the i do really not like 4e (too much rules and stuff too much for my little middle schooler brain to ever remember) though i took skill challenges and some of the stuff with monster making and use it in my 5e games
Tbh I never actually played 4e so maybe I’m unfairly prejudging it.
In 5E, each DM is of course free to go off into the realm of narrative, intrigue, socio-political stuff with little combat. I find 5E heading towards the opposite. Yes, DMs can houserule and design the game they want to play, but as it stands, recent options are more and more geared towards combat. The system itself - encounters per day, rest mechanics, etc., are designed around lots of combat. The recent books and options offer more ways to do cool things in combat. Most build sites, min-max, templates, etc., are based around the idea of heavy combat. If you're not focusing on combat, there aren't a lot of discussion points for characters.
This is all to say that at least 4th edition was unapologetic in saying and doing exactly what it set out to do. For my money, it still had the best combat system - navigating through rules and at the table - of any edition of D&D to date. It felt tabletop wargaming-esque, with cards, rollin' some dice, figuring out what powers to use, etc.
As I've seen lately, that's what 5E D&D is moving towards. Terrain, miniatures, combat trackers, chits, tokens, etc. A D&D table looks a lot more like Warhammer Fantasy these days than the sit on the couch, imagine stuff of old school D&D.
4E may have had other problem areas and been shallow otherwise, but it went all-in on what it was trying to do. As 5E gets more and more grey, I'm more appreciative of the black and white nature of 4E even more.
recent options are more and more geared towards combat.
Which is totally why Tasha's had big chapter on puzzles (exploration) and Patrons (social). It's all combat!
Jokes aside, DnD has always been mostly about combat with a side of exploring dungeons. No matter the edition. But there's always bits of lore, exploration and social nuggets here and there.
the i do really not like 4e (too much rules and stuff too much for my little middle schooler brain to ever remember) though i took skill challenges and some of the stuff with monster making and use it in my 5e games
Tbh I never actually played 4e so maybe I’m unfairly prejudging it.
4e did tend towards positional effects that were hard to adjudicate without a map, but it's not like a druid dropping Moonbeam and then using Thunderwave to push people into it is super easy to resolve without a map either. I think more key to complexity was that most non-minion monsters in 4e had at least one special ability, encounter design strongly encouraged a mix of unit types, and the ratio of damage to hp was a bit lower. Consider the encounters in Keep on the Shadowfell. It has 24 separate encounters, and on average each encounter had three enemy types (exactly one encounter, which was a solo boss, had only one enemy type). Most 5e encounters have only one enemy type.
As I've seen lately, that's what 5E D&D is moving towards. Terrain, miniatures, combat trackers, chits, tokens, etc. A D&D table looks a lot more like Warhammer Fantasy these days than the sit on the couch, imagine stuff of old school D&D.
I think this has as much (or more) to do with the changing public image of the game as with the edition. VidCasts show amazing production values, DMs are encouraged to use props, scenery, terrain and minis. All of those are more prevalent and accessible now than 15-10 or even just 5 years ago. Published modules offer high-quality battlemaps. People use monitors and projectors to create digital maps to use with miniatures, or build or buy terrain - both instructional videos to learn how to do this and companies producing these have become easy to find. There are companies making good or even great money with dice vaults and dice towers and campaign journals and whatnot. D&D is a mainstream hobby in 5E. That comes with more ancillary products and more people willing to spend money on them.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I always figured that official content focused on combat stuff because social/exploration stuff needs far fewer rules. I can port social encounters over from an older edition or with almost no changes, same goes for lots of exploration challenges. And with minimal effort you can duplicate scenes from books, movies, and other kinds of media as well.
It requires no new rules to roleplay the king as a drunken Robert Baratheon or a calculating Emperor Palpatine. Maybe figure out a few proficiencies and you're good. But if the party wants to fight Emperor Palpatine, now you need to figure out about 30 different things about him. Content focuses on combat because combat is vastly more rules intensive than the rest of the game. At least that's how it's always seemed to me. It may be the focus of the rules but that doesn't mean it's the focus of the game.
I always figured that official content focused on combat stuff because social/exploration stuff needs far fewer rules. I can port social encounters over from an older edition or with almost no changes, same goes for lots of exploration challenges. And with minimal effort you can duplicate scenes from books, movies, and other kinds of media as well.
