• The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!

Has anyone figured out the meta rules of 4th edition??

Evenglare

Adventurer
Particularly for home brewing purposes... by meta rules I mean the underlying rules that the game is based on. A sort of guideline if you will. I'm wanting to know the thinking behind races, classes, paragon paths, epic destinies,themes, backgrounds and power creation and the corresponding math. I'm quite aware about the whole "just compare it to other powers the same level" but im looking for something a bit more in depth than just eyeballing it.

Also as a side question... is there some sort of site where us 4th edition players congregate to keep the game going via community resources?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

the Jester

Legend
AFAIK, pc stuff in 4e is designed by eyeball and playtest; I don't think there is a specific underlying math per se. Strikers do more damage while controllers are more likely to control, for instance.

As to your second question, why not here?
 

Octangula

First Post
For power level of powers, I suggest looking at powers that just do damage, with very little bonus. For example, the Fighter has the option to take a level 29 daily that is 7[W] and reliable. Past that (and treating [W] as roughly 1d8 for non-weapon powers), I think that eyeballing is all there is.
 

ggroy

First Post
Around two years ago, I attempted to do some general mathematical scaling analysis of 4E in a series of blog posts.

rpg mechanics

(The posts of interest are mostly from August and September 2010).

It was an attempt at deducing some metarules, but I didn't bother finishing it.

Your mileage may vary.
 
Last edited:

Evenglare

Adventurer
Cool, thanks! I was wanting something like...

Themes grant X, Y and Z at these levels. Races grant this type of power (which is around X level). Each level of power is around Q level , each power is built around the fact that a zone does X damage or Y single damage. A forced movement power is equal to XdY dice or an average of 3 damage. A zone is equal to about 5 points in power. A paragon path grants something at these levels, x y,z and an ability at these levels. A feat is measured in power by X.

stuff like that.
 

ggroy

First Post
Cool, thanks! I was wanting something like...

Themes grant X, Y and Z at these levels. Races grant this type of power (which is around X level). Each level of power is around Q level , each power is built around the fact that a zone does X damage or Y single damage. A forced movement power is equal to XdY dice or an average of 3 damage. A zone is equal to about 5 points in power. A paragon path grants something at these levels, x y,z and an ability at these levels. A feat is measured in power by X.

stuff like that.

I never got around to figuring out a bigger meta-framework which could incorporate all this other stuff.

A lot of trial and error involved.
 

wedgeski

Adventurer
It's a great question. The designers certainly implied (if not stated outright) that they were working for the first time from a mathematical framework when they first built the game. I would like to hope they continued to do so through Essentials and all the additional rules added throughout the game's life...and if so, it would be a great asset to the community to release this information either now or after 5E is out in the wild.
[MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION]?
 

S'mon

Legend
The monster-building rules are very useful for considering PCs; by the math a PC should equal an Elite monster of that level, which means they should equal a standard monster of Level+4.

Standard monsters average Level+8 damage, IME Elites need to do 1.5 (High-Limited) times standard single-target damage as their baseline output in order to equal the threat of 2 standard monsters, with their AP that makes at least x3 damage for that round, possibly more if they have limited powers, minor action attacks, etc, but no monster should do more than x1.75 damage on a single attack, and that for Elite Brutes.

I have found that PCs should be expected to do baseline damage of around L+8 per round, same as standard monsters, but Strikers can do around 50% more.

On Monday I ran a session where one player played a well-built level 8 Archer Ranger, a top Striker, and another player a simplified level 8 DMG-2 Companion Character Striker, similar to an armoured Slayer, whose base attack averaged 17 damage (2d8+8), but who also had an AP, Heroic Effort, and a recharge 5-6 power strike for average 23.5 (3d8+10). I found that in practice the two characters had very similar DPR, the Ranger was only slightly ahead, and the Companion Character was generally ahead of a second less optimised Ranger PC in the group.

My overall impression was that the Striker PCs were doing around 1.5 Level+12 or 24 damage on a typical round, while non-Striker PCs average Level+8, or 16 at 8th level, and this is similar to Elite vs Standard monster DPR. But a player of a normal PC has to 'work to stand still', by making decent power selection choices etc, whereas monsters get their good DPR 'for free'.
 
Last edited:

Particularly for home brewing purposes... by meta rules I mean the underlying rules that the game is based on. A sort of guideline if you will. I'm wanting to know the thinking behind races, classes, paragon paths, epic destinies,themes, backgrounds and power creation and the corresponding math. I'm quite aware about the whole "just compare it to other powers the same level" but im looking for something a bit more in depth than just eyeballing it.

Also as a side question... is there some sort of site where us 4th edition players congregate to keep the game going via community resources?

WotC probably won't ever release their guidelines, which I suspect are vague. Sometimes they've been "violated" and cheese gets out, needing to be nerfed.

I believe each race gets: two stat bonuses (many but not all have a fixed bonus and a choice of two, post-errata), two +2 skill bonuses, a "defining" racial power (eg Elven Accuracy, Second Chance), and a few miscellaneous bonuses (eg resistance to charm for eladrin, resistance to poison for dwarves). I wanted to say each gets an attack power and one or more utility powers but that's not true - half-elves and halflings don't get anything like that, for instance.

Even the MM1 races in the back of that book seem to follow this pattern. They fall down because they don't get racial feats (or not many).

There's nothing that can be done but comparing. Fortunately, a few trends are obvious. At-will magic powers that do nothing but damage to a single target (eg Eldritch Blast) usually have ranged 20 and do 1d10 damage. Powers with a small bonus (eg Lance of Faith) usually do 1d8 damage instead. And so on...
 

Remove ads

Top