D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[Undrave]

Saving throws in 5e are inheritors of the duration mechanic of 4e.

Huh?! How so?

 

[Deekin]

Huh?! How so?

Some spells got a "At the end of each of its turns, the target can make another saving throw. On a success, the spell ends on the target." tacked onto them. Most of them the really powerful low level spells, like Hold Person and Blindness/Deafness.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Huh?! How so?

I'm assuming because they believe the "save again every round" thing makes it more similar to 4e than to 3e. I, personally, disagree--they're not totally dissimilar, in much the same way that hit dice and healing surges aren't totally dissimilar. But that doesn't make 5e saves actually 4e saves with a new coat of paint. The two are quite different.

That is, for clarity, 4e saves do exactly three things (and two of them could technically be lumped together):
permit variable but diminishing durations
avoid death (death saves)
power the "condition track" mechanic

Death saves were kept in 5e essentially as-is, but the condition track was completely trashed and the "variable-but-diminishing-durations" thing is not even remotely the primary point of 5e saves. The majority just decide whether something takes full damage or reduced damage. Some, yes, do preserve the "it won't last forever" effect, but plenty don't--others lean more into what PF2e would formalize later with its four-step variable success (hitting vs missing and standard vs crit), where passing the save means you get hit with a weak effect for the normal duration while failing it means you get hit with the full/nasty effect for the full duration. It all depends, and there's never been a consistent pattern.

Variable-but-diminishing duration is valuable, but it's really the "condition track" mechanic that makes 4e saves shine. That invites drama and tension: things could get worse or better or stay the same, and the ending outcome remains uncertain for a good while, rather than definitively being all bad or all cleared up. Giving a specific example, fighting a medusa can allow for a condition track against its petrification: anyone that can see its Petrifying Gaze attack must make a save, first failure makes you Slowed, second failure makes you Immobilized, and only on the third failure in a row are you Petrified (no save.) This creates a great deal of tension, without actually making outright failure that likely; by default, a save is a 50% chance, so any given character only has a 1/8 chance of falling to it, and that's assuming no one is able to give them a boost. That's better than even (~51.3% chance) that no one gets petrified--but it becomes very tense, because any member of the party still could. Since Blinded creatures are immune to the Petrifying Gaze, you can even protect yourself by willingly becoming blind--perhaps by wearing a blindfold.

So...yeah. The "condition track" was one of the best, most interesting components of 4e design that could easily be applied to any other game, and 5e just unceremoniously chucked it in the bin because it stank too much of 4e. And it wasn't even original to 4e, SWSE did it first!

 

[Atomoctba]

So...you can't tell stories about people who are genuine experts. And you can't have the special impact of a situation where players are usually reliable, but this one time it goes wrong because it's especially hard. (Gandalf's failure to understand the entrance of Moria is special because everyone, including Gandalf himself, expects to be able to open the door easily. Without his reliability, the scene has far less value.)

You can tell these stories if you assume you just roll dice when in doubt for the outcome. I would rule that Gandalf simply knows lots of things (something in line to the always take 10 or even take 20 on rolls) and just roll when in doubt. Usually the rule of "take 10" is enough for experts do most things without fear to fail. Dice are just for combat and for situations interesting for the narrative, like Moria's entrance. And, when I think is interesting for narrative, yes, I want a mook has a chance to do something very special or a specialist have a small, but not very small, chance to fail.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You can tell these stories if you assume you just roll dice when in doubt for the outcome. I would rule that Gandalf simply knows lots of things (something in line to the always take 10 or even take 20 on rolls) and just roll when in doubt. Usually the rule of "take 10" is enough for experts do most things without fear to fail. Dice are just for combat and for situations interesting for the narrative, like Moria's entrance. And, when I think is interesting for narrative, yes, I want a mook has a chance to do something very special or a specialist have a small, but not very small, chance to fail.

Okay, but that's a huge power-up. Like, you're literally handing out one of the Rogue's entire class features in 5e, for free, to anyone whose "thing" is being good at a skill. Isn't that a bit unfair, in purely gameplay terms? Seems to pretty clearly devalue the Rogue. Not "make totally useless," but like...that's effectively erasing one of the class features for a class that's already at a disadvantage.

Not to mention the arbitrariness of it. You're an expert until you're not. Again, part of the story idea is the reliability. "DM decides" is the antithesis of reliability.