It requires no new rules to roleplay the king as a drunken Robert Baratheon or a calculating Emperor Palpatine. Maybe figure out a few proficiencies and you're good. But if the party wants to fight Emperor Palpatine, now you need to figure out about 30 different things about him. Content focuses on combat because combat is vastly more rules intensive than the rest of the game. At least that's how it's always seemed to me. It may be the focus of the rules but that doesn't mean it's the focus of the game.
I think some of the stuff about how tricky the rules are is WHY I love 4e. It took effort to learn and I'm not about to forget easily. Thanks a lot - at least now I know who here would probably be amenable to playing 4e. I think I could patch over some of the stuff relating to online resources.
4e is still my favorite edition, and I've been playing since Basic. My second favorite after this was 3.5, then 2e using Skills & Powers. I tend to like systems with lots of mechanical options for player's to be able customize their characters to their hearts' content (or me, when I play) :) 5e, now that Tasha's is out, is starting to rise in the ranks of my favorites, though. I currently run my school D&D group over Google Meet using 4e (since that's the edition I'm most comfortable DM'ing).
Thanks a lot to everyone who replied. Especially @hugodlr (sorry, still don't know how to ping people on this forum) for telling me where I could go to find other clingers-on. Clingers on. . . . heh heh. . . I started playing D&D three years after 5e came out. As a high school junior it's not even a decade younger than I am. It's kinda funny . . .
I guess I'll pick up some books and learn the rules to 5e. Will probably make finding a group to play with easier. But I still plan to mess around with 4e. . . switch back and forth. By the way, could anyone please tell me if swordmages exist in 5e and if so, what book they are in? One of the characters I'll need to make a new character sheet for is a Swordmage.
Primarily due to 4e's reputation. People who don't read between the lines hear about 4e from players of 3.5, primarily, and most 3.5 players deem 4e to be Literally The Worst Thing Invented In All of the History of Mankind. Worse than war. Worse than sex crimes. Worse than genocide. Worse than PBR. Many/most 3.5 players cannot demonize, denigrate, and badmouth 4e enough, so new-to-5e players get the impression that the game is actively trying to send them to Satan.
Reading between the lines? D&D 4e was an attempt to modernize the game and get it away from some of the clinging old systems that had been strangling 3.5e to death.
4e was an attempt to make D&D very much like a computer game, that is primarily why players rejected it.
Primarily due to 4e's reputation. People who don't read between the lines hear about 4e from players of 3.5, primarily, and most 3.5 players deem 4e to be Literally The Worst Thing Invented In All of the History of Mankind. Worse than war. Worse than sex crimes. Worse than genocide. Worse than PBR. Many/most 3.5 players cannot demonize, denigrate, and badmouth 4e enough, so new-to-5e players get the impression that the game is actively trying to send them to Satan.
Reading between the lines? D&D 4e was an attempt to modernize the game and get it away from some of the clinging old systems that had been strangling 3.5e to death.
4e was an attempt to make D&D very much like a computer game, that is primarily why players rejected it.
Thanks a lot to everyone who replied. Especially @hugodlr (sorry, still don't know how to ping people on this forum) for telling me where I could go to find other clingers-on. Clingers on. . . . heh heh. . . I started playing D&D three years after 5e came out. As a high school junior it's not even a decade younger than I am. It's kinda funny . . .
I guess I'll pick up some books and learn the rules to 5e. Will probably make finding a group to play with easier. But I still plan to mess around with 4e. . . switch back and forth. By the way, could anyone please tell me if swordmages exist in 5e and if so, what book they are in? One of the characters I'll need to make a new character sheet for is a Swordmage.
Thanks.
There are a lot of cool setting books and adventures for 5e you can check out if you want.
4e was an attempt to make D&D very much like a computer game, that is primarily why players rejected it.
While there were a few computer-game-esque features of 4th edition, such as bringing something resembling the Holy Trinity into D&D, it really wasn't terribly like a computer game, it was more of a combination of MtG and a board game.
Thanks a lot to everyone who replied. Especially @hugodlr (sorry, still don't know how to ping people on this forum) for telling me where I could go to find other clingers-on. Clingers on. . . . heh heh. . . I started playing D&D three years after 5e came out. As a high school junior it's not even a decade younger than I am. It's kinda funny . . .
