Going back to 3.5... Any ideas to 4e-ify it?

[Treebore]

I think getting rid of stat boosting spells and items entirely is a good idea.

Or have the items/spells give a fixed attribute score that is not modified by attacks. Say a Girdle or spell that gives a 20 CON. The CON stays 20 for all intents and purposes and you only worry about what the CON loss did to your actual attribute score.

So say you lose 12 points of CON during a battle, you only worry about the effects when the Girdle or spell goes away, or your real CON reaches 0 and your PC dies.

So no yo-yo recalculating during battles because those values are fixed by the magic of the item or spell.

Thats how I'd do it anyways.

 

[Noumenon]

OK, Gneech, I decided to try out your system on an encounter I made recently with four CR4 bugbears riding four CR2 large monstrous spiders. It was CR9 against an 8th level party (3600 XP).

Your first table gives me budget of 2400XP. I wanted EL+1 so I multiply by 1-1/2 (table two). That's 3600. Right on target so far.

Now I look on table 3 (the d20 version on page 3). It says a CL2 beast is 600 XP and a CL4 is 1200. I used four of each, so that would have been -- 7200XP? Why didn't that work out?

I was really glad to see someone had already been working on this, though. I'd really love to just pick monsters off a budget. Has anyone done a "treasure budget" for the other side of things? Or do you just take the Character Wealth by Level table and pass out that much? I'd think you'd need to give out 30% more than that to account for potions and the fact that a magic item loses 50% of its value once you drive it off the lot.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I'm playing both 4E and OGL now, and I've ported over a number of 4E concepts. Here are a couple you can use with almost no mechanical changes to your 3E game:

Skill Challenges: Work just as well in 3E as they do in 4E. Don't rely on the 4E guidance for DCs, though; stick to your 3E sensibilities.

Bloodied: I use the bloodied concept all the time, though I don't have many mechanics that hang off it. Most commonly, I use bloodied as a point to change opponents' behaviour or tactics. In particular, I often up the EL of an encounter by a 2 or 3 steps, but have the monsters flee when all are bloodied (or dead). (This fits my observation that few creatures are keen to die; most would rather escape with their lives that fight to the death. It also lets my low-to-mid-level heroes face more exciting foes and gain the satisfaction of victory without suffering TPKs every other fight.)

 

[Noumenon]

I went looking through the 4E MM and PHB for all the effects that trigger on "bloodied" so I could add them to 3E monster fights. Most of them are actually things the players do, not the monsters.

rampage on bloodied (extra attack)
barbarian gets a bonus when bloodied and against bloodied targets
a bonus for how many bloodied creatures in combat or close to you
becomes a ghost when bloodied
you gain resist energy when bloodied
bloodhunt (+1 vs bloodied)
healing all those who are bloodied
concentration checks required to sustain spells once bloodied
power lasts till bloodied
gains regeneration when bloodied
on a hit if bloodied gain hp
opportunism (immediate attack on someone who was just bloodied)
evisceration (+1d6 Sneak on bloodied)
bloodied gives +to skill checks (- to climb, + to intimidate forcing surrender, ...)
new ability or transform into a better monster
vampire power recharge when adjacent becomes bloodied
a limb is severed and emits poison

A hit that bloodies a monster is also a good time for a vivid description.

 

[The_Gneech]

OK, Gneech, I decided to try out your system on an encounter I made recently with four CR4 bugbears riding four CR2 large monstrous spiders. It was CR9 against an 8th level party (3600 XP).

Your first table gives me budget of 2400XP. I wanted EL+1 so I multiply by 1-1/2 (table two). That's 3600. Right on target so far.

Now I look on table 3 (the d20 version on page 3). It says a CL2 beast is 600 XP and a CL4 is 1200. I used four of each, so that would have been -- 7200XP? Why didn't that work out?

Well, one possibility is that the numbers might just not work linearly. If I run a single CL 4 bugbear through a 3E CR/EL calculator for a party of four 8th level characters, it has an XP value of 150, whereas if I run it for a party of four 4th level characters, it has an XP value of 300.

3E CR/EL is algorithmic, not linear. Each member of your party is more than twice the level of the toughest single foe, which significantly reduces the amount of XP they're worth using the CR/EL formulae.

However, the XP Budget model is completely linear -- a CL2 beast is 600 XP no matter if you're 1st level or 15th, even though a 15th level character could probably fight a hundred CL 2 foes without breaking a sweat.

