delericho
Legend
Okay, so I've been rather harsh on 4e lately. And I've also made no bones about the fact that it is my least favourite version of D&D. (That's not to say I think it's not a good game; I just prefer the other versions.)
But 4e does have some very nice features. So, here are a few of the things that I think 4e got very right, together with ways they could be even better. (All IMO, of course.):
Action Points: I'm really not a fan of these as implemented in Eberron/d20 Modern. They're fiddly; they get forgotten too easily; they mess with probabilities (making the formerly impossible possible); because they refresh with each level, they're easy to lose track of; and because there's a whole mess of feats and powers that key off them, they're not easy to just ignore without losing a lot from the setting.
By contrast, the 4e mechanic is simple, it is easy to remember and apply (spend an action point and get an extra... action), it is nicely discrete from the rest of the rules. It just works. So, yeah, I do like that.
How it Could be Better: Give an action point every encounter, to be used in that encounter only (that is, with every short rest you reset to 1 AP). This has a couple of benefits. Firstly, it gives more opportunities for characters to do cool things, which is always good. Secondly, it improves encounter balancing - an encounter where everyone uses all their dailies and action points is much easier than the same encounter without those resources. And it saves tracking of milestones.
Artifacts and Deities: These are fairly peripheral to the game, but they're handled very well in 4e. That deities are considered extremely high level, but can be killed with ultra-high level PCs with just the right gear, and after appropriate questing is just right. And the transient nature of artifacts is also a good thing - these can now appear in campaigns for a time without totally dominating them... unless the DM wants them to.
How it Could be Better: 4e is rather lacking where it comes to magic items. In 4e Classic they're usually deadly dull; in Essentials they're a bit of a hole in the rules. The game would probably benefit from moving many more magic items over to the "artifact" category, and relying on the appropriate mechanisms more.
Class Roles: I wouldn't have been as explicit with these as 4e has been, but it was definitely true of 3e that some classes were a bit of a fifth wheel - it wasn't quite clear what the Bard or Monk were supposed to be doing. (Was the Bard a poor man's rogue? A wizard-lite? A jack-of-all-trades? Was the Monk an unarmoured fighter? A pseudo-Cleric?)
By assigning clear roles, it's easy to see what a class is about. Of course the Bard is a Cleric-replacement! Of course the Monk is a Striker! If we'd had that clarity years ago, the 3.5e PHB could have had 11 really solid classes, instead of having several that people immediately skipped as being "too weak".
How it Could be Better: However, a problem comes about from having four clear roles - one of my groups has only three players, and 4e characters are too complex for them to run multiple characters. If there's a role 'missing', it can be difficult for the party to adjust.
So, this could have been improved a lot either by enabling each class to take on part of another role without either being really bad at it, or losing a lot in their main role, or building in hybrid roles from the outset. (It is likely the hybrid classes rules would have fixed our problems; unfortunately, it was way too late for us by then.)
Powers: Now, I really don't like the uniformity of classes/powers in 4e classic. It all seems way too... neat, I guess. But the division of the powers themselves into At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers was a good move - it's good to clear up the divisions that had always existed, but were never explicit in the same way.
How it Could be Better: Ditch "Dailies". There are three ways I can see for doing this:
- Simply remove them, and replace with per-adventure powers instead.
- Have characters start their day with no 'daily' powers available. Then, after odd-numbered encounters (or just every encounter), have them pick one 'daily' to become active.
- Provide some other recharge mechanism - perhaps there's an action required to ready a 'daily' for use.
Why do this? As long as characters have daily resources, you'll get the 15-minute adventuring day. 4e is a bit better than 3e in this regard (we're up from 5 minutes to 15), but it doesn't go far enough.
(Note: Healing surges aren't on my list here, since I don't particularly care for them, but you'd need a similar fix for them to get rid of the 15 minute day.)
Rituals: Splitting the quick-casting 'combat' spells from the slow-casting 'ritual' spells was definitely a good move. This was always somewhat implicit in the rules, with the 'ritual' spells having much longer casting times and expensive material components, but they still left the wizard who used them down on his regular allocation for the day.
It's a real shame that these too seem to have been lost in the Essentials shuffle.
How it Could be Better: Three things:
- Drop the Ritual Caster feat. Anyone who can meet the prerequisites for a ritual can learn and use it.
- Add rituals for every power source (and 'mundane' rituals as well). There should be a ritual for non-magical healing (expend a "medic's kit", make a Heal check, recipient spends a Healing Surge and gains an extra 1d8 hp (or whatever)). Crafting magic items should be a ritual... but so too should crafting non-magic items. And so on.
- Add rituals with a duration listed as "downtime". These can only be performed between adventures. (Since these are typically not performed 'in game', they shouldn't require a roll - the prerequisites should be such that a character qualifies if he could "make the roll" (equivalent) by taking 10.)
