Vaalingrade
Legend
Add two zeros the the end of that and we've got a deal.
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D&D General How would you redo 4e?
- Thread starter Atomoctba
- Start date
Voadam
Legend
Cool. Happy to engage on specifics and keep it civil.
For comparison here is B/X fireball:
Which has no spell school, no components, no fire specific effects, or pre explosion mechanics.
1e fireball has a lot of that (2-5) but uses inches instead of feet, so you can do the battle mat thing directly.
Funny how the entry is missing the M notation for the Components: V, S, M and includes it in the description.
Also given the 4e description of exploding on impact and B/X's striking language, if a fireball streaked from a caster and hit an invisible wall (impact/striking) before its intended target I think I would rule the same way in 3e and 4e and B/X.
I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the crunch in 5e is.
MichaelSomething
Legend
Here's a whole topic on the subject for reference...
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
To relate this somewhat back to the topic at hand, I don't consider anything to be 'missing' from 4e in the way of craft, etc. Ask yourself the question "why am I doing this?" and the answer is always going to equate to one of 4e's list of skills. Yes, you may be "cooking a strawberry tart" but the reason you are doing that is to win the heart of the Princess! This is something like Diplomacy/raw CHA, maybe even Bluff or perhaps Streetwise. Now, from a FICTIONAL perspective, as GM, I will want to find out how it is that your character can bake, but this is not some sort of esoteric ability that is hard to come by. Heck, if the player wants to ask for a +5 Proficiency bonus because they happened to select a 4e background that would know how to bake, GREAT! I guess if your theme or whatever seems to make that highly appropriate, that would also suffice. So, we see that background and such are not non-existent, nor unimportant necessarily, they're just not RATIONED THINGS like skills are! This is why the 4e skill system works, because you don't have to pick between "I know how to pick a lock" and "I know how to bake tarts."
Honestly, I couldn't find any way to significantly improve the 4e skill system, and just left it alone. Frankly, if a player wants his PC to make a living as a brick layer, or whatever, why worry about mechanics for that? Its an FRPG, that mundane stuff is not really a part of it, aside from being in the fiction. It doesn't NEED rules. This is also part of why I consider wealth as a candidate to become an abstract system. It just isn't THAT important, and for whatever unusual situations where it might be, you can still play out those specific ones. If my Wealth +0 totally broke dude finds a 1000gp treasure, well, he's not Wealth +0 anymore, eh? I call that a 'minor boon' in my game. It might be a reward for a minor quest, or something you find during an adventure. Useful, maybe even something you seek out, but not the POINT of the game.
D20 Modern did a great job with wealth as a pseudo skill. If you fail your check, you reduce your level by 1 after buying the item.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Look its obviously one of those aesthetic judgement things, but 4e powers have keywords, which gives you all of your "you can set things on fire" stuff (there's a DMG section on how that works). It also hooks you into ALL other rules anywhere in the game that reference fire, arcane, or implement. I'd also argue the 4e power's color block gives a pretty good condensed indication of what this thing is doing, a ball of flame appears in your hand, and you throw it, then it explodes! I agree its succinct, but MOST of the 3e version is actually just rules text that 4e puts elsewhere (IE all the stuff about "determine the range" and all that stuff about the setting fire, etc. which 3e has to repeat for every spell where it matters! 4e has it once in rules for keywords/damage types.
I will grant you the lack of a material ingredient, but how many people ever use that? I've seen some attempts, but they all died of lack of interest and players not bothering with the book keeping. So, yeah, 4e chooses to save a LOT of book space by consolidating rules and whatnot, and chose not to implement some widely unused things, but I very definitely still get the idea of a guy hurling exploding balls of fire from this.
And what the heck point is 'school', its another of those "who cares" things. I'd much rather if 5e had keywords, like 100x more useful. That and if it would just get rid of the whole bad idea of saves.
But, in any case, you have a point, 4e 'spells' (some of them) have a bit less color. That could be remedied at the cost of bigger heftier books, but it could be. Also if we got rid of a lot of powers it would still come out ahead. I still want the common rules in common places though!
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
4e was designed to let the GM riff off of a few basic keywords to provide 'rulings' too, though I would say they are more in terms of binding to FICTION (IE how things are described, as well as situational effects and such that the GM will come up with, like setting a building on fire).
You bring up an interesting point. Yes, 4e powers have very codified effects, although to be honest I don't see where 5e mostly is much different. Fireball for instance is pretty cut and dried! But OK, your example is a reasonable one, if made up. Page 42 (of the DMG) allows 'improvised actions' and gives guidelines for them. What I would say is if someone wants to trip an enemy and doesn't have a power which does that, tell me how you do it! Maybe its a Basic Attack, does minimal damage, and trades that damage for a prone effect. However, I would definitely require that explanation from the player as to exactly what environmental factor is letting you cause the enemy to go prone. 'Tripping Strike' is still likely to be a much better option for those who have it, as it undoubtedly does good damage, etc. My point is, 4e is certainly not stopping players from doing stuff they want to do.
Of course that does bring the design discussion back to the whole "creating powers on the fly" concept which people have had forever. I think Strike! did something like that, but I have really only played the playtest a couple times, long ago.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, HoML kinda works that way. Expenses are graded by their size, so even a poor character won't go broke buying a beer or two, but he'd probably become destitute if he bought a fancy suite of clothing and failed his check. Likewise you can do things like sources of income that let you automatically recover some of your wealth as minor boons. Its a workable system anyway, one with a long tradition!
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
No dice. Even if we reduce the total number of classes to 20, that's 6 feats per class, with no feats left over for generic use.
