mine was a Rogue Kobold with a spear and fire magic. I named him Clawgork just cuz it sounds stupid.

TL;DW is that according to their own research, it was too complicated for the average player. People were not reading the rulebooks or their character sheets. I know here we're all pro-gamers but if I'm being honest most players I encounter offline fit the bill he describes.

As I understand it, 4e martials got some Spell-Like-Abilities that they could use, kinda as buffs, and abilities that acted as special stylish attacks like Executions and such? Or, like a spin attack or such things like that?

Edit: HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS STUFF WAS COOL AS HELL! WHY DO WE NOT DO THIS FOR MARTIALS IN CURRENT EDITION?! WHAT THE FUCK?!

I don't want to make a value judgement, even though I didn't like 4e. But I think it's an interesting phenomenon. I remember that until 2017 and 2018 to be a cool kid you had to hate 4e and love 3.5e or 5e, but nowadays they offer 4e as a solution to the "lame 5e". Does anyone have any idea what caused this?

Final fight of a lvl 1- 30 4e campaign that lasted almost 6 years (covid was a dry spell). Its a lvl 33 Tarasque with no fly aura that made a distant Shade city start to fall from the sky. It is immune to all status effects, ton of hp, it could reflect magic and ranged attacks and could swallow you whole. It was a very fun fight, but in the end we Triumphed. This fight came right after we stopped a shar plot to take control of Mystras Weave. My character (in the photo) Is a Dwarf barbarian/blackguard that is built in a way that (when raging) he can crit on 17-20. He wields a +6 great axe that deals 2 d12 + 20 weapon damage, its brutal and has exploding 12s. Glorious campaign. Legendary DM. 10/10 would play again.

Sorry, posting as a novice but for background, I started playing Dungeons and Dragon when 4th edition came out, my local library was promoting it and had a local DM do a one shot with me and my friends. I really enjoyed playing DnD then but stopped due to school and not having people play with me.

2 years ago, I finally had a group to play DnD with and we played 5th edition and it was awesome! It wasn't exactly how I remembered when I played 4th edition, it's still enjoyable and I loved my games but I just don't understand all the hate that 4th edition had? What personally made you not like 4th edition?

Like I have played this game since the mid 80s moving from edition to edition, but 4e was by far my favorite for a number of reasons and I have since moved on to pf2e.

So, for the people who ACTUALLY played 4e(and I mean more than 5 or 6 times, like for years) what specifically brings this "you can't roleplay in 4e" comment to the foreground?

If it all boils down to "I can't multiclass 12 times like I could in 3.x" I consider that a feature not a limitation(though I can admit it went a bit TOO far the other direction)

I feel like there are so many people who say 4e sucks, but never actually played the system.

Back in the 4e days, Penny Arcade podcast was one of the, if not the, biggest actual play podcasts.

Even in the 4e days they were doing the actual plays at PAX and I remember pretty packed rooms leading up to 5e's release with the audience knowing a lot of the inside jokes of the podcast "Nnnnnineteen!", "Green flames!", etc...

Compared to Critical Role, I'd say Critical Role in 5e is more popular, but I feel like 4e was more popular than people think if the Penny Arcade AP fans are any indication.

I feel like 4e gets a lot of undeserved hate from the community. I'm not going to say it's perfect - it's not. But I think it deserves more of a chance than it got.

What I loved most about it was the character creation. Between the dozens of races with unique abilities and the dozens of classes, each of which had at least 3-4 subclasses, the possible combinations felt endless. I remember playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer who took the feat that allowed Sneak Attacks, meaning that I could Sneak Attack with an AOE spell. And even then, I was contemplating what I might have done as a Dragon Sorcerer, or a Cosmic Sorcerer. There were so many cool options for just that class! And I HATE that WotC removed their 4e character designer from their website to push more 5e.

