D&D 4E New 4e RPG to Fix 4e Problems (and Add Technology!)

[Camelot]

I'm trying to make an RPG that combines magic and technology and is based on the 4e system. However, there must be differences. I have noticed all the complaints about 4e and want to amend that with this game.

My goal is to make the game able to please powergamers, roleplayers, and everyone in between equally.

One thing I know I'm going to have is an equal amount of attack and utility powers at each level, allowing a player to make their player built for combat encounters, social encounters, or somewhere in between.

I'm playing with the idea of 100 levels, but it's a long stretch and I'll probably stick with 30 unless I can come up with a useful XP method. Also, I want to use hexes instead of squares, because they make more sense. (The distance diagonally is technically longer than the distance horizontally and vertically, but 4e ignores that, so I want to erase that geometry issue by using hexes, which have an equal distance between each one.)

Another idea I'm just toying with is a view arc. Instead of being able to see everything around you at all times, you can only see things in a certain arc determined by your class or race (I haven't decided, probably class, and some races can increase your vision). If something attacks you from behind, they have combat advantage. You can use a move action to spin to face a different direction, and you can spin as a free action when an enemy moves into a space adjacent to you. This is an idea recycled from Mage Knight, if you're wondering. Of course, I don't know if it would make it better than the current 4e or not; it might make battle just a little more confusing.

In addition, I've revised the skill set to represent a combination between 3.5e and 4e, so that the rules allow you to do more, hopefully opening up different roleplaying opportunities than 4e, whose skills are all combat oriented. Remember, this is combining magic and technology, too. Here are my skill ideas (some of which are not completed):

Acrobatics (Dexterity)
* Your agility, allowing you to perform acrobatic stunts, escape from grabs and bonds, move right under enemies' feet, and reduce falling damage.
Arcana (Intelligence)
* Your knowledge of magic and ability to identify and sense magic.
Architecture (Intelligence)
* Your knowledge of architecture and ability to identify false floors, etc.
Athletics (Strength)
* The synergy of your arms, legs, and body, allowing you to climb, swim, break free of grabs and bonds, and catch yourself while falling.
Balance (Dexterity)
* Your inner balance, allowing you to walk across narrow or unstable surfaces.
Bluff (Charisma)
* Your ability to weave lies that seem true or distract others.
Concentration (Constitution)
* Your ability to concentrate on a task at hand, ignoring distractions so you don't mess up your task.
Diplomacy (Charisma)
* Your social grace and ability to convince others to do what you want.
Endurance (Constitution)
* Your ability to endure debilitating physical effects, like temperature, disease, hunger, thirst, and lack of air.
Heal (Wisdom)
* Your knowledge of medicines, herbs, and your ability to cure wounds, allowing you to heal allies and unlock their own healing potential.
History (Intelligence)
* Your knowledge of history or a region, including past events and their causes, royalty, leaders, wars, legends, other significant personalities, laws, and customs.
Initiative (Dexterity)
* Your reflexes and reaction time to events, be it combat, a triggered trap, or a sudden encounter with a familiar NPC.
Insight (Wisdom)
* Your ability to discern intent and recognize false effects as illusions, and also your ability to resist the urge of temptation or the threat of intimidation.
Intimidate (Charisma)
* Your force of deadly persuasion.
Jump (Strength)
* The strength of your lower body, allowing you to jump high and long.
Lift (Strength)
* The strength of you upper body, allowing you to lift heavy objects.
Logic (Intelligence)
* Your ability to solve riddles and logic puzzles.
Nature (Wisdom)
* Your knowledge of nature, allowing you to identify creatures and plants, forage for food, and train animals.
Perception (Wisdom)
* Your eyesight, allowing you to notice details, find tracks, or search a room.
Perform (Charisma)
* Your base charisma, allowing you to be perceived as nice, helpful, or even mean and rotten if you want, in addition of course to giving streetwalkers a good show.
Pilot (Dexterity)
* Your ability to drive a vehicle from a scooter to a spaceship. Also helps you perform stunts on horseback (or the backs of other rideable creatures). I couldn't think of a name that encompasses both vehicles and mounts, so I chose this, but do you think it should be two skills?
Prescience (Wisdom)
* Your ability to foresee events based on current circumstances, and even helps you gamble!
Religion (Intelligence)
* Your knowledge of religions around the world, and might even allow you to sense divine presence or recognize a deity's will.
Stealth (Dexterity)
* Your control over your body, allowing you to move quietly and hide.
Streetwise (Charisma)
* Your ability to gather information in a busy place, and your knowledge of a town or city that you've already gathered.
Technology (Intelligence)
* Your knowledge of technology, allowing you to use or hack into computers and write computer programs.
Thievery (Dexterity)
* Your control over your hands, allowing you to disarm alarms, disable traps, perform sleight of hand tricks, and pick pockets.

