Lackhand

Haven't posted here in a while -- I'm not exactly a conscientious blogger. Sorry, devoted throngs!

I've found I've drifted from 4e. I don't enjoy the gamist tactical aspects so much, and my first character was a wizard in a group of relative newbies that were (in high degree) casual players; because of that, I felt underpowered and irritated at the tactics we were using. Harsh to blame that on the system, I know, but gamers need games that match their temperaments, and I'd rather be in a high-functioning group than one struggling with the system.

I flirted with a weekly game using the Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game (basicfantasy.org) but have somewhat lost interest. I'll probably resurrect it, but it's a bit restrictive to my modern palette; it doesn't give me enough gamist knobs to tweak when I say "I'm swinging from the chandeliers"; it's just an attack roll + DM adjudication, which I invariably fell back to 3e for. Besides, I felt bad for the fighters.

So I've moved on, a bit, to Spirit of the Century (evilhat's website). I houseruled it a bit, but then I'd have to -- added an Evocation skill so you could use magic to fight, some gadgets to let you use Art more broadly (considered to replace enchantment/illusion ), a Thaumaturgy skill in place of Science!, a Craft in place of Engineering, and so on.
Thinking about that, I probably should have gone the stunts root, fewer skills & more stunts to specialize their use. Ah well.

Anyway, it's an excellent chassis in a book crammed full of excellent GM advice, so I highly recommend it -- I wouldn't call it ready for play as is if you like medieval games, which I do -- but it's really quite good.

The same team is working on a Dresden Files RPG. I lust for it. The Dresden Files, if you haven't read them, should be required reading for any D&D player -- slightly pulpy noir action between a modern day wizard-detective and the trials and tribulations that Chicago, its underworld, its Underworld, and pretty much everything else can throw at him.
What's interesting to me is that, unless I miss my guess, the game system they eventually produce will be an all around excellent fantasy RPG game, too. Sure, you have to file out the guns, modern day trappings, and so on -- but a set of 1e books (inspiration) and that (rules) might make me a happy camper for a very long time.

At least until something new comes along

There's a lot of discussion on the boards right now about what 4e's power system should have been. This entry is going to be so indulgent that I'm saving it for the blog -- I might end up linking it though, so no promises

4e powers grew out of the designer's urge to solve the 15 minute adventuring day problem (thus introducing at wills, so the wizard would have something to do other than fire a crossbow, and encounter powers, representing the "spells" from previous editions), and the playtester feedback that without any per-day power, it didn't feel like D&D (thus a slightly retained vancian character to the magic system).

Where they fell flat, to me, is in flavor. First off, almost every (combat) power can be summed up as:

1. do extra damage
2. do some damage and push the foe
3. do some damage and some ongoing damage
4. do some damage and an ongoing status effect (stun, daze, immobilize, and slow being common)
5. do some damage in a burst

That's a pretty rich vocabulary, but there are a lot more powers than there are effects on that list. I'd have liked a more classically D&D naming scheme, involving either a hierarchy of adjectives ("Improved", "Major", "Greater") or roman numerals. It's dorky, but it's our dorky.

Too, I reject that defensive spells are not "attack" spells. The "utility" power siloing failed, hard, for me. I think that Shield is a perfectly legitimate /encounter power, and moreover, that Dimension Door is a perfectly legitimate daily power -- make it deal some blurring damage at the endpoints, optionally, if you feel the need to make it an attack power.

Otiluke's Icy Sphere was an excellent spell, because it has many uses. I see no reason that Force Orb couldn't have had a secondary use as a Globe of Force or a Shield spell; it makes the spell more complex, sure -- but it makes the game so much richer!

Frankly, making Magic Missile a 1/round minor action and giving wizards spells that did combat-stuff-that-wasn't-an-attack would have been nice.

Giving us fighter powers that didn't require reading fluff-that-wasn't would have been nice, too.

Giving us utility powers that weren't either

• gain a surge
• gain a minor defensive benefit
• a shoddy standin for a ritual

would have been quite nice, too. The easiest way to do that, to my mind, is to remove the "utility power" distinction, and to allow for some very minor rituals to be quickly cast -- and to count as a daily magical item use, or cost a healing surge.

