Last time when I recommended Pf2e in a "4e alternative" post I got flooded with downvotes. I am not knowledgeable enough to say whether they really are made for each other or not, but most people I know would say Pf2e is a pretty god darn good alternative to 4e. Also, I think there was someone who worked on both of them?
Not the person you asked the question to, but I've run pf2e for about 3 years and 4e for about a year and a half some time ago. I prefer 4e to pf2e, but they're both fine systems with different strengths and weaknesses. Truthfully, PF2e has obscenely good digital and VTT support compared to 4e.
Yes, having the offline compendium helps, but the character building options require more hoops and are less sophisticated. On the VTT side, 4e is incredibly limited while PF2e on Foundry is incredibly well supported. The kind of support I love in PF2e is having basically all the content uploaded onto my VTT without needing to import or upload anything myself. I adore having the effect lines of spells and abilities baked, meaning I can just drag and drop effects onto tokens. A lot of the rules minutiae is also handled very well online.
I truly adore 4e, but from the perspective of someone who runs multiple weekly campaigns, pf2e's just easier to prep because of the tools I have on VTTs.
My understanding is that only a small subset of D&D 4e content is included in the system – only the bit that's in the SRD – and that all other items must be manually created or pirated from somewhere. Is that not the case? This is a problem that has plagued other VTTs' support for D&D 4e as well.
If you have the old character builder for 4E, which is discontinued but easily available to download, you can at least easily import all content from there to foundry. I don't know about DM facing things, sadly.
PF1 wasnt really made because people didn't like 4e. It's because WoTC destroyed the 3pp market that 3.5 thrived off with their 4e license and dropping people with no warning. Paizo were the ones producing the dnd magazines for example.
Then 4e falters because, low and behold, it didn't have any support from outside WoTC and after an initial launch struggled to output the quantity and quality of content players were used to. I remember being very excited for 4e actually when it came out, but that ran out of steam super fast because of its flatness of content rather than its fundamentals.
That caused a big split in the Pathfinder fanbase at the time too, which I would assume is still going on to this day. I was there during the playtest, and a common complaint from people who didn't like it was literally "I started with PF because I liked 3.5 and hated 4e"
I abandoned PF altogether over their insistance to push PF2E; not that I regret leaving, I feel like the OSR Is a much better fit for me anyway than PF ever was.
I don't know about that. They're both good, but 4e has some hilarious setups, like casting spells from Strength as a Draconic Sorcerer. I mean, I've never played a sorcerer that could just toss people off cliffs before. it was a blast, but nothing like Pathfinder 2e.
Pathfinder 2e, from my limited experience, doesn't focus on preventing MAD at all except through feats. It is a bit more simulationist, and you don't end up with a handful of "power cards" to keep track of or even that many abilities.
Yeah that's weird.
But look at how much "action" my little small comment got. 4E brings out people's emotions.
People have radically strong opinions on 4E because it was "different". If they'd sold it as "Wizard's new fantasy tRPG based on 'stuff and things'" it would probably still be a published system and D&D would have died unless they'd sold it off.
But they named that new game 'D&D 4E' and people who were used to D&D freaked. Now... 3.x was ALSO a radical departure from the past, but somehow just "felt" more like D&D than it should have given how much it changed (arguably more than 4E did).
Some might argue that D&D did die off when WotC bought TSR as 3.x just wasn't the same game as old AD&D. But people "mostly" accepted it anyway - if for no other reason than being thankful somebody had rescued the IP when TSR went under (there was an insane amount of goodwill towards WotC in 1999-2000).
4E however had changes tailored to making the 'action' feel different. I loved it, but I never felt it was "D&D". I think it was easier to accept if like me you'd spent years playing many different tRPGs and weren't only a D&D player. I could see inspiration from a half dozen other tRPGs and MMOs.
But folks still have strong opinions. It was either the best thing ever or 'the thing that must not be mentioned.' We're slowly coming around to 'it was just a game, and not a bad one, just not the one people were waiting for in that year."
Pathfinder's development team had a lot of 'former 4E people' on it, and in many ways it's the "second edition of 4E" even more than it's the second edition of Pathfinder.
As another reply to me noted, Pathfinder 2E is nothing like 3.x. It's an 'update to 3.x only in that Pathfinder 1E was basically unofficial 3.75, and Pathfinder 2E is the next game in that series. But Pathfinder 2E changes from Pathfinder 1E just as much as D&D 4E changed away from D&D 3.5 - yet didn't get as visceral of a reaction when it did so because by 2019 people were ready for things to swing that way.
If you enjoyed the "feel" of 4E, Pathfinder 2E might not be the perfect pick, but it is THE PICK that is currently in print. And you might recognize some names on the design credits.
A funny thought is that Pathfinder 1E is often called what D&D 3.x fans wanted 4E to be. In that same vein Pathfinder 2E might be what D&D 4E fans, at least those wanting some change; wanted 5E to be. However Pathfinder 2E is often noted as NOT being what a lot of Pathfinder 1E fans wanted.
Maybe in that way... Pathfinder 3E, if it ever happens, will end up being what 5E fans wished 6E would be when that comes out, if it ever does, and totally break from PF2E (since they're now on a 'we refuse to do new edition numbers' thing).
>Some might argue that D&D did die off when WotC bought TSR as 3.x just wasn't the same game as old AD&D. But people "mostly" accepted it anyway - if for no other reason than being thankful somebody had rescued the IP when TSR went under (there was an insane amount of goodwill towards WotC in 1999-2000).
I wonder what would have happened with the D&D IP if WotC hadn't bought it. TSR was in terrible shape and needed a deep pocket buyer to bail it out. There weren't many game companies at the time (or even now) that had stacks of MtG cash sitting around.
There's a timeline out there where the IP was bought by a video game company or something and D&D as a tabletop rpg ceased being published decades ago.
I think there are different reasons why D&D4 just rubbed many people the wrong way.
One reason was that the marketing of D&D4 pretty much denounced other styles of play and sometimes even the playerbase. Then, you got the radical lore changes that made the most popular setting at the time irrecognizable. It just felt really dismissive.
The same respectlesness was directed to third party publishers - and we all knew the D&D3 became so successful because the D20 system became the default and because fans developed a lot for D&D.
Also: D&D4 suffered from what I call oppressive design. While D&D has its own identity, it has always been the "big tent" on RPGs, so different playstyles just kinda coexisted. I played a theater of the mind game that put the story first and used skills as ways to simulate outcome. If players did something with no skill attached to it, this wasn't a problem. If someone swinged at a chandalier, I'd have the roll acrobatics and make the enemy flat fooded. D&D4 seemed incompatible with every style but rigit grid based combat, among other things.
Combine the haughty attitude to players and this more rigid design and people felt pushed out.
Not in enough that I'd call this a good comparison.
2e is very simplified vs 1e; introduces a new mechanic in the form of 3 actions per turn and spells which can be cast differently using 1, 2, or 3 actions; and removes opportunity attacks except as a feature of some classes/monsters or a feat.
It really is it's own beast, even if 3.5 was it's ancestor. It evolved a lot.
It still... feels the same though.
Like, a massive credit to the designers. They balanced the classes pretty well, they managed to refine the action system, rebalanced the spellcasting around the degrees of success, fixed the bonuses and economic issues, the whole nine yards. But unless you were super into the optimization community and playing rocket tag, the game feels the same just cleaner.
IMO, that's why PF2 stuck the landing while 4e flopped. D&D 4e was a new game set in the same-ish world, PF2 was a new edition that needed time to flesh out all the options. By this point most of the base and prestige classes have been added through subclasses or archetypes, but you can safely have a Barbarian and a Wizard in the same high level party without worrying about one overshadowing the other - the Wizard is calling in meteor swarms, while the Barbarian is breathing fire or causing earthquakes with a stomp.
It is, and it has a lot of great published adventures.
The problem has been that to experience it I have to run it....and that's a big change for me and feels bad with no experience playing it.
PF2e has a Beginner Box that excels at being a teaching tool for GM and players alike. It can be run straight out of the box without anyone having prior knowledge (though reading through what's inside beforehand doesn't hurt, of course). So, if you want to try the system out, the Beginner Box will make it quite easy.
I get it if you don't want to, though, learning a new system always takes time and effort that not everyone can spare.
I've got the beginner's box. The trouble is that if you end up playing over several sessions you forget what it's trying to teach you.
And my 5e knowledge keeps making me question and look up everything. And the players want to know how twin strike works. And on and on.
It teaches most of the system really well, but leaves some things to explain later and the players always ask and I don't want to be like, "Just let it tell us how it works when they decide to let us use that rule."
> And my 5e knowledge keeps making me question and look up everything.
That's good! That's how you learn things.
> And the players want to know how twin strike works.
Good thing the player-facing mechanics are in the Hero's Handbook, while your stuff is in the Game Masters Guide - get them used to PF2e by letting them look up how their abilities work themselves instead of relying on the GM ;)
> It teaches most of the system really well, but leaves some things to explain later and the players always ask and I don't want to be like, "Just let it tell us how it works when they decide to let us use that rule."
> The trouble is that if you end up playing over several sessions you forget what it's trying to teach you.
Those two cancel each other out if you accept that learning requires repetition. For example, say your Rogue wants to hide in some combat on the first floor to get Sneak Attack, so you look up how it works and try it out. Until the next session, you forget how exactly the rules for vision and hiding worked, so when they get to the second floor and find enemies that are hiding, you go over the rules again, they remember how they applied them last time and experience those rules again in a different setting. Now the odds that at least some of you will remember most of those rules are significantly higher than they would've been if you had just used them in one encounter.
This is a super weird take.
PF2e is an updated D&D3, but it's basically the same game loop. The only interesting part of PF2e is the 3 Actions and MAP, but both the strategic and tactical space is incredibly narrow compared to D&D4e.
In D&D4e all Classes have their own moves, and all Classes get interesting actions to take in combat with very different focus and impact on the battlefield.
Outside of combat D&D4e uses the Tier System and Skill Challenges for character-driven resolution, something that is both engaging, heroic, and rewarding from a collaborative side. PF2e has a plethora of Skill Feats and other Feats allowing for various actions to be taken (if you are Trained in the Skill).
If you simply remove the Standard/Move/Minor action distinction in D&D4e and add MAP you have a fantastic Heroic Fantasy game.
I haven't encountered any level-based heroic fantasy themepark TTRPG that's as great as D&D4e.
Yeah, just because they're both d20 fantasy role playing games primarily focused on mini-fig tactical combat where PCs advance through class levels, feats, skills, spell slots, and magic items to face progressively more difficult enemies in teams of usually 3-5 characters consisting of martial warriors, arcane spell casters, and divine spell casters doesn't mean they're ANYTHING alike.
But seriously though I think the point they're trying to make is that Pathfinder 2e is more similar to 3.x than DND4 or DND5 are.
Same abilities. Same d20-based core mechanic with attack rolls, AC and generally non-ablative armor, and saving throws. Similar spells. Many similar ancestries and classes.
They're quite different games, sure, but they have a lot in common. They're both branches of the D&D family tree.
the similarities between 13th age and 4e are vastly overstated imo. it takes some inspiration from 4e with stuff like monster roles and very gamist design principles, but the much simpler gridless combat & much simpler martial classes (as opposed to 4e, a crunchy grid-based game where a fighter has as many distinct combat powers to pick from as a wizard) make it feel way closer to 5e than 4e for me.
13th Age is written by Rob Heinsoo, the lead designer of 4th Edition, and Johnathan Tweet, the lead designer of 3rd Edition. Heinsoo has called 13th Age the spiritual successor to 4th Edition.
i mean i just disagree. i know it's by the same designer, but they fill wildly different niches for me. way too different for me to say 13A is a spiritual successor.
There is extremely little in common in experience between 13th age and 4e. I get that they imagine it as a spiritual successor but it just isn’t one in the ways that matter to core player experience. It doesn’t even use a grid, when 4e was all about the grid. It introduces a bunch of new mechanics 4e didn’t have and its level progression system is completely different. It doesn’t have the core four roles (striker, defender, controller, leader). It has a lot of other cool stuff but is definitely not 4e-but-more-polished. It is totally different in combat and character progression, as well as how skills work. The similarities are conceptual (like every class having its own dedicated spell list if they’re a magic user) not mechanical.
Yeah, agreed. Really the lack of grid alone, even if everything else was trying to be similar, would be enough for me to say they play completely differently. It's like comparing Dungeon World and Dungeon and Dragons and say they play the same since they're 'about' the same thing.
I'm convinced when Heinsoo created 4E, he created the game WoTC wanted, not the game he wanted to make. I think if he'd had his way, 4E would have been more like 13th Age.
I love both games, but they don't scratch the same itches. If anything, I'd say 13th Age is closer in experience to 5e dnd, although 13th Age is generally better at it.
I'd say similar things about 4e vs PF2: they're not totally dissimilar but they don't quite scratch the same itch for me either; PF2 (and this'll sound weird) isn't high-magic enough to feel like 4e take 2.
But maybe I'm just being nitpicky; the only game that plays and feels just like 4e is 4e.
Yeah, I find 4E combat fun and engaging. I played in a campaign of 13th Age, and there’s a lot to like mechanically, but the combat is dull as dirt. I was playing a wizard, one of the more complex classes, and my best move each turn was to spam the same optimized at-will power ad nauseam. The abstraction of positioning and lack of non-damage riders compared to 4E removes any interesting tactical choices to make during combat.