I'd really love to hear any ideas anyone has. If you've had problems with 4e and you think you know how it can be fixed, let me know here. If you think something here won't work and should be different, tell me. Thanks to all who contribute!

 

[Bronze_Dragon]

Sounds like quite an undertaking. I've always felt like technology is always an interesting aspect of a fantasy roleplaying game.

Food for thought:
- Remember you don't have to be 100% original. I'm sure there are plenty of systems out there that already have a fantasy/technology mix. If they don't suite you (I know I personally prefer grinding out a new system rather than adopt a new one when I'm really driven on an idea...), you could at least see how they integrate everything and maybe adopt those ideas.

- You said you want to incorporate technology. Cool. What kind? Is this going to be steampunk style, eberron style (with magic powering the technological things), medieval technology (everything short of gunpowder), early gunpowder, etc. etc. I personally find Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings inspiration for how to think about technology in a medieval world.

Edit: Sorry, I posted without reading over the entire list of skills; I see you want to have computers in there. Still, I'd suggest thinking about what kind of style you want, and how important and how everpresent (for lack of a better word) technology will be.

 

[Camelot]

I want the technology and magic to mesh like they do in Star Wars, except magic is just a little more common. The thing is, most average people don't want to spend the time it takes to learn magic, because technology gives them what they need and want without much need for learning new techniques. Magic takes much more study if you aren't innately born with magical powers. On the other hand, there are some communities of people who would rather use magic than technology, and some (usually big cities) who have found innovative ways of combining the two.

There will also definitely be spaceships. It may be fantasy, but the "material world" is an entire universe, and doesn't just consist of one planet. There are many planets and species out there, and in this era, they are almost all connected using technology and magic.

And about being original...I pretty much stole all the magic from D&D and the technology from Star Wars. It's just a way to combine the two; I don't plan on selling this, I plan on playing it. Plus, that's the style I had in mind. Star Wars with the force just being a little more versatile (you can create fire, unseen servants, etc.).

I've been working on a few ideas for races and classes. I'm including the standard fantasy races, of course, like elves and dwarves and such, but there are no "standard" sci-fi races, so for that I've got to come up with my own. Any ideas?

As for classes, everything in D&D has been transferred to this, just tweaked a little where I want it to have a different flavor. For example, sorcerers are still those born with magic inside them, however, they use Constitution as their main skill instead of Charisma, because they can be as unsocial as they want, they just need to be able to endure it when they channel great bursts of energy throgh their bodies. Also, fighters have become soldiers, rangers have become scouts, and rogues have become scoundrels, echoing the Star Wars RPG. Swordmages have become mechmages, because they can use more technology with magic than just swords, and bards have become spellsingers, because bards are just normal people who write songs and poetry, while spellsingers weave magic into their songs.

Of course, I added in my own classes to represent the technology, modernness, and other options in the game: the noble, a martial controller; brawler, a martial defender (their powers are attacks to help fight with their fists, or spiked gauntlets, and talk tough); grenadier, a martial controller (D&D lacks martial controllers when these can easily be converted to only magic); and the medic, a martial leader. I would love to hear your ideas for new classes as well, and your opinion on my changes from D&D and Star Wars to this.

Oh, and by the way, the working title of this game is Spells and Spaceships, to reflect the alliteration of other popular RPGs (Dungeons and Dragons, Swords and Sorcery, Monsters and Mazes (yeah, not a real game, but whatever), you know the rest).

 

[Mythlore]

Once upon a time, before you developed 'Pilot' out, there was a skill entitled 'Ride'.

In d20 Modern, I think it became 'Drive', but Pilot is much more effective.

Navigate? (Implies naval maneuvering, but may count, as well.)

I think you might have the most effective word for 'take control of anything you could maneuver or navigate with' -- mounted upon a creature, seated within a vehicle, engaging some other machination such as an airship or seaship...

 

[Camelot]

Yeah, I thought Pilot would encompass both better than Ride would. Of course, with riding a mount, Nature helps, while with piloting a ship, Technology helps!

I started working on the Soldier class first, thinking that it would be the simplest class to design powers for, since it's exactly like the Fighter anyway. All I have to do is think up 1st-level utility powers. Turns out, it's harder than it seems. I though of one at-will power:

Knuckle Crack Soldier Utility 1
You back up your threats with displays of your strength.
At-Will * Martial
Standard Action Personal
Effect: Make an Intimidate check with a bonus equal to your Strength modifier.

This allows Soldiers, whose Charisma isn't so hot, to still be effective at Intimidate just by being so huge. If you have a negative Charisma modifier, it offsets it a little bit. If you have a fairly good Charisma modifier, then you can cause your enemies to quake in their boots.