I'm not sure if there's a way to fix that, that doesn't end up with going right back to the 3E CR/EL model. My first idea is to treat the spider as a "vehicle" and add it to the CR of the bugbear rather than as a separate creature. That makes your encounter against four CR 5 creatures, which costs 6000 XP.

(Strangely enough, the math works much better using the Saga Edition numbers ... a party budget of 4800 and an encounter cost of 5000. Until I can figure out a fix, you might consider just using the Saga Edition numbers.)

-The Gneech

 

[Remathilis]

I'm playing both 4E and OGL now, and I've ported over a number of 4E concepts. Here are a couple you can use with almost no mechanical changes to your 3E game:

Skill Challenges: Work just as well in 3E as they do in 4E. Don't rely on the 4E guidance for DCs, though; stick to your 3E sensibilities.

Bloodied: I use the bloodied concept all the time, though I don't have many mechanics that hang off it. Most commonly, I use bloodied as a point to change opponents' behaviour or tactics. In particular, I often up the EL of an encounter by a 2 or 3 steps, but have the monsters flee when all are bloodied (or dead). (This fits my observation that few creatures are keen to die; most would rather escape with their lives that fight to the death. It also lets my low-to-mid-level heroes face more exciting foes and gain the satisfaction of victory without suffering TPKs every other fight.)

Heh, I've been using Bloodied (and second wind) since the 4e announcement. (Second wind rules were from SAGA, but I'm changing it to the 4e verison)

 

[CharlesRyan]

Heh, I've been using Bloodied (and second wind) since the 4e announcement.

Gotcha beat. The bloodied idea was in the very first "concept" document R&D put together for 4E back in something like 2005. When R&D gave the brand team a quick playtest of the concept version, I so like the idea of bloodied that I've been using it in my games (as described in my post) ever since!

 

[TerraDave]

Bloodied: I use the bloodied concept all the time, though I don't have many mechanics that hang off it. Most commonly, I use bloodied as a point to change opponents' behaviour or tactics. In particular, I often up the EL of an encounter by a 2 or 3 steps, but have the monsters flee when all are bloodied (or dead). (This fits my observation that few creatures are keen to die; most would rather escape with their lives that fight to the death. It also lets my low-to-mid-level heroes face more exciting foes and gain the satisfaction of victory without suffering TPKs every other fight.)

A running complaint on 4E has been too many hp and combats going to long. My main response has been just this: run away! This leaves the closer and more interesting battles to go to epic lengths.

More explicitly tying to bloodied is a good, not too metagamey, way to support this. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Noumenon]

Well, one possibility is that the numbers might just not work linearly.

Oh. I had hoped that was one of the things your table might have accounted for. For example, instead of "a CR2 monster = 600XP", it could be a table saying "a monster 7 CRs lower than the challenge rating of the party = 150 XP."

The way it looks to me from table 2-6 in the DMG is,
"a monster equal to the CR of the party = party level * 300."
"A monster 1 CRs less than the party = party level * 300 * 2/3."
"A monster 2 CRs less than the party = party level * 300 * 1/2."
...

Now you can't fit this all into one table, but you could plug in the party level and make a table called

XP Budget for Level 8 parties
CR 1 monster costs: 200 XP each
CR 2: 300
CR 3: 400
CR 4: 600
...
CR 8: 2400
CR 9: 3600

That's basically one row of table 2-6. And it works -- if I want my level 9 encounter I can pick four CR 4s (2400) and 4 CR 2s (1200). Or one CR 8 (2400) and the four CR 2s. Works out perfect on table 3-1, also, as four CR 2s are a level 6 encounter and a 6+8 encounter is a 9.

So all you need to do to have a "budget" approach to 3.5 is look at table 2-6. Each row is a mini-table telling exactly what each CR monster costs for a party of that level. That's pretty easy!

 

[Kristian Serrano]

I've adopted Complex Skill Checks in my game, and I've been toying with converting some spells to Incantations.

There are already lot of 4e-isms in later v3.5 products that I actively use already, too.

One thing I've been tempted to do is fuse the Hexblade with the Warlock, or at least grant the Warlock the Hexblade's curse ability.

I've already seen a Marshal/Warblade hybrid, too, although I'm not a big fan ToB (yet another subsystem to learn) or the idea of abilities being per encounter (with few exceptions).