How the success of 4E compares to 3E is up to debate. But I think the main reason that Pathfinder outsold 4E is because Wizards scaled back their release schedule in preparation for 5E. Not to mention that 4E was on the tail end of its life cycle and Pathfinder was still ramping up or near its peak.
I think you’re very wrong. 
4E’s life cycle got cut short because of how badly they blew its launch (which they’ve acknowledged) and the factioning of the D&D playerbase (which they’ve also acknowledged). They’ve still got a number of relatively big items on their release schedule and 5e is a year and a half away, at the nearest. They launched a new campaign setting in that third quarter.
Besides, we can see the trend forming a year earlier than that :
One of my gaming cohorts - a guy who runs a 4E game - also raised a salient point : he no longer buys the books, because the books quickly become useless than to the constant stream of errata and rebalancing that they undergo. So he just uses D&D insider. WotC may be partially responsible for the slide of their own sales.
I don’t think that anyone’s disagreeing that 4E’s life cycle was cut short and that fractioning of the player base caused problems (note all of the constant appeals for unity in the 5E previews!). Nevertheless, a significant number of announced products were dropped from the schedule or delayed in 2011 (e.g. “Heroes of Sword and Spell” and “Hero Builder’s Handbook” were cancelled and “Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium” was significantly delayed).
Here’s Wizards of the Coast’s take on the cancellations (skip ahead to “D&D RPG Product Release Updates”):
That first dip was when they cut back on releases while they were working on Essentials (i.e. “4.5E” D&D).
Essentials, which was an effort to shore up their flagging playerbase, since they’d lost so much marketshare to Pathfinder?
Sorry, it looks like 4E hasn’t conclusively topped Pathfinder since Pathfinder came out. You can make an excuse for every quarter if you had to, I imagine, but the bottom line is that 4E turned the world’s #1 roleplaying game into #2.
I’m positive that there would have been an Essentials version (or something like it) whether Pathfinder existed or not.
Why? Because the biggest sellers for an RPG are the core rules, and after a while (say, 3-5 years) pretty much everyone who wanted to buy a copy of the core rules has bought one. So they come out with a “Core Plus” book that gooses sales a bit but still isn’t as big a seller as the “real” core rules. So they come out with RPG version 2, which incorporates stuff from the original rules and the “Core Plus” rules (with some portion of the fan base sticking to the previous version, of course).
For example:
[ul][li]1E PHB => AD&D Unearthed Arcana => 2E PHB[/li][li]2E PHB => Player’s Option series => 3E PHB[/li][li]3E PHB => 3.5E PHB (they kind of skipped a step here)[/li][li]3.5E PHB => Tome of Magic/Tome of Battle/3.5E Unearthed Arcana => 4E PHB[/li][li]4E PHB => Essentials => “D&D Next” PHB[/ul][/li]
I’m not sure why you think this situation might be different from the previous 4 times (and I’m leaving out Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer/BECMI/whatever as well). The only difference I see is that they’re really doing some soul-searching about how they can try to break out of this cycle in the future.
Well, I’m not claiming I have any special insight into the tabletop RPG business. But I remember that there was a period where it was clear from their marketing that they were focusing their efforts on the upcoming Essentials.
Certainly. And I can guarantee that there will be a time in 2-3 years when Pathfinder is going to go from the world’s #1 tabletop RPG to #2 as well. I doubt that would shock you, either.
Indeed. But Pathfinder won’t have been king of the hill from the hobby’s inception with a proven track record of over thirty years. No matter how you try to parse it, 4E was a fumble.
No arguments here. I just don’t think Pathfinder had very much to do with it.
And I should probably address this as well. Look at the time frames on those releases in their actually context and you’ll see how exceptional 4E/Essentials is as a failure.
Launched in 1989, 2nd Edition didn’t go to Player’s Option until 1995. It had a six year run with no major modifications. (I also question your through-line - 3rd really doesn’t owe much of anything to Player’s Option.) And the Player’s Option books - which weren’t really core books in the same sense as a ‘Player’s Handbook’ is - were the latest word on D&D until 2000.