S&S classes are too much of a match for D&D classes (in theory, of course, I haven't actually tried it out yet). If you were to pit a Fighter against a Soldier, the Soldier would more likely end out on top. This is because of the utility powers that the Soldier gets to offset its attacks. At level 1, you get three at-will powers: one or two attacks and one or two utilities; two encounter powers: one attack and one utility; and two daily powers: one attack and one utility. It's a lot of powers to handle. I'm on the fence with how much this actually is, and wondering if it's too much for 1st level. Also, coming up with utility powers is hard! If there's anything you want a class to be able to do, let me know, please!!

 

[Garthanos]

If one wants the stat swapping at-will, you need more reason for CHA to be the normal attribute for it. Knuckle cracking is good if you are using it against townsfolk but if its a soldier with 14 strength himself ? or even an orc with 16 Strength.. it gets less wonderful (.. reduce the amount gained by a positive str modifier of your target... so flexing biceps - skin as you like , becomes comparative ;-)).

Note I think situational application of modifiers like the above give you the same effect without the hard coding of an at-will, your mileage may vary...

 

[Camelot]

That's a great idea!!! Okay, here's the updated power:

Knuckle Crack Soldier Utility 1​

You back up your threats with displays of your strength.​

At-Will * Martial​

Standard Action Personal​

Effect: Make an Intimidate check with a bonus equal to your Strength modifier. The target of your Intimidate check gets a bonus to their Insight check equal to their Strength modifier.

This brings up a change I made from the 4e system. I have Intimidate checks made against Insight checks, because I don't like how they made a skill vs. a defense, as the two should not be combined. This is a long stretch, though, so I'd love to hear opinions on it.

Speaking of defenses, another radical change I want to make is instead of your defense being a static 10 + modifiers, I want the 10 to be replaced with a die roll. For example, a creature attacks and rolls an 7. Not very good, and with the modifier only turns out to be a 11. Now, the attack targets Reflex, and the PC has a +8 bonus to Reflex defense checks, so he's pretty confident that he can dodge the attack. But he rolls a 2, meaning he gets a 10 for his defense and the attack hits! This resembles that in the world of the game, you are constantly moving and shifting your attention from one thing to another. You can be extremely agile, but you always have the chance of letting down your guard just for a split second.

To follow this, I want to come up with a "critical defend" and "fumble defend" system. Obviously, if you get a 1 on a defense check, the attack automatically hits and if you get a 20 the attack automatically misses. But in addition, maybe fumbling makes you grant combat advantage until the end of the attacker's next turn? And maybe criting lets you bounce the attack back at the attacker so they take half damage or something? And if a crit is against a crit, then it nulls both crits and they're treated just like other die rolls. Then, if the attack hits, it deals maximum damage, and if the attack misses, the attacker takes half damage (which would be half maximum damage!). A fumble also nulls a fumble, and the attack may still hit, but both combatants grant combat advantage until they can recover.

I think these give rise to very cinematic opportunities, which may appeal to a certain kind of gamers who aren't really powergamers or roleplayers!

 

[Garthanos]

That's a great idea!!! Okay, here's the updated power:

Knuckle Crack Soldier Utility 1
You back up your threats with displays of your strength.
At-Will * Martial
Standard Action Personal​

Effect: Make an Intimidate check with a bonus equal to your Strength modifier. The target of your Intimidate check gets a bonus to their Insight check equal to their Strength modifier.

I think they could be encounter powers

If you wanted to impress them with the size of your whatever it doesnt have to be strength. ;-)

For the Scientist... its called
Baffling them Jargon (polite word)and it allows you to get an intelligence bonus to diplomacy checks... and suitably the target gets a defensive boost... with their brilliance.

 

[Camelot]

Well, I really do want there to be at-will options for utility powers so that rules allow for more interesting roleplaying. I like the idea of being able to use skills with a different ability score, offsetted by the opponents resistability to that skill, and I'll probably use it for other opposed skills, like the Baffling Jargon power. I think it shouldn't be an option for everyone, only with certain powers for certain classes. Maybe other classes will have the same powers, though.

 

[Garthanos]

I generally agree with wanting more at-wills, (especially if they are nicely reskinnable...)

My question if it isnt likely to be used very often then making it an encounter power (discourages spamming) if the power relies a little on surprise or originality.. I can easily
see responses like .. "after all I've seen his muscles once how often does he think I'm going to let that sway me" comes in to the picture... using strength to enhance a diplomacy roll to sway the attractive barmaid to ignore your otherwise questionable charisma.

Note she wouldnt use her strength in opposition ;-), but rather that of her last beau perhaps.