D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[overgeeked]

Why would you want to push Gygaxian prose on anyone?

To help with their SAT scores.

 

[overgeeked]

So, if you are not a 4e hater, how would you rework it?

There are a few big changes I'd make.

1) Reduce the amount of interrupts and off-turn actions to make combat faster.

2) Reduce hit points and up damage all around to make combat faster.

3) Use clocks instead of skill challenges.

4) Replace filler combats with clocks/skill challenges.

5) Be explicit in the text, advice, and modules that the full combat rules are only meant for the big, important fights, not each and every single pointless fight.

6) Make a build-your-own power system. The math is so tightly wound that you barely have to squint to see it's almost already there.

I absolutely loved everything about 4E except how long combat took.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Why would you want to push Gygaxian prose on anyone?

It would give 4E that "D&D" feeling that's so important to people.

 

[cbwjm]

It would give 4E that "D&D" feeling that's so important to people.

I mean, if that's what you'd want to do for 4e, that's fine, but I'm not sure we should rewrite 4e to satisfy the 7 people who think Gygaxian prose makes DnD.

 

[RangerWickett]

Oh, there are some conditions that could probably be gated with 'minor' and 'major' versions, and a presumption that the real "nerf the enemy into pointlessness" ones could be downgraded by boss monsters - akin to legendary resistances.

I ran a party against Lolth, and the first round they could reach her, she was knocked prone, dazed, and give -6 to her attack rolls. They locked that goddess down something good, and the combat was boring.

Per overgeeked's ideas:

There are a few big changes I'd make.

1) Reduce the amount of interrupts and off-turn actions to make combat faster.

2) Reduce hit points and up damage all around to make combat faster.

Agreed on 1 definitely. For 2, I think simply lowering the number of modifiers (and simultaneously lowering the amount of HP) would reduce the cognitive load of running combat.

3) Use clocks instead of skill challenges.

When writing the Adventures in ZEITGEIST setting guide, I think I finally hit upon a good way to fix skill challenges. You foreground the narrative by having specific obstacles that must be overcome, and then you allow different skill checks to be directed at one obstacle or another. And yeah, 'clocks' work. Or in the case of a lot of ZEITGEIST spycraft stuff, you split up the "reconnaissance" and "mission" time, to let some PCs use some skills to prep their way through obstacles, while other PCs can overcome them in the moment.

Finally, there needs to be a smidge of granularity. Instead of failures being failures, they up the stakes. A single failed check means you have increased the peril. You can give up and just fail. If you try again, you increase the DC (or get disadvantage, in 5e), and might succeed. But if you try again and fail, there's some bonus negative consequence beyond failure.

Skill challenges just need to link the dice rolling and DCs more clearly to actual stuff going on in the narrative.

4) Replace filler combats with clocks/skill challenges.

I'm intrigued by that, but I'd need to see it in practice. Like, if you're going through a dungeon, kicking down doors and fighting incidental oozes and wandering zombies, could you just have a battle map, and treat things as minions? How 'zoomed out' can you get before the dice rolling feels like it's no longer part of a compelling narrative?

5) Be explicit in the text, advice, and modules that the full combat rules are only meant for the big, important fights, not each and every single pointless fight.

6) Make a build-your-own power system. The math is so tightly wound that you barely have to squint to see it's almost already there.

Man, I tried like three times to build a skeletal version of 4e combat powers, sort of styled on the 3.5 book Elements of Magic, where you had 'points' you could spend to add different conditions or riders or damage or range or whatever.

I think it would have been cool for, like, a paladin to get to a new level and to design her own new magical smite, for instance. I never took the time to flesh it out enough to be a full system, though.

 

[overgeeked]

Oh, there are some conditions that could probably be gated with 'minor' and 'major' versions, and a presumption that the real "nerf the enemy into pointlessness" ones could be downgraded by boss monsters - akin to legendary resistances.

I ran a party against Lolth, and the first round they could reach her, she was knocked prone, dazed, and give -6 to her attack rolls. They locked that goddess down something good, and the combat was boring.

Yeah, 4E mechanics produced a lot of boring combat.

When writing the Adventures in ZEITGEIST setting guide, I think I finally hit upon a good way to fix skill challenges. You foreground the narrative by having specific obstacles that must be overcome, and then you allow different skill checks to be directed at one obstacle or another. And yeah, 'clocks' work. Or in the case of a lot of ZEITGEIST spycraft stuff, you split up the "reconnaissance" and "mission" time, to let some PCs use some skills to prep their way through obstacles, while other PCs can overcome them in the moment.

