D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[Faolyn]

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.

The lore section, with the DCs, are like one line each. Not a paragraph. So you have two paragraphs of monster lore.

And yes the extra lore helps, if you plan on using hags for anything other than brute force combatants.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I toyed around with a heartbreaker before, though I reduced the number of attributes to four: Might, Agility, Intellect, and Spirit. My workaround for including Psionic was to essentially separate the Intellect-casters (Mages) from the Spirit-casters (Mystics), likewise the Warrior was the Might-class and the Rogue was the Agility-class. (I can't remember how the classes were called.) So the Blue Mage was more of an Arcane Wizard while the Blue Mystic was the Psion. And one could extend this for the other Colors as well.


I would probably prefer having Red be Primordial Chaos rather than Martial and to keep Martial as "colorless," but this is your heartbreaker you are talking about and not mine.

But this is all quite the aside from the topic of how we would do 4e. I did want to note that 4e would have been a pretty decent opportunity for WotC to build around the Magic the Gathering colors as 4e power sources.

It still seems a bit hard to see how you thematically define Blue/Arcane. I mean, one of the virtues of the M:tG color system is that they DIDN'T name the 'sources' they just called them by color names. It means NONE of them has baggage, and whatever associations were made are fairly 'clean'. So Blue, being just a color, gets associated with water, and mind/control. While it is explained as being 'mind magic' and thus might come across as similar to Arcane, it really isn't similar at all, IMHO. I would honestly equate blue with PSIONIC, not Arcane. Arcane actually feels more like colorless! All the weird artifacts and whatnot, all super high magitech lost arts. Now, maybe that creates some problems, but I don't think so, Red is elemental, and honestly does Martial have a color at all? Every color has martial heroes, they're like these Chinese Chi 'Martial Arts World' guys in their dramas, some use fire, water, ice, shadow, they're all drawing from martial and every group has its martial 'foot soldiers'.

Now, that opens up another interesting modification for 4e, which would be some kind of an 'association', sort of a PC side equivalent of the Monster Theme where you can pick up a bit of another source. MCing obviously is an existing way to depict that, but you could use Themes too, like there's a Wizard's Apprentice theme, there could also be a theme for getting a bit of divine power, etc. Some of them may even effectively exist already, I don't know for sure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@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.

Sure, it is definitely worth reading what is in that PbP thread here The Slave and Her Sovereign that has several points where they do an SC, and you can see how it can be pretty seamless. I think that one that Pemerton linked to recently was pretty good too. The idea clearly needs to be introduced well, and some of the DMG1 example SC stuff is not great.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The lore section, with the DCs, are like one line each. Not a paragraph. So you have two paragraphs of monster lore.

Each of the two lore entries is at least 2 complex sentences. They are not one-liners.

And yes the extra lore helps, if you plan on using hags for anything other than brute force combatants.

We will have to agree to disagree on that. I used Hags for a bunch of things in one of my campaigns. They were a significant factor, and IIRC nobody fought any of them (there might have been one time).

 

[Undrave]

This is no mere 'kit' you add to your character, it is a mighty office of sacred power which you must uphold! This is epic fantasy written right across your character sheet. No other edition has anything that holds a candle to this. I mean, there's some good stuff in every Edition, but 4e does this kind of thing brilliantly, again and again, this is just some random PP I picked up in 20 seconds of browsing the database. Its not some especially thrilling pick, 90% of them rise to this level or better.

The Epic Destinies DOUBLE DOWN on that! I mean, "You are now a Demigod" what other game puts that on the table, for real? You'd have to play Exalted or something like that to get a similar sort of thing. Even high level AD&D play didn't really easily give you that kind of feel.

Oh I totally agree with you! Paragon Paths and Epic Destiny were AWESOME. I particularly LOVE the Dark Wanderer Epic Destiny where you can walk ANYWHERE in the univers you want in 24 hours. And at Lv 30, if you're not revived within 12 hours, you just SHOW UP on foot 24 hours after your death. It's amazing. I love how many had a feature that said "Once per day, hen you DIE". And the blurb on your version of Immortality? Amazing!

The other challenge with PP and ED is the way they often challenge the campaign organization in some fashion. Like, most players aren't thinking a lot about what their transition into Paragon is going to be like, what story it will tell. So, typically people get to level 11 and then suddenly they're going through all these choices and picking one. Now, hopefully its really thematic, and ties into the character's themes/drives/agenda, but it can be a challenge to try to make that all happen in a way that feels organic. That wouldn't be a big issue, except you have 5 PCs who are all going to pretty much level at the same time, and now you need to handle this 5x over. There are obvious plot devices, like some Heroic Tier capstone event that unleashes magical power on the characters or whatever, but I didn't find it super easy to manage 5 simultaneous mini-apotheoses at one time.

