D&D 4E Streamlined 4e combat

doctorbadwolf · Jun 16, 2019

Garthanos said:
I feel it makes the artificiality of turn based combat more obvious to me... in 1e action was planned but simultaneous. (relying on the DM to merge them)

That’s fair. I like having some floating actions in the game, but 4e went a bit too far there for me. I like 5e’s Action economy in a lot of ways, like how movement works, but I’ve also enjoyed how other games do rounds, like Alternity and The One Ring.

Garthanos · Jun 16, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
That’s fair. I like having some floating actions in the game, but 4e went a bit too far there for me. I like 5e’s Action economy in a lot of ways, like how movement works, but I’ve also enjoyed how other games do rounds, like Alternity and The One Ring.

The warlord whose primary context is often for team work is very off turn as well to me the highly limited off turn action basically undermines that.

I do like 5e movement system its pretty sweet.

doctorbadwolf · Jun 16, 2019

Garthanos said:
The warlord whose primary context is often for team work is very off turn as well to me the highly limited off turn action basically undermines that.

I do like 5e movement system its pretty sweet.

Sure, but does it need to eat the other character’s actions at all? Why isn’t it just an Action the warlord takes, with no cost to the person making the attack?

Garthanos · Jun 16, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
Sure, but does it need to eat the other character’s actions at all? Why isn’t it just an Action the warlord takes, with no cost to the person making the attack?

It generally doesnt in 4e but they didnt lock down out of turn actions

doctorbadwolf · Jun 16, 2019

Garthanos said:
It generally doesnt in 4e but they didnt lock down out of turn actions

Right, which is why I’m fine with cutting down off turn actions into, at most, Immediate Interrupt and Free Action. If it interrupts, it’s that one, if it doesn’t it’s the other. You get one of each per turn.

Maybe even make them all Minor Actions, and allow 3 per round, but only 1 per turn, and they all specify what triggers them or when you can use them. So, an extra attack on your turn would be a Minor Action, and say “make an attack on your turn”. Attacks of Opportunity would spend a Minor Action, and you could theoretically make up to 3 per round, but you’d have no Minor Action on your own turn.

Meanwhile, some Warlord stuff would be Minor Action, while others would be folded into on turn actions of just passively boost certain actions an ally can take, etc.

JeffB · Jun 16, 2019

Essentially (NPI) I ended up doing a lot of things that 13th Age did.

I often substituted a random die roll for # of creatures affected instead of dealing with bursts and blasts

I rarely called for an attack roll for each creature for powers that could affect multiples- the random die roll took care of it

Most monsters were one or two hit minions when it came to groups of Skeletons, Goblins, etc, "leader" types would be fully statted.

Monster HP are too high (for my tastes)- I experimented with "exploding" damage dice, Double dice on Crits, expanded crit range, and simply reducing HP.

We don't use grids and minis, so hard and fast squared movement was minimized

Companion Characters made for PCs without gobs of situational bonuses from feats, etc.

As an example for a standard class-I'd eliminate stances like posed assault and battle fury, instead letting the player build that bonus into whichever weapon they wanted.

Garthanos · Jun 16, 2019

AbdulAlhazred said:
In a nutshell you'd have a relatively limited number of hit points, say maybe 30 give or take, with elites and solos getting 2 or 4-5 times that, and minions 1 or a small number (less than 5) but with the 'die or take no damage' rule in effect. Then you'd just rely on defenses and attack bonuses to provide all the 'power curve', with PCs getting the option to 'act like an elite' or 'act like a minion' (IE as an 'elite' your attack bonus would go down but you'd get more attacks and a better defense, and 'act like a minion' would do the opposite).

Allow insight checks or similar to figure out what the capability of the adversaries are maybe add that effect into certain utility powers.

Garthanos · Jun 16, 2019

I see something you need to integrate with powers. You need a method to allow a big cool method to defeat the big bad without it being a fluke of chance -- we have a method already it's the nature of powers. Conversely a power might be useable against an enemy or set of enemies you out class without expending a power slot.

@AbdulAlhazred

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 19, 2019

Garthanos said:
I feel it makes the artificiality of turn based combat more obvious to me... in 1e action was planned but simultaneous. (relying on the DM to merge them)

If it is a FAST iteration of turns, then it is fine. That seems better to me then turning the turn sequence into pea soup, which is what 4e ended up doing.

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 19, 2019

Garthanos said:
I see something you need to integrate with powers. You need a method to allow a big cool method to defeat the big bad without it being a fluke of chance -- we have a method already it's the nature of powers. Conversely a power might be useable against an enemy or set of enemies you out class without expending a power slot.

@AbdulAlhazred

Yeah, there was a suggestion by [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] (in the other thread IIRC) about the minion/elite 'mode' thing. It could also be called 'aggressive' and 'defensive' or whatever, and there are a few options for implementing it, but that would get you some of it. You could 'go aggro' for a big move, and toss out your daily.

HoML has 'vitality points' instead of AP/HS, you can burn them to play your big powers, so you could actually do something crazy like burn a VP to use a 'vitality' power, burn another one to buy an extra action, and burn a 3rd one to fire off a vitality power again, there's your real alpha strike! hehe.