TheRPGSite

OK, assuming you keep the basic 4ed design goals in place (many of which clash pretty badly with standard D&D play) how would you go about fixing 4ed?

Here's my hack at it.

First of all establish what kind of game it is. It's about mythic Beowulf-level heroes who get in big climatic battles, not Cugel pulling a heist in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam.

Then cut away all of the unneeded detritus that's left over from 3ed bloat. Feats, skills, out of combat DCs, the whole lot. Gone. No fucking +1 bonus for fighting ice creatures while picking your nose. Combine healing surges and action points into one bennie (call it hero points or something more creative). Have these hero points be pretty rare.

Then focus in on the stuff that makes 4ed unique: the big stacks of powers. Burn AEDU with fire and have all powers either be at-will ones or ones that you need to spend a hero point to use. Have these powers that cost hero points generally have conditions tied to them like:
-Last stand: can only use if it's your last hero point.
-Vengeance: can only use if it's to hit the guy who just downed your buddy.
-Riposte: can only use if it's to hit the guy that just bloodied you.
etc. etc. etc. and have them do interesting larger than life stuff out of Hercules/Beowulf/Gilgamesh not the pretty weaksauce stuff we got for a lot of martial powers in 4ed.

The main point of that would be to shift the use of hero points (which replace dalies) to the END of combat from the START to make for better pacing. Big combats would often start with the monsters kicking the PCs' shit in and then the PCs using some hero point-fueled powers to turn the tables.

For healing have it be a lot like in 4ed except that hero points are a lot rarer than the action points + dailies + healing surges they're replacing something like this:
-Second wind: shitty hero point to hit point conversion.
-Healing: expert healer heals you, good hero point to hit point conversion.
-Bed rest: sleep for a night, best hero point to hit point conversion.

Then have it really hard to get hero points back, just camping out in Mirkwood wouldn't cut it, you'd need to spend a few days in Rivendell at peace with hippy elves dancing around singing.

For out of combat stuff, no skills and no stupid skill challenges. For human-level stuff PCs can do it automatically or with a simple ability check. For superhuman stuff they'd need to use a power. There'd be powers like giving infinite endurance for a period of time (like Beowulf swimming across the sea in his armor) or massive lifting capacity for one feat (like Hercules) and these would generally cost a hero point to use. Stuff like hollow leg (PC can drink a few barrels of wine and not get drunk) would be fun too.

Dealing with out of combat challenges would generally be about being cunning enough to get past big challenges while spending as few hero points on your big supernatural abilities as possible.

Think that'd hold together relatively well for that sort of game, if a very different one from D&D. Thoughts?

Might be good for a high level Planescape dimension-hopping game.

Quote from: TristramEvans;887065Might be good for a high level Planescape dimension-hopping game.

Or one focused on the more high powered bits of mythology but those tend to run together.

It's just pretty bad for traditional D&D, which is kind of the point...

I don't know if this hacked version is a game that would interest me greatly, but it definitely sounds better than the actual game that was released.

My advice is get off the table.  As in the reason people don't play warlord that much is because it relies too much of having miniatures and grid map.  That is okay for some, but not okay for me.

Despite its utter failure at being Gamma World.

4e D&D Gamma world by all accounts is what many seem to have wanted in a streamlined and more accessible 4e.

Dont know if 4e core has it or not. But GW presented an interesting abstract weapon and armour system that I liked.

Your proposed system sounds a lot like Cortex+ Heroic, actually.  And there's a Fantasy hack of it available.

If 4e RAW doesn't work for you, I highly suggest two options:

If you love minis/maps, then consider the 4e version of Gamma World. It is deadlier, faster and has great creative chargen that you can tweak to different genres. Many of Daztur's tweaks look like stuff in GW.

If you prefer theater of the mind, then consider 13th Age.

Personally, 4e works fine for me as a hybrid RPG/skirmish wargame. But apparently, I'm one of the few DMs who didn't have a problem weaving skill challenges into our roleplaying.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887099If you love minis/maps, then consider the 4e version of Gamma World. It is deadlier, faster and has great creative chargen that you can tweak to different genres. Many of Daztur's tweaks look like stuff in GW.

Me and every player I showed it to hated the near totally random chargen system. A buggy system no less. Remove some of the excessive random and yeah its fun.

I'm actually working on my own 4E D&D inspired game! Need to do another rewrite though.

Quote from: Daztur;887063OK, assuming you keep the basic 4ed design goals in place (many of which clash pretty badly with standard D&D play) how would you go about fixing 4ed?

Here's my hack at it.

First of all establish what kind of game it is. It's about mythic Beowulf-level heroes who get in big climatic battles, not Cugel pulling a heist in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam.

Yeah, any time you start designing a game you need to go into it with a clear idea of what you are trying to do, and carefully consider whether your mechanics reinforce the theme you are aiming for and vise versa.

If there's one problem that's evident with my 4E hack, it's the lack of focus, and that's something I definitely need to work on.

QuoteThen cut away all of the unneeded detritus that's left over from 3ed bloat. Feats, skills, out of combat DCs, the whole lot. Gone. No fucking +1 bonus for fighting ice creatures while picking your nose. Combine healing surges and action points into one bennie (call it hero points or something more creative). Have these hero points be pretty rare.

Even things like the 3-18 scale for ability scores should probably get cut, since they don't really work for 4E. I use a +0 to +5 scale in my own hack.
While I do agree that there is a lot of fat that needs to get trimmed, a lot of the game's material is stuff that can be consolidated and reorganized rather than cut outright.

QuoteThen focus in on the stuff that makes 4ed unique: the big stacks of powers. Burn AEDU with fire and have all powers either be at-will ones or ones that you need to spend a hero point to use. Have these powers that cost hero points generally have conditions tied to them like:
-Last stand: can only use if it's your last hero point.
-Vengeance: can only use if it's to hit the guy who just downed your buddy.
-Riposte: can only use if it's to hit the guy that just bloodied you.
etc. etc. etc. and have them do interesting larger than life stuff out of Hercules/Beowulf/Gilgamesh not the pretty weaksauce stuff we got for a lot of martial powers in 4ed.

Yep. That's basically what I'm doing in my hack.

QuoteThe main point of that would be to shift the use of hero points (which replace dalies) to the END of combat from the START to make for better pacing. Big combats would often start with the monsters kicking the PCs' shit in and then the PCs using some hero point-fueled powers to turn the tables.

That, now, is something I am yet to implement in my own hack.

One issue with forcing players to hold out all of their big big guns for later in the fight is that it can artificially pad out combat. This isn't the way to go if you are trying to speed up combat. 'Alpha strikes' can indeed make for quick fights; the only problem is that enemies that survive your alpha strike are going to take a long slog to finally whittle down.
I think what players need are big opening attacks to clear out weak enemies (and hopefully end easy fights in a single round), and big closing attacks to finish off strong enemies (and cut off the late-battle grind that so many 4E fights end with).

QuoteFor healing have it be a lot like in 4ed except that hero points are a lot rarer than the action points + dailies + healing surges they're replacing something like this:
-Second wind: shitty hero point to hit point conversion.
-Healing: expert healer heals you, good hero point to hit point conversion.
-Bed rest: sleep for a night, best hero point to hit point conversion.

Then have it really hard to get hero points back, just camping out in Mirkwood wouldn't cut it, you'd need to spend a few days in Rivendell at peace with hippy elves dancing around singing

Agreed. Point refreshes in my hack are actually tied to role-playing related stuff to (hopefully) tie the game's noncombat segments back into the game's combat focus.

QuoteFor out of combat stuff, no skills and no stupid skill challenges. For human-level stuff PCs can do it automatically or with a simple ability check. For superhuman stuff they'd need to use a power. There'd be powers like giving infinite endurance for a period of time (like Beowulf swimming across the sea in his armor) or massive lifting capacity for one feat (like Hercules) and these would generally cost a hero point to use. Stuff like hollow leg (PC can drink a few barrels of wine and not get drunk) would be fun too.

Dealing with out of combat challenges would generally be about being cunning enough to get past big challenges while spending as few hero points on your big supernatural abilities as possible.

That's a pretty cool idea.

*edit*

I've just suddenly had an idea...

Some attacks may have a threshold to use, or a variable effect, depending on how many hero points you have spent during the encounter.

What I mean is that you might have a powerful attack that you can use only if you've spent at least X number of hero points previously during the encounter, or an attack that deals an additional +X dice of damage where X is the number of hero points you've already spent.
So you still need to do 'alpha strike' openings in order to set up your 'omega strike' finishes.

The problem is that 4th edition is an exception based design. What make 4e feel like 4e is the list of powers and ability that are exceptions to the normal rules. So to make 4e into something else you have to re-write 75% of the game.

Similar to the issues with coming up with a totally new Magic the Gathering setup. You have to write each and every card to make it feel like something different.

The good news is that because it is exception based it can be done and the game still remain 4e. The result may be underpowered or overpowered compared to the original rules.

What I would do is start with an idea of what genre or setting I am targeting. I would start with a set of basic four classes:

A class that fights
A class that wields arcane magic
A class that wields divine magic
A class that is good at things other than fighting.

I would the existing 4e classes, powers and abilities and figure out their structure. Then come up with a new baseline either lower for a more gritty realistic feel or higher for a even more epic feel. Or just keep the same but the classes would have a different mix of power to reflect my chosen subgenre or setting.

I dabbled with a more realistic version of 4e a couple of years back and my conclusion was that it was a lot of work, that the way to do it was to tamp down on the bonuses, effects, and damage dice. That it would NOT be particularly wargamish as most "powers" are simple progressions of a base packages of abilities and skills. The implication of this would that the then existing 4e fanbase would likely find it boring as a game.

I can't speak to fixing anything, because I'm just not that good at that sort of thing. BUT:

*Keep the different defenses: I REALLY liked how spellcasters had to "roll to hit," just like everyone else. (though I guess you could do that with 5E by just adding +10 to the relevant stats to get static defenses).

Most everything else I could've done without. More fiddly than I wanted

Quote from: Spinachcat;887099Personally, 4e works fine for me as a hybrid RPG/skirmish wargame. But apparently, I'm one of the few DMs who didn't have a problem weaving skill challenges into our roleplaying.

I think that is key to metagame rules in general. From what I've seen, it takes a GM that is comfortable with the rules and running a game where the players can state their action and incorporate it seamlessly without the players having to worry about it.

I would definitely not try to make 4E "more D&D" -like. 4E is very much its own thing. Just embrace what 4E is and focus on making it the best possible game it can be.

I would not use estar's class breakdown, for instance. That's a good setup for a OSR-style game, but it does not play to 4E's strengths.

There's nothing wrong with it.  It may not be what you LIKE (I don't), but it's perfectly functional and does exactly as it says on the tin, it runs a fantasy game.

You know, let's start over.

We can't very well have a discussion on how to fix 4E without understanding what is wrong with it.

We should have started by identifying things we consider to be problems first before going into how we'd change it.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887215You know, let's start over.

We can't very well have a discussion on how to fix 4E without understanding what is wrong with it.

We should have started by identifying things we consider to be problems first before going into how we'd change it.

That's an excellent point, no snark:  What is broken about 4e, that people want to fix?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887217That's an excellent point, no snark:  What is broken about 4e, that people want to fix?

I'll start:

I. Combat Pacing

Problem: Combat takes a little bit longer than most of my players would prefer
Reason 1: Monsters have too many hit points.

Solution: If using MM1 and other earlier monsters, divide HP in half and increase monster's average damage by +1. Or, use MM3, Monster Vault, and other later monsters. Be wary when using brute, elite, and solo monsters.

Reason 2: Whiff factor; attacks miss too frequently.

Solution 1: Make sure everybody has an expertise feat. One popular houserule is to give everybody one free expertise at character creation.

Solution 2: Make sure that everybody has magic weapons/implements appropriate to their level, or use the inherent bonus optional rule from Dark Sun/DMG2. Be wary when using soldier, elite, and solo monsters.

Reason 3: Late combat feels like a boring slog compared to the exciting 'alpha strike' of the earlier rounds.

Solution: You might consider refreshing encounter powers halfway through combat. Maybe after players use their second winds or spend their action points. Monsters should attack in waves.

Reason 4: Players take too long to select actions on their turn.

Solution: Use an egg timer.

Actually, I've realized I do have issues with the game, as a player:

The Ranger Class.  Mechanically speaking, Twin Strike was the most power ability in the game, everything was compared to it, for utility.

Secondly, the amount of 'free' or 'reaction' attacks the class got was OBSCENE.

Quote from: cranebump;887175*Keep the different defenses: I REALLY liked how spellcasters had to "roll to hit," just like everyone else. (though I guess you could do that with 5E by just adding +10 to the relevant stats to get static defenses).

5e has casters roll to hit for quite a few of the spells, and those that dont oft allow a stat save. Different approach. Having to roll "to hit" just to heal someone would get more than tedious really fast.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887221Actually, I've realized I do have issues with the game, as a player:

The Ranger Class.  Mechanically speaking, Twin Strike was the most power ability in the game, everything was compared to it, for utility.

Secondly, the amount of 'free' or 'reaction' attacks the class got was OBSCENE.

Well, Twin Strike is the most powerful striker power in the game, I'll grant you that.
Defenders, controllers, and leaders don't need to concern themselves with having an effective damage-dealing power like Twin Strike since that isn't their job. But the fact that other striker classes don't have good equivalents is a problem.

Solution: Every striker class should have some variation on Twin Strike; a power that grants two attacks during their turn.


As for free and reaction attacks: Is it the abundance of free and reaction attacks the thing that concerns you, or is there something inherent in how free and reaction attacks work that bothers you?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887213There's nothing wrong with it.  It may not be what you LIKE (I don't), but it's perfectly functional and does exactly as it says on the tin, it runs a fantasy game.

I agree theres nothing wrong with 4e as it is. But its touted as an RPG. But even non-RPG players notice very quickly that it plays more like a board game or wargame. Thus it fell short of being a RPG.

Totally YMMV of course if the GW version is any indicator. That feels more like an RPG and does not have the heavy board game feel. Did come with lots of pogs and battle maps though.

So what did 4e D&D GW excise or change that made it work?

Quote from: Omega;887224I agree theres nothing wrong with 4e as it is. But its touted as an RPG. But even non-RPG players notice very quickly that it plays more like a board game or wargame. Thus it fell short of being a RPG.

Totally YMMV of course if the GW version is any indicator. That feels more like an RPG and does not have the heavy board game feel. Did come with lots of pogs and battle maps though.

So what did 4e D&D GW excise or change that made it work?

Okay, this might be a discussion to spin off into another thread, but;

OD&D plays like a wargame. Because it started out as a wargame.

Do wargame/boardgame elements preclude a game from being an rpg?

I mean, what is an rpg if not a wargame/boardgame that generates emergent narrative and richly characterized game pieces?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887221Actually, I've realized I do have issues with the game, as a player:

The Ranger Class.  Mechanically speaking, Twin Strike was the most power ability in the game, everything was compared to it, for utility.

Secondly, the amount of 'free' or 'reaction' attacks the class got was OBSCENE.

I put alot of effort into playing 4e and making it workable...I honestly just don't see the reward/effort ratio being worth it today.

The "reaction" stuff was just ridiculous once the players got half a dozen levels under their belt. You put 5 people around a table, and every time the monster moved a space you had to ask permission from each player for the privilege...then you had to do it again for each attack...and you had to do it again, for each reaction...and for each counter-reaction...and for each counter-counter-counter reaction.

I'm pretty sure 5e's "you only get 1 reaction a turn" is a response to this mess...and I'm pretty sure you'll need something similar if you wish to pursue the quixotic dream of making 4e really viable.

Then comes the saving throw issues--again it happens at too many places. Save at the end of your turn, beginning of your turn, end of monster's turn, beginning of the round...that's ungainly.

Then you've got the meta-powers, Battlemind being the worst--immune to damage, rather silly in a system where the only way to harm a character is damage. There were plenty of others, though.

Seriously, going through all the things that didn't work is too much trouble.

You may as well build from the ground up a totally new game, with perhaps using 1 or 2 core ideas from 4e.

Quote from: Doom;887227The "reaction" stuff was just ridiculous once the players got half a dozen levels under their belt. You put 5 people around a table, and every time the monster moved a space you had to ask permission from each player for the privilege...then you had to do it again for each attack...and you had to do it again, for each reaction...and for each counter-reaction...and for each counter-counter-counter reaction.

This is a forum full of oldschool guys. Somebody get Gronan in here and ask him how Gary used he used those simultaneous action rules in Chainmail.
If it's relevant, we might take a page from the oldschool playbook for fixing reactions.

QuoteThen comes the saving throw issues--again it happens at too many places. Save at the end of your turn, beginning of your turn, end of monster's turn, beginning of the round...that's ungainly.

Having played and DM'd 4E on numerous occasions, I am quite certain that is absolutely not how it works.
When did a player character ever have to save at the end of the monster's turn in your campaign?

QuoteThen you've got the meta-powers, Battlemind being the worst--immune to damage, rather silly in a system where the only way to harm a character is damage. There were plenty of others, though.

What are you on about?

Quote from: Daztur;887063OK, assuming you keep the basic 4ed design goals in place (many of which clash pretty badly with standard D&D play) how would you go about fixing 4ed?

Don't use it for D&D, use it for sports inspired fantasy games like Blood Bowl.

Otherwise, fix it by setting the books on fire.

Quote from: jeff37923;887229Don't use it for D&D, use it for sports inspired fantasy games like Blood Bowl.

Otherwise, fix it by setting the books on fire.

Hey, at least we made it to page 3 before this crap showed up.  Now, all we need is Gronan to show up and tell us how it was back in his day, and we call it a week!

OK, I'm going to go ahead and point out more problems and possible solutions.

II. Unsatisfactory Non-Combat Segments
4E's gameplay outside of combat leaves something to be desired. The designers included skill challenges as an all purpose solution to devising non-combat encounters but it comes off as a bit... stilted? Bland? It just doesn't have the same rigors of 4E's combat and character creation mini-games.
Utility powers don't seem to help much.

I think the solution to this problem lies in genre fusion. If 4E's combat feels like a wargame, then we might take a different sort of game that acts as a counterpoint and use that as a basis for a more detailed non-combat portion of the game.

I've thought about incorporating worker-placement mechanics (from such games as Settlers of Catan, Agricola, and Lords of Waterdeep!) into 4E as a domain management mini-game.
4E's designers cite influence from Euro-games, so why not?

Every time 4E comes up

A) someone mentions their negative experiences with it, followed by

B) someone hops on to tell them they played it wrong.


Every. Fucking. Time.

Quote from: Omega;8872225e has casters roll to hit for quite a few of the spells, and those that dont oft allow a stat save. Different approach. Having to roll "to hit" just to heal someone would get more than tedious really fast.

Well, if you're healing someone, they wouldn't be defending...

Familiar with 5E to hit spells. I like them wish they all worked that way. Creatures could still take half damage or whatever on a "miss," thus providing the same effect as current, but allowing casters to roll.

Just a preference...

I would fix 4E by removing lolis. Adventuring party full of 12 year old girls every single goddamned time. I can't even play as male human fighter what the cock is that shit? What were the 4E developers thinking?!

Plus there's like 100 skills, and not a single skill for cooking! That shit doesn't make sense. They have powers for every single combat action you can imagine like gouging out people's eyes out and strangling people with their own intestines, but my character can't cook because Wizards of the Coast forgot to add a power for cooking. Fix that shit.

And how the hell did vampires make it through playtesting? That's like the most overpowered character class ever!

I also think they should just scrap the d20 system and make finally make the change over to GURPS, as D&D should be!

Quote from: Cave Bear;887228Having played and DM'd 4E on numerous occasions, I am quite certain that is absolutely not how it works.
When did a player character ever have to save at the end of the monster's turn in your campaign?

I honestly don't feel like digging out the 4e MM to find out which monster had an ability that may or may not trigger at the end of its turn, affecting a player...but I still maintain there wasn't just one place in the combat round where a player needed to roll saving throws.

Nobody else recall all those status effects? I bought Aleatools just to keep up with them, sometimes, solos especially, a monster would have 5 or more effects on it.

QuoteWhat are you on about?

Uh...the abilities characters get at, say, 10th level? I guess you haven't made it that far yet? It gets pretty nuts then, honest.

Quote from: Doom;887250I honestly don't feel like digging out the 4e MM to find out which monster had an ability that may or may not trigger at the end of its turn, affecting a player...but I still maintain there wasn't just one place in the combat round where a player needed to roll saving throws.

Nobody else recall all those status effects? I bought Aleatools just to keep up with them, sometimes, solos especially, a monster would have 5 or more effects on it.

Granted, it's exception based design, and I'm not familiar with every single monster power in the game, but that sounds like an edge case.

QuoteUh...the abilities characters get at, say, 10th level? I guess you haven't made it that far yet? It gets pretty nuts then, honest.

Granted, I've never had anyone play a Battlemind up to level 10.
But I'm looking through my copy of PHB3 right now.

What I see is a level 10 daily power that grants resistance (encounter duration), and a daily power that reduces damage to 0 (one time!)
The resistance thing is pretty damned strong, but not really broken considering there are effects that can bypass damage resistance. I mean, sorcerers can bypass some forms of resistance starting from level 1!
And the other thing is just a once per day deal that negates a single attack.

You made it sound like Battleminds had something that just gave blanket immunity to all damage, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Quote from: cranebump;887243Every time 4E comes up

A) someone mentions their negative experiences with it, followed by

B) someone hops on to tell them they played it wrong.


Every. Fucking. Time.

agreed though imho most people have a knee jerk reaction to 5e

Quote from: kosmos1214;887252agreed though imho most people have a knee jerk reaction to 5e

Which they had for 3e, and for 2e, and for 1e, and for Red Box, ad nauseum. m Edition Wars never really stop, and started the moment someone stopped using the little brown books.  If you don't believe me, watch Gronan go on and on about how he still uses them.

The only thing I truly had issues with in 4e, other than flavour (I have a hard time reconciling 'Daily Attacks' for martial characters that use their muscles/bodies as a 'power source') was the Ranger Class with it's ease of multiple attacks and reaction powers.  (I remember once being a Battlerager fighter, unable to actually get into the battle, so all I did was throw a rock at the bad guys every round, which triggered the Ranger to unleash something like 3? attacks.  And that's on top of the basic 5 he had each round.)

If we could somehow tone it down, that would have been nice.

In my experiences 4e's problems were far more "user" based than the system of the game. For some unknown reason people stuck religiously to the RAW of the game and were quite fearful of any departure from the rules. This led to such dumb situations such as:

• LOOOONG Combats: Why on Earth would EVERY Kobold fight to the bloody death when they just witnessed large amounts of their kin all get slaughtered in 12 seconds? No 4e DM ever heard of parley or running away if they're cowardly monsters? Yet in other editions this tends to happen quite more frequently. Heck sometimes players are encouraged to speak with intelligent beasts in order to continue without bloodshed. Not 4e though, throw all of that good stuff right out the window! And, if a DM did insist on the PCs fighting EVERY last monster to death, the gameplay is still in their control. IF an encounter has gone on longer than 1/2 hour then maybe adjudicate that the next significant (non At-will) attack or critical hit kills one of the targets, ignoring HP bloat of the monster.

Proposed Fix for long combats: Make the monsters run when it's appropriate to do so and don't stick to RAW if encounters drag on, either by shortening the monsters HP (and subsequently subtracting the overall XP they award). When fighting intelligent monsters, perhaps encourage dialogue instead of "roll Initiative".

• Use of Powers: Did you know there were quite a few DMs I played 4e with that were pretty ridiculous in when and how people can use their class and other abilities? Yea to my dismay apparently DMs were real anal about the target line of almost ALL PCs powers. For example our group came to a frozen door and the party's mage had this at-will Spell called Scorching Burst that deals fire damage in a small area. Cool! So he was going to use that on the frozen door (fire melts ice and all...) however the DM was completely against it because the Target line of the spell clearly states Creature and a door is not a creature. Da hell? This is one of those moments the DM has shown complete lack of anything resembling common sense.

Proposed Fix for use of Powers: Allow players to be creative with the tools they have. Allowing them to utilize their abilities in fun and interesting ways not only adds to the overall immersion of the game-world, it can create situations where a long combat isn't necessary.

• Sticking to RAW: In almost every D&D game I've ever played in, there have been houserules. These are often attempts to modulate the game to better fit a groups needs or fix problems the group has found within any system. In 3e we had quite a few houserules that made the game more enjoyable, such as not confirming natural 20 critical hits and using the average for HPs when leveling up. Yet 4e was one of those systems that people didn't houserule. I don't know why? I used LOTS of non-RAW ideas and things including home-brew classes, feats, and items to throwing out dumb rules like not being able to use X-number of magical items per Tier (a rule that was later removed officially). I'm not sure why people felt they shouldn't or couldn't fix things that were inherently wrong with many of 4e's systems but they either didn't based on some fear or principal.

Proposed fix for forced RAW: Pretty self evident that any good group doesn't stick to RAW as some religious text. If something is amiss, like for example non-magical powers used on a daily basis, give them all the Reliable Keyword. This mean if they miss, they can try it again and again. If you feel Fighters should have bow-based Exploits, homebrew some. If you want to roll for HP, then do it! Like in every other system of D&D, the rules are not cement and you should feel fine in changing things to make the game more preferable to the group.

Quote from: cranebump;887243Every time 4E comes up

A) someone mentions their negative experiences with it, followed by

B) someone hops on to tell them they played it wrong.


Every. Fucking. Time.

I wonder why that is? I'm going to guess that those who didn't have those problems will site the differences in the group vs. the same rules played with. Same thing with 3e and how there are people who say Spellcasters do and will break the game by X-level and there are people who've never had or seen a large problem with the caster/martial disparity.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887263Which they had for 3e, and for 2e, and for 1e, and for Red Box, ad nauseum. m Edition Wars never really stop, and started the moment someone stopped using the little brown books.  If you don't believe me, watch Gronan go on and on about how he still uses them.

That's basically it.

I don't think there's any real issue to saying "I play D&D vers. X." It's when you have played, don't care for it, and the whole thing gets turned into how, "If you'd just played it THIS way..." you'd somehow change your views. Part of system preference has to include your preferred style of play. I can't speak for everyone, but 4E didn't work for me primarily for two reasons:

(1) Time consuming battles
(2) Didn't like the scaling

I understood why the scaling was there, and understood how to run battles. But, when we looked up hours later after a particularly long fight, the entire session had ended, and we'd moved the campaign forward a metaphorical inch on a scale of six feet (and I hated that the kicking down the same door required a 15 for one level of characters and a 25 for another, simply due to level progression--surely we can standardize skills in some way?)

