D&D 4E 4e Mechanics That Ought to Exist (But Don't Yet!)

[Garthanos]

It depends on how you think about it. A ranger can be a devotee of a god and call himself a priest of that god and be a striker. He can always mix in a bit of calling down the power of his god by taking an MC feat in cleric. The cleric class is just "a guy that uses the power of his god to do his leader thing." Don't get too stuck on the class of your character defining WHO he is, that's RP stuff and classes don't particularly have to define that.

Exactly true and many real world religions classically had priests whose primary role was something else ... the priest of Odin ought to be either a fighter or warlord multi-classed.

I am designing a blind priest-consort of Avandra... havent decided whether to make him a presentient bard or wizard where all his powers are skinned as luck twisting and warping itself in his favor.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I disagree. My 2e specialty priests (admittedly homebrewed) were roughly balanced, with different roles and sets of abilities emphasizing their deities' interests. I saw lots of others that were similar. The key is to give up the idea that all clerics are healers.

Well, all priest classes in 2e are "home brewed" in that it was up to the DM to decide what their powers were. The problem really was that there simply wasn't all that much else for a 2e priest to be good at besides healing. Sure they had other spells which were perfectly useful, but any wizard could just as easily handle utility spell caster. Unless you had the healing sphere your priest was a PURE support caster with very little offensive spell power and missing the most vital support function of all. His melee combat capability was seriously weaker than that of a fighter. I had an entire selection of priest classes in my long-running 2e campaign. They were thoroughly lacklustre. The only way they became at all interesting was to add some really heavy duty class features.

It was really overall an inherent flaw in 2e. Cure Light Wounds was so vitally central to any party that a cleric lacking that spell simply had very little utility to a party. Of course any priest with the healing sphere was fine, they just needed a few interesting class features to make up for the more restricted spell lists. It was just annoying that ALL priests pretty much had to be able to heal.

 

[the Jester]

Again, my experience with priests in 2e was very different- some could play the combat role, some the medic, some the sage, etc.

I had many pc priests in my 2e game who couldn't heal, yet who contributed in their own way. The problem of mages being able to do almost anything that a priest could do was somewhat alleviated by the spheres introduced in Tome of Magic- no wizard could thought capture!

 

[hirahito]

What about Crafting, Performance and Knowledge skills?

Crafting, Performance and Knowledge skills have yet to be represented with any system (that I have seen) that doesn't take away from the combat skills / abilities.

I'd like to see this done well. I saw one set of ideas where it was based off the ritual idea but never saw them complete that idea.

Likewise, there really aren't any decent enchanting rules in 4E. Sure, there's a few rituals but they hardly cover the 'fluff' most campaigns would like.

Dunno - I guess I'm just looking for a bit more fluff to go with the balanced crunch.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Crafting, Performance and Knowledge skills have yet to be represented with any system (that I have seen) that doesn't take away from the combat skills / abilities.

I'd like to see this done well. I saw one set of ideas where it was based off the ritual idea but never saw them complete that idea.

Likewise, there really aren't any decent enchanting rules in 4E. Sure, there's a few rituals but they hardly cover the 'fluff' most campaigns would like.

Dunno - I guess I'm just looking for a bit more fluff to go with the balanced crunch.

Well, knowledge skills certainly exist. 4e just chose not to divide it down into 238 different areas of knowledge because who can say which one applies to a given situation at that point (is that sociology or ethnobiology...). Instead you get a DC that tells you how likely it is you particularly happen to know some information in an area you generally understand (trained in Nature say). Much easier and it alleviates the 2e/3e problem that it was impossible to ever master an area of knowledge, unless you really gutted your character of useful skills/NWPs.

Crafting and performing DO exist. They are covered by backgrounds. Generally if you want to accomplish something by making something or performing, then the relevant 4e skill is the one that pertains to what you are trying to do (Diplomacy to influence someone by singing, maybe if you have "Opera Singer" in your background the DM can give you a +2). Likewise craft. In either case no really important activity the PC carries out should be decided by a single die roll, so its going to be a Skill Challenge anyway.

I guess I'm not sure what you mean by there are no good enchanting rules... For those DMs who want to keep it simple Enchant Item can make any standard magic item. If you want to get a bit more elaborate then it really aught to be up to the DM IMHO. For example Masterwork Armors have a pretty good fluff that makes it pretty easy to imagine what you need to do to create the base item to enchant. I wouldn't object to a page in the next DMG that listed some possible materials and processes but I can come up with that if I need it.

 

[Starfox]

Crafting, Performance and Knowledge skills have yet to be represented with any system (that I have seen) that doesn't take away from the combat skills / abilities.

Ah yes. I guess I would have listed this too, but one of the first things I did for 4E was build a trait/talent system (equivalent to feats/skills for noncombat), and it has been working decently so far.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ah yes. I guess I would have listed this too, but one of the first things I did for 4E was build a trait/talent system (equivalent to feats/skills for noncombat), and it has been working decently so far.

What always bugs me about these systems though is that the categories are always too narrow somehow. There is also always the implication just by the existence of the system that you can't do X unless you have Y on your character sheet.

 

[Starfox]

What always bugs me about these systems though is that the categories are always too narrow somehow. There is also always the implication just by the existence of the system that you can't do X unless you have Y on your character sheet.

Agreed. But in this aspect of the game, I find players often want their expertise to be narrow. If you want to have a wide area of proficiency you generally don't care so much about the exact rules, 4Es general "say Yes" methodology works. If you want to know more precisely what you can do, you are likely to also want a system with much more specialization.

For me, the bottom line is that by putting these things in a completely different silo from all combat abilities, you are avoiding the "roleplay tax" these skills represented in 3E.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed. But in this aspect of the game, I find players often want their expertise to be narrow. If you want to have a wide area of proficiency you generally don't care so much about the exact rules, 4Es general "say Yes" methodology works. If you want to know more precisely what you can do, you are likely to also want a system with much more specialization.

For me, the bottom line is that by putting these things in a completely different silo from all combat abilities, you are avoiding the "roleplay tax" these skills represented in 3E.

Yeah, except that's only true if these skills are really actually useless to an adventurer. Presumably they aren't useless or they wouldn't exist. Some will be more useful than others, so there is always some level of "tax". If they are indeed not useful at all then they are just defining background and don't need mechanics at all. There's nothing wrong in that case with having a "list of possible things characters might add to their background to round it out" but it carries no more weight than any other list of possible "flavor" elements like NPC personality quirks, etc. I have nothing against that but I find the existing backgrounds to be nice because they are pretty suggestive of ways the background can tie into the plot later on, etc.

 

[Starfox]

Well, Abdul, it seems you're not missing this kinds of rules at all then. Winging it under the 4E "Just say Yes" paradigm certainly works. Hirahito said he wanted craft and profession rules, and I pointed at a possible solution.