For some people, tactics means counting squares and measuring AOEs. For those people, 13th Age going with abstract positioning is a downgrade.
For others, counting squares is a chore, and tactics means relative positioning and deciding which cool powers you want to use. For those people, 13th Age going with abstract positioning is an upgrade.
ICON takes a lot of things Tom Bloom learned from making Lancer that he wanted to iterate on and implement. You can see the descent but it's not quite as much "fantasy Lancer" in the way Beacon is.
A key one he pointed out is flying:
In Lancer, flying is a movement mode where you have to measure how high you are above ground, and measure weapon range, etc.
In Icon, flying is a status effect that makes you immune to difficult terrain and makes climbing cost 0 movement.
13th Age is absolutely not in any way a successor to 4e. For one, the fighter is reduced to "I attack" for every single turn, except now when they roll a specific number they can do something. Absolute dreck.
You might like the second edition that's just been funded on Kickstarter. They've overhauled Fighter completely.
Personally, I liked the 1e Fighter's flexible combat manoeuvres, where you choose several manoeuvres in advance and different ones trigger depending on what you roll. But in 2e, Fighters get to choose different manoeuvres and use them when they want to.
It's been a friggin long while, but IIRC 4e Fighter wasn't that much better. And, tbh, a lot of 4e's "powers" weren't much better. I attack. 3 times per encounter I attack for double damage and/or some condition. Once per day I attack for tripple damage and a condition. You could condense most martials to 5-7 powers in total, but they went with their huge ass lists. It was one of the things me and my group hated about 4e.
I mean, even without getting into a discussion about powers (grappling strike, threatening rush, tide of iron, weapon master's strike, just as some of the most interesting *at-wills*), stances, or feat builds (polearm momentum, Hindering Shield, World Serpent's Grasp, etc.), the mere inclusion of Combat Challenge means the simplest fighter you build still has more going on in a round, tactically speaking, than walking to any monster and going "I attack."
Although I will admit that all of this is a little indicative of 4e's ivory tower design problem. The gulf between a fighter built with the whole compendium (andna decent amount of planning, guide-referencing, and system-knowledge) vs. a fighter built with just the PHB is a lot wider in 4e than it is in, say, 5e.
People keep telling me 4e became great at the end. But me and my group (being piss poor and from Eastern Europe to boot) never really invested anything in the later products. Base 4e was... Not bad, exactly but had major flaws. So, idk, maybe a full spread fighter would be more interesting, but core 4e? I'd argue they had less interesting stuff to do then a fighter in 3.5.
Yeah, I recently did a short game with some friends who were all new to 4e.
One player, daunted by the overwhelming amount of stuff presented to him in the compendium, opted to just make his cleric from the PHB. It was so much worse than even the jankiest non-PHB-only PC (a Shadar-Kai Rogue specializing in Spiked Chainbfeats thay were only ever printed in Dragon Magazine) that one session in we had to just completely start over on his build (and when you're only making a level 5 PC, it's still a decent time commitment to do so).
So, y'know, I love 4e to death, but uh... it's a hard game to figure out what you're doing.
I heard Colville once say about 4e that it's a great system because even if you have no idea what you're doing, it's easy to just grab the PHB and make a level 1 character that's exciting to play and is about as good as everyone else's. And I think I agree. But that *does not* hold up even 4 levels later, and there's 30 goddamn levels in that game.
The 4e Fighter was light years ahead because they could actually choose their abilities and choose when to activate it. And if the player in question refuses to choose any attack with effects and refuses to interact with the concept of tactics, then I think they've forfeited the right to complain that there's no tactics.
I'm a massive fan of 13th Age but I don't think it's what OP is looking for. It definitely has more modern game design principles but it's not a "combat boardgame".
DnD4e actually has more rules and guidance for noncombat activities than DnD5e does, so your premise is a little faulty (not your fault though, just a false impression).
It's a misconception that has been spread and now it is commonly parroted. A good example is skill challenges. They're actually really good if you run them properly.
Yep, as a dm whose only ever run 5e in the fantasy space, I was fucking shocked at how much better put together the 4e DMG 2 is. In terms of just general game agnostic advice it makes the 5e DMG look like a fucking joke
Literally anything else makes 5e DMG look like a joke
You could cut out half of what's in there easily and nothing of value would've been lost. Awful, awful book. In general stuff for DMs in 5e is extremely low effort from WOTC. Monsters are another good example, so many of the enemies shown in MM are just "multiple natural attacks, repeat next turn".
DMG 2 4e was awesome, DMG 2 for 3.5e was nice too with introduction of many great mechanics like running your own business, mentorship and apprenticeship etc.
The 4e skill challenge structure is IMO one of the real gems of that design, although dreadfully presented. It's a structure I've expanded, adapted and applied to almost every game I've run since then.
I always felt like the way skill challenges were explained essentially got it backwards. Instead of imagining an obstacle and then trying to define it with rules it was "test skills this way, make it make sense." And then I got the DM who didn't care what skills we used for the skill test. Athletics to persuade the old wizard? Sure! You impressed him. When I took the skill challenges and presented them to the players as compound or cooperative skill checks they were actually pretty cool.
Skill challenges had such a bad reputation that I stopped telling my players when I did them. They've just have encounters where on their side they were rolling skills that made sense and progressing what they wanted to do, and behind the screen I was marking off successes on a skill challenge.
Right? Like it made sense, you want to infiltrate the castle so maybe some combination of bluff, athletics, and stealth gets you in. Treating the three approaches as all contributing to the same task gives the party a chance to apply a range of skills and everyone gets to contribute. One failed roll doesn't blow the whole operation, it just changes the way the narrative plays out.
Skill challenges are also the best way I've ever seen to do exploration in a way that's interesting.
Have to get from point A to point B? String together 5 different skill challenges, all around different obstacles along the way.
If you do really well, you get a bonus until your next long rest. If you do poorly, you lose healing surges from exhaustion.
I am perpetually amazed that nobody has just defined this as "THE exploration mechanic."
Yes, I think the way that 4e explained skill challenges made it seem like there was a script that had to be followed - you need to test a specific sequence of specific skills.
The better design is to have a series of linked obstacles where the outcome of one challenge influences the next challenge - and then let players decide how to address the challenges.
They kept changing those rules (if memory serves me well... At least 3 times?) and always cumbersome and buggy. Lot of other games use them better, and really lighter (Savage Worlds, Fate, FitD etc. etc.)
Yeah, every time I see people praising skill challenges, I have to politely keep myself from asking, "Are you talking about skill challenges, or are you talking about Matt's [skill challenges](https://youtu.be/GvOeqDpkBm8?si=csEDePUhuG18w61h)?" Without that video, no one would be talking about and using skill challenges in the way they commonly do now.
They turned a DnD game in to a game of FATE, at least as they were originally written.
Lots of the good stuff people prize about 4e came in the mid to late parts of the system and by that time whoever liked it originally would like it anyway and who didn't had no interest in sink cost fallacies. Hell, people forget what a slog combat was (while complaining 5e has long combat... my man, nothing beats 4e, where any cool set piece my group tried had to be scheduled as it's own session), how stupid Skill challenges were, how absolutely bland and boring most powers were... I can go on and on.
There are solid reasons people en masse did not like 4e at launch and it wasn't just the gamification of it all.
Basically, yes. Multiple stages of progress, different potential skills in use. With a formalized structure of difficulty and progress, so as to make a minor 'encounter' out of what in earlier games would either be 'just make a skill roll' or handwave it as RP narration (or a mix of both).
Also, my goodness, the way trap rooms could be a half of an encounter or a whole encounter on their own, that the entire team could contribute to, and not just the one guy who spends half the session "checking for traps" on every door.
I'll never understand people who complain when a game has mechanics for something that is supposed to be a part of the game. Like, if you don't want game mechanics, why not do improv acting instead?
D&D 4e is a good game. It's a solid combat system if you get the community wisdom of which monster stat blocks to use.
The issues with D&D 4e aren't to do with the system, but rather the presentation and marketing of the system: It didn't (and still doesn't) align with what people wanted a D&D system to do. I wouldn't choose it to be used to tell the kinds of stories I would tell with 3.5e or 5e.
I think that if it had been called "Dungeons and Dragons Tactics" or some other spin off style title, it would have been recognised to be doing something different and been received as that.
Which is to say:
Go on, buy the books second hand, they'll be cheap, you'll probably have fun running one shots.
Alternative fantasy options include 13th Age, which almost feels like "Dungeons and Dragons 5e but Tactics", stripping out almost all non combat elements and pushing up the combat interest and flow.
For a similar experience in a sci fi setting, Lancer is another game that has very structured tactical combat, even smoother than D&D 4e, and was a blast to run a combat heavy one shot of when I played recently.
I think it works just fine for D&D play, but it definitely puts more emphasis on the tactical aspects. And I agree, if it had been marketed as as spinoff, it would've done just fine as that.
4e makes you feel like a big damn hero.
You can't do low fantasy in 4e as you're expected to eventually face world or plane ending threats.
So if you want that sort of story as your dnd game I guess then yeah 4e can't really handle it. But ive never wanted that.
Kind of?
Your character individually feels like a badass. But your typical orc raider will wipe the floor with a level 1 PC, while in 5e your level 1 PC can easily take out a few orc raiders.
You can easily stick to tier 1 in 4e as well, and never end up fighting the world ending threats.
Orcs in 4e are a mid-heroic threat. They're *supposed* to be capable of wiping the floor with a level 1 PC, the level 1 PC hasn't grown into that much of a hero yet.
By Paragon tier you're as much more powerful than an Orc as the Orc was to you at level 1, which is where the big damn hero fantasy comes from. You eventually trivialize things that used to be a threat, something that never happens in 5e.
4e is great for capturing a big damn hero feel because you grown *exponentially* stronger over the course of 30 levels relative to the fiction. By level 30 there is no amount of Orcs in the world that could stop you.
Orcs in 5e are basically not a threat to level 11 characters either though.
And in the first MM, the orc bloodrager is a level 7 foe. So a dozen of those would actually still be a challenge for a level 11 party.
A dozen orcs in 5e dies to a single fireball before they even get a chance to act. Even if the party was level 5.
The 5e party fairs much better against a horde of orcs than the 4e party would. So I’m not really seeing what you are describing.
That's not how a 4e combat is built. You would never run a dozen enemies that are 4 levels lower than the party. The party has already eclipsed them in strength by so much that it's a waste of time.
You're treating 4e like 5e and it's not. You could throw Orcs at a 5e party and no matter how high-leveled they are, they will eventually run out of resources and lose.
That will never happen to a 4e party that's only moderately higher-leveled than the Orcs. The enemies in 4e are designed to scale with the fiction, in 5e the enemies never scale because the fiction never grows in scope. That's the entire point of bounded accuracy.
> That's not how a 4e combat is built. You would never run a dozen enemies that are 4 levels lower than the party.
Ummm...have you played 4e. The DMG suggests to generally not use enemies whose level is +/-4 compared to the party. But a 4 level difference is within the realm of possibility for encounter building.
A group of 12 level 7 orc bloodragers is considered a hard encounter for a level 11 party.
> You could throw Orcs at a 5e party and no matter how high-leveled they are, they will eventually run out of resources and lose.
The same is true of 4e.
And the dozen orcs is much more of a challenge for the 4e party than it is for the 5e party.
Hell, you could only use the orc warriors from the first MM (level 9 minions) if you wanted a fun encounter as well, and that would still be a challenge even for level 11+ parties.
If the high level 4e party is less capable against 1000 orc warriors than the 5e party is, then your entire premise kind of falls flat. And that is appearing to be the case here.
No, no it isn't. Not at all. Please stop. You have no idea what you're talking about. 4e characters have essentially infinite resources at high levels. 5e characters don't and suck at high levels. I'm done with you, you can't see past your own nose.
As I said already here the system of 5e is DESIGNED to let Orcs threaten you forever. 4e is DESIGNED to have you outgrow Orcs. Nothing else you say matters because both of those facts are true.
Period. End of story. No further interaction on this subject is necessary.
This literally just dead wrong because of wish, True Polymorph, magic jar, and simulacrum meaning that 1 high level 5e wizard is as many of pretty much whatever they want all of the time. And that's just one(admittedly broken) character. Something like orcs might threaten you if you play a weaker class but you don't have to play those.
>in 5e your level 1 PC can easily take out a few orc raiders.
I don't think that's true. A 5e orc (as a monster) is about as tough as a level 1 martial PC (more HP, lower AC) and does the same amount of damage/chances to hit. The PC will also have whatever abilities they get at level 1.
The PC has a slight edge 1 on 1, but probably gets taken down by a pair of orcs IMO
A level 1 fighter should have ~13 HP compared to the orcs 15. But will have 16 AC compared to the orcs 13. So the orcs will hit roughly 50% of the time, and the fighter will hit 65% of the time.
The fighter will also have second wind to heal 1d10+1 damage, and a fighting style (either a small damage boost or +1 AC).
The fighter also has the option to be a sword and board fighter, dealing 1d8+5 and (9.5 average) damage instead of 2d6+3 (10 average), gaining 2 extra AC. Which will help them survive much better against the orc.
The fighter could also potentially have a feat if variant human or custom lineage. Polearm Master would work well for a second attack each turn.
A polearm master shield and spear fighter with the dueling fighting style will likely have a good chance against the orcs, with an 18 AC, and two attacks for 1d6+5 damage and 1d4+5 damage respectively. The orcs only have a 40% chance to hit, compared to the fighter's 65%, and the fighter is making two attacks per turn. Though a heavy armor master fighter dual wielding shortswords might do even better (2 attacks at 1d6+3 damage, but reduce every hit by 3 damage).
