D&D 4E 4e Lite - a rules-lite fast play version of 4e

Back at the tail end of 3.5, I started writing D&D Miniature scenarios that used the D&D miniature rules but in a D&D like adventure. This let us play very fast D&D adventures with anywhere from 2 to 5 players with one acting as a DM. The problem with this was that we were stuck with the specific monsters released as part of D&D miniatures.

With 4e, much of the game has been simplified, but as others have pointed out, combat can be quite slow. Also, character generation can take quite a bit of time.

I want to run my normal 4e game without any house rules at all. However, sometimes I might want to run a quick game when I only have a couple of players or when the wife and I are out of town but itching to roll a d20.

With that in mind, I started writing up a set of house rules with the following design goals:

1. Speed up combat.
2. Make it easy for a single player to run multiple characters.
3. Simplify character creation.
4. Make it fully compatible with new 4e sourcebooks and adventures.

With those goals in mind, here are the current house rules I'm considering:

1. There are no daily powers. All daily powers are encounter powers. (power increase)

2. All damage is maximized. You do not roll dice for damage.

3. All crits are for double damage.

4. The d20 is the only die needed.

5. All characters are limited to 1 at will power, 2 encounter powers, 1 daily powers, 1 utility power, 1 racial power, 1 class power or ability, and 1 equipment power. There are no rituals.

6. Every character receives one action point per battle.

7. There are no healing surges. All characters receive one second wind. Healing surges are not required for any ability that requires one.

8. Any effect that removes a healing surge instead does 1 point of necrotic damage per level.

9. Any attack that targets more than one creature rolls a single attack roll. The resulting attack roll is used against all monster defenses.

10. There are no extended rests. All powers and hitpoints are restored between battles. All effects are removed. All unconscious characters are restored to full hitpoints.

11. Characters are unconscious at 0 hitpoints. They cannot be restored or healed in combat. Nor can they be further attacked or take damage. If all characters are knocked unconscious, the party loses.

Not bad. I don't foresee this speeding up character creation all that much since you still need to sift through hundreds of powers and do a bunch of math, but I don't have a great suggestion for how to improve this, either. Maybe you pre-group powers, feats, and ability scores into packages that people can pick. If each class has two builds at three tiers, that's 48 packages... Some players may lament the loss of customization, but I would view this as an opportunity to differentiate my character by role-playing rather than mechanics.


You might want to eliminate basic attacks, and just let players use their at-will when charging, making OAs, etc. (Power increase, but not a major one for most characters.) Each character would get one melee at-will and one ranged at-will, depending on their class (for example, the wizard's melee at-will would just be a basic attack). This way players have fewer powers to decide between during game play.


Rule #11 seems pretty harsh. At my table, PCs drop to 0 and then bounce back up with alarming frequency. Of course, preventing this healing may compensate for the increased damage everyone is pumping out.


I'm not sure I like the idea of dailies becoming encounters. They tend to be noticeably more powerful, which will be exacerbated with maximized [W]. You might specify that using your daily requires spending your action point. This would not get you an extra standard action but might trigger other special abilities based on action point use. By consuming the action point, players are less likely to use their dailies as alpha-strikes in every single encounter.

-- 77IM

Yeah

I like the idea of character packages. I've been puzzling through a way to combine feats, attribute bonuses, and other bonuses so calculations are a lot easier. I think the NPC creation rules in the DMG help out a lot. One just uses the threshold score instead of worrying about proficiency bonuses, weapon bonuses and feat bonuses. Attribute bonuses could also be simplified downs. You might make some assumptions that someone's top score always began at +4 and always increased every 8 levels and at 30.

I'll ponder this more.

Quickplay Char Gen

For the character generation I'm contemplating using the NPC creation rules in the DMG except for hitpoints which are done by using the standard hitpoints for a PC.

This is AWESOME. These rules are the final little nudge that 4e needed to become a fully-fledged tactical RPG to the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea. My group being huge fans of these games took one look at the proposal and now we're all happier and more excited about 4e than ever

We'll be trying out the first session this week, I'll let you know how it goes. Here's our version of your rules we'll be using:


1. All damage is automatically maximized. You do not roll dice for damage, ever.

2. Criticals are double damage, except for critical-triggered damage, which is maximized.

3. There are no basic attacks. At-will powers function as basic attacks for charging, opportunity attacks, etc.

4. There are no Daily powers. All Daily powers are Encounter powers, but they also need an Action Point to be spent to activate.

5. Every character receives 1 Action Point and 1 Magic Item point for every encounter completed. Both points reset to 1 per tier at the beginning of every game session.

6. A character may use as many Action Points and Magic Item Points as he likes during an encounter (but he can only spend 1 point of any type total on the same turn).