I guess I'll pick up some books and learn the rules to 5e. Will probably make finding a group to play with easier. But I still plan to mess around with 4e. . . switch back and forth. By the way, could anyone please tell me if swordmages exist in 5e and if so, what book they are in? One of the characters I'll need to make a new character sheet for is a Swordmage.
Thanks.
There are no "Swordmages" in Fifth Edition, and there likely never will be. There's a few broadly similar routes you could pursue, depending on your desired ratio of Sword to Mage
The Bladesinger wizard subclass (Tasha's Cauldron of Everything) is eighty percent Mage with twenty percent Sword. Overall it plays as a fast, lightly-armored striker, with higher mobility than normal and a distressingly powerful (if very cool) multiattack that combines spellcasting with basic weapon play. Bladesingers also have full access to the base wizard class including their full spellcasting, so it's more like 100% mage, just with some extra set dressing in the shape of a sword.
The Eldritch Knight subclass (Player's Handbook) is the opposite - eighty percent Sword, twenty percent Mage. You get all the default benefits of the fighter base class, which makes you an effective martial combatant, and you also get (very) limited spellcasting. As one of the game's oldest current subclasses, the Eldritch Knight is kind of clunky in play and does not do a good job whatsoever of mixing weapons and magic fluidly, but it allows a fighter to benefit from a limited degree of magical utility.
The usual answer to players who ask about "Swordmage" classes - often thrown violently in their face with a heaping dose of vitriol by Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM) fans who see anyone asking about a class that can both Sword and Mage as a horrible game-ruining munchkin - is to play a paladin and refluff it as being an arcane character rather than a divine one. That's certainly an option, and the paladin's Divine Smite is the most fluid way the game offers of combining martial might and magical power. It is extremely difficult to divorce a paladin from their divine trappings though, it may be difficult to get the right narrative feel for your character when trying to turn a paladin into a 'Swordmage'.
There's a few other options depending on how fiddly you want to get, but those are kinda the base options. Mostly-Mage with a little Sword, mostly-Sword with a little Mage, or both in good quantity but in a flavor nobody likes or asked for.
Also? If 4e decided to try and hew a little closer to modern video games, maybe it's because modern video games have enjoyed hundreds of thousands of times the success D&D has and have done a ton to advance the state of game design as a whole. Since they're, y'know, not mired in fifty years' worth of Sacred Cows nobody is willing to let go of even when it makes for a better game.
The main thing limiting swordmages is that the effect you really want is "I hit someone with a sword, and a spell goes off at the same time". Giving something like that to a full caster has obvious balance concerns, and before the Artificer there really wasn't an arcane half-caster.
The main thing limiting swordmages is that the effect you really want is "I hit someone with a sword, and a spell goes off at the same time". Giving something like that to a full caster has obvious balance concerns, and before the Artificer there really wasn't an arcane half-caster.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I imagine what most people want from a sense of thematics and character concept is for the act of "Casting A Spell" and the act of "Striking With Sword" to be the same act, or at least seamlessly interwoven in a fluid dance of steel and fire. The Blade cantrips are actually quite good for that, except for the fact that casting a Blade cantrip is categorically worse than simply using a multiattack option in basically all relevant tactical cases. There is essentially never an advantage worth having in hitting once with a Blade cantrip rather than two or more times with regular steel for any character who has that choice to make. Smite-style spells are absolutely terrible and also conflict with maintaining the magical combat buffs a Swordmage is supposed to be good at, and even Divine Smite - the best Wizards was willing to do before the Tasha's update to the Bladesinger - was "I shove raw, unformed magical power into my sword and hope it burns the other guy".
The Bladesinger's ability to substitute a cantrip for one of its attacks via its super custom Extra Attack is the first time a character's been able to seamlessly weave (minor) magic and swordplay into a fluid action string, and it also empowers Blade cantrips. That one single change actually made the Bladesinger live up to the most basic, humble starting-line requirements of its name, but elsewise? Nobody's asking for the moon, or for the nuclear launch codes. People just want to be that awesome cool dude who wields both fire and steel. Doesn't have to be as good at fire as a wizard, or as good at steel as a fighter. Just needs to be able to spellsword, and not be a heavy-armor clankety-clank Lawful Stupid god-bothering divine busybody like the paladin.