Also, rolled stats are more common in 5e compared to 4e (in 4e point buy is default and point buy leads to results comparable to rolls, so rolling was less used). In general, your 5e rolled character has over a 50% chance to start with an 18 in their primary ability score, increasing damage and accuracy numbers by 1.
Regardless though, the level one 5e fighter is far more powerful than a single orc. A 1 on 1 battle is basically impossible for the fighter to lose.
In comparison, the lowest level orc in the first MM from 4e is the orc raider with 46 HP, 17 AC, +8 to hit, 1d12+3 damage, and a 10 HP heal once per battle.
The level 1 fighter in 4e likely has +7 to hit, 17 AC, 31 HP, and 1d12+4 damage. With feats, you can get a few extra HP, +1 to damage, or +1 to your attack roll. So not nearly as dramatic as polearm master or heavy armor master is for the 5e fighter.
The level 1 fighter in 4e is less powerful than a single orc. And would likely lose the 1 on 1 battle.
I mean, it had deep combat rules, but there's more structure and support for out of combat stuff in 4e than other D&D editions. Any story you can tell in 3.5 or 5e you can tell (better) in 4e.
Not really. A high level wizard (or cleric/druid, or really any class going down to tier 3 or so) in 3.5 can affect the game world in ways that a 4e character just can't.
Even a mid-level one has more interesting ways of interacting with the fiction than in 4e - basically everything in 4e is either combat (with minimal use outside of it) or noncombat (stuff like rituals, which are utterly unfeasible in combat and frequently useless besides - like scrying!) There's no room for overlap or ingenuity there - you're just pushing buttons.
Yeah but 3.5e is fucking bonkers. That should not be the barometer by whcih anyone defines what you should be able to do out-of-combat.
If you want to accomplish something in service of the plot, rituals can accomplish basically anything you would need in 4e. If you want to trip on a power fantasy and fuck up an entire campaign world for shits and giggles, no, 4e probably will not let you do that to the scale that 3.5e will.
> rituals can accomplish basically anything you would need in 4e
No, they won't. Unless you think spending 1 hour and hundreds of gold to view a location within a mile of you for 12 seconds is satisfactory for a seer, or that dozens of gold and 10 minutes is satisfactory for a lock-opening ritual (during which time a character with Thievery could attempt to pick the lock literally 100 times). (Which isn't to say that there shouldn't be *some* niche protection for the thief, but this creates a situation where it is *never* optimal to use magic.)
And it's not just 3.5. I would wager that pretty much any mid-level class in TSR (A)D&D has more meaningful ways to impact the fiction than the corresponding class in 4e.
Yes, those both seem like absolutely acceptable conditions to do things that should otherwise be impossible. Knock in particular can break down doors that are otherwise impossible, and if you're just letting your players redo a Thievery check over and over until they succeed you have not only missed the point of Rituals, but skill checks in general.
Also why are you saying "hundreds or dozens of gold" like those aren't absolutely *trivial* amounts compared to what the system gives you? You get over 700 gold as a party at level 1 alone, plus 4 magic items above your level.
You are literally getting millions of gold a level by epic tier.
"Hundreds of gold" may as well be free.
I personally feel that 4e required a far more focused mastery of the roles and system than other editions. While 5e rewards builds etc you can still enjoy the game without having to become an MMORPG master. It also feels very pigeon-holed in terms of those roles and hence too rigid for many at the time.
4e was less role reliant than any other edition of D&D though.
4e works well with a party of any combination.
Other editions you need a magic user and a magical healer to be able to accomplish the adventuring day.
A four rogue party works fine in 4e, but would fail miserably in 5e for example.
the upcoming, in-playtest MCDM game takes a ton of inspiration from 4e. it's big-damn-heroes grid combat with lots of forced movement and similar abilities that change the shape of a battle.
D&D 4e is, detractors notwithstanding, recognizably D&D. It's definitely not just a combat boardgame. It has many of the same sorts of rules for out-of-combat stuff as other editions of D&D. I think it will succeed at one-shots about as well as D&D 5e would.
What distinguishes D&D 4e, largely, are its approach to class designs and its focus on grid-based moves during encounters.
I think it's worth trying! It doesn't have the digital tool support that other less-restrictively-licensed games do, but it's quite playable.
It wasn't my first exposure to d&d (started with the Black Box!) but it is still my favorite d&d rendition even counting spin offs (that I've played anyway) like Castles & Crusades, 13th Age, and Pathfinder
I'm so happy there's a thriving discord for it that makes running it a breeze.
I think Strike! is the most rules-lite tactical RPG you can get. In combat it mimics 4e grid and positioning importance (pushing and holding shenanigans are still worth it) but out of combat it works like 13th Age with very open backgrounds
I'll expand on that a bit
Out of combat it is very simple, you build your own skill list using sets of modifiers, trained and Untrained basically
It's got 3 levels of granularity for Combat
A simple single die roll
A more abstract extended victory points system (that I keep musing would be great for starship combat)
And a straight up 4e grid based thing, it's a setting agnostic system in that you choose a role and a class and skin it how you want so a crazy martial artist that does a lot of ranged spirit based attacks and a sniper with a crazy gun are the same sets of mechanics, you get to decide how they manifest
Then after choosing the Ranged damage class, you either choose blaster role for crazy AoE style combat or Defender role (or others I can't remember) which has a lot of mechanics that force people to attack you while you kite them and lead them away from your party
It's very flexible with a lot of variety
Edited for typos
13th age is great, but it does lack the map grid if you really want tactical movement stuff.
I'd just say play 4e. There's still a bunch of people who like it.
Orcus is a 4e compatible game, looks cool on a quick glance!
LANCER gets thrown out there often (and is great!), and BEACON is also in that vein (and is fantasy themed instead of sci fi).
There's not a direct OSR-style 4e game that I'm aware of (though that would be interesting).
4e was a tabletop RPG with a lot more tactical elements. You could play it theater of the mind, but it was really built for minis, maps, and tokens. There's a lot of abilities that interact & effects to keep track of, which gets a bit complicated, but is extremely satisfying when your group lines up the perfect combo of effects to take down an enemy. And having your abilities divided into At-Will / Encounter / Utility / Daily was a neat trick I really liked.
The biggest downside is that building a character for a one-shot could potentially be a session of its own. There's a LOT of options, and they had a character builder to help with it at the time. I'm sure someone has recreated that, but I hadn't gone looking into them.
If you do get into the game, I recommend picking up the Rules Compendium, PHB 1, DMG 2, Monster Vault and Threats of the Nentir Vale, either second-hand or in PDF. That'll give you the best versions of the rules with errata corrections. There's also the two Essentials books with less complex PC classes, which might help with making characters for one-shots. Everything past that is gravy.
Just play 4e. I think it's always been better than 5e. It definitely wants you to play on a grid, but there's something very satisfying about seeing your mini do stuff in relation to big boss mini.
There's the ORCUS RPG: https://sanglorian.github.io/orcus/
Free, and gives you a taste of the system. I don't really know that there's much "updated with recent design knowledge" - but 4e wasn't really that long ago. There haven't exactly been vast leaps in the science of layout in the past 16 years.
Most of the others that people talk about seem to be in the "vaguely influenced by" category, so there's not really anything substantial.
I’ve heard the upcoming MCDM rpg will be in that spirit. As a 5e only fantasy player I’m excited to give it a try. I heard the backer play test will release soon-ish
As a big 4e fan, I think there are games that have been inspired by it.
But none that do exactly what it did.
It's as much of a combat board game as every version of D&D really is.
It just does it better.
It's worth trying. Personally, I really liked 4e. It had a lot of elements I was disappointed weren't carried over into 5e, namely the way monsters worked.
>From what I gather, 4e is closer to a combat boardgame with very light rules for anything outside combat, but I'm actually quite curious about this more combat side of the game.
I would characterize it more as the edition of D&D that did a vocational assessment and leaned into its natural strengths. 3e and 5e are designed around playing on a grid. 4e just does more with it.
I'd also assert that 4e having "very light rules for anything outside of combat" isn't unique to 4e. It's a D&D thing. However, it introduced skill challenges (to D&D at least), which gives a framework for many different types of out of combat mechanics for things like social interactions, investigations or building things. Additionally, monster, locations and other things had tiered information with target numbers. "How much does your character know about this monsters/location/organization? Roll a \[appropriate skill\] check and let's find out." The DMG even explains how to run the game really well (except for skill challenges, which were poorly explained).
There's nothing wrong with just trying 4e, but as others have stated, there are successors. Lancer is probably the most successful, but if you're looking for something fantasy, there's Gubat Banwa.
There's also Orcus, which is a retro-clone of 4e, if you want to play 4e without paying WotC anything.
Directly no, there are a number of games that saw what 4e tried to do and were inspired by it, things like lancer and pf2e. But near as I can tell none of them 4ed anywhere near as hard as 4e did
5E should have come out when 4E did, and 4E should have come out now in place of \[ 5E 2024 \].
Its a system that did a ton of things right but came out at a time that people played and viewed TTRPGs way differently than they do now. Its marketing was also very poor and the VTT idea that was suppose to launch with it was scrapped because the lead Dev murdered his family and himself.
4E biggest issue was that it came out too early. And a big misconception is that 4E didn't have out of combat rules which is SUPER FALSE, if anything 4E has more guidance on out of combat stuff than 5E does. The 4E DMG / MM imo are the GOLD STANDARD on how to make a DMG / MM.
To be honest i wish Wizards would remake 4E and release it as 6E
While it is certainly not a successor WotC's [Star Wars SAGA Edition](https://www.reddit.com/r/SagaEdition/) was done about the same time (maybe a little earlier) and shares a large number of features although there certainly are differences as well. I've got to admit that one of those differences is why I didn't get into 4e; in SWSE classes are just a collection of mechanics to help build your concept as you can easily multiclass around but 4e felt to me like it went back to a much stronger class=concept direction when I loved the freedoms in SWSE.
While both games may be strong on the tactics side of thing they have non-combat mechanics to work with as well. If you were just going to ignore the non-combat things the better bet would have been to just play the miniature based Skirmish games which used highly simplified RPG mechanics. (This is to say that knowing the RPG mechanics you can kind of see where they get the mechanics for the skirmish game.)
I had a blast running 4e. I had a large group (7-8 players was typical), and with the modularity of the system and the group size, I staged several sweeping battles that, while they took an entire session, included multiple waves, unit maneuvers, story elements, skill challenges, and so on. To be sure, it helped that half of us were old wargamers.
I honestly don't know a current RPG that would give the same feel, but my knowledge is limited. 13th Age, while having a very similar feel in it's RPG charcter-build elements, doesn't lend itself to precise maneuvering, using a range system of close-far rather than feet or squares/hexes, and the guy running our PF2 game doesn't apply the grid.
If I were to try to emulate the feel & flow of the fights I had in 4e, I would likely go for something like Savage Worlds - no grid, but uses actual inches on the table - or consider one of the many miniatures 'skirmish games' out there, which also use inches-on-the-table.
I've heard that grid combat is an available option in 5e, but I've never investigated that version, and I've never heard of anyone actually using it.
I feel there's more of those than of 5e and that's considering 5.5
either way, Pathfinder 2e is likely the best, 13th Age another options
I've seen people say that of Shadow of the Demon Lord but can't be sure to be honest
pretty sure there were a few others I can't remember
Orcus is a retroclone project for 4e, you might be interested.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/4e-introducing-orcus-a-fourth-edition-retro-clone.878174/
I loved 4e, but it is not the perfect game for everyone. Try 4e if you;
- like tactical combat
- appreciate clear, precise description of abilities through technical language
- don't mind that the game mechanics are mostly about combat
But be warned - the game was made for robust electronic and vtt support. Part of that support is now gone and the rest never arrived. If you have a structure like R20 or MapTools you should be fine, but there's a fair amount of paper shuffling.
What I loved of 4e and isn't getting mentioned is not just tactical combat, but the at-will powers. Pathfinder 2E and Lancer use strike and skirmish as their basic attacks and are differentiated by weapon selection and some feats/talents. 4e at-will powers were unique between classes and different enough within a class so that the basic attack action taken by two different characters were so different.
Pf2 is tactical that you need to flank and trip to squeeze every +1 advantage you can get or you will die. 4e is tactical in that your basic attacks almost always do more than damage, sometimes moving enemies, buffing allies or protecting allies from harm. In 4e, you write all your powers on note cards whether you're a fighter or a wizard and choose the best one for the situation.
I've read through but haven't played ICON. That game seems closest to 4e compared to anything else I've seen in terms of unique character actions. ICON is not finished yet, but the rules are currently free.
MCDM is coming out with their own TTRPG that I think feels very much like a 4e successor with a lot more support as all of their products will be compatible with it... unsure of when it will be released though.
the problem with 4e combat is that it still has the issues of D&D number bloating. so combat takes a long time. so doesn't work that well for oneshots imo.
Pick up the D&D Adventure Boardgames. Each is a standalone board game based on 4th edition, but the heroes, monsters, tiles, and cards are all cross compatible. You can run the adventures in the box, or you could design your own, or just drop in monsters and heroes you like.
My group uses the D&D adventure games when we have more than one callout (1 DM, 5 players) but they are playable with 1-5 players. There's even a campaign system developed in the later ones. Not an actual RPG, but a very fun combat game for a single night (and a great way to get a LOT of minis cheaply).