Sooooo...any "fix" of 4E, for me, would include speedier combat, and no scaling.  The only thing I can think of that might satisfy my requires would be:

(1) Using bloodied HP totals as max for monsters
(2) Eliminating or reducing reaction-abilities
(3) Capping characters at the first tier.

So, maybe something like an E6 version of 4E--characters expand in "breadth" rather than "height?"

(Now that I think about it, 5E fixed a lot of my issues with both 3E and 4E).

Quote from: cranebump;887317That's basically it.

I don't think there's any real issue to saying "I play D&D vers. X." It's when you have played, don't care for it, and the whole thing gets turned into how, "If you'd just played it THIS way..." you'd somehow change your views. Part of system preference has to include your preferred style of play. I can't speak for everyone, but 4E didn't work for me primarily for two reasons:

(1) Time consuming battles
(2) Didn't like the scaling

I understood why the scaling was there, and understood how to run battles. But, when we looked up hours later after a particularly long fight, the entire session had ended, and we'd moved the campaign forward a metaphorical inch on a scale of six feet (and I hated that the kicking down the same door required a 15 for one level of characters and a 25 for another, simply due to level progression--surely we can standardize skills in some way?)

Sooooo...any "fix" of 4E, for me, would include speedier combat, and no scaling.  The only thing I can think of that might satisfy my requires would be:

(1) Using bloodied HP totals as max for monsters
(2) Eliminating or reducing reaction-abilities
(3) Capping characters at the first tier.

So, maybe something like an E6 version of 4E--characters expand in "breadth" rather than "height?"

(Now that I think about it, 5E fixed a lot of my issues with both 3E and 4E).

How about completely remove the 1/2 level base progression and instead make it +1 (heroic tier at 5th), +2 (paragon tier at 15th), and +3 (epic tier at 20th)? So at most you'll progress in your normal ability scores but only add a total of +3 and your ability modifier (and feats, proficiency bonus) to the over all math. Thus a 10th level monster wouldn't have +15 to everything, it'd be +11. A 20th level monster wouldn't have +30 to everything, it'd have +22, etc.

As for long combats and HP bloat, well I mentioned some easy fixes up-thread. Another way is to max + double damage on Critical hits and incorporate "bleeding".

Bleeding is a mechanic that just say "hey, if you're below 1/4 your total hit points you have 1 round to get out of that condition OR after that round, you fall unconscious due to extreme fatigue and loos of life. Monsters who are at 1/4 their HP can escape (double move) or use some sort of magical elixer or potion OR get HP from their leader. If they don't, they die after a turn of bleeding. You can then alter certain monsters to ignore this effect (undead, constructs, Solo enemies, etc.).

Quote from: cranebump;887243Every time 4E comes up

A) someone mentions their negative experiences with it, followed by

B) someone hops on to tell them they played it wrong.


Every. Fucking. Time.

Perhaps because people have gone out of their way to shit on 4e?
Like a local game store owner who hasn't played D&D since the 70s who was shitting on the very product he is trying to sell.  Doesn't make a lick of sense.

But you want to see it here in this very thread?  look below these words.

Quote from: Batman;887313In my experiences 4e's problems were far more "user" based than the system of the game. For some unknown reason people stuck religiously to the RAW of the game and were quite fearful of any departure from the rules. This led to such dumb situations such as:

• LOOOONG Combats: Why on Earth would EVERY Kobold fight to the bloody death when they just witnessed large amounts of their kin all get slaughtered in 12 seconds? No 4e DM ever heard of parley or running away if they're cowardly monsters? Yet in other editions this tends to happen quite more frequently. Heck sometimes players are encouraged to speak with intelligent beasts in order to continue without bloodshed. Not 4e though, throw all of that good stuff right out the window! And, if a DM did insist on the PCs fighting EVERY last monster to death, the gameplay is still in their control. IF an encounter has gone on longer than 1/2 hour then maybe adjudicate that the next significant (non At-will) attack or critical hit kills one of the targets, ignoring HP bloat of the monster.

Proposed Fix for long combats: Make the monsters run when it's appropriate to do so and don't stick to RAW if encounters drag on, either by shortening the monsters HP (and subsequently subtracting the overall XP they award). When fighting intelligent monsters, perhaps encourage dialogue instead of "roll Initiative".

• Use of Powers: Did you know there were quite a few DMs I played 4e with that were pretty ridiculous in when and how people can use their class and other abilities? Yea to my dismay apparently DMs were real anal about the target line of almost ALL PCs powers. For example our group came to a frozen door and the party's mage had this at-will Spell called Scorching Burst that deals fire damage in a small area. Cool! So he was going to use that on the frozen door (fire melts ice and all...) however the DM was completely against it because the Target line of the spell clearly states Creature and a door is not a creature. Da hell? This is one of those moments the DM has shown complete lack of anything resembling common sense.

Proposed Fix for use of Powers: Allow players to be creative with the tools they have. Allowing them to utilize their abilities in fun and interesting ways not only adds to the overall immersion of the game-world, it can create situations where a long combat isn't necessary.

• Sticking to RAW: In almost every D&D game I've ever played in, there have been houserules. These are often attempts to modulate the game to better fit a groups needs or fix problems the group has found within any system. In 3e we had quite a few houserules that made the game more enjoyable, such as not confirming natural 20 critical hits and using the average for HPs when leveling up. Yet 4e was one of those systems that people didn't houserule. I don't know why? I used LOTS of non-RAW ideas and things including home-brew classes, feats, and items to throwing out dumb rules like not being able to use X-number of magical items per Tier (a rule that was later removed officially). I'm not sure why people felt they shouldn't or couldn't fix things that were inherently wrong with many of 4e's systems but they either didn't based on some fear or principal.

Proposed fix for forced RAW: Pretty self evident that any good group doesn't stick to RAW as some religious text. If something is amiss, like for example non-magical powers used on a daily basis, give them all the Reliable Keyword. This mean if they miss, they can try it again and again. If you feel Fighters should have bow-based Exploits, homebrew some. If you want to roll for HP, then do it! Like in every other system of D&D, the rules are not cement and you should feel fine in changing things to make the game more preferable to the group.

Here you have batman talking about how for some reason his gaming group got all stupid when it came to playing 4e.

Why the drastic change?

I guess I am both lucky, and unfortunate, that my so far only exposure to 4e was via the Gamma World set since it left a relatively favourable impression of the 4e system.

For the curious, 4E gets shit upon because it was a miniatures skirmish game sold as a role-playing game and shoved down people's throats as D&D. No crime if you like it, but it is not as suited to being a RPG as it is a tabletop computer wargame simulator.

I honestly do think there is very little wrong with the system when you use it for what it is designed for, stuff like Blood Bowl or Space Hulk. The OP and most of the posters here agree that 4E was too focused on combat or else this thread about "How to fix 4E" would not exist because it didn't need fixing to be a RPG.

Quote from: Doom;887250I honestly don't feel like digging out the 4e MM to find out which monster had an ability that may or may not trigger at the end of its turn, affecting a player...but I still maintain there wasn't just one place in the combat round where a player needed to roll saving throws.

Nobody else recall all those status effects?

I'm pretty sure you're just wrong on this one. The saving throw mechanics (PHB, pg. 279) state that the save is always made by the affected creature at the end of their turn. I did a search through about half the MM and there are no abilities that posit special rules for saving throws (just "save ends"). Also checked a chunk of a Monster Vault (to see if new design standards were used later on), and I'm not seeing anything in there, either.

Quote from: Batman;887313LOOOONG Combats: Why on Earth would EVERY Kobold fight to the bloody death when they just witnessed large amounts of their kin all get slaughtered in 12 seconds? No 4e DM ever heard of parley or running away if they're cowardly monsters? Yet in other editions this tends to happen quite more frequently.

There was a time period where I was running D&D3, OD&D, and D&D4 in various configurations with many of the same players crossing over from one system to the next. I was also recording the sessions, which allowed me to do very accurate comparisons about combat length across systems.

What I found was that:

(1) Assuming a similar number of combatants, the average length of time to resolve a round worth of actions was generally comparable between all three systems (with D&D4 possibly being slightly longer, but not significantly so).

(2) The length of combats in OD&D and D&D3 were generally comparable. However, when measured across all combats OD&D averaged slightly less time per encounter because OD&D has more spells that instantly end an encounter (compared OD&D's sleep spell to D&D3's, for example). (This was somewhat counteracted at my table because ubiquitous hirelings generally increased the average number of combatants in OD&D compared to D&D3.)

(3) D&D4, on the other hand, featured combats that took two to three times as many rounds to resolve as comparable OD&D and D&D3 fights. And this directly translated into longer fights.

A uniform methodology doesn't solve this problem because, whatever the methodology is (i.e., the goblins cut and run when half of them have been killed), it still takes longer to get to that point in the fight.

(4) D&D4 fights were also longer on average because (a) there were no abilities that instantly ended encounters and (b) the relative lack of strategic play (i.e., resource ablation over multiple encounters) made the range of meaningful combats much smaller (which meant a lack of easy, quick fights; in OD&D and D&D3 you can get 7th level characters quickly mopping up a half dozen goblins; in D&D4 such an encounter would be entirely pointless).

The other problem contributing to fights that last "too long" in D&D4 was the design decision to reduce the number of abilities that monsters have. The logic was that a monster only survives 2-3 rounds, so if they have more than 2-3 things to do it's pointless. This logic was always flawed (you can encounter the same creature multiple times; there may be multiple versions of the creature in the same fight; tactical flexibility is a thing), but it was particularly disastrous when you also increased the length of combat.

The result was a systemic bias towards combats that shot their load and then... just continued happening for some reason for another hour.

Quote• Use of Powers: Did you know there were quite a few DMs I played 4e with that were pretty ridiculous in when and how people can use their class and other abilities? Yea to my dismay apparently DMs were real anal about the target line of almost ALL PCs powers. For example our group came to a frozen door and the party's mage had this at-will Spell called Scorching Burst that deals fire damage in a small area. Cool! So he was going to use that on the frozen door (fire melts ice and all...) however the DM was completely against it because the Target line of the spell clearly states Creature and a door is not a creature. Da hell?

I've found that games with a preponderance of dissociated mechanics tend to create mechanics-only (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37976/roleplaying-games/art-of-rulings-part-3-the-fiction-mechanics-cycle) play even among players who don't engage in that behavior in other systems.

Once you've surrendered yourself to simply accept that you can only attempt to do a backflip once per day because that's what the Backflip ability says, it follows that you can only target creatures (and not objects) with your Scorching Burst because that's what the ability says. Once you've broken the mechanics-fiction loop, it tends to stay broken (or at least takes some effort to get back up to speed).

Quote from: jeff37923;887396For the curious, 4E gets shit upon because it was a miniatures skirmish game sold as a role-playing game

OD&D was a miniatures skirmish game.

Fight me.

Quote from: Omega;887373I guess I am both lucky, and unfortunate, that my so far only exposure to 4e was via the Gamma World set since it left a relatively favourable impression of the 4e system.

Yknow, I've heard this comment a few times. Having never tried this iteration, I am curious as to why it seems to be a better experience when running GW? Do the system mechanics fit better with the genre conceits?

Quote from: Cave Bear;887412OD&D was a miniatures skirmish game.

Fight me.

Why? OD&D is terrible as well.

Quote from: jeff37923;887418Why? OD&D is terrible as well.

Shit taste detected.

First, I didn't like this about 4e:

Lengthy combats. Which I attribute to:
a) too many exception-based powers, AEDU. analysis paralysis.
b) too many stacking status effects. processing overload & gotcha! gaming.
c) whiff-tastic math penalizing heavily sub-optimal mods and "lack of proper build magic items." basically built-in power inflation for chargen & chase drops.
d) HP bloat & combat scaling. treadmill effect.

Combats in General:
e) poorly defined "retirement period," to graduate game from squad tactics to realm management or the like. all game structures weather and crumble as they approach infinity; there is no broad community benefit in stressing the math to its event horizons.
f) dissociative mechanics, namely snapping everything to the grid and encouterization, e.g. cube-spheres AoEs, Healing Surges, "all out of sword," ...
g) Action allocations. I've seen 5e still overwhelm a few players, but it is leagues better than 3e and 4e action subdivisions, combinations, and triggers.
h) Facing assumptions & AoOs. Flanking, rear attack, AoOs... terrible 3e legacy.
i) Initiative and surprise handling options. Still not happy with 5e's, even though it has been made looser.
j) Lack of Morale, Number Appearing, Wandering Monsters Table Suggestions, etc. to shift tactical play to strategic play.
k) Minions as a concept, and Bloodied as a noticeable condition.

Character Generation & Non-Combat:
a) I still hate Fort, Reflex, Will saves. Older 5 column versions or new 6 stat saves is vastly better in my view. Improving by 1/2 lvl was a step int the right direction but sloppy and indiscrete design.
b) Distribution and handling of skills. Too class restrictive, the general pool should be much larger. Also found 1/2 lvl sloppy and hyper mod dependence annoying.
c) Feats, period. Still a terrible kludge all these years.
d) Complete dissociation of weapon usage to functionality. Only needing one's best weapon, regardless of circumstance due to triggering, is jarring. My cleric's warhammer was just for looks — I couldn't really "wield" it, but it was necessary for Divine Smite et al. effects.
e) TOCKASC (The obscene clusterfuck known as skill challenges). The less said the better; let us enjoy our newfound sobriety.

And then there's art design, adventure structures, League Play (intro player, storyline, and challenge mode - I concede 5e has made great strides in this directions), PHB & MM splatting, etc.

Suffice it to say I don't find much worth retaining in 4e.

If I want to create a pared down Tactics Skirmish game though, it does have an intriguing chassis. I love me some Shining Force and Langrisser and similar old school turn-based tactics games. So, Daztur, I will explore with you what I would do to achieve this heroic! style of tactics skirmish play in my following posts.
:)

(PS: I am going to stick to this topic, re-building atop a stripped 4e chassis, to the exclusion of other conversation here. I say this in advance because I am not interested in debating anyone else's opinions on this game as it currently is. I am interested in debating our houserule designs to get closer to one of our forum's wishes. Reply accordingly, please.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397I'm pretty sure you're just wrong on this one. The saving throw mechanics (PHB, pg. 279) state that the save is always made by the affected creature at the end of their turn. I did a search through about half the MM and there are no abilities that posit special rules for saving throws (just "save ends"). Also checked a chunk of a Monster Vault (to see if new design standards were used later on), and I'm not seeing anything in there, either.

Really not worth my time to look it up...but flipping through the rules a bit, I see the years have shaded my memory a bit. It's not saving throws, it's effects, hence my reference to "all those status effects." So, not saves, mea culpa, but effects.

 I see there are effects that end at the end of your next turn--not much different than the beginning of the next player's turn, or next monsters. Then there are effects until end of encounter.

Then there are effects that end when don't attack the right creature, effects that end when you move away, effects that end when you're not adjacent to the right creature, effects that begin when you're hurt for a certain amount of damage (eg, becoming bloodied), effects that end on your action (Escape, save DC, though not exactly a saving throw), effects that take effect within 2 squares of an ally (drake), effects that take effect when target is affected by something else, effects that take effect when you shift...and it goes on and on.

Don't get me wrong, rules are the rules, but trying to keep track of all that stuff when there are, say, 10 figures on the board is bloody hard. Toss in the "cool new power every level" paradigm of 4e and it gets like one of those children's songs that just stacks up and up and up.

I have to admit, 4e would have worked *great* as a computer game. A computer has no trouble tracking half a dozen conditional effects going off every turn...but it's a lot to ask, even at a table with engineers, mathematicians, grogs, and rules lawyers.

Quote from: cranebump;887416Yknow, I've heard this comment a few times. Having never tried this iteration, I am curious as to why it seems to be a better experience when running GW? Do the system mechanics fit better with the genre conceits?

Well it sure as hell wasnt better at running Gamma World. It was a total failure.

But from all accounts it streamlines the rules enough to make it managable and more RPG and less Board game. Though its still got alot of board game in it. Moreso since they tacked on that damn CCG element.

With nothing to compare to. At a personal guess. Possibly it cut down on the feats and mechanics. While still retaining the overall feel of 4e. Some have mentioned it feels like what a 4e D&D starter should have been.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887412OD&D was a miniatures skirmish game.

Fight me.

So... You dont even know what OD&D is...

Quote from: Cave Bear;887251Granted, it's exception based design, and I'm not familiar with every single monster power in the game, but that sounds like an edge case.



Granted, I've never had anyone play a Battlemind up to level 10.
But I'm looking through my copy of PHB3 right now.

What I see is a level 10 daily power that grants resistance (encounter duration), and a daily power that reduces damage to 0 (one time!)
The resistance thing is pretty damned strong, e.

Again, my bad, not blanket immunity to all damage (but I still maintain Battle Resiliance, eliminating the first 10 or so  points of all damage, all the time, in a system where level 10 minions don't hit for that much, is a bit strong), and you're probably right there might well be some obscure edge case to get around it...but let's focus on the actual point.

Focusing on the real issues, all the "cool powers" stack up to make the game a slog to play after a fistful of levels.

I'll now mention how the Battlerager (un-patched) was basically unstoppable, period, at low levels, just to give the obsessives something to do.

Quote from: Omega;887373I guess I am both lucky, and unfortunate, that my so far only exposure to 4e was via the Gamma World set since it left a relatively favourable impression of the 4e system.

Yknow, I've heard this comment a few times. Having never tried this iteration, I am curious as to why it seems to be a better experience when running GW? Do the system mechanics fit better with the genre conceits?

Quote from: Omega;887426So... You dont even know what OD&D is...

It's a Chainmail expansion.
Wargame rules. Zoomed in on 1:1 man, small unit tactics.

Miniatures optional, but if you want to play OD&D like a miniature skirmish game you have all the rules you need to do it with.

Cunt.

Quote from: Doom;887429Again, my bad, not blanket immunity to all damage, and you're probably right there might well be some obscure edge case to get around it...but let's focus on the actual point.

Focusing on the real issues, all the "cool powers" stack up to make the game a slog to play after a fistful of levels.

Does that not also apply to oldschool D&D? Wasn't it Stoneskin from Unearthed Arcana that totally negates a certain number of attacks?

QuoteI'll now mention how the Battlerager (un-patched) was basically unstoppable, period, at low levels, just to give the obsessives something to do.

Granted, but they did indeed errata that.
And any responsible DM would spot the problem and talk to the player about it. Or employ the use of stunlocking and/or surge-draining monsters to even the playing field a little bit.
As they should in any edition of D&D.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887433Does that not also apply to oldschool D&D? Wasn't it Stoneskin from Unearthed Arcana that totally negates a certain number of attacks?

.

Uh...one of these is not like the other. I'll let someone else try to explain it, though.

Quote from: Doom;887437Uh...one of these is not like the other. I'll let someone else try to explain it, though.

If you're not going to make your own arguments then why do you even bother to comment?!

Quote from: Daztur;887063First of all establish what kind of game it is. It's about mythic Beowulf-level heroes who get in big climatic battles, not Cugel pulling a heist in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam.

Y'know, this is definitely not my default style of play. BUT!, considering how high D&D 4e goes, 30+ lvls and like 5+ tiers (IIRC), it is a surprisingly robust chassis for such a style of play. This might actually be the best way to pitch the game so as to bring everyone's assumptions onto the same page.

Other games can do the low level grunt or street level crack team, but few could hit the epic tiers without collapse. As much as I hate the scaling, and think bounded accuracy should be returned, this might be one instance where 4e is better. "Wanna start as a mythic hero and scrape demigod status?" is a solid pitch to narrow the scope of play and manage player expectations.

Still not something I am interested in playing. But it would have warned me off of the table earlier, to the benefit of all involved.

Quote from: Daztur;887063Then cut away all of the unneeded detritus that's left over from 3ed bloat. Feats, skills, out of combat DCs, the whole lot. Gone. No fucking +1 bonus for fighting ice creatures while picking your nose. Combine healing surges and action points into one bennie (call it hero points or something more creative). Have these hero points be pretty rare.

I completely agree. If you're going to switch into full Tactics Skirmish mode, do so and drop the legacy material. Less 3e modifier, feats, PrCs, and tactics cruft the better. There's little to salvage from there that won't get in the way of a Good Saga.

I also applaud the idea Healing Surge + Action Points as a single pool. Might I suggest Healing Surges get replaced by Hit Dice, and Action Points replaced by Tier Level? That way no one can game chargen for more, and everyone can quickly tabulate their "Hero Point" pool. Starting 1st lvl has 2 Hero Points (1 for lvl, 1 for tier); 6th lvl has 8 Hero Points (6 for lvl, 2 for tier).

Quote from: Daztur;887063Then focus in on the stuff that makes 4ed unique: the big stacks of powers. Burn AEDU with fire and have all powers either be at-will ones or ones that you need to spend a hero point to use. Have these powers that cost hero points generally have conditions tied to them like:
-Last stand: can only use if it's your last hero point.
-Vengeance: can only use if it's to hit the guy who just downed your buddy.
-Riposte: can only use if it's to hit the guy that just bloodied you.
etc. etc. etc. and have them do interesting larger than life stuff out of Hercules/Beowulf/Gilgamesh not the pretty weaksauce stuff we got for a lot of martial powers in 4ed.

This turns Hero Points into "that second bar below Hit Points" (Mana, Skill, Power, Hero, whatever,) which is fine. Eliminating AEDU cruft also frees up analysis paralysis while also keeping things to quick heroic description. Tying finishing flourishes to battlefield conditions also retires powers to major battle tipping points, instead of front-loaded spam.

Quote from: Daztur;887063The main point of that would be to shift the use of hero points (which replace dalies) to the END of combat from the START to make for better pacing. Big combats would often start with the monsters kicking the PCs' shit in and then the PCs using some hero point-fueled powers to turn the tables.

I like this for pacing, tied to major battlefield tipping points. The challenge would be designing them so that they are harder to repeatedly setup — like bouncing in and out of being bloodied with healing. If you standardize the triggers, like the above three used for every class, but with different effects, you could keep consistency while quickly checking power level.

Quote from: Daztur;887063For healing have it be a lot like in 4ed except that hero points are a lot rarer than the action points + dailies + healing surges they're replacing something like this:
-Second wind: shitty hero point to hit point conversion.
-Healing: expert healer heals you, good hero point to hit point conversion.
-Bed rest: sleep for a night, best hero point to hit point conversion.

Solid power tiering concept for refreshing. Should be similarly done in power tiers as battlefield tipping points. That way a minor battlefield shift (first crit? first Hit Die of dmg lost?) can open Fighter's Second Wind or Cleric's ranged Healing Word.

Perhaps use Tipping Points as a Trigger category for the three major game facets: Combat, Explore, Social?

Triggers like, Sleighted Encounter or Awoke Guardian Curiosity, could be moments to use Hero Points. As long as Hero Points are appropriately powerful to the trigger — essentially mostly a palliative (not a coup de grace) to ameliorate the loss — this could work well. Then it affects your last condition that to succeed you want to use as little Hero Points as possible, and thus bring a strategic element back into the tactics.

Quote from: Daztur;887063Then have it really hard to get hero points back, just camping out in Mirkwood wouldn't cut it, you'd need to spend a few days in Rivendell at peace with hippy elves dancing around singing.

So more than an 8 hour Long Rest. Something like a Hero Point a day carousing and spreading your name amongst civilization? Could be extremely useful in both campaign pacing and encouranging poking around in stable societal areas. Perhaps you could have your Tier Hero Points refresh per Long Rest, but keep Class Level Hero Points as 1 pt per day of civilized frolic. This way higher tiers can jump back into adventure in a moments notice, yet still not be at their best until they partied for a few weeks.

Quote from: Daztur;887063For out of combat stuff, no skills and no stupid skill challenges. For human-level stuff PCs can do it automatically or with a simple ability check. For superhuman stuff they'd need to use a power. There'd be powers like giving infinite endurance for a period of time (like Beowulf swimming across the sea in his armor) or massive lifting capacity for one feat (like Hercules) and these would generally cost a hero point to use. Stuff like hollow leg (PC can drink a few barrels of wine and not get drunk) would be fun too.

Dealing with out of combat challenges would generally be about being cunning enough to get past big challenges while spending as few hero points on your big supernatural abilities as possible.

Think that'd hold together relatively well for that sort of game, if a very different one from D&D. Thoughts?

Yes, I really like the return to Skills as Professional Level from 2e NWPs. Less rolling the better, even moreso than take 20 or the like. Only when really taxed should they bother with a skill roll.

And, returning to my Hero Points during Explore and Social, it seems we are on the same page here. Again, the easiest way would be to tier things to various contextual critical conditions, and then provide Hero Point Powers as a class variable solution. And again, this would similarly tax the same Hero Point pool so as to return a Strategic element along with the Tactical element; you only get so many Boo-Boo Erasers, so try to solve as much as possible without going nova.

How would you like to go from here? I'm thinking of starting with at least 3 Tipping Points per Combat, Explore, Social, and then giving each class its equivalent Heroic Reaponse.

3 Prospective Tipping Points per Game Facet

Combat

1. Bloodied
2. Downed Ally/Self
3. Last Stand/Sacrifice

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up
2. Exposed
3. Cornered

Social

1. Faux Pas
2. Gross Breach
3. Grave Insult

Hmm... Next to try to fill the four main classes. I'll start with the Fighter.

Fighter

Combat

1. Bloodied. Second Wind.
2. Downed Ally/Self. Vengeance.
3. Last Stand. ... Blade Whirlwind.

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Olympian Athletics. (STR check Expertise?)
2. Exposed. Olympian Endurance. (CON check Expertise?)
3. Cornered. In the Zone. (As the two above plus Lucky STR & CON saves?)

Social

1. Faux Pas. Forgiveable Brute (let slide due to martial skill; possible attraction by target).
2. Gross Breach. Minor Debt of Honor/Gentleman's Duel.
3. Grave Insult. Appeasement Geas.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887422Shit taste detected.

Don't lick yourself?

:idunno:

Quote from: jeff37923;887396For the curious, 4E gets shit upon because it was a miniatures skirmish game sold as a role-playing game and shoved down people's throats as D&D. No crime if you like it, but it is not as suited to being a RPG as it is a tabletop computer wargame simulator.