The warlock gets Summon Messenger Imp. Seriously, this is a power -- and not a ritual? Grr!

Fundamentally: if you're balancing the game around combat, you don't need to use the same scale (powers) to balance the out-of-combat tricks; move the in-combat "utilities" into the combat tiers (and beef them up or give them alternate uses, if you have to! Let people optionally open shields inside other people's heads, let people in a fix dimension door enemies' arms away, whatever! Just retain the "normal" uses, too), and give truly out of combat tricks out like candy as they come to you, or through feats, or whatever.

boo.

I like them. I really do. But one of the things that's nice about a new edition is that it shakes stuff up.

This isn't 1st ed. This isn't 3rd ed. This isn't 4th ed. This is me, wondering what a different system could look like.

Strength: This is an excellent stat, and I hold nothing against it.

Dexterity: This measures a welter of different things, and some of them are now shared with Intelligence: reaction speed, hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, stealth. That's a little broad.

Constitution: Eh, it's okay. The new defenses and saves system has done terrible things to it.

Intelligence: I've never really liked this: it gets in the way of "challenge-the-players" play, which I enjoy; similarly, there's just no good way to play as a character smarter than you are, and as D&D doesn't have a good flaw system, I feel the rewards of playing a character less intelligent than yourself are insufficient. Personality is all well and good, but a range from 3 to 18 doesn't model it.

Wisdom: It's become too schizophrenic. Time to get fixed.

Charisma: Like intelligence, this models a quality which I feel is more properly left outside the game engine.


How do I fix this? Simple!

New Six Stats:
Strength: Still pretty much as before: how much can you lift, how hard can you hit, athletics, grappling.
Reflex: The reflex/speed part of "dexterity", feeding into AC, reflex defense, initiative, dancing skill, acrobatics, avoiding falling into pits.
Fortitude: Health! Surges, fort defense, physical save-ends effects, endurance.
Will: Bits of intelligence, wisdom, and charisma: wizards bend magic with this, clerics work wonders with it, it's used to defend oneself from magical onslaught and mental save-ends effects.
Perception: Bits of dexterity, intelligence, and wisdom: ranged weapons use this, hidden things are seen with this, liars are defeated, and so on.
Aura: Bits of charisma and wisdom. How much force of personality you have, and raw magicalness; how much fate loves you, luck, and impression on the universe you leave.

Humans: +2 to any one
Elves: +2 Perception, +2 Reflex
Dwarves: +2 Fortitude, +2 Will
Halflings: +2 Reflex, ? (I want to use +2 Fortitude )
Half-elves: +2 Aura, +2 Fortitude
Eladrin: +2 Will, +2 Reflex
Tiefling: +2 Aura, ? (I want to use +2 Reflex)
Dragonborn: +2 Strength, +2 Aura

The intelligence stat has substantially disappeared, which hurts the warlord most (the wizard can just jump over to Will and Perception for their powers). The charisma stat has withered, which is sad for a stat so narrow, but I plan to use it for a lot of "toss-up" rolls, so it has some use still, never fear.


Skills: Perception just became a stat! zomg! That's right, it's no longer a skill. Because it's no longer a skill, a lot of things that are currently skills _stop_ being skills.

No skill has an associated statistic. Some skills will be rolled in conjunction with a stat, or another skill -- perception and nature to track a bear -- but in general it's just the raw stat.

Most skills are rolled against a stat -- Bluff versus Perception or Will, or Stealth versus Perception or Will.

Stealth is, in general, determined purely by a skill; either you are trained in it or you are not. It has a fairly unique distance-and-speed-moved penalty system in place which I'll tweak to file off any rough edges which this creates.

This is a sort of logarrheic dump before bed, so bear with me

I am generally enjoying playing 4e, perhaps even more than 3e (certainly as much as, and as DMing it is easier and more fun, I'm not going to complain too loudly!), but it fell short for me in a couple of areas.