The same goes for EDs of course. Everyone hits 21 at the end of the Saturday Evening Session. Now all of a sudden the players are asking themselves what ED they're going to pick, but really it feels like it should be more organic and seem like "Oh, yeah, this was always DESTINED to be my fate!" It is certainly highly achievable in the sense of a character's story arc, but the 5-at-once thing can be a bit crazy.

I mean, one option would be something like a mechanism for a solo 'destiny quest' for each character, though many groups might not find that interesting. Another would be a bit more staggered progression, which 4e doesn't rule out, but then you have the problem of a mixed party where some are Heroes and some are Paragons. Its not unworkable, but 4e loves its even playing fields amongst PCs.

That's a very good point... Maybe Paragon Paths and Epic Destiny could have a more gradual component? Hmm... more guidance for the DM could be useful on the subject, that's for sure.

 

[James Gasik]

@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.

Yes, many DM's (and a few adventure writers) didn't quite know how to use Skill Challenges, and would suddenly be like "ooh, hey, let's do a Skill Challenge!" for no good reason.

For example, my party was in a forest tracking down what the local villagers called "a monster". Upon entering the forest, the DM said "ok, so this is a Skill Challenge" and I said "Why? We have a Ranger. He has all the skills needed to track and move through the woods, and he's good at them, while the rest of us aren't. Why don't we just let him lead, because this is his "thing" and we just do what he says?"

The DM was very resistant to the idea, for some reason, but it really made no sense for us all to start doing random things when we had a literal survival expert in our midst!

 

[Pedantic]

How would that work? I mean, they are divided now by which class they belong to (aside from those granted by Power of Skill or other feats). I guess I'm trying to understand how this would practically work and how it would improve things. The purpose of Utility as a category was to make it so that ALL characters would have some, instead of the old "oh, I can climb better or kill better, I'll pick the killing" problem. Dividing them into, say "mobility" and "skill" is going to do what? I'm going to have to take some of each? How many of these lanes are there and how do we allow for an adequate allocation from each one without everyone ending up needing to make 100 power choices, and then remember how 100 different highly niche utilities work?

I'm saying it's a mistake to put divine counter and astral speech in the same category, and that they should be paid for with resources from different pools. One is for fighting better, one is for not fighting at all. 4e didn't go far enough here, and these should just be different things.

I am not against color, but this sort of thing is MOSTLY color. Its a lock, it keeps the door closed, its DC is 19. The DMG1 actually DOES have a section on this sort of thing, though I'm not sure it delves into enormous detail. It does have a whole chart on what sorts of materials things are made of at different levels. I gotta say though, rereading the PHB1 skill descriptions, they are PRETTY DETAILED! Acrobatics gets an entire page, roughly and covers stunts, balance, escape, and decreasing falling damage. This is all in addition to the general description and some examples. Bluff is a bit less voluminous but its explained what it covers, what typically opposes it, and provides explicit rules for a couple use cases. Honestly, I think the specific thing you are asking for, you have to go to the DMG, or use your imagination. I have certainly never read EVERY edition's equivalent rules, but I don't think any of them states anything more explicitly here than 4e does.

Yes, I'm saying that on order to maintain an internally consistent world, 4e really could have benefited from not leaving it up to the players and GMs to assume the world is scaling around them, and instead lay out precisely how that is happening.

I'm not sure what you mean about 'scaling indefinitely'... The idea with 4e is that your environment is appropriate to your level, thematically. At level 1 the dungeon is next to the town, and level 11 it is deep in the Underdark, at level 21 it is on the uppermost layer of Hell. This may have an impact on how some rules play out, but mostly its there to convey how badass you are at those higher levels, and to 'be cool'. The scaling is simply there to tell us, "this is a place for Epic PCs, those level 11 guys cannot even pass the DCs to get in the front door."

Yes, I know, and I hate it (IMO PCs should actually scale in capability, not setting color, and which requires material changes in problem solving and resolution, not adjusting the adjectives used to describe obstacles) but we're here to talk about improving 4e, so my advice is to at least ensure that scaling is thematically enforced. 4e could have done more to specifically ground what each DC represents, and would have avoided much of flack it got if it spent more page count on it.

I'm suggesting that all the calls for 4e to move to a bounded accuracy system couldd have been avoided if the system made a stronger aesthetic case for PC progression.

Obviously you also leverage this if there's a situation where things are 'out of place', like showing us a level 21 door in the level 11 dungeon, you ain't opening it (or else this is a serious challenge and probably its not treated as a single DC at level 11). It will be 'Adamantium' or some such thing, the exact adjectives used are not very relevant in game terms.

Again, I'm not confused.

As for the endless rat race... Open ended skill systems where you have to keep picking small incremental increases in your ability are indeed what I would call "awful nothingburger rat race." Your character must constantly allocate N pips of his skill increases to Pick Locks, or else soon he will useless in this capacity since he'll be encountering magical Adamantium toggle-locks at some point with DCs far above his ability unless he does so.

