D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[James Gasik]

Oh man, I remember someone put together a Deva Tome Wizard, with this crazy Feat that let them learn more powers on top of the Tome ability, it was just stupid, lol.

Playing in LFR, I had a Cleric I kept picking up Rituals for, and eventually in the CALI mods, I had the DM basically ask me not to use my Rituals (there was this large "desert survival" challenge and I was all set to conjure some shadow steeds and completely obviate the group's need for food or water, lol).

The two Rituals that cracked the game completely open were Feywild Bole and...whatever the one was that let you shuffle around the party's healing surges.

 

[Faolyn]

Oh, my gosh, my utility wizard near broke the game! lol. It was a bit later, so I had some added options. I took the tome implement and then extended spellbook, and the Wizard Apprentice Theme. I had spells and rituals coming out my ears. I often had 3 choices of which power to take on a given day, and when I leveled I just kept adding fun stuff, like alchemist, and various feats that give you more access to stuff. I started collecting potion formulae, making scrolls, other consumables, etc. Pretty soon we were going into battle buffed to the gills, invisibly sneaking the whole party into a fort, etc. And the great part was, my character still kicked ass in combat. It got to a point where the GM was starting to wonder what exactly would happen when I got to take the Paragon and Epic tier feats and stuff that buffed rituals up even more (not to even imagine Sage of Ages and etc.). Summoning also turns out to be rather nasty, especially if your party optimizes for it, though that aspect of my character wasn't so crazy. Still, this was an excellent way to get to use combat powers in almost ANY skill challenge.

In short, you gotta do more than read, you gotta play. Really, come play with us. I lost all the sheets I had stored on DDI, and didn't back up some, so I don't think I have the utility wizard sheet anymore, but its easy enough to make. Play it sometime, I guarantee you will have a TON of stuff to do!

Nah, but thanks. I've already got a ton of games going on.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, but it was never the intent for 4e to do so. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not really the intent of any WotC edition for such characters to exist, really. It doesn't take a lot of effort to realize WotC only really balances for combat. They have no real idea what a non-combat challenge is.

I mean what's an exploration challenge? Most of them are "buy the right stuff in town" and "make an ability check". And all of them can be circumvented or trivialized by ribbon class abilities, feats, or spells.

What's a social challenge? Roll a high enough number on an ability check? A Rogue with the right expertise can breeze through these most likely.

It's worth noting that you don't have challenge ratings for exploration (other than traps). Nor is there a statblock for "Wily merchant" with no combat ability and social abilities. Heck, even the Noble has way more attention paid to their combat statistics; all they have to present a social challenge are three skill proficiencies!

Right, and in all fairness, when a GM is going to put a 'Noble' into their scenario, would there have been some benefit to some kind of generic non-combat 'stuff'? No! If its a combat, then that goes without saying. If its a non-combat situation, who knows what it is??? Non-combat is NOT A THING. 99.999% of life is non-combat. Yes, you could envisage some specific kind of situations that might benefit from a power or trait or something, but this is really SCENARIO design, not monster design. What does THIS PARTICULAR Noble do when he needs to get someone to agree with him? Does he threaten them, does he offer something illicit, does he try to get some leverage on them? I mean, its all going to depend on his personality, resources, motives, etc. I'd rather basically leave this up to the GM. Honestly, I'm happy with the Dungeon World approach, each monster has an Instinct: tag that gives us a very succinct idea of what the creature does/wants. 4e has some lore/description and things like alignment, role, and stats/skills, which is generally enough.

I guess the question I'd have is whether or not the level of verbiage in MM3/MV seems to help people. I didn't mind the slightly greater amount of description, but it didn't DO much for me either. Like in my D&D campaign world Hobgoblins and Kenku are both the product of biological magic used by the Eldar (Eladrin) to create servant species. So, is that kind of thing helpful? I mean, it can be suggestive, to me, at times, but canon like that can become overly restrictive too.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I guess the question I'd have is whether or not the level of verbiage in MM3/MV seems to help people. I didn't mind the slightly greater amount of description, but it didn't DO much for me either. Like in my D&D campaign world Hobgoblins and Kenku are both the product of biological magic used by the Eldar (Eladrin) to create servant species. So, is that kind of thing helpful? I mean, it can be suggestive, to me, at times, but canon like that can become overly restrictive too.

I liked it. But I dont' have time to tweak stuff (I wish i did!) - so I have to use what's in the book. For a while I still used 4e descriptions and motivations and lore for my 5e encounters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Conversely, given the degree to which we've begun integrating computers into almost everything, recognizing that and leveraging it isn't that bad an idea. 4e was probably just a decade too early; the rise of tablet computing wouldn't come until 2010 with the iPad, and widespread adoption didn't happen until after 4e was already defunct. If that had differed...I could very easily see an ultra-slick tablet and smartphone app actually being seen as a huge boon. Alas, in a lot of ways, that's the lesson of 4e: it happened 2-5 years too early.

That said I do agree that it's nice to have a game that is easier to work with purely by hand, and 13th Age is an extremely well-made game that people should be cribbing from as much as their own game's design allows. (I recognize that not all rules work in all systems--just as "bake at 425 for 15 minutes" is lovely for cookies and horrible for salad.)

Wut? I will have you know that I bake every single dish that I serve on my table for 15 minutes at 425 (thats F, so 200C for you normal people) before serving. My salad is beautiful, if I must say so myself! nom nom nom...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's why I referred to the lore, which was very lacking in the first 4e MM, and became just as poor in recent 5e books. Compare, say, 5e's hags with 4e's hags. Fifteen paragraphs of flavor text versus just one.