I honestly do think there is very little wrong with the system when you use it for what it is designed for, stuff like Blood Bowl or Space Hulk. The OP and most of the posters here agree that 4E was too focused on combat or else this thread about "How to fix 4E" would not exist because it didn't need fixing to be a RPG.

You can keep saying this all your want jeffy, still wont make it true.

Quote from: Omega;887138Me and every player I showed it to hated the near totally random chargen system. A buggy system no less. Remove some of the excessive random and yeah its fun.

The chargen is random as you want it to be. I am surprised the RAW dialed 4e GW chargen to 11 on the random scale, but that's easy to house rule. It's not like there were disparity in the quality of powers. There were different flavors, but 4e GW didn't min/max out of the box - though I hear the CCG packs had some power creep.

The big coolness for 4e GW is the reskinning of power. You can fly? Want wings? Cyborg jetpack? Psionic levitation? Elemental magic? That encouraged a lot of creativity.

Quote from: Cave Bear;8872074E is very much its own thing. Just embrace what 4E is and focus on making it the best possible game it can be.

Bad Cave Bear! That's a 2 Day Topic Ban for attempting to have reasonable discussion in a 4e thread!!

You've triggered the children!!

Quote from: Cave Bear;887220I. Combat Pacing

I use Morale rules.

Nothing except for the mindless fight to the death.
At the top of each round, Bloodied foes get a Saving Throw. If they fail, they flee. Otherwise, they are caught in the madness of combat and keep chopping away.

This speeds up combat hugely.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887220Reason 1: Monsters have too many hit points.

The Morale rules solve much of this.

However, even this can be a problem at higher levels. At the Paragon Tier, I also used the Glass Cannon solution where I cut the HP in half and added 1 die of damage to all attacks.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887220Reason 2: Whiff factor; attacks miss too frequently.

I only saw the Whiff factor as a problem with Dailies. We had a house rule that all Dailies came with a +2 Attack bonus.

Your solution of Expertise is a free feat sounds fine too.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887220Reason 3: Late combat feels like a boring slog compared to the exciting 'alpha strike' of the earlier rounds.

Again...the Morale rules solve this.

Another solution comes from 13th Age: the Escalation Die. Each round, the PCs get a bonus based on the number of rounds (up to 6). This creates an interesting dynamic where you might save Encounter powers to later rounds to get a big bonus.

If you're a nasty GM like me, you let the PCs and the Monsters use the Escalation Die so combat becomes deadlier for everyone.  

Quote from: Cave Bear;887220Reason 4: Players take too long to select actions on their turn.

I didn't have this problem much in the Heroic tier, but damn, it showed up in Paragon and insanely in Epic.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887221The Ranger Class.  Mechanically speaking, Twin Strike was the most power ability in the game, everything was compared to it, for utility.

Note that Twin Strike does 1W damage, no damage bonus from Ability scores. Thus, if a Ranger has +4 Dex bonus and Long Bow, then he could do

Careful Attack +8 Attack, D10+4 Damage
or
Twin Strike +6 Attack, D10 Damage, but 2 attacks

D10 equals 5.5 damage.
If you hit with Careful Attack, you do 9.5 average
If you hit once with Twin Strike, you do 5.5 average
If you hit twice with Twin Strike, you do 11 average

So Twin Strike is a great at-will power, but I don't think its overwhelming. If you see the foe is armored, its a much better bet to Careful Attack and get that +2 Attack bonus and the DEX bonus Damage.

Quote from: Omega;887224Totally YMMV of course if the GW version is any indicator. That feels more like an RPG and does not have the heavy board game feel. Did come with lots of pogs and battle maps though.

Here's the joke. 4e GW is way more of a boardgame than 4e D&D, but the name D&D carries phenomenal emotional baggage and that baggage brings expections that GW's name does not.

If WotC had just continued 3e and launched 4e as "Dragonstrike: the RPG" as a separate line, then there would not have been a Pathfinder and "Dragonstrike: the RPG" would have plenty of fans too.

Quote from: Cave Bear;8872324E's gameplay outside of combat leaves something to be desired. The designers included skill challenges as an all purpose solution to devising non-combat encounters but it comes off as a bit... stilted? Bland?

Skill challenges worked in the 4e playtest because they were really loose and flowing, and that's how I ran them. But as presented in the PHB and DMG, they are a real mess.

You don't actually need them. You can just use skills and powers outside of combat without the "skill challenge" matrix of Wins/Losses. FOR ME, I really liked those because I encouraged lots of fast, flowing creativity around the table. But the "everybody roll your STR three times and give me the tally" was idiotic and I never used it that way.  

Quote from: MockingTone;887249I would fix 4E by removing lolis!

Welcoming Mocking Tone!!

You're right. Lolis was the problem in 4e.

BTW, WTF is a lolis?

Quote from: cranebump;887416Yknow, I've heard this comment a few times. Having never tried this iteration, I am curious as to why it seems to be a better experience when running GW? Do the system mechanics fit better with the genre conceits?

I like 4e D&D, but I loved 4e GW.

Chargen is especially interesting IF you encourage reskinning while toning down the gonzo. That just requires talking with players and make sure everyone is on the same page.

Combat is deadlier. Instead of worrying about heaing surges, you either survive the combat and regain all your HP or you die. Damage output seemed higher too (I'd have to crunch numbers, but it felt that way).

Rules are streamlined. There's 10 levels. You had less powers, so the everyone was encouraged to roleplay instead of looking to the RAW for the answer.

As for the Gamma World-ness of it, 4e GW is my second favorite GW (my first is GW 1e) because the collision of all realities setting allows for lots of crazy stuff and thus an auto-conceit for why weird techno shit would be laying around various places and for why your PCs could pick up little temporary powers.

It's a huge shame WotC did not advertise 4e GW like a mofo. It could have been a YUUUGE hit with teens because it didn't carry D&D baggage and it had that insano kitchen sink that teens love (and those of us who are just graying teens).

Quote from: Cave Bear;887439If you're not going to make your own arguments then why do you even bother to comment?!

Because it's pretty retarded to not see a difference in utility between:

1) free action, per encounter, ability that affects all damage, that is basically unstoppable and will occur at all times.

2) Spell (so, limited use, and a 4th level on at that), pricey component, that only affects a limited class of damage (basically non-magic weapons, for the SRD version (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneskin.htm)), limited duration (10 min/level), can be circumvented in several common enough ways, and limited amount of damage stopped in any event.

Didn't the Arcana one only block 2-5 attacks? If so, it should be obvious that 2-5 is somewhat below infinity, no?

Since it's not obvious to you on the face of it that one is these is not nearly as generally useful as the other, I doubt much else I have to say would make sense. Did the OP start a troll thread?

Anyway, back to the point for those interested in legitimate discussion, with a party of level 10 characters, each with an uber-power, each with a half dozen or so other semi-uber-powers, plus another handful of special-effect powers...it really does become a mess of special abilities firing off, pretty much every encounter.

Then when the Big Bad shows up, you get twice of much specialness firing off, because Action Points (again, note how 5e responded to the Action Point problem by restricting it to one class, if memory serves) and super-uber powers.

I'll grant D&D never has functioned particularly well at high levels (though, in my opinion 5e does it best), but 4e's hyperexceptionalist design just caused a complete collapse around level 10 (with pretty big cracks at level 5).

So, I'd scale back the powers every level thing. Honest, in 2e, getting your hit points doubled at 2nd level was actually very nice.

Quote from: Doom;887466Because it's pretty retarded to not see a difference in utility between:

1) free action, per encounter, ability that affects all damage, that is basically unstoppable and will occur at all times.

2) Spell (so, limited use), pricey component, that only affects a limited class of damage (basically non-magic weapons), can be circumvented in several common enough ways.

Since it's not obvious on the face of it that one is these is not nearly as generally useful as the other, I doubt much else I have to say would make sense.

The Battlemind powers you referenced were daily powers (limited use).
And higher level ones at that!
Of course they should be highly effective at what they do. If they weren't, you would be complaining about the Battlemind's lack of power at higher levels!

*edit*

Quote from: Spinachcat;887458...

I use Morale rules.

Nothing except for the mindless fight to the death.
At the top of each round, Bloodied foes get a Saving Throw. If they fail, they flee. Otherwise, they are caught in the madness of combat and keep chopping away.

This speeds up combat hugely.



The Morale rules solve much of this.

...

Again...the Morale rules solve this.

...

That is a good rule. :)

While I still hold that any potential 4E clone/heartbreaker should focus on playing to 4E's strengths, there really is a lot of good stuff that 4E could adopt from Moldvay Basic and other TSR-era versions of D&D.

QuoteSkill challenges worked in the 4e playtest because they were really loose and flowing, and that's how I ran them. But as presented in the PHB and DMG, they are a real mess.

You don't actually need them. You can just use skills and powers outside of combat without the "skill challenge" matrix of Wins/Losses. FOR ME, I really liked those because I encouraged lots of fast, flowing creativity around the table. But the "everybody roll your STR three times and give me the tally" was idiotic and I never used it that way.  

I'd like to see those rules. Were they in that 'Wizards of the Coast: Worlds and Monsters' book?

QuoteWelcoming Mocking Tone!!

You're right. Lolis was the problem in 4e.

BTW, WTF is a lolis?

You know. Like a Touhou.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887458...

I use Morale rules.

Nothing except for the mindless fight to the death.
At the top of each round, Bloodied foes get a Saving Throw. If they fail, they flee. Otherwise, they are caught in the madness of combat and keep chopping away.

This speeds up combat hugely.



The Morale rules solve much of this.

...

Again...the Morale rules solve this.

...

That is a good rule. :)

While I still hold that any potential 4E clone/heartbreaker should focus on playing to 4E's strengths, there really is a lot of good stuff that 4E could adopt from Moldvay Basic and other TSR-era versions of D&D.

QuoteSkill challenges worked in the 4e playtest because they were really loose and flowing, and that's how I ran them. But as presented in the PHB and DMG, they are a real mess.

You don't actually need them. You can just use skills and powers outside of combat without the "skill challenge" matrix of Wins/Losses. FOR ME, I really liked those because I encouraged lots of fast, flowing creativity around the table. But the "everybody roll your STR three times and give me the tally" was idiotic and I never used it that way.  

I'd like to see those rules. Were they in that 'Wizards of the Coast: Worlds and Monsters' book?

QuoteWelcoming Mocking Tone!!

You're right. Lolis was the problem in 4e.

BTW, WTF is a lolis?

You know. Like a Touhou.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887467The Battlemind powers you referenced were daily powers (limited use).
And higher level ones at that!
Of course they should be highly effective at what they do. If they weren't, you would be complaining about the Battlemind's lack of power at higher levels!

My goodness, did my memory fail again? I could have swore there was an at-will power that had a 55% chance of blocking all damage.

Oh wait, here it is, funny nobody else could find it:

Iron Defense    Iron Guardian Utility 12

Your skin becomes as hard as iron, allowing you to shrug off even the deadliest blows.
 At-Will + Psionic
 Standard Action     Personal
 Effect: Until the end of your next turn, roll a d20 whenever you take damage. On a 10 or higher, the damage is reduced to 0. Otherwise the damage is halved.  (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Iron_Guardian)

Now toss this in with all the other abilities that shift/displace/ignore damage...

Anyway, here's a discussion of *just* battlemind powers at first level (https://dinodung.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/class-action-battlemind-defense-and-powers-1st-level/), I don't even want to know how many pages it is.

Just to keep track of all this is *nuts*...now put 4 other players around the table. Good luck keeping track:

... how well the battlemind can defend her party mates. In this second article on the new psionic defender I'll take a look at how well she can defend herself.

As mentioned in the prior article, a battlemind  starts out knowing how to use scale armor and a heavy shield. This would give a starting battlemind AC 19.  You could take  Armor Proficiency (Plate) for a single point gain in AC, but that requires Strength and Constitution 15.

For a Con/Str, Con/Wis, or Con/Cha bonus race, using the beginning ability score array of 16, 15, 14, 11, 10, 8 would wind up 18, 16, 15, 11, 10, 8. These are decent level stats if you are willing to forgo a starting Con 20, or Con 18 + Wis or Cha 18 array.

A tertiary Strength based battlemind build is not as unintuitive as you might think. Aside from opening up plate armor use, it helps to ameliorate a semi-defense related deficiency of the battlemind – opportunity attacks.

Unless Strength is boosted or one of the Melee Training feats are chosen, the battlemind is restricted to rather lackluster OAs. With blurred step's limitations outlined in my previous post, there is very little a non-OA optimized battlemind can do to deter enemies from simply walking away unscathed.

Simply put, without a lot of forethought and careful building, the battlemind is not very adept at opportunity attacks.

Sorry about the side trip into OA-land. But the flaw in the build needed to be addressed. Back to self defense!

Hit points are pretty good for a battlemind. With Constitution the primary stat, you know you'll be  tough. At 1st level you get 15 + Constitution, then 6 per level afterward. A typical battlemind with an 18 Con will have 33 hit points, 16 bloodied value, a surge value of 8, and 13 surges per day. If you wanted to burn a feat on Toughness you could be looking at 38 hp, 19 bloodied, 9 surge value, and 13 surges.

There are two encounter powers in the class feature Psionic Study, a battlemind may choose one of them.

Battle resilience is a Wisdom based defensive free action that gives 3 + Wisdom modifier resists all until the end of your next turn. It triggers off an attack hitting or missing you for the first time in an encounter.

Speed of thought is a Charisma based offensive positioning free action which allows you to move 3 + charisma modifier when initiative is rolled for the encounter. This can be used in a surprise round. Obviously it is very effective at getting the battlemind into the fray early. Considering Dexterity is a low priority for most defenders, initiative modifiers are usually low as well. This power will help overcome the slow and lumbering defender stereotype.

However, as this article is (mostly) about the battleminds personal defense, we'll look more closely at battle resilience.

Battle resilience suffers from some of the ambiguity of other battlemind powers. It is a free action with a trigger. A free action takes no time (or very little time) and can be taken on your or another combatant's turn. Thus, strictly speaking, as soon as the attack is made against the battlemind, she can use battle resilience.

The ambiguity of this depends on how your DM rules free actions and where in the resolution of the triggering attack you may use the power and gain the resistance.

Battle resilience is usable ONLY on the first attack against you during an encounter. Thus its usefulness is already severely limited.

If your DM allows free actions at any time, you could wait until you see if the attack hits and trigger it before the damage is dealt. Thus you save yourself 3 + Wis mod initial damage. I feel this is the intent of this power – to absorb some of an opening attack's damage and provide possible defense against further damage until the end of your next turn.

If your DM only allows the power to trigger after the attack is resolved battle resilience becomes somewhat less useful. It can still help soak up further attack damage until the end of your next turn, but that initial hit still gets through fully. And it is quite possible no other damaging attacks are sent your way before the power ends.

To muddle things even more, your DM's ruling on what constitutes an attack can affect whether you avoid any damage from the initial attack. Let's say you have a Wis mod of +4 giving you a resistance 7 all. Then a power or ability with multiple to hit and damage rolls are used against you –  claw/claw/bite for 7/12/14 damage. If your DM rules an attack is a single d20 roll, you would take 0/5/7  damage. If your DM rules all d20 rolls included in a power are considered one attack, then you would take 0/12/14 damage. A difference of 12 damage vs. 26 is significant.

You may want to discuss with your DM what he considers an attack.

The battlemind's four current at-will standard attack powers each have a defensive aspect to them, actually giving the defender some minimal (mostly) single target controller ability, too. All of them are Constitution vs. AC and does 1[W] + Constitution modifier damage on a hit, unaugmented.

Demon dance does psychic damage opposed to the rest of the level 1 at-wills' untyped damage.  It also imposes a -5 penalty to opportunity attack rolls until the end of your next turn. Positioning just got a little less hazardous for you and your allies with an effective +5 to your AC.

Augment 1 is more situational by removing the target's threatening reach. there are not too many baddies out there with it, but when you do run into one, this could be useful.

Augment 2 does more damage (2[W] + Con mod) and the target cannot make opportunity attacks until the end of your next turn. More easy positioning when needed.

Iron fist grants the battlemind resist all equal to the battlemind's Wisdom modifier. Less damage taken equal more health retained and more hits able to be withstood. If you have someone in the group who offers THP, paired with resist all you could be taking little to no damage from most attacks. Resist all is also great against ongoing damage. Just remember, damage resistance does not stack; only the higher damage resistance is effective. So if you have someone in the group who offers damage resistance, this ability is less useful.

Augment 1 changes the resist to fire resist 5 + Wisdom modifier. More situational, but useful.

Augment 2 just does more damage,  2[W] + constitution modifier.

Bull's strength pushes the target 1 square. This is okay for some positioning options, but it is limited. A slide would have been better. Pushing your target away is contrary to a defender's role. you really want those suckers focused on you, and within weapon range. If you push the enemy away, it is like giving it a free shift back from you. This has minor use, but overall is counter-productive. (Yes, I realize you do not have to push the target, but then you are making a glorified basic attack.)

Augment 1 increases your reach by 1 for this attack. Now it's getting more useful. In tight quarters and something is harrying your squishies? No problem, augment bull's strength with a power point, reach right past the baddies surrounding you, and shove the annoying bugger right out your squishy's grill!

Augment 2 makes this attack a blast 3. It is against all creatures, not just enemies, so you need to take some care your allies are not in the way. This is an effective minion clearer as well as an Oh Sh!t attack. It still pushes any target hit 1 square. If your group lacks good minion control or other AoE damage, this is practical, if limited in use by available power points.

Twisted Eye gives the target a penalty to attack rolls equal to the number of your allies adjacent to it on hit. The penalty lasts until the end of your next turn. Two factors play into this power: how many mêlée allies you have and how willing they are to position themselves properly for this to be effective. Melee light partys will see less effect from this than those with at least 3+ mêlée, or at least ranged willing to move into harm's way. This becomes very effective in heavier mêlée groups against single targets, especially élite and solo targets.

Augment 1 allows this at-will to be used in place of a basic mêlée attack. I wish this were part of the base power and did not cost a power point. But, in later levels, with more than the initial 2 power points to spend, this might become more useful.

Augment 2 also blinds the target until the end of your next turn. This is actually pretty great. The target is now granting combat advantage, everyone has total concealment from it, and it cannot flank.

Whirling defense marks the target until the end of your next turn. Wow! You could conceivably have THREE (!!!) marked targets at once with continued use (and hits) of this power (and augmenting battlemind's demand to mark two others). Useless against minions as a hit will pretty much explode them.

Augment 1 boost your mind spike damage by your Charisma modifier if you use it before the end of your next turn. Gambling one power point a marked target adjacent to you will attack someone besides you is risky. It depends on how the DM plays the marked creatures. If he often ignores marks to attack others, then it might be worthwhile.

Augment 2 turns this into a close burst 1. Another nice minion sweeper or a way to get a group of enemies focused on you for a round. The biggest drawback of this is mind spike is an immediate reaction, so even if you are able to punish one mark ignoring bugger, the others can pretty much do so with impunity –  aside from the -2 penalty to their attack rolls.

Which two would I take at first level, you ask?

Demon dance and twisted eye have some nice synergy. You can set your allies up to position themselves with less hazard adjacent to your main target, then impose a hefty attack roll penalty on it. I also like the blinding aspect of twisted eye's augment 2. But this combo really needs at least 3 mêlée in the party to be effective.

I would probably take iron fist for the resist all (especially if paired with a THP tossing leader), twisted eye for the possible attack roll penalty and to blind a target to help set up a nova, or whirling defense for the added mark and possible minion sweeper use.

The level 1 daily disciplines also have some defensive uses to them, though I will not go into as deep of detail as i did with the at-wills. (Go buy the PHB3, you mooching buggers!)

Allies to enemies – psychic damage, and a forced mêlée basic attack? This does not sound as bad as it might. It all depends on how much damage the BBEG or his henchmen are capable of doing with that basic mêlée attack. Thus it is a bit situational. Not a horrible choice, though.

Aspect of elevated harmony – self-healing and the ability to gain some THP off augmented at-wills. Nice if the party lacks sufficient healing. Even better when you start getting more than 2 power points. Otherwise pass.

Psionic anchor – teleport the target to a square next to me when it ends its turn? Yo-yo sticky. The target can still move away and attack others, this just makes it annoying to do so. If you use it on a non-marked target it increases in value.

Steel unity strike – Why does this make me think of Jimmy Hoffa? This does more damage than the other three level 1 dailies and you go into a stance. A very special stance which allows you to make a 2[W] + Con mod damage Constitution vs AC attack against any marked adjacent enemy that moves without shifting. Can you say non-gimped opportunity attack? A decent choice if you want better OA's on your marked baddie and do not have the Strength tertiary build....

Seriously, this is overboard.

Quote from: Doom;887469...

Seriously, this is overboard.

Well, first off that's charop shit. Nobody but autistic savants and minmaxers actually play that way at the table.

It isn't even terribly complicated charop shit though. The text only looks complicated because you posted a lot of it in one big chunk.
You can make any topic appear complicated if you present it in dense blocks of text.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887458BTW, WTF is a lolis?

It's a pejorative term used to infer pedophilia.  However, it's a Japanese term to denote an animated female character with an underdeveloped figure.  It's a shortening of the word Lolita, as per the movie with the same name (Yes, I know there's a novel, but the Japanese use the movie.)

Note that the characters may seem under-aged, often is the eldest female.  In fact, the Japanese Animation shows that use it tend to have characters younger with clearly more developed figures a very common gag.

Quote from: Doom;887469My goodness, did my memory fail again? I could have swore there was an at-will power that had a 55% chance of blocking all damage.

Oh wait, here it is, funny nobody else could find it:.....

Seriously, this is overboard.

Iron Defense    
At-Will + Psionic
Standard Action     Personal
Effect: Until the end of your next turn, roll a d20 whenever you take damage. On a 10 or higher, the damage is reduced to 0. Otherwise the damage is halved.


"What's Doomy doing this round?"
"Standing there and Iron Defensing?"
"Wait what was that? you moving and then Iron Defensing? KK."
"What do you mean why isn't anything attacking you?  You're not doing anything"

Quote from: Sommerjon;887478Iron Defense    
At-Will + Psionic
Standard Action     Personal
Effect: Until the end of your next turn, roll a d20 whenever you take damage. On a 10 or higher, the damage is reduced to 0. Otherwise the damage is halved.


"What's Doomy doing this round?"
"Standing there and Iron Defensing?"
"Wait what was that? you moving and then Iron Defensing? KK."
"What do you mean why isn't anything attacking you?  You're not doing anything"

What, seriously?

All I knew about Battleminds before today was that they were psionic defenders with an ineffective marking mechanic and a feat tax (they need the Melee Training feat just to pull of opportunity attacks... defenders are supposed to be good at opportunity attacks right out of the gate.)

Holy shit, that's a terrible defender power.
Enemies then have no incentive to attack you instead of your allies.
It doesn't even matter if Battleminds are indestructible if they can't do their damn jobs.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887458The chargen is random as you want it to be. I am surprised the RAW dialed 4e GW chargen to 11 on the random scale, but that's easy to house rule. It's not like there were disparity in the quality of powers. There were different flavors, but 4e GW didn't min/max out of the box - though I hear the CCG packs had some power creep.

The big coolness for 4e GW is the reskinning of power. You can fly? Want wings? Cyborg jetpack? Psionic levitation? Elemental magic? That encouraged a lot of creativity.

Here's the joke. 4e GW is way more of a boardgame than 4e D&D, but the name D&D carries phenomenal emotional baggage and that baggage brings expections that GW's name does not.

If WotC had just continued 3e and launched 4e as "Dragonstrike: the RPG" as a separate line, then there would not have been a Pathfinder and "Dragonstrike: the RPG" would have plenty of fans too.

I like 4e D&D, but I loved 4e GW.

Chargen is especially interesting IF you encourage reskinning while toning down the gonzo. That just requires talking with players and make sure everyone is on the same page.

Combat is deadlier. Instead of worrying about heaing surges, you either survive the combat and regain all your HP or you die. Damage output seemed higher too (I'd have to crunch numbers, but it felt that way).

Rules are streamlined. There's 10 levels. You had less powers, so the everyone was encouraged to roleplay instead of looking to the RAW for the answer.

As for the Gamma World-ness of it, 4e GW is my second favorite GW (my first is GW 1e) because the collision of all realities setting allows for lots of crazy stuff and thus an auto-conceit for why weird techno shit would be laying around various places and for why your PCs could pick up little temporary powers.

It's a huge shame WotC did not advertise 4e GW like a mofo. It could have been a YUUUGE hit with teens because it didn't carry D&D baggage and it had that insano kitchen sink that teens love (and those of us who are just graying teens).

1:  The main problem was the designers saw fit to insult you for not wanting to do the total random chargen. That irked people. They liked the freeform nature of it. Just didnt like being insulted right out the gate.

2: Yep, the ability to call it whatever, even the races.

3: The modules and the CCG try to make it more a board game. But the core itself doesnt. But then the whole game was schizophrenic in what it wanted to be. But would we get the cool TV series with the same Dragonstrike actors?

4: Really? Its hard to tell... :cool:

5: You also have to unbreak chargen. As was you could not actually get a human character by the rules. And it wasnt all that goofy really. The Sasquatch even is a nod to to Alternity GW.

6: The explanation of combat is a little garbled. But seems like it is at least somewhat faster after all calculations since you add your level and any mods to your to hit roll vs the target AC. You dont auto heal after combat. But a 5min short rest is pretty quick.

7: Verily.

8: 4eGW is my most disliked for the setting which both utterly fails to be Gamma World and pisses all over the franchise more than White Wolfs d20 GW did. Which is an accomplishment. Would have been more appropriate calling it Gammarauders.

9: It seemed to be tailor made to repulse older GW fans to one degree or another. I think the lack of focus would have not clicked with players new to GW either as the book jumps all over the place in tone. You have the loony land slapstick tone, the serious RPG tone and then the circus freak horror tone, and the TORG cosm tone. None of which is focused on enough. d20 GW at least focused on the nanotech and transhuman theme. 4e GW has no focus. And yeah.

For a testbed proof-of-concept platform it was not advertised. In the end. Be glad it failed as otherwise 5e D&D might have been saddled with that damn CCG. Imagine having to "collect" half your spells and magic items from random boosters. ugh!

But still. for a 4e RPG it moves along relatively well.

What I dislike more of GW 4e is that the goofiness is a lie. It's just gloss, a veneer. The game itself is still D&D and is all about careful tactics. If you play the game in the goofy spirit in which it is presented you will end up dead very quickly.

