D&D 4.5E (Not Essentials)

I would like to see the power system converted to more of a general Staunton system.

I am thinking that everyone would have an at-will attack, an encounter attack, and a daily attack (using the standard 4e encounter/daily progression).

At-will attacks would do 1[W] and give you 1 stunt point (SP).

Encounter attacks would do 2[W] and give you 2 SP.

Daily attacks would do 3[W] and give you 3 SP.

You could then spend the SP to do things like push, knock prone, slow, daze, etc. with each condition having a SP cost (maybe 1 to push a square and 3 for daze). You could also spend SP to turn an attack to a burst or blast (maybe spells could be more flexible with this).

Something like that.

If the SP always had the same cost, it would destroy role identity.

I could picture defenders getting a discount for things like push, prone, and immobilize but not to ranged or AoE. A controller might get a discount to AoE and to conditions and forced movement, but not to high damage effects. A striker might get a discount to damage boosting but not to many other effects.

Yes, if you want to preserve the roles then you could vary the SP by role. That could work.

There's a few revisions one could make for 4e.

• Faster combats.
• A monster type between regular monster and minion for incidental fights.
• Revised skill math. Fewer and smaller bonuses to skills.
• Inherent bonuses assumed.
• Magic items that stack with inherent bonuses. Optional and rarer magic.
• Subraces from the start.
• Classes with flexible roles from the start.
• Melee basic equal to an At-will, increasing options by making At-Wills a tactical choice.
• Options on Page 42 equal to an At-Will or Encounter power (Or better if skill check required).
• Different numbers of powers dependent on power source.
• Overlapping powers. Choose some powers based on your powers source, some based on your build, and some based on class.
• Choice of build augments or alters powers (working off keywords). This allows fewer total powers in the game reducing option creep & related power creep.
• Refocus Paragon Tier. It's the "Legendary" tier where you do great tasks and build a legacy.

captpike said:

2) every class is made to be able to do two roles, which one is up to the resources picked, and in-combat choices made by the players. so a fighter is a striker-defender. he can be all defender, all striker or a combination of the two.

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Jester Canuck said:

There's a few revisions one could make for 4e.

• Classes with flexible roles from the start.

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Eh, no. This is the biggest failing of E4e. Classes should be designed to fulfill ONE role and do it well. Once you lose the focus that designing to a role gives you, you get things like the Berserker that dont do anything well. This is tn to say that you cant have a strong secondary role(Warlock/Bard->Controller, Fighter->Striker, Paladin->Leader), it just means that the class needs to be designed to do its primary role well.

What you really need are more classes(or more generic templates) that let you take different archetypes, power sources, roles and styles(heavy/light/ranged : weapon/implement) and matrix them all into different Classes. The question is how much do you want to weight "class" in the determination of character build? 4e matrices by Power Source and Role with Class determining archetype and build determining style at those intersections.

What 4e needs is more classes, the most glaring being the built-to-suit Martial Heavy Weapon Striker that the Slayer tries to be, without more powers. Which some of your other suggestions apply to. Source powers/role powers/archetype powers would all go a long way.

Marshall said:

Eh, no. This is the biggest failing of E4e. Classes should be designed to fulfill ONE role and do it well. Once you lose the focus that designing to a role gives you, you get things like the Berserker that dont do anything well. This is tn to say that you cant have a strong secondary role(Warlock/Bard->Controller, Fighter->Striker, Paladin->Leader), it just means that the class needs to be designed to do its primary role well.

What you really need are more classes(or more generic templates) that let you take different archetypes, power sources, roles and styles(heavy/light/ranged : weapon/implement) and matrix them all into different Classes. The question is how much do you want to weight "class" in the determination of character build? 4e matrices by Power Source and Role with Class determining archetype and build determining style at those intersections.

What 4e needs is more classes, the most glaring being the built-to-suit Martial Heavy Weapon Striker that the Slayer tries to be, without more powers. Which some of your other suggestions apply to. Source powers/role powers/archetype powers would all go a long way.

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We need fewer classes and powers.
More classes are problematic. Classes have an important narrative role. Each class needs X powers (15+) and multiple builds. This leads to bloat. And bloat removes choices from the game by increasing the odds of a better option.
And having one class be the sword using martial striker and as slightly different class being the sword using martial tank. We don't need both a "fighter" and a " battlerager", the class that's narratively exactly the same as the fighter but deals slightly extra damage.

