Rules Broad reworking of 4e characters and combat

[RangerWickett]

Edited 16 October 2009 with newest version, here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachm...dition-oct.doc.

The attached file is the original version.

Basically, I wanted to get away from the at-will, encounter, daily thing, so I'm working on designing a combat system with variety and options, where you can build your moves from an assortment of small fighting styles, instead of having to pick premade moves from a list.

The options are pretty basic right now, and the magic section is unfinished because, well, magic's complicated. But this is sort of proof of concept. I'm fairly comfortable with where the melee combat options are. What do you think?

[SSquirrel]

Seems interesting in the proof of concept early doc. Here are my notes from a quick viewing at work:

1)Executioner and Sniper are the only styles requiring another fighting style. Both require the assassin. More styles coming built off of other styles?
2)How many fighting styles do you get? Level based requirement? (nevermind, I missed that bit) How many of these make sense for casters? In an Iron Heroes style game they all work obviously.
3)All requirements are based on Strength or Con, since anyone can choose any skill. Any plans to make any of the other abilities have weight in the system?
4)Feels like 2E with kits, healing surges and the level based bonus

Some of my questions may simply be answered by "this is proof of concept, that's all in the works", which is fine. Just things I felt should get mentioned. Good luck w/the project RW

[RangerWickett]

Originally Posted by SSquirrel

Seems interesting in the proof of concept early doc. Here are my notes from a quick viewing at work:

1)Executioner and Sniper are the only styles requiring another fighting style. Both require the assassin. More styles coming built off of other styles?

Yeah, I'd like to have different martial arts substyles, different duelist substyles, and so on. But first I wanted to see if the basic concept would be playable.

2)How many fighting styles do you get? Level based requirement? (nevermind, I missed that bit) How many of these make sense for casters? In an Iron Heroes style game they all work obviously.

3 at 1st level. I would like it if it were possible to learn more later, but the challenge becomes balancing them with normal feats. Then again, my opinion has long been that 4e feats are weak and uninteresting. The problem of course comes in that you get 16 feats over the course of your career, so I need a lot of options.

I figure at a certain point, even if you did take lots of styles, eventually adding new styles wouldn't be much help. You could be a jack of all trades, master of none, or you could take other feats (yet to be designed) to improve your existing styles. I'm not quite sure yet in what way to improve them, though.

3)All requirements are based on Strength or Con, since anyone can choose any skill. Any plans to make any of the other abilities have weight in the system?

Str and Dex are for attacking. Str and Con are for armor. All 6 stats are potentially valuable for defenses. And magic will key off of Int, Wis, and Cha.

4)Feels like 2E with kits, healing surges and the level based bonus

Some of my questions may simply be answered by "this is proof of concept, that's all in the works", which is fine. Just things I felt should get mentioned. Good luck w/the project RW

Thanks. Do you think a system like this would be interesting to play? You get to have a variety of basic attacks, and you can surge to pull off some interesting tricks a few times each combat, and if you take a moment to get your focus, you can have devastating turns.

[SSquirrel]

Well 4E feats were weak and uninteresting by design really. On the Dex, I just meant that armor requirements were all strength based, armor was strength based, we had no styles that really fell to an especially dextrous individual.

Are the surge and focus in addition or instead of action points? Like I said, I think the system feels like 2E with a few bits borrowed from 4E. The people who like how 2E runs, but like the feel of things like healing surges and the simplicity of the level based bonuses (with no more racial class and level restrictions) will enjoy it.

[RangerWickett]

Ah, there were a few elements I didn't include, I see. I want to tweak weapons just a tad. No simple/military/superior differentiation.

Weapons are light, medium, or heavy. Light weapons you can use either Str or Dex. So if you fight with daggers, shortswords, whips, small axes, batons, etc., you can use your Dex.

So you can make a 'fighter' by using heavy armor, having high Str and Con, and focusing on medium or heavy weapons. A 'rogue' would use light armor, and have a high Dex. Pretty much same as now, but you could mix and match if you want.