Note that that is NOT the same as saying "nothing should ever require adjudication," since I'm sure that will get misinterpreted. What I mean is, "you have Take 10 protection up until whatever moment the DM decides it would be dramatic for you to not have it" is, very literally, the definition of something being unreliable. As soon as you'd really really WANT to have it, that's exactly the moment that it disappears, because your wanting to have it IS what makes it dramatic for you to NOT have it. The Rule of Drama is heavily fueled by taking things away when their reliability would be desirable.

 

[Atomoctba]

Okay, but that's a huge power-up. Like, you're literally handing out one of the Rogue's entire class features in 5e, for free, to anyone whose "thing" is being good at a skill. Isn't that a bit unfair, in purely gameplay terms? Seems to pretty clearly devalue the Rogue. Not "make totally useless," but like...that's effectively erasing one of the class features for a class that's already at a disadvantage.

Not to mention the arbitrariness of it. You're an expert until you're not. Again, part of the story idea is the reliability. "DM decides" is the antithesis of reliability.

Note that that is NOT the same as saying "nothing should ever require adjudication," since I'm sure that will get misinterpreted. What I mean is, "you have Take 10 protection up until whatever moment the DM decides it would be dramatic for you to not have it" is, very literally, the definition of something being unreliable. As soon as you'd really really WANT to have it, that's exactly the moment that it disappears, because your wanting to have it IS what makes it dramatic for you to NOT have it. The Rule of Drama is heavily fueled by taking things away when their reliability would be desirable.

As I said, mileage can vary. Different people have different expectations of fun and it is all ok. The group where I game (not the group I DM) drama is exactly that: not realiable. Because that is drama.

 

[Kannik]

I really never saw the flavor arguments either. I mean, in my first campaign, at paragon the PCs were like: A dwarf fighter wielding his father's flaming war axe that was infused with balor blood in a trial by combat with a demon; A chosen STR cleric wielding the sword and shield of an ancient hero and prophesied to save the land; A starlock with a secondary hag pact that was slowly being taken over by his rod; And I forget what the rogue had, but it was another pretty bad-assed weapon that had a history of some sort, etc! The whole system is so dripping with flavor, and easy ways to tie stuff into the PC's history, actions, and build choices that I almost find it hard to understand when I see games where the above sort of stuff isn't the norm!

One way I would go about fixing 4e would be doing more to give default flavor to each power, but also make it really clear both THAT that flavor can change, and tools for HOW to change it if players/DMs want them. Some of this was there, but a lot of it showed up late...partially due to the "Purple Wyvern" thing (or whatever that preview feat was that made people SO ANGRY for no reason.)

HA... and such is the Schrödinger/Heisenberg principle of 4e upset. It is at once too "flavourless/generic/NOT AN RPG" while at the same time being "Too much default lore/Stepping on my world/Don't tell me what my character is." Quite the impressive feat.

But yes, adding a paragraph that talks about refluffing things would be beneficial -- we went so far into the "effects based" design/mindset in our game and it was always awesome.

 

[James Gasik]

HA... and such is the Schrödinger/Heisenberg principle of 4e upset. It is at once too "flavourless/generic/NOT AN RPG" while at the same time being "Too much default lore/Stepping on my world/Don't tell me what my character is." Quite the impressive feat.

But yes, adding a paragraph that talks about refluffing things would be beneficial -- we went so far into the "effects based" design/mindset in our game and it was always awesome.

There was an amazing article during the 4e era (I think on the online Dragon Magazine), "My Son is a Fire Archon" all about refluffing. The man was teaching his son to to play 4e, and asked what kind of character he would want to play, and the boy saw a picture of a Fire Archon and said "I want to play THAT!".

So the man thought about it, and gave his son a Rogue, but changed all his damage to fire, and refluffed all his powers to be based on things an elemental could do, and they had a blast!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's a paragraph in the PHB that talks about reflavoring stuff and changing keywords, and the Adventurers Vault touches on these themes WRT magic items and such. Obviously it's a big theme on the GM side of things but if I had to guess, the more editorial side of the 4e team gave frowny faces. No prize for guessing which WotC figure lead that side of the house! 4e was virtually in the hands of it's own enemies it feels like.

 

[heretic888]

There was an amazing article during the 4e era (I think on the online Dragon Magazine), "My Son is a Fire Archon" all about refluffing. The man was teaching his son to to play 4e, and asked what kind of character he would want to play, and the boy saw a picture of a Fire Archon and said "I want to play THAT!".

So the man thought about it, and gave his son a Rogue, but changed all his damage to fire, and refluffed all his powers to be based on things an elemental could do, and they had a blast!

That particular example was also printed in the DMG2.