D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[Undrave]

Like 5e's barbarian reckless abandon ability to give the barbarian advantage on attacks for a round while granting advantage on all attacks against himself.

Exactly! But with more granularity. Similarily, Casters could become 'attuned' to the element they just used and thus gained its weakness. You use a Fire spell, you become resistant to Fire for a turn, but weak to others spell that might specifically be good against creatures 'Atuned to Fire'.

I’m a big fan of these in RPG. Similarly, I also like special techniques that play into the weaknesses of your opponents, so not all of your abilities have the same return in every combats.

Add both together and you could do X to incite your opponent to do Y, setting you up for attack Z which is strong in reaction to Y.

It’d probably be a nightmare of game design however.

Shades of the Bravura here, where willingly opening yourself to X gives bonus Y to an ally.

Just make it 'doing this type of move always opens you to this time of more' and let the players figure out how to chain them together.

Heck, make those exposed weaknesses even more devastating if your move fails!

Then, to make things even crazier: make it possible to feint that you missed!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sometimes I wonder why it's necessary to limit a player's ability to do "cool fun things" in the first place. Would it get boring to see a Fighter perform "Sweet Sword Strike" every combat? Every turn?

Does it really matter if a Wizard can throw out Magic Missile turn after turn?

Does the game really need to be balanced around "only able to fight X combat encounters per game day"? What does that actually accomplish, when it's been my experience the real limit on how far a party can progress is based on running out of real-world time for the session!

I mean, there's already a base mechanic for endurance, called "hit points". You run out of those, the game is probably over. So it seems like telling players that they have a "gun" full of "bullets" that can allow them to use "maximum effort" and you have to figure out how to spread out that ammunition over the course of a "game day" causes more problems with adventure design, since now there's this constant struggle to make sure the players don't get a chance to use more than one bullet per X encounters.

Suppose you let players use daily powers every round, over and over. First of all it would sure cut back on the variety of powers that would get deployed. Secondly it would just rebaseline the level of character power in the game and everything else would be tweaked to accommodate that. It would simply be a game that was not as varied and thus, IMHO less interesting, than what 4e actually is.

And this is really why resources exist in this context, as a way of increasing the variations in play. You could replace that with "Well, when you roll really great you do some crazy thing" instead, but then 'crazy thing' only likely happens when you're killing a goblin minion or something, it just doesn't produce good fun results in most cases. A third approach is the 'build up' approach, where there isn't technically a limit on how much you can use some 'power', but it requires some amount of setup, so you only unleash your 'daily' at the end of the fight. You can also do cool downs, though that generally tends to amount of an encounter power by another name, or something similar at least.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is coming from my specific playstyle, but - I like having some form of limited resources because it lets me make more decisions. If my best strategy is always available, then there is less problem solving. If I want to feel creative, I need there to be costs between things - a reason to do Thing A and not thing B. Having different resource costs can be one way to give this option.

The way D&D traditionally does the resourcing tends not to work well for me, but the AEDU method meant I had options to come up with tactics, no matter what class I played.

Yet another option would be to have a large array of always available powers, but make each one very situational. So then the choices would be in terms of how you create the conditions you want in order to keep doing really effective things. I feel like this is an extremely tricky design though, and has the downside that everyone will really need to have quite a variety of powers available at all times.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd go one step further and draw a distinction between figuring out the most optimal response to a situation, and making the decision to commit to that optimal response knowing that it may cost me an optimal response later. Both can scratch the itch, and in different ways, but I think there is a depth of play in knowing that "If I play this card, I won't have it later - so is now the time to use the Mega Missile, or is a normal missile sufficient?"

In my home brew I have been playing with the idea of resource tokens that you get per round (Hello Triangle Strategy!), where every round you get a new "Focus Token" and your abilities cost Focus Tokens. So in the fight, you are deciding do I cache my token and use a less effective ability and save up for a 3 Token move, or do I funnel that in to moderate ability?

Those types of decisions can be exciting and allow for expression. But to your point - I have players who play Paladins and Rangers and only use the spells to teleport or heal, because those are obvious decisions and they would rather use the old faithful basic attack. So it is a case of different strokes for different folks.