And I think I would have action points, one for each encounter after the first each day.

[SSquirrel]

Surge and focus seem to produce similar results in many cases as to what you would receive from using an AP. Having both in the system along with APs would be pretty strong.

Things like Buy the Numbers in 3E were very interesting ways of turning D&D into a point buy system. I think a point buy 4E would be even easier to achieve b/c they have already given us the numbers behind so much of the system and have tried to make more balanced all around. An interesting 3.x/Arcana Evolved crossover point buy system was DrSpunj's Class Balance Spreadsheet and I was a big fan of that.

What happens when the "Rogue" has a 2H sword he is wanting to backstab with in a dark alley?

[LostSoul]

I like it.

There's only one change I would make: the DM chooses the condition when you do an Afflict.

How does he make that choice? The player's description of the action. The player would probably want to describe the first attack so that the follow-up Afflict makes sense, and you get the DM ruling you're hoping for.

[RigaMortus2]

Originally Posted by RangerWickett

3 at 1st level. I would like it if it were possible to learn more later, but the challenge becomes balancing them with normal feats.

So I have a thougt here... I borrowed this idea from Palladium's Ninja's and Superspies. I was trying to do a fighting style system of myself a while back, and didn't really get anywhere with it. Instead of having classes levels 1 - 20, each fighting style had levels 1 - 20, and at each level had different maneuvers and benefits (and BAB progression).

You can have 2 Hero classes. One is the Dedicated Hero, the other is the Worldly Hero.

The Dedicated Hero is dedicated to one type of Fighting style, and so can raise all the way up to level 20 gaining each benefit at each level. The other choice the Dedicated Hero can do is start with an Exclusive (prestige in D&D terms) fighting style. This would be akin to your Executioner and Sniper fight styles (except they can pick it from the get-go, no previous fighting style requirement needed).

The Worldly Hero starts with 2 fighting styles, but can only pick a benefit from one style or the other at each level. So they get more choices and options each level, and they can still get benefits at each level all the way through level 20, but they don't get ALL the benefits from each style. This could make for some interesting combinations. They are not as disciplined as a Dedicated Hero, so can not pick from the Exclusive fighting styles.

Anyway, just wanted to toss a few ideas at you...

[Cwheeler]

I like it. I'm interested to see how you're planning on handling magic.

a few quick notes:

1. I'd probably change the combat styles and magic traditions from being feats - they're definitely not balanced with normal feats. Instead, you might want to give out an extra style per tier (even having 'upgraded' styles that can only be purchased at higher tiers) or allowing people to purchase a combat style at the cost of two feats.

2. The damage for the unarmed strikes seems a little high...

3. I like the system! Please keep working on it .

[Alex319]

Overall, this seems like a very solid base. There are probably a few balance tweaks that would be useful to make although I can't see any styles that are obviously overpowered. The only possible exception is the Clincher that lets you make melee basic attacks against grabbed targets as a minor action - 3 attacks per round every round is pretty darn powerful at high levels, especially when most of your damage is going to be coming from those static damage modifiers.

I also noticed you used terms that you didn't define anywhere, like "Short range" and "light, medium, and heavy weapons".

I'll just make a few comments about the Afflicting and the conditions.

- It seems a little too easy to do. You do get a -5 on the roll, but it's against Fort, which is usually 2-3 points lower than AC, so it's really more like -2 or -3. Also this makes Fort much more important than the other NADs (Non-AC Defenses). You might want to have different conditions key off of different NADs - e.g. Dominated keys off of Will, Disarmed keys off of Reflex, etc.

- It's probably overpowered against Solos and possibly Elites too. This is a problem in the regular 4e game as will but it's going to be more serious in this version because everyone can (try to) inflict conditions at-will. Even with the -5 penalty, with everyone whaling on the solo they can easily inflict a couple conditions per round, and it really only takes about 3-5 steps worth of conditions to basically take someone out of the fight.