1) The farm-boy levels. They're just gone.
I actually enjoy these. I don't want them to be the levels at which you can get stuck by a goblin and die -- the hardiness of a 4e first level character is completely acceptable to me -- but the set dressing you get is totally inappropriate. I want to play Seoman, pre-Snowlock. I want to play Taran, chasing after a pig. They're fun characters.
I'd like to bring them back, and I'm not certain what the rules fix is for this. These characters tend to be fighter-y or warlord-y, which is a blessing.

2) Power Source as Destiny! I forget who uttered these wise words, but I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of (explicit) overlap between roles' bread-and-butter powers. It would have been nice to have powers split up by, say, 'school' or 'sphere' or similar, and allot to each class access to a set of schools.
Healing Word and Inspiring word are, uh, suspiciously similar powers. It would be nice to put them in one place, the Healing school, and to move on with everyone's life; instead, the artificer gets a reprint, too. If the flavor were any good, it wouldn't be an issue, but the blurbs on powers are just terrible. Similarly, everything the paladin does is a miracle. I'd've liked to see more plain-old-swordsmanship training, possibly shared with the fighter.

3) The fighter. This is a bit controversial, so people may begin to be glad it's not me at the helm of the World's Most Popular Tabletop RPG. I wish that they hadn't given each class 30 levels, so that I would not have to contend with a 30th level fighter.

Ignore, for the nonce, that the fighter doesn't have as much of a niche in a game that defines the barbarian, the paladin/crusader/knight, and the swashbuckler/fencer.

Ignore also the contortions which are required to maintain the 30th level fighter's relevancy, especially when the schtick of 9th level Lords has been subsumed by Warlords.

The Fighter as a fighter doesn't, for me, have a place beyond maybe 10th level. That's the latest I can in good conscience put a Caravan Guard into play; from there on in it's Dragon Knights and Holy Knights and Mage Knights and Kensai Blademasters and Jedi Knights and so on. Demigods, usually, too.

I can understand why powers weren't organized into "schools" -- it gives relatively little gain, since it enforces overlap (which is arguably very bad!) between classes and cuts down on the reference quality of the PHB. In return, though, it would expand the power choice of the classes & help with coming up with more unique powers, since I get the impression a lot were just filler.

I can't really understand, though, why every class goes to 30, other than that it must have been a style choice. Especially with paragon paths, the staged nature of the game must have made the idea of cutting at 10 and 20 and allowing new choices tempting. It would also let fighters and rogues under level 10 be 'mundane', and over level 10 use an explicitly increasingly magical powersource.

Everyone wins.

I read airwalkerr's post and immediately thought "That's not a problem at all with my game of 4e!".

And then I remembered that that's because I had a houserule.

Which I will now present:

Desire: Keep dying from being too easy. Because 4e is relatively lethal and chargen is only moderately faster, I'd like to make character churn not happen.

Desire: Let dying be under character -- not DM -- control. In other words, I'm okay with a monster mortally wounding your character -- them's the breaks! -- maybe even crippling your character. I'm not okay with then requiring some magic to bring you back from the dead; I don't like the revolving door D&D sets up.

Rule: When at or below 0 hp, you're not dying. You're "wounded" and it's unclear to everyone -- even yourself! -- whether this is a persistent "oh god oh god oh god it's all over" wound or a more temporary, looks-worse-than-it-is wound. That's why constitution doesn't help prevent death, btw, and why you pop back up at min 1 hp, regardless of how far under you were.
The "death save" is not resisting death, it's resisting your wound causing enough damage, trauma, bloodloss and shock to make the wound 'take' and you be stricken unto death.

If the three-saves-you're-out are all failed, you're unconscious (you're conscious but helpless during the first three, if you'd like to be) and "mortally wounded": you are (slowly) dying, though medical help will probably save you.

You lose all but your constitution-bonus in healing surges (which may in fact reduce you to 0 surges remaining).

Every long rest, you must make an endurance check, DC 20 to improve (regain con bonus healing surges, min 1), DC 15 to remain stable, else lose a healing surge or a number of hit points equal to your surge value. If this causes you to drop below your death threshhold, game is over.

Rituals that restore the dead can also remove the dying condition, as can waiting it out with some healing, or anything to boost hit points during the long rests (just in case!).

You're better when you've regained all of your healing surges.


I have some special rules for action points that interact with the death & dying rules, but as presented it's a fully workable system.