D&D 4E Broad reworking of 4e characters and combat

[RangerWickett]

Edited 16 October 2009 with newest version, here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/attach...n-characters-combat-rzn-fixed-edition-oct.doc.

The attached file is the original version.

Basically, I wanted to get away from the at-will, encounter, daily thing, so I'm working on designing a combat system with variety and options, where you can build your moves from an assortment of small fighting styles, instead of having to pick premade moves from a list.

The options are pretty basic right now, and the magic section is unfinished because, well, magic's complicated. But this is sort of proof of concept. I'm fairly comfortable with where the melee combat options are. What do you think?

 

[SSquirrel]

Seems interesting in the proof of concept early doc. Here are my notes from a quick viewing at work:

1)Executioner and Sniper are the only styles requiring another fighting style. Both require the assassin. More styles coming built off of other styles?
2)How many fighting styles do you get? Level based requirement? (nevermind, I missed that bit) How many of these make sense for casters? In an Iron Heroes style game they all work obviously.
3)All requirements are based on Strength or Con, since anyone can choose any skill. Any plans to make any of the other abilities have weight in the system?
4)Feels like 2E with kits, healing surges and the level based bonus

Some of my questions may simply be answered by "this is proof of concept, that's all in the works", which is fine. Just things I felt should get mentioned. Good luck w/the project RW

 

[RangerWickett]

Seems interesting in the proof of concept early doc. Here are my notes from a quick viewing at work:

1)Executioner and Sniper are the only styles requiring another fighting style. Both require the assassin. More styles coming built off of other styles?

Yeah, I'd like to have different martial arts substyles, different duelist substyles, and so on. But first I wanted to see if the basic concept would be playable.

2)How many fighting styles do you get? Level based requirement? (nevermind, I missed that bit) How many of these make sense for casters? In an Iron Heroes style game they all work obviously.

3 at 1st level. I would like it if it were possible to learn more later, but the challenge becomes balancing them with normal feats. Then again, my opinion has long been that 4e feats are weak and uninteresting. The problem of course comes in that you get 16 feats over the course of your career, so I need a lot of options.

I figure at a certain point, even if you did take lots of styles, eventually adding new styles wouldn't be much help. You could be a jack of all trades, master of none, or you could take other feats (yet to be designed) to improve your existing styles. I'm not quite sure yet in what way to improve them, though.

3)All requirements are based on Strength or Con, since anyone can choose any skill. Any plans to make any of the other abilities have weight in the system?

Str and Dex are for attacking. Str and Con are for armor. All 6 stats are potentially valuable for defenses. And magic will key off of Int, Wis, and Cha.

4)Feels like 2E with kits, healing surges and the level based bonus

Some of my questions may simply be answered by "this is proof of concept, that's all in the works", which is fine. Just things I felt should get mentioned. Good luck w/the project RW

Thanks. Do you think a system like this would be interesting to play? You get to have a variety of basic attacks, and you can surge to pull off some interesting tricks a few times each combat, and if you take a moment to get your focus, you can have devastating turns.

 

[SSquirrel]

Well 4E feats were weak and uninteresting by design really. On the Dex, I just meant that armor requirements were all strength based, armor was strength based, we had no styles that really fell to an especially dextrous individual.

Are the surge and focus in addition or instead of action points? Like I said, I think the system feels like 2E with a few bits borrowed from 4E. The people who like how 2E runs, but like the feel of things like healing surges and the simplicity of the level based bonuses (with no more racial class and level restrictions) will enjoy it.

 

[RangerWickett]

Ah, there were a few elements I didn't include, I see. I want to tweak weapons just a tad. No simple/military/superior differentiation.

Weapons are light, medium, or heavy. Light weapons you can use either Str or Dex. So if you fight with daggers, shortswords, whips, small axes, batons, etc., you can use your Dex.

So you can make a 'fighter' by using heavy armor, having high Str and Con, and focusing on medium or heavy weapons. A 'rogue' would use light armor, and have a high Dex. Pretty much same as now, but you could mix and match if you want.

And I think I would have action points, one for each encounter after the first each day.

 

[SSquirrel]

Surge and focus seem to produce similar results in many cases as to what you would receive from using an AP. Having both in the system along with APs would be pretty strong.

Things like Buy the Numbers in 3E were very interesting ways of turning D&D into a point buy system. I think a point buy 4E would be even easier to achieve b/c they have already given us the numbers behind so much of the system and have tried to make more balanced all around. An interesting 3.x/Arcana Evolved crossover point buy system was http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3r...readsheet.html?highlight=Dr+Spunj's+classless and I was a big fan of that.