- Some conditions are far more powerful than others. Dazed, for example, is very good because 3 steps worth is enough to stun him (save ends), and 4 steps worth is just as good as killing them.

- Assuming you have a minor action to spare, it doesn't cost anything to try to inflict a condition, so it's easy to spam conditions without any loss in damage output.

Possible suggestions:

- Give elites and solos their save bonus as a bonus to their defense against Afflict. So a player would effectively be at -10 to Afflict an unbloodied solo.

- Make it so that in order to Afflict you have to give something up - say halve the damage on the attack.

- Have a different track for penalties to Afflict. For example something like:
3/4 or more hp = -10 penalty
1/2 to 3/4 = -5 penalty
1/4 to 1/2 = no penalty, but still only get one step of the condition
0 to 1/4 = no penalty, and get two steps of the condition

Probably you don't need to do both this and the half damage thing - one is enough and both would make conditions underpowered.

---

(By the way, I'm imagining someone with Brute and Two-Weapon Fighting wielding two mauls with several more on his person and using his battle surge to throw them at enemies... by the way, if a Brute is dual-wielding heavy weapons and expends his focus to do something else, what happens?)

[RangerWickett]

Re: Afflict
I tried to have the level 1 afflicts all be fairly minor, akin to something you might get with an encounter power in 4e.

Remember, when someone's not bloodied, you only give them one step of the condition, not two. In order to knock someone unconscious with Afflict when they're not bloodied, you have to hit them four times, and then hit with four follow-up attacks, and they have to fail all their saves in the interim. Assuming you've got a fairly average "hit 70% of the time" party, even if all five PCs gang up on one guy, you get:

Chance of a given attack hitting -                                        70%
Chance of an Afflict hitting -                                              60% (-5 penalty, but Fort is lower than AC)
Chance of a successful hit that afflicts -                                  42%
Average number of successful Afflicts per round with 5-person party - 2.1
Chance enemy saves vs. condition to reduce it -                             55%
Average Afflict stage after one round of PCs hitting foe -                  1.55
Average number of rounds needed to knock out a foe -        4/1.55 = 2.58

I figure if a party devotes everything to walloping on a single enemy for two and a half rounds, it ought to go down. Of course, I figure after several of those hits the critter gets bloodied, so you might take him down in a round or two. Still, if 5 guys gang up on one thing, it should probably go down.

I'm all in favor of giving some extra defense to elites and solos, though. (On the other hand, I don't know that I'll ever run a solo again, not without tons of tweaks.) Maybe Elites suffer the effect of 1/2 the stage they're on, so to knock one out you need 8 steps. And Solos are 1/4, so knocking out a dragon is quite an involved process.


Also, Dominated is only an option for Charm attacks, which target Will. Disarm, yeah, should probably be Reflex.


Re: Losing Focus
If a two-weapon fighting brute expends his focus while holding a pair of heavy weapons, he's no longer 'wielding weapons.' He's just 'holding objects.' He'd have to drop or stow one, and hold the other with both hands. Fairly straightforward.


Re: Definitions and Unarmed Damage
That's the result of a separate retooling of weapons and damage I was working on. Since none of the attacks in my system deal multiple [w] damage, I wanted to make the distinction between small and large weapons be greater. Which led to a new weapon chart.

I'm attaching it, for anyone who's interested, but it's nothing special. Mostly just added damage, and changing weapons to all be the equivalent of 'military.' No simple or superior.


Re: Balancing Feats
I might make something like a two feat system.

Feat 1 - Style Novice. You gain the benefit entry of a style of your choice.
Feat 2 - Style Expert. You gain the battle surge and combat focus abilities of a style you took Style Novice for.

[Cwheeler]

Ok, the martial artist thing makes a little more sense now.

It still seems a little strange to me to have a martial artist dealing d12 damage with an unarmed strike. If I where playing this, I could think of very few instances where I'd be willingly using one of the lower damage dice. How would it play to drop medium and heavy to d8/d10 respectively?