Look, its fine to make comparisons, but you destroy all your credibility when you fib. I'm on P150 of the 4e MM at the Hag Entry. I t has a general paragraph about Hags, then a general 'Hag Lore' section, which has roughly 2 paragraphs of monster knowledge. It then has a section called 'Encounter Groups' which I'd judge to be another paragraph, basically that outlines 2 hag encounters, there's also some color text explaining hags preferences in allies. After this there are 4 more paragraphs describing general tactics and such for each type of hag. Depending on how you count it, there are 8 paragraphs, plus extensive stat blocks which outline their actual powers. It is inarguable that the 5e MM is more loquacious on the topic of hags, but OTOH I kind of wonder if that helps much. I mean, is it going to help me to have a discussion of the personal hygiene habits of hags? Honestly? I appreciate the 4e version for its sheer succinctness and lack of useless details.

I mean, 4e tells me, as if I knew nothing, that hags are wise in dark magic and curses, sometimes serve other powerful entities, That they are cruel, dangerous and inhabit lonely places, and the Feywild. They bully weaker creatures, and foment trouble against mortals. At this point I already understand the basic nature of this creature and how to potentially use it.

The lore part tells me they know ritual magic, and often scry, and that they sometimes gather in covens. The rest of the lore tells me they are basically ugly-natured fey who like treasure, hate happy people, and can often be bribed with money to free captives or sell information.

Then we learn they like to boss around lesser creatures, and advise stronger ones, followed by a list of creatures they can be encountered with, statted out into 2 encounters. The tactics sections (4) gives us some ideas about how they use their powers.

I'm not feeling like this is a dearth of knowledge. I'd also point out that MANY of the player-facing books like the various Power books contain sidebars and other information that fleshes out a lot of the world and discusses common monsters. Those aren't in any of the Compendia, so I'd have to really look hard to find that stuff, but it exists. Also Heroes of the Feywild talks a LOT about hags.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I also never understood skill challenges raw and made it up but could you explain "clocks"

Its kind of weird that people say this, as the 'rules' for SCs are actually incredibly simple and can be stated in 3 or 4 short paragraphs, and one table. BitD uses 'clocks', which are just countdowns (why called a clock I do not know, its just a progress track). All an SC is are 2 of these, one with 3 ticks, and one with 4,6,8,10, or 12 depending on complexity. Then there is a tally of 'advantages', and 'hard checks', which the GM can utilize to match up with the fiction during play. There are a couple posts here about different obstacles having their own clocks, I just pointed out that all this is is 'scene change' within the SC after a certain amount of success or failure. Anyway, its fine to consider things in terms of clocks, I just don't see it as really radically different from the existing SC mechanics.

BitD does have the concept of a 'tug of war clock' which is just a progress track that can move to either end, producing a victory or failure when it gets there. This is not a technique that was used in SCs. You could do it, though honestly what I found was that its better to just keep it simple and keep the game moving.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

@AbdulAlhazred what I found original with Skill Challenge was it looked forced and I was not clear as to how the progress of the challenge mapped to the fiction.

 

[Haplo781]

Another thing I'd keep is all the power sources (I friggin' LOVE the Primal Power Source lore and wish it was in 5e!), and maybe try to bring back Shadow and Elemental... Heck, I'd take care of creating an identity for those two BEFORE crafting the Arcane power source.

Because I'm really tired of Arcane being a codeword for 'whatever BS' and being a free pass to the Wizard doing everything under the sun.

The Wizard should NOT be getting telepathy and telekinesis, dangit!

Arcane should be tied to the Feywild, change my mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I still haven't seen a convincing argument that 5e does monsters better.

Because the stat block is what you need at the table when a fight breaks out. All that flowery 2e ecology is nice to read about, I'm sure, but I'm not gonna want to start scanning half a page of fluff when somehing comes up in a fight. And honestly the 5e stat block isn't that much different, except for that part I hate with the spells.

Maybe you don't think the 4e lore goes into enough details, maybe the 5e one is way better (I don't own the 5e MM) but I'm not sure what you exactly need. 4e monsters works on a philosophy of economy of details. It won't tell you how many kids on average a Bulette can have, or how long the gestation period of Warg, but it'll tell you if they'll attack adventurers and where you're likely to encounter those creatures. It will tell you the essential and trust you to fill in the rest and give your world your own flavor. That's what DMs have been doing forever after all.

It's why they don't give spellcaster monsters a series of Rituals in their stat blocks or anywhere on the page. Because the base assumption is that you'll decide what rituals they need if you think they need one, and if you only encounter that monster in a fight you'll have every data and rule bits you need on hand.

It's not the same philosophy as 3.X or even 5e. It might not appeal to you but it appealed to me and if I was redoing 4e I wouldn't be trying to appeal to you since you're already satisfied by 5e. I'm trying to scratch my 4e itch here.

In any case, Monster Vault has considerably extended monster descriptions. Its Hag entry is considerably more verbose than the MM one, though by that point they had dropped the lore, encounters, and tactics sections. It covers most of what the 5e version talks about, though I am guessing the word count is slightly less (I could be wrong). In any case, a rough count says MV has 320 stat blocks, one per page on average (it is a smaller format book), vs the 352 pages of the 5e MM which contains roughly 500 stat blocks, and the 287 pages of the 4e MM containing about 475 stat blocks. My point is, 5e is using a much denser layout (smaller fonts basically) and bigger books, so yeah, they get in more, but I am not fond of reading them.

So, keep 4e's fonts and such! Honestly, I like the visuals of 4e, though I am not hating 5e either exactly, but keep 4e's visuals, and since the monster is already out of the bag, if an updated MM did appear, I'd use the MV lore (and stat blocks of course, duh!). Honestly, I would cut out a lot of monsters in a rehash of 4e. I like having a lot of stat blocks to play with, but I think we could ditch a bunch of redundant and marginal ones without really missing much. I mean, Destrachan? really? lol.