Oh sure, the authors get to make the jokes about clown feet mutations and inflatable dolls shields, the players are forced to look past the joke and treat those items seriously. It produces a terrible disconnect.

Quote from: jeff37923;887396For the curious, 4E gets shit upon because it was a miniatures skirmish game sold as a role-playing game and shoved down people's throats as D&D. No crime if you like it, but it is not as suited to being a RPG as it is a tabletop computer wargame simulator.

I honestly do think there is very little wrong with the system when you use it for what it is designed for, stuff like Blood Bowl or Space Hulk. The OP and most of the posters here agree that 4E was too focused on combat or else this thread about "How to fix 4E" would not exist because it didn't need fixing to be a RPG.

I dunno, my group has plenty of time and fun role-playing in 4e. What rules actually make a game force role-play? From my limited D&D experiences (AD&D 2e, 3.PF, 4e and 5e) the amount of role-play put into the system is almost always derived from the people playing, not rules thrust at us. One can, quite simply, play most (if not ALL) editions without any regards to role-play and just focus on the combat side of the system.

When most people talk about the non-existence of RP in 4e it's usually because they equate 4e's Skill Challenges to what surmounts as Role-Play and there not being enough time to RP in between all the lengthy combats. Skill Challenges, as written in the DMG/PHB, were an abysmal mess. I never used them like they said to in the first books. I did like the formula however not the implementation. A Skill Challenge was great if the players didn't know they were actually in one. And here's the kicker, they should almost ALWAYS be decided as the players are role-playing. Their in-game decisions and how they RP their characters in the scenario can simply by-pass certain checks in Skill Challenges or complete one entirely.

Comparing 4e to 3.5 there were many times combat was the key focus of the game. 90% of the feats, prestige classes, and class features enhanced or modified things you did in combat. Yet the non-existence of RP isn't stated anywhere in 3e. Miniatures were heavily pushed as a game supplement and even mechanics helped foster the idea that they were almost required to play. Yet no one accuses them of being a Mini-Skirmish game. Why? It can't just be push, pull, and slide effects (which 3e had too).

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397There was a time period where I was running D&D3, OD&D, and D&D4 in various configurations with many of the same players crossing over from one system to the next. I was also recording the sessions, which allowed me to do very accurate comparisons about combat length across systems.

What I found was that:

(1) Assuming a similar number of combatants, the average length of time to resolve a round worth of actions was generally comparable between all three systems (with D&D4 possibly being slightly longer, but not significantly so).

(2) The length of combats in OD&D and D&D3 were generally comparable. However, when measured across all combats OD&D averaged slightly less time per encounter because OD&D has more spells that instantly end an encounter (compared OD&D's sleep spell to D&D3's, for example). (This was somewhat counteracted at my table because ubiquitous hirelings generally increased the average number of combatants in OD&D compared to D&D3.)

(3) D&D4, on the other hand, featured combats that took two to three times as many rounds to resolve as comparable OD&D and D&D3 fights. And this directly translated into longer fights.

A uniform methodology doesn't solve this problem because, whatever the methodology is (i.e., the goblins cut and run when half of them have been killed), it still takes longer to get to that point in the fight.

I think part of the problem was that every goblin or monster used were all standard monsters of different roles. While those encounters occurred in published adventures, casual games were much different. I'd probably never run an encounter where the PCs were going up against 5-6 creatures of significant hit points. That would be.....long. Instead I pit them up against a couple of hit point intense monsters and fill the rest with things like minions. Minions helped set larger scale scenes where PCs can engage with mowing down many enemies but can succumb to be getting overrun and swarmed while one or two big-bads are wading in and dealing significant damage.

Also, and this is what I was talking about earlier, why didn't anyone ever change the monsters' HP mid-combat? If I felt a combat was slogging through and losing it's effect, make the next hit on the monster kill it if it's bloodied (just 1/2 it's HP gone). I adjust HP on the fly to make for more dramatic games and keep the action flowing. If you're using another at-will again just because you're out of Encounter powers and most of your dailies and the intention of the encounter is to drain you of your resources, job done and move on.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397(4) D&D4 fights were also longer on average because (a) there were no abilities that instantly ended encounters and (b) the relative lack of strategic play (i.e., resource ablation over multiple encounters) made the range of meaningful combats much smaller (which meant a lack of easy, quick fights; in OD&D and D&D3 you can get 7th level characters quickly mopping up a half dozen goblins; in D&D4 such an encounter would be entirely pointless).

Most combats in 4e aren't throw-a-way ones. They're not intended to be. You can do it, sure with minions, but if the combat isn't going to be significant or important, why are you doing it? Or if you like more sand-boxy style campaigns where there's a possible fight around every bend in the road, use minions for the most part with LOTs of them and then occasionally throw in a big-bad for more effect. One of the things I hated in v3.5 were combats that took 10 mintues and our 6th level characters got like 25 XP for killing some rats or Kobolds. At that point, getting out dice and fighting really isn't even worth the break in role-play for some measily XP and copper coins.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397The other problem contributing to fights that last "too long" in D&D4 was the design decision to reduce the number of abilities that monsters have. The logic was that a monster only survives 2-3 rounds, so if they have more than 2-3 things to do it's pointless. This logic was always flawed (you can encounter the same creature multiple times; there may be multiple versions of the creature in the same fight; tactical flexibility is a thing), but it was particularly disastrous when you also increased the length of combat.

Hm, I'm not really sure I follow. In most of my v3.5 games monsters usually had 1 schtick to do. They could attack with a weapon (like natural ones or ones carried) or they had some special feature from a tacked-on class or template. The only time it was more of a thing was spellcasters later on and then the DM had to search through the PHB for each spell and how it works and the amount of bookkeeping was a serious drag on the encounter and game. By keeping the amount of capabilities to a quick-reference minimum it cut down on how much time the DM was going back into the spell section for DCs and number of damage die, etc.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397The result was a systemic bias towards combats that shot their load and then... just continued happening for some reason for another hour.

My 4e combats never took longer than an hour. Group synergy and players not suffering from taking too long to choose their action and all meshing well their their own tactics tended to make combats go fast. A seasoned group does have that effect though, regardless of the system being used.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397I've found that games with a preponderance of dissociated mechanics tend to create mechanics-only (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37976/roleplaying-games/art-of-rulings-part-3-the-fiction-mechanics-cycle) play even among players who don't engage in that behavior in other systems.

*shudder* yea I've read the article. What I find funny is the utterly complete lack of the article also pointing out how often it's occurred in other systems, namely 3rd edition in splended amounts. Dissociated mechanics is, I've found, just another way to say "Fighters can't have nice things."

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397Once you've surrendered yourself to simply accept that you can only attempt to do a backflip once per day because that's what the Backflip ability says, it follows that you can only target creatures (and not objects) with your Scorching Burst because that's what the ability says. Once you've broken the mechanics-fiction loop, it tends to stay broken (or at least takes some effort to get back up to speed).

Nah, I think the those DMs were far more concerned with opening up a flood gate with at-will magics and powers that they didn't want to open for fear of making them overpowered. It doesn't, but that's the fear I've always heard float around. Like in Pathfinder there are LOTS of DMs who hate that cantrips are at-will. Same as in 5e too. Certain daily Exploits in 4e can easily be hand-waived as stunts a human body cannot easily and readily do over and over or because a monster has caught on to the attack and will be ready if a player tries it again. OR the DM, not liking that explanation, can just make all powers Reliable if they miss and allow PCs to downgrade if they want to do X, Y, or Z power again. If, for example, a 7th level Fighter used a 3rd level maneuver, I'd be fine with him asking to replicate the attack using a higher-level encounter power in it's place. Same thing with Dailies too.

Quote from: Soylent Green;887489What I dislike more of GW 4e is that the goofiness is a lie. It's just gloss, a veneer. The game itself is still D&D and is all about careful tactics. If you play the game in the goofy spirit in which it is presented you will end up dead very quickly.

Oh sure, the authors get to make the jokes about clown feet mutations and inflatable dolls shields, the players are forced to look past the joke and treat those items seriously. It produces a terrible disconnect.

This is what I mean by the schizo nature of it. Like there were four different writers. And none were on the same page as the others. The end result is an incoherent mess of a setting that isnt a setting at all.

Quote from: Sommerjon;887478"What's Doomy doing this round?"
"Standing there and Iron Defensing?"
"Wait what was that? you moving and then Iron Defensing? KK."
"What do you mean why isn't anything attacking you?  You're not doing anything"

Actually, by the time the characters reach this level, there are quite a few ways to attack that don't require a Standard action, and quite a few ways to take more than one attacking action a round.

Quote from: Doom;887518Actually, by the time the characters reach this level, there are quite a few ways to attack that don't require a Standard action, and quite a few ways to take more than one attacking action a round.

Of course..................... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Quote from: Sommerjon;887528Of course..................... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Exactly!

You really need examples, or do you need an eye doctor?

Quote from: Doom;887540Exactly!

You really need examples, or do you need an eye doctor?

If you make a claim, back it up with evidence!

I normally wouldn't care about these flaming exchanges, but Daztur is a stand up guy, and these 4e volleys have been done to death. (As the "OSR death squads" can attest... /cue inside joke)

Could we all please unclench our sphincters and stick to the topic on hand in a productive manner?

I am sure all of you are the truest of Scotsmen and 4e Players, so take a bow and carry it outside onto another topic if you must.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887263Which they had for 3e, and for 2e, and for 1e, and for Red Box, ad nauseum. m Edition Wars never really stop, and started the moment someone stopped using the little brown books.  If you don't believe me, watch Gronan go on and on about how he still uses them.

The only thing I truly had issues with in 4e, other than flavour (I have a hard time reconciling 'Daily Attacks' for martial characters that use their muscles/bodies as a 'power source') was the Ranger Class with it's ease of multiple attacks and reaction powers.  (I remember once being a Battlerager fighter, unable to actually get into the battle, so all I did was throw a rock at the bad guys every round, which triggered the Ranger to unleash something like 3? attacks.  And that's on top of the basic 5 he had each round.)

If we could somehow tone it down, that would have been nice.

true i wasent trying to down play the older edition wars but to me the 3.x vs 4e war seemed especially hot compared to what i had heard of the older edition wars

Quote from: Cave Bear;887422Shit taste detected.

dont let him get to you hes jest like that

Quote from: Opaopajr;887548I normally wouldn't care about these flaming exchanges, but Daztur is a stand up guy, and these 4e volleys have been done to death. (As the "OSR death squads" can attest... /cue inside joke)

Could we all please unclench our sphincters and stick to the topic on hand in a productive manner?

I am sure all of you are the truest of Scotsmen and 4e Players, so take a bow and carry it outside onto another topic if you must.

Yeah, should've expected this thread to sink into the gutter. But this is the only forum I've ever seen a civil discussion of Gamergate and Trump so I held out a bit of hope. I guess people here are only chill about everything except RPGs.

Edit: thanks for your excellent breakdown a few pages back. Will hit it point by point when I'm not on my cell while camping in the woods.

As Justin Alexander points out upthread the biggest single thing wrong with 4ed that is bad implementation rather than 4ed having design goals I don't like is how the system rewards people shooting their loads at the start of the fight and the fight just slowly petering out after that.

For 0ed a short bloody beatdown is perfect but for 4ed what you want is the fights building up to a climax with the dailies ENDING a fight rather than opening it. My idea would be tying more conditions to dailies (can only be used if your buddy is down or another one that can only be used if you're out of healing surges) to get the right sort of pacing but my 4ed knowledge isn't close to being strong enough to see how that'd work in practice.

Also 4ed works so much better with fewer harder combats which doesn't make it a bad game but does make it a bad fit for how I usually DM DnD.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887543If you make a claim, back it up with evidence!

Fine.

I claim that Wizards of the Coast is an actual company. It exists, here's the wiki entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_of_the_Coast)..

I claim it printed books for a game, commonly referred to as "Fourth Edition D&D". You can still find these books for sale on E-bay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dungeons-Dragons-4th-Edition-Players-Handbook-Divine-Martial-Arcane-4E-21736-/272187368080?hash=item3f5fa1a290:g:SgwAAOSwPc9WzneS).

I already put it away, because I didn't realize the level of idiocy that would spring up here, but in this book you'll find something called "action points (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Action_point)"

Here's the pronunciation for action points: [ˈakSH(ə)n] [points]

A first level character (by "first level" I'm referring to a newly created character in what is called a "role playing game") generally begins each day with an action point, and gains more during play.

An action point allows an extra action during a combat round (play in 4e is generally done in turns, each turn often referred to as a "combat round).

A player using an action point can get an EXTRA (by this I mean, additional, one more) action.

So, a player can take a standard action, then use (that is, activate) an action point, to take an additional action.

As this occurs at 1st level, all that remains is to show that 1st level occurs before 11th level.

If you inspect a number line (http://www.mathsisfun.com/number-line.html), you'll see 1 lies to the "left" (will you allow me to use the word "left" without a precise definition?) of 10; this is the very definition of "less than".

Crap, I see that the number line I linked to stops at 10.

Let us recall we use a "base 10" numbering system
 (http://math.about.com/od/glossaryofterms/g/Definition-Of-Base-10.htm). By "eleven" I'm referring to 10 + 1.

Shit.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887474It's a pejorative term used to infer pedophilia.

Thank you! I had never heard that term used before Lolitas.

Quote from: Omega;8874851:  The main problem was the designers saw fit to insult you for not wanting to do the total random chargen. That irked people.

I greatly enjoy random chargen, but I don't understand WTF designers don't offer optional rules for chargen to offer the olive branch to those who want more control and those who want more random.

Quote from: Omega;887485But then the whole game was schizophrenic in what it wanted to be.

I agree, even as a fan. There's a strange line with gonzo. Paranoia 1e straddled it without becoming a complete cartoon, but the 4e GW RAW had some strange cartoonish gonzo and significant tone issues.

However, GW has a history of that. The pics in GW 1e of bunnies with guns, Wisconsin badgers and elephants with tiny wings were very silly for what was usually a brutal game.

Quote from: Soylent Green;887489What I dislike more of GW 4e is that the goofiness is a lie. It's just gloss, a veneer. The game itself is still D&D and is all about careful tactics. If you play the game in the goofy spirit in which it is presented you will end up dead very quickly.

Agreed. I found GW combat to be faster and deadlier, so tactics were even more important - which was why I like it. But the cartoon aspects are jarring which is why they are the first stuff I nuke.

Quote from: Daztur;887579I don't like is how the system rewards people shooting their loads at the start of the fight and the fight just slowly petering out after that.

Agreed. This is where 13th Age's Escalation die is a great addition. Players have to choose whether to burn powers early or wait until they can get a good bonus to increase their chance for success.

That might achieve your goal of dailies used to end fights, because it would make sense to wait until you have a +4 bonus (or more) before risking the daily.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887586Agreed. I found GW combat to be faster and deadlier, so tactics were even more important - which was why I like it. But the cartoon aspects are jarring which is why they are the first stuff I nuke.

Does core 4e's combat advance as fast as it does in 4e GW?

I did a quick conversion and comparison and GW characters are hitting the same ACs as a AD&D fighter 10% more often vs the same AC. If the progression had advanced to level 20 then by then the GW character would be hitting 20% more often vs the same AC. They also have alot more HP. 12+Con score+5 per level thereafter. A level 10 GW can have as much HP as a level 20 AD&D fighter.

I never played 4e GW past 5th level so I can't speak for higher level play, but I definitely felt that it had a lower "whiff" factor. Both PCs and monsters seemed to be hitting more often, but they have higher HPs than AD&D and a higher damage output.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397The result was a systemic bias towards combats that shot their load and then... just continued happening for some reason for another hour.

Jesus. I've never had an RPG skirmish combat run longer than twenty minutes in the last 20 years.

Quote from: Doom;887469My goodness, did my memory fail again? I could have swore there was an at-will power that had a 55% chance of blocking all damage.

Oh wait, here it is, funny nobody else could find it:

Iron Defense    Iron Guardian Utility 12

Your skin becomes as hard as iron, allowing you to shrug off even the deadliest blows.
 At-Will + Psionic
 Standard Action     Personal
 Effect: Until the end of your next turn, roll a d20 whenever you take damage. On a 10 or higher, the damage is reduced to 0. Otherwise the damage is halved.  (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Iron_Guardian)

Now toss this in with all the other abilities that shift/displace/ignore damage...

Anyway, here's a discussion of *just* battlemind powers at first level (https://dinodung.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/class-action-battlemind-defense-and-powers-1st-level/), I don't even want to know how many pages it is.

Just to keep track of all this is *nuts*...now put 4 other players around the table. Good luck keeping track:

... how well the battlemind can defend her party mates. In this second article on the new psionic defender I'll take a look at how well she can defend herself.

As mentioned in the prior article, a battlemind  starts out knowing how to use scale armor and a heavy shield. This would give a starting battlemind AC 19.  You could take  Armor Proficiency (Plate) for a single point gain in AC, but that requires Strength and Constitution 15.

For a Con/Str, Con/Wis, or Con/Cha bonus race, using the beginning ability score array of 16, 15, 14, 11, 10, 8 would wind up 18, 16, 15, 11, 10, 8. These are decent level stats if you are willing to forgo a starting Con 20, or Con 18 + Wis or Cha 18 array.

A tertiary Strength based battlemind build is not as unintuitive as you might think. Aside from opening up plate armor use, it helps to ameliorate a semi-defense related deficiency of the battlemind – opportunity attacks.

Unless Strength is boosted or one of the Melee Training feats are chosen, the battlemind is restricted to rather lackluster OAs. With blurred step's limitations outlined in my previous post, there is very little a non-OA optimized battlemind can do to deter enemies from simply walking away unscathed.

Simply put, without a lot of forethought and careful building, the battlemind is not very adept at opportunity attacks.

Sorry about the side trip into OA-land. But the flaw in the build needed to be addressed. Back to self defense!

Hit points are pretty good for a battlemind. With Constitution the primary stat, you know you'll be  tough. At 1st level you get 15 + Constitution, then 6 per level afterward. A typical battlemind with an 18 Con will have 33 hit points, 16 bloodied value, a surge value of 8, and 13 surges per day. If you wanted to burn a feat on Toughness you could be looking at 38 hp, 19 bloodied, 9 surge value, and 13 surges.

There are two encounter powers in the class feature Psionic Study, a battlemind may choose one of them.

Battle resilience is a Wisdom based defensive free action that gives 3 + Wisdom modifier resists all until the end of your next turn. It triggers off an attack hitting or missing you for the first time in an encounter.

Speed of thought is a Charisma based offensive positioning free action which allows you to move 3 + charisma modifier when initiative is rolled for the encounter. This can be used in a surprise round. Obviously it is very effective at getting the battlemind into the fray early. Considering Dexterity is a low priority for most defenders, initiative modifiers are usually low as well. This power will help overcome the slow and lumbering defender stereotype.

However, as this article is (mostly) about the battleminds personal defense, we'll look more closely at battle resilience.

Battle resilience suffers from some of the ambiguity of other battlemind powers. It is a free action with a trigger. A free action takes no time (or very little time) and can be taken on your or another combatant's turn. Thus, strictly speaking, as soon as the attack is made against the battlemind, she can use battle resilience.

The ambiguity of this depends on how your DM rules free actions and where in the resolution of the triggering attack you may use the power and gain the resistance.

Battle resilience is usable ONLY on the first attack against you during an encounter. Thus its usefulness is already severely limited.

If your DM allows free actions at any time, you could wait until you see if the attack hits and trigger it before the damage is dealt. Thus you save yourself 3 + Wis mod initial damage. I feel this is the intent of this power – to absorb some of an opening attack's damage and provide possible defense against further damage until the end of your next turn.

If your DM only allows the power to trigger after the attack is resolved battle resilience becomes somewhat less useful. It can still help soak up further attack damage until the end of your next turn, but that initial hit still gets through fully. And it is quite possible no other damaging attacks are sent your way before the power ends.

To muddle things even more, your DM's ruling on what constitutes an attack can affect whether you avoid any damage from the initial attack. Let's say you have a Wis mod of +4 giving you a resistance 7 all. Then a power or ability with multiple to hit and damage rolls are used against you –  claw/claw/bite for 7/12/14 damage. If your DM rules an attack is a single d20 roll, you would take 0/5/7  damage. If your DM rules all d20 rolls included in a power are considered one attack, then you would take 0/12/14 damage. A difference of 12 damage vs. 26 is significant.

You may want to discuss with your DM what he considers an attack.

The battlemind's four current at-will standard attack powers each have a defensive aspect to them, actually giving the defender some minimal (mostly) single target controller ability, too. All of them are Constitution vs. AC and does 1[W] + Constitution modifier damage on a hit, unaugmented.

Demon dance does psychic damage opposed to the rest of the level 1 at-wills' untyped damage.  It also imposes a -5 penalty to opportunity attack rolls until the end of your next turn. Positioning just got a little less hazardous for you and your allies with an effective +5 to your AC.

Augment 1 is more situational by removing the target's threatening reach. there are not too many baddies out there with it, but when you do run into one, this could be useful.

Augment 2 does more damage (2[W] + Con mod) and the target cannot make opportunity attacks until the end of your next turn. More easy positioning when needed.

Iron fist grants the battlemind resist all equal to the battlemind's Wisdom modifier. Less damage taken equal more health retained and more hits able to be withstood. If you have someone in the group who offers THP, paired with resist all you could be taking little to no damage from most attacks. Resist all is also great against ongoing damage. Just remember, damage resistance does not stack; only the higher damage resistance is effective. So if you have someone in the group who offers damage resistance, this ability is less useful.

Augment 1 changes the resist to fire resist 5 + Wisdom modifier. More situational, but useful.

Augment 2 just does more damage,  2[W] + constitution modifier.

Bull's strength pushes the target 1 square. This is okay for some positioning options, but it is limited. A slide would have been better. Pushing your target away is contrary to a defender's role. you really want those suckers focused on you, and within weapon range. If you push the enemy away, it is like giving it a free shift back from you. This has minor use, but overall is counter-productive. (Yes, I realize you do not have to push the target, but then you are making a glorified basic attack.)

Augment 1 increases your reach by 1 for this attack. Now it's getting more useful. In tight quarters and something is harrying your squishies? No problem, augment bull's strength with a power point, reach right past the baddies surrounding you, and shove the annoying bugger right out your squishy's grill!

Augment 2 makes this attack a blast 3. It is against all creatures, not just enemies, so you need to take some care your allies are not in the way. This is an effective minion clearer as well as an Oh Sh!t attack. It still pushes any target hit 1 square. If your group lacks good minion control or other AoE damage, this is practical, if limited in use by available power points.

Twisted Eye gives the target a penalty to attack rolls equal to the number of your allies adjacent to it on hit. The penalty lasts until the end of your next turn. Two factors play into this power: how many mêlée allies you have and how willing they are to position themselves properly for this to be effective. Melee light partys will see less effect from this than those with at least 3+ mêlée, or at least ranged willing to move into harm's way. This becomes very effective in heavier mêlée groups against single targets, especially élite and solo targets.

Augment 1 allows this at-will to be used in place of a basic mêlée attack. I wish this were part of the base power and did not cost a power point. But, in later levels, with more than the initial 2 power points to spend, this might become more useful.

Augment 2 also blinds the target until the end of your next turn. This is actually pretty great. The target is now granting combat advantage, everyone has total concealment from it, and it cannot flank.

Whirling defense marks the target until the end of your next turn. Wow! You could conceivably have THREE (!!!) marked targets at once with continued use (and hits) of this power (and augmenting battlemind's demand to mark two others). Useless against minions as a hit will pretty much explode them.

Augment 1 boost your mind spike damage by your Charisma modifier if you use it before the end of your next turn. Gambling one power point a marked target adjacent to you will attack someone besides you is risky. It depends on how the DM plays the marked creatures. If he often ignores marks to attack others, then it might be worthwhile.

Augment 2 turns this into a close burst 1. Another nice minion sweeper or a way to get a group of enemies focused on you for a round. The biggest drawback of this is mind spike is an immediate reaction, so even if you are able to punish one mark ignoring bugger, the others can pretty much do so with impunity –  aside from the -2 penalty to their attack rolls.

Which two would I take at first level, you ask?

Demon dance and twisted eye have some nice synergy. You can set your allies up to position themselves with less hazard adjacent to your main target, then impose a hefty attack roll penalty on it. I also like the blinding aspect of twisted eye's augment 2. But this combo really needs at least 3 mêlée in the party to be effective.

I would probably take iron fist for the resist all (especially if paired with a THP tossing leader), twisted eye for the possible attack roll penalty and to blind a target to help set up a nova, or whirling defense for the added mark and possible minion sweeper use.

The level 1 daily disciplines also have some defensive uses to them, though I will not go into as deep of detail as i did with the at-wills. (Go buy the PHB3, you mooching buggers!)

Allies to enemies – psychic damage, and a forced mêlée basic attack? This does not sound as bad as it might. It all depends on how much damage the BBEG or his henchmen are capable of doing with that basic mêlée attack. Thus it is a bit situational. Not a horrible choice, though.

Aspect of elevated harmony – self-healing and the ability to gain some THP off augmented at-wills. Nice if the party lacks sufficient healing. Even better when you start getting more than 2 power points. Otherwise pass.

Psionic anchor – teleport the target to a square next to me when it ends its turn? Yo-yo sticky. The target can still move away and attack others, this just makes it annoying to do so. If you use it on a non-marked target it increases in value.

Steel unity strike – Why does this make me think of Jimmy Hoffa? This does more damage than the other three level 1 dailies and you go into a stance. A very special stance which allows you to make a 2[W] + Con mod damage Constitution vs AC attack against any marked adjacent enemy that moves without shifting. Can you say non-gimped opportunity attack? A decent choice if you want better OA's on your marked baddie and do not have the Strength tertiary build....

Seriously, this is overboard.

Ok, all of that right there? Thats why I'll never play 4th edition. Not whats actually said, I got maybe two paragraphs in before my eyes glazed over and I started daydreaming about unicorns fighting cheetahs.

Seriously, I just want to roleplay. Roll some dice when there's an element of chance, and have a blast with friends while acting out characters who are nothing like ourselves in a fantasy world.

Quote from: TristramEvans;887615Ok, all of that right there? Thats why I'll never play 4th edition. Not whats actually said, I got maybe two paragraphs in before my eyes glazed over and I started daydreaming about unicorns fighting cheetahs.

I think the unicorns will win, especially the curvaceous ones from Africa and India. :p

(Yeah, that level of class analysis is a bit esoteric, isn't it?)

