Serendipity
Explorer
Rituals, minions, an encouragement to reskin/refluff existing content, "unaligned," Warlocks, Avengers, Invokers, and a core book race of elves who aren't tree huggers but arcanists.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
D&D 4E The Indispensable 4e
- Thread starter theuglyamerican
- Start date
tuxgeo
Adventurer
Something 4E had that 3E did not: multiclassing at Level 1.
For indecisive Bards, or actually for any PC visualized as struggling to find a starting identity. this could create combinations not possible with a "take your next level in which class?" system. (Both feat-based multiclassing and hybrid multiclassing accomplished this.)
The drawbacks often cited for 4E multiclassing usually centered around the existence of the "power-swap" feats, much more than around the basic "become a member of another class" feats.
If feat-based multiclassing were to be retained in 5ENext, it might have to be called "dual-classing" in order to leave the term "multiclassing" available for the 3E style; but with enough modularity, both styles might be able to be included.
For indecisive Bards, or actually for any PC visualized as struggling to find a starting identity. this could create combinations not possible with a "take your next level in which class?" system. (Both feat-based multiclassing and hybrid multiclassing accomplished this.)
The drawbacks often cited for 4E multiclassing usually centered around the existence of the "power-swap" feats, much more than around the basic "become a member of another class" feats.
If feat-based multiclassing were to be retained in 5ENext, it might have to be called "dual-classing" in order to leave the term "multiclassing" available for the 3E style; but with enough modularity, both styles might be able to be included.
the Jester
Legend
The warlord.
Healing isn't just for clerics (and isn't always all you can do with your turn).
MONSTER CREATION- holy crap is it the best version ever for monster creation. That said, there should be modules for "toolkitting" monsters together too, like in 3e.
A way for fighters to be 'sticky'.
A way for fighters to do more than "I swing my sword".
Healing isn't just for clerics (and isn't always all you can do with your turn).
MONSTER CREATION- holy crap is it the best version ever for monster creation. That said, there should be modules for "toolkitting" monsters together too, like in 3e.
A way for fighters to be 'sticky'.
A way for fighters to do more than "I swing my sword".
Blackwarder
Adventurer
Here is my list.
* short prep time.
* and err that's it (I honestly though that I'll have more
)
Warder
* short prep time.
* and err that's it (I honestly though that I'll have more
)Warder
Some points to add:
* removal of stat-boost spells and items
* shifted buffs and debuffs to the totals, not to the source numbers. i.e. +1 to hit, not +2 strength
There are lots of points made that I want to query or counterpoint, but in the interest of not de-railing the thread, I'll stick to the less inflamatory ones:
Non-rolled HP, or at least some system to get HP w/o rolling.
This was an optional rule in 3.0 if I recall correctly. I don't remember anyone ever even giving it a chance, let alone making it the standard for their game. I think the difference comes from the values chosen. In 3.0 you halved the dice roll. Most players aren't satisfied with gaining 4 HP when they know they have a 50% chance of gaining more than 4 HP by rolling. In 4E, it appears to be more like 'half the old dice roll +1'. Hence clerics get 5 instead of 4.
Action economy move/minor/standard/free
We keep forgetting to mention that you can 'trade down' through the actions. That's an important part of why it works so well.
Dynamic fights - fighters aren't stuck due to using full round attacks
I wonder why no-one has done this in 3E. If it's that bad, surely allowing fighters to do their full attack action as a standard action would help to solve the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem.
Team based play - all classes are important, not just 2
This is often overlooked and is a very good point. I just wanted to highlight it.
Finally; I couldn't possibly agree MORE with Crazy Jerome regarding the fact that some mechanics are improved without being perfect. Something being 'better in 4E' doesn't necessarily mean that 4E's version is the best. In some cases, we might need to go 'beyond 4E' and create something new. In other cases it might be a requirement to merge 4E's idea with an earlier idea to create a new improved version.
For example:
No Condition Tracking
4E did NOT get rid of condition tracking. If anything, it increased it. Especially at low levels. What it did do is replace long term durations with a greater prevalence of conditions overall.
