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Seriously though, let's talk about some of the things 4e gets right, starting with the aspects that interact with character creation: https://twitter.com/trollishdelver/status/1326967122413703175
ickyness about Race aside, 4e has the best approach toward species splats I've seen so far, in that each race is meant to be A) unique and B) flexible. This is achieved with racial ability bonuses and racial powers.
Each racial power in 4e was designed to:
Give unique flavor to the race
Be useful for every class
Be useful at all levels of play
Which is a tall fucking order, yet most of them deliver.
Give unique flavor to the raceBe useful for every classBe useful at all levels of playWhich is a tall fucking order, yet most of them deliver.
The classic example is the Eladrin's teleport, a wizard might teleport away from melee, whereas a fighter might teleport into melee to position herself without provoking opportunity attacks.
But most classes were this good.
Gnome Fighter? Invisible fighter makes you attack him and you miss because he's invisible.
Half-Orc Wizard? Channel some extra damage into that frost ray. And so on...
Gnome Fighter? Invisible fighter makes you attack him and you miss because he's invisible.Half-Orc Wizard? Channel some extra damage into that frost ray. And so on...
which leads us to racial ability mods. By taking out penalties 4e changed the way class/race combos went, from "Really Good/Completely Useless" to "Really Good/Pretty Good if that's what you're into."
Not only that, but each class has a secondary ability it cares about, so the aforementioned Half-Orc might not be getting the same boost to hit that a Genasi did (for +2 int), but it pretty much guarantees that he's gonna hit when it counts (+2 dex applied to Wand of Accuracy).
And actually each class has multiple potential secondary abilities. So a tough dwarf wizard gets to shine as much as a fancy dancy eladrin wizard.
I really can't stress how absolutely bananas it is, when you compare 4e to other editions, that my players, at level 28 were still getting value from the racial powers they got at lv. 1.
and that's what's good about 4e.
it
is
tight
The systems all click into each other, and all the gears work together.
4e gets a lot of flack for not being as open ended as other editions, but that is a feature, not a bug. 4e was designed so that there would be no wrong decisions.
it
is
tight
The systems all click into each other, and all the gears work together.
4e gets a lot of flack for not being as open ended as other editions, but that is a feature, not a bug. 4e was designed so that there would be no wrong decisions.
Are there? Yes. Dragon Magazine articles saw to that, but if you ignore those it's actively hard to make a weak character.
That's what I got for now, maybe later I'll come back and talk about the dozen or so other things that make 4e the superior D&D edition.
That's what I got for now, maybe later I'll come back and talk about the dozen or so other things that make 4e the superior D&D edition.
That’s an issue inherent in the way D&D does abilities. I will point out that infernal warlocks are int secondary letting Tieflings pick up some stuff there. Also absolutely nothing deals more damage per turn in 4e than a dual wielding dwarf ranger. https://twitter.com/dragonchild12/status/1327392145205047297
I hope you see what I'm saying here. 4e is the best implementation of this system since it a) eliminated negative scores and b) classes cared about multiple abilities.
https://twitter.com/dragonchild12/status/1327421021293522944?s=19
https://twitter.com/dragonchild12/status/1327421021293522944?s=19
And now for some theory https://twitter.com/kai_tave/status/1327390842944819201?s=19
