One thing I enjoyed quite a bit about 4e was how fun/easy it was to run my monsters. They were just as dynamic/unique/effective as the players, and ten times as fast to play. I found myself wishing my players could play their characters as fast. Why can i play 6 monsters in two minutes and they take five minutes for one player? (exaggeration).

If WOTC could keep characters as dynamic/unique/effective/fast as their monsters, combat would move fast and furious, losing none of the crunchy combat fun. Just let each class chose five or six powers that define their characters and let those powers level up and grow with that character like the monsters do.

Just my two cents.

What I would love to see HAsbro do is pull the D&D brand from Wotc and hand it to some one like FF games or Catalyst ( the guys that picked up the old FASA properties). Both companies really now how to keep the feel and flavor of a brand while updating it for new generations. I guess that is what turned me off on a lot of 3.5 and 4e was the change of feel and flavor. PF managed to recapture alot of the feel of 2nd Ed and earlier. Honestly for me alot of the feel was jut in how it presents itself and the game.

Some friends of mine picked up the 4e Gamma World for me for my birthday. While reading it every time it started to feel like the old game something would pop-up that total hurt the feel of the game (5 minute rest to totally recover wounds and powers??!!). That lack of familiarity with what should be a game you knew the lore of well, is to me one of the things that really hurt 4e. I will probably play it as it is far enough removed form the original Gamma to not be tainted by cross comparison. ( I do still have the original and most of the supplements)

If 5e can regain the feel and fantasy of earlier eds. then maybe it can make the come back, and please please don't let them make a "better computer game for the table top" edition.

I don't know what all the hub bub is about. WOTC's goal would be to marry 4e with Pathfinder..

If 5e isn't a complete and total success, its going to be still born. It is not likely to be that successful.

Personally I would be extremely leery about WOTC and its approach to its customers. Its track record regarding the demise of 3.5 speaks for itself. WOTC cannot be trusted.


All the way around I predict failure for WOTC.


I'm a 4e fan, but I have switched to DMing Pathfinder. Mostly I switched because Paizo's prefab materials (setting\adventures) were meatier and better than anything I could find for 4e.

I like how 4e runs, and if I had my druthers I'd prefer to run a martial 4e campaign. (I've had sooo much fun with my Freeport conversions. 4e runs old school just fine.)

Pathfinder seems to be running well for me. Its very 'tight' in its rules. Combats bog down with rule\spell checking. I'm not looking forwarding to needing to memorize all feats and how they work in combat, as well as all spells. (By contrast, I hardly had to crack a book when I ran 4e.)

I know the "computer port" bothers a lot of people about 4e, but I really like it.

Two thoughts on the matter:
In the short time MMOs have been around, more fights have been waged in MMOs than were ever fought in the table-top gaming world*. Why not draw from the lessons learned and make use of what we've found?

The best part of 4e, in my opinion, is a cessation of shame or pity-based aggro. In the last version of D&D I played (Advanced, but I heard there was no aggro management in 3.5 either...), there was no reason for a monster to not kill the wizard or monk other than the DM taking pity on them (yes, you could manage clever tactics sometimes, but it's not always possible...). Given the rules, there is no reason any wizard should have lasted beyond first level. Here's what seems like should happen (and did happen in a few games I was involved in...):

1) Wizard does something other than throw a dart, like casting a nifty spell.
2) Any monster they're facing makes a beeline for the wizard and kills them.

or...

1) A semi-intelligent monster sees someone in cloth armor.
2) That character dies.

The fact that players can affect what monsters can do in a way that allows them to mitigate "aggro" in a way that gives the DM something to base their decision on other than "I'd prefer to keep people alive so they don't quit, so I guess I'll leave the guys in cloth alone" is awesome.

*this is something I think makes sense but I have absolutely no data to support... But think about it... A fight happens every few minutes in an MMO, per-player or group, and you get a couple fights per evening of table-top. Just compare a single evening of either and the number of fights that happen in each, and it's easy to see MMOs should far outstrip table-tops.

I always thought agro management was a feature of console games for two reasons: 1) the AI couldn't handle anything more sophisticated, and 2) computers are good at tracking annoying details like agro tags and durations, so that sort of solution suits the capabilities of console systems.

I've never seen a reason for putting rules for agro management in a tabletop RPG where there's a DM there to control the enemy forces. If the DM wants to play some enemy as dumb and others as smart then they just specify the monster's actions accordingly. One halfway-decent human DM is going to do a far better job playing monsters for dramatic effect than any set of rules is going to achieve.

As for the pace of combat, simple dramatic rules are going to outperform complex rules every time (a major factor in my gaming group switching to Savage Worlds). Feats are a good solution - each feat is quick to play and each player just needs to know their character's own feats. Complex combat rules generally aren't. Complex rules can be good for detailed combats, though a) the players have to want this style of combat, and b) the rules need to flow fast enough (including for players with less experience of the rules) that attention can focus on the action rather than the rules.