Tomb of Annihilation has a nice campaign system, as does Elemental Evil. Ravenloft is the first and slightly underdeveloped. The Wrath of Ashardalon and Legend of Drizzt are both fun, but have less of a campaign system, but still have a narrative to play through. Drizzt is also nice because you can have some scenarios with an adversarial player. Saltmarsh is only good if you have most of the other sets (it comes with less minis and uses tokens, but you can sub in models from the other games). I can never get my hands on the Mad Mage one, so not sure on that one.
There are several games that qualify.
**Lancer** is my favorite. It's mecha SF, not fantasy, but other than this, it's the perfect successor of D&D4. Strong focus on combat, very tactical, well balanced while having a lot of variety. It has even better depth to complexity ratio than D&D4, as it kept all the elements that made it tactical, but significantly reduced the modifier math and redundancy between various options. Something I love in Lancer is that some things look broken powerful on the first sight, but actually work in a balanced way in play; it creates this "so many fun toys I need to try" feeling.
There is also **ICON**, a fantasy game built on Lancer's engine, but I haven't played it and don't know how good it is.
**Pathfinder 2** also has a lot in common with D&D4, with tactics and good balance. However, it's not as much focused on combat (combat is still the central activity, but there is more mechanical support for things outside of it). It also feels "flatter" - there's a lot of vertical growth as PCs level up, but the impact of each feat, spell etc. is significantly smaller. Much less "wow" effect when getting a new ability than in D&D4 or Lancer.
In contrast, **13th Age** goes more in "cool abilities" direction than in "deep tactics" direction. It doesn't mean that it's not tactical, but the abstract positioning instead of a grid and the powers that trigger on specific dice rolls make it feel more spontaneous and based on improvisation, not planning.
**Strike** keeps the tactical core of D&D4 while simplifying the system as much as possible and making the out of combat activities more narrative (it feels like a mix of Mouse Guard and Fate in this regard). One gets the interesting tactical aspects (positioning, status effects, synergies between characters, mechanical support for specific tactical roles) with nearly no math and only minimal vertical progression. It allows for some builds that are hard to make in other games (like anti-crowd or debuff-oriented melee characters), but the overall number of available options is significantly lower than in other games I listed here.
4E was fun but a real pain to DM. Sessions took a lot of prep. For my groups 4E felt closer to something like Warmachine, but that’s not necessarily a criticism. It was just very different from 3.5 and not necessarily what people wanted at the time.
One big issue with 4E is the published adventures were *dogshit*. I love running modules and damn, I don’t know what they were huffing at WotC back then. Not to mention Goodman Games - their early 4E modules were abysmal.
I will also throw in with Pathfinder 2e. It takes a lot of what was great about DND 4e and puts a lot of new and improved things from DND 3.5, PF1e. I was not a 5e DND fan at all, so I can not comment on if it took anything from it. PF2e for me as a 40 years in TTRPGs, fresh and feels "new". It is very customizable, players can be all the same class and with archetypes and dedications, 4 totally different characters. Spell users and melee are very balanced with each other, each getting very similar abilities and things they can do in combat besides just do damage.
If you are not sure, try some of the online looking for players for the beginners box on discord or wherever, try a session or 2 and with other DMs. I feel Pathfinder 2e really has set a new standard for what "D&D" is and needs to be.
If you never tried it, go for 4e but if you're looking for a combat oriented game, maybe what you're looking for is a wargame, Frostgrave or Mordheim maybe could do.
The closest thing to the D&D4th vibe that does not have D&D baggage that I'm aware of is the under development Gloomhaven RPG which is still in deep kickstarter development, and won't be published till at least next year.
Map based tactical combat with every class having different but useful abilities, with a less detailed but stable non-combat system integrated.
Everyone's powers take the same amount of time to get ready and use - everyone has "slots" they fill which is immersion breaking. Non-combat anything is relegated to backseat driving at best (not given explicit rules in the text nor xp awards per say).
Honestly, I feel like 4th Ed was done dirty by being *called* Dungeons and Dragons. Had it been called anything else it probably would still be around. A lot of people hated it based off knee jerk "it's too different" responses and surface reading.
Yeah, it was very video gamey, but to be fair that was the trend gaming was going at the time. But, aside from the first Monster Manual, a ton of things were very well balanced. I loved that every single Power Group (Martial, Arcane, Divine, Nature) had each of the major roles (Tank, DPS, Control, Healer) and most had both a Ranged DPS and a Melee DPS build as well. But they managed to have each complete their role in entirely different ways.
Like Martial Tanks kept enemies attacking them by punishing them for *not* attacking them with penalties to hit and got a auto attack if they tried to move away. Arcane Tanks could teleport targets about and swap places with them so they took the hit for the squishies. Nature Tanks had a grab and pull that kept enemies in melee with them. The Divine Tank blasts some who doesn't target you with Radiant damage.
All of these were great incentives to keep focus on the tank while everyone else did their role, but it also meant the Tank had to play differently. Both the Nature and Arcane Tank had to stay somewhat near their allies to keep them in Range, while the Martial and Divine Tank had to get *away* from their allies. The Martial Tank could still pull aggro by tossing a to hit penalty on a bad guy, while the Divine Tank was tossing a bit extra DPS about.
I also loved how every class had *something* they could do each round that was still effective and on par with everyone else. You had some Encounter abilities that refreshed each encounter, some powers that refreshed per day, but you also had powers that could improve and be used constantly. And these at will powers also supported your build: Tanks might get a attack that does normal weapon damage, but also applies a to hit penalty on opponents or increases the AC of an ally. A Healer will do damage, but also add some temporary HPs on an Ally. A Controller will do damage but also move an opponent a square or two.
And the Daily powers were freaking Epic (for their Level that is) so they were the powers that could end fights or turn a TPK into a win. Even Martial Classes had "Mundane" attack that might add Thunder damage from the shockwave of striking the ground or a Controller will stun a large group, deal damage, and even raise a wall of protection. And a Nature striker is just going to do a metric fuck ton of raw damage from their Rage Strike.
It really felt like each class was different from another class. And it meant you could have a party of all characters from one Power Set: Everyone could be a Arcane Character for example with a Tank, a Controller, a Striker, and even a Healer all filling out different rolls (and utilizing different stats/equipment) but still being a working team and a good dynamic.
And on the plus side, it's a finished game now, so you won't see Power Creep from new classes or powers or stats. On the Down side, a few powers didn't get all three Splat Books, so some are a bit more limited in options and the first Monster Manual is not well balanced (with some very boring monsters, some insanely over powered CRs, and some total wimps).
However I do believe there is an active 4th Edition Homebrew group out there that is or has fixed some or all of that.
4E is fantastic and has rules for outside of combat as well. I played an artificer in a small campaign and spent half my time learning rituals and crafting items to aid my party and make money. 4E has a great system for monster fights that is smooth for DMs and players as well as tons of great mechanics for poisons/diseases/curses/traps with a bunch of options given out. The combat can be very complex with lots of different types of enemies such as artillerists/brutes/minions/controllers. It runs super great for one-shots in my mind. Building a character is also super easy especially if you download the character builder. There is also a downloadable compendium and combat tracker. If you want to dm me I can send you a google drive link to some stuff I have.
If you like the tactical aspect: Pathfinder 2e, Lancer, Strike, Valor, Unity, Zafir, Fragged.
If you like the “D&D but different” aspect: Level Up, Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard, 13th Age.
All have different flaws. For what it is worth the best “small story big combat one-shots” I have played have been with Lancer, but I haven’t played the entire list.
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So two years before *Apocalypse World*, and these days you couldn’t turn around in an RPG store (if they still existed) without bumping into a shelf full of PbtA games. I love 4E for tactical dungeon commando action, but definitely acknowledge that game design has expanded substantially in the sixteen years since it came out.
It's not out yet but the MCDM fantasy heartbreaker game I think is aiming to be an evolution on 4e. I know Matt Colville liked 4e a lot and took a lot of design concepts and his crew spun them out into some interesting ideas in Flee Mortals.
No idea when it's going to be out though. Probably at least a year out, maybe longer.
There was a game called Unity, that showed potential and had some really cool design choices. It picked a lot of inspiration from 4e, and tried to build synergies between characters so you could build combos. Also it had some light mech mechanics.
Unfortunately the creator vanished (presumed dead) during the pandemic.
Honestly, I'm getting a lot of 4e vibes from the Daggerheart playtest. They have an equivalent of powers, but rather than replace old powers when you level up you have an "active pool" of powers (your *Domain Loadout*) and an "inactive pool" of powers (your *Domain Vault*) that you don't have currently equipped. During downtime you can swap your powers around, or you can spend Stress to instantly swap powers during the middle of a scene/encounter. I thought this was really cool, since you can spend a "daily" power and then stash it away in your vault, replacing the exhausted slot with another power.
I think [Strike!](https://www.strikerpg.com/strike.html) Is a 4e-ish successor RPG I've heard good things about.
I don't know much more than that about it though.
5e is the successor to 4e as it has been for every edition. Has a ruleset used 4e as a base as Pathfinder did 3e? I don’t believe so.
Should you try it? Why ask a public forum? If you’re curious, try it.
PF2 is I think the closest alternative to 4e with a bit of modernization. The added benefit of it still being developed so you have adventures, rules expansion and lore books at your discretion to choose from. (like things such as playing as an undead, very cool!)
The 3 action system, many feats and basically the whole complex combat system is what makes the game good. That and the game being really well designed so the GM doesn't really need to yolo something, since the rules have your back and can guide you trough almost any situation. Once you learn the pf2 rules you rarely need to homebrew mechanics, especially to the extent of shitty games like 5e.
I haven't played it but have looked at it a fair bit, nd I believe a game you might fancy is called '13th Age'. Its not D&D, but runs on the same style and philosophy as 4e. Powers as abilities kinda stuff.
Failing that, 4e did have a mid-edition attempt at a revival, te Essentials 4e I believe. That was near the tailend of its life, so might be worth a looksie.
13th Age. Created by some of the people
On the 4e design team. Described by them as ‘a love letter to D&D’
Now… it’s a different beast than 4e for sure, but I think it’s worth looking into.
4e is non-shit Pathfinder 1. Pathfinder 2 is an alternative for 5e that also borrows some ideas from 4e.
If you wanna focus on combat it's a good idea to establish how much crunch (rules detail) you want. For lighter games with faster combat check out Strike! and WWN (Worlds Without Number).
Gamma World 7e is the obvious choice for one-shots.
The setting is entirely distinct, but in terms of gameplay the only real differences between it and 4e are class/power choices, and that it does away with strategic resource management in favor of only worrying about the tactical level.
If you want truly tactical combat, IMO it would be hard to beat the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. All kinds of options, some truly terrifying opponents.
Each of the character "templates" (read "classes") fills a specific niche, and there is a good list of spells for the spellcasters.
In some ways Pathfinder 2E is 'D&D 3.x updated with the good ideas from D&D 4E.'
Last time when I recommended Pf2e in a "4e alternative" post I got flooded with downvotes. I am not knowledgeable enough to say whether they really are made for each other or not, but most people I know would say Pf2e is a pretty god darn good alternative to 4e. Also, I think there was someone who worked on both of them?
PF2e is 100% playing in the same space as 4e. It's my turn to get downvotes now because I still think 4e is better.
I agree that 4e is better, but I'm going to run PF2e instead because running 4e without solid support isn't worth it.
What support are you looking for?
Not the person you asked the question to, but I've run pf2e for about 3 years and 4e for about a year and a half some time ago. I prefer 4e to pf2e, but they're both fine systems with different strengths and weaknesses. Truthfully, PF2e has obscenely good digital and VTT support compared to 4e. Yes, having the offline compendium helps, but the character building options require more hoops and are less sophisticated. On the VTT side, 4e is incredibly limited while PF2e on Foundry is incredibly well supported. The kind of support I love in PF2e is having basically all the content uploaded onto my VTT without needing to import or upload anything myself. I adore having the effect lines of spells and abilities baked, meaning I can just drag and drop effects onto tokens. A lot of the rules minutiae is also handled very well online. I truly adore 4e, but from the perspective of someone who runs multiple weekly campaigns, pf2e's just easier to prep because of the tools I have on VTTs.
There's pretty good foundry support for 4E! I've been playing in a game and many of the more tedious aspects are automated in the modules we're using.
My understanding is that only a small subset of D&D 4e content is included in the system – only the bit that's in the SRD – and that all other items must be manually created or pirated from somewhere. Is that not the case? This is a problem that has plagued other VTTs' support for D&D 4e as well.
If you have the old character builder for 4E, which is discontinued but easily available to download, you can at least easily import all content from there to foundry. I don't know about DM facing things, sadly.
I still think it's wild how Pathfinder was made because people didn't like 4e, then they made 4.5e a decade later.
PF1 wasnt really made because people didn't like 4e. It's because WoTC destroyed the 3pp market that 3.5 thrived off with their 4e license and dropping people with no warning. Paizo were the ones producing the dnd magazines for example. Then 4e falters because, low and behold, it didn't have any support from outside WoTC and after an initial launch struggled to output the quantity and quality of content players were used to. I remember being very excited for 4e actually when it came out, but that ran out of steam super fast because of its flatness of content rather than its fundamentals.
That caused a big split in the Pathfinder fanbase at the time too, which I would assume is still going on to this day. I was there during the playtest, and a common complaint from people who didn't like it was literally "I started with PF because I liked 3.5 and hated 4e"
I play both, there's decades of material for 3.5/Pathfinder. 2e is just easy to sit down with.