That’s six and five years respectively.
And then 3rd - 2000 to late 2003, three years, before the modestly revised 3.5 rules were presented. And those endured to 2008. 3 and five years.
4E has already had a revised edition and we’re just now entering its fourth year, with the announcement that it’ll be replace next year. In other words, 4E as a Major Edition is going to last a shorter amount of time than most SUB Editions.
I think Pathfinder offering a clear, currently supported continuation of a better-liked edition of D&D definitely contributed to 4E’s failure. How could it not? And D&D had held the number one slot for over thirty years in this market - how could the loss of that position NOT factor into their decision to launch a new edition? If Coke starts getting its ass kicked by RC, they’re going to re-evaluate their business tout suite.
I think that Encounter and Daily powers are a purely narrative device. Is it more interesting and credible to you for disarming the opponent to be an open option for a character every single time they face an opponent?. That seems wildly implausible to me.
Instead, attempting to disarm, in a credible and interesting story, would only present itself as a possibility at certain moments when it becomes opportune. Maybe, oh, I don’t know, against one opponent per encounter or so? I’d say that’s about how often it would make sense for this possibility to pop up in a good series of fantasy adventures.
Actually, I misspoke above. To clarify:
[ul][li]I think Pathfinder had little to do with the lukewarm reception to 4E when it came out. The main fragmentation was between 3.5E players and 4E players. Paizo Publishing was putting out 3.5E supplements, so they had a little effect, I suppose.[/li][li]I think Pathfinder had little to do with the creation of 4E Essentials. As I noted above, some sort of “half” edition was probably inevitable.[/li][li]I do think Pathfinder had some effect on the lukewarm reception for 4E Essentials. I have no doubt that a non-trivial number of people who were getting bored of 4E had moved on to Pathfinder RPG by that point, so there just wasn’t as big an audience for Essentials as their was for 3.5E when it came out. However, I think they also hurt their sales by their repeated insistence that Essentials wasn’t a new edition (even a “half” edition) and that everything in Essentials was completely optional and wouldn’t be mandatory for future products. In that case, how is it different from a typical splatbook? And how is it “essential”?[/li][li]I definitely think Pathfinder is having a big effect on their plans for 5E (“D&D Next”). It’s obvious from their talk about fragmentation and their stated goal to be compatible with every edition (good luck with that).[/ul][/li]
For background, I was an early adopter of Pathfinder RPG when it came out (although I was pessimistic about its chances to be more popular than Hackmaster and True20 and other D&D offshoots) and I’ve only dabbled with 4E. Now I play Pathfinder almost exclusively.
No, they seem pretty distinct from feats. Which, IIRC, are still a part of the rule set in 4th edition, aren’t they?
At any rate, I like the feat system in 3.5/Pathfinder just fine. Some specific feats fall into the same trap I described with class features in 4th ed, but the basic mechanic feels solid, and some of the feats work well as roleplaying hooks. For example, I’ve often rules that having a feat like Lightning Reflexes (+2 to Reflex saves) allows one to do things like automatically catch a tray of drinks before it hits the ground without spilling any. It’s a trivial bit of color that’s not part of the feat description, but it makes sense that someone who’s specifically trained themselves to be better at dodging lightning bolts can keep a tankard of beer from spilling without having to make a die-roll.
Yeah, I can see how its easy enough to work around, but the whole point of fluff is to facilitate roleplaying, not impede it. I think it says something that they fumbled so badly on what should have been the easiest part of the system.
True, but I’m not really talking about everything you could possibly do, I’m talking about what you usually end up doing each round. As Candid pointed out, you almost never use basic melee attacks. (First time I played 4th ed, I wasn’t even sure if basic melee attacks even existed, or if they’d been wholly replaced by class powers.) Charge and Bull Rush don’t come up terribly often, and are context dependent. If I’m already in melee, Charge isn’t really a viable combat option any more. And Encounter and Daily powers are only going to happen for one die roll each in a given combat. Most of the combat, I’m just reusing one of the same two abilities, over and over, and it does feel tedious.
