4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
I think everyone should start with 18s in every ability. The stats all progress at the same rate, as well. +1 at levels 4, 8, 11, 14, 18, 21, 24 and 28. The only thing to differentiate characters' abilities would be racial modifiers.
Ok. Take a second, think about that, and then read it again. It sounds radical and munchkiny, but the more I think about it the more I think it's a really good idea.
Frankly, I don't think ability scores serve much of a purpose in this game except as a sacred cow. If I had my way, I'd get rid of them entirely. But that would cause massive problems, from requiring re-balancing of everything in the game (albeit by just a few points) to completely invalidating the Character Builder.
This sidesteps all those issues nicely and virtually does away with ability scores. It even has the interesting bug/feature of making the various races continue to stand out in their areas of expertise by having an extra +1 modifier to whichever attacks/effects are based on their racial stat.
Let's take a look at what is lost.
The most obvious thing is balance... or is it? I'll go out on a limb and say that every single serious D&D 4th edition character has at least a base 16 in their attack/damage stat. Further than that, I'd guess at least half, if not more, have an 18 in that stat already. And this is before taking racial modifiers into account. If you don't have an 18 in your primary stat after racial modifiers, you're gimping your character.
There are only two real power gains under this system; players' lowest defenses won't be quite as low, and effects of powers based on their secondary ability scores will get a bump of a couple points. Personally, I don't think either of those are big deals in the long run, based on what we stand to gain. YMMV.
The next thing you might argue would be some vague notion of individuality among characters, but I think that the ability scores play little part in that. It's the class, power, feat and skill choices that make a character who he is; at most the ability scores just enhance those. On top of that, you've already got the vast majority of your point-buy points spent as soon as you pick your class, since you've got to put at least a 16 in your primary stat and likely a 14 in one of your secondary stats. I'd go so far as to say that if you tell me your class and chosen feature, I could guess your ability scores to within a few points. Individuality indeed.
The biggest loss that I can see is a bit of fidelity in skills. Previously, with a skill you had two "chances" of being "good" with it; either naturally (i.e. through having a high ability score) or through training (e.g. other bonuses, including actually training in the skill, feat bonuses, racial bonuses, items, etc). So it was possible to be poor (no natural ability or training), moderate (natural ability OR training), or good (both natural ability AND training). Now you're either trained (good) or you're not (poor).
Let's look at what we gain, however.
First, all of those sad, neglected "V" classes (Paladin, Ranger, Warlock, etc) would rejoice. No longer would you be forced to choose from a subset of your powers because they happen to target the correct stat for your ability. All your class's powers are game for every character.
On top of that, we have just opened the door for much wider and more interesting multiclass. Previously, you really had to choose a multiclass (or hybrid) which had some ability score synergy with your primary class. Now that's no longer a concern-- all that matters is the implements, and those are cheap and easy for any character to acquire with a bonus of at least one less than your main weapon/implement (e.g. if you have a +3 sword, a +2 magic wand should be very affordable for you since it costs at most 1/5 the price of your sword).
And finally, it's just plain easier. There's a lot of stuff to think about as a player when you're designing your character. Ability scores might not seem like much, but it is one fewer headache to deal with, and isn't that a good thing?
What, are you some sort of commie or something, wanting to build a party of Winston Smiths????
And what's wrong with sacred cows? Billions of Hindus swear by them
You do raise an interesting point, in that point buy basically means 1 x 18 for everyone and other stats pretty well pan out in a familiar well-trodden distribution, but the solution I would consider is bringing back random rolls.
I think stats do matter in terms of defining a character. I was always a fan of point buy, but looking over my players' sheets and seeing the same numbers, albeit in different places, is depressing. Replacing what little variation I see now with all 18s or blanks wouldn't cheer me up any.
One idea I've been toying with is rolling 3 or 4 pairs of dice per stat, discarding the lowest in each pair. There are all sorts of variations of course, but the trick is to come up with something that avoids crap characters.
I suppose I'm just hopelessly old school, but your idea is way too radical for me. However, there's one player in my group that absolutely must never hear of this.... frankly I'm surprised he hasn't already thought of it himself.
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...and furthermore - high stats / low stats are often triggers for roleplaying. If everyone is equally smart/strong/quick etc, no-one gets to play the intellectually impaired jock or weedy wizard.
Stereotypes everywhere are lining up to fight this abomination!
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Last edited by pdmiller; 6th July 2009 at 12:23 PM..
this might be a good idea for a 4e lite. Simply start characters with base 18s (+4 bonuses) at level 1 and move it up +2 at 4, 8, 11, 14, 18, 21, 24, 28.
Or make it +2 at 8, 14, 21, and 28 to make it even simpler: +5 at 8; +6 at 14; +7 at 21; +8 at 28
I like this - not for actual 4e, but as a 4e variant.
Off hand I don't see a huge issue with it. As you state, MOST characters are going to have decent stats for to-hit and damage so we're talking a +1, maybe +2 at the most here for everything a character would typically do and this does help address MAD with a pretty big hammer.
It would not be for everyone but I could see it being for some perhaps a lot. One of the most memorable characters of a past campaign (random roll fixed placement) was Leoss the Magnificent the wizard who was stronger and had a better constitution than the fighter thanks to insane dice rolls.
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Sounds like a way to make all the characters really boring and undifferentiated.
I recognize your arguments that class, powers, etc. do the differentiation, but I disagree.
I wouldn't be inclined to play such a game and I would NEVER run a game like that. Many of the most memorable pcs had at least one low stat- that's why I don't do point buy and prolly never will. All 18s would be boring as hell.
(Please note that this is an opinion based on playstyle preference; I'm not calling your idea out as badwrongfun, just as badwrongfun for me.)
