D&D 4E 4E and the Low-Fantasy Campaign

[Grimstaff]

4E seems like it will lend itself very well to folks who like a gritty, low fantasy style of play, in the vein of Conan, etc. A couple of quick restrictions, and you have a game that seems to replicate this style very nicely:

1. Human Race only (provide some "racial" or regional variants for flavor)
2. Fighter, Warlord, Rogue, and Ranger classes only
3. Ritual magic only
4. No (or severely rare) magical items

Ritual magic, being able to self-heal (even if its just a little) and having a power curve designed without magic-items as an expectation really helps.

Thoughts?

 

[Voss]

I'd work the enhancement bonuses for the weapon/armor/neck items into the character progression, but other than that, its pretty good. It does seem quite possible... though you might want to cherry-pick the rituals as well. Some sound like they're quite high-fantasy, even if they are limited.

 

[Nebulous]

I'd already been thinking that a 4e Conan conversion would be fantastic. I don't know if that will be allowed under the new GSL, but i can see how great it would be. Specific rituals tied to sacrificing enemies, or long rituals to revive the dead, and over the top combat maneuvers. It's all built into 4e, it just needs the high magic stripped away.

 

[Grimstaff]

I'd already been thinking that a 4e Conan conversion would be fantastic. I don't know if that will be allowed under the new GSL, but i can see how great it would be. Specific rituals tied to sacrificing enemies, or long rituals to revive the dead, and over the top combat maneuvers. It's all built into 4e, it just needs the high magic stripped away.

Yeah, hopefully Mongoose is taking a hard look at the new rules. 4E definitely seems like a better match with Conan than d20 did.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

I'd work the enhancement bonuses for the weapon/armor/neck items into the character progression, but other than that, its pretty good. It does seem quite possible... though you might want to cherry-pick the rituals as well. Some sound like they're quite high-fantasy, even if they are limited.

Or the DM can just adjust the stats of the monsters by their magic threshold. If a 6th lvl monster is built with having a +1 bonus in mind, just drop all their attacks and defenses by one.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

My homebrew -

Since Utility, Daily and Encounter powers are limited in use, I control the abuse of At Will spells/prayers with a cost - the Blood Price (carried over from 3e to 4e). Players have to expend a Healing Surge everytime they use an At Will spell. Once the battery is overextended, they start taking damage equal to the healing surge amount.

 

[DSRilk]

If you want to be able to use monster creation rules and such, then you'll probably want to add into the character what magic items give to characters. In short, +1 to attack and all defenses every 5 levels starting at level 3 (Mearls has said that items are expected to go from +1 from levels 1-5 to +6 at levels 25-30) plus a magic-item-like power roughly every 4th level (per the magic item preview: 4 items per level per 5 characters with armor, weapon, and neck slots being upgraded 5 times each for new bonuses gives 24 - 15 items over the course of 30 levels). In order to maintain the low magic world, I'd make sure to pick powers that were less magical in nature (like the 1/day extra healing surge found on one of the items in KotS).

As the other poster said, I'd be very careful about what rituals you allow. You might also want to consider rules for actual wounds. One example would be a character being wounded once they hit 0 hit points. Wounded could be a state where characters could only use 1 healing surge per day and had to make a save (same one they use to avoid death while "dying") in order for it to take effect. Wounded characters might also suffer -2 to all actions. The wounded state is removed once a character reaches max hit points again. This would stop characters from popping out of unconsciousness during combat and would require them to actually heal once truly wounded while still allowing hit points to represent fatigue, etc.

You might also want to consider allowing characters to choose from any martial powers of their level, but only allowing them to pick one set of class features. This would allow fighters to dual wield without having to be woodsmen, for example. I'd do some playing around with power combinations before allowing this one though -- it's hard to say if this would work without looking through all the rules.

 

[Nebulous]

You might also want to consider allowing characters to choose from any martial powers of their level, but only allowing them to pick one set of class features. This would allow fighters to dual wield without having to be woodsmen, for example. I'd do some playing around with power combinations before allowing this one though -- it's hard to say if this would work without looking through all the rules.

I think 3rd party developers would have an absolute field day tweaking 4e to suit their own settings. Just from the little i've seen, 4e has a lot of customization options, and mix-n-match capability.

 

[Drammattex]

4E seems like it will lend itself very well to folks who like a gritty, low fantasy style of play, in the vein of Conan, etc. A couple of quick restrictions, and you have a game that seems to replicate this style very nicely:

1. Human Race only (provide some "racial" or regional variants for flavor)
2. Fighter, Warlord, Rogue, and Ranger classes only
3. Ritual magic only
4. No (or severely rare) magical items

Ritual magic, being able to self-heal (even if its just a little) and having a power curve designed without magic-items as an expectation really helps.

Thoughts?

I've been fighting the system for 15 years running my low fantasy campaign. At long last, I feel the system can accomodate my game with minimal adjustments.

In practice, 2e gave me a better play experience than 3e for what I wanted, but I couldn't give up 3e for the things it did right (including saves, customization). But I eventually left it in search of a better fit. Iron Heroes was good, but I couldn't get the players to back me on it 100%.

4e looks like just what I've been waiting for. The less cranking with the gears I have to do, the better.

 

[Vorpal Sword]

Since Utility, Daily and Encounter powers are limited in use, I control the abuse of At Will spells/prayers with a cost - the Blood Price (carried over from 3e to 4e). Players have to expend a Healing Surge everytime they use an At Will spell. Once the battery is overextended, they start taking damage equal to the healing surge amount.

This might be getting a little bit OT, but what's your thought process here? In the 4e game, the constant use of at-will powers is by definition not abusive.

Healing surges are also an extremely heavy cost to pay, since the basic cleric and warlord healing powers cost the recipient a healing surge; considering the prevalence of ranged-damage monsters, if each magic missile is the equivalent of a cure light wounds I can't receive that day... then I'm simply never using magic missile.

Finally, if you're penalizing spells and prayers this way but not exploits, martial classes have a huge advantage. On one hand, that's a reasonable intention if you're running a gritty, low-magic campaign. On the other, if you're going to make battle magic virtually unusable, why not ban arcane and divine classes entirely?