Finally, there needs to be a smidge of granularity. Instead of failures being failures, they up the stakes. A single failed check means you have increased the peril. You can give up and just fail. If you try again, you increase the DC (or get disadvantage, in 5e), and might succeed. But if you try again and fail, there's some bonus negative consequence beyond failure.

Skill challenges just need to link the dice rolling and DCs more clearly to actual stuff going on in the narrative.

Yeah, that sounds like what I mean by clocks and how I ran skill challenges at the end of 4E and still do in other games.

Each obstacle requires so many successes to overcome, the clock. The referee decides that up front and maybe some auto success and auto fail conditions. Like this guard is in debt so bribery auto succeeds but because this guard is in debt he's being shaken down by some serious leg breakers so intimidation auto fails. But then the players get to do whatever. Interact with the obstacle however they want, just like the regular back-and-forth conversational play loop.

And yeah, instead of three failures and that's somehow the end, failures bring in new obstacles or increase the difficulty of existing obstacles. You try to intimidate the in-debt guard, it auto fails which makes it more difficult to deal with and it now requires one more success to bypass that obstacle.

Success and failure should be directly tied to the narrative. The narrative is the important bit, not the mechanics. To me at least.

I'm intrigued by that, but I'd need to see it in practice. Like, if you're going through a dungeon, kicking down doors and fighting incidental oozes and wandering zombies, could you just have a battle map, and treat things as minions?

Sure, why not? Like the clocks or dynamic skill challenges above only the obstacles are actively trying to harm you. You're only removing rolling damage and tracking hit points. If the monsters score a hit, remove a healing surge. Monsters could be one-hit minions, two hits, three, four...whatever. Players still declare and narrate their actions, the referee still adjudicates those actions, maybe calling for dicing, and narrates the outcome. The point of most filler fights is to whittle down the PCs' resources. In 4E that's healing surges, dailies, and consumables. So why not skip the intermediary paperwork step?

How 'zoomed out' can you get before the dice rolling feels like it's no longer part of a compelling narrative?

Depends on the players, I'd guess. But I don't see it as zoomed out, rather reduced paperwork.

Man, I tried like three times to build a skeletal version of 4e combat powers, sort of styled on the 3.5 book Elements of Magic, where you had 'points' you could spend to add different conditions or riders or damage or range or whatever.

My version skipped the points and just swapped out riders. In 4E, the damage is fairly fixed for all the powers by type (AEDU) and level. The only real differences were melee vs ranged and riders...which were largely determined by role or secondary role. Defenders could pick from this list, strikers from that list, etc. The idea being the player could have their list in front of them and decide which to use in the situation. Spend the resource and their attack now has that rider. Flexible at the point of use rather than pre-built. Fixed powers always strike me as kinda boring.

Are you familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics and mighty deeds? It's like that compared to the 5E fighter's maneuvers. I vastly prefer the DCC approach to the 5E approach.

I think it would have been cool for, like, a paladin to get to a new level and to design her own new magical smite, for instance. I never took the time to flesh it out enough to be a full system, though.

Yeah, it sounds easy to say but it would certainly be a lot of work.

 

[Charlaquin]

I saw some people in this forum asking for 4e be released as a SRD to Creative Commons like 5e (and possibly 3.5e). Do not get me wrong, I liked 4e, but I think it was very combat oriented and did a bad service to other game pillars. And most powers were, quite frankly, more of the same.

I disagree strongly with both of those assertions.

Bounded Accuracy. I would remove the +half level to everything and the +3 bonus to skill proficiency would be remade in a proficiency bonus linked to level (as 5e)

Agreed! (The bonus for being trained in a skill was +5 though, not +3).

More like Essentials. Different classes, different power progressions. Not really needed the same AEDU thing to everyone. Fighters would get lots of ways to change Basic Attacks rather than different powers, for example.

I agree to a point… I liked Essentials a lot, and I would lean on some of its improvements for sure, including different power progression structures for different classes. But I would get rid of (for example) fighter daily powers entirely. Everyone should get some daily, some encounter, some at-will, and some utility. Different classes would just get proportionally more of their expected damage output and/or mitigation from different power types.

Spell Lists. Even if we keep spells as powers, no need a power list to every caster class. Wizards and warlocks, for example, could both take "spells from the arcane power list". Perhaps same idea to martials, like A5e maneuver schools.

I could take this or leave it. I kind of liked that each class had its own unique powers to choose from, but I could see it working fine this way.

Exploration and Social Powers. New powers to cover exploration and social pillars. In addition to other powers your class gives, not take in place of them.

That’s what utility powers were, and not having to give up a combat power for them was one of the benefits of the unified power progression structure. Also rituals, which anyone could learn to do.

