to this is that the 4.0 team made the split between combat and role-playing more defined. This was probably a good thing, as it meant that both could stand on their own.RP is as common in 4e as the group wants it to be.

ZombieJoe wrote:3. The tear system is VERY MMO. The whole, idea of paragon paths and epic levels (which yes I know you can draw parallels between epic level and prestige classing in 3.5) felt more derivative of WOW then of 3.5. Plus the whole tear system as a whole was MMO based. In an MMO, you pick your powers and abilities based on the "PATH" or "TEARS" you choose, each comes with a set of choices. 3.5, this was not the case. You got the abilities outlined in your class profile. You could then pick from a very long list of magics and feats as needed. In that way, 3.5 gave you more options than 4.0.

I assume you mean Tiers.

Again, RPGs did it first. Early DYD editions were split into several sets for (if I remember correctly) Basic/Expert/Immortal. These actually map suprisingly well to the 4e tiers, actually...

'Tiers' are a measure of what style of gaming is expected. Basic tier (Heroic, I think?) characters are going to tend to be gritty adventurers of limited means. the 2nd tier is more heroes that can act on a larger national/worldly scale, while 3rd tier characters are practically demigods and can theoretically take on gods if they work together. It's a very broad system to classify what players should expect their characters to do.

You do get a 'Paragon Path' at the beginning of the 2nd tier, and a 'Epic Destiny' at the 3rd tier. These are much like 3.0's Prestige Classes, really. Which MMOs let you pick a second class at roughly 1/3 and 2/3 of the level cap? (Not doubting there is one... I just don't know it.)

ZombieJoe wrote:4. Just look at the art! Take a 4.0 book and some WOW cover art and if you cannot see the similarities then you might just be choosing not to.

No argument here. WotC was horrible to use a popular art style to entice people into reading their horrible, no-fun derivative RPG they stole from MMOs even when their game came up with stuff first.

ZombieJoe wrote:5. The whole bloodied and healing surges felt very MMO based. It added an entire new element to the game to reduce the need for parties and make the game more standalone. This is not automatically a bad thing, but there again it focused the game into a monstermashing system more than anything else. A big thing to come out of 4.0 was battle session. People getting together to just battle monsters and cave crawl. This was not nearly as prevalent in 3.5. If you play MMO's then you'd know that this is pretty much the nature of them.

Dungeon Crawls are not a new thing to 4e.

Healing surges are actually a pretty cool idea. Note that you can only use 1/combat without special abilities, so they by no means replace 'traditional' magic healing. They fix a couple 'system oddities' as well: D&D has often mentioned that HP is an abstraction. It's not that a higher-level character has more blood, body mass, or redundant organs than a lower-level character, but that they have experience, force of will, and plot immunity to ignore or minimize wounds. In game effects, they soak more HP. But healing has often fallen more into a mechanical aspect: it heals a random range. In 4e, much healing is based of healing surges, so it heals a percentage of the character's HP. Thus a healing spell is as useful to a mid-level character as a low-level character. This helps prevent some weirdness (for beginning adventurers pre-4, Cure Light is often full-up. For level 10s, it's for nicks and scratches. In 4e, it's always a relatively light healing spell).

Similarly, the whole 'healing surge' concept is a great thing for many character abilities to key off of: It adds another 'resource' to manage (I think there's undead that can steal healing surges, and I think I saw an adventure where a puzzle could allow a character to voluntarily forfeit a healing surge for a benny). I don't know of any powers off the top of my head that do this, but a power could require the player 'exert themselves' (lose a healing surge) to activate a more useful power. Pre-4e, a lot of this stuff would either just have x/day limits (Oh wait, see your first point... A lot of pre-4e D&D characters have "May use power X 1/day and similar...)

Bloodied, in actual practice, is just a neat 'status' to key off of. Some monsters have 'berserk' effects when they get to bloodied, and more than a few PC abilities key of themselves or others getting bloodied. Also, in practice, I think it's a lot more flavorful way of players tracking each other's status than throwing HP counts around. I'd rather the cleric target whoever's bloodied than looking at HP totals.