Quote from: TristramEvans;887610Jesus. I've never had an RPG skirmish combat run longer than twenty minutes in the last 20 years.

It made me want to murder my own face. My biggest problem with D&D4 was undoubtedly the pointlessly dissociated mechanics, but it was the bloated and poorly designed combat system that completely killed it for me.

Quote from: Doom;887424Really not worth my time to look it up...but flipping through the rules a bit, I see the years have shaded my memory a bit. It's not saving throws, it's effects, hence my reference to "all those status effects." So, not saves, mea culpa, but effects.

Oh yeah. Those are all over the map. And they get even worse when you add in the purely situational ones. (Like you're currently getting +3 to hit somebody, but it'll be +4 if an ally moves one step closer to you.)

Quote from: Batman;887507Also, and this is what I was talking about earlier, why didn't anyone ever change the monsters' HP mid-combat?

If I had been captured by terrorists and forced to run 4E because otherwise they would murder my mother, I'd probably start doing stuff like that, too. I just found it easier to give up on the badly broken game and go play something else.

QuoteMost combats in 4e aren't throw-a-way ones. They're not intended to be. You can do it, sure with minions, but if the combat isn't going to be significant or important, why are you doing it? Or if you like more sand-boxy style campaigns where there's a possible fight around every bend in the road, use minions for the most part with LOTs of them and then occasionally throw in a big-bad for more effect. One of the things I hated in v3.5 were combats that took 10 mintues and our 6th level characters got like 25 XP for killing some rats or Kobolds. At that point, getting out dice and fighting really isn't even worth the break in role-play for some measily XP and copper coins.

4th Edition was made for players like you: It caters to a very, very narrow range of experiences (which are apparently the only experiences you're interested in) and it benefits greatly from GMs who are willing to just ignore the rulebook whenever the game's shitty design is causing a problem.

QuoteMy 4e combats never took longer than an hour.

Well... yes. You just got done saying that you didn't use the actual rules and would modify them on the fly specifically to prevent that from happening, so that's unsurprising.

We're literally in a thread about fixing 4E's problems. Your endless litany of, "THE PROBLEMS DON'T EXIST BECAUSE THE GM CAN JUST IGNORE ALL OF THEM!" is the worst kind of rule zero fallacy.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887586Agreed. This is where 13th Age's Escalation die is a great addition. Players have to choose whether to burn powers early or wait until they can get a good bonus to increase their chance for success.

That might achieve your goal of dailies used to end fights, because it would make sense to wait until you have a +4 bonus (or more) before risking the daily.

This is mostly a random thought and probably beyond the scope of what this thread is trying to accomplish, but I wonder what kind of result you'd get if you ditched the "daily" concept and instead made it so that you needed to set up more powerful abilities before you could use them.

For example, to cast a fireball you might need to expend three Move actions. (So the wizard could stand there slinging magic missile cantrips, but if they can stay in one place long enough -- BOOM!) Or if you wanted to perform some awesome martial arts move, you might have to (a) hit them twice and (b) flank them. Or maybe you need to perform a specific sequence of lesser moves before pulling off the "big combo finisher".

Quote from: Spinachcat;887607I never played 4e GW past 5th level so I can't speak for higher level play, but I definitely felt that it had a lower "whiff" factor. Both PCs and monsters seemed to be hitting more often, but they have higher HPs than AD&D and a higher damage output.

To hits are easier and if my calculations are right then the 4e GW characters are averaging at level 10 about as much HP as a level 20 AD&D fighter. Damage output is the iffy part. The base weapons do a bit more damage. But armour is a little weaker I think. Overall though the massive HP a 4e GW character has is a big advantage.

Do the core 4e characters have such absurd HP and to hit jumps too?

Quote from: TristramEvans;887615I got maybe two paragraphs in before my eyes glazed over and I started daydreaming about unicorns fighting cheetahs.

Who won?

...and were they undead unicorns invading Dundee?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlhQZFTvAn4

Quote from: TristramEvans;887610Jesus. I've never had an RPG skirmish combat run longer than twenty minutes in the last 20 years.

Wow! My 0e fights almost always take longer than that! A short fight for me is usually at least 15 minutes. And I use morale rules.

Maybe my players and I are slow. I do engage in lots of description and roleplay in combat.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887635I wonder what kind of result you'd get if you ditched the "daily" concept and instead made it so that you needed to set up more powerful abilities before you could use them.

That's an interesting idea.

I wonder how it could be implemented open enough so different ways could achieve the same goal so the path to the "daily" wasn't always the same.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887634If I had been captured by terrorists and forced to run 4E because otherwise they would murder my mother, I'd probably start doing stuff like that, too. I just found it easier to give up on the badly broken game and go play something else.

Gee, hyperbolic much? Sort of difficult to have any sort of meaningful discussion with vitriol like this.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;8876344th Edition was made for players like you: It caters to a very, very narrow range of experiences (which are apparently the only experiences you're interested in) and it benefits greatly from GMs who are willing to just ignore the rulebook whenever the game's shitty design is causing a problem.

Gotta say, I'm confused. You don't really believe that do you? Especially because I'm a pretty vocal van of both 5e and 3.5 and Pathfinder, which apparently, offers a lot more range in terms of experiences. Suffice to say that I enjoy 4e in ways it accomplishes certain aspects of RPGs. As for ignoring the book, yea I took the advise in the DMG and changed things to make the game better for me and our group. You know, shit people have been doing in almost EVERY RPG since the dawn of fucking time. Ignoring rules that the group or DM doesn't like is something of an expectation in systems like AD&D 2e. Shit the vast majority of people I know don't use or modify HALF the damn rules in that game: from no XP penalty, no class racial restrictions to throwing out alignment altogether. But I guess that's OK, for some reason because it's not 4e.  

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887634Well... yes. You just got done saying that you didn't use the actual rules and would modify them on the fly specifically to prevent that from happening, so that's unsurprising.

We're literally in a thread about fixing 4E's problems. Your endless litany of, "THE PROBLEMS DON'T EXIST BECAUSE THE GM CAN JUST IGNORE ALL OF THEM!" is the worst kind of rule zero fallacy.

Yea I never said they didn't exist, considering the large amount of people who had problems with them. I just don't know why people didn't change the rules to make it better, you know like how people change rules in every other system to make it better? You know, like how the fucking DMG says specifically to alter the game so that you have a more enjoyable experience. And yes, I'm going to mention it because that was a "Fix" we implemented in our games to make them better.

As for not following the rules, I'd say we followed roughly 90% of them. Depending on the style of game we wanted to use, I'd adjust the amount of Surges each class received. We also threw out the limitation on using Daily items based on Milestones. If a player wanted to re-use a Encounter or Daily spell, I'd let them re-use it in lieu of a higher level one. If a Fighter wanted Bow Powers, I'd make them fucking Bow Powers. I also let them change out spells/Exploits on a daily basis based on what they wanted to do. If, for example, a Fighter found a magical two-handed Axe I'd allow him to practice with the weapon and change out his Exploits to accommodate his weapon-selection. Why, you ask? Because the game is about being fun and if players are engaged and having fun, then I'm doing something right. Besides this isn't rocket science where the smallest change will end up blowing up in your face.

Quote from: Doom;887584Fine.

I claim that Wizards of the Coast is an actual company. It exists, here's the wiki entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_of_the_Coast)..

I claim it printed books for a game, commonly referred to as "Fourth Edition D&D". You can still find these books for sale on E-bay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dungeons-Dragons-4th-Edition-Players-Handbook-Divine-Martial-Arcane-4E-21736-/272187368080?hash=item3f5fa1a290:g:SgwAAOSwPc9WzneS).

I already put it away, because I didn't realize the level of idiocy that would spring up here, but in this book you'll find something called "action points (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Action_point)"

Here's the pronunciation for action points: [ˈakSH(ə)n] [points]

A first level character (by "first level" I'm referring to a newly created character in what is called a "role playing game") generally begins each day with an action point, and gains more during play.

An action point allows an extra action during a combat round (play in 4e is generally done in turns, each turn often referred to as a "combat round).

A player using an action point can get an EXTRA (by this I mean, additional, one more) action.

So, a player can take a standard action, then use (that is, activate) an action point, to take an additional action.

As this occurs at 1st level, all that remains is to show that 1st level occurs before 11th level.

If you inspect a number line (http://www.mathsisfun.com/number-line.html), you'll see 1 lies to the "left" (will you allow me to use the word "left" without a precise definition?) of 10; this is the very definition of "less than".

Crap, I see that the number line I linked to stops at 10.

Let us recall we use a "base 10" numbering system
 (http://math.about.com/od/glossaryofterms/g/Definition-Of-Base-10.htm). By "eleven" I'm referring to 10 + 1.

Shit.

Your proof is action points?

Action points?

This action point?  to gain an additional standard action once per encounter. A character starts with one action point. To regain an action point a character must reach a milestone or take an extended rest.

Really?

get the fuck outta here.

Quote from: daniel_ream;887095Your proposed system sounds a lot like Cortex+ Heroic, actually.  And there's a Fantasy hack of it available.

Don't know this one...

Quote from: Cave Bear;887207I would definitely not try to make 4E "more D&D" -like. 4E is very much its own thing. Just embrace what 4E is and focus on making it the best possible game it can be.

I would not use estar's class breakdown, for instance. That's a good setup for a OSR-style game, but it does not play to 4E's strengths.

I'd strongly agree with that, a lot of the most annoying things about 4ed were bits of 3ed that was carried over that didn't really fit.

Aaak, gotta run now. Will reply to more stuff in a bit.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887640Who won?

...and were they undead unicorns invading Dundee?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlhQZFTvAn4

Well that's the best thing ever this week.

Keeping with Daztur's "Mythic Heroes" 4e Hack...

Things I Would Keep:

- Minions (I know I said I hate it - and I still do - but it does mythic heroics tier separation so well).
- Bloodied (ditto above, but it's such a solid narrative trigger condition).
- Shortened (Professional Level) Skills List.
- A form of Level progression for Saves, akin to 1/2 lvl , but less...
- Class bonuses to Saves.
- Race bonuses to Saves and Skills.
- Marking (as much as I hated 4e's stacking effects, this was good as it couldn't stack).

Things I Would Change:

- Cascading Mod Dependency (it shouldn't affect everything - AC, Saves, Skills, Surges, Initiative, Attacks, AEDU equations...).
- Lessen Mod Progression (you're already an epic hero; let Minions rules highlight that tier difference. Could easily halve or quarter Abil Mod progression).
- Drop 1/2 lvl as the universal level progression modifier. (Instead use Class Mods as the Save progression, and ideally outpace the lowered Abil Mods. Drop entirely from Skills, Attacks, AC, Init...)
- Strip out almost all Skill Mods, (as Pro Skills they should be rolled sparingly, otherwise just use Ability roll-under directly, with Race, Train, & Misc Mods as rare - and mostly cosmetic - sprinkles atop).
- Open Chargen Out-of-Class Skills but cost 1 pt more. Make the majority of the Skills Generic Non-Class.
- Drop current Initiative entirely. (Create a table of contextual group or individual modifiers if you must, but best not. Fog of War is infinitely better here in practice; waaay more drama integral to it.)
- AEDU is just gone. (Exception-based design is shooting for CCG heartbreak.)
- 3e Action Legacies are also just gone. (5e did Attacks, Reactions, Enviro Interact, and Movement right. Quick, dynamic, mythic, harder to metagame.)
- Change Healing Surges & Action Points into Hero Points. Hero Points are Level & Tier, so every equivalent mythic hero gets the same point pool.
- Add an equivalent to "Fighter Attacks vs. <1HD Equal to Class Level." Perhaps "Attacks vs. Minions Equal to Class Level"?
-------------------------------

Continuing with my work from before, now with the Wizard. I'll focus on a school because I wonder how this could work. Maybe generic "class trigger responses" can be offered, but examples of "archetype trigger responses" can lead to creative variation.

Abjuration Wizard

Combat

1. Bloodied. Thunderous Arcane Wave (a.k.a. Big Thunderwave).
2. Downed Ally/Self. Lasting Shield (a.k.a. multi-round Shield spell).
3. Last Stand. Sealing Sigil (lasting protective circle locking out a space).

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Unseen "Fixer" (a.k.a. Unseen Servant covers up errors).
2. Exposed. Abjurer's Egress (a.k.a. oodles of Arcane Lock & Knock).
3. Cornered. Vibrating Aura (a.k.a. Dmg Over Time Aura & Anti-Magic Shell).

Social

1. Faux Pas. Warding Against the Evil Eye (blame misstep on unseen malice).
2. Gross Breach. Heaven Forfend! (prompt apology; proffered protection token).
3. Grave Insult. Debt of Protection (negotiation of discounted or gratis services).
-----------------------

Later I'll scribble up a new pared down 4e character, with Hero Points and Class Triggers included.

New Ability Mod Progression
1-4 = -2
5-8 = -1
9-12 = 0
13-16 = +1
17-20 = +2

Tiers
Progresses by each five levels.

Tier 1 = Lvls 1-5
Tier 2 = Lvls 6-10
Tier 3 = Lvlvs 11-15
etc.

Core 4 Classes Save Progression
Equation is 10+ Abil Mod+ Class Mod+ Race Mod+ Misc.

Initial mod values at 1st lvl below. From then on every odd level gains in this sequence: 3rd lvl - Primary +1, 5th lvl - Secondary +1, 7th lvl - +1 to all three saves, repeat pattern from beginning sequence.
(e.g. 9th lvl - Primary +1, 11th lvl - Secondary +1, 13th lvl - +1 to all three...)

Cleric
Prime - Will +1.  Secondary - Fort +0.  Tertiary - Refl -1.

Fighter
Prime - Fort +1.  Secondary - Refl +0.  Tertiary - Will -1.

Rogue
Prime - Refl +1. Secondary - Fort +0. Tertiary - Will -1.

Wizard
Prime - Will +1.  Secondary - Refl +0.  Tertiary - Fort -1.

Skills
Equation is Ability Score (not mod)+ Race Mod+ Extra Training+ Misc. Roll under value as percentile. Roll sparingly, especially for known Skills, as they are a professional level of knowledge. Hero Points can be spent in lieu of professional skill knowledge, but should grant enough use (and possible otherworldly intervention!) so as to seem "mythic."

Everyone starts with 5 pts for Starting Skills.
General Skills are open to all, they do not cost extra.
Class Specialties are harder to start with outside of class, costing 1 more point at chargen.

Every Tier you gain one new point for Professional Level Skill knowledge. This point may be used as Extra Training in a known Skill for +2 to that Skill.

General Skills
Bluff (CHA)
Diplomacy (CHA)
Heal (WIS)
History (INT)
Insight (WIS)
Intimidate (CHA)
Nature (WIS)
Perception (WIS)
Stealth (DEX)

Class Specialties

Cleric - Religion & Endurance
Fighter - Acrobatics & Athletics
Rogue - Streetwise & Thievery
Wizard - Arcana & Dungeoneering

Hero Points

Hero Points are equal to PC's Class level plus their Tier level. e.g. Eleventh level PC is Tier 3, thus has fourteen hero points (11+3=14).

Tier-based Hero Points refresh wholly each day after an 8 hour rest (Long Rest).

Class Level-based Hero Points refresh one point per day while residing among peaceful civilization, spreading one's stories of glory and reveling in one's success (even sizeable nomadic camps count).

Hero Points are spent to ameliorate truly bad turns in the hero's journey. As such, certain failure or misfortune conditions apply before usable. Ideally this is a strategic, as well as tactical, reservoir to smooth out the Hero's Glorious Saga.

Minions

Minions take as many hits equal to their Tier to go down. So a Tier 3 (lvls 11-15) Minion takes three hits to K.O.

Any minions at or below your PC tier allows your PC to take as many attacks equal to their level, only for attacking such minions.

e.g. A Tier 3 PC, 11th lvl, faces off against: a King of Minotaurs, two Tier 3 minions (Maze Minotaurs), five Tier 2 minions (WereBulls), and six Tier 1 minions (frenzied cows). The thirteen minions take twenty-two hits total to wipe them all out (2x Tier 3 = 6, 5x Tier 2 = 10, 6x Tier 1 = 6. Total = 22). Since all minions are at or below the PC's tier level, the PC gets 11 minion-only attacks a turn, which can make short work of them yet.

......................

Next, a simplified 4e PC using the above guidelines, as promised.

Had a look at a friends copy of the PHB and Jesus Wept people werent joking about all the screwball terms and overwrought rules in this?!? Shudder to think what the DMG is like.

No wonder people were lauding the GW version as what a starter for 4e D&D should have been. yeesh.

Great art though.

Some at a glance observations.
Thats an absurd amount of starting HP. Especially when combined with the plethora of healing surges. Are the low level monsters that lethal? Or are the PCs supposed to be that sturdy out the gate? And yeebus thats alot of perks and powers to track.

Weird way to do AC. Works. But again seems to boost the PCs defense way up?

Crazy thing is, even at a glance through it seems to be a fairly well thought out and intigrated system. Can see why some would gravitate to it.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887634If I had been captured by terrorists and forced to run 4E because otherwise they would murder my mother, I'd probably start doing stuff like that, too. I just found it easier to give up on the badly broken game and go play something else.

Quote from: Batman;887659Gee, hyperbolic much? Sort of difficult to have any sort of meaningful discussion with vitriol like this.

Justin's just joking.  We all know any mother would rather die then live with the dishonor of their son running 4e.

Quote from: Omega;887853Some at a glance observations.
Thats an absurd amount of starting HP. Especially when combined with the plethora of healing surges. Are the low level monsters that lethal? Or are the PCs supposed to be that sturdy out the gate?

A Goblin Warrior (lv. 1 skirmisher) deals 1d8+2 with spears and 1d6+2 with javelins. If it moves at least 4 squares from it's starting position, it deals an additional d6 on it's ranged attacks. A goblin blackblade (lv. 1 lurker), deals 1d6+2 with it's short sword and an additional 1d6 against targets it has advantage against. With a 1st level Fighter having between 28-30 HP, the idea is that their amount of HP should last them for a couple of encounters barring a lot of critical hits on their part. This is going off the MM1 manual, which, admittedly, has poor math. Still, healing mid-combat, is the limiting factor because you can only self-heal 1/encounter and it takes a Standard Action too. Leaders like the Cleric and Warlord, can only mid-combat heal 2/encounter barring any use of other Daily spells or exploits. I have had, on many occasions, the part almost fall to TPKs because the Leader wasn't in a good position to heal or used up their heals and players gambled on making another attack vs. using their Second Wind.

Taking the better supplement, Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale a Goblin Cuttthroat (lv. 1 skirmisher) deals 1d6+5 (or 2d6+5 if it has combat advantage) and their ranged attacks with a dagger deal 1d4+5. So lower die but higher automatic damage making them more lethal. When playing 4e I usually just reference Monster Vault rather than the Monster Manual 1 or 2. MM 3 is also a pretty good book with better monsters.

Quote from: Omega;887853And yeebus thats alot of perks and powers to track.

I dunno, 2 at-will, 1 encounter (or 2, depending on race), and 1 daily plus a few features isn't all that much when you're comparing it to 3rd edition by say....3rd level, especially with many of the later classes. And feats are almost always just bonues or buffs compared to mini-class feaures of 3rd edition. Just for comparison take the Duskblade (v3.5, PH2) that has X-amount of cantrips, x-amount of spell per day, gets feats and additional class features. Or a 1st level Human wizard with 3 feats, an animal familiar, 1 + Int. Mod spells per day plus cantrips, of which you're pretty much expected to know.

Quote from: Omega;887853Weird way to do AC. Works. But again seems to boost the PCs defense way up?

AC is done the same way as in 3rd you just don't add Dex to heavy armor. Chainmail + shield in 4e is 18 (Base 10 + 6 + 2) and Chainmail in 3e is 17 (Base 10 + 5 + 2). Cool thing about shields in 4e (and 5e I believe) is that they help your Reflex defense, which is pretty nice. A wizard with Int 18 is going to have an AC of 14 (base 10 + Int. mod of 4) and that Goblin Cutthroat has an attack modifier of +6, so he'll be hitting the wizard 60% of the time or more with advantage.

Quote from: Omega;887853Crazy thing is, even at a glance through it seems to be a fairly well thought out and intigrated system. Can see why some would gravitate to it.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough and changed far too much for people to really get on board. The layout, the lack of charts, the forcing of things like Stat Arrays for generating ability scores instead of rolling (although they're both detailed in the PHB) and removing 5 very interesting classes (Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk, and Sorcerer) put off a LOT of people. Not to mention all the stuff leading up to 4e's release that didn't help things at all.

Quote from: Sommerjon;887788Your proof is action points?

Action points?

This action point?  to gain an additional standard action once per encounter. A character starts with one action point. To regain an action point a character must reach a milestone or take an extended rest.

Really?

get the fuck outta here.

Holy shit, you don't know about action points? Fair enough.

A level 1 warlord has Commander's Strike...again, the Fightbrain is getting an extra attack this way. Any half-elf in the party could have this as well.

We're at level 1, and already have 3 different ways the Battlemind can attack while also being incredibly resistant to damage. Seeing as a "typical" fight in 4e takes 4 rounds, we've got 3 rounds covered with different abilities without even getting to higher level abilities.

Do you even know what a minor action is in 4e?

And this isn't even addressing marking (bit of a big deal with the Fightbrain) and opportunity attacks. A quick example, not that it will do any good:

The second "punishment" a battlemind can use on a marked enemy is mind spike, an at-will immediate reaction. A marked, adjacent enemy that deals damage to an ally with an attack which does not target the battlemind takes force and psychic damage equal to the damage it hit your pal with. So, if Zorbo the Angry Goblin Blackblade crits your combat granting ally for 14 damage and you have him marked and next to you, Zorbo will find himself in a world of hurt when he takes 14 damage.

So, start the round, use the action point, mark 3 guys, become mostly invulnerable to damage...and still become the center of attention and/or deal damage to foes. I'd go into the other Battlemind abilities that keep him close to foes so that this goes on forever, but I suspect it would be pointless.

Enough schooling people that have never even played the game, we're done here. Most likely you won't understand what I've said above any more than anything else, and continue to just spout obscenities...no need for me to feed the troll any further.

I'm leaving equations in because I apparently forgot a lot of 4e equations. I had to bust out my old character sheets and check the 4e Wikia. For the most part the equations have small alterations.

First, the ugly behind the scenes character sheet

Garreth, the Extortionist (Asshole of the Sinking Marsh Slums)
7th class lvl, 2nd tier.

ABILITIES
Ability Stat Array: 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10. Choose in-order.
Human Ability Race Bonus: +2 on any one ability. Choose CHA.
4th lvl Ability Increase: +1 on two separate abilities. Choose STR & CHA.

STR: 17 (+2). CON: 14 (+1). DEX: 13 (+1). INT: 12 (0). WIS: 11 (0). CHA: 13 (+1)

HIT POINTS
Fighter = 15+CON Score+(6 per add'l lvl).

15+14+(6*6) = 29+36 = 65 HP

Hero Points
Class Lvl + Tier Lvl = Hero Points Pool.

7 class lvls + 2 tier lvls = 9 Hero Points.
Tier Hero Points = 2.

Armor Class
Abil+Armor+Shield+Misc+Misc = AC.
No need to bloat as many enemies should be shuffled to minion status after surpassing their tier.

10 + Chain Mail (6) + Hvy Shield (2) = AC 18

Saves
10+Abil+Class+Race+Misc (+Shield for Refl)
Highest mod of each STR/CON, DEX/INT, WIS/CHA pair.
Fighter Class is Fort +1, Refl +0, Will -1. Then follow sequence prescribed above.
Human Race is +1 for each save.

Fort = 10 +2 (Abil) +1 (Class 1st lvl) +1 (Class 3rd lvl) +1 (Class 7th lvl) +1 (Race) = 16.
Refl = 10 +1 (Abil) +0 (Class 1st lvl) +1 (Class 5th lvl) +1 (Class 7th lvl) +1 (Race) +2 (Hvy Shield) = 14, 16 with Hvy Shield.
Will = 10 +1 (Abil) -1 (Class 1st lvl) +1 (Class 7th lvl) +1 (Race) = 12.

Skills
Five starting professional skill points, one add'l per tier.

7th lvl = 6 professional skills.

Athletics (STR), in-class
Acrobatics (DEX), in-class
Intimidate (CHA), generic
Stealth (DEX), generic
Streetwise (CHA), out-of-class +1 skill pt

Attacks
Same as 4e: 1/2 lvl +str/dex/cha mod +prof +race +enh +item = To Hit.

3 + 2/1/1 +3 (2 for ranged) +0 race +0 enh +0 item = 8/7/7 (7/6/6 ranged).

Triggers
(from previous post)
-----------------------------------

Now the cleaned up, very easy-to-use character sheet

Garreth, the Extortionist (Asshole of the Sinking Marsh Slums)
7th level, 2nd tier.

Bio
Violently possessive overlord of his slum domain. Shakes down locals, but avenges his community against opportunistic intruders. Known to harbor grudges and go to great lengths for revenge.

ABILITIES

STR: 17 (+2). CON: 14 (+1). DEX: 13 (+1). INT: 12 (0). WIS: 11 (0). CHA: 13 (+1)

HIT POINTS

65 HP

Hero Points

Hero Points = 9.
Tier Hero Points = 2.

Armor Class

Chain Mail + Hvy Shield
AC 16, 18 with shield

Saves

Fort = 16.
Refl = 14, 16 with Hvy Shield.
Will = 12.

Skills

17 Athletics (STR)
13 Acrobatics (DEX)
13 Intimidate (CHA)
13 Stealth (DEX)
13 Streetwise (CHA)

Attacks

STR/DEX/CHA to-hit = 8/7/7 (7/6/6 ranged).

Hero Point Triggers

Combat

1. Bloodied. Second Wind.
2. Downed Ally/Self. Vengeance.
3. Last Stand. Whirlwind of Death.

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Olympian Athletics.
2. Exposed. Olympian Endurance.
3. Cornered. In the Zone.

Social

1. Faux Pas. Forgiveable Brute.
2. Gross Breach. Minor Debt of Honor/Gentleman's Duel.
3. Grave Insult. Geas.


Daztur, how is this? Is it closer to your mythic heroics ideal, a la Beowulf or Gilgamesh?

Quote from: Cave Bear;887207I would definitely not try to make 4E "more D&D" -like. 4E is very much its own thing. Just embrace what 4E is and focus on making it the best possible game it can be.