Jester I do agree with you, but what if we had things which allowed another level of differentiation... like taking clumbsy.. or distractable or similar descriptive negative aspects for your character. One could assume that a clumbsy hero is almost always compensated for the difficiency with luck (but under a specific situation he has a penalty that looks like the halfling in reverse).
We could give people extra feats to compensate for a deficiency... when the clumbsy guy suceeds with a dex based activity he.. just got lucky. Agile could give you a reroll like the hobbits but only for dex based activity. Yup its another layer (but it could give Asmor what he is doing and address the issue you are seeing.)
I can say that all 18's seems outlandish to start; but I can also think of a game or two when it would be cool to try. I also really like Garthanos' idea of different aspects. I would apply them to skills in particular; since that is the biggest thing where 18's sees power.
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So everyone gets almost the same defenses. Everyone gets almost the same to hit. Everyone gets the same secondary stat ability... everyone gets similar hp..
To be honest, if you went with the 'all 18s' route I'd say that you should consider that only mechanically and then go ahead and describe your character in appropriate RP terms.
So you can still have the dumb fighter or gullible warlord, or whatever.
Seems like overall it would be a power boost, but not an unrecoverable one. Try it out, let us know how it goes.
Personally I'd rather not have hit based on an ability and then keep the ability mods at 1st and just not increase ability scores. But that doesn't work with the character builder. Ah well.
To be honest, if you went with the 'all 18s' route I'd say that you should consider that only mechanically and then go ahead and describe your character in appropriate RP terms.
Oh, absolutely. You don't need to have an 8 in wisdom to be the absent-minded wizard. Just play your character as if he's absent-minded.
Part of the idea of this is to get rid of ability scores without actually changing the system, so you don't need to roleplay your character as if you had 18s in everything.
Similar/Almost etc is a relative thing
20 to 30 hitpoints = 4,5,6 hitpoints ... this is a "fairish translation" of what a version 2.5 D&D player sees looking at 4e mathematically... and boy when my wizards rolled 1 on hitpoints 2 tops, so many times you cant imagine. ;-), I was really wishing for house rules like d4 and d6(4 hp), d8(5hp), d10 and d12(6hp).
That said I really dont see ironing out the subtleties like the proposed rule actually gaining much.(nor losing as much as those who heartily object). insufficient argument has been put forth for it providing benefit.
Oh, absolutely. You don't need to have an 8 in wisdom to be the absent-minded wizard. Just play your character as if he's absent-minded.
Part of the idea of this is to get rid of ability scores without actually changing the system, so you don't need to roleplay your character as if you had 18s in everything.
Oh I wasn't saying you had to have mechanical aspects but it can help some players... it can work entirely without.... heres how I see it and its very 4e
Just as players are encouraged to skin what their characters powers look like ..... allowing/encouraging/requiring ;-) players to describe how there characters skills or defenses succeed and fail. If you your highly agile character fails to hit the target it can be because there arrow hit a crosswind. It can be because the enemy defended them self very well, If your character is clumbsy and they fail then they can describe it as them stumbling over there own shaking arthritic condition.... or they can suceed because they were distracted by something and fired at a different target....
I was aiming at the guy on the left honest. That was a critical failure not a critical hit (mechanically he rolled a 20 but that is entirely beside the point)
I have found that players don't like straight 18's. I usually allow players to pick their own stats for their characters and have told my players repeatedly that straight 18's would be fine. I've never had a player take more then one 18 and about 50% of the characters geenrated this way have not had any 18's at all.
So, while I'm open to the idea I don'ty see my own players wanting to do this.
I have found that players don't like straight 18's. I usually allow players to pick their own stats for their characters and have told my players repeatedly that straight 18's would be fine. I've never had a player take more then one 18 and about 50% of the characters geenrated this way have not had any 18's at all.
So, while I'm open to the idea I don'ty see my own players wanting to do this.
That's an even better idea. I think I will be officially stealing that. Thanks!
ETA: Just sent out an email to the group informing them of this decision.
heh now that I think about it... my players would probably generate straight 13s and 14s with an occasional 16 or 17 a hight point buy but very distributed.
I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad. But I find the all 18 houserule to be heavily exploitable and will be building a character exploiting it as much as I can for fun (I've recently learned Im a HUGE min/maxer). I'll show you my results.
I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad. But I find the all 18 houserule to be heavily exploitable and will be building a character exploiting it as much as I can for fun (I've recently learned Im a HUGE min/maxer). I'll show you my results.
Stay tuned...
heheh I want to see the ultimate pc by flipguarder..
The other option, Asmor, is to throw all ability scores out the window and then adjust the rest of the game down 4. That might be somewhat more convoluted, though.
I've been screwing around writing a game now for the last couple years that has no character stats so I really like this idea. I mean, I REALLY like it -
-except for D&D. Especially 4E.
Why? Not enough noncombat player-narration powers and feats. Straight up. Your two main feat types in this edition are "add or subtract a number" and "substitute x for y." Even most of your utility powers are of those two types with the occasional "make a nonstandard movement" thrown in.
Stuff like Oath of the Relentless Hunter (Avenger Utility 6) and Magpie Filch (Rogue Utility 16) are my favorite types of powers; schticks. My character does this. I don't need to roll, I just do it because that's what I do. The Vancian spell system from previous editions also gave this feel to some extent. They would be gold in a statless system because they a) help differentiate one PC from another apart from fighting style and b) support the feel of a game where the math is as minimized as possible.
If I'm playing D&D, though, I'm here because I want to figure out how to get a +87 to hit. I want to stack bonuses and crunch numbers because that's what the game encourages. If I don't want math, I'll play FATE. There's something about a statless D&D that falls into a mechanical 'uncanny valley' for me.
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