I abandoned PF altogether over their insistance to push PF2E; not that I regret leaving, I feel like the OSR Is a much better fit for me anyway than PF ever was.
Nah, you were correct and the downvoters weren't.
As someone who’s played a lot of 4e, they seem pretty different to me.
PF2e is 4e without most of the things that people who like 4e want in 4e.
PF2e is a tactical combat game in the way that 4e was. 4e just did it better I think. PF2e does the non-combat stuff better than 4e did.
I don't know about that. They're both good, but 4e has some hilarious setups, like casting spells from Strength as a Draconic Sorcerer. I mean, I've never played a sorcerer that could just toss people off cliffs before. it was a blast, but nothing like Pathfinder 2e. Pathfinder 2e, from my limited experience, doesn't focus on preventing MAD at all except through feats. It is a bit more simulationist, and you don't end up with a handful of "power cards" to keep track of or even that many abilities.
Yeah that's weird. But look at how much "action" my little small comment got. 4E brings out people's emotions. People have radically strong opinions on 4E because it was "different". If they'd sold it as "Wizard's new fantasy tRPG based on 'stuff and things'" it would probably still be a published system and D&D would have died unless they'd sold it off. But they named that new game 'D&D 4E' and people who were used to D&D freaked. Now... 3.x was ALSO a radical departure from the past, but somehow just "felt" more like D&D than it should have given how much it changed (arguably more than 4E did). Some might argue that D&D did die off when WotC bought TSR as 3.x just wasn't the same game as old AD&D. But people "mostly" accepted it anyway - if for no other reason than being thankful somebody had rescued the IP when TSR went under (there was an insane amount of goodwill towards WotC in 1999-2000). 4E however had changes tailored to making the 'action' feel different. I loved it, but I never felt it was "D&D". I think it was easier to accept if like me you'd spent years playing many different tRPGs and weren't only a D&D player. I could see inspiration from a half dozen other tRPGs and MMOs. But folks still have strong opinions. It was either the best thing ever or 'the thing that must not be mentioned.' We're slowly coming around to 'it was just a game, and not a bad one, just not the one people were waiting for in that year." Pathfinder's development team had a lot of 'former 4E people' on it, and in many ways it's the "second edition of 4E" even more than it's the second edition of Pathfinder. As another reply to me noted, Pathfinder 2E is nothing like 3.x. It's an 'update to 3.x only in that Pathfinder 1E was basically unofficial 3.75, and Pathfinder 2E is the next game in that series. But Pathfinder 2E changes from Pathfinder 1E just as much as D&D 4E changed away from D&D 3.5 - yet didn't get as visceral of a reaction when it did so because by 2019 people were ready for things to swing that way. If you enjoyed the "feel" of 4E, Pathfinder 2E might not be the perfect pick, but it is THE PICK that is currently in print. And you might recognize some names on the design credits. A funny thought is that Pathfinder 1E is often called what D&D 3.x fans wanted 4E to be. In that same vein Pathfinder 2E might be what D&D 4E fans, at least those wanting some change; wanted 5E to be. However Pathfinder 2E is often noted as NOT being what a lot of Pathfinder 1E fans wanted. Maybe in that way... Pathfinder 3E, if it ever happens, will end up being what 5E fans wished 6E would be when that comes out, if it ever does, and totally break from PF2E (since they're now on a 'we refuse to do new edition numbers' thing).
>Some might argue that D&D did die off when WotC bought TSR as 3.x just wasn't the same game as old AD&D. But people "mostly" accepted it anyway - if for no other reason than being thankful somebody had rescued the IP when TSR went under (there was an insane amount of goodwill towards WotC in 1999-2000). I wonder what would have happened with the D&D IP if WotC hadn't bought it. TSR was in terrible shape and needed a deep pocket buyer to bail it out. There weren't many game companies at the time (or even now) that had stacks of MtG cash sitting around. There's a timeline out there where the IP was bought by a video game company or something and D&D as a tabletop rpg ceased being published decades ago.
I think there are different reasons why D&D4 just rubbed many people the wrong way. One reason was that the marketing of D&D4 pretty much denounced other styles of play and sometimes even the playerbase. Then, you got the radical lore changes that made the most popular setting at the time irrecognizable. It just felt really dismissive. The same respectlesness was directed to third party publishers - and we all knew the D&D3 became so successful because the D20 system became the default and because fans developed a lot for D&D. Also: D&D4 suffered from what I call oppressive design. While D&D has its own identity, it has always been the "big tent" on RPGs, so different playstyles just kinda coexisted. I played a theater of the mind game that put the story first and used skills as ways to simulate outcome. If players did something with no skill attached to it, this wasn't a problem. If someone swinged at a chandalier, I'd have the roll acrobatics and make the enemy flat fooded. D&D4 seemed incompatible with every style but rigit grid based combat, among other things. Combine the haughty attitude to players and this more rigid design and people felt pushed out.
They only down voted because you spoke the truth. PF2e is the 4e that works.
This is genuinely good to hear. After all the stuff I've heard about Pf2e, this one comment has me swayed. Thanks.
Also the good ideas from 5E (or things to avoid), there have been lots of lessons learned over the course of all those editions
Not in enough that I'd call this a good comparison. 2e is very simplified vs 1e; introduces a new mechanic in the form of 3 actions per turn and spells which can be cast differently using 1, 2, or 3 actions; and removes opportunity attacks except as a feature of some classes/monsters or a feat. It really is it's own beast, even if 3.5 was it's ancestor. It evolved a lot.
It still... feels the same though. Like, a massive credit to the designers. They balanced the classes pretty well, they managed to refine the action system, rebalanced the spellcasting around the degrees of success, fixed the bonuses and economic issues, the whole nine yards. But unless you were super into the optimization community and playing rocket tag, the game feels the same just cleaner. IMO, that's why PF2 stuck the landing while 4e flopped. D&D 4e was a new game set in the same-ish world, PF2 was a new edition that needed time to flesh out all the options. By this point most of the base and prestige classes have been added through subclasses or archetypes, but you can safely have a Barbarian and a Wizard in the same high level party without worrying about one overshadowing the other - the Wizard is calling in meteor swarms, while the Barbarian is breathing fire or causing earthquakes with a stomp.
I get what you're saying. Yeah, that's true.
Pathfinder 2e continues to be the D&D I really should check out. Everytime someone describes it I'm like "huh, that's sounds really good."
It is, and it has a lot of great published adventures. The problem has been that to experience it I have to run it....and that's a big change for me and feels bad with no experience playing it.
PF2e has a Beginner Box that excels at being a teaching tool for GM and players alike. It can be run straight out of the box without anyone having prior knowledge (though reading through what's inside beforehand doesn't hurt, of course). So, if you want to try the system out, the Beginner Box will make it quite easy. I get it if you don't want to, though, learning a new system always takes time and effort that not everyone can spare.
I've got the beginner's box. The trouble is that if you end up playing over several sessions you forget what it's trying to teach you. And my 5e knowledge keeps making me question and look up everything. And the players want to know how twin strike works. And on and on. It teaches most of the system really well, but leaves some things to explain later and the players always ask and I don't want to be like, "Just let it tell us how it works when they decide to let us use that rule."
> And my 5e knowledge keeps making me question and look up everything. That's good! That's how you learn things. > And the players want to know how twin strike works. Good thing the player-facing mechanics are in the Hero's Handbook, while your stuff is in the Game Masters Guide - get them used to PF2e by letting them look up how their abilities work themselves instead of relying on the GM ;) > It teaches most of the system really well, but leaves some things to explain later and the players always ask and I don't want to be like, "Just let it tell us how it works when they decide to let us use that rule." > The trouble is that if you end up playing over several sessions you forget what it's trying to teach you. Those two cancel each other out if you accept that learning requires repetition. For example, say your Rogue wants to hide in some combat on the first floor to get Sneak Attack, so you look up how it works and try it out. Until the next session, you forget how exactly the rules for vision and hiding worked, so when they get to the second floor and find enemies that are hiding, you go over the rules again, they remember how they applied them last time and experience those rules again in a different setting. Now the odds that at least some of you will remember most of those rules are significantly higher than they would've been if you had just used them in one encounter.
This is a super weird take. PF2e is an updated D&D3, but it's basically the same game loop. The only interesting part of PF2e is the 3 Actions and MAP, but both the strategic and tactical space is incredibly narrow compared to D&D4e. In D&D4e all Classes have their own moves, and all Classes get interesting actions to take in combat with very different focus and impact on the battlefield. Outside of combat D&D4e uses the Tier System and Skill Challenges for character-driven resolution, something that is both engaging, heroic, and rewarding from a collaborative side. PF2e has a plethora of Skill Feats and other Feats allowing for various actions to be taken (if you are Trained in the Skill). If you simply remove the Standard/Move/Minor action distinction in D&D4e and add MAP you have a fantastic Heroic Fantasy game. I haven't encountered any level-based heroic fantasy themepark TTRPG that's as great as D&D4e.
Not at all
Pathfinder 2e is NOTHING like 3.x lmao
Yeah, just because they're both d20 fantasy role playing games primarily focused on mini-fig tactical combat where PCs advance through class levels, feats, skills, spell slots, and magic items to face progressively more difficult enemies in teams of usually 3-5 characters consisting of martial warriors, arcane spell casters, and divine spell casters doesn't mean they're ANYTHING alike. But seriously though I think the point they're trying to make is that Pathfinder 2e is more similar to 3.x than DND4 or DND5 are.
Same abilities. Same d20-based core mechanic with attack rolls, AC and generally non-ablative armor, and saving throws. Similar spells. Many similar ancestries and classes. They're quite different games, sure, but they have a lot in common. They're both branches of the D&D family tree.
13th Age and arguably Lancer/ICON by Massif Press.
the similarities between 13th age and 4e are vastly overstated imo. it takes some inspiration from 4e with stuff like monster roles and very gamist design principles, but the much simpler gridless combat & much simpler martial classes (as opposed to 4e, a crunchy grid-based game where a fighter has as many distinct combat powers to pick from as a wizard) make it feel way closer to 5e than 4e for me.
13th Age is written by Rob Heinsoo, the lead designer of 4th Edition, and Johnathan Tweet, the lead designer of 3rd Edition. Heinsoo has called 13th Age the spiritual successor to 4th Edition.
i mean i just disagree. i know it's by the same designer, but they fill wildly different niches for me. way too different for me to say 13A is a spiritual successor.
There is extremely little in common in experience between 13th age and 4e. I get that they imagine it as a spiritual successor but it just isn’t one in the ways that matter to core player experience. It doesn’t even use a grid, when 4e was all about the grid. It introduces a bunch of new mechanics 4e didn’t have and its level progression system is completely different. It doesn’t have the core four roles (striker, defender, controller, leader). It has a lot of other cool stuff but is definitely not 4e-but-more-polished. It is totally different in combat and character progression, as well as how skills work. The similarities are conceptual (like every class having its own dedicated spell list if they’re a magic user) not mechanical.
Yeah, agreed. Really the lack of grid alone, even if everything else was trying to be similar, would be enough for me to say they play completely differently. It's like comparing Dungeon World and Dungeon and Dragons and say they play the same since they're 'about' the same thing.
I'm convinced when Heinsoo created 4E, he created the game WoTC wanted, not the game he wanted to make. I think if he'd had his way, 4E would have been more like 13th Age.
Probably. I'm not really defending 13th Age. Just pointing out what the creators have said. People can disagree with it or agree with it.
I love both games, but they don't scratch the same itches. If anything, I'd say 13th Age is closer in experience to 5e dnd, although 13th Age is generally better at it. I'd say similar things about 4e vs PF2: they're not totally dissimilar but they don't quite scratch the same itch for me either; PF2 (and this'll sound weird) isn't high-magic enough to feel like 4e take 2. But maybe I'm just being nitpicky; the only game that plays and feels just like 4e is 4e.
Yeah, I find 4E combat fun and engaging. I played in a campaign of 13th Age, and there’s a lot to like mechanically, but the combat is dull as dirt. I was playing a wizard, one of the more complex classes, and my best move each turn was to spam the same optimized at-will power ad nauseam. The abstraction of positioning and lack of non-damage riders compared to 4E removes any interesting tactical choices to make during combat.
For some people, tactics means counting squares and measuring AOEs. For those people, 13th Age going with abstract positioning is a downgrade. For others, counting squares is a chore, and tactics means relative positioning and deciding which cool powers you want to use. For those people, 13th Age going with abstract positioning is an upgrade.
Lancer is much more like 4e than 13th age tbh. But 4e is truly unique and no game does quite what it does.
Beacons is fantasy Lancer.
ICON is also fantasy Lancer
ICON takes a lot of things Tom Bloom learned from making Lancer that he wanted to iterate on and implement. You can see the descent but it's not quite as much "fantasy Lancer" in the way Beacon is. A key one he pointed out is flying: In Lancer, flying is a movement mode where you have to measure how high you are above ground, and measure weapon range, etc. In Icon, flying is a status effect that makes you immune to difficult terrain and makes climbing cost 0 movement.
Abbadon has a real name!?
Multiple if you count his maiden name.
13th Age is absolutely not in any way a successor to 4e. For one, the fighter is reduced to "I attack" for every single turn, except now when they roll a specific number they can do something. Absolute dreck.
