D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[Voadam]

3e Barbarians I would always take the extra rage feat for +2 times/day as a feat tax. Three encounters per day was just enough to feel comfortable generally raging when combat came up instead of hoarding it for boss fights or five minute work days.

 

[Voadam]

I haven't been okay with daily resources for a while, but having just recently played a Pathfinder 1e barbarian with a whopping 6 rounds of being a Barbarian per day... nah, fam.

For me it started in '81 with Moldvay Basic. I had no desire to play a 1/day magic-user. I played a lot of Dwarves and Fighters for a long while.

 

[Undrave]

One thing that I realized while prepping for savage worlds - I would probably move to using Hexes by default, if I were redoing 4e.

No one likes to draw building interiors on hexes

The advantage is that classes feel more differentiated to some people if they use different recharge mechanics.

I don't think this outweighs the disadvantages which are numerous. Especially when the recharge is tied to in game world time. (13th Age has non-daily recharges that happen on a game balance timeline that work)

Yeah well 1D&D seems to be moving toward the PB/day model and cutting down on short rest ressources as much as possible… at this point everybody is on the same recharge mechanics, but like… the Wizard gets 2 ‘Spell Slot’ but the Fighter has 6 ‘stamina points’ and so forth… it’s all the same thing again but with obfuscating names and without being easy to learn.

 

[Kannik]

Anyway, I was always more a fan of the PHB2 era classes, they were the best overall, with a solid primary and secondary role design, all A-shaped, and with solid thematics.

Adding the secondary roles to classes was a big boon, and that too for me would be another 'update' task for a revised 4e, ensuring all the classes have a choice point (sub-class-ish) up front with some well defined secondary roles.

You are right, and I personally HATE games that are crappy references. Sadly modern RPG designers don't seem to care if their rules are actually playable or not. I think its largely a result of how most of these games are funded.

I've definitively noticed this (even with books not Kickstarted). Often when starting a new game I'll go through and make a cheat sheet/reference, and in doing so it's often shocking just how poorly organized and explained things can be, with stuff scattered throughout the books.

I'd prefer short rest resources for all, but I'd be ok if everyone had daily resources. This mix and match stuff has got to go, however.

Really does cause some issues in 5e, at least in 4e with a short rest being 5 mins and most classes having access to both encounter and daily powers it kept things much more aligned (or at least it never became an issue in our games).

 

[Kannik]

No one likes to draw building interiors on hexes

As an architect and as a gamer I acutely feel this tension.... But it's doable! Align the walls with the hex divisions horizontally and hex points vertically and it's not that bad.

 

[braro]

As an architect and as a gamer I acutely feel this tension.... But it's doable! Align the walls with the hex divisions horizontally and hex points vertically and it's not that bad.

So far, I have been planning to have the hexes as partial walls as a place to use cover or squeezing, to make mobility a bit more.

 

[Undrave]

For me it started in '81 with Moldvay Basic. I had no desire to play a 1/day magic-user. I played a lot of Dwarves and Fighters for a long while.

This is an issue 5e at least fixed for everybody (except the Paladin for some reason...): Everybody had a THING they can do all day, or is at least passives, that makes them stand out at level 1. It means you can BE that class all the time right from the start. I believe Subclasses should ALSO get one of those when you get them or they fail at being a good representation of their theme.

At level 1, Casters get Cantrips, Fighters get Fighting Style, Rogues get Sneak Attack and Expertise, Ranger get their favoured terrain and enemy, Monks get Martial Art, Barbs get Unarmored Defense. Paladins...well, better luck next time I guess?

 

[braro]

This is an issue 5e at least fixed for everybody (except the Paladin for some reason...): Everybody had a THING they can do all day, or is at least passives, that makes them stand out. It means you can BE that class all the time. I believe Subclasses should ALSO get one of those or they fail at being a good representation of their theme.

Casters get Cantrips, Fighters get Fighting Style, Rogues get Sneak Attack and Expertise, Ranger get their favoured terrain and enemy, Monks get Martial Art, Barbs get Unarmored Defense. Paladins...well, better luck next time I guess?

Paladins get fighting styles as well, and then some other always on abilities - like divine health, protective auras, as well as improved smite for always on radiant damage. Which, that is scaled out from levels - but the fact that it also gets what fighters get makes that more functional.

 

[Undrave]

Paladins get fighting styles as well, and then some other always on abilities - like divine health, protective auras, as well as improved smite for always on radiant damage. Which, that is scaled out from levels - but the fact that it also gets what fighters get makes that more functional.

Oops... Sorry. I meant specifically at level 1. Let me fix that.

 

[Pedantic]

I think this is tied to another issue that I think causes problems in that D&D (except for 4e) is not explicit or consistent on which elements of Class abilities are mapped directly into the World and which are just modeling in abstraction.

So vanican spellcasting is often used as a direct map onto the way magic works in the World.

Barbarian rage is abstract modeling of something in the world but the player is triggering this to represent the conditions when Rage occurs. The character just knows they get triggered and Rage.

Limited use Fighter abilities tend to act like Rage -- the player picks when the fictional positioning allows for this. While at will use stuff is often treated as something the character knows about -- trained in this specific in world technique.

I know some people want the exact opposite, but I think I prefer the flexibility of not mapping 1-1 as this allows for martial narrative control, more effects based, etc. This would also free abilities from being tied to in world recharge timelines as these abilities don't represent discrete in world things.

4e got most of the way there with this but still held on to a few vestiges of 1-1 mapping.

I don't think it would have avoided any conflict if this was spelled out upfront and/or in the descriptions of abilities/ability types, but it certainly would have clarified (and accelerated) those discussions. Similarly, healing surges could have been straight renamed "health reserve" or "healing limit" and better explained their function/design intent.