7. A character cannot use multiple Item points to activate the same magic item multiple times during the same encounter, but he CAN use multiple Item points to activate different magic items during the same encounter.

8. Healing surges per day are not counted. Everybody has as many healing surges as they need.

9. Any effect that removes a healing surge instead does a healing surge's amount of damage.

10. There are no extended rests or short rests. All powers and hitpoints are restored between encounters. All effects are removed. All unconscious characters are restored to full hitpoints.

We don't really care about making characters simpler, so we don't need that part of the system, but with these rules I'm expecting fights will be much faster, more interesting, and just better all around

8. Any effect that removes a healing surge instead does 1 point of necrotic damage per level.

Click to expand...

9. Any effect that removes a healing surge instead does a healing surge's amount of damage.

Click to expand...

I would instead suggest that it does 5 hp damage per tier (or 6 or 7). I would not apply a damage type to it.

My suggestion (based on the above)

1. There are no extended rests or short rests. All powers and hit points are restored between encounters. All effects are removed. All unconscious characters are restored to full hit points. Action Points are reset to 1 per tier.

2. All damage is maximized.

3. Critical damage is double max damage; except for critical-triggered damage which is maximized.

4. Do not use basic attacks, use at-will powers instead.

5. “Daily powers” may be used each encounter at the cost of an Action Point (this includes Daily item powers).

6. Each PC and Monster has a Defense value. This is the average (round down) of their Fort, Ref, & Will. All attacks target Defense or AC.

7. All characters have an unlimited amount of healing surges.

8. Any effect that removes a healing surge instead does 5 hp of damage per tier.

9. Only roll to hit once for all attacks that have multiple targets. That roll is used for all targets.

I would just ignore any effect that drains a healing surge. Since you're not tracking their use, there's no point tracking their loss. Giving wights extra damage seems unnecessary -- it's the rare encounter when loss of healing surges makes a tactical difference.

Alternately, if you get hit by something that drains a healing surge, you get a status called "Drained" until the end of your next turn.

Drained:

• You can not regain hit points by any means.
• You can still gain temporary hit points.

-- 77IM

Yes, I think that 'Drained' idea is even better, it is true that healing surges and how many a character has left is almost always a non-issue in the regular game, so making them do damage is a bit of overkill, and the Drained thing actually makes it more interesting.

Great feedback!

Great feedback, my friends! Hiya Foxman!!

I'd like to have some sort of level-drain-like capability for the wights. Doing extra necrotic damage seems like a good solution for me. It has SOME flavor and the extra damage makes them dangerous. I like the 5 points per tier.

What is this triggered critical damage you speak of? Can you give an example of that?

Instead of keeping track of action points and equipment points. I'd just give them one action point per battle and one equipment trigger per battle. No tracking needs to be done this way. Too many action points per battle will slow down combat, I think.

I like the removal of basic attacks for at-will powers. Nice and easy.

Foxman, I think I'll stick to fort, reflex, and will. Part of my intent was to make it directly compatible with monsters from the monster manual without having to do any modification that I can't keep in my head. I can max monster damage easy enough and thats about all I want to change with them.

I have to think about the required use of an action point for a daily power. Clearly giving players daily powers in every battle makes them more powerful over time but for quickplay skirmish games, I don't know how much this matters.

So here are my revised rules:

The d20 is the only die needed.

There are no daily powers. All daily powers are encounter powers.

All damage is maximized. You do not roll dice for damage.

All crits are for double damage. Any additional triggered critical damage is maximized.

Every character receives one action point per battle and may trigger one magical item daily power per tier in each battle.

There are no healing surges. All characters receive one second wind. Healing surges are not required for any ability that requires one. Any effect that removes a healing surge instead does 5 points of necrotic damage per tier.

Any attack that targets more than one creature rolls a single attack roll. The resulting attack roll is used against all monster defenses.

There are no extended rests. All powers and hitpoints are restored between battles. All effects are removed. All unconscious characters are restored to full hitpoints.

Characters are unconscious at 0 hitpoints. They cannot be restored or healed in combat. Nor can they be further attacked or take damage. If all characters are knocked unconscious, the party loses.

Monster recharge powers use the following conversion: 2+ = 6+ on d20; 3+ = 11+; 4+ = 14+; 5+ = 16+; 6+ = 18+

Quickplay Character Creation:

Use the NPC creation rules on page 187 and 188 of the Dungeon Master's Guide with the following exceptions:

On step 4 determine hitpoints as you would for a PC instead of an NPC.

On step 5 use the following AC bonuses:

Fighter, Paladin: +10 AC
Cleric, Warlord: +9 AC
Ranger, Rogue, Warlock: +2 AC
Wizard, +0 AC

On step 8 choose one magic item's daily power.

Skip step 10.