The one thing I remember most distinctly from the arguments about 4e back when it was the current edition were a very vocal group of fans who absolutely lost their shit at the suggestion a DM may choose to not allow oozes to be tripped. "You're taking a class's core competency away and nerfing them!! If a player has a selected an ability with trip, then they are allowed to trip!"

There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful.  Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war."  In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times.  In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point.  Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important.  As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style.  I unequivocally prefer the latter.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 22, 2021, 04:50:43 AM
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful.  Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war."  In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times.  In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point.  Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important.  As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style.  I unequivocally prefer the latter.

Wow that is a great way to characterize it. I'd argue even D&D 5E is still closer to the sport category (maybe 60% sport to 40% war). But yeah, I think for me a major "oh crap" moment was realizing that there were no longer any long term consequences in 4E, which essentially killed a nontrivial chunk of my scenario plotting expectations. It was the first edition where the wound that Frodo took could never happen mechanically, so to speak.

Quote from: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 11:54:19 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on June 22, 2021, 04:50:43 AM
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful.  Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war."  In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times.  In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point.  Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important.  As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style.  I unequivocally prefer the latter.

Wow that is a great way to characterize it. I'd argue even D&D 5E is still closer to the sport category (maybe 60% sport to 40% war). But yeah, I think for me a major "oh crap" moment was realizing that there were no longer any long term consequences in 4E, which essentially killed a nontrivial chunk of my scenario plotting expectations. It was the first edition where the wound that Frodo took could never happen mechanically, so to speak.

Sure it could.  I'd represent it as a Disease so that it could have different stages and be delayed somewhat.  A big watershed moment for me was when I realized that PC's Hit Points weren't their hit points but that Healing Surges were the measure of how long they could last.  Once I started plotting encounters around that it became easier.

But yeah I wish they'd gone full Earthdawn with the Wound Threshold on top of your hit points.

Quote from: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 11:54:19 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on June 22, 2021, 04:50:43 AM
There are some terms used for discussing "operational play" on ENWorld, back when it was a cool place and I almost lived there, that I find intuitive and useful.  Those were "RPGs as a sport" vs "RPGs as war."  In the former, in the extreme example, you reset to the same state before every encounter and tackle it with the same capabilities every times.  In the latter, loss or gain of resources occur from encounter to encounter and for each encounter the PCs have a different starting point.  Conserving resources for future encounters and long term planning become important.  As one might imagine, there were quite a few arguments about how to employ the terms, but most folks seemed to see 4E in the RPG as a sport category with earlier editions being more in the RPG as war style.  I unequivocally prefer the latter.

Wow that is a great way to characterize it. I'd argue even D&D 5E is still closer to the sport category (maybe 60% sport to 40% war). But yeah, I think for me a major "oh crap" moment was realizing that there were no longer any long term consequences in 4E, which essentially killed a nontrivial chunk of my scenario plotting expectations. It was the first edition where the wound that Frodo took could never happen mechanically, so to speak.

I think it would be more accurate to say that long term consequences are not the defaults and are not explained well and do not usually relate directly to something in the game world (at least not at first glance).  Which, in fairness, at many tables will devolve to exactly what you said.  Even in 5E, with some fairly clear optional rules to make it much easier to do, there is no clear guidance in the books on why you would choose to do that.  In other words, it's easy for an old school GM to run a 5E (mostly) old-school style game, and more or less follow the rules in doing so.  But the game doesn't help you much except providing an incomplete toolbox. 

Run well as more than a tactical skirmish game, 4E requires the GM to make a lot of rulings on effect--sometimes directly counter to the asinine, so-called "sage advice" from WotC.  It is akin to the way Hero System works, where an "8d6 Blast" with the "explosion advantage and some flavor limitations, might be how a fireball is described.  It's up to the GM to decide what the inherent limitations are on a fireball are and how much those are worth as mechanical limitations, often in consultation with the player.  The big difference is that in Hero, this largely gets decided when the power is built, it is a necessary part of developing the power, and because it is central to running Hero, the rules usually do a fairly decent job of explaining how that process works--and then you get a lot of practice.  In 4E, the GM needs that same conceptual skill, but you take the power they give you, without the rationale beyond kind of reading between the lines, and then you need to make those rulings as the thing gets used.  Much more difficult ask for your average GM selected at random--and not something that previous play in D&D has much prepared you to do (except insomuch as all RPGs require you to make rulings about things in general, but that is a much broader activity).

I have not notice combat taking much longer in 4e than it does in 5e. 4e has 30 levels and most of them work. We're up to level 21 in a campaign and we have rituals equivalent to any magic you can do in 5e. The combats take way too long. Like 3+ hours for important fights and 1.5+ hours for anything else. Which is the same for 5e at that level.

It's not worse than 5e, I just hate sitting in initiative and it's no better at that than 5e.