I also loved the Powers system. It was easy to keep track of, simple to learn, and leaned into the amazing character customization. Instead of just another attack action, you could learn a unique powerful ability, some of which leaned into your character path.

I'll admit, it definitely leaned far more into battle than it did the RPG aspects. But I remember having an absolute blast with the fights, and wish people weren't so quick to discard this system. I'd love to see it come back as a tabletop fighting game of some kind.

EDIT: Holy smokes, I did not expect this much attention! I threw together a post to gush about an edition I don't see much love for, and I get a flood of discussion about the history, mechanics, and what people like/dislike about it. I've had a blast reading all of it!

every time people wax nostalgic about the golden days of 4th edition (particularly in relation to what we have in 5e) i always have to think to myself: okay, so what's the catch ? what really held it back ? what should i expect to struggle with if i were to experiment with running/playing a 4e game ?

it seems like every time 4e is mentioned anywhere around D&D reddit, people are eager to explain how incredible it was and how reductive/uninformed the criticisms are and how much we lost in transition. but for seasoned 4e players, is there anything you're glad has stayed in the past ?

Back when I was starting out people would say stay away from 4e for several reasons. But they ended up being wrong.

Here are a few I can remember:

• It's like a Video Game - "Oh its WoW". Never felt that way to me. At Will, Encounter, and Daily Powers felt nothing like WoW for me which had abilities on Cooldowns. Now if Abilities could only be reused after a certain number of turns, then maybe I'd be more inclined to believe that.
• There is No Roleplaying - "You can't roleplay in it as everything is about combat". I was perfectly fine roleplaying in 4e. Players would negotiate and deal with political intrigue. When I look at 3.5e and 4e the social mechanics both seemed pretty similar, roll a Skill check and see if you succeed. Unlike other games where they put entire subsystems to manage Social Encounters.
• Skill Challenges Sucked - "You have to have certain skills or you were stuck". Skill Challenges were a solved problem by the time I got into 4e, even the designers at the time said "The skills required are recommendations, not set in stone." Basic rundown of them was get X Skill roll Successes before Y Failures and you got a bonus to your next Combat or Social encounter like the enemy is ambushed, doesn't have their equipment on, or have yet to harm anyone. Or if you Fail you get a penalty: enemy has reinforcements, enemy ambushes you, etc... But the book would say stuff like Dungeoneering DC 15 to uncover a hidden panel with a piece of evidence in it. Whereas a normal DM would allow maybe Thievery or Perception to also find that same hidden panel.

The only complaint I'll give credance to is:

• Combat is Long - Most sessions would involve 1 big encounter. If you used more Minions instead of Bulky HP bags you could mitigate this. By the end of 4e's life the combat encounters got a lot better with DnD Essentials increasing enemy damage while lowering enemy HP to make things move quicker, but it wasn't quite there yet.

Things no one mention:

• Traps/Hazards were Fun - Puzzle encounters were a thing I ran, where the players had to solve riddles and puzzles to progress. And the statblocks for traps and hazards really helped. I even made a few myself such as a rolling boulder encounter where you could use different skills to affect it and its attack would do damage, but also push you 5 ft in front of it, until you were knocked unconcious in which case you'd be behind it. And a sailing encounter where the mast was used to knock people down.
• Monster Classes Made Combat Easier to Understand - If I brought along an Artillery Monster I knew it was ranged support so I'd put them in cover or hard to reach places, while Skirmishers I'd throw at my players like canon fodder. Lurkers would be invisible/hidden on the board till they struck, etc... Basically you were also given some tactics these monsters would employ to make encounters feel a lot more interesting than "Monster Charges you, now spend 2-3 turns swinging swords at each other".

Almost every time it gets brought up someone chimes in with that, and I have no idea what the basis is. Never seems to come with an accompanying explanation of any sort, just a brief statement as if of well known fact.