I've always thought the ideal for an RPG rule system would be that it works so well the players forget they are using a set of rules most of the time and especially when the action is at its most exciting. If 5e can get somewhere close to that target, then I'll be really interested.

Okay, yeah. I can see that perspective. I guess I like that D&D is now a complex tactical board game wrapped up in an RPG. As a player, I like being able to have my actions matter when it comes to protecting another player (sure, you can have that guy attack the healer, but you'll be at minus 2, Mr. GM... Plus I'll get to attack him because he's adjacent to me and not attacking me. Suck it! ), and as a GM I like being able to actively try as hard as I can to kill off my players, comfortable that there are rules that allow them to make it difficult for me to do so.

And yeah... It's not dramatic. You can add drama to it by your descriptions and characterizations (which I do), but it's a tactical board game above all else, and I guess that appeals to me.

The real trick is for the party to defend their casters.

The monsters do target casters, once that first spell has gone off.

If the wizard is in melee range then casting a spell will get him bopped by an attack of opportunity, he may or may not lose out on casting it.

Spells are faster in 3.X than they were in AD&D, rounds are the same lengths as what used to be called segments.

There is a reason that wizards get protection from arrows as a spell....

The Auld Grump

WOTC will fail. No matter how you cut it, the stated goal of 5e is to alienate 4e fans and PF\3.5 Fans, and further segment the market.

The only way they can succeed is to come up with a totally successful game system, and OGL2. (The only new clause should be exclusion of old OGL material. That's what I would do.)


If you look at the two systems as a whole... I like PF skills hands down. 4e combat is just plain pleasant (attack vs defense is a win in my books). 4e effects are a failure... mainly because they are all the same. This causes sameness fatigue burning out DMs and players. (As Chatty DM says, he sees 'the matrix' when ever he plays.) In 4e magic isn't magical. (I don't want invisibility of 10 seconds... I want it for 1 minute per level dang it!) 4e micro effects don't add anything to story telling or role playing, so they they need to be neutered. (Not eliminated...)

PF combat could stand some tidying up... (4e Attack vs Defense would speed things up.) A bazzilion different effects don't add much in my books either. I still use 4e movement and area templates. I don't see the use in trying to be too precise it does not add to the story. (Forgetting to cast Protection from Evil... now that adds to the story....)


Feats, etc, for both 4e and PF are an alter to the God of WTF. Half of it is junk, and I guarantee that most feats will never ever ever be used. I think PF adopted the class archetypes for this reason. It goes a long ways towards easing the feat tax of designing your character the way you want. Any new system needs to start with archetypes in mind.


I feel that combat styles and techniques should be built completely differently than they are now for both systems. Short of real role playing, I feel that little effort or focus in combat has been placed on anything but achieving the mostest for any class. Fighter... pair of blades, or big sword\hammer\axe... single sword on shield... archer.... Am I missing something?

I feel that combat styles should be further separated from their classes. Any character may choose to use a combat style, and simply develop at their own pace. PF does this... sort of. I figure a combat style should do more and be more detailed. i.e. what can a guy do with a pair of Picks? Trip on 5th advancement with with dual pick combat? What could someone achieve with a dexterity focused single light sword combat? Aldori Sword Lord would be a single combat style... (not feats as initially tried, or an archetype as is currently available... I want a rogue to be able to do it.) And think of how little effort it would be to build up and drop in an Elven Curve Blade style? Your wizard could take some of these combat abilities... but frankly, he'd still suck at it. But at least he wouldn't have to devote feats to even try.

(This concept was tried by Mearls in the Iron Heroes 3.x variant. Players could consider using a Pick... not just for role playing, but because it does something interesting.)

I have not had any Magus PCs in my game yet, but I created a Magus lich NPC almost immediately.

One of these days I want to play one.

I agree in regards to the skill systems, disagree about combat in 4e - but that could just be caused by the details. Way too prone to the grind - the few games I played were dominated by battles that took up several hours, but could have been handled in minutes in 3.X. Both were free adventures from the WotC site.

A battle with orcs should not take two hours. A battle with a single green dragon should not take the entire session.

But it could be the scenarios or it could be that WotC went the wrong direction with the details of combat, they assumed that everybody having things to do every round made a battle that lasted [insert arbitrary number here] rounds a good thing.

Feats... I like them. They prevent what I thought of as the cookie cutter in AD&D.

I am lucky in regards to my current players - when they err it tends to be on the side of caution. (Though the kids... I have to remind them that their characters need to rest. 15 Minute Adventuring Day, nothing - if left to their own devices they will keep on until the fighter is about to drop and all the casters are out of spells.

I can almost guarantee that that clause you suggested would kill the 'OGL 2' before it was born. Having a similar clause in the first version of the GSL made almost every 3PP decide, then and there, to abandon 4e.

I think that the only thing that would work is for WotC to go back to the original OGL, or something nearly identical.

They already burned all their 3PP once, I would be very leery of trusting them.

