D&D 4E Encounter Based 4E - Thoughts?

[holywhitetrash]

that seems like it would take away a lot of the since of accomplishment
i mean my group typically never stops for a rest until every resource is used
and afterward it really feels like we went as far as our characters could possibly go
with your way my group would never stop in fact the only way they would stop is if they died
also what does a wight do then?

 

[DevP]

So, you're kinda looking to remove the need to track "gamestate" outside of an encounter. Is that accurate? Are you going for a certain kind of feel (low-magic/low-fi) as well?

I'd consider keeping Daily powers in, and just let them be used per-encounter. This obviously increases your group's firepower, so you can tend towards picking harder encounters. (Just as the narrative passage of time is required for full HP healing, you could require a similar amount of time for a daily to become available again. I'm guessing the default will be that your HP and your dailies will always recover.)

The 3d6 method has been vetted by Chris Sims, at least; I don't know that it's as important regarding dailies.

The common hack to speed up combats is monsters deal 1/2-their-level in bonus damage and have only half their hitpoints.

 

[Jhaelen]

All in all, your suggestions wouldn't appeal to me. It's hard to tell how it would play out without actually giving it a try, though.

And, use 3d6 in place of d20 (attacks will hit more often, meaning those "reliable" and miss effect dailies won't be missed as much).

Thoughts?

Does this mean there are no crits? That would _definitely_ be boring.

 

[ppaladin123]

Remember that some rituals, martial practices, items, and non-healing utility powers require the character to burn a healing surge to activate/re-roll/whatever. You'll need to set up rules for what to do in those situations.

 

[avin]

Does this mean there are no crits? That would _definitely_ be boring.

3d6 crits on a 18.

 

[babinro]

I dislike the removal of daily powers. For many classes, many of the more flavorful parts of the class are tied to their daily powers. PC's will essentially lose access to conditions like ongoing x, dominate. Druids will lose access to their summoning build established in Primal Power, etc. In a low magic setting, this may well be what you want, but in the case of ongoing damage in particular, that's a pretty big loss.

I would instead recommend making the dailies into encounter powers as well, but remove the miss element to them. To compensate, a reliable power could add +2 to the attack rolls with that power. If you still found it too powerful, you could simply remove 1[w] from all damage outputs on dailies <2[w] for 21th+ level dailies>.

 

[P1NBACK]

Thanks for the feedback guys. These are all good thoughts.

I think I'm just going to design my own homebrew which has been suggested otherwise on the WotC forums.

Also, I'm going to disagree entirely about the "encounter" vs. "daily" suggestion two of you made that they are the same resource.

While, encounter powers use a "rest" to recharge, it's an entirely meta-level adjustment. Meaning, encounter powers charge "whenever there is a battle" - i.e. whenever in the game the DM decides there is a battle. It means, it's not tied to any "in-game" timespan. It's simply tied to the meta-level aspect of "ok, this encounter is over - recharge".

However, daily powers aren't tied to any meta-level aspect (but others have suggested doing so, such as "recharge dailies when appropriate to the story" [meta-level] or "recharge dailies every 4 encounters" [meta-level] or "recharge based on milestones" [meta-level]).

Instead, they are tied to in-game time spans. Every 12 hours means _nothing_ as far as story pacing (meta) or player and DM expectations (meta). So, if for the story, I want a "morning" encounter that really tests the PCs, I have to go to extraordinary lengths to do that because the PCs just had a rest (unless I arbitrarily cause them to have no 'sleep' and/or increase the difficulty of the encounter dramatically which often has a side-effect of still not challenging the PCs, but just dragging out the encounter or sometimes maybe the opposite- it becomes too hard and ends in a TPK).

No, I'm looking to play the game to where each battle has a sense of intensity you might find in that "last battle of the day". I want to have battles that coincide with story elements, and not have to feel like I have to get "4 battles" in to challenge the players.

I guess this is a different system altogether, as 4E is about attrition. I'm looking for the players to have X resources at the beginning of each battle, and see how they take it down each battle. So, resources on a battle-by-battle basis.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback and suggestions!

 

[mkill]

I agree with your analysis: The per day / per encounter mechanic works well if you have a flow of about 3 - 4 encounters per day, but breaks down otherwise.

Problem 1: Overland travel with small encounters: just blow all dailies and walk over it.

Problem 2: Large dungeons. Either you have repetitive, grinding fights, where everyone is defensive and never uses dailies to save ressources for the boss fight, or you have to take in-dungeon rests.

Where I don't agree is your solutions. Taking out dailies removes the fun out of most combats. Combined with your other changes you completely turn the system on its head, and without testing I can't say where this is heading.

Why not do the simple and straightforward: Keep short rests as is, but award "long rests" not for sleeping 6 hours, but for in-game accomplishments - Regain all dailies and healing surges after 3-4 encounters, regardless of in-game time.
For more fine-tuning, add a "medium rest" that regains one daily and 1/4 healing surges.

The big advantage is that the changes are merely in story pacing - you avoid all the butterfly effects that are such a headache with bigger changes.

 

[P1NBACK]

Why not do the simple and straightforward: Keep short rests as is, but award "long rests" not for sleeping 6 hours, but for in-game accomplishments - Regain all dailies and healing surges after 3-4 encounters, regardless of in-game time.
For more fine-tuning, add a "medium rest" that regains one daily and 1/4 healing surges.

The big advantage is that the changes are merely in story pacing - you avoid all the butterfly effects that are such a headache with bigger changes.

In my last campaign, I did exactly this. And, it worked ... just OK. It solved some of the problems you mentioned, like fighting, resting, owning. Rinse/repeat.

There's still that problem of attrition that I find to be annoying. I don't like that each encounter isn't important. It's those encounters at the end of the "day" that really start to matter. The previous ones... Not so much. But, if I'm running a campaign where there are no "filler" encounters, no "grinding dungeons", etc... Then, the whole thing simply feels unsatisfying.

4E was _designed_ to be a dungeon crawl system. What I'm proposing is turning it into a system that's designed around a story, plot, etc...

It may not be possible, and that's fine.

 

[mkill]

Instead, whenever you would take a daily power, you may take an encounter power of your level or lower (so I could have two 3rd Level Encounters and 1 1st level Encounter at 5th Level).

Wizards, Druids, Barbarians, Wardens and Vestige Warlocks sit crying in the corner.

Rangers and Swordmages rejoice and make nasty gestures at the whining guys.

Psionic classes go on strike for more power points.

Healing Surges are removed. Instead you can use your second wind 1/encounter to regain 1/4 HP, and all "healing" powers become encounter based (x times per encounter). At the end of an encounter, you automatically heal to full HP with an appropriate amount of time based on the fiction.

Changes nothing. I'm playing 4th ed weekly as DM and player since the book came outt, I've seen a PC run out of healing surges only once.

Monster HP are halved.

Only makes sense if you also increase damage.

use 3d6 in place of d20 (attacks will hit more often, meaning those "reliable" and miss effect dailies won't be missed as much).

Be very careful with this as it effectively doubles each +1 and -1 to attack or defense and makes combats a lot less swingy due to decreased variance in rolls.
Combats that slightly favor the PC will become a safe victory, combats that are tipped against the party turn into a TPK. Attacks against Fort / Ref / Will are an auto-hit for monsters at higher level. A 16 attack stat, no expertise and / or a +2 weapon equal sure misses. Monsters of +1 party level are tough, +3 party level is a suicide mission.
Add in no dailies, and the PCs have no reserve resources to reverse a losing battle.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see your answer above when I wrote this.