Sleight of hand: what have your 3e games stolen from 4e?

[blargney the second]

What have you stolen from 4e to use in your 3.5 games? How well did it work, and how much did you have to modify it to make it fit? I'm just as interested in success stories as colossal failures.

We've grabbed the bloodied status with no changes, and it's been a convenient tool that helps with the narration of the game while giving players useful in-game information.

I've already used a poison as ongoing damage (save ends) to great success. The mere fact that there was no ability score recalculation has sold me on using more of those. In a similar vein, I'm seriously considering yoinking 4e's diseases if I can figure out what needs to be done to import them.
-blarg

 

[Whimsical]

Here's are some house rules that I had before I read 4th edition that may look familiar:

Effects that incapacitate you for a few rounds instead allow you to reduce or negate the effect with a new saving throw (which takes no time) at the end of your turn and at the end of every round afterward if necessary.
I understand that this rule is fuzzy, so check with me if you want more details.

Arcane spell failure rules are not used. Wearing armor or wielding a shield will not hinder spellcasting. This rules and the bonus spell-casting feats puts spellcasters a bit more in-line with psions.

I also incorporated the 4th ed. death rules detailed in this rules preview article back in February.

 

[blargney the second]

Has anybody else brought some loot from 4e over to 3.5?

 

[Greg K]

First, didn't bloodied appear in MMV?

Anyway, to be honest there is not much in 4e that I consider to be worth stealing. The only items that I want to bring over are the following
- removing the non-biological aspects of race into feats; and
- the unified saving throw progression.

Otherwise there is not anything I really want to bring over as I was already doing it (e.g. more starting hp and passive perception) or found what I consider to be better fixes and new mechanics in Unearthed Arcana, other WOTC games, messageboards and third party products.

 

[Vorput]

My players liked the starting out as heroes- so I broke with long-standing tradition and we started at lvl 4 rather than 1.

Since we initially started playing 4e, and didn't really like it- we just converted the campaign and world back over. So I ended up stealing dragonborn and Eladrin (and then had to figure out what a 4e race looks like in 3,5!).

I made some other offers- like giving wizards/sorcerers unlimited magic missile usage and offered to convert any encounter/at will powers they liked into feats, but none of them took me up on it.

Vorp

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Nothing yet. All the things I like about 4E were already houserules in my 3E games, so I don't consider it "stealing." For equipment specifically, I didn't pay much attention to it when I read the PH. I didn't really notice anything that stood out.

 

[Henry]

If I ever go back to DM'ing 3e games, I'm going to try my darndest to steal and convert the way they do monsters & NPCs in 4th edition. I haven't been this happy with DMing since running level 1 characters through 3e back in 2000.

The biggest problem is going to be tweaking the math, because the bonus progression curve is going to look REALLY weird after the first four or five levels -- players start really racking up the plusses after that.

 

[Spatula]

Skill consolidation is one, although I was already planning on doing this after playing Star Wars Saga. Skill challenges & the minion concept are easily portable.

I hadn't thought of it until reading this thread, but changing poisons to deal periodic HP damage is a good one, too.

 

[Greg K]

I hadn't thought of it until reading this thread, but changing poisons to deal periodic HP damage is a good one, too.

Sean Reynolds has had a web article on continuous poison damage posted on his website for about five or six years. It's actually towards the bottom of the page that I linked (actually, he has several good things there. Fewer Absolutes is especially good)

 

[blargney the second]

I didn't realize bloodied was in MMV. Where can I find that?

I've done a skill challenge in our Savage Tide campaign, and that worked marvelously. It was really just a case of exploiting the fact that I'd put Complex Skill Checks from UA in our house rule document.

I gave our party's artificer produce flame as an at-will power. From 7th to 9th level it has proved to be useful but definitely not overpowered.

Has anybody found a simple and effective way to convert low level 3.5 monsters into minions? It's the attack and defense math that I'm not certain about.
-blarg

ps - thanks for the link, Greg. There's some good stuffs in there!