In practice, healing surges and other 4e elements really encourage teamwork in combat. Offensively, there's a lot of opportunities for a player to set up another player. lure enemies into position with abilities that force movement. Use a low-damage power that has a side effect that knocks an enemy prone or grants combat advantage so another party member can hit them with a nasty maneuver. Defensively it is much the same. There's powers to rescue a character that is in trouble by healing them, moving them around, attracting enemy attention, etc.

A low-level team won't do as much teamwork, but in my experience once the group hits 3rd or 4th level they start to discover combos that make sense for the group. For example, if there's a rouge in the group, anyone that can make enemies grant combat advantage is going to be the backstabber's best friend.

I'm not saying any edition is intrinsically and objectively better, I just don't like how 4th plays.

Don't like how 1st plays, either, so I'm not exactly "it's better cause it's older" about this.

That's cool. I wasn't a fan of speed factors and thac0 after I learned there were other ways to play. I can see how a more defined system could not sit well with some folks.

It just pisses me off when people regurgitate the same arguments that they heard somewhere else and have no basis on reality. 4E has problems but they have nothing to do with MMOs.

Balance wrote:

streamdragon wrote:I will track it down this evening and give you a page reference. I did find it sort of odd that the requirement was made for martial characters, but it made some sort of sense at the time.

It'd be interesting. We certainly didn't do that, but I am not saying we did everything 100% strictly to the rules.

Found the page reference:

Page 271, Area Attack, third bullet, second paragraph:

If you're using a projectile weapon to make an area attack, you need one piece of ammunition for each target, and if you're using thrown weapons, you need one for each target.

I remembered it only because it became an issue for my rogue, who needed to carry multiple daggers to use Cloud of Steel (encounter, level 7). I opted to get the Armbands of Daggers, or whatever the things were called that let you create +2 daggers.

ZombieJoe wrote:The reason I view 4.0 as an MMO-esk game is for the following.

1. The daily/encounter powers. This is very much like any MMO ability system, completely with cool downs and all. In 3.5, you didn't have many of these. Honestly, they were very far and few between.
2. They tried to increase the amount of "combat" stuff and decrease the roleplay. That is why you got those fancy "powers" in the first place, and they down played roleplaying. MMO's do not focus on roleplay at all...usually. So, in an MMO you only have powers and that is all you consider when you level up. This similarity exhists between 4.0 and, say, WOW.
3. The tear system is VERY MMO. The whole, idea of paragon paths and epic levels (which yes I know you can draw parallels between epic level and prestige classing in 3.5) felt more derivative of WOW then of 3.5. Plus the whole tear system as a whole was MMO based. In an MMO, you pick your powers and abilities based on the "PATH" or "TEARS" you choose, each comes with a set of choices. 3.5, this was not the case. You got the abilities outlined in your class profile. You could then pick from a very long list of magics and feats as needed. In that way, 3.5 gave you more options than 4.0.
4. Just look at the art! Take a 4.0 book and some WOW cover art and if you cannot see the similarities then you might just be choosing not to.
5. The whole bloodied and healing surges felt very MMO based. It added an entire new element to the game to reduce the need for parties and make the game more standalone. This is not automatically a bad thing, but there again it focused the game into a monstermashing system more than anything else. A big thing to come out of 4.0 was battle session. People getting together to just battle monsters and cave crawl. This was not nearly as prevalent in 3.5. If you play MMO's then you'd know that this is pretty much the nature of them.

That's mostly it. There are more, and when I actually played 4.0 I had an even longer list of arguments. Seriously, there are elements of 4.0 that feel ripped right out of an MMO. But, these are the basics. Take 'em or leave 'em. I don't hate 4.0, its just not better than 3.5 in my eyes.

I know several people have already responded to your list, but as I was the one that posed the question I feel compelled to answer it. Please don't feel like I'm jumping all over you or anything. I enjoyed 3.0/3.5 greatly before 4e, and I've no doubts if I played another 3.5 game now I would still enjoy it.

1. As others have said, even in 3.0/3.5 you had powers with limited uses. Spells per day, Druid Shapeshift, Paladin Lay on Hands, etc. etc. This isn't exclusive to 4e by a long shot, and is vastly different from MMOs to me, where each power can be used each and every encounter, over and over. In essence, an MMO has mostly At-Will powers, not AEDU powers.

