D&D 4E Am I crazy? I've just gotten a hankering to play 4e again...

[Randomthoughts]

If I get a chance to play 4e again I think I'd like to try a Warden... I wish there was a class like that in 5e. Sticky and hard to disable with cool transformation powers!

Never played one (I DM'd more often) but I remember a game where the warden and warlord were the only ones who were conscious in an especially brutal battle (as I focused mainly on set piece battles with big encounter budgets). The warlord retreated to start reviving the others one-by-one. Meanwhile, the warden took and held the full brunt of the assault, spending daily-after-daily and healing surge-after-surge until the party counter-attacked and eventually emerged victorious. We all stood up and applauded the player for such a memorable come-back. Still gives me goose bumps thinking about it

 

[Horwath]

I would like to give a version of 4E a try after 10 years, but it would require to rewrite half the info in the books to do it to my taste so it can be playable.
Examples:

1 - cut all monster/npc HP by half

2- cut all PC health by 25%

3 - remove +1/2 per level treadmill

4 - add more 1st level at wills to all classes, but different amount

5 - modify 1st level at-will epic level progression that was usually 2×effect of 1st level.
move that to 11th, and add 3×effect on 21st level.

6 - add option to trade Encounter powers for Daily powers.
I.E. trade 3rd level encounter for 1st level daily or 5th level daily for one 3rd and one 1st level encounter power.
That way you have character that is more focused on encounter or daily nova's.

7 - cut magic items base bonus max from +6 to +3.

 

[masshysteria]

I forgot one last reason I like the 4th edition books. The artist's name was listed on each page with an illustration. I thought it was a really cool way of giving the artist credit, especially considering the role art plays in D&D. I thought it was too bad that was dropped in 5e.

 

[Garthanos]

4 - add more 1st level at wills to all classes, but different amount

Intriguing more details? People tend to focus on leveraging 1 out of their 2 at-wills. I like more at-wills and take human for that reason. More situational abilities is generally how one could increase these or even feats that enhance each of the 3 in different ways instead of just one. Make more Rock Paper Scissor effects ie Roshamboisms. My swordmage's 3 at-wills target 3 different defenses one pulls an enemy the other two might be two similar in that they harm multiple adjacent ones or ones adjacent to his target ie he is bursty.

5 - modify 1st level at-will epic level progression that was usually 2×effect of 1st level.
move that to 11th, and add 3×effect on 21st level.

Cool I like it. Would make at-wills more viable without investing so heavily via feats and make some of those early feats you did invest so they still are valuable.

6 - add option to trade Encounter powers for Daily powers.
I.E. trade 3rd level encounter for 1st level daily or 5th level daily for one 3rd and one 1st level encounter power.
That way you have character that is more focused on encounter or daily nova's.

As player choice cool - I made abilities that allow trading at-will and a weak attack for an encounter class power next round. So someone who wanted more encounters could get them. Basically by scanning the battle. And a similar encounter power option to trade up by delay of game scanning the field.

7 - cut magic items base bonus max from +6 to +3.

Certain 5e magic items that would be incongruous in 4e become quite translatable when you do that.

 

[pemerton]

My project right now is developing a hexcrawl. I always thought 4e would be great for this b/c I found the encounter budget worked well as an indicator of challenge (with some tweaks). So, populating the world map would be a decision of (for example) hex A1 would have an equivalent of a L1 encounter while hex E6 would have a L5 encounter budget (with appropriate rumors and clues for adventures to find to avoid or confront). Wandering Monster tables would include a range of levels, forcing players to decide whether they should run away, if the fates are unkind. Anyway, that's the idea for now.

On these boards, @LostSoul posted about a pretty sophisticated campaign with associated subsystems which used 4e in a way similar to what you describe. Those posts would be from around 10 years ago, but maybe will come up under Search?

 

[dave2008]

I would like to give a version of 4E a try after 10 years, but it would require to rewrite half the info in the books to do it to my taste so it can be playable.
Examples:

1 - cut all monster/npc HP by half

I never had a need to reduce HP, but I did up the damage of my monsters. With the minion/standard/elite/solo paradigm I just move a monster up and down the scale if I wanted more or less HP.

2- cut all PC health by 25%

never noticed a need for that, but if it works for your - go for it.

3 - remove +1/2 per level treadmill

that doesn't really change anything if you do it to everything, but I can understand it from a world building BA type reason.

4 - add more 1st level at wills to all classes, but different amount

I like this idea. I too felt there were to few options

5 - modify 1st level at-will epic level progression that was usually 2×effect of 1st level.
move that to 11th, and add 3×effect on 21st level.

I like this idea too

6 - add option to trade Encounter powers for Daily powers.
I.E. trade 3rd level encounter for 1st level daily or 5th level daily for one 3rd and one 1st level encounter power.
That way you have character that is more focused on encounter or daily nova's.

We allowed spending healing surges (which we called heroic surges) to recharge encounter and daily powers. 1 surge for an encounter power and 2 for a daily (multiplied by tier). We also powers to change use by tier (roughly). If you are 10 or more levels above the powers level you can reduce it by one step (and 2 steps if 20 levels above). So a level 1 encounter power becomes an at-will power at level 11.

7 - cut magic items base bonus max from +6 to +3.

I Or you could only give out +3 max items

However, those changes do not seem like anywhere near half the info. Seems pretty simple to to do actually. Other than adding a bunch of new powers it is a page or two of changes really

 

[Eyes of Nine]

We allowed spending healing surges (which we called heroic surges) to recharge encounter and daily powers. 1 surge for an encounter power and 2 for a daily (multiplied by tier). We also powers to change use by tier (roughly). If you are 10 or more levels above the powers level you can reduce it by one step (and 2 steps if 20 levels above). So a level 1 encounter power becomes an at-will power at level 11.

When I played 4e, I always held my Dailies in reserve, "just in case". So they never got used except when it was clear either a) this was the big bad guy and we needed to uncork the pain; or a long rest (or whatever it was called) was coming. Which meant my incredibly cool dailies never saw use.

I like this solution; both the healing surge for regaining and the reduce powers by step. Although did you have to balance that on the monster side at all?

 

[dave2008]

I like this solution; both the healing surge for regaining and the reduce powers by step. Although did you have to balance that on the monster side at all?

Not normally as monsters don't typically last long enough for this to matter, but I would allow them to recharge powers in the same way sometimes. Also, as I stated above I already upped their damage so that compensated some as well. You can get the revised damage by level tables i used from my resources page: 4e Epic Updates

EDIT: In case people don't know or remember, monsters get healing surges to by RAW in 4e.

 

[dave2008]

When I played 4e, I always held my Dailies in reserve, "just in case". So they never got used except when it was clear either a) this was the big bad guy and we needed to uncork the pain; or a long rest (or whatever it was called) was coming. Which meant my incredibly cool dailies never saw use.

That was an issue I noticed with my players as well and was one of the reasons we allowed spending HS to recharge them. It also made sense to us from a martial perspective.

PS. We carried this over to our 5e game and allow spending HD to recharge Short rest and long rest abilities.

 

[dave2008]

..., and battle maps are mandatory.

That is a misconception. Battle maps are not mandatory. I ran 10 hours of 4e in a minivan (while someone else was driving) without minatures or maps. If you are used to TotM it works for 4e too. In our regular game we used maps about as I often as I did in 1e