Miller, how would you compare reusing the same 1 or 2 abilities again and again to using iterative attack in D&D 3.5? Just want to understand why you find the former tedious.
Why would it be ? If you’re the better fencer, you’re the better fencer all the time. If you know Kung Fu, you bloody well know Kung Fu. Unless your character is Malkavian, he’s not going to forget half of his training mid-fight.
If you can disarm one kobold, you can try and disarm the whole tribe if you feel like it. It’s not like they’re suddenly getting a solid grasp on the finer points of melee combat in the six seconds it’ll take you to get to the next one in line (why are you Disarming kobolds, anyway ? They have like 2 hit points ! :p).
Remember that, just because you’re throwing the same dice with the same skill every time doesn’t mean you do the exact same move every time, there are plenty of ways to disarm someone. Same goes for Feint, or Trip, or Grapple, Spring Attack etc…
Being a better fencer doesn’t mean you can disarm your opponent willy-nilly, nor does it mean you would even consider doing so.
And if your opponents know kung fu too, then your options are definitely limited. You might be able to pull off certain manouvres only on average about once a day or so…
Nope. It does mean you can *try *whenever you want, though. Whether it’s likely to succeed or even a sound tactical choice is not the point.
Again, whether your attempt is likely to succeed is not the point.
Nope, still silly. If I have the know-how, I can *try *all the time. The DM can make it easy or hard, or even rule that “not on this one guy you can’t, he’s too good/his weapon is grafted to his arm/he’s got a plot shield/he’s watched you and memorized your moves” or whatever.
“You can’t because you’ve already done it today” simply doesn’t make any sense. Even less so when “doing it once” still involves a roll, which might turn it into “you can’t because you’ve already tried to do it today”.
I could accept some sort of Ultimate Saian Attack Of Doom that drains all of your mojo (and makes your shirt vanish) being restricted. Or stuff like berserker rage, where the whole gimmick of the class is that you’re either semi-weak, or super strong, but have to juggle with the two states and manage your daily allocation of pissed-offness.
But a basic fighting manoeuver ? Forget it.
Did you see post 128? I think I covered those questions there. Is there something specific you’d like me to elaborate on?
Okay, I am inferring that you usually add flavourful description to your basic iterative attack in 3.5, or that feats back in 3.5 were more useful so you have more options in combat?
Your point in the second paragraph is well taken, but it seems to me that you’re approaching it ass-backwards. Instead of creating an entirely artificial cap on how often you can disarm, instead create encounters varied enough that disarming is not always the best option, and difficult enough that it won’t always succeed. In other words, create a situation detailed enough that the same constraints that prevent characters in novels and movies from using the same maneuver over and over, also prevent your players from doing the same maneuver over and over.
On the matter of feats, I’m sorry, I’m not really sure where you’re coming from. I’m not talking about feats, I’m talking about the basic combat mechanic.
As for combat flavor, sometimes I’ll provide some color commentary for a particularly good shot, but mostly I’m referring to how I envision the game in my head. When I’m rolling dice in 3.5, in my head my character’s jumping around, doing all sorts of crazy flourishes and shit. In 4th ed, I just see him mechanically making the same two attacks, over and over. It’s obviously not an insurmountable problem - it’s not like I’m incapable of imagining something more interesting then what the game prints in its books. But it’s another example of how the system in general seems to actively fight against roleplaying. It’s kind of like Frylock’s post, really - lots of gamers complain about railroad plots, but 4th ed. has railroad mechanics. Instead of a game that says, “You’re in a fantasy world. What do you want to do?” 4th ed. says, “You’re in a fantasy world. In a fantasy world, you do X. Start doing X!”