Glad to be of service :) And while I love 4e, getting to play with others is getting harder and harder :) Though as I mentioned, with Tasha's out it's starting to feel a bit more mechanically customizable (not just fluffable), which is how I like my D&D :)
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Tbh I never actually played 4e so maybe I’m unfairly prejudging it.
I hate that stuff. But every table’s different.
Idk why ppl are so opposed to combat...
Which is totally why Tasha's had big chapter on puzzles (exploration) and Patrons (social). It's all combat!
Jokes aside, DnD has always been mostly about combat with a side of exploring dungeons. No matter the edition. But there's always bits of lore, exploration and social nuggets here and there.
4e did tend towards positional effects that were hard to adjudicate without a map, but it's not like a druid dropping Moonbeam and then using Thunderwave to push people into it is super easy to resolve without a map either. I think more key to complexity was that most non-minion monsters in 4e had at least one special ability, encounter design strongly encouraged a mix of unit types, and the ratio of damage to hp was a bit lower. Consider the encounters in Keep on the Shadowfell. It has 24 separate encounters, and on average each encounter had three enemy types (exactly one encounter, which was a solo boss, had only one enemy type). Most 5e encounters have only one enemy type.
I think this has as much (or more) to do with the changing public image of the game as with the edition. VidCasts show amazing production values, DMs are encouraged to use props, scenery, terrain and minis. All of those are more prevalent and accessible now than 15-10 or even just 5 years ago. Published modules offer high-quality battlemaps. People use monitors and projectors to create digital maps to use with miniatures, or build or buy terrain - both instructional videos to learn how to do this and companies producing these have become easy to find. There are companies making good or even great money with dice vaults and dice towers and campaign journals and whatnot. D&D is a mainstream hobby in 5E. That comes with more ancillary products and more people willing to spend money on them.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I always figured that official content focused on combat stuff because social/exploration stuff needs far fewer rules. I can port social encounters over from an older edition or with almost no changes, same goes for lots of exploration challenges. And with minimal effort you can duplicate scenes from books, movies, and other kinds of media as well.
It requires no new rules to roleplay the king as a drunken Robert Baratheon or a calculating Emperor Palpatine. Maybe figure out a few proficiencies and you're good. But if the party wants to fight Emperor Palpatine, now you need to figure out about 30 different things about him. Content focuses on combat because combat is vastly more rules intensive than the rest of the game. At least that's how it's always seemed to me. It may be the focus of the rules but that doesn't mean it's the focus of the game.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Very good point
I think some of the stuff about how tricky the rules are is WHY I love 4e. It took effort to learn and I'm not about to forget easily. Thanks a lot - at least now I know who here would probably be amenable to playing 4e. I think I could patch over some of the stuff relating to online resources.
4e is still my favorite edition, and I've been playing since Basic. My second favorite after this was 3.5, then 2e using Skills & Powers. I tend to like systems with lots of mechanical options for player's to be able customize their characters to their hearts' content (or me, when I play) :) 5e, now that Tasha's is out, is starting to rise in the ranks of my favorites, though. I currently run my school D&D group over Google Meet using 4e (since that's the edition I'm most comfortable DM'ing).
Back to your question, though - there's a good 4e subreddit you can join (https://www.reddit.com/r/4eDnD/), as well as a very active Discord (D&D 4E - https://discord.com/channels/415906830137556992/548270965549957171). Discord's got a very long list of 4e digital resources and links that make playing and running it much, much easier.
Good luck!
Thanks a lot to everyone who replied. Especially @hugodlr (sorry, still don't know how to ping people on this forum) for telling me where I could go to find other clingers-on. Clingers on. . . . heh heh. . . I started playing D&D three years after 5e came out. As a high school junior it's not even a decade younger than I am. It's kinda funny . . .
I guess I'll pick up some books and learn the rules to 5e. Will probably make finding a group to play with easier. But I still plan to mess around with 4e. . . switch back and forth. By the way, could anyone please tell me if swordmages exist in 5e and if so, what book they are in? One of the characters I'll need to make a new character sheet for is a Swordmage.
Thanks.
4e was an attempt to make D&D very much like a computer game, that is primarily why players rejected it.
That’s what I heard.
There are a lot of cool setting books and adventures for 5e you can check out if you want.
