How come D&D and other tabletop games moved away from stuff like stances and maneuvers? Is it just because 4E was so bad?
5e has stances, they're just packed into the Fighter's maneuvers. As for maneuvers, what it says on the tin.
>>979798714e was not bad it was just more focused on combat. I didn't get into 4e right when I came out but after enough books came out I made the move from 3.5. My D&D group was an outgrowth from my Warhammer group so the more mechanically focused combat was a big hit with them. I would say 3.5 was more about simulating a world (dominated by casters) and 4e was more about simulating combat exclusively. I quite enjoyed that 4e had defined roles for the classes. The Warlord and Cleric were very fun to play.
It wasn't just about 4e, since they could have gone 3.5 Tome of Battle style (which is quite different from 4e).The real reason is that WotC realized that a large portion of the RPG market wanted a simple game without much tactics. 5e is an intentionally stripped-down version of D&D without that much to do each turn, which is fine for them as a lot of the players want to roll a die to decide if they win or lose and do improv theatre.Basically, pic related is WotC's target market.
>>97979897>It wasn't just about 4e, since they could have gone 3.5 Tome of Battle style (which is quite different from 4e).Didn't people bitch back then, too?
>>97979933the glazing exceeded the bitching. Most people loved Tome of Battle, and those that hated it were so few that I know them only by how much other people bitched about their bitching.
>>97979897It's hard to say they made the wrong choice when 5e ended up with a playerbase that is largely made up of retards who can't read and can't learn the rules even after only playing 5e for a decade.
>>97979996I thought tome of battle was the best thing ever when it came out. It made me end a campaign and start a new one (I was DM) when it came out. My players really liked it too.
>>97980075>>97979996I feel so butthurt that my group insist on playing 3.5 but refuses to use it because it 'makes things too complicated'
>>97980375Dozens of books full of bullshit spells and the one book that gives martials a few new tricks is too complicated?
>>97980419Absolute bullshit. Until we switched over to 4e none of my players even considered playing non-casters until Tome of Battle came out. I remember one campaign where 2 players show up day 1 with nearly identical psions. Say what you will about the transition from 3.5 to 4e but re was a hell of a lot easier to DM. For 10 years I was the group's designated DM. Until 4e came out no one else wanted the workload.
>>97980419>>97980449His problem is that it makes things complicated, because you'd have to apply the stances and stuff to NPC warriors and it's a lot to manage.I tried to talk him into it but he's already resistant to play a book he doesn't physically own, so.
>>97980496Thats just lazy DMing. I went above and beyond for my players. I'll break it down: I would present the party with 3 threats. If they chose threat A B & C would increase a threat level. Then when they chose threat B threat C would go up to level 3. I planned out every combination of orders they faced the threats with. Its a simple system but it worked great for 10 years. Fuck I love D&D.
>>97979871L5R was good for stances, but early game they dont make much of a difference and late game they're so overpowered that it makes balancing any encounters as the DM basically impossible.
>>97979871PF 2e uses them to great effect. Makes all types of martials distinct and useful.
>>97980671Pathfinder 2e's tactics are fucking stupid dude. Spamming demoralize every turn for no reason that makes Watsonian sense and only being allowed to sttempt to parry with like 3 weapons is not enough to make the swordplay meaningfully better than D&D or an MMORPG. Compare to something like Mythras where melee combat is frankly tedious in its interactivity and it becomes obvious that PF2e merely plays at tactics.
>>97979871It's not that 4e was bad, every edition of D&D is bad in some catastrophic way. It's because people were less willing to edit 4e than they were other editions, for some reason.
>>97979871Fighters is the bitch class for hazing new players. It's not supposed to be interesting or fun.
>>97980496What? No you don't. If you don't want to apply certain rules to an enemy, then don't. Is he stupid?
>>979798715e put some of them into a fighter's subclass as it's main gimmick rather then use them for the martial's specialty. However other systems like L5R, DC20, etc use them to give them a leg up rather than screwing over the martial classes.
>>97981268He's a great DM, but we talked about it and he says he thinks it invalidates a lot of older material.
>>97980630>balancingLol, lmao even. You can have shugenja at level 1 give assistance to each other and create castles, seal oni for 100 years or switch places to enemies/allies like it's jujutsu kaisen. During investigations they can use relevant rings to know anything in advance, or ask spirits anyway. Just put whatever is appropriate and roll with it.
>>97979871Because it is made for sub 70 IQs untermensch like you anon.Do NOT play other games, we do NOT want you.
>>97981949Are there other games that do maneuvers and stances? I'm mostly familiar with OSR stuff which doesn't touch that.
>>97981450The older material that's invalidated was already invalidated by virtue of being bad at its job. Stupid argument.
>>97979871>Is it just because 4E was so bad?Yes, but also because 5e is worse, just in different ways.
>>97979893>4e was not badIt was, but only because what constitutes "bad" is contextual. An automobile makes for a bad flotation device. 4e was bad because it called itself D&D and presented itself as an RPG.I have always maintained that had 4e instead of pretending to be the 4th edition of D&D been presented as a scenario-based dungeon-crawling adversarial boardgame-based D&D spinoff inspired by games like Descent: Journeys in the Dark, HeroQuest, or Imperial Assault, it would have been a big hit, and could have leaned further and further into a type of free-form-ish tactical gameplay with fully customized characters.It should never have pretended to be an RPG to begin with, nor have been considered a new edition. The fundamentals were not inherently "bad", they were just trying to build the wrong thing.
>>97980630>>97980671Fuck off, slopfag.
>>97982113I don't think he sees it that way. He's a great DM but man do I wish he wasn't so insistent on this issue. The ToB stuff looks so fun.
>>97981450The older material is terrible. It should be invalidated, even if he misunderstood it.
>>97982940I vividly remember a shoot pearly clutching jew bemoaning that you couldn't haggle in 4e because there was no rule for it on the official Green Ronin forums back in the day.
>>97984155I don't think he misunderstands it so much as he's okay with it.So from that perspective I imagine ToB does seem OP.
>>97980058Just think of the average person, anon. If you're looking for advanced games, the type of people you walk past in your daily life aren't capable of that. 5e is easy to digest, which is exactly why it both sucks and is popular.