Paizo seems a lot saner than WotC, and I like Pathfinder a lot more than I do 4e. While I have hopes for 5e, I do not think that it will succeed - WotC screwed up too much with 4e.

The Auld Grump

Ugh, apparently 4e sales peaked in 2009, and WotC started talking about 5e in late 2010.... That is worse than I thought - before Pathfinder was a year old 4e was already faltering. So it was failing before Pathfinder really started hitting its stride.

I guess that answers the question of what the cancelled announcement was at last year's Gen Con....

The Auld Grump

A minor correction in regards to 3.5 - WotC repeatedly, both before and after launch of the revised edition, stated that upgrades were not required, and that most D20 material would work fine.

I continued buying 3e material well into 3.5. Conversion could be done on the fly, quite easily. My biggest complaint was the introduction of round and square bases being the only options - I like the 1x2 base for cavalry, for example, and 2x4 for some dragons.

Distribution and fans being kind of narrow in their focus had much more to do with the collapse than WotC's intent.

Comparing that to WotC saying not to even try to convert between 3.5 and 4e.... One was a revision, the other was an attempt to bring all development back in house.

The Auld Grump

Not out of the woods yet remember this blast from 2005 when Ryan Dancey said the RPG industry is in a death spiral.
http://mearls.livejournal.com/105311.html?thread=804447

This was 2 years after 3.x's release, so the life cycle of the products is not 10 years. Not by a long shot.

Goodman also confirmed much of what Merls\Dancey said. Namely, d20 companies were totally dead and seemed to think they were valuable based on their early d20 sales. (GSL didn't kill them, they were dead already.)

On the other hand, Paizo is doing job given the current situation. I still feel that they are going to be feeling a pinch shortly or now. They've pretty much finished documenting Golarion... so what will they sell to gamers? They are already getting into 'Other Worlds' and 'Alien Races'. (IMO its scrapping the barrel for more sales.)

To me this is a sign that they will either have layoffs coming (bit brutal, but its opinion), or they need a re-release. On the plus side Paizo is sitting pretty and I suspect they will weather out what WOTC does and react accordingly.

I gotta say that Paizo's slower pace at releasing new hardcover books for Pathfinder frustrates me often, but it probably has worked to their advantage. This way, they're not flooding the market with too much too soon and they're experiencing more gradual, consistent growth, rather than big spikes in sales and the risk of big drops in sales.

The point is d20 was dieing in 2005. d20 was dead in 2008. Its even deader now... Either its Pathfinder or its dead. This has nothing to do with WOTC, Hasbro or the GSL. Even Pathfinder's OGL stuff is still stinking up the shelves.


I think you misunderstand just how much material there used to be out there versus now. My LGS has 10 book cases 6 feet wide, 7 feet tall full of d20. (I'm talking packed in tight on the self.) They now have the equivalent of 1 shelf of one book case selling for Pathfinder and Pathfinder 3rd party. This means that in no uncertain terms, that a horrific portion of the market space is now gone. (In case you're wondering my LGS has one rule. If its in print they put it on the shelves.)


Fundamentally the marketplace is very different. And its smaller and more fragmented than ever. Digital is desired, even demanded, yet its still not viable as a business model (from the horses mouth);
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... s_id=60161

There is no money in PDF. If its digital only is hardly a business. Do you have data to support the profitability of PDF sales? Mongoose says PDF is 1/10 to 1/100 of what brick and mortar sales are, and the cost is the same as a printed book. A Platinum seller on RPGNOW is selling 30 units a month world wide. (You earn $10 on that if you're lucky.) Products with unlabeled status are <10 units a month world wide.


On the last bits you said, I agree whole heartedly. I begin to worry. I see that many of the younger players I DM lack imagination. (When I was 12, I was cracking software. By Hand.)

I think part of it is also that Paizo is more willing to take risks - the only book that equals the Advanced Player's Guide for changing the game, as far as 3.X is concerned, is Unearthed Arcana. And WotC did very little with that material. APG material gets used a lot in Pathfinder APs.

Villains in Pathfinder/Paizo adventures (including Dungeon, back in the day) are more likely to be villainous.

Pathfinder adventures often use critters from 3PP.

I think part of it is also that Paizo views 3PP as collaborators, not competition. Paizo is more than willing to plug 3PP material on the front page of their website.

Which hit Tome of Horrors pretty hard - the print run expected to last a year didn't make it to lunch. I gather that Lisa Steven's autographed copy has 'Lisa told us to print more copies, Lisa told us to print more copies, Lisa told us to print more copies' written over and over on the inside cover.... And since they were being sold on the Paizo store... Paizo had their biggest single day sales ever.

Early on WotC treated their 3PP that same way, but then they started tolerating the 3PP rather than valuing them. By 4e even the toleration was pretty much gone. Then they wondered why more 3PP didn't jump on the 4e bandwagon.

A lot of those early WotC folks are now the core of Paizo. I do not believe that the way they treat their 3PP is merely a coincidence. Within months more 3PP were supporting Pathfinder than 4e.

The Auld Grump