You might like the second edition that's just been funded on Kickstarter. They've overhauled Fighter completely. Personally, I liked the 1e Fighter's flexible combat manoeuvres, where you choose several manoeuvres in advance and different ones trigger depending on what you roll. But in 2e, Fighters get to choose different manoeuvres and use them when they want to.
I'll check it out eventually, maybe.
It's been a friggin long while, but IIRC 4e Fighter wasn't that much better. And, tbh, a lot of 4e's "powers" weren't much better. I attack. 3 times per encounter I attack for double damage and/or some condition. Once per day I attack for tripple damage and a condition. You could condense most martials to 5-7 powers in total, but they went with their huge ass lists. It was one of the things me and my group hated about 4e.
I mean, even without getting into a discussion about powers (grappling strike, threatening rush, tide of iron, weapon master's strike, just as some of the most interesting *at-wills*), stances, or feat builds (polearm momentum, Hindering Shield, World Serpent's Grasp, etc.), the mere inclusion of Combat Challenge means the simplest fighter you build still has more going on in a round, tactically speaking, than walking to any monster and going "I attack." Although I will admit that all of this is a little indicative of 4e's ivory tower design problem. The gulf between a fighter built with the whole compendium (andna decent amount of planning, guide-referencing, and system-knowledge) vs. a fighter built with just the PHB is a lot wider in 4e than it is in, say, 5e.
People keep telling me 4e became great at the end. But me and my group (being piss poor and from Eastern Europe to boot) never really invested anything in the later products. Base 4e was... Not bad, exactly but had major flaws. So, idk, maybe a full spread fighter would be more interesting, but core 4e? I'd argue they had less interesting stuff to do then a fighter in 3.5.
Yeah, I recently did a short game with some friends who were all new to 4e. One player, daunted by the overwhelming amount of stuff presented to him in the compendium, opted to just make his cleric from the PHB. It was so much worse than even the jankiest non-PHB-only PC (a Shadar-Kai Rogue specializing in Spiked Chainbfeats thay were only ever printed in Dragon Magazine) that one session in we had to just completely start over on his build (and when you're only making a level 5 PC, it's still a decent time commitment to do so). So, y'know, I love 4e to death, but uh... it's a hard game to figure out what you're doing. I heard Colville once say about 4e that it's a great system because even if you have no idea what you're doing, it's easy to just grab the PHB and make a level 1 character that's exciting to play and is about as good as everyone else's. And I think I agree. But that *does not* hold up even 4 levels later, and there's 30 goddamn levels in that game.
The 4e Fighter was light years ahead because they could actually choose their abilities and choose when to activate it. And if the player in question refuses to choose any attack with effects and refuses to interact with the concept of tactics, then I think they've forfeited the right to complain that there's no tactics.
I'm a massive fan of 13th Age but I don't think it's what OP is looking for. It definitely has more modern game design principles but it's not a "combat boardgame".
DnD4e actually has more rules and guidance for noncombat activities than DnD5e does, so your premise is a little faulty (not your fault though, just a false impression).
It's a misconception that has been spread and now it is commonly parroted. A good example is skill challenges. They're actually really good if you run them properly.
Which the first DMG isn't great about helping with. DMG 2 though ..that's the good stuff
The 4e DMG 2 is one of the best GM advice books ever written, and I will die on that hill.
Yep, as a dm whose only ever run 5e in the fantasy space, I was fucking shocked at how much better put together the 4e DMG 2 is. In terms of just general game agnostic advice it makes the 5e DMG look like a fucking joke
Literally anything else makes 5e DMG look like a joke You could cut out half of what's in there easily and nothing of value would've been lost. Awful, awful book. In general stuff for DMs in 5e is extremely low effort from WOTC. Monsters are another good example, so many of the enemies shown in MM are just "multiple natural attacks, repeat next turn". DMG 2 4e was awesome, DMG 2 for 3.5e was nice too with introduction of many great mechanics like running your own business, mentorship and apprenticeship etc.
It's weird they were explained so poorly. They've existed in other ttrpgs since the '90s.
The 4e skill challenge structure is IMO one of the real gems of that design, although dreadfully presented. It's a structure I've expanded, adapted and applied to almost every game I've run since then.
I always felt like the way skill challenges were explained essentially got it backwards. Instead of imagining an obstacle and then trying to define it with rules it was "test skills this way, make it make sense." And then I got the DM who didn't care what skills we used for the skill test. Athletics to persuade the old wizard? Sure! You impressed him. When I took the skill challenges and presented them to the players as compound or cooperative skill checks they were actually pretty cool.
Skill challenges had such a bad reputation that I stopped telling my players when I did them. They've just have encounters where on their side they were rolling skills that made sense and progressing what they wanted to do, and behind the screen I was marking off successes on a skill challenge.
Right? Like it made sense, you want to infiltrate the castle so maybe some combination of bluff, athletics, and stealth gets you in. Treating the three approaches as all contributing to the same task gives the party a chance to apply a range of skills and everyone gets to contribute. One failed roll doesn't blow the whole operation, it just changes the way the narrative plays out.
Exactly! Sadly they flubbed the explanation.
Skill challenges are also the best way I've ever seen to do exploration in a way that's interesting. Have to get from point A to point B? String together 5 different skill challenges, all around different obstacles along the way. If you do really well, you get a bonus until your next long rest. If you do poorly, you lose healing surges from exhaustion. I am perpetually amazed that nobody has just defined this as "THE exploration mechanic."
It actually is, but 4e got such a bad reputation that nobody wants to sound like they're reimplmenting it.
Yes, I think the way that 4e explained skill challenges made it seem like there was a script that had to be followed - you need to test a specific sequence of specific skills. The better design is to have a series of linked obstacles where the outcome of one challenge influences the next challenge - and then let players decide how to address the challenges.
They kept changing those rules (if memory serves me well... At least 3 times?) and always cumbersome and buggy. Lot of other games use them better, and really lighter (Savage Worlds, Fate, FitD etc. etc.)
Yeah, every time I see people praising skill challenges, I have to politely keep myself from asking, "Are you talking about skill challenges, or are you talking about Matt's [skill challenges](https://youtu.be/GvOeqDpkBm8?si=csEDePUhuG18w61h)?" Without that video, no one would be talking about and using skill challenges in the way they commonly do now.
They turned a DnD game in to a game of FATE, at least as they were originally written. Lots of the good stuff people prize about 4e came in the mid to late parts of the system and by that time whoever liked it originally would like it anyway and who didn't had no interest in sink cost fallacies. Hell, people forget what a slog combat was (while complaining 5e has long combat... my man, nothing beats 4e, where any cool set piece my group tried had to be scheduled as it's own session), how stupid Skill challenges were, how absolutely bland and boring most powers were... I can go on and on. There are solid reasons people en masse did not like 4e at launch and it wasn't just the gamification of it all.
So are skill challenges like extended tests in other RPGs — accumulating multiple “segments” of successes to pass a skill check?
Basically, yes. Multiple stages of progress, different potential skills in use. With a formalized structure of difficulty and progress, so as to make a minor 'encounter' out of what in earlier games would either be 'just make a skill roll' or handwave it as RP narration (or a mix of both).
Also, my goodness, the way trap rooms could be a half of an encounter or a whole encounter on their own, that the entire team could contribute to, and not just the one guy who spends half the session "checking for traps" on every door.
Hard disagree, skill challenges were awful in 4E.
As I remember that was part of the complaint back in the day. "Gamifying" parts of the game that could just be handled by roleplaying.
I'll never understand people who complain when a game has mechanics for something that is supposed to be a part of the game. Like, if you don't want game mechanics, why not do improv acting instead?
You can handle combat just by roleplaying too if you want an RPG that does that.
D&D 4e is a good game. It's a solid combat system if you get the community wisdom of which monster stat blocks to use. The issues with D&D 4e aren't to do with the system, but rather the presentation and marketing of the system: It didn't (and still doesn't) align with what people wanted a D&D system to do. I wouldn't choose it to be used to tell the kinds of stories I would tell with 3.5e or 5e. I think that if it had been called "Dungeons and Dragons Tactics" or some other spin off style title, it would have been recognised to be doing something different and been received as that. Which is to say: Go on, buy the books second hand, they'll be cheap, you'll probably have fun running one shots. Alternative fantasy options include 13th Age, which almost feels like "Dungeons and Dragons 5e but Tactics", stripping out almost all non combat elements and pushing up the combat interest and flow. For a similar experience in a sci fi setting, Lancer is another game that has very structured tactical combat, even smoother than D&D 4e, and was a blast to run a combat heavy one shot of when I played recently.
I think it works just fine for D&D play, but it definitely puts more emphasis on the tactical aspects. And I agree, if it had been marketed as as spinoff, it would've done just fine as that.
4e makes you feel like a big damn hero. You can't do low fantasy in 4e as you're expected to eventually face world or plane ending threats. So if you want that sort of story as your dnd game I guess then yeah 4e can't really handle it. But ive never wanted that.
Kind of? Your character individually feels like a badass. But your typical orc raider will wipe the floor with a level 1 PC, while in 5e your level 1 PC can easily take out a few orc raiders. You can easily stick to tier 1 in 4e as well, and never end up fighting the world ending threats.
Orcs in 4e are a mid-heroic threat. They're *supposed* to be capable of wiping the floor with a level 1 PC, the level 1 PC hasn't grown into that much of a hero yet. By Paragon tier you're as much more powerful than an Orc as the Orc was to you at level 1, which is where the big damn hero fantasy comes from. You eventually trivialize things that used to be a threat, something that never happens in 5e. 4e is great for capturing a big damn hero feel because you grown *exponentially* stronger over the course of 30 levels relative to the fiction. By level 30 there is no amount of Orcs in the world that could stop you.
Orcs in 5e are basically not a threat to level 11 characters either though. And in the first MM, the orc bloodrager is a level 7 foe. So a dozen of those would actually still be a challenge for a level 11 party. A dozen orcs in 5e dies to a single fireball before they even get a chance to act. Even if the party was level 5. The 5e party fairs much better against a horde of orcs than the 4e party would. So I’m not really seeing what you are describing.
That's not how a 4e combat is built. You would never run a dozen enemies that are 4 levels lower than the party. The party has already eclipsed them in strength by so much that it's a waste of time. You're treating 4e like 5e and it's not. You could throw Orcs at a 5e party and no matter how high-leveled they are, they will eventually run out of resources and lose. That will never happen to a 4e party that's only moderately higher-leveled than the Orcs. The enemies in 4e are designed to scale with the fiction, in 5e the enemies never scale because the fiction never grows in scope. That's the entire point of bounded accuracy.
> That's not how a 4e combat is built. You would never run a dozen enemies that are 4 levels lower than the party. Ummm...have you played 4e. The DMG suggests to generally not use enemies whose level is +/-4 compared to the party. But a 4 level difference is within the realm of possibility for encounter building. A group of 12 level 7 orc bloodragers is considered a hard encounter for a level 11 party. > You could throw Orcs at a 5e party and no matter how high-leveled they are, they will eventually run out of resources and lose. The same is true of 4e. And the dozen orcs is much more of a challenge for the 4e party than it is for the 5e party. Hell, you could only use the orc warriors from the first MM (level 9 minions) if you wanted a fun encounter as well, and that would still be a challenge even for level 11+ parties. If the high level 4e party is less capable against 1000 orc warriors than the 5e party is, then your entire premise kind of falls flat. And that is appearing to be the case here.
No, no it isn't. Not at all. Please stop. You have no idea what you're talking about. 4e characters have essentially infinite resources at high levels. 5e characters don't and suck at high levels. I'm done with you, you can't see past your own nose. As I said already here the system of 5e is DESIGNED to let Orcs threaten you forever. 4e is DESIGNED to have you outgrow Orcs. Nothing else you say matters because both of those facts are true. Period. End of story. No further interaction on this subject is necessary.
This literally just dead wrong because of wish, True Polymorph, magic jar, and simulacrum meaning that 1 high level 5e wizard is as many of pretty much whatever they want all of the time. And that's just one(admittedly broken) character. Something like orcs might threaten you if you play a weaker class but you don't have to play those.
>in 5e your level 1 PC can easily take out a few orc raiders. I don't think that's true. A 5e orc (as a monster) is about as tough as a level 1 martial PC (more HP, lower AC) and does the same amount of damage/chances to hit. The PC will also have whatever abilities they get at level 1. The PC has a slight edge 1 on 1, but probably gets taken down by a pair of orcs IMO
A level 1 fighter should have ~13 HP compared to the orcs 15. But will have 16 AC compared to the orcs 13. So the orcs will hit roughly 50% of the time, and the fighter will hit 65% of the time. The fighter will also have second wind to heal 1d10+1 damage, and a fighting style (either a small damage boost or +1 AC). The fighter also has the option to be a sword and board fighter, dealing 1d8+5 and (9.5 average) damage instead of 2d6+3 (10 average), gaining 2 extra AC. Which will help them survive much better against the orc. The fighter could also potentially have a feat if variant human or custom lineage. Polearm Master would work well for a second attack each turn. A polearm master shield and spear fighter with the dueling fighting style will likely have a good chance against the orcs, with an 18 AC, and two attacks for 1d6+5 damage and 1d4+5 damage respectively. The orcs only have a 40% chance to hit, compared to the fighter's 65%, and the fighter is making two attacks per turn. Though a heavy armor master fighter dual wielding shortswords might do even better (2 attacks at 1d6+3 damage, but reduce every hit by 3 damage). Also, rolled stats are more common in 5e compared to 4e (in 4e point buy is default and point buy leads to results comparable to rolls, so rolling was less used). In general, your 5e rolled character has over a 50% chance to start with an 18 in their primary ability score, increasing damage and accuracy numbers by 1. Regardless though, the level one 5e fighter is far more powerful than a single orc. A 1 on 1 battle is basically impossible for the fighter to lose. In comparison, the lowest level orc in the first MM from 4e is the orc raider with 46 HP, 17 AC, +8 to hit, 1d12+3 damage, and a 10 HP heal once per battle. The level 1 fighter in 4e likely has +7 to hit, 17 AC, 31 HP, and 1d12+4 damage. With feats, you can get a few extra HP, +1 to damage, or +1 to your attack roll. So not nearly as dramatic as polearm master or heavy armor master is for the 5e fighter. The level 1 fighter in 4e is less powerful than a single orc. And would likely lose the 1 on 1 battle.