Oh, yes, and add lots more rituals generally!
But 4e does have some very nice features. So, here are a few of the things that I think 4e got very right, together with ways they could be even better. (All IMO, of course.):
Action Points: I'm really not a fan of these as implemented in Eberron/d20 Modern. They're fiddly; they get forgotten too easily; they mess with probabilities (making the formerly impossible possible); because they refresh with each level, they're easy to lose track of; and because there's a whole mess of feats and powers that key off them, they're not easy to just ignore without losing a lot from the setting.
By contrast, the 4e mechanic is simple, it is easy to remember and apply (spend an action point and get an extra... action), it is nicely discrete from the rest of the rules. It just works. So, yeah, I do like that.
How it Could be Better: Give an action point every encounter, to be used in that encounter only (that is, with every short rest you reset to 1 AP). This has a couple of benefits. Firstly, it gives more opportunities for characters to do cool things, which is always good. Secondly, it improves encounter balancing - an encounter where everyone uses all their dailies and action points is much easier than the same encounter without those resources. And it saves tracking of milestones.
Artifacts and Deities: These are fairly peripheral to the game, but they're handled very well in 4e. That deities are considered extremely high level, but can be killed with ultra-high level PCs with just the right gear, and after appropriate questing is just right. And the transient nature of artifacts is also a good thing - these can now appear in campaigns for a time without totally dominating them... unless the DM wants them to.
How it Could be Better: 4e is rather lacking where it comes to magic items. In 4e Classic they're usually deadly dull; in Essentials they're a bit of a hole in the rules. The game would probably benefit from moving many more magic items over to the "artifact" category, and relying on the appropriate mechanisms more.
Class Roles: I wouldn't have been as explicit with these as 4e has been, but it was definitely true of 3e that some classes were a bit of a fifth wheel - it wasn't quite clear what the Bard or Monk were supposed to be doing. (Was the Bard a poor man's rogue? A wizard-lite? A jack-of-all-trades? Was the Monk an unarmoured fighter? A pseudo-Cleric?)
By assigning clear roles, it's easy to see what a class is about. Of course the Bard is a Cleric-replacement! Of course the Monk is a Striker! If we'd had that clarity years ago, the 3.5e PHB could have had 11 really solid classes, instead of having several that people immediately skipped as being "too weak".
How it Could be Better: However, a problem comes about from having four clear roles - one of my groups has only three players, and 4e characters are too complex for them to run multiple characters. If there's a role 'missing', it can be difficult for the party to adjust.
So, this could have been improved a lot either by enabling each class to take on part of another role without either being really bad at it, or losing a lot in their main role, or building in hybrid roles from the outset. (It is likely the hybrid classes rules would have fixed our problems; unfortunately, it was way too late for us by then.)
Powers: Now, I really don't like the uniformity of classes/powers in 4e classic. It all seems way too... neat, I guess. But the division of the powers themselves into At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers was a good move - it's good to clear up the divisions that had always existed, but were never explicit in the same way.
How it Could be Better: Ditch "Dailies". There are three ways I can see for doing this:
- Simply remove them, and replace with per-adventure powers instead.
- Have characters start their day with no 'daily' powers available. Then, after odd-numbered encounters (or just every encounter), have them pick one 'daily' to become active.
- Provide some other recharge mechanism - perhaps there's an action required to ready a 'daily' for use.
Why do this? As long as characters have daily resources, you'll get the 15-minute adventuring day. 4e is a bit better than 3e in this regard (we're up from 5 minutes to 15), but it doesn't go far enough.
(Note: Healing surges aren't on my list here, since I don't particularly care for them, but you'd need a similar fix for them to get rid of the 15 minute day.)
Rituals: Splitting the quick-casting 'combat' spells from the slow-casting 'ritual' spells was definitely a good move. This was always somewhat implicit in the rules, with the 'ritual' spells having much longer casting times and expensive material components, but they still left the wizard who used them down on his regular allocation for the day.
It's a real shame that these too seem to have been lost in the Essentials shuffle.
How it Could be Better: Three things:
- Drop the Ritual Caster feat. Anyone who can meet the prerequisites for a ritual can learn and use it.
- Add rituals for every power source (and 'mundane' rituals as well). There should be a ritual for non-magical healing (expend a "medic's kit", make a Heal check, recipient spends a Healing Surge and gains an extra 1d8 hp (or whatever)). Crafting magic items should be a ritual... but so too should crafting non-magic items. And so on.
- Add rituals with a duration listed as "downtime". These can only be performed between adventures. (Since these are typically not performed 'in game', they shouldn't require a roll - the prerequisites should be such that a character qualifies if he could "make the roll" (equivalent) by taking 10.)
Oh, yes, and add lots more rituals generally!