I would not use estar's class breakdown, for instance. That's a good setup for a OSR-style game, but it does not play to 4E's strengths.

Yup, the main things that gummed up the works with 4ed were things carried over from 3ed that weren't TSR D&D (skills, feats, etc.).

Quote from: jeff37923;887229Don't use it for D&D, use it for sports inspired fantasy games like Blood Bowl.

Otherwise, fix it by setting the books on fire.

Yup, 4ed isn't much good for traditional D&D but it really works for other things. Liked the kaiju game I played where I got to use a gummi worm as a mini for my reskinned Tremors worm/Shai Hulud PC that got to eat giant robots.

Quote from: cranebump;887243Every time 4E comes up

A) someone mentions their negative experiences with it, followed by

B) someone hops on to tell them they played it wrong.


Every. Fucking. Time.

Well it's true that if you play 4ed wrong it won't be much fun and if you play it right it will, the problem was:
-Playing 4ed in a traditional D&D way is wrong.
-Keep on the Shadowfell did a shit job of teaching people how to play 4ed in a fun way.

So how were people supposed to know how to play 4ed in a fun way?

Quote from: Batman;887313In my experiences 4e's problems were far more "user" based than the system of the game. For some unknown reason people stuck religiously to the RAW of the game and were quite fearful of any departure from the rules. This led to such dumb situations such as:

Agreed. Although it seems like the game was set up with this kind of strict adherence to the RAW assumed. For example the ease of reskinning stuff in 4ed is mostly because of the fact that the "skin" that you put on various mechanical effects doesn't really matter.

Quote from: Daztur;887922Well it's true that if you play 4ed wrong it won't be much fun and if you play it right it will, the problem was:
-Playing 4ed in a traditional D&D way is wrong.
-Keep on the Shadowfell did a shit job of teaching people how to play 4ed in a fun way.

Well, that definitely identifies the problem.:-)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397(2) The length of combats in OD&D and D&D3 were generally comparable. However, when measured across all combats OD&D averaged slightly less time per encounter because OD&D has more spells that instantly end an encounter (compared OD&D's sleep spell to D&D3's, for example). (This was somewhat counteracted at my table because ubiquitous hirelings generally increased the average number of combatants in OD&D compared to D&D3.)

Did you use side-based initiative? That was one of the main things that sped up combat for me in 0ed. At least for me a lot of the combat drag in 3ed comes in more at higher levels when people are juggling a lot of modifiers, 3d runs pretty fast for me at lower levels.

And yeah, it's really important to note that you can have an easy encounter in the older editions (as long as you fix 3ed crafting rules so you don't have fistfuls of CLW wands) since the PCs can still lose a few HPs that'll matter later in the day while that doesn't really work in 4ed, 4ed combats should be balls to the wall or not happen at all.

It matters a lot less if a 4ed fight gets reaaaaaally dragged out if you're only having one fight per session. Of course that means chucking out traditional D&D dungeon crawling completely.

Quote from: Opaopajr;887423First, I didn't like this about 4e:

Mostly on the same page here.

Sorry for so long in responding...

...

Nope, still don't give a shit about 4ed warmind powers...

Quote from: cranebump;887923Well, that definitely identifies the problem.:-)

Indeed. If you're playing 2ed and you drop it and start playing 3ed in exactly the same way and with players using exactly the same tactics it'll work fine (hell, it'll work BETTER than when players figure out how 3ed works and start poking at all of the holes in the system), or at least work fine until you've played for a few months and start getting to higher levels.

If you're played 3ed and you drop it and start playing 4ed in exactly the same way and with players using exactly the same tactics it'll be an utter disaster.

This explains why 4ed was a financial flop. Doesn't mean it can be fun but you have to, well, not use it for D&D for it to be fun. So, yeah pretty damn stupid of WotC.

Quote from: Opaopajr;887440Y'know, this is definitely not my default style of play. BUT!, considering how high D&D 4e goes, 30+ lvls and like 5+ tiers (IIRC), it is a surprisingly robust chassis for such a style of play. This might actually be the best way to pitch the game so as to bring everyone's assumptions onto the same page.

Other games can do the low level grunt or street level crack team, but few could hit the epic tiers without collapse. As much as I hate the scaling, and think bounded accuracy should be returned, this might be one instance where 4e is better. "Wanna start as a mythic hero and scrape demigod status?" is a solid pitch to narrow the scope of play and manage player expectations.

Still not something I am interested in playing. But it would have warned me off of the table earlier, to the benefit of all involved.

Yup, if you reskin things a bit even 1st level in 4ed FEELS like demigods clashing and just feels wrong for representing a few shlubs trying to get a few coins from some goblins.

QuoteI completely agree. If you're going to switch into full Tactics Skirmish mode, do so and drop the legacy material. Less 3e modifier, feats, PrCs, and tactics cruft the better. There's little to salvage from there that won't get in the way of a Good Saga.

Yeah for as much as people complain about 4ed changing too much, a lot of its biggest problems come from not jettisoning 3edisms wholesale.

QuoteThis turns Hero Points into "that second bar below Hit Points" (Mana, Skill, Power, Hero, whatever,) which is fine. Eliminating AEDU cruft also frees up analysis paralysis while also keeping things to quick heroic description. Tying finishing flourishes to battlefield conditions also retires powers to major battle tipping points, instead of front-loaded spam.

Yup, exactly, the front loaded spam was the biggest problem for 4ed as a tactical skirmish game.

QuoteI like this for pacing, tied to major battlefield tipping points. The challenge would be designing them so that they are harder to repeatedly setup — like bouncing in and out of being bloodied with healing. If you standardize the triggers, like the above three used for every class, but with different effects, you could keep consistency while quickly checking power level.

Good points. For the bouncing in and out of bloodied with healing, the idea would be to make that inefficient due to having in-combat healing by a very inefficient use of precious healing surges.

QuoteTriggers like, Sleighted Encounter or Awoke Guardian Curiosity, could be moments to use Hero Points. As long as Hero Points are appropriately powerful to the trigger — essentially mostly a palliative (not a coup de grace) to ameliorate the loss — this could work well. Then it affects your last condition that to succeed you want to use as little Hero Points as possible, and thus bring a strategic element back into the tactics.

Not following you here.

QuoteAnd, returning to my Hero Points during Explore and Social, it seems we are on the same page here. Again, the easiest way would be to tier things to various contextual critical conditions, and then provide Hero Point Powers as a class variable solution. And again, this would similarly tax the same Hero Point pool so as to return a Strategic element along with the Tactical element; you only get so many Boo-Boo Erasers, so try to solve as much as possible without going nova.

Yeah, a lot of 4ed fans call for siloing everything between "can only be used in combat" abilities and "can never be used in combat" abilities which I think is really bad design as it makes everything tactical and erases the strategic angle.

QuoteHow would you like to go from here? I'm thinking of starting with at least 3 Tipping Points per Combat, Explore, Social, and then giving each class its equivalent Heroic Reaponse.

Again not quite following the tipping point bit.

Quote from: Opaopajr;8874443 Prospective Tipping Points per Game Facet

Combat

1. Bloodied
2. Downed Ally/Self
3. Last Stand/Sacrifice

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up
2. Exposed
3. Cornered

Social

1. Faux Pas
2. Gross Breach
3. Grave Insult

Hmm... Next to try to fill the four main classes. I'll start with the Fighter.

Fighter

Combat

1. Bloodied. Second Wind.
2. Downed Ally/Self. Vengeance.
3. Last Stand. ... Blade Whirlwind.

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Olympian Athletics. (STR check Expertise?)
2. Exposed. Olympian Endurance. (CON check Expertise?)
3. Cornered. In the Zone. (As the two above plus Lucky STR & CON saves?)

Social

1. Faux Pas. Forgiveable Brute (let slide due to martial skill; possible attraction by target).
2. Gross Breach. Minor Debt of Honor/Gentleman's Duel.
3. Grave Insult. Appeasement Geas.

Ah, OK, now with these more concrete examples I'm starting to get it.

So just like in combat, out of combat your powerful abilities need a set-back to be triggered. I kind of like how there is some incentive to act like a huge ass socially to trigger some of the social abilities.

What would things like "in the zone" or "appeasement geas" do concretely?

Quote from: Batman;887505I dunno, my group has plenty of time and fun role-playing in 4e. What rules actually make a game force role-play? From my limited D&D experiences (AD&D 2e, 3.PF, 4e and 5e) the amount of role-play put into the system is almost always derived from the people playing, not rules thrust at us. One can, quite simply, play most (if not ALL) editions without any regards to role-play and just focus on the combat side of the system.

For me at least the thing that encourages RP is to have all of the little details of the world matter so that players have to pay attention and engage with them. Too much abstraction turns all of those details into "fluff" that can be ignored as window dressing. For me at least when you've got a game where the distinction between fluff and crunch is clear and meaningful then RP gets impacted negatively.

Also having a big combat focus doesn't hurt RP, RP doesn't mean "stuff you do outside of combat" or "talking to NPCs" some of the best RP in my sessions has been stuff that happened during combat.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887586Agreed. This is where 13th Age's Escalation die is a great addition. Players have to choose whether to burn powers early or wait until they can get a good bonus to increase their chance for success.

Yes, that is clever a nice clear simple way to getting players to think about saving their powers for later.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887634It made me want to murder my own face. My biggest problem with D&D4 was undoubtedly the pointlessly dissociated mechanics, but it was the bloated and poorly designed combat system that completely killed it for me.

The same thing drove me craaaaaaaazy during the Keep on the Shadowfell bit I played, I had to do goofy stuff like challenge Ironwhatever the super kobold to a one on one duel just to break up the grind that went on and on and on and on.

That said, one way to deal with the gargantuan combats is just have one a session and go all out in it. But that means totally shifting the way your campaign is organized.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887635This is mostly a random thought and probably beyond the scope of what this thread is trying to accomplish, but I wonder what kind of result you'd get if you ditched the "daily" concept and instead made it so that you needed to set up more powerful abilities before you could use them.

For example, to cast a fireball you might need to expend three Move actions. (So the wizard could stand there slinging magic missile cantrips, but if they can stay in one place long enough -- BOOM!) Or if you wanted to perform some awesome martial arts move, you might have to (a) hit them twice and (b) flank them. Or maybe you need to perform a specific sequence of lesser moves before pulling off the "big combo finisher".

Yup, that's the sort of thing I'd be adding. Much more fun than fireball at the start and then a long slow crawl of magic missile to slowly put the fight out of its misery.

Edit: kids waking up soon, time to start making breakfast. Will hit Opaopajr's newer post in a while. Will need some time to mull over it, as if often this case with this posts, they really set my brain's cogs a-turning...

Good question, those were spitballed ideas how a fighter might respond to such extreme explore and social situations.

In the Zone is about that weird body+mind alignment during high adrenaline fight or flight moments.

So it would have the 5e equivalent of Expertise for STR & DEX checks - the "as above" part of Olympian Athletics & Endurance - and 5e equivalent of Lucky for STR & CON saves.

To convert for 4e, perhaps skill checks that challenge even a mundane professional get waved away. Unless they are mythic! in difficulty, don't roll. And even then those mythic skill checks get a simple +2 bonus to the d20 percentile roll (roll d20 as d100% in 5% increments).

As to 4e the Saves, perhaps roll 3d20 and take the best? Or perhaps continuous Adv on STR & CON saves until escape or dead?

Appeasing Geas would be less mechanical and more a setting tether/restriction. Like a temporary Paladin Oath, it would be the fighter swearing a terrible binding oath to appease the gravely insulted party — or assuage his sense of lost honor. So it would be akin to a knight pledging a quest to a shamed princess, or a divested noble swearing vengeance onto his usurper.

Yes, it essentially means you use a Hero Point as big social boo-boo eraser by turning it into a quest hook.

----------

They are just spitballed ideas for other game facets. They are meant to scoop the Mythic PC out from a mundane mistake, if the player likes. But since each game facet can tap the same point pool, eventually strategy as well as tactics comes into play. So creative and cautious use of everyday equipment, skills, and spells overall helps reserve Hero Points for real big trouble.

(And yes, the "asshole potential" is rather nice. Hubris is a big part of mythic stories. And tapping out one's pool prematurely to be a jerk and reap the rewards can leave a hero exposed for a nasty fall.)

Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Something remotely close to resembling the aspects common to the first 35 years of the game?

Just a guess. :D

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Usually somewhere between "D&D as designed/approved by Gygax" and "D&D as I like it."

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

For me that means: PCs go into a dangerous environment and slowly get their resources get worn down via attrition until they either die or escape back to safety.

Before 4ed this had started to break down both through shifts in play style and rules (people not tracking encumbrance, people not using wandering monsters, 15 minute adventuring days, fistfuls of CLW wands, etc. etc.). Standard dungeon crawling in which the basic attrition model doesn't work isn't much fun.

From my point of 4ed tried to fix the problems that crop up in D&D when the attrition model isn't working by moving beyond it and making each fight be an interesting tactical exercise in and of itself rather than something that's mostly important because even if you win you'll lose a few HPs and some time and both are precious.

Now if you take the 4ed ruleset and try to use it for a traditional D&D attrition-based game it doesn't really work well because it takes soooooooooooooooooo looooooooooooooooong to wear a 4ed party down through gradual attrition. Things like plentiful healing resources, resources that refresh after a "short rest," combat vs. non-combat abilities being siloed so that you're not burning dailies outside of combat in the way that you'd burn spell slots to get around non-combat obstacles in older editions mean that if you took a bog standard TSR-D&D dungeoncrawl, converted everything over to 4ed stats and then ran everything with a bog standard TSR-D&D playstyle it would be an agonizing exercise in tedium.

The way you have fun with 4ed is to approach it in a completely different way and have big massive set-piece battles be the centerpiece, not a running series of Fantasy Fucking Vietnam skirmishes.

For example 4ed would be fun for a campaign centered around arena battles in which each session it capped with one massive gladiatorial battle and the rest of the session is interpersonal drama, assembling teams, trying to purchase monsters that's bring in the crowd, trash talking the opposition, attempting to cheat, attempting to stop the other team from cheating, etc. etc. That'd be fun. A dungeon crawl with five combats in a session with 4ed is not fun.

Quote from: Daztur;887955For example 4ed would be fun for a campaign centered around arena battles in which each session it capped with one massive gladiatorial battle and the rest of the session is interpersonal drama, assembling teams, trying to purchase monsters that's bring in the crowd, trash talking the opposition, attempting to cheat, attempting to stop the other team from cheating, etc. etc.

So the first season of the TV series Spartacus? :)

Quote from: Bren;887957So the first season of the TV series Spartacus? :)

That's exactly what I was thinking. The prequel season too. 4ed would be perfect for that.

Quote from: Doom;887872Holy shit, you don't know about action points? Fair enough.

A level 1 warlord has Commander's Strike...again, the Fightbrain is getting an extra attack this way. Any half-elf in the party could have this as well.

We're at level 1, and already have 3 different ways the Battlemind can attack while also being incredibly resistant to damage. Seeing as a "typical" fight in 4e takes 4 rounds, we've got 3 rounds covered with different abilities without even getting to higher level abilities.

Do you even know what a minor action is in 4e?

And this isn't even addressing marking (bit of a big deal with the Fightbrain) and opportunity attacks. A quick example, not that it will do any good:

The second "punishment" a battlemind can use on a marked enemy is mind spike, an at-will immediate reaction. A marked, adjacent enemy that deals damage to an ally with an attack which does not target the battlemind takes force and psychic damage equal to the damage it hit your pal with. So, if Zorbo the Angry Goblin Blackblade crits your combat granting ally for 14 damage and you have him marked and next to you, Zorbo will find himself in a world of hurt when he takes 14 damage.

So, start the round, use the action point, mark 3 guys, become mostly invulnerable to damage...and still become the center of attention and/or deal damage to foes. I'd go into the other Battlemind abilities that keep him close to foes so that this goes on forever, but I suspect it would be pointless.

Enough schooling people that have never even played the game, we're done here.

Oh so now it's Action Points + having a Warlord with Commander's Strike + having a Half Elf using racial ability to pick up Commanders Strike.

Lets just ignore that other pesky concept that they all have to be in melee with the same model in order to use all of this silliness, pah to that peskiness.

Again get the fuck outta here with your stupid asinine bullshit.

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Around here, anything besides 4e.

Quote from: cranebump;887923Well, that definitely identifies the problem.:-)

That was part of 4e's disasterous advertising. "You have been playing D&D wrong!" and the derogatory advertisements.

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Something made up by one faction to demean some style of play or make themselves feel important. So "traditional" is whatever said faction likes to puff their egos up with. And odds are that a chunk of what they claim is pure fabrication.

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Whatever the OSR Pontifex Maximus, or similar spiritual leader, says it means. So I, as Gran Mufti of the OSR Jyhad, declare thine predilections to WotC Dungeons & Dragons heretical and thus worthy of community chastisement. Unleash the d4s and CheetosDustStorm! Lalalalalalalalalalalalala!

Quote from: Opaopajr;887970Whatever the OSR Pontifex Maximus, or similar spiritual leader, says it means. So I, as Gran Mufti of the OSR Jyhad, declare thine predilections to WotC Dungeons & Dragons heretical and thus worthy of community chastisement. Unleash the d4s and CheetosDustStorm! Lalalalalalalalalalalalala!

And/or is more likely to line their pockets with cash if they have a product to hawk. Or just to shill their free (copied from someone else and the names changed) product.

And/or telling players who were playing OD&D or earlier that they werent playing the game how they say and it was really insert OSR shill here way.

And/or havent a damn clue...

Quote from: Daztur;887063OK, assuming you keep the basic 4ed design goals in place (many of which clash pretty badly with standard D&D play) how would you go about fixing 4ed?

...

Combine healing surges and action points into one bennie (call it hero points or something more creative). Have these hero points be pretty rare.

Then focus in on the stuff that makes 4ed unique: the big stacks of powers.

Here's the thing: 4e is actually ingenious.

Please take this moment to laugh.

The problem with 4e is that... it's like some people had a vision for an amazing cake, and had all the ingredients on hand, but absolutely no idea how to combine them. You wind up with a goopy mess covered in sugar and eggshells that makes no goddamn sense. The end result was nothing like what they had envisioned - or promised - and so lots of folk give it shit, without looking deeper at the system (myself included, until ~8 months ago).

You can't take 4e wholesale. You just can't. The game, as written, is shit. You have to look behind the game, at the principles they were trying to build on, but - for whatever reason - were unable to bring to fruition.

I've skimmed the thread a bit, and some folks have touched on the attrition thing. I think what they were trying to do was ensure that everyone could still do their thing without having to resort to bullshit, and to do that end the attrition factor became healing surges. Can we agree that deciding to play a wizard, then - at low levels - being told you get one magic thing you can do a day, otherwise you're stuck with a crossbow, blows goats? If you're a mage, you should be able to do mage-y shit on the regular. To prevent adventurers from just going nuts and never taking a break, though, you have to give them a limit, and healing surges provide that limit. Not only that, but they're sensible in-world: you get beat to shit, you want to go take a rest, because you might not live through the next fight. I realize it abstracts hit points a bit further than pretty much any other edition of D&D does, but the intent of the mechanic is sound.

But that then brings us to the damage thing, and how long combats take (I once had a 4e combat take 16 hours, split over three sessions, so I'm well aware it's a sensible complaint). I'm going to try to explain my understanding of what they were trying to accomplish, but it might take a minute, so bear with me.

Let's take dragons for an example. The theory was that, at low levels, Dragon X is a solo encounter, a badass the party is hard-pressed to fight. At medium levels, Dragon X becomes a regular monster, something the party might fight a small group of: the adventurers have become badass enough that they can take on a few and live. At even higher levels, Dragon X becomes a minion, such a pushover that the PCs just pretty much need to look at the thing and it'll drop dead, and can fight hordes of something that 15 levels ago, one of which could've easily mopped the floor with them.

A lot of people think this is utterly nonsensical. And if you look at it from a purely HP perspective, where Dragon X as an elite has a shit-ton more HP than Dragon X as a minion, you're right: it is nonsensical. So don't look at it that way.

It is not that Dragon X as a minion is literally weaker than Dragon X as a solo. It is that the PCs' ability to dish out damage is that much greater. Power A might deal 2[w] damage, but the idea is that - conceptually - the damage of that power is scaling as the PCs increase in level. Rather than have powers increase in damage over time, a monster's HP are conceptually reduced in relation to the PCs.

Yes, this results in the sort of weirdness where the state of a monster is dependent upon the PCs looking at it. But really, is this any different from having fireball do 1d6/level damage? At 5th level, 5d6 isn't much (I'm talking from 3.5 here, so keep that in mind), and will probably not outright kill a CR 5 monster; at 15th level, that same fireball now deals 15d6, and is significantly more likely to one-shot that same CR 5 creature. To the level 5 PC, that CR 5 critter is a solo; to the 15, that CR 5 critter is a minion.

Now, this doesn't excuse some of the shitty math that 4e has. Powers do increase in damage as you gain levels (higher level powers do more damage), and PCs and monsters both have more HP as you gain levels, which leads to the horrible grind that is 4e once you leave heroic tier.

What I'm getting at is that all damage output in 4e is scaling, even though the numbers aren't increasing at that rate. It's hidden, but it's there; you can see a glimpse of what they were trying to do with the "damage expressions" table in the DMG for building your own monsters. Monsters are supposed to have X damage output at a given level. Through a combination of factors, that table is shit, but the basic concept is there, and ripe for mining.

The AEDU power structure came about, I think, because they were trying to (1) solve "linear warriors, quadratic wizards," (2) let mages be mages all the time, and (3) didn't want to abandon the "feel" of improving over time, as would happen in a situation where a PC's damage output never increased (even though, effectively, it was, by modifying monster HP in response to PC level). It's an artifact of a shitty approach to what I think was their design intent, not the purpose of the edition itself.

tl;dr - I think you've got your priorities crossed. Healing surges, and by extension the fundamental concepts at play in combat math, are the big draw of 4e, not the "stacks of powers."

Quote from: Omega;887972And/or is more likely to line their pockets with cash if they have a product to hawk. Or just to shill their free (copied from someone else and the names changed) product.

And/or telling players who were playing OD&D or earlier that they werent playing the game how they say and it was really insert OSR shill here way.

And/or havent a damn clue...

Your comment does not have a CheetosDustStorm and is thus invalidated by the rule of cool.

Believers, to the Hippopotamus Water Chariots! Tonight we ride against the infidels!
:cool:

Quote from: GnomeWorks;887973Here's the thing: 4e is actually ingenious.

Please take this moment to laugh.

The problem with 4e is that... it's like some people had a vision for an amazing cake, and had all the ingredients on hand, but absolutely no idea how to combine them. You wind up with a goopy mess covered in sugar and eggshells that makes no goddamn sense. The end result was nothing like what they had envisioned - or promised - and so lots of folk give it shit, without looking deeper at the system (myself included, until ~8 months ago).

That was an episode of Little Rascals... :worship:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i41mQr2IJ_Y (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i41mQr2IJ_Y)

Quote from: Daztur;887955For me that means: PCs go into a dangerous environment and slowly get their resources get worn down via attrition until they either die or escape back to safety.

Before 4ed this had started to break down both through shifts in play style and rules (people not tracking encumbrance, people not using wandering monsters, 15 minute adventuring days, fistfuls of CLW wands, etc. etc.). Standard dungeon crawling in which the basic attrition model doesn't work isn't much fun.

Looking back at the majority of my 3.5 experience I don't remember dungeon delving too much. Even with things like loads of CLW wands (something that a DM can control) basic attrition started to lose its effectiveness after 6th level (hence my love for E6). And I do agree that as character power ramps up the play style changes. Still, despite  the most stingiest of Grognards, 3e and PF are still considered D&D.

Quote from: Daztur;887955From my point of 4ed tried to fix the problems that crop up in D&D when the attrition model isn't working by moving beyond it and making each fight be an interesting tactical exercise in and of itself rather than something that's mostly important because even if you win you'll lose a few HPs and some time and both are precious.

I'd argue that still holds true for 4e, though replace HP with Surges and Daily powers including magical items. Perhaps DMs were far too easy on PCs when it came to allowing them to rest and regain those precious resources? There have been times in my home game (and the occasional pre-bought adventure) that I didn't allow them rest even after the monsters were dead. It forced them to think outside the box, use their abilities in non-traditional ways, and give an urgency to the plot while whittling down their surges.

Quote from: Daztur;887955Now if you take the 4ed ruleset and try to use it for a traditional D&D attrition-based game it doesn't really work well because it takes soooooooooooooooooo looooooooooooooooong to wear a 4ed party down through gradual attrition. Things like plentiful healing resources, resources that refresh after a "short rest," combat vs. non-combat abilities being siloed so that you're not burning dailies outside of combat in the way that you'd burn spell slots to get around non-combat obstacles in older editions mean that if you took a bog standard TSR-D&D dungeoncrawl, converted everything over to 4ed stats and then ran everything with a bog standard TSR-D&D playstyle it would be an agonizing exercise in tedium.

I'd love the challenge, to be honest. I always eyed up the 4e version of the Tomb of Horrors and would loe to try it with a seasoned group of 4e players. But give me a TSR-D&D classic dungeon crawl and I'll run my group with it, sans house-rules, and see how it goes. Maybe it is the system and maybe it's the DM style.

Quote from: Daztur;887955The way you have fun with 4ed is to approach it in a completely different way and have big massive set-piece battles be the centerpiece, not a running series of Fantasy Fucking Vietnam skirmishes.

For example 4ed would be fun for a campaign centered around arena battles in which each session it capped with one massive gladiatorial battle and the rest of the session is interpersonal drama, assembling teams, trying to purchase monsters that's bring in the crowd, trash talking the opposition, attempting to cheat, attempting to stop the other team from cheating, etc. etc. That'd be fun. A dungeon crawl with five combats in a session with 4ed is not fun.

Most combats with us run approx 35 to 45 min and we usually get in 3 per session. Huge set piece battles does sound fun too.

At the risk of feeding that troll some more, let's get back to the actual thread.

One thing I would do to fix 4E is to eliminate most all of the status effects. I'm serious, each character gets one status effect generator, or can only inflict one status effect at a time.

One of the big changes from AD&D to 3e was the realization that status effects can affect combat far more than actual damage.

In 4e, as we've noted, the number of effects in play in any given combat can number in the half dozen, trivially (one for each player, and one for each monster, if there are two types), and can double that if players start blowing dailies and action points (assuming you're one of those folks that believes action points are part of 4e, I've only recently learned not everyone does)...it's way too much to follow, especially when the effects vary significantly from combat to combat.