While there were a few computer-game-esque features of 4th edition, such as bringing something resembling the Holy Trinity into D&D, it really wasn't terribly like a computer game, it was more of a combination of MtG and a board game.
There are no "Swordmages" in Fifth Edition, and there likely never will be. There's a few broadly similar routes you could pursue, depending on your desired ratio of Sword to Mage
The Bladesinger wizard subclass (Tasha's Cauldron of Everything) is eighty percent Mage with twenty percent Sword. Overall it plays as a fast, lightly-armored striker, with higher mobility than normal and a distressingly powerful (if very cool) multiattack that combines spellcasting with basic weapon play. Bladesingers also have full access to the base wizard class including their full spellcasting, so it's more like 100% mage, just with some extra set dressing in the shape of a sword.
The Eldritch Knight subclass (Player's Handbook) is the opposite - eighty percent Sword, twenty percent Mage. You get all the default benefits of the fighter base class, which makes you an effective martial combatant, and you also get (very) limited spellcasting. As one of the game's oldest current subclasses, the Eldritch Knight is kind of clunky in play and does not do a good job whatsoever of mixing weapons and magic fluidly, but it allows a fighter to benefit from a limited degree of magical utility.
The usual answer to players who ask about "Swordmage" classes - often thrown violently in their face with a heaping dose of vitriol by Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM) fans who see anyone asking about a class that can both Sword and Mage as a horrible game-ruining munchkin - is to play a paladin and refluff it as being an arcane character rather than a divine one. That's certainly an option, and the paladin's Divine Smite is the most fluid way the game offers of combining martial might and magical power. It is extremely difficult to divorce a paladin from their divine trappings though, it may be difficult to get the right narrative feel for your character when trying to turn a paladin into a 'Swordmage'.
There's a few other options depending on how fiddly you want to get, but those are kinda the base options. Mostly-Mage with a little Sword, mostly-Sword with a little Mage, or both in good quantity but in a flavor nobody likes or asked for.
Also? If 4e decided to try and hew a little closer to modern video games, maybe it's because modern video games have enjoyed hundreds of thousands of times the success D&D has and have done a ton to advance the state of game design as a whole. Since they're, y'know, not mired in fifty years' worth of Sacred Cows nobody is willing to let go of even when it makes for a better game.
Please do not contact or message me.
The main thing limiting swordmages is that the effect you really want is "I hit someone with a sword, and a spell goes off at the same time". Giving something like that to a full caster has obvious balance concerns, and before the Artificer there really wasn't an arcane half-caster.
Spells like green-flame blade and booming blade can make Bladesinger Wizards feel like Swordmages, IMO.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I imagine what most people want from a sense of thematics and character concept is for the act of "Casting A Spell" and the act of "Striking With Sword" to be the same act, or at least seamlessly interwoven in a fluid dance of steel and fire. The Blade cantrips are actually quite good for that, except for the fact that casting a Blade cantrip is categorically worse than simply using a multiattack option in basically all relevant tactical cases. There is essentially never an advantage worth having in hitting once with a Blade cantrip rather than two or more times with regular steel for any character who has that choice to make. Smite-style spells are absolutely terrible and also conflict with maintaining the magical combat buffs a Swordmage is supposed to be good at, and even Divine Smite - the best Wizards was willing to do before the Tasha's update to the Bladesinger - was "I shove raw, unformed magical power into my sword and hope it burns the other guy".
The Bladesinger's ability to substitute a cantrip for one of its attacks via its super custom Extra Attack is the first time a character's been able to seamlessly weave (minor) magic and swordplay into a fluid action string, and it also empowers Blade cantrips. That one single change actually made the Bladesinger live up to the most basic, humble starting-line requirements of its name, but elsewise? Nobody's asking for the moon, or for the nuclear launch codes. People just want to be that awesome cool dude who wields both fire and steel. Doesn't have to be as good at fire as a wizard, or as good at steel as a fighter. Just needs to be able to spellsword, and not be a heavy-armor clankety-clank Lawful Stupid god-bothering divine busybody like the paladin.
Please do not contact or message me.
Glad to be of service :) And while I love 4e, getting to play with others is getting harder and harder :) Though as I mentioned, with Tasha's out it's starting to feel a bit more mechanically customizable (not just fluffable), which is how I like my D&D :)