* removal of stat-boost spells and items
* shifted buffs and debuffs to the totals, not to the source numbers. i.e. +1 to hit, not +2 strength
There are lots of points made that I want to query or counterpoint, but in the interest of not de-railing the thread, I'll stick to the less inflamatory ones:
Non-rolled HP, or at least some system to get HP w/o rolling.
This was an optional rule in 3.0 if I recall correctly. I don't remember anyone ever even giving it a chance, let alone making it the standard for their game. I think the difference comes from the values chosen. In 3.0 you halved the dice roll. Most players aren't satisfied with gaining 4 HP when they know they have a 50% chance of gaining more than 4 HP by rolling. In 4E, it appears to be more like 'half the old dice roll +1'. Hence clerics get 5 instead of 4.
Action economy move/minor/standard/free
We keep forgetting to mention that you can 'trade down' through the actions. That's an important part of why it works so well.
Dynamic fights - fighters aren't stuck due to using full round attacks
I wonder why no-one has done this in 3E. If it's that bad, surely allowing fighters to do their full attack action as a standard action would help to solve the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem.
Team based play - all classes are important, not just 2
This is often overlooked and is a very good point. I just wanted to highlight it.
Finally; I couldn't possibly agree MORE with Crazy Jerome regarding the fact that some mechanics are improved without being perfect. Something being 'better in 4E' doesn't necessarily mean that 4E's version is the best. In some cases, we might need to go 'beyond 4E' and create something new. In other cases it might be a requirement to merge 4E's idea with an earlier idea to create a new improved version.
For example:
No Condition Tracking
4E did NOT get rid of condition tracking. If anything, it increased it. Especially at low levels. What it did do is replace long term durations with a greater prevalence of conditions overall.
Tallifer
Hero
I love the way adventures in the Fourth Edition are formatted. They are very much easier to read and understand and run than those for any other system or edition. Everything you need for a fight is on one or two pages right in front of you. All the story is linked in one seamless introductory portion of the adventure, with all the encounters following. All the monsters easily fit on one or two pages.
CroBob
First Post
I'm almost certain there was no such optional rule in 3rd or 3.5rd, because I had to house rule such into my campaign. I made it optional to simply take half your di type, then add your die roll halved. I had a friend who was so unlucky with HP rolling that he once had a character take his sixth level in fighter and take toughness just to break the double digits. Rolling for HPs is a bad idea, as you're just as likely to do poorly as you are to do well. There's no guarantee your class's typical HP totals will be typical.
This is probably the best thing 4th did for us.
I've met lots of people who simply don't want this. I'll never understand the desire to have innately superior and inferior classes, but I don't think it's wise to allow stubborn old dogs to ruin a potentially good game.
I think a decent solution to this is status prioritization. Only the worst condition needs to be tracked. Making a good way to implement that may be difficult, though. As long as the penalty higher archly is thoroughly considered, it should be doable. There will be ongoing effects aside these status effects, of course, but only doing the highest ongoing damage type would help, and maybe making hunter's quarry and marks a similar, in-stackable type of debugging would help, as well as put some pressure on the ranger and fighter to work as a better team... I dunno, just spitballing.
At any rate, getting rid of status effects would make the game less fun, so the trick is to reduce the difficulty in tracking them.
I agree with this.
In the spirit of this thread, I'll explain why, for me, this is a strength of 4e.
Because instead of having to track durations in a "How much time exactly is passing in the gameworld?" way (1 min/lvl, 10 min/lvl, etc), tracking is confined to within a conflict. This is part of the way in which I think 4e focuses minutiae into the action of play rather than away from the action.
But absolutely 4e still has minutiae. This came up in my game yesterday when the paladin made a ranged attack as a reaction during the turn of the dazed, prone enemy to whom he was adjacent. The rules processing went like this: dazed, so combat advantage; but prone, so -2 penalty to ranged attacks that cancels out the bonus; but (suggested one of the players), doesn't that penalty apply only to non-adjacent ranged attacks?; check rules, find player is correct; player of paladin is happy because his attack hits rather than misses, but also comments that the rules are a little on the intricate side!