I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to more utility powers though, they were often some of the most interesting powers in a character’s kit.

Subclasses earlier. Not wait to level 11 to take a subclass/paragon path/whatever. Like 5e, around 3rd level is a good start.

Paragon Paths served a very different role than 5e subclasses do, and I don’t think moving them to 3rd level would be a good idea. Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies were more akin to Extra Attack, cantrip scaling, and major spell levels: they marked the beginning of a new tier of play.

I wouldn’t be opposed to adding something like subclasses to a revised 4e though. In fact, that’s one of the things I think would be a good idea to borrow from Essentials. Like how there was the Slayer and the Knight for the Fighter.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Step 1: Exile whoever came up with Essentials to the MtG department, never to be seen again.

 

[Charlaquin]

The presentation of characters could keep the same sort of pacing, but use a less obviously systemic framing. Fewer "bland boxes with solid blocks of color and formulaic text that reads like a card game"

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More 5e-style natural language, even if it's wordier.

e.g., 'At level 1, your fighter starts with two rudimentary combat maneuvers they can use at will, and one rank 1 combat maneuver that requires they expend their focus. The fighting style you choose determines how you can gain your focus. At higher levels, you'll learn additional combat maneuvers and fighting styles."

Gotta hard disagree with you on this one. 4e power cards were so much more usable than 5e’s “natural language.” You could actually tell what your abilities did, at a glance, without having to wade through paragraphs of empty fluff text trying to find the sentence or so of meaningful gameplay information buried in them. By all means, expand the flavor text of powers if you want more evocative descriptions, but keep the rules text separate, clear, concise, and easy to reference, please!

Monster statblocks likewise should have been more like 5e's natural language, even if they kept the same basic design philosophy.

Same response here. By all means, include more descriptive text about monsters, but for the love of Pelor, don’t hide the relevant mechanical information in that descriptive text.

Instead of standard, move, minor action, give characters movement speed (which is use or lose it; you can't downgrade it) and two actions, but no more than one action can cause damage. You'd usually use your other action to apply a condition, heal, dash, or otherwise modulate the parameters of the encounter.

This just seems to complicate things more for no benefit I can see. I’d be fine with adopting 5s’s movement-as-granular-resource instead of 4e’s movement-as-action-type, but keep the standard action/minor action distinction (as 5e does). Or adopt PF2’s action economy where certain activities cost multiple actions, that’s a fine alternative.

 

[James Gasik]

I'd probably put non-combat options and combat options on different progression paths; one of the big issues with the non-combat utility powers and feats was that they directly competed with the combat ones; you never knew if a non-combat utility would come in handy, but combat ones always did.

For example, I had this Assassin utility, Ghost on the Rooftops, that let me climb or jump a set distance without a check. I really like the mobility it gave me, but whenever we came upon a "platforming" section, it was always a skill challenge and DM's were loath to just let me "succeed". And in combat, there were only a handful of times I really needed to climb something, so it mostly just took up space on my character sheet.

Honestly, I was always "meh" about skill challenges anyways; the exact skills asked for always seemed arbitrary, some classes had few useful skills, and sometimes all you were doing was giving the "real" skill a bonus. More effort needed to be made to explain how and why to use them, how to construct them, and how to make it more interesting than "a challenge appears! make 4 successful rolls before 7 failures!".

Some Essentials classes were ok, but a few were not only underpowered, but were so lacking in options as to completely miss the point of strategic combat. I don't care how much you hate thinking in your fantasy combat simulator, but a class needs more than "I swing" and "I swing...with feeling!".

The Rituals system felt tacked on, and despite the massive amount of Rituals, they interacted oddly with the rest of the system, especially skill challenges, due to working like spells, often with cast times that relegated them to pointlessness, and just making things happen instead of saying "this obviates the need for checks" or granting bonuses.

And the nonmagic version (Martial Practices, I think?) were woefully undeveloped. A lot of options (especially feats) weren't properly balanced or given development time; a lot of bloat existed, and some classes had tons of flavorful and powerful abilities (Wizard) while later ones felt janky and barely functional (Ardent).

I loved 4e by the end of it's run (and hated it at the start), but it's token acknowledgement of other pillars of play outside of "uh, make a skill challenge!" was obnoxious, and there really needed to be a real 4.5 (no essentials doesn't count).

But something I'll never forget is how easy it was to build and run encounters as a DM. No more poring over books and books of monsters or trying to find the right critter. Level a monster up or down, change it to a minion, elite, or solo as needed, you could make encounters in minutes.

I'd love to have that sort of functionality back.