A few notes after skimming the weapons:

• The damage for the Battle Axe seems a little high for a medium weapon, being two dice higher than any other weapon of it's category. Should it be dropped to d10?
  
• If you wanted to, you could put in some things to make the different weapon types function more differently - such as allowing light weapons to attack more frequently (perhaps as a move action), or medium weapons giving you a static bonus to defense.
  
• Another option with the weapons is to include a 'focused strike' option - By taking a full round to make a single attack, you can increase the damage dealt (e.g. one extra damage dice, adding +50% to damage dealt, etc..)
  

(Those last two options are mostly ways to balance other builds against the inevitable Brute/Two-Weapon Fighter powerhouses, although I actually like the idea of having more ways to distinguish light, medium and heavy weapons)


Idea on sample magic tradition:

Energy Manipulator.
Prerequisites: Trained in Arcana, religion or nature.
Benefit: Choose an energy type (fire, cold, acid, lightning, thunder, force, radiant, necrotic, psychic).
You gain a medium ranged attack that deals XdY damage of the chosen energy type.
Battle Surge: During this battle surge, you may make a ranged attack as a standard action. This attack is Blast1 and deals XdY damage.
Focus: While you are focused, you gain resist 5 to your chosen energy type. You may expend your focus to change the type of energy being used for this tradition.

It's quite a strait forward example, but should do the trick.


Using this system, you could do some really interesting specific magical traditions.

Illusionist and necromancer spring to mind...

[RangerWickett]

I've conglomerated all my ideas into this file. I'm rather busy for the near future, but if anyone has any thoughts on refining the system, or making the magic work, have at it.

Basically, for magic, I wanted magical traditions that give you attacks, and feats to let you tweak the way your magical attacks work. But each tradition lets you sort of make a little magic on the fly, with the GM's guidance.

I know it's unfinished, but I probably won't be able to put any more significant work into it for a month or more. Thanks for all the feedback so far.

[Cwheeler]

Interesting stuff. I think I'm liking this idea more and more. Not sure how much I like the 'Blaster, burster', etc, but it might grow on me.

Before you posted that, I did a quick concept write up for the Necromancer (which was quite similar to yours), and the Illusionist (which was a bit different from the mystic idea).

Necromancer

Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana or Religion.

Benefit: You gain a touch attack that deals 2d8 necrotic damage.

Battle Surge: As a standard action once during this surge, you may raise the corpse of a dead creature. This corpse has HP equal to the creature's healing surge value, and can make basic melee attacks that deal half the damage that the creature did in life.
You can animate a maximum of three creatures at any one time. If you choose to keep any creatures animated between encounters, you start the next encounter as if you have already used 1 battle surge/creature kept.
Maintaining a resurrected elite uses 2 surges, and maintaining a solo uses 3.

Combat Focus: While you are focused, you can use a move action to make all of your undead move, or a standard action to make all of your undead attack.

Illusionist

Prerequisite: Int or Cha 15, trained in Arcana

Benefit: You gain access to the ghost sound cantrip.
As a standard action, you may create an illusion. Make an attack vs will against the target creature(s). If you succeed, they believe the illusion is real. Interacting with the illusion grants a save for disbelief.
The size of the illusion can be up to a blast equal to your level (blast 1 at 1st, blast 2 at 2nd, etc..)

Battle Surge: As a standard action during this surge, you may create an offensive illusion that deals 2d8 Psychic damage and (status effect) to each target in Blast 1, Save ends status effect.

Focus: While you are focused.. ????

I also messed around with Arcane Trickster -

Arcane Trickster

Prerequisite: Dex 15, trained in Arcana.

Benefit: You may make Disable Device and Thievery checks at short range.
You gain aceess to the ghost sound and Mage Hand cantrips.
You may make attacks with light weapons as if they had reach.

Battle Surge:???

Combat Focus: ???

I know they're not quite in line with your system's write up style, but I did them before I saw the document.