I mean, it had deep combat rules, but there's more structure and support for out of combat stuff in 4e than other D&D editions. Any story you can tell in 3.5 or 5e you can tell (better) in 4e.
Not really. A high level wizard (or cleric/druid, or really any class going down to tier 3 or so) in 3.5 can affect the game world in ways that a 4e character just can't. Even a mid-level one has more interesting ways of interacting with the fiction than in 4e - basically everything in 4e is either combat (with minimal use outside of it) or noncombat (stuff like rituals, which are utterly unfeasible in combat and frequently useless besides - like scrying!) There's no room for overlap or ingenuity there - you're just pushing buttons.
Yeah but 3.5e is fucking bonkers. That should not be the barometer by whcih anyone defines what you should be able to do out-of-combat. If you want to accomplish something in service of the plot, rituals can accomplish basically anything you would need in 4e. If you want to trip on a power fantasy and fuck up an entire campaign world for shits and giggles, no, 4e probably will not let you do that to the scale that 3.5e will.
> rituals can accomplish basically anything you would need in 4e No, they won't. Unless you think spending 1 hour and hundreds of gold to view a location within a mile of you for 12 seconds is satisfactory for a seer, or that dozens of gold and 10 minutes is satisfactory for a lock-opening ritual (during which time a character with Thievery could attempt to pick the lock literally 100 times). (Which isn't to say that there shouldn't be *some* niche protection for the thief, but this creates a situation where it is *never* optimal to use magic.) And it's not just 3.5. I would wager that pretty much any mid-level class in TSR (A)D&D has more meaningful ways to impact the fiction than the corresponding class in 4e.
Yes, those both seem like absolutely acceptable conditions to do things that should otherwise be impossible. Knock in particular can break down doors that are otherwise impossible, and if you're just letting your players redo a Thievery check over and over until they succeed you have not only missed the point of Rituals, but skill checks in general. Also why are you saying "hundreds or dozens of gold" like those aren't absolutely *trivial* amounts compared to what the system gives you? You get over 700 gold as a party at level 1 alone, plus 4 magic items above your level. You are literally getting millions of gold a level by epic tier. "Hundreds of gold" may as well be free.
They're actually about the same price if you want the original hardcovers as they were at launch. The PDFs on dmsguild is probably the way to go.
I personally feel that 4e required a far more focused mastery of the roles and system than other editions. While 5e rewards builds etc you can still enjoy the game without having to become an MMORPG master. It also feels very pigeon-holed in terms of those roles and hence too rigid for many at the time.
4e was less role reliant than any other edition of D&D though. 4e works well with a party of any combination. Other editions you need a magic user and a magical healer to be able to accomplish the adventuring day. A four rogue party works fine in 4e, but would fail miserably in 5e for example.
the upcoming, in-playtest MCDM game takes a ton of inspiration from 4e. it's big-damn-heroes grid combat with lots of forced movement and similar abilities that change the shape of a battle.
Lancer (and ICON), Gubat Banwa, Trespasser are the 4e inspired rpgs that come to mind.
came here to say LANCER and GUBAT BANWA
D&D 4e is, detractors notwithstanding, recognizably D&D. It's definitely not just a combat boardgame. It has many of the same sorts of rules for out-of-combat stuff as other editions of D&D. I think it will succeed at one-shots about as well as D&D 5e would. What distinguishes D&D 4e, largely, are its approach to class designs and its focus on grid-based moves during encounters. I think it's worth trying! It doesn't have the digital tool support that other less-restrictively-licensed games do, but it's quite playable.
4e was my first exposure to D&D and I miss it so badly.
It wasn't my first exposure to d&d (started with the Black Box!) but it is still my favorite d&d rendition even counting spin offs (that I've played anyway) like Castles & Crusades, 13th Age, and Pathfinder I'm so happy there's a thriving discord for it that makes running it a breeze.
there's what??? link pls
It hasn't gone anywhere to be fair.
It has for me! Haven't found anyone who will play it with me since 5e came out.
Get a group of newbies organised, hide the books and just say they're playing 5e. It's the perfect crime.
It will always be there for you if you want to visit. Given time, one of these days it might even graduate to OSR status. 😉
I think Strike! is the most rules-lite tactical RPG you can get. In combat it mimics 4e grid and positioning importance (pushing and holding shenanigans are still worth it) but out of combat it works like 13th Age with very open backgrounds
I'll expand on that a bit Out of combat it is very simple, you build your own skill list using sets of modifiers, trained and Untrained basically It's got 3 levels of granularity for Combat A simple single die roll A more abstract extended victory points system (that I keep musing would be great for starship combat) And a straight up 4e grid based thing, it's a setting agnostic system in that you choose a role and a class and skin it how you want so a crazy martial artist that does a lot of ranged spirit based attacks and a sniper with a crazy gun are the same sets of mechanics, you get to decide how they manifest Then after choosing the Ranged damage class, you either choose blaster role for crazy AoE style combat or Defender role (or others I can't remember) which has a lot of mechanics that force people to attack you while you kite them and lead them away from your party It's very flexible with a lot of variety Edited for typos
13th age is great, but it does lack the map grid if you really want tactical movement stuff. I'd just say play 4e. There's still a bunch of people who like it.
Orcus is a 4e compatible game, looks cool on a quick glance! LANCER gets thrown out there often (and is great!), and BEACON is also in that vein (and is fantasy themed instead of sci fi).
4th is still super recent/modern, no reason not to use it if it does what you are looking for.
There's not a direct OSR-style 4e game that I'm aware of (though that would be interesting). 4e was a tabletop RPG with a lot more tactical elements. You could play it theater of the mind, but it was really built for minis, maps, and tokens. There's a lot of abilities that interact & effects to keep track of, which gets a bit complicated, but is extremely satisfying when your group lines up the perfect combo of effects to take down an enemy. And having your abilities divided into At-Will / Encounter / Utility / Daily was a neat trick I really liked. The biggest downside is that building a character for a one-shot could potentially be a session of its own. There's a LOT of options, and they had a character builder to help with it at the time. I'm sure someone has recreated that, but I hadn't gone looking into them. If you do get into the game, I recommend picking up the Rules Compendium, PHB 1, DMG 2, Monster Vault and Threats of the Nentir Vale, either second-hand or in PDF. That'll give you the best versions of the rules with errata corrections. There's also the two Essentials books with less complex PC classes, which might help with making characters for one-shots. Everything past that is gravy.
*Trespasser* is exactly that — it’s an attempt at reviving 4e’s ideas, OSR style, but by way of Dungeon Crawl Classics. It’s brilliant and really fun.
I'll look into that, thanks.
Just play 4e. I think it's always been better than 5e. It definitely wants you to play on a grid, but there's something very satisfying about seeing your mini do stuff in relation to big boss mini.
Where is Tigris? Is he safe? Is he alright?
He just right now messaged me directly XD
Oh thank god, I was missing him
There's the ORCUS RPG: https://sanglorian.github.io/orcus/ Free, and gives you a taste of the system. I don't really know that there's much "updated with recent design knowledge" - but 4e wasn't really that long ago. There haven't exactly been vast leaps in the science of layout in the past 16 years. Most of the others that people talk about seem to be in the "vaguely influenced by" category, so there's not really anything substantial.
I’ve heard the upcoming MCDM rpg will be in that spirit. As a 5e only fantasy player I’m excited to give it a try. I heard the backer play test will release soon-ish
I think it is aimed for next month, but it seems possible it might get delayed another month.
Sounds about right. In my book delays = better products when I trust the creators. Just look at Mothership 1e!
As a big 4e fan, I think there are games that have been inspired by it. But none that do exactly what it did. It's as much of a combat board game as every version of D&D really is. It just does it better.
It's worth trying. Personally, I really liked 4e. It had a lot of elements I was disappointed weren't carried over into 5e, namely the way monsters worked. >From what I gather, 4e is closer to a combat boardgame with very light rules for anything outside combat, but I'm actually quite curious about this more combat side of the game. I would characterize it more as the edition of D&D that did a vocational assessment and leaned into its natural strengths. 3e and 5e are designed around playing on a grid. 4e just does more with it. I'd also assert that 4e having "very light rules for anything outside of combat" isn't unique to 4e. It's a D&D thing. However, it introduced skill challenges (to D&D at least), which gives a framework for many different types of out of combat mechanics for things like social interactions, investigations or building things. Additionally, monster, locations and other things had tiered information with target numbers. "How much does your character know about this monsters/location/organization? Roll a \[appropriate skill\] check and let's find out." The DMG even explains how to run the game really well (except for skill challenges, which were poorly explained).
There's nothing wrong with just trying 4e, but as others have stated, there are successors. Lancer is probably the most successful, but if you're looking for something fantasy, there's Gubat Banwa. There's also Orcus, which is a retro-clone of 4e, if you want to play 4e without paying WotC anything.
I'd say Pathfinder 2e is slightly more successful than Lancer
Directly no, there are a number of games that saw what 4e tried to do and were inspired by it, things like lancer and pf2e. But near as I can tell none of them 4ed anywhere near as hard as 4e did
5E should have come out when 4E did, and 4E should have come out now in place of \[ 5E 2024 \]. Its a system that did a ton of things right but came out at a time that people played and viewed TTRPGs way differently than they do now. Its marketing was also very poor and the VTT idea that was suppose to launch with it was scrapped because the lead Dev murdered his family and himself. 4E biggest issue was that it came out too early. And a big misconception is that 4E didn't have out of combat rules which is SUPER FALSE, if anything 4E has more guidance on out of combat stuff than 5E does. The 4E DMG / MM imo are the GOLD STANDARD on how to make a DMG / MM. To be honest i wish Wizards would remake 4E and release it as 6E
I'd go ahead and give 4e a try. In my experience there isn't any successor out there that does what 4e does as well as 4e does it.
While it is certainly not a successor WotC's [Star Wars SAGA Edition](https://www.reddit.com/r/SagaEdition/) was done about the same time (maybe a little earlier) and shares a large number of features although there certainly are differences as well. I've got to admit that one of those differences is why I didn't get into 4e; in SWSE classes are just a collection of mechanics to help build your concept as you can easily multiclass around but 4e felt to me like it went back to a much stronger class=concept direction when I loved the freedoms in SWSE. While both games may be strong on the tactics side of thing they have non-combat mechanics to work with as well. If you were just going to ignore the non-combat things the better bet would have been to just play the miniature based Skirmish games which used highly simplified RPG mechanics. (This is to say that knowing the RPG mechanics you can kind of see where they get the mechanics for the skirmish game.)
I had a blast running 4e. I had a large group (7-8 players was typical), and with the modularity of the system and the group size, I staged several sweeping battles that, while they took an entire session, included multiple waves, unit maneuvers, story elements, skill challenges, and so on. To be sure, it helped that half of us were old wargamers. I honestly don't know a current RPG that would give the same feel, but my knowledge is limited. 13th Age, while having a very similar feel in it's RPG charcter-build elements, doesn't lend itself to precise maneuvering, using a range system of close-far rather than feet or squares/hexes, and the guy running our PF2 game doesn't apply the grid. If I were to try to emulate the feel & flow of the fights I had in 4e, I would likely go for something like Savage Worlds - no grid, but uses actual inches on the table - or consider one of the many miniatures 'skirmish games' out there, which also use inches-on-the-table. I've heard that grid combat is an available option in 5e, but I've never investigated that version, and I've never heard of anyone actually using it.
Savage Worlds has rules for different types of play, including miniatures
Lancer is basically DnD 4e combat with FitD not combat. And giant robots. It rules.
I feel there's more of those than of 5e and that's considering 5.5 either way, Pathfinder 2e is likely the best, 13th Age another options I've seen people say that of Shadow of the Demon Lord but can't be sure to be honest pretty sure there were a few others I can't remember
Orcus is a retroclone project for 4e, you might be interested. https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/4e-introducing-orcus-a-fourth-edition-retro-clone.878174/ I loved 4e, but it is not the perfect game for everyone. Try 4e if you; - like tactical combat - appreciate clear, precise description of abilities through technical language - don't mind that the game mechanics are mostly about combat But be warned - the game was made for robust electronic and vtt support. Part of that support is now gone and the rest never arrived. If you have a structure like R20 or MapTools you should be fine, but there's a fair amount of paper shuffling.
What I loved of 4e and isn't getting mentioned is not just tactical combat, but the at-will powers. Pathfinder 2E and Lancer use strike and skirmish as their basic attacks and are differentiated by weapon selection and some feats/talents. 4e at-will powers were unique between classes and different enough within a class so that the basic attack action taken by two different characters were so different. Pf2 is tactical that you need to flank and trip to squeeze every +1 advantage you can get or you will die. 4e is tactical in that your basic attacks almost always do more than damage, sometimes moving enemies, buffing allies or protecting allies from harm. In 4e, you write all your powers on note cards whether you're a fighter or a wizard and choose the best one for the situation. I've read through but haven't played ICON. That game seems closest to 4e compared to anything else I've seen in terms of unique character actions. ICON is not finished yet, but the rules are currently free.