Were I in charge of revising 4e I'd tie At-Wills to Power Source, so all Arcane classes draw from the same pool of At-Wills. All Martial characters use the same At-Wills as there's only so many ways of swinging a sword.
Class modifies At-Wills, so while the fighter and ranger might both use Reaping Strike the effect is slightly different. Build adds a second added effect. This lets the class add marking or extra damage or control effects to the base power.
Each class would pick At-Wills differently. Martial classes would learn fewest At-Wills but be able to use more each day, having access to all their At-Wills. Arcane would have the largest pool of potential At-Wills but have to learn them and memorize each day, so they can change their At-Wills. Divine has a medium pool but characters have automatic access to all and pick their a At-Wills each day.

It'd be tempting to make other small changes, like tying Encounter powers to choice of build, or like psionics/ Essential where Encounters are super At-Wills. Or tweaks like letting martial characters use any of their Daily powers, so they could use Power 1 then Power 2 or use Power 1 twice, or straining themselves letting them use a Daily power an extra time at the cost of healing surges.
It might be interesting to shift how Daily powers can be used, such as requiring Martial characters to have a certain trigger making them actual exploits, necessitating some actual tactics or teamwork to set-up. Or that could be a class gimmick.

I know therE are a couple versions out there that folks are working on, such as [MENTION=93857]C4[/MENTION].

Personally I don't think there's any use in recreating the wheel. And who wants to go over all the broken rules, and then get stuck in a debate about what is broken and what isn't? Is my version of 4.5 the same as yours? Maybe, maybe not.

Instead what I think the 4e chassis would be great for is an Ultralite 4e game inspired by something like Old School Hack (maybe a bit meatier) and focused on improvisational play. Something like that could operate on the premise that healing surges are essentially bennies that can be used to heal, to improve attacks, to get an extra attack or reroll an attack (replacing action points), etc. Each character class might have three feature options per level and you choose one. In addition, there'd be a list of power stunts and surge cost unique to the class like what [MENTION=80924]fjw70[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1165](Psi)SeveredHead[/MENTION] suggest.

Anyhow, I don't mean to knock anyone's ideas, it's just a huge amount of work and inherently involves value decisions that not everyone will agree on (e.g. Look at the "build of every role for every class" debate forming in this thread). I will add that I like a lot of these ideas as house rules for my own games and have actually implemented several behind the DM screen.

In particular, I use 6 types of monsters, not 3:

Minion - I include lots of homebrew tricks for my minions to increase longevity and fighting effectiveness without tracking; worth XP of 1/4 standard and sometimes 1/8 if it's a throwaway fight.

Humanoid - 33-50% HP of a standard, old damage expressions, simple mostly at-will powers,and worth half XP of a standard; used for small or medium sized creatures like gnolls, dwarves, orcs, goblins, etc.

Standard - use MM3 damage expression, reserved for quadrupeds, large monsters, or anything that isn't humanoid basically

Elite - As per the DMG2, for exceptionally strong enemies, usually named with some kind of unique lore to them, worth XP of 2 standards.

Champion - A powered up elite, a paragon of its kind or a unique monster of great age, inspired by [MENTION=714]frogsoth[/MENTION]'s "Savage" monster, usually a leader, has 2 action points, has some kind of action recovery, very nasty multi-attacks of typically high damage, saves at start and end of turn, an auto-damage aura or equivalent, free action attack when bloodied/dying, and other nastiness, worth XP of 3 standards

Solo - As per the DMG2, with action recovery and a whole host of other tricks that are too long to get into right here, possibly incorporating [MENTION=33187]gamefiend[/MENTION]'s "World Breaker", and [MENTION=14368]angryDM[/MENTION]'s "Three Stage Boss Monster", worth XP of 5+ standards.

Jester Canuck said:

We need fewer classes and powers.
More classes are problematic. Classes have an important narrative role. Each class needs X powers (15+) and multiple builds. This leads to bloat. And bloat removes choices from the game by increasing the odds of a better option.
And having one class be the sword using martial striker and as slightly different class being the sword using martial tank. We don't need both a "fighter" and a " battlerager", the class that's narratively exactly the same as the fighter but deals slightly extra damage.

