D&D 4E How I Fixed 4e

Jack99 said:

Been considering something along those lines. How long have you been experimenting with that rule?

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A while, but its only actually been used twice.

It worked fine. I mean, "make something up, here are some really rough guidelines" generally does work fine. The only pitfalls are the usual ones- you have to either remember that last time your PCs ad libbed a ritual it cost X, so it should cost X again, or you have to get your players to understand that you're not going to bother doing that, and they should expect some variation.

Rel said:

Just so this is out there, I have huge respect for Ari and I may yet pick up the APG. And I'm proud to say that, independant of ever hearing about his ideas for injuries, I immediately thought of using the Disease Track for Wounds. However, upon further consideration, I decided that it felt a bit cumbersome to do so. I wanted to be able to resolve it in only a few quick rolls. So I've been steering clear of the Disease Track in general.

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I've thought about making "disease cards" (similar to power cards), that have the track across the top. Put a paper clip on the track numbers and slide it back and forth to show where you are. When you're no longer diseased, hand the card back to the DM.

Seems like it would make it pretty easy to adjudicate.

PS

I'm loving this thread. I'm still not sure about wounds, but some of these other effects are definitely going to make their way into my game.

Doesn't this belong in the 4E house rules forum?

Matrix Sorcica said:

Doesn't this belong in the 4E house rules forum?

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Bugger, lost a post.

I really, really like your action point-Daily houserule. Very, very much. MM get that into the DMG2 quick !!

I was considering something similar to your Wounded] condition after I first read the PHB, but I found my group didn't really care about the instant healing so it is on the back burner for now.

However I was going to use the bloodied condition as the maximum HPs a wounded character could heal until he had some days (or even weeks) of bed rest. And I would encourage the players to come up with their own wounds.

XP: I dont give out XP any more, there is no reason too; unless you have a lot of players that split from the group or give out hefty RP xp rewards. I level them up after they have ploughed through a few encounters, I keep a rough track, but make it fit into our sessions.

Milestones: Very like XP, but I dont keep very good track, as long as I feel they have done something significant - not just killed a couple of goblin guards - I'll hand out Action Points. I like 4e because it supports my casual style more so than 3e, I'm not very organised, I like to story-tell.

Magic Items: Your spontaneous magic items reminds me of the Computer RPG Baldurs Gate, a lot of the magic items were created by this kind of spontaneous magic. It is actually a great resource, there is a program that can extract all the magic item histories from the game discs. I should dig it out and add this to my own game.

Rituals: My players arn't as enthused about them as I am, I think they are great and my NPCs now make liberal use of them. I will start handing them out as treasure and use your component idea so they dont feel like they are spending their gold.

If anybody is interested I posted a thread about my homebrew setting for this campaign here.

Here is the latest version of my "Wounded" system. I'd love any further feedback you care to give.

There are two possible ways for a PC to become Wounded:

A PC who fails a Death Save while at negative Hit Points becomes Wounded.

Certain monsters (mostly Elite and Solo monsters) or Traps may cause a PC to become Wounded on a Critical Hit.

While Wounded a PC suffers from the following effects:

They do not regain full hit points after an Extended Rest. A successful Heal check after an Extended Rest allows them to regain hit points as though they had spent a Healing Surge.

The PC is not as resiliant as normal and thus their healing surges only restore half (rounded down) of the normal hit points.

A character may attempt to recover from being Wounded after an Extended Rest by making a successful Endurance check. If the PC is under the care of a character Trained in the Heal skill, that roll may be substituted for the Endurance check. In addition it is possible for certain Rituals to give bonuses to this Endurance check or to heal the Wounded condition outright.


This would mean that a Wounded PC IS effected in Combat by way of not gaining as much benefit from healing effects. It also means that having a Cleric around helps quite a bit (thanks to the extra healing above and beyond the Surge value for Healing Word). Without a Cleric a PC has to spend (roughly) 8 Healing Surges to be at full health from zero. That's going to be the lion's share of Surges for even the strongest members of the party.

It makes a Wounded PC fragile and less able to recover from nastier wounds but doesn't take them out of the fight entirely. I think that's the feel that I'm after here.

Mechanically it requires no additional tracking that you weren't already doing anyway during combat. And it takes only a single roll to determine whether the PC has recovered after an Extended Rest.

RFisher said:

If I had a million dollars, I’d still eat Kraft dinners.

(Except I’ve lived in TX all my life so I call them “macaroni and cheese”)

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Well, I'd buy a green dress, but not a real green dress because that is cruel.

Matrix Sorcica said:

Doesn't this belong in the 4E house rules forum?

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You may have a point there. I'll slide it over...

Nice Stuff Rel.

I am considering adding some of these for my home game (also in the Triangle ). One question, how about during a Short Rest? Do they just burn surges at 1/2 value instead? OR can then only be healed by a Cleric using his encounter powers (or Healing Word) during the short rest?

My party likes to (sometimes) do the 10 min rest or the "double-short" rest so that the cleric can use his powers to optimize the use of surges and then get them back for the next encounter.

I like the skills option, the milestones (but, admittedly, in a dungeon the 1 per 2 may still be in effect -- not sure yet), and I actually only pseudo-track XP and I am thinking of just leveling them up when I think they are ready. Since I am running AoW converted for 4e, it will be easy to estimate this.

Rituals and Magic Items -- I have been using improvised and unique reagents for a while and will continue to do so. The old Phil Reed 101 series (3.x) had some good ones in there, or powering spells, making items, etc. I do like your Magic Item ideas. I would have special mundane items (like an heirloom blade, or dead father's ring) become magical in certain circumstances since 1e and I love the fact that you are trying to codify it.

Good stuff!