So yeah, after a solid month of sitting on D&D subs, listening to the echo chamber of "martials are very bad, here's how I fixed them but it's just 4e stuff reintroduced into 5e!", having a tiny mental breakdown and then having to detox from socials for a couple of days due to work reasons, I come to the community with a question:

How do I get into 4e? Are books still up for sale? Would I have to look for some weird AliExpress-esque resalers?

I'm asking because Pathfinder (HAHA YOU THOUGHT I WOULDN'T MENTION THAT NAME? THINK AGAIN!) has Archives of Nethys, where the entire game is just... up for reading. Other systems also have either the entire core ruleset up online for free, or some sort of "Basic rules" (like 5e does) also for free.

But from what I've scavenged, 4e isn't as widely accessable. I may have been looking in the wrong places, though.

I'm just kind of really tired of 5e+ and its discourse, it's obviously not a game I wholeheartedly enjoy, so perhaps it's time to play "the one who got it right". I started my D&D career with 3.5e, after all (1 heavily mishandled campaign; a shame, really, I was having a lot of fun).

EDIT: forgot to mention. I live in Russia, so a vast majority of American advice is just inapplicable to my situation (I can't, for example, ask around the local gameshops for copies of 4e that they might have in the back of the store), so keep that in mind when giving advice, please.

and that’s not even taking Pathfinder 2e into account

I know this is a rather subjective question, but if you had to make a recommendation to someone, which version would you choose, and why? I realize it depends on the specific group, the players, and the GM, but what makes that particular version so "special" to you?

So I've done a little bit of 3.5, 5th and 4th, with 4th being my first edition and 3.5 being the one I'm most familiar with (my family are all huge nerds, so my parents had rulebooks for even 1st Ed. laying around, so leisure-reading 3.5 rulebooks was part of my childhood)

Why was 4th so different than 3.5 or 5e?

5 definitely seems like it carries some DNA from 4th; for example, folding some of the ideas in Paragon Paths (and a few other classes) into subclasses, the advantage/disadvantage system being simplified etc.

However, it seems like a return to 3.5 in terms of gameplay and character customization and if anything seems like it expands more on 3.5 than 4e

4e even more in terms of gameplay feels like it strayed on terms of lore as well; focusing on a different cosmology, eliminating the law/chaos alignment axis etc.

If you told me that 5e was an iteration on 3.5, I'd fully believe you while 4e seems like an odd child. 4e has far more differences from 3.5 than 5e has with 3.5. Transitioning between 3.5 and 5e seems like a relatively simple task while transitioning between either of those to 4e seems like you'd have to learn a whole new game

This isn't a thread meant to hate on a particular edition; I already have my own opinions on the quality/pros and cons of each edition that I have experience playing. I'm trying to invite discussion on why 4e is so different in almost every aspect from 3.5 and 5e

EDIT:

Thanks for all the info! That helped a lot.

It's nice to see that the game has changed.

Maybe i will give 5e a try.

...also: thank you for correcting my misconceptions/false memories.

(How you think it has been and how it has actually been are often two separate things. 😅)

ORIGINAL POST:

Ok. To get some things clear from the start:

I have played rogues. I have played magic users...

But i love playing the regular human in armor. (Boring, i know... but i love being the tank.)

And YES i am one of those martials, that think magic users have it better. 😅

But that is a battlefield that i want to avoid this time. (It seems to be an outright WAR between wizards and martials around here...)

But over the years i came to the conclusion that it seems to be better to just put your xp into dex, which gets added to the AC if you just wear leather armor.

Why should you put xp into learning armor proficencies and stuff if leveling dex is outright better (it cannot break, you can use it for other things, it cannot be taken away from you.)

Why wear plate armor if its more expensive to buy, to fix, etc than leather?

Why chose a class that can take armor proficiencies if other classes could take something mor useful whilst leveling dex?

Am i right for feeling ABSOLUTELY useless if my AC is only one or two points away from a rogue or monk (or whatever... again - i have not read any rules after 4th ed)?

PLEASE correct me if i am wrong. Or if things have changed.