The worst is, I'm starting to see it in 5e; I have a summoner player, and sure enough, status-effect inflicting monsters are the key once again...but at least there are seldom more than 3 effects in play in a 5e fight.

Naturally, getting rid of all the effect-inflicting abilities and adding lots of abilities that aren't status-inflicting (change a few encounter powers to "reroll a missed attack", "reroll a save", and such) would require a considerable rewrite of the rules, which puts things back in the "why bother, just make a new game from the ground up" category.

But if I were fixing 4e, snipping off a jillion (note: this is hyperbole, not a specific number) status-effect inflicting powers would be on the to-do list.

Quote from: Doom;887983But if I were fixing 4e, snipping off a jillion (note: this is hyperbole, not a specific number) status-effect inflicting powers would be on the to-do list.

I don't think that you have to cut them, I think that you have to standardize them.

Part of the problem with 4e status effects is that their durations are all over the board: some last until the start of your next turn, some until the end of your next turn, some until the start of the creature's next turn, some until their end, some end on a save, etc etc.

If you started with standardizing durations - every status effect you inflict ends at the end of your next turn, full stop (just as an example) - and then standardizing effects, so they don't stack and there are a reasonable number of them, you'd fix a lot of problems.

Continue to point out your bullshit....
But I'm the troll? :rolleyes:

Quote from: Doom;887983At the risk of feeding that troll some more, let's get back to the actual thread.

The umpteen status effects were one of those "gotta see it to believe it" parts of 4e. I mean, I saw those game trade mags with magnetic stackable disc markers, in a 'taste the rainbow!' spread of Skittles colors, and thought they were joking (for that eccentric completionist at your table). But, lo, I played 4e Org Play (Expeditions, was it?) and were those status effects flying - and at somewhat low level, too!

I pitied the GMs and their bookkeeping for both monsters and players.

Thankfully when you strip AEDU away, and go back to older spell and equip options, most of this issue goes away. Dumping AEDU also removes the "pinball wizard" forced movement effects, too, along with quite a few other dissociative, high mod (expertise) dependency, and scaling issues. The exception-based design for each class at every milestone stage really brought more problems than it solved, I think.

That and the feat kludge is still a kludge, and no amount of extra pages worth - regardless of trimming away the 'fruitless trees' - made it any more streamlined for grab 'n go play.
...........................

But what would you do to make it play like you want? Or at least shape it to play like how Daztur wants?

Quote from: Opaopajr;887986The umpteen status effects were one of those "gotta see it to believe it" parts of 4e. I mean, I saw those game trade mags with magnetic stackable disc markers, in a 'taste the rainbow!' spread of Skittles colors, and thought they were joking (for that eccentric completionist at your table). But, lo, I played 4e Org Play (Expeditions, was it?) and were those status effects flying - and at somewhat low level, too!

I really do think it's entirely reasonable to have a large number of standardized status effects, so long as (1) their effects are meaningful and players will care about remembering them, and (2) their durations aren't both stupendously brief and variable in that brevity.

QuoteDumping AEDU also removes the "pinball wizard" forced movement effects, too, along with quite a few other dissociative, high mod (expertise) dependency, and scaling issues.

Of these, forced movement is the one I don't mind, and think it actually adds a solid option to the tactical toolkit for players.

I understand the gripe that that makes a tactical map a necessity. I see that as a worthwhile trade; others may not.

My biggest problem with AEDU is that it made the classes very same-y. They tried a lot of weird stuff, like with psionics, to reduce that, but at that point it was too little, too late. I like my fighters being on par with my mages, but I still want them to feel different.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;887984I don't think that you have to cut them, I think that you have to standardize them.

Part of the problem with 4e status effects is that their durations are all over the board: some last until the start of your next turn, some until the end of your next turn, some until the start of the creature's next turn, some until their end, some end on a save, etc etc.

If you started with standardizing durations - every status effect you inflict ends at the end of your next turn, full stop (just as an example) - and then standardizing effects, so they don't stack and there are a reasonable number of them, you'd fix a lot of problems.

Yeah, that's probably a better way to do it...something would need to be done, all the same.

Just make them Save Ends or Until the end of your next turn. The vast majority of effects are that way anyways.

Quote from: Batman;887990Just make them Save Ends or Until the end of your next turn. The vast majority of effects are that way anyways.

But not all, is the issue.

I'm not even sure it really matters which you go with. I mean, yes, it has mechanical impacts, but if you know which one you want you can work with that decision in how you write the powers.

I could even see keeping "save ends" and "ends at [beginning/end] of [your/their] next turn" as two separate durations; they feel a bit different, and it might be worthwhile to keep them distinct. I'm not sure if the extra book-keeping is worth it though.

I feel the distinction is, overall, not worth the effort considering the amount of power effects in play. By making it end of the initiators next turn or save ends stops any pause in the game and makes it more smooth IMO. Make it easier on the DMs bookkeeping.

I will say this about 4e, my bookkeeping has improved tremendously  since DMing the game.

Eh, keeping the same vast number of effects but reducing them all to one round is like substituting being mauled by a pack of hyenas into being nibbled to death by a flock of ducks.

Just say no to the temptation for noble but trifling half measures in the face of a known issue.

Quote from: Doom;887983At the risk of feeding that troll some more, let's get back to the actual thread.

One thing I would do to fix 4E is to eliminate most all of the status effects. I'm serious, each character gets one status effect generator, or can only inflict one status effect at a time.

One of the big changes from AD&D to 3e was the realization that status effects can affect combat far more than actual damage.

In 4e, as we've noted, the number of effects in play in any given combat can number in the half dozen, trivially (one for each player, and one for each monster, if there are two types), and can double that if players start blowing dailies and action points (assuming you're one of those folks that believes action points are part of 4e, I've only recently learned not everyone does)...it's way too much to follow, especially when the effects vary significantly from combat to combat.

The worst is, I'm starting to see it in 5e; I have a summoner player, and sure enough, status-effect inflicting monsters are the key once again...but at least there are seldom more than 3 effects in play in a 5e fight.

Naturally, getting rid of all the effect-inflicting abilities and adding lots of abilities that aren't status-inflicting (change a few encounter powers to "reroll a missed attack", "reroll a save", and such) would require a considerable rewrite of the rules, which puts things back in the "why bother, just make a new game from the ground up" category.

But if I were fixing 4e, snipping off a jillion (note: this is hyperbole, not a specific number) status-effect inflicting powers would be on the to-do list.

Status effects?  Like Petrification?  Poison?  Paralyzed?  Stuff that showed up in second edition and had specific saving throws for?

Sorry, but given your inability to understand the 4e system, I'm stepping out of this mess.

The best fix I've found for 4E is to throw out all the haters and round up a table full of players who actually want to play 4E.

It's actually fun that way.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;888007The best fix I've found for 4E is to throw out all the haters and round up a table full of players who actually want to play 4E.

It's actually fun that way.

Wanting to play 4e, and then realizing what a mess it is once you grind through the rules. Are two rather different things.

If you can get a DM who is fine with the level of bookkeeping needed to track things then you are a long long way to getting good use out of 4e.

Just glancing at the 4e PHB I can tell you I'd rather DM that than Gurps. I wouldnt mind DMing it for a one off or two. But in the end theres other systems like BX, AD&D or 5e I'd rather host. But I do love trying new systems so 4e Id certainly try.

For bookkeeping I usually require my players to keep track of their own status effects and per-round mechanics or it gets tossed to the side. If a Fighter forgets to say X creature is Marked or is vulnerable or dazed then I'm probably not going to add those effects in when the monster goes. What I found this does is keep players more engaged and when they're engaged they usually spend less time on decision paralysis and keeps the game going.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;888002Status effects?  Like Petrification?  Poison?  Paralyzed?  Stuff that showed up in second edition and had specific saving throws for?

Sorry, but given your inability to understand the 4e system, I'm stepping out of this mess.

Bit of a typo there, I'm sure you mean "my." With what, half a dozen people in this thread saying there are too many effects going on in too many places in 4e, you're in the confused minority if you think the preponderance of effects in 4e aren't a problem. And thus, wise for you to step out of the thread before hurting yourself further. Prediction: you won't stay out.

That leaves me asking the rest of the crowd, does anybody know if there was a character class that could inflict petrification like this guy claims? I didn't read the last few 100k words of 4e rules, did that actually make it into the game?

The point isn't the existence of legacy effects, the point is there are too many effects, ending in too many places, to conveniently track.

I mean a solo hits the board, and a round later, the solo has marked (two different types), -2 to hit, -2 to AC, half damage if it attacks the wrong player, and probably poisoned as well (and unlike some folks here that just want to attack people, I'm actually curious if a character class got petrification).

Some of these effects were save ends, others ended well, ended at a variety of times. It's a significant bookkeeping issue just on a solo...make it half a dozen monsters and it's a tracking nightmare.

Now, the monsters generally only inflicted 1 or 2 effects so it wasn't as big a problem (though I suspect there's room for scaling back there as well)--the medusa, if memory serves, had both petrifying and poison, for example.

But as someone above noted, scaling back all the effects makes the "sandpapering monsters to death" aspect of 4e even more apparent, so the monsters would need to be softened up a bit.

That leads to the next fix: hit points/damage could stand to be lowered as well. How much? I dunno, though I'd heard of some fixes where they were going with 50%...once again we've an issue where the problem is so widespread that just making a new game would be a wiser choice.

Quote from: Batman;888021For bookkeeping I usually require my players to keep track of their own status effects and per-round mechanics or it gets tossed to the side. If a Fighter forgets to say X creature is Marked or is vulnerable or dazed then I'm probably not going to add those effects in when the monster goes. What I found this does is keep players more engaged and when they're engaged they usually spend less time on decision paralysis and keeps the game going.

My tables did that, too. I got more engaged, which meant following more of the GM's suffering as the mobs had oodles of their own specialized combat roll effects to track. Most other players who were just there for the people merely slipped back into more at-wills, dragging the game out more. (And eventually other players telling them how to more competitively play their character - something I extremely don't like). I was rewarded with a bookkeeping headache and palpable boredom as the rounds ground on.

No, it's not for the lack of wanting to play that divorced myself and others from 4e - it was labeled D&D after all, a game filled with fond memories to which I wished to return. No, it was the product on offer, after months of weekly play, that finally broke any lingering forgiveness of its idiosyncracies. And after a year of coming to the same from WotC before with 3e I was very tired and wanted to go back to what I fondly remembered and face my own nostalgia with my own older eyes. Guess what - it held up, in actual play, with younger people, and using RAW even!

And that's why Daztur has this topic. He's not interested in how true your 4e Scotsman bona fides are, or how you failed 4e (because 4e obviously cannot ever fail you :rolleyes:). He's interested in people's reworking of the chassis into something they consider palatable.

So if we're all done here derailing, let's return to the topic at hand. No one gives a shit about how your 4e experiences were more pure or faithful than the unwashed masses who will never get it. They didn't give a shit the last umpteen times we've had this circus, thus why now?

So everyone, pack it in and save your worthless, unwanted anecdotal dick-measuring commentaries and stay at the topic at hand.

-- with love,
Opaopajr

Quote from: Opaopajr;887806- Marking (as much as I hated 4e's stacking effects, this was good as it couldn't stack).

Different KINDS of marks not stacking always set my teeth on edge because of how obviously gamey it looked but I can see why they did it.

QuoteThings I Would Change:
- Strip out almost all Skill Mods, (as Pro Skills they should be rolled sparingly, otherwise just use Ability roll-under directly, with Race, Train, & Misc Mods as rare - and mostly cosmetic - sprinkles atop).

Yeah the basically 3ed skill system doesn't really fit Mythic 4ed so it should be hacked to bits.

Quote- 3e Action Legacies are also just gone. (5e did Attacks, Reactions, Enviro Interact, and Movement right. Quick, dynamic, mythic, harder to metagame.)

Oh dear god yes.

QuoteContinuing with my work from before, now with the Wizard. I'll focus on a school because I wonder how this could work. Maybe generic "class trigger responses" can be offered, but examples of "archetype trigger responses" can lead to creative variation.

Hmmmm, was using bloodied, downed ally/self and last stand as examples off the top of my head rather than general ability categories, I could see the working really well for martial characters but they seem a bit forced for wizards.

QuoteExplore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Unseen "Fixer" (a.k.a. Unseen Servant covers up errors).
2. Exposed. Abjurer's Egress (a.k.a. oodles of Arcane Lock & Knock).
3. Cornered. Vibrating Aura (a.k.a. Dmg Over Time Aura & Anti-Magic Shell).

Social

1. Faux Pas. Warding Against the Evil Eye (blame misstep on unseen malice).
2. Gross Breach. Heaven Forfend! (prompt apology; proffered protection token).
3. Grave Insult. Debt of Protection (negotiation of discounted or gratis services).

The combat triggers are pretty self-evident as you KNOW when you've run out of healing surges/hero points, but social and exploration triggers seem a bit more subjective. How would you nail them down?

QuoteExplore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Olympian Athletics.
2. Exposed. Olympian Endurance.
3. Cornered. In the Zone.

Social

1. Faux Pas. Forgiveable Brute.
2. Gross Breach. Minor Debt of Honor/Gentleman's Duel.
3. Grave Insult. Geas.


Daztur, how is this? Is it closer to your mythic heroics ideal, a la Beowulf or Gilgamesh?

Am liking it. Would probably still retain some at-wills though.

What I'm mostly curious about is the specific mechanics for the explore and social abilities and triggers.

QuoteTo convert for 4e, perhaps skill checks that challenge even a mundane professional get waved away. Unless they are mythic! in difficulty, don't roll. And even then those mythic skill checks get a simple +2 bonus to the d20 percentile roll (roll d20 as d100% in 5% increments).

As to 4e the Saves, perhaps roll 3d20 and take the best? Or perhaps continuous Adv on STR & CON saves until escape or dead?

Appeasing Geas would be less mechanical and more a setting tether/restriction. Like a temporary Paladin Oath, it would be the fighter swearing a terrible binding oath to appease the gravely insulted party — or assuage his sense of lost honor. So it would be akin to a knight pledging a quest to a shamed princess, or a divested noble swearing vengeance onto his usurper.

Yes, it essentially means you use a Hero Point as big social boo-boo eraser by turning it into a quest hook.

For physical feats, In the Zone seems a bit broader than I was thinking, but then I have a bias towards very very narrow skills, for example being immune to fatigue for a period or being able to lift just about anything once rather than a more general bonus.

Ah, appeasing geas is perfect, very narrow and specific, fits with the sort of mood we're spit balling perfectly. Would want to use that in other settings as well.

Quote(And yes, the "asshole potential" is rather nice. Hubris is a big part of mythic stories. And tapping out one's pool prematurely to be a jerk and reap the rewards can leave a hero exposed for a nasty fall.)

Indeed, I like this aspect of it a lot. Both incentives to get people to act like huge swinging dicks and ways to weasel out of the consequences of doing so (for a price).

Quote from: GnomeWorks;887973Here's the thing: 4e is actually ingenious.

Please take this moment to laugh.

The problem with 4e is that... it's like some people had a vision for an amazing cake, and had all the ingredients on hand, but absolutely no idea how to combine them. You wind up with a goopy mess covered in sugar and eggshells that makes no goddamn sense. The end result was nothing like what they had envisioned - or promised - and so lots of folk give it shit, without looking deeper at the system (myself included, until ~8 months ago).

You can't take 4e wholesale. You just can't. The game, as written, is shit. You have to look behind the game, at the principles they were trying to build on, but - for whatever reason - were unable to bring to fruition.

I've skimmed the thread a bit, and some folks have touched on the attrition thing. I think what they were trying to do was ensure that everyone could still do their thing without having to resort to bullshit, and to do that end the attrition factor became healing surges. Can we agree that deciding to play a wizard, then - at low levels - being told you get one magic thing you can do a day, otherwise you're stuck with a crossbow, blows goats? If you're a mage, you should be able to do mage-y shit on the regular. To prevent adventurers from just going nuts and never taking a break, though, you have to give them a limit, and healing surges provide that limit. Not only that, but they're sensible in-world: you get beat to shit, you want to go take a rest, because you might not live through the next fight. I realize it abstracts hit points a bit further than pretty much any other edition of D&D does, but the intent of the mechanic is sound.

But that then brings us to the damage thing, and how long combats take (I once had a 4e combat take 16 hours, split over three sessions, so I'm well aware it's a sensible complaint). I'm going to try to explain my understanding of what they were trying to accomplish, but it might take a minute, so bear with me.

Let's take dragons for an example. The theory was that, at low levels, Dragon X is a solo encounter, a badass the party is hard-pressed to fight. At medium levels, Dragon X becomes a regular monster, something the party might fight a small group of: the adventurers have become badass enough that they can take on a few and live. At even higher levels, Dragon X becomes a minion, such a pushover that the PCs just pretty much need to look at the thing and it'll drop dead, and can fight hordes of something that 15 levels ago, one of which could've easily mopped the floor with them.

A lot of people think this is utterly nonsensical. And if you look at it from a purely HP perspective, where Dragon X as an elite has a shit-ton more HP than Dragon X as a minion, you're right: it is nonsensical. So don't look at it that way.

It is not that Dragon X as a minion is literally weaker than Dragon X as a solo. It is that the PCs' ability to dish out damage is that much greater. Power A might deal 2[w] damage, but the idea is that - conceptually - the damage of that power is scaling as the PCs increase in level. Rather than have powers increase in damage over time, a monster's HP are conceptually reduced in relation to the PCs.

Yes, this results in the sort of weirdness where the state of a monster is dependent upon the PCs looking at it. But really, is this any different from having fireball do 1d6/level damage? At 5th level, 5d6 isn't much (I'm talking from 3.5 here, so keep that in mind), and will probably not outright kill a CR 5 monster; at 15th level, that same fireball now deals 15d6, and is significantly more likely to one-shot that same CR 5 creature. To the level 5 PC, that CR 5 critter is a solo; to the 15, that CR 5 critter is a minion.

Now, this doesn't excuse some of the shitty math that 4e has. Powers do increase in damage as you gain levels (higher level powers do more damage), and PCs and monsters both have more HP as you gain levels, which leads to the horrible grind that is 4e once you leave heroic tier.

What I'm getting at is that all damage output in 4e is scaling, even though the numbers aren't increasing at that rate. It's hidden, but it's there; you can see a glimpse of what they were trying to do with the "damage expressions" table in the DMG for building your own monsters. Monsters are supposed to have X damage output at a given level. Through a combination of factors, that table is shit, but the basic concept is there, and ripe for mining.

The AEDU power structure came about, I think, because they were trying to (1) solve "linear warriors, quadratic wizards," (2) let mages be mages all the time, and (3) didn't want to abandon the "feel" of improving over time, as would happen in a situation where a PC's damage output never increased (even though, effectively, it was, by modifying monster HP in response to PC level). It's an artifact of a shitty approach to what I think was their design intent, not the purpose of the edition itself.

tl;dr - I think you've got your priorities crossed. Healing surges, and by extension the fundamental concepts at play in combat math, are the big draw of 4e, not the "stacks of powers."

I actually like the "wizard can do one magical thing a day" forces them to be cunning and the solo/regular/minion dragons got under my skin not because of realism or consistency reasons but because having Shroedinger dragons make stating up a hexcrawl in 4ed a nightmare as you don't know what stats to use for what monsters until you know the level of the PCs fighting them so you can't stat stuff up before the campaign start.

That said, I'm fine with wizards doing magical stuff all day long and Shroedinger dragons as long as you're explicitly embracing a play style that's pretty different from how I usually play D&D.

What specifically do you like about the combat math, just the scaling or other stuff as well?

As for healing surges, they're my favorite part of 4ed design bar none, just don't like the implementation. PCs get too many of them and they're too easy to refresh so it's a lot harder to get proper attrition going on.

Quote from: Daztur;888143I actually like the "wizard can do one magical thing a day" forces them to be cunning

That's... fucking retarded, but I smell "old-school" bullshit, so I'm not touching the remainder of that fucking conversation with a ten-foot pole (haha, see what I did there?).

Quotethe solo/regular/minion dragons got under my skin not because of realism or consistency reasons but because having Shroedinger dragons make stating up a hexcrawl in 4ed a nightmare as you don't know what stats to use for what monsters until you know the level of the PCs fighting them so you can't stat stuff up before the campaign start.

I'm trying to think of a better way to describe this than I did up-thread, and I'm having a hard time with that.

Think of a monster like... an algebra problem.

When you're young and not to algebra yet, you have no idea what you're doing with it. You have no idea how to solve it. The algebra problem kicks your ass and laughs while doing it. The algebra problem, in this case, is a solo.

When you get a bit older, and you've learned more math, you get taught algebra. You know the basics, but you're still a bit unsure of them. You try to solve this algebra problem, and it's hard, and you might hurt your head a bit on the way, but you get there. The algebra problem is now a regular critter.

When you get even older, and into shit like calculus, the algebra now is no longer a problem. Hell, you might even relish seeing actual variables, instead of weird-ass expressions and symbols. And when you see this normal, dull, plain algebra problem, you mop the floor with it. The algebra problem is now a minion.

The idea behind 4e is that your damage is scaling invisibly, and it achieves this illusion by fucking around with monster HPs. Why is Schrodinger an elite when the PCs are 4th level, and a minion when they're 16th? Because at 4th level, the PCs' damage is conceptually low, so he has fuck-you hit points. Conversely, when the PCs are 16th, their damage output is so high - again, abstractly, not the actual numbers - that their weakest attacks will one-shot this dragon.

I get the concern about game prep. I really do. You can resolve that by taking the invisible scaling and putting those numbers back on the table. If you do, you'll most likely wind up with crazy numbers at the high end, but the end result will be a system where the concept of "solo" and "minion" are naturally emergent properties of how the math works, and you don't have to dick with writing up multiple versions of the same monster.

Or that thing where the world scales to the PCs. Because that is complete fucking bullshit.

QuoteWhat specifically do you like about the combat math, just the scaling or other stuff as well?

I've been rooting around in 4e's corpse looking for useful bits for awhile now. I don't like 4e's math, I think it's shit (and I think most 4e fans are also of this opinion, given how many fixes and such there are for it; I know later books messed with it, but I haven't looked too closely).

I like the concepts behind it. There are a ton of good ideas buried beneath design that sucks ass, you just have to be willing to dig through it and consider things from different angles.

Let me think... I like their magic items. Mostly. The whole "items have levels" thing was fucking weird, and I ditched that, but the idea that items were small and not must-haves like in 3e is a good one.

QuoteAs for healing surges, they're my favorite part of 4ed design bar none, just don't like the implementation. PCs get too many of them and they're too easy to refresh so it's a lot harder to get proper attrition going on.

Uh... easy to refresh how? So far as I'm aware, there are very, very few things that restore healing surges.

Quote from: Daztur;888140Hmmmm, was using bloodied, downed ally/self and last stand as examples off the top of my head rather than general ability categories, I could see the working really well for martial characters but they seem a bit forced for wizards.

You know, they may be off the cuff examples, but they are pretty good demarcations shared by all classes. Every class can be bloodied, have themselves or their ally swoon in combat, or be down to their last Hero Point. And as these triggers are very stark they easily determine when usable.

Perhaps you could think of different combat alternates for wizards? However three triggers for three game facets, for 4+ classes and far more archetypes, is more than enough to stay busy designing. Wizards do get in combat, and suffer bloodied, swooning, and last ditch efforts, like all other classes, so I am not seeing the forced part so much.

I do believe that my Abjuration Wizard examples for each of those triggers could be better tailored, though.

Quote from: Daztur;888140The combat triggers are pretty self-evident as you KNOW when you've run out of healing surges/hero points, but social and exploration triggers seem a bit more subjective. How would you nail them down?

I honestly don't think you can, outside of Exposed and Cornered which are contextually self-evident. Evidence/Slip Up and all the social triggers are completely within the realm of setting characters' internal states, and that means only the GM can truly give accurate feedback here. Unless your character can read the minds and feelings of NPCs all the time, even when physically not present, this is within GM trust to negotiate the scene.

Yes, that means shit GMs with poor description, flagging, and negotiation won't work here.

But it would work when the GM leaves a well-flagged opening to let the player decide to spend the Hero Point, or to try and push their luck with their own talent and skills.

Quote from: Daztur;888140Am liking it. Would probably still retain some at-wills though.

What I'm mostly curious about is the specific mechanics for the explore and social abilities and triggers.  

I honestly have come to dislike the at-wills. I think it becomes that hammer which nudges players to see all problems as nails. I believe such a mythic form of play would do better with a looser framework to tease out player creativity of the environment.

What I would do is provide lots of new equipment and items to counterbalance the plethora of extant spells. Then I would wholly encourage PCs using objects, spells, the environment, and improvising actions to what they think their mythic hero would do. That way if they want to improvise their pike and anchor rope into a "dragon harpoon," and have Athletics (or burn a Hero Point), boom! you got yourself a dragon on your line -- as you sail off the ground clutching the rope like Captain Ahab.

As for more specific explore & social mechanics... I'm thinking of cooking up some cleric and rogue examples soon. They'll still use the same triggers for simplicity's sake.

(As for grounding the triggers, most of those are dependent on NPC mental states and thus I don't think it's possible for those ones. You're welcome to create new ones! Maybe yours will be more tightly defined and obvious from game context.)

edit: PS: Yes, Appeasing Geas came out very well. So well I am tempted to use it elsewhere.

Quote from: Opaopajr;888132My tables did that, too. I got more engaged, which meant following more of the GM's suffering as the mobs had oodles of their own specialized combat roll effects to track. Most other players who were just there for the people merely slipped back into more at-wills, dragging the game out more. (And eventually other players telling them how to more competitively play their character - something I extremely don't like). I was rewarded with a bookkeeping headache and palpable boredom as the rounds ground on.

No, it's not for the lack of wanting to play that divorced myself and others from 4e - it was labeled D&D after all, a game filled with fond memories to which I wished to return. No, it was the product on offer, after months of weekly play, that finally broke any lingering forgiveness of its idiosyncracies. And after a year of coming to the same from WotC before with 3e I was very tired and wanted to go back to what I fondly remembered and face my own nostalgia with my own older eyes. Guess what - it held up, in actual play, with younger people, and using RAW even!

cool story bruh....

Quote from: Opaopajr;888132And that's why Daztur has this topic. He's not interested in how true your 4e Scotsman bona fides are, or how you failed 4e (because 4e obviously cannot ever fail you :rolleyes:). He's interested in people's reworking of the chassis into something they consider palatable.