2. This is one that is flatly and blatantly wrong. Pure and simple. 4e did not one thing to dilute roleplaying. In fact, I would argue it is the first D&D system to actualy ENCOURAGE it. Previously, any XP awards outside of combat were purely at the whim of the DM; 3.0/3.5 had not a single system in place to reward roleplay style encounters, whereas 4e had skill challenges (even if the system was deplorable). There are numerous utility powers for each class that are not combat powers. Paladins get Astral Speech at level 2, for instance, which added to Diplomacy checks. Rogues had a whole slew of skills designed for sneaking around out of combat, as well as skills like Master of Deceit that let you reroll bluff skill checks. There were plenty of powers and feats that were for out of combat encounters.

3. Tiers are nothing new to D&D either. Early versions of D&D had the whole "Name level" thing, where early fighters could then learn to be rangers or paladins. 3.0/3.5 had prestige classes. All 4e did was tack on another layer.

4. Art is such a subjective thing I can't take this point seriously. The art in the D&D books has changed drastically over the years, from early artists to Elmore to other fantastical styles, nothing here is really screaming "MMO" as much as it screams "FANTASY!"

5. I'll admit it: I love both the Bloodied mechanic (which I feel 4e actually underutilized) and the idea of healing surges. In making 3.0/3.5 parties, it always came down to "okay, who wants to play the healer". There was simply the assumption there would be one, because it was 100% mandatory, and really clerics were the only truly viable option. Druids were awesome at lots of things, don't get me wrong, but with delayed access to Heal and no access to Mass Heal, they simply couldn't truly compete with a cleric, let alone a Radiant Servant of Pelor. So I played a LOT of clerics, and let's face it, the pressure is on clerics. In 2.0, a cleric's spell list was almost always the same. Cure _____ Wounds xhowevermanyyoucouldget for each level. 3.0/3.5 did a nice job of lessening that burden by allowing you to channel spells as a FRA, which helped. 4.0 allowed a party to truly have options. Warlords are viable healers, and all players share the healing resource, which I will always see as a step up. I also have no idea how either of those relates to MMOs, and I've been playing MMOs since EQ. And there is no way you could possibly say "3.0/3.5 had less dungeon crawls", since that's simply a playstyle, and playstyles vary so much from group to group. My group actually had a set of characters specifically for a dungeon crawl, for when none of the usual DMs felt like DMing that night.


So again, please don't feel like I'm saying "OMGeesies, you like 3.0/3.5 what in the flaming spoon farts is wrong with you?" I'm just saying that the comparisons of 4e to MMOs always seem to fall ridiculously flat. If I were to try to compare it to anything, I'd point at "squares" and square area of effects and compare it to something like Final Fantasy Tactics, but even then the comparison isn't completely apt.

Arguing that 4e reduces roleplay is not an argument at all. The levels of roleplay vs combat is entirely up to the DM. He or she decides whether your two-hour session is spent wandering around the hillside doing nothing, or fighting monsters. He or she decides if those statues are going to come alive and attack the party (combat), or if the doors will all suddenly shut and the party will be trapped (RP).

If players or DMs want to cave crawl and fight monsters, so be it. It's one of the reasons why we play these games in the first place, instead of playing video RPGs - the flexibility. "You need Item X to open Door Y" - an unavoidable circumstance in some games, but in D&D? No matter the edition, the DM decides whether or not Item X is the only way. Maybe your Warforged Paladin can smash the door down, because it's evil or something. Maybe there is no door.

I play 4e. I'm not saying it's the best thing ever, but what is? It's good, casual fun. Although, to the OP, I'd probably wait until 5e is released, since it's coming soon, apparently.

Also, yeah, art? That's a silly argument! If anything, WoW is just copying D&D . It's like complaining that D&D is exactly like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion because it has elves in it.

EDIT: Also, it's not like you can't RP while in combat. For example, my Tiefling Warlock character followed the Cleric around the battleboard asking him for a heal, even though he'd only been scratched (extremely few hit points gone), because he's prissy and stuff. As long as your party plays IC, everything is 'RP'.