What happens when the "Rogue" has a 2H sword he is wanting to backstab with in a dark alley?

 

[LostSoul]

I like it.

There's only one change I would make: the DM chooses the condition when you do an Afflict.

How does he make that choice? The player's description of the action. The player would probably want to describe the first attack so that the follow-up Afflict makes sense, and you get the DM ruling you're hoping for.

 

[RigaMortus2]

3 at 1st level. I would like it if it were possible to learn more later, but the challenge becomes balancing them with normal feats.

So I have a thougt here... I borrowed this idea from Palladium's Ninja's and Superspies. I was trying to do a fighting style system of myself a while back, and didn't really get anywhere with it. Instead of having classes levels 1 - 20, each fighting style had levels 1 - 20, and at each level had different maneuvers and benefits (and BAB progression).

You can have 2 Hero classes. One is the Dedicated Hero, the other is the Worldly Hero.

The Dedicated Hero is dedicated to one type of Fighting style, and so can raise all the way up to level 20 gaining each benefit at each level. The other choice the Dedicated Hero can do is start with an Exclusive (prestige in D&D terms) fighting style. This would be akin to your Executioner and Sniper fight styles (except they can pick it from the get-go, no previous fighting style requirement needed).

The Worldly Hero starts with 2 fighting styles, but can only pick a benefit from one style or the other at each level. So they get more choices and options each level, and they can still get benefits at each level all the way through level 20, but they don't get ALL the benefits from each style. This could make for some interesting combinations. They are not as disciplined as a Dedicated Hero, so can not pick from the Exclusive fighting styles.

Anyway, just wanted to toss a few ideas at you...

 

[Cwheeler]

I like it. I'm interested to see how you're planning on handling magic.

a few quick notes:

1. I'd probably change the combat styles and magic traditions from being feats - they're definitely not balanced with normal feats. Instead, you might want to give out an extra style per tier (even having 'upgraded' styles that can only be purchased at higher tiers) or allowing people to purchase a combat style at the cost of two feats.

2. The damage for the unarmed strikes seems a little high...

3. I like the system! Please keep working on it .

 

[Alex319]

Overall, this seems like a very solid base. There are probably a few balance tweaks that would be useful to make although I can't see any styles that are obviously overpowered. The only possible exception is the Clincher that lets you make melee basic attacks against grabbed targets as a minor action - 3 attacks per round every round is pretty darn powerful at high levels, especially when most of your damage is going to be coming from those static damage modifiers.

I also noticed you used terms that you didn't define anywhere, like "Short range" and "light, medium, and heavy weapons".

I'll just make a few comments about the Afflicting and the conditions.

- It seems a little too easy to do. You do get a -5 on the roll, but it's against Fort, which is usually 2-3 points lower than AC, so it's really more like -2 or -3. Also this makes Fort much more important than the other NADs (Non-AC Defenses). You might want to have different conditions key off of different NADs - e.g. Dominated keys off of Will, Disarmed keys off of Reflex, etc.

- It's probably overpowered against Solos and possibly Elites too. This is a problem in the regular 4e game as will but it's going to be more serious in this version because everyone can (try to) inflict conditions at-will. Even with the -5 penalty, with everyone whaling on the solo they can easily inflict a couple conditions per round, and it really only takes about 3-5 steps worth of conditions to basically take someone out of the fight.

- Some conditions are far more powerful than others. Dazed, for example, is very good because 3 steps worth is enough to stun him (save ends), and 4 steps worth is just as good as killing them.

- Assuming you have a minor action to spare, it doesn't cost anything to try to inflict a condition, so it's easy to spam conditions without any loss in damage output.

Possible suggestions:

- Give elites and solos their save bonus as a bonus to their defense against Afflict. So a player would effectively be at -10 to Afflict an unbloodied solo.

- Make it so that in order to Afflict you have to give something up - say halve the damage on the attack.

- Have a different track for penalties to Afflict. For example something like:
3/4 or more hp = -10 penalty
1/2 to 3/4 = -5 penalty
1/4 to 1/2 = no penalty, but still only get one step of the condition
0 to 1/4 = no penalty, and get two steps of the condition

Probably you don't need to do both this and the half damage thing - one is enough and both would make conditions underpowered.

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(By the way, I'm imagining someone with Brute and Two-Weapon Fighting wielding two mauls with several more on his person and using his battle surge to throw them at enemies... by the way, if a Brute is dual-wielding heavy weapons and expends his focus to do something else, what happens?)