*sigh*

Quote from: Opaopajr;888132So if we're all done here derailing, let's return to the topic at hand. No one gives a shit about how your 4e experiences were more pure or faithful than the unwashed masses who will never get it. They didn't give a shit the last umpteen times we've had this circus, thus why now?

So everyone, pack it in and save your worthless, unwanted anecdotal dick-measuring commentaries and stay at the topic at hand.

-- with love,
Opaopajr

I thought this post would never end. FFS do you like to hear yourself talk. But by all means take a heaping pile of your own words.

Making Combats faster:
• Starting HP = Con score (no mods) and everyone has 4+Con modifier surges per day. Im not sure one could remove the entire surge concept as a whole but in theory I guess you could and just make all Leader healing per/day. Another method is to remove all in-combat healing altogether.

• Drop Monster HP by 1/4 but increase all damage their attacks do by a set amount per tier and role. Minions would do less, elites and Solos do more. Or as an easier method pick a set number for all monsters and use that (like 5/10/15 per tier).

• Drop the overall amount of resources Characters have except spellcasters. Honestly the fact that certain spells instantly end encounters is a fast way of overcoming them. Going back to more traditional roots: Druids, Clerics, and Wizards get more Dailies (no encounters) and just adjust their encounter attacks by 2 or 3 die and make them dailies. Conversely make other classes that use the Martial Power sources all use encounters but give them 1 daily that is inline with your level. Half casters, like the Paladin, can choose to either get 1 or 2 dailies at the cost of two encounter powers. It's messy but you have less decision paralysis.

• Critical hits are doubled (in addition to all the stuff they alreadd do). Make them actually dangerous instead of just some extra icing.

Rituals: allow them to be cast mid-combat but make casters spend surges to do it, again by tier. Rituals from 1-10 require 2 surges/ 11-20 require 3/ 21-30 require 4

Remove martial class exploits and allow any class to take them. Want two-weapon fighting Mr. Wizard? go ahead and grab it. Want twin strike Mr. Cleric, by all means have at it. Still, you have to have the ability score to utilize the power.

Edit:

Forgot Magical Items:
• remove the level as its really unimportant. Instead stick with the tier system.

• allow properties to stack but restrict them to 1 daily per day. If an ability is per encounter, allow it until a daily is used then it goes inert until a long rest. At-will properties stay in place. The cost of enhancing the weapon is the cost of the enhancement bonus but that's not added in.

Gnomeworks is onto something.

What if we broke tiers up more 1-3/4-6/7-10, etc, and you treated monsters of lower tiers as minions? Or maybe 2 tiers down?

AKA, if I'm 7th level, the 3rd level monster can be one punched.

Quote from: Opaopajr;887806- Drop current Initiative entirely. (Create a table of contextual group or individual modifiers if you must, but best not. Fog of War is infinitely better here in practice; waaay more drama integral to it.)

What about fixed initiative?

Maybe Level + DEX/INT mod?

Quote from: Opaopajr;887806- Change Healing Surges & Action Points into Hero Points. Hero Points are Level & Tier, so every equivalent mythic hero gets the same point pool.

Interesting. I want to ponder this more.

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Whatever edition you played when you were 12.

I like F/X, but they are a problem in play when too many arrive in one fight.

I am unsure how to fix this. We could trim down the F/X list, but then you limited options which creates its own problems.

Quote from: Batman;887990Just make them Save Ends or Until the end of your next turn. The vast majority of effects are that way anyways.

I'd go with Save Ends for Offensive F/X and Until End of Your Next Turn for Beneficial F/X.

Quote from: Doom;888130That leads to the next fix: hit points/damage could stand to be lowered as well. How much? I dunno, though I'd heard of some fixes where they were going with 50%...once again we've an issue where the problem is so widespread that just making a new game would be a wiser choice.

Morale rules end combats with foes fleeing with their remaining HP, but I would be happy to combine that with 50% HP reduction.

I'm all for glass cannon monsters. Then the big bag of HP monsters could be special and rare. Wow, this one won't go down! would then be interesting instead of the regular grind.

Quote from: Daztur;888143because having Shroedinger dragons make stating up a hexcrawl in 4ed a nightmare as you don't know what stats to use for what monsters until you know the level of the PCs fighting them so you can't stat stuff up before the campaign start.

This is true. 4e didn't sandbox easily.

Quote from: Daztur;888143As for healing surges, they're my favorite part of 4ed design bar none, just don't like the implementation. PCs get too many of them and they're too easy to refresh so it's a lot harder to get proper attrition going on.

Instead of 1/4 HP, make surges 1/2 HP and give them 1/2 the number of surges (maybe less).

Quote from: GnomeWorks;888167Or that thing where the world scales to the PCs. Because that is complete fucking bullshit.

That's existed in every edition. It's the default way most DMs have run their campaigns from the beginning. Even the TSR modules reflected this by having "level appropriate" monsters in their adventures.  

However, I agree the concept was most codified in 4e.

Quote from: Opaopajr;888201Then I would wholly encourage PCs using objects, spells, the environment, and improvising actions to what they think their mythic hero would do.

I agree. 13th Age promotes this, but the adjudication is DM hand waive. I wonder how to add mechanics to support newer DMs or whether just more anecdotes in the text would do.

Quote from: Batman;888225cool story bruh....

*sigh*

I thought this post would never end. FFS do you like to hear yourself talk. But by all means take a heaping pile of your own words.

I honestly don't give a shit what you think about 4e and me, just as much as I don't give a shit about 4e and you. Yet I am glad your following post is attempting to contribute to the original post's topic. So for that, thank you.

Quote from: Spinachcat;888254Gnomeworks is onto something.

What if we broke tiers up more 1-3/4-6/7-10, etc, and you treated monsters of lower tiers as minions? Or maybe 2 tiers down?

AKA, if I'm 7th level, the 3rd level monster can be one punched.

I commented on an equivalent beforehand, but it was "minions had hits equal to their tier."

Then, since I was worried about scaling, I added an analog of the old rule of "fighter has as many attacks as his level against creatures less than one hit die."

PCs would have as many attacks as their level against minions. By tier 4+ it seems like a lot of attacks, but higher tier minions also become more durable, too. Then you can mix and match different tiered minions, using less higher tiered ones as they can last longer. So e.g. a 19th lvl PC can have 19 attacks vs minions, but 3rd tier minions take 3 hits and 4th tier minions take four hits.

I don't know where that would eventually break in scale, but it keeps older, weaker monsters-turned-minions into more than just soap bubbles. And the attack-minions-equal-to-level speeds things along for all classes without fretting about which class gets more action economy (*cough* Twin Strike *cough*). It might even sport huge battles that come in waves that however mop up fast, a la Smash TV (which really supports that Mythic Heroes vibe).

Quote from: Spinachcat;888254What about fixed initiative?

Maybe Level + DEX/INT mod?

Nah, stat dependence supports chargen gameability whil not allowing an interesting back and forth flow of battle. Totally un-mythic in my view. There's no drama!

Easiest fix to retain some player control would be to let them burn a Hero Point at the top of the round's initiative roll to choose their PC's order in the following round. Then they can go at the top, bottom, or middle depending on their tactics (this sometimes matters greatly for healers). Yet those points should be precious, and spending them so freely for initiative... will likely catch up with them over time. Mythic heroic, but eventually costly, just like good myths trying to point out a lesson about patience.

Quote from: Spinachcat;888254Interesting. I want to ponder this more.

It's pretty well detailed by now in my previous posts.

Class Level plus Tier Level equals Hero Points.

Tier Level refreshes after every eight hour (Long) rest anywhere.

Class Level refreshes one point after each day reveling amid civilization (bedouin oases will count), recounting your glory, and spreading your heroic story.

These points fuel your hero getting away with things, or pushing himself to greater glories.

So far I have that you can spend Hero Points on:
Triggers, Skills, Saves, Initiative (new)...
maybe add Ensure Single To-Hit Attack Lands.

More ways to drain them off the better; let's people learn the difference from strategy and tactics.

Traditional D&D Cleric

Combat

1. Bloodied. Hastened Blessing. (bless spell while keeping your action).
2. Downed Ally. Salvation. (target, such as downed ally, gains 1/4 HD HP).
3. Last Stand/Sacrifice. Desperate Plea (moderate miracle, GM choice).

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Guiding Whispers. (GM handholds through trifling trouble).
2. Exposed. Mere Coincidence? (uncanny timely interventions).
3. Cornered. Seems Innocent... (who'd blame an agent of the divine?).

Social

1. Faux Pas. Patronizing the Flock. (let it slide, child, let it slide...).
2. Gross Breach. Owe a Ritual Service. (you fail - offer an institutional prayer in their name. they fail - make an example of them in your next sermon.)
3. Grave Insult. Unimpeachable Name. (you insult - call upon most high mutually respected -- and owe them a favor for backing you. they insult - call out heresy/apostasy and invoke future retribution).

Quote from: CRKrueger;887855Justin's just joking.  We all know any mother would rather die then live with the dishonor of their son running 4e.

Thank you for finding the perfect response to that.

Quote from: Daztur;887926Did you use side-based initiative? That was one of the main things that sped up combat for me in 0ed.

My experience with OD&D was LBB-only (which meant I didn't have "access" to the Chainmail initiative system). I ended up going with simultaneous action until the groups became too large for me to handle that, at which point I started using a phased sequence similar to the Perrin Conventions (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7842/roleplaying-games/justins-house-rules-for-odd) but still with simultaneous action.

Quote from: Batman;887944Can someone explain to me what the fuck traditional D&D means?

Start with OD&D. Move forward through the various editions. When enough shit has been changed that it feels like the fundamental gameplay has been altered, you've officially left traditional D&D.

For a very small minority that's either 1977 or 1989. For the majority of people it's either 2000 or 2008.

I tend to go with the latter: My 3E games feel like the OD&D, BECMI, and AD&D games I've played. Another good measurement is running modules across systems with a simple "goblin = goblin, giant = giant" conversion method (i.e., if the adventure says there are 8 goblins you pop open the MM for the edition you're running and use the stats you find in there). If you pick up one of the early modules (say 1977-1980 timeframe) you can run it in OD&D, AD&D, B/X, BECMI, and 3rd Edition and you'll end up with a pretty comparable experience. You run it in 4th Edition, though, and you end up with a radically different experience (and probably a horrifically sub-par one).

YMMV. (Although I can't imagine anyone honestly looking at 4E and saying, "Yup. That plays like AD&D.")

Quote from: Daztur;887922-Playing 4ed in a traditional D&D way is wrong.

Since it is published as D&D, fixing 4e to me would involve making it work when playing in a traditional D&D way (and a traditional old school D&D way, for me). That's what I expect/demand of any game calling itself a new  D&D edition which is published to replace the previous editions. But don't worry, this will be my only comment in this thread.

Daz, Opa, Spinach...

You guys could just let it go, accept that bringing a beautifully designed MMO to paper was not the best thing that ever happened and just play something else.

You'll be free, and happy, there will be butterflies...and beer. :D

Quote from: Justin Alexander;888282Start with OD&D. Move forward through the various editions. When enough shit has been changed that it feels like the fundamental gameplay has been altered, you've officially left traditional D&D.

For a very small minority that's either 1977 or 1989. For the majority of people it's either 2000 or 2008.

I only started with AD&D 2e in 96'. And that was a terrible experience. Jumped on at 3.0 moved to 3.5 and then onto 4e and 5e. From that perspective, seems pretty "D&D" to me. Obviously many people will have different experiences and Expectations. YMMV.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;888282I tend to go with the latter: My 3E games feel like the OD&D, BECMI, and AD&D games I've played. Another good measurement is running modules across systems with a simple "goblin = goblin, giant = giant" conversion method (i.e., if the adventure says there are 8 goblins you pop open the MM for the edition you're running and use the stats you find in there). If you pick up one of the early modules (say 1977-1980 timeframe) you can run it in OD&D, AD&D, B/X, BECMI, and 3rd Edition and you'll end up with a pretty comparable experience. You run it in 4th Edition, though, and you end up with a radically different experience (and probably a horrifically sub-par one).

Well I'm going to find out. Just got a copy of S-2 White Plume Mountain and I'm going to convert it almost verbatim using 4e-isms and see how that goes. I might add/subtract a monster here or change the level a bit from the 4e version if the level all over the place. So far from reading it, seems plausible. If it's a total train-wreck I'll have a better grasp of how to modify and change 4e's total structure to accommodate that particular style. In any sense, it'll be fun.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;888282YMMV. (Although I can't imagine anyone honestly looking at 4E and saying, "Yup. That plays like AD&D.")

I mostly don't remember my AD&D days. I recall dumb things like THAC0, racial restrictions, ability score requirements for classes, weapon speeds, turn-by-turn initiative, and spells going off where there were no monsters. In general, a clusterfuck of time spent either not knowing what I should be rolling and often dying to some save vs. magic or paralysis. So for me, 4e playing nothing like AD&D was probably a good thing.

Quote from: Batman;888312I mostly don't remember my AD&D days. I recall dumb things like THAC0, racial restrictions, ability score requirements for classes, weapon speeds, turn-by-turn initiative, and spells going off where there were no monsters.

Sounds like you remember quite a bit, you just learned nothing from it.

Quote from: Batman;888312often dying to some save vs. magic or paralysis.

Holy Christ, you poor tortured bastard...
(https://iaaebq.by3302.livefilestore.com/y3meFxV0RuSD0yAM60qAsmqZvyEDeMrh22HiLL99pAVSs01SYIanb7nFI-DfxUEQGZVWNWudmFghJxLLw5hSbl4TyO3h_7atIYWzgP9ftTTD7MXroaJZbrfWFvluGcMYRcwqKx8m0MkJxsKEpzY545QNQ?width=117&height=100&cropmode=none)
...feel better?

Quote from: CRKrueger;888319Sounds like you remember quite a bit, you just learned nothing from it.

Actually I learned what a fucking terrible mess that game was. But please don't let me stop you from circle-jerking to the TSR gods and how "real D&D was".  

Quote from: CRKrueger;888319Holy Christ, you poor tortured bastard...
(https://iaaebq.by3302.livefilestore.com/y3meFxV0RuSD0yAM60qAsmqZvyEDeMrh22HiLL99pAVSs01SYIanb7nFI-DfxUEQGZVWNWudmFghJxLLw5hSbl4TyO3h_7atIYWzgP9ftTTD7MXroaJZbrfWFvluGcMYRcwqKx8m0MkJxsKEpzY545QNQ?width=117&height=100&cropmode=none)
...feel better?

Now apply that same emoji to pretty much every 4e experiences you've probably had and we'll call it a day :). At least I was attempting to add to the conversation. And seriously THAT'S the best you can do?! I really wonder why you waste your time?

Quote from: Batman;888321Actually I learned what a fucking terrible mess that game was. But please don't let me stop you from circle-jerking to the TSR gods and how "real D&D was".

Lemme guess, your older brother didn't let you play Batman? ;)

Seriously though, you started with 2nd Edition, without ever seeing what came before, a hell I really wouldn't wish on anyone, especially if it was in the 2.5 Skills & Powers phase.  

Quote from: Batman;888321At least I was attempting to add to the conversation. And seriously THAT'S the best you can do?! I really wonder why you waste your time?

You were obviously so emotionally scarred by your character dying when you didn't want it to that you think bringing that up is adding to the conversation.  You kind of have to respond to that level of...yeah, whatever that was...but really that's the only reply that ever really fits in response to the "save or die" argument.  Sorry it didn't help, it was meant to be cathartic...at least for me. ;)

Quote from: RandallS;888302Since it is published as D&D, fixing 4e to me would involve making it work when playing in a traditional D&D way (and a traditional old school D&D way, for me).

I agree...but I am more interested in 4e as a fantasy skirmish RPG hybrid, not as a D&D replacement, because my OD&D never needed replacing.

What I do need is a better done fantasy skirmish RPG hybrid for when I want to play something different than OD&D.

Not better, not replacing, just different and equally fun.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;888307You guys could just let it go, accept that bringing a beautifully designed MMO to paper was not the best thing that ever happened and just play something else.

Like Forge Conan? Or Kull the Storygamer in the Tower of Safe Spaces? :)

I had lots of fun with 4e, and even more fun with 4e GW, but I am very interested in how the 4e concepts could possibly be evolved.

In the future, after I get off my ass and finish my current RPG projects, I do want to launch a new 4e game that fits my vision. In the meantime, all these kinda threads have my interest because I get lots out of seeing what people liked, hated, changed, or want to change.

It's why I bought the new Conan boardgame.

Quote from: CRKrueger;888307Daz, Opa, Spinach...

You guys could just let it go, accept that bringing a beautifully designed MMO to paper was not the best thing that ever happened and just play something else.

You'll be free, and happy, there will be butterflies...and beer. :D

Butterflies AND beer!? Well, shit, why didn't anyone say so... :thanx:

Actually, as much as my initial thoughts on the matter were "I'll have to change too much for it to be worth the bother," Daztur's Game Statement of Purpose — Mythic Saga Heroes — and his system stripdown to a freeform chassis with surges and action points converted into epic boo-boo erasers is a really interesting seed of a 4e homebrew.

(A statement of purpose to bring an MMO to paper, however, is definitely not my idea of an interesting seed.)

It's like looking at the product from its own system conceits and then constructing setting conceits from what you consider the most choice morsels. And then rebuilding from almost scratch with your favorite iconic morsels. I mean, Daztur's efforts got down to making three of 4e's most obvious digressions (surges+action points, bloodied, & minions) into intriguing epic-mythic material. That's rather exciting from a coffee clatch brainstorm.

Actually, I think 4e would have been a GREAT computer game; a computer handling all the bookkeeping would have sped up the game immensely (but please don't ask me to prove that).

Heck, I'd still reach for my walled if a 4e-based fantasy RPG came out on the computer.

Quote from: Doom;888505Actually, I think 4e would have been a GREAT computer game; a computer handling all the bookkeeping would have sped up the game immensely (but please don't ask me to prove that).

Heck, I'd still reach for my walled if a 4e-based fantasy RPG came out on the computer.

Neverwinter online is basically 4E (Without skills), and it's not bad.

Quote from: Doom;888505Actually, I think 4e would have been a GREAT computer game; a computer handling all the bookkeeping would have sped up the game immensely (but please don't ask me to prove that).

Heck, I'd still reach for my walled if a 4e-based fantasy RPG came out on the computer.

Actually, it's a better Board game than RPG.  Seeing as they're still selling them.

Quote from: Doom;888505Actually, I think 4e would have been a GREAT computer game; a computer handling all the bookkeeping would have sped up the game immensely (but please don't ask me to prove that).

Heck, I'd still reach for my walled if a 4e-based fantasy RPG came out on the computer.

I'll never touch the 4E tabletop game again, but I'd throw good money at a 4E CRPG in the vein of ToEE (ideally with fewer major bugs).

Quote from: Doom;888505Actually, I think 4e would have been a GREAT computer game; a computer handling all the bookkeeping would have sped up the game immensely (but please don't ask me to prove that).

Heck, I'd still reach for my walled if a 4e-based fantasy RPG came out on the computer.

For a while there was bounce around the idea of adapting FRUA/DC over to 4e as it was a perfect fit in terms of gameplay on a grid when combat starts. Like alot of UA/DC concepts. As of last check several years ago it had puttered out. Much like the greatly lamented never finished Star Frontiers project which I did all the sprites for based on all the counters from the boxed sets.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;888571Actually, it's a better Board game than RPG.  Seeing as they're still selling them.

Dont think the now four board games use the 4e system. They use some very simplified combat structure. Havent had a chance to really look at it yet though so cant say.

I know some players combined 4e with D&D HeroScape rather than using HeroScapes system which was most definitely not D&D.

And Lords od Waterdeep is even further removed as is Dungeon, which even the original did not use D&D's system.

Quote from: Omega;888602Dont think the now four board games use the 4e system. They use some very simplified combat structure. Havent had a chance to really look at it yet though so cant say.

I know some players combined 4e with D&D HeroScape rather than using HeroScapes system which was most definitely not D&D.

And Lords od Waterdeep is even further removed as is Dungeon, which even the original did not use D&D's system.

They're still selling all the board games, though.  Which is still using the 4e engine as a base.  Personally, I rather like them.

Quote from: Omega;888602Dont think the now four board games use the 4e system. They use some very simplified combat structure. Havent had a chance to really look at it yet though so cant say.

I know some players combined 4e with D&D HeroScape rather than using HeroScapes system which was most definitely not D&D.

And Lords od Waterdeep is even further removed as is Dungeon, which even the original did not use D&D's system.

The board games use a very light version of 4e...you roll a D20 to hit, and past that the resemblance is arguable. I lean towards saying it's "4e light", but I can accept how reasonable people can disagree on that.

They're kind of fun, for a little while, but it's monster whack-a-mole, once you get the hang of it there's no there, there, as far as replay value. I guess you could say the board games use a "fixed" version of 4e, to give some idea of what you'd have to do to 4e to make it run clean.

Lords of Waterdeep and Dungeon! are license properties...there's no way at all to call those 4e systems, you don't even use a D20 anywhere in the game.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;888612They're still selling all the board games, though.  Which is still using the 4e engine as a base.  Personally, I rather like them.

Just looked at the rules PDF WOTC has up on their site. Does look like it uses at least some 4e elements. But its definitely not using the 4e engine aside from some terms, maybe the skills and the baser combat system. The characters arent useing 4es system for HP as one example and monsters are using their own movement system as another at a glance.

Tom Vasel has a very good review of Castle Ravenloft and the other three sets.

As for still using the system. That is because each new set has to be backwards compatible. So they are still using the 4e-like system even now as they can not switch out without losing that compatibility with the rest of the series.

There has been talk of a new 5e based co-op. But so far WOTC seems to be looking to other things.

Rogue

Combat

1. Bloodied. Cheap Shots. (choose one of XYZ status effects to add to your attacks.)
2. Downed Ally. The Art of Vengeance. (unleash the scary venoms and tricks of the trade. define with help of GM.)
3. Last Stand/Sacrifice. Fearless Lunges. (backstabs on charges, target's facing and awareness doesn't matter.)

Explore

1. Evidence/Slip Up. Second Nature Training. (muscle memory catches what escaped your attention.)
2. Exposed. Preternatural Escape. (when all your training sings together.)
3. Cornered. That'll Never Work... (sometimes those old or crazy tricks do work!)

Social

1. Faux Pas. Uncanny Mimic. (ape the savoir faire of the nearest visible suave person. can lead to funny mannerisms.)
2. Gross Breach. Fast Talk & Flattery. (distract and entrance with words. a little goes a long way before your hand is called.)
3. Grave Insult. Precious Bribes. (offer something precious for forgiveness — or plot to take something precious in revenge.)

I'm not sure I would tinker with the mechanics of 4E much. The problem a lot of people seem to have with 4E (including the people who wrote modules for WotC) is using it to run traditional dungeon-crawls. It's a terrible system for adventures with lots and lots of combat encounters. 4E works perfectly fine for more heroic play, featuring role-playing, investigation, and exploration, where you have 2-3 dramatic combats per session.

Quote from: Haffrung;888759I'm not sure I would tinker with the mechanics of 4E much. The problem a lot of people seem to have with 4E (including the people who wrote modules for WotC) is using it to run traditional dungeon-crawls. It's a terrible system for adventures with lots and lots of combat encounters. 4E works perfectly fine for more heroic play, featuring role-playing, investigation, and exploration, where you have 2-3 dramatic combats per session.

I came from this very same perspective just recently. However Daztur's ideas to look at it through an epic saga lens, especially the notable divergence like surges and minion rules, intrigued. I am actually now curious whether a mix of 4e minion rules & 1-2e fighter attacks v. <1HD equal to fighter level, along with a surges hybrid as strat/tactics super moves pool, could pull off that mix of extra combats and attrition.

Checking random chargen (3d6 straight down)
12, 13, 11, 12, 4, 14

Cleric would be odd, but depending on non-AEDU spell equations *could* work.

I'm going to use a middle-aged grandma for these 4 classes, just because. I won't add the triggers for space and redundancy reasons.

First, fighter.

Nan, the Rolling Pin Brava
Human 2nd level Fighter, 1st tier.

Bio
Defended her family homestead with her rolling pin and pet sow after her menfolk were conscripted. Her legend thus spread throughout the county. Now she's teaching other mothers how to form militias for when their menfolk are conscripted. A bit naive thinking this won't upset "the powers that be."

ABILITIES
Human: chose +2 WIS.

STR: 12 (0). CON: 13 (+1). DEX: 11 (0). INT: 12 (0). WIS: 6 (-1). CHA: 14 (+1)

HIT POINTS
34 HP

Hero Points
Hero Points = 3.  Tier Hero Points = 1.

Armor Class
Cloth Armor (Apron) + Small Shield (Wicker Basket)
AC 11, 12 with shield

Saves

Fort = 13.     Refl = 12, 13 with Small Shield.   Will = 11.

Skills

14 Bluff (CHA)
11 Endurance (CON) (cross-class)
6 Heal (WIS)
14 Intimidate (CHA)

Attacks
proficiency: Improvised Household Tools.
STR/DEX/CHA to-hit = 5/4/5 (4/3/4 ranged).

Triggers
Cleverly reskin some to include the pet sow.

Rogue

Mamacita San, of Mamacita San's Traveling Burlesque Circus
Human 2nd level Rogue, 1st tier.

Bio
A sex worker refuge from their legal denial to trade unionism. Mamacita San uses their outsider status to fight against this injustice by scraping a living, and a pension for their aging members. Vive les libertines!

ABILITIES
Human: chose +2 DEX

STR: 12 (0). CON: 13 (+1). DEX: 13 (+1). INT: 12 (0). WIS: 4 (-2). CHA: 14 (+1).

HIT POINTS
12+con score+(5/add lvl) = 30 HP

Hero Points
Hero Points = 3. Tier Hero Points = 1.

Armor Class
Cloth (slinky) + Small Shield (big scarf)
AC 11, 12 with shield

Saves

Fort = 12. Refl = 13, 14 with Small Shield. Will = 11.

Skills

4 Insight (WIS)
4 Perception (WIS)
13 Stealth (DEX)
14 Streetwise (CHA)
13 Thievery (DEX)

Attacks
proficiency: simple, Improvised Boudoir Items.
STR/DEX/CHA to-hit = 5/5/5 (4/4/4 ranged).

Triggers
Cleverly reskin some to include Octopussy circus troupe tricks.