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Thats just the point. The narrative space for the Fighter is Martial Heavy Weapon Defender. Martial Heavy Weapon Striker is going to use a different set of powers, many of which are likely shared with the Ranger and Rogue. Those are the Striker(weapon) powers. The Fighter uses the Defender(weapon) powers along with Fighter powers and probably Martial powers that are shared among all 4 classes.

The narrative space is only close if you make it close. I dont see a lot of people arguing that the Ranger and the Rogue are narratively exactly the same despite both being Martial Light Weapon Strikers that even share the same high skill paradigm and even the same prime stat(Dex).

You could switch the role assignment to a build option(Mage basically does this between controller and striker) but you then have to move a number of class features to sub-builds and end up with the same incoherent mess that 5e is at the moment.

Were I in charge of revising 4e I'd tie At-Wills to Power Source, so all Arcane classes draw from the same pool of At-Wills. All Martial characters use the same At-Wills as there's only so many ways of swinging a sword.
Class modifies At-Wills, so while the fighter and ranger might both use Reaping Strike the effect is slightly different. Build adds a second added effect. This lets the class add marking or extra damage or control effects to the base power.
Each class would pick At-Wills differently. Martial classes would learn fewest At-Wills but be able to use more each day, having access to all their At-Wills. Arcane would have the largest pool of potential At-Wills but have to learn them and memorize each day, so they can change their At-Wills. Divine has a medium pool but characters have automatic access to all and pick their a At-Wills each day.

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That would go a long way towards alleviating some complaints from the non-4e crowd. I'm not sure exactly what it would accomplish except for watering down some of the classes that have class defining at-wills. I'm thinking more Bard at-wills than Twin Strike, but TS will be pick number one for all martial classes. But again, a list of generic power source at-wills or role based at-wills would be a good idea.

It'd be tempting to make other small changes, like tying Encounter powers to choice of build, or like psionics/ Essential where Encounters are super At-Wills. Or tweaks like letting martial characters use any of their Daily powers, so they could use Power 1 then Power 2 or use Power 1 twice, or straining themselves letting them use a Daily power an extra time at the cost of healing surges.
It might be interesting to shift how Daily powers can be used, such as requiring Martial characters to have a certain trigger making them actual exploits, necessitating some actual tactics or teamwork to set-up. Or that could be a class gimmick.

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4e is so flexible you can make quite a few changes and know exactly what its going to do to gameplay, but yeah, I'd make quite a few changes to the presentation and layout. Changing "Healing Surge" to "Reserve Point" or "Vitality" would eliminate a chunk of the edition wars.

re: power sources

I honestly think a 4.5 would drop power sources altogether.

At the end of the day, a classes power source had no mechanical meaning. It existed solely so there could be overpowered splat books entitled "X Power" and so that forumers could argue endlessly over whether there should be a Martial Controller.

Heck, even the developers fell for it... we had a few classes, especially primal and psionic, that seemed to exist just so there could be an "x defender." Invoker, Warden, Battlemind... these were "check the power box" classes. Unless power sources were retooled to be more meaningful, I just don't see the point.

Jester Canuck said:

Were I in charge of revising 4e I'd tie At-Wills to Power Source, so all Arcane classes draw from the same pool of At-Wills. All Martial characters use the same At-Wills as there's only so many ways of swinging a sword.
Class modifies At-Wills, so while the fighter and ranger might both use Reaping Strike the effect is slightly different. Build adds a second added effect. This lets the class add marking or extra damage or control effects to the base power.
Each class would pick At-Wills differently. Martial classes would learn fewest At-Wills but be able to use more each day, having access to all their At-Wills. Arcane would have the largest pool of potential At-Wills but have to learn them and memorize each day, so they can change their At-Wills. Divine has a medium pool but characters have automatic access to all and pick their a At-Wills each day.

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I think it's important to have a class's at-wills be unique. One of they key ideas is that "Every time the fighter attacks, he feels like a fighter." Having a unique power that no other class shares is part of that. The fighter knows that the ranger is not going to bust out Tide of Iron. That's HIS thing.

That said a theoretical 4.5 certainly doesn't need hundreds of powers for every class to pick from at every moment as in 4e. Especially for martial classes, having a handful of powers that scale up would be fine.