In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...

A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).

B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).

C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 04:22:57 PM
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...

A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).

B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).

C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.

Essentials seems like the lost step child of 4e. The diehard 4e fans love pre-Essentials complexity, so for them it's not a fix, it's ruining what they liked about 4e in the first place. And everyone else already moved on.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 06:08:04 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 04:22:57 PM
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...

A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).

B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).

C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.

Essentials seems like the lost step child of 4e. The diehard 4e fans love pre-Essentials complexity, so for them it's not a fix, it's ruining what they liked about 4e in the first place. And everyone else already moved on.

The problem for non-4e fans with Essentials is that it's missing some of the expected class options and some of the key rules that would help it feel more like D&D.  A big one being Rituals, without which there's not really much in the way of utility magic.

But in terms of the what Chris24601 was talking about, the monster design and also the adventures post Essentials are much much better.  Even if you wanted to stick with the original two PHB, I would agree about using that material from Essentials (Although Monster Manual 3 and the Dark Sun monster book which came at the end of the core line are also good).

Quote from: TJS on June 22, 2021, 06:41:13 PM

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 06:08:04 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 22, 2021, 04:22:57 PM
In terms of combat speed and not being quite so bored; a couple of things I found really helped were...

A) Use Post-Essentials material only. By two years in the kinks were mostly out of the system and Essentials was essentially (heh) the X.5e of the edition with streamlined powers and a much tighter feat list. Likewise, the Monster Vault and later monsters were far better designed (there's a reason even the 4E fans use the term "Padded Sumo" for the early 4E monster designs).

B) Limit the splats. Official RPGA 5E limiting PC builds to "Core+1" wasn't an accident. It was a lesson learned by many 4E GMs over its lifespan. Things get infinitely more complicated when PCs are allowed to pull from every last splat and magazine article for the perfect synergies, particularly when most of the classes were only designed with their core material in mind. The main reason the Essentials Wizard class broke was allowing all the old spells from all the old splat books/articles (which were also written before the paradigm shift in design where the devs realizated soft controls were more fun for everyone than the hard lockdowns in the early material).

C) a big one to keep the players engaged, replace the monster attacks with 10+bonus, subtract 10 from all the player's defenses and have them roll their defenses instead. It takes some of the burden off the GM who is probably managing as many creatures each fight as there are PCs, but also gives the players more to do when its not specifically their turn.

Essentials seems like the lost step child of 4e. The diehard 4e fans love pre-Essentials complexity, so for them it's not a fix, it's ruining what they liked about 4e in the first place. And everyone else already moved on.

The problem for non-4e fans with Essentials is that it's missing some of the expected class options and some of the key rules that would help it feel more like D&D.  A big one being Rituals, without which there's not really much in the way of utility magic.

But in terms of the what Chris24601 was talking about, the monster design and also the adventures post Essentials are much much better.  Even if you wanted to stick with the original two PHB, I would agree about using that material from Essentials (Although Monster Manual 3 and the Dark Sun monster book which came at the end of the core line are also good).

I'm glad our group decided not to use essentials. Without ritual magic the entire 4e system falls apart.
Take most of the impactful out of combat actions and just remove it? So you can spend more time in combat?

Dumb.

Quote from: Rhedyn on June 22, 2021, 03:24:33 PM
I have not notice combat taking much longer in 4e than it does in 5e. 4e has 30 levels and most of them work. We're up to level 21 in a campaign and we have rituals equivalent to any magic you can do in 5e. The combats take way too long. Like 3+ hours for important fights and 1.5+ hours for anything else. Which is the same for 5e at that level.

It's not worse than 5e, I just hate sitting in initiative and it's no better at that than 5e.

As a player, I've had a single combat encounter in 4th edition take multiple, 4 hour sessions to complete. It got a bit better when I was DMing Dark Sun, where the creatures used the revised stats. But it took noticeably longer than the 5e I've played.

The dull part of 5e is that I'm not convinced it's faster than 4e round to round in any greatly significant way.  It's just takes less rounds.

As opposed to 13th Age, which takes the same amount of rounds as 4e, but makes them play out much faster.

5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.

4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.

4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.

In my experience, Combat was not just the number of rounds but the interactivity between each individual turn.  Interrupt reactions made turns last much longer then a normal DnD turn.

This was particularly noticeable if you had a Warlord player but any Defender type was a pain.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 22, 2021, 10:40:48 PM
5e combat was designed to last 3 rounds.

4e combat was designed to last 10 rounds.

Just for clarification, initial 4E combat was based on 5 rounds with the average monster taking three hits to bring down with a 60% hit rate. I spent a lot of time reading up on the designer notes and tearing apart 4E's math for my own system. By Essentials it was closer to 4 rounds due to shaving off some of the monster hit points and tweaking up the damage of the monsters and the damage and accuracy of the PCs.