This whole topic has got me thinking about power points. In my game, currently, you have an attunement to a power source (you could acquire more of these) and so you spend PPs that are, say, Martial, which enhance Martial powers. What if, instead, you spent power points, and declared them to be attuned to whatever power source. Now, if you kept a track of what you have spent of each type, you could use that as your build up to something more powerful. So, you could simply build your character with a single focus, which is good, or possibly 2 or maybe more sources that you focus on (and have powers usable with) but you'd definitely be making a significant choice each time you power one up, because it would increase the corresponding track towards 'nova'. Obviously different sources will yield situationally more or less advantageous results, or effects that are more or less needed, and tie into role too of course.

Hmmmm, this is an interesting concept, but it will definitely need a bit of work.

 

[Voidmoji]

Action Points are one of those things that seem to be very either/or. Either you love them and instantly grok how they can become a huge force multiplier when deployed wisely, or you constantly forget that they're a thing you can do (or fear to use them because you don't want to "waste" them.)

Minor actions seem to have been similar, but with a third camp: those who saw it as a workhorse and no more, e.g. knowing it's for your Healing Word but never thinking about it otherwise.

All my players took to action points quite easily. After I added the ability to use spent powers, the typical mix was one-third of the time using expended powers, two-thirds using the extra action. There was certainly hoarding at times, but I also gave out one per encounter, rather than milestones. Extra actions were limited to one per encounter still.

I kind of disliked the whole extra action thing after awhile, to be honest. I didn’t help by giving out more, for sure, but it felt out of place. Probably just me, but I’m not using that aspect in my 4e-inspired game.

My players also didn’t have issues with minor actions, but many of them ended their turn chanting the actions mantra, some variant of: “Ok, I took my standard action, and then my minor action. I’m not moving, so no action there. Done.”

 

[Voidmoji]

Yet another option would be to have a large array of always available powers, but make each one very situational. So then the choices would be in terms of how you create the conditions you want in order to keep doing really effective things. I feel like this is an extremely tricky design though, and has the downside that everyone will really need to have quite a variety of powers available at all times.

For my game, The Fantasy Engine, I am trying to use this approach for some abilities. I do hand out more encounter actions, and so I like the idea of mixing and matching more specific abilities and more general abilities. You are right, it can be a fine line. But I like the idea that characters in TFE have an array of encounter actions that might not get used every encounter, because it doesn't make in.

I also feel reactions and such make good special-case powers. When they come online you don't need to spend a standard action, which feels better when you can't use it all the time.

 

[Kannik]

This thread had be pull out my Rules Compendium to look something up and now I feel the need to make a Rules Compendium Appreciation Post. I'm becoming reacquainted with what a good book it is, from the descriptions of play, to bits on RP, to the various sections on improvisation (including in the skill descriptions), to GM assistance, to the rules themselves presented with both clarity and detail. And a handy size to boot. Top notch!

 

[Red Castle]

This thread had be pull out my Rules Compendium to look something up and now I feel the need to make a Rules Compendium Appreciation Post. I'm becoming reacquainted with what a good book it is, from the descriptions of play, to bits on RP, to the various sections on improvisation (including in the skill descriptions), to GM assistance, to the rules themselves presented with both clarity and detail. And a handy size to boot. Top notch!

Since I was buying all the 4e books from the beginning, I never bothered with the rule compendium since it seemed to just be a reprint of all the rules from the previous books.

But now I wonder, was there some rules changed? Is there some parts that are still worth reading even for someone like me that has all the previous books?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Since I was buying all the 4e books from the beginning, I never bothered with the rule compendium since it seemed to just be a reprint of all the rules from the previous books.

But now I wonder, was there some rules changed? Is there some parts that are still worth reading even for someone like me that has all the previous books?

I don't think any rules were truly "changed," in the sense of being rewritten just for that book. However, it does contain all errata up to the date of its publication (which, being later on in 4e's active publishing span, means there wasn't a lot more errata after it), and provides a more slick, smooth presentation.

 

[James Gasik]

As I recall, the rules compendium made a few minor changes, and definitely clarified a few things. I want to say Opportunity Attacks were changed in some way, but it's been awhile.