As a side note - I'm not sure if I like making people take a feat to get access to schools of magical training. I can understand taking a feat to get access to the spells, but it seems like too much of a cost just for the traditions.

If I wanted to create, for example, a 'Dark Paladin' type character, I'd probably want to take Drednought, Commander and Necromancer.

It just seems like a bit of an extra limitation. (could just be me though)


And finally, a build option for sh#ts and giggles (probably martial training)

Airbender

Prerequisite: Dexterity 13, Wisdom 13

Benefit: You gain a short ranged attack vs Reflex that deals 1d10 damage and slides the opponent 1.

Battle Surge: Once during this battle surge as a standard action, you may make a blast 1 attack vs Reflex within 20 that deals 2d8 damage and slides each target 2.

Focus: While you are focused, you may shift 1 as a free action once per turn. You may expend your focus to shift 5 as an immediate interrupt.

I've gotta say, this system seems like it could turn out to be a lot of fun!

[Ulorian]

You should edit your first post to include your updated rules doc.

[RangerWickett]

Originally Posted by Ulorian

You should edit your first post to include your updated rules doc.

Done.

[Cwheeler]

What do you want Manna-based magic to look like?

Plain ole damage? Useful utilities? Are you planning on using it alongside rituals?

(I think Monte Cook's World of Darkness had a decent point-based spell system. Might be a good starting point...)

[RangerWickett]

Mana magic would basically be anything 'magical' that is not just 'simple attacks' or 'short duration trick.' Like, depending on your tradition you might have mage hand as a cantrip, but you'd need mana to levitate a large boulder and hurl it at a foe. And in such a case, damage would be ad-hoc, as per pg. 42 in the DMG.

Looking at 3e spells, stuff like invisibility, levitation, fly, protection from energy, enlarge person, haste, and so on would all require mana, probably. It depends a lot on how much you give traditions in their 'basic abilities' and 'battle surge' or 'focus' sections. I dunno, should an air mage have to be focused to fly, or should he need to gather and spend mana?

Or you could use mana to do ritual-type magic: remove afflictions, teleport long distances, scry, communicate, etc.

So ultimately, I'm not sure what's best. I'm open to about anything.

[Cwheeler]

Perhaps air mages should get discounts on flight-based spells. That would make sense.

I'm pretty busy over the coming week, but I'll see if I can find the time to do some work on a spell system.

The one biggest hurdles that I can see is making the cost of the components for the spells scale in cost for different tiers, as well as making sure that a high level caster isn't broken by their ability to throw around neigh-infinite small spells.

Edit: Ok, Just put this together. It's not much yet, but it should work as a starting point:

Notes for Ranger Wickett's spell system.

Can each component have a heroic, paragon and epic version? Each component version scales in cost in accordance to the power/tier.

the cost of elements such as range, action speed, area spread, duration etc. can scale with tier as well.

Also making a difference between the power of utility spells:

Flight - Heroic: Basic levitation
Paragon: Clumsy flight
Epic: Skilled Flight

Invisibility - Heroic: Invisible to one/specific number of targets
Paragon: Actually invisible.
Epic: Improved invisibility.

Heroic spell costs:
Medium Damage: 1MP
High Damage: 2MP

Range: Touch, -1MP
Short, 0MP
Medium, 1MP
Long, 2MP


Action: Full Round, -1MP
Standard, 0MP
Move, 1MP
Minor, 2MP
Immediate Interrupt 3MP

Duration: Instantaneous: 0MP
One Round: 1MP
etc...


Area (burst/blast/etc.)
1: 1MP
2: 2MP
3: 4MP
4: 8MP
Etc.

Specific Targets:
1 target: 1MP
2 targets: 2MP
3 targets: 4MP
4 targets: 8MP
Targets are willing: -1MP/Target

Utility: Basic effect: Detection, skill bonus, etc. 1MP.
Advanced Effect: Levitation, Illusion, invisibility, etc 2MP

Hope that helps.