You've backported a 4e assumption here, and it's precisely this that I disagree with. Locks shouldn't scale indefinitely. Being good at something should actually mean being good at it, as in actually not challenged by anything but the rarest scenarios.

Sure, in 3e I can be a thief that is 20th level and can still only pick crappy chests that show up in level 1 dungeons. So what? You want me to go play that out? I mean, really? 4e's solution is quite workable, you take Thievery proficiency, and you now get +5 on lock picking attempts, and then you get all your other level-scaling bonuses, which means you're really good at it, and nope, you never had to decide between "good at ropes" and "good at locks" at each bloody level!

This is mechanically identical to just picking the same X skills to put all your points in. You're at best arguing for a smaller skill list, or that players should generally have more skill points, which are fine mechanical concepts and in no way a 4e specific innovation, nor a particular flaw it resolved. How many times have we bemoaned the fighter's arbitrarily low trained skills?

 

[James Gasik]

I'm saying it's a mistake to put divine counter and astral speech in the same category, and that they should be paid for with resources from different pools. One is for fighting better, one is for not fighting at all. 4e didn't go far enough here, and these should just be different things.

Yes, I'm saying that on order to maintain an internally consistent world, 4e really could have benefited from not leaving it up to the players and GMs to assume the world is scaling around them, and instead lay out precisely how that is happening.

Yes, I know, and I hate it (IMO PCs should actually scale in capability, not setting color, and which requires material changes in problem solving and resolution, not adjusting the adjectives used to describe obstacles) but we're here to talk about improving 4e, so my advice is to at least ensure that scaling is thematically enforced. 4e could have done more to specifically ground what each DC represents, and would have avoided much of flack it got if it spent more page count on it.

I'm suggesting that all the calls for 4e to move to a bounded accuracy system couldd have been avoided if the system made a stronger aesthetic case for PC progression.

Again, I'm not confused.

You've backported a 4e assumption here, and it's precisely this that I disagree with. Locks shouldn't scale indefinitely. Being good at something should actually mean being good at it, as in actually not challenged by anything but the rarest scenarios.

This is mechanically identical to just picking the same X skills to put all your points in. You're at best arguing for a smaller skill list, or that players should generally have more skill points, which are fine mechanical concepts and in no way a 4e specific innovation, nor a particular flaw it resolved. How many times have we bemoaned the fighter's arbitrarily low trained skills?

I made this thread some time ago wondering not only why locks scale, but why the DC's to open them are so high to begin with. Apparently it's just one of those D&D-isms where players can never have things be easy for them.

"Never let the PC's get away with nothin'." -E.G.G., probably.

 

[MwaO]

@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.

The original skill challenge had two major issues and that was quickly errata'd. Basically:
People choose when they want to go, no forced initiative where Fighter has to make the social scene roll because they won init
The skill challenges were originally set up that "difficult" skill challenges were easy and "easy" ones were difficult.

But more importantly, all a skill challenge really is a framework for the DM to think about the players likely to be playing at their table and set up enjoyable out of combat challenges for them. That are meaningful for their level of skill — just as a 15th level PC shouldn't be fighting barely trained orcs or Tiamat, a 15th level PC shouldn't be doing skill challenges that ask them to make skill checks within a skill challenge for 'XP' that aren't at approximately their level of threat.

That doesn't mean you can't throw those skill checks into the game — you just don't want a teflon-coated wall with demonic hands reaching out of it to be whether a skill challenge is a success or a failure. You want the king saying, "Oh, you think you're so hot? Climb my teflon-coated wall with demonic hands." and being potentially impressed for a +2 on a diplomacy check or open up another skill as a success even as the Fighter falls off eventually. Or something similar.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh I totally agree with you! Paragon Paths and Epic Destiny were AWESOME. I particularly LOVE the Dark Wanderer Epic Destiny where you can walk ANYWHERE in the univers you want in 24 hours. And at Lv 30, if you're not revived within 12 hours, you just SHOW UP on foot 24 hours after your death. It's amazing. I love how many had a feature that said "Once per day, hen you DIE". And the blurb on your version of Immortality? Amazing!

Well then there is the Thief of Legend who can steal the color out of your hair, or all the world's memory of your heroic deeds, or basically any nonsensical thing whatsoever! There was a brief period when a tranche of EDs came out that were just completely amazing like that. Those are the ones I love most, that Dark Wanderer is really up there though, and I think there's also Planes Walker that is similar.

That's a very good point... Maybe Paragon Paths and Epic Destiny could have a more gradual component? Hmm... more guidance for the DM could be useful on the subject, that's for sure.

Well, that might be one option, to like do a 13th Age incremental leveling kind of thing? Like you get the AP feature, and then the first power, etc.