I would LOVE to hear: "you are wrong. Being a knight in plate armor is a viable and important option and by choosing it you are a useful member of the group."

Again - i do not want to fight or farm pity... i just want to know if my perception is wrong. or my memories.

I heard lots of good about the Edition online and what I've heard is vague but sounds more fun than 5e, especially martials.

But of course, internet could have a scuffed opinion sometimes, so I'd like to ask explicitly.

Also important is that I wanna play it with a group that has only experienced 5th edition so far, so I wanna know how easy it would be to learn 4th based on that. How different are the systems?

And, since I'm already asking all kinds about it, how good and plentyful is the content for it? I'd probably wanna run something premade for a while before I'd get into a self-made campaign.

I feel like when I hear people talk about D&D they're either more recent players like me who know 5E, folks who swear by 3.5, or the people who are the real veterans who played in the earliest days.

But I know, being a man who lives in the world, that there is a number that would be given to an edition between 3.5 and 5. Why does nobody talk about 4E?

Also sidenote, what about 3.5 was so much better than 3?

I've heard that 4th edition has 20 - 30 epic adventures but I don't know what book those are in. I do want to start buying random things.

Just wanted to get a quick temperature check on something I did recently.

I run an online game of DND for some discord friends. The world is my homebrew campaign that takes a lot of inspiration from Spanish Catholicism (if you've played d the blasphemous games, think that).

One of the key elements of this world is that there is divine wine that literally contains the blood of Gods.

One of the players managed to get a hold of a bottle of the stuff and wanted to drink it. I explained that, if they drank it, they would lose a level of their current class (they played a level 6 bard) and they'd gain a level in a class of my choosing. They chose to drink it and they are now a level 5 bard/level 1 cleric.

The play group is pretty chaotic so they were all, including the player, pretty happy and are now planning to get the barbarian some of the stuff to drink as well!

I explained the above to a fellow forever DM and they freaked out and basically accused me of playing the game for my player?

What are your thoughts?

I have heard (mainly through memes) that the fourth edition of dungeons and dragons was at least controversial, if I may enquire, what was it that made 4e so disliked

It suprised me but thinking back. If you have a party of only fighters and thieves in AD&D it works fairly well if the DM adapts same goes for pathfinder. Those games are kinda built for PVP anyway.
Now 4e is the most gamey system and you would think it can only do one thing but it hit me. With a full martial party, if you allow the essentials ranger you have every role filled.
Fighter: Tank
Warlord: Healer
Ranger (archer I think its called): Battlefield control and aoe
Normal ranger, barbarian, rogue: DPS

Hell i havnt looked at it specifically but you might be able to build a cleric, paladin or bard that is exclusivly martial by not picking any powers that have arcane or divine in the tagline.

Am I wrong here and maybe 3.5 or pathfinder 1e does things better for full martial parties?

4th edition D&D had a mixed reception when it was released. Lots of people enjoyed it and some still play it now. But lots of others didn't take to the system and either continued using older versions of D&D or switched to Pathfinder. Even today, I see far fewer people talking enthusiastically about 4e as I do for 3e or old school D&D.

Clearly WOTC misunderstood or ignored what the D&D community wanted back in 2008. Their strategy was based around moving more people onto using a virtual table top and so they built the system around using a VTT, with more complicated character abilities, more complicated math, and lots of little things to keep track of.

This didn't appeal to the players of the time and it was generally criticised as being "videogamey" and homogenous, with too much focus on granular game mechanics and not enough on supporting roleplaying.

But if 4e was released in 2021, do you think it would be more popular? I read a lot of posts where people complain about 5e combat being too simple and suggesting that all martials should have more complicated combat techniques, which all sounds very similar to 4e's power system. And far far more people play D&D online using a VTT these days, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So if WOTC released 4e today as an "advanced" variant specifically designed to be played with a VTT, do you think it would have received a more positive reception than it did?