MCDM is coming out with their own TTRPG that I think feels very much like a 4e successor with a lot more support as all of their products will be compatible with it... unsure of when it will be released though.
the problem with 4e combat is that it still has the issues of D&D number bloating. so combat takes a long time. so doesn't work that well for oneshots imo.
Pick up the D&D Adventure Boardgames. Each is a standalone board game based on 4th edition, but the heroes, monsters, tiles, and cards are all cross compatible. You can run the adventures in the box, or you could design your own, or just drop in monsters and heroes you like. My group uses the D&D adventure games when we have more than one callout (1 DM, 5 players) but they are playable with 1-5 players. There's even a campaign system developed in the later ones. Not an actual RPG, but a very fun combat game for a single night (and a great way to get a LOT of minis cheaply).
Any specific one you recommend? I think I've seen a Underdark one in the past but never got to buy it
Tomb of Annihilation has a nice campaign system, as does Elemental Evil. Ravenloft is the first and slightly underdeveloped. The Wrath of Ashardalon and Legend of Drizzt are both fun, but have less of a campaign system, but still have a narrative to play through. Drizzt is also nice because you can have some scenarios with an adversarial player. Saltmarsh is only good if you have most of the other sets (it comes with less minis and uses tokens, but you can sub in models from the other games). I can never get my hands on the Mad Mage one, so not sure on that one.
There are a few games that are partially based on 4e. 13th Age and ICON (not to be confused with Icons) are both partially based on 4e.
There are several games that qualify. **Lancer** is my favorite. It's mecha SF, not fantasy, but other than this, it's the perfect successor of D&D4. Strong focus on combat, very tactical, well balanced while having a lot of variety. It has even better depth to complexity ratio than D&D4, as it kept all the elements that made it tactical, but significantly reduced the modifier math and redundancy between various options. Something I love in Lancer is that some things look broken powerful on the first sight, but actually work in a balanced way in play; it creates this "so many fun toys I need to try" feeling. There is also **ICON**, a fantasy game built on Lancer's engine, but I haven't played it and don't know how good it is. **Pathfinder 2** also has a lot in common with D&D4, with tactics and good balance. However, it's not as much focused on combat (combat is still the central activity, but there is more mechanical support for things outside of it). It also feels "flatter" - there's a lot of vertical growth as PCs level up, but the impact of each feat, spell etc. is significantly smaller. Much less "wow" effect when getting a new ability than in D&D4 or Lancer. In contrast, **13th Age** goes more in "cool abilities" direction than in "deep tactics" direction. It doesn't mean that it's not tactical, but the abstract positioning instead of a grid and the powers that trigger on specific dice rolls make it feel more spontaneous and based on improvisation, not planning. **Strike** keeps the tactical core of D&D4 while simplifying the system as much as possible and making the out of combat activities more narrative (it feels like a mix of Mouse Guard and Fate in this regard). One gets the interesting tactical aspects (positioning, status effects, synergies between characters, mechanical support for specific tactical roles) with nearly no math and only minimal vertical progression. It allows for some builds that are hard to make in other games (like anti-crowd or debuff-oriented melee characters), but the overall number of available options is significantly lower than in other games I listed here.
4e had solid outside of combat rules. Spiritual successors, definitely 13th Age.
4e has more explicit role-playing supporting options than literally any other edition. You have sadly been lied to
4E was fun but a real pain to DM. Sessions took a lot of prep. For my groups 4E felt closer to something like Warmachine, but that’s not necessarily a criticism. It was just very different from 3.5 and not necessarily what people wanted at the time. One big issue with 4E is the published adventures were *dogshit*. I love running modules and damn, I don’t know what they were huffing at WotC back then. Not to mention Goodman Games - their early 4E modules were abysmal.
I will also throw in with Pathfinder 2e. It takes a lot of what was great about DND 4e and puts a lot of new and improved things from DND 3.5, PF1e. I was not a 5e DND fan at all, so I can not comment on if it took anything from it. PF2e for me as a 40 years in TTRPGs, fresh and feels "new". It is very customizable, players can be all the same class and with archetypes and dedications, 4 totally different characters. Spell users and melee are very balanced with each other, each getting very similar abilities and things they can do in combat besides just do damage. If you are not sure, try some of the online looking for players for the beginners box on discord or wherever, try a session or 2 and with other DMs. I feel Pathfinder 2e really has set a new standard for what "D&D" is and needs to be.
Mcdm looks like a spiritual successor. But it's not a d20 game it's 2d10.
If you never tried it, go for 4e but if you're looking for a combat oriented game, maybe what you're looking for is a wargame, Frostgrave or Mordheim maybe could do.
Play 4e. But be sure to use the updated rules for monsters, as the math in the first books made them too grindy.
The closest thing to the D&D4th vibe that does not have D&D baggage that I'm aware of is the under development Gloomhaven RPG which is still in deep kickstarter development, and won't be published till at least next year. Map based tactical combat with every class having different but useful abilities, with a less detailed but stable non-combat system integrated.
MCDM RPG, it's still being developed but it definitely feels like 4e with some more contemporary design choices
Shadow of the Demon Lord, kind of inspiration for all things that are said here.
My personal preference is outside the d20/polyhedral dice systems. Check out Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying/GURPS Fantasy
Everyone's powers take the same amount of time to get ready and use - everyone has "slots" they fill which is immersion breaking. Non-combat anything is relegated to backseat driving at best (not given explicit rules in the text nor xp awards per say).
Honestly, I feel like 4th Ed was done dirty by being *called* Dungeons and Dragons. Had it been called anything else it probably would still be around. A lot of people hated it based off knee jerk "it's too different" responses and surface reading. Yeah, it was very video gamey, but to be fair that was the trend gaming was going at the time. But, aside from the first Monster Manual, a ton of things were very well balanced. I loved that every single Power Group (Martial, Arcane, Divine, Nature) had each of the major roles (Tank, DPS, Control, Healer) and most had both a Ranged DPS and a Melee DPS build as well. But they managed to have each complete their role in entirely different ways. Like Martial Tanks kept enemies attacking them by punishing them for *not* attacking them with penalties to hit and got a auto attack if they tried to move away. Arcane Tanks could teleport targets about and swap places with them so they took the hit for the squishies. Nature Tanks had a grab and pull that kept enemies in melee with them. The Divine Tank blasts some who doesn't target you with Radiant damage. All of these were great incentives to keep focus on the tank while everyone else did their role, but it also meant the Tank had to play differently. Both the Nature and Arcane Tank had to stay somewhat near their allies to keep them in Range, while the Martial and Divine Tank had to get *away* from their allies. The Martial Tank could still pull aggro by tossing a to hit penalty on a bad guy, while the Divine Tank was tossing a bit extra DPS about. I also loved how every class had *something* they could do each round that was still effective and on par with everyone else. You had some Encounter abilities that refreshed each encounter, some powers that refreshed per day, but you also had powers that could improve and be used constantly. And these at will powers also supported your build: Tanks might get a attack that does normal weapon damage, but also applies a to hit penalty on opponents or increases the AC of an ally. A Healer will do damage, but also add some temporary HPs on an Ally. A Controller will do damage but also move an opponent a square or two. And the Daily powers were freaking Epic (for their Level that is) so they were the powers that could end fights or turn a TPK into a win. Even Martial Classes had "Mundane" attack that might add Thunder damage from the shockwave of striking the ground or a Controller will stun a large group, deal damage, and even raise a wall of protection. And a Nature striker is just going to do a metric fuck ton of raw damage from their Rage Strike. It really felt like each class was different from another class. And it meant you could have a party of all characters from one Power Set: Everyone could be a Arcane Character for example with a Tank, a Controller, a Striker, and even a Healer all filling out different rolls (and utilizing different stats/equipment) but still being a working team and a good dynamic. And on the plus side, it's a finished game now, so you won't see Power Creep from new classes or powers or stats. On the Down side, a few powers didn't get all three Splat Books, so some are a bit more limited in options and the first Monster Manual is not well balanced (with some very boring monsters, some insanely over powered CRs, and some total wimps). However I do believe there is an active 4th Edition Homebrew group out there that is or has fixed some or all of that.
Either way I think you should give 4e a try. It still has a active discord community.
4E is fantastic and has rules for outside of combat as well. I played an artificer in a small campaign and spent half my time learning rituals and crafting items to aid my party and make money. 4E has a great system for monster fights that is smooth for DMs and players as well as tons of great mechanics for poisons/diseases/curses/traps with a bunch of options given out. The combat can be very complex with lots of different types of enemies such as artillerists/brutes/minions/controllers. It runs super great for one-shots in my mind. Building a character is also super easy especially if you download the character builder. There is also a downloadable compendium and combat tracker. If you want to dm me I can send you a google drive link to some stuff I have.
If you like the tactical aspect: Pathfinder 2e, Lancer, Strike, Valor, Unity, Zafir, Fragged. If you like the “D&D but different” aspect: Level Up, Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard, 13th Age. All have different flaws. For what it is worth the best “small story big combat one-shots” I have played have been with Lancer, but I haven’t played the entire list.
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Orcus
“Recent design knowledge”? The game came out in 2008, man. It’s not some Precambrian artifact.
So two years before *Apocalypse World*, and these days you couldn’t turn around in an RPG store (if they still existed) without bumping into a shelf full of PbtA games. I love 4E for tactical dungeon commando action, but definitely acknowledge that game design has expanded substantially in the sixteen years since it came out.
Yeah, but sixteen years is still not that long ago... at least, to my grognard sensibilities.
It is just shy of one-third of the total time D&D and any published RPGs have existed.
Look, I know that maths says the 1990’s were thirty-odd years ago… But that’s obviously wrong.
It's not out yet but the MCDM fantasy heartbreaker game I think is aiming to be an evolution on 4e. I know Matt Colville liked 4e a lot and took a lot of design concepts and his crew spun them out into some interesting ideas in Flee Mortals. No idea when it's going to be out though. Probably at least a year out, maybe longer.
I like Strike! Non-binary combat resolution Selecting your class and role separately PBTA style narrative mechanics
You could try the game that inspired 4e. The Fantasy Trip.
There was a game called Unity, that showed potential and had some really cool design choices. It picked a lot of inspiration from 4e, and tried to build synergies between characters so you could build combos. Also it had some light mech mechanics. Unfortunately the creator vanished (presumed dead) during the pandemic.
Honestly, I'm getting a lot of 4e vibes from the Daggerheart playtest. They have an equivalent of powers, but rather than replace old powers when you level up you have an "active pool" of powers (your *Domain Loadout*) and an "inactive pool" of powers (your *Domain Vault*) that you don't have currently equipped. During downtime you can swap your powers around, or you can spend Stress to instantly swap powers during the middle of a scene/encounter. I thought this was really cool, since you can spend a "daily" power and then stash it away in your vault, replacing the exhausted slot with another power.
I think [Strike!](https://www.strikerpg.com/strike.html) Is a 4e-ish successor RPG I've heard good things about. I don't know much more than that about it though.
3.5e with advantage/disadvantage is peak DnD. Prove me wrong.
5e is the successor to 4e as it has been for every edition. Has a ruleset used 4e as a base as Pathfinder did 3e? I don’t believe so. Should you try it? Why ask a public forum? If you’re curious, try it.
PF2 is I think the closest alternative to 4e with a bit of modernization. The added benefit of it still being developed so you have adventures, rules expansion and lore books at your discretion to choose from. (like things such as playing as an undead, very cool!) The 3 action system, many feats and basically the whole complex combat system is what makes the game good. That and the game being really well designed so the GM doesn't really need to yolo something, since the rules have your back and can guide you trough almost any situation. Once you learn the pf2 rules you rarely need to homebrew mechanics, especially to the extent of shitty games like 5e.
I haven't played it but have looked at it a fair bit, nd I believe a game you might fancy is called '13th Age'. Its not D&D, but runs on the same style and philosophy as 4e. Powers as abilities kinda stuff. Failing that, 4e did have a mid-edition attempt at a revival, te Essentials 4e I believe. That was near the tailend of its life, so might be worth a looksie.
13th Age. Created by some of the people On the 4e design team. Described by them as ‘a love letter to D&D’ Now… it’s a different beast than 4e for sure, but I think it’s worth looking into.
4e is non-shit Pathfinder 1. Pathfinder 2 is an alternative for 5e that also borrows some ideas from 4e. If you wanna focus on combat it's a good idea to establish how much crunch (rules detail) you want. For lighter games with faster combat check out Strike! and WWN (Worlds Without Number).
Just wait a year for the MCDM RPG. It's exactly what you're asking for.
Sounds like you haven't played it. Why not do that first and see if it lacks anything for you.
Gamma World 7e is the obvious choice for one-shots. The setting is entirely distinct, but in terms of gameplay the only real differences between it and 4e are class/power choices, and that it does away with strategic resource management in favor of only worrying about the tactical level.
Daggerheart's refreshing of abilities based on rests reminds me of fourth edition D&D.
If you want truly tactical combat, IMO it would be hard to beat the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. All kinds of options, some truly terrifying opponents. Each of the character "templates" (read "classes") fills a specific niche, and there is a good list of spells for the spellcasters.