D&D 4E [4e Clone] Scaling Powers! (?)

[TerraDave]

[MENTION=93857]C4[/MENTION] I like it, definitely the right direction.

 

[MoonSong]

I still think that is too much reinventing the wheel. And yes I also think that just two powers of each kind through heroic is too few.

In my own design I started thinking on removing scaling all together from the powers, all you get at higher levels is the chance to swap for a power with better riders, better targeting or better usage that were just too much for lower levels (or the chance to get what was a daily as an encounter power). In this way there is an actual qualitative improvement.

The actual scaling of damage comes on its own. Basically allowing strikers to add their full level to damage and non-strikers half their level. (well at least mathwise, strikers would add half their level, and the striker mechanic count for the other half)

This may come as weird, but actually a meager dice of scaling is too little compared to the evergrowing static modifiers, striker mechanic growth and extra critical dice from magic weapons/implements. Taking all that out of the powers leaves less more distinctive powers and erases all competence between them. A high damaging power at first level remains high damaging across the board.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And, of course, change it too much, and it's not really a 'clone.' Since you can't outright lift any existing class from 4e, for instance, you might present some more generic means by which existing classes could be approximated.

 

[C4]

Not sure item dependency is a great idea. One thing I liked about 4e was the ability to punch the 'inherent bonuses' button and run a low- or even no-magic game. You could even run a campaign w/o casters, at all, and still have things work relatively well.

Same here; in fact I went ahead and wrote enhancement bonuses right out of the game.

The magic-item sweet spot I'm aiming for is 'A game without them is like Hard mode; a game that follows my guidelines is like Normal mode; and a Monty Haul game is like Beginner's mode.'

 

[Dungeoneer]

Lol!

Seriously, though, 3e fighters got two feats to start and another every-other level. They could be used to expand options pretty dramatically by level 6. And, classic D&D fighters were supposed to be constantly getting new magic items - the treasure tables were pretty heavily weighted in favor of stuff they could use.

So there's always been some attempts at keeping the fighter interesting, even if they didn't often work that well - contributing to the game falling out of it's 'sweet spot' before double-digit levels in most eds.

Fine and dandy, as long as we define the class by it's Source, Role, and, most importantly, archetype, not by it's (sometimes abysmal) past performance.

It's possible you're reading something here I'm not saying - that Fighters should be underpowered or that all they should be able to do is hit things. That's not it at all. But I think that early on in 4e the answer to the question "How do you make non-casters interesting?" was "Give them a zillion powers to pick from!!!" I don't believe that that is the only answer or even the best answer.

I honestly don't have TOO much interest in coming up with a 4e 'Heartbreaker' because I already have one and it's called 13th Age. In that game the classes all work very differently, yet all of them are more interesting than "I hit it with my sword" and they also balance fairly well. But even within 4e we see that there are different ways you can approach the problem. Psionics showed another great approach to building classes. Essentials had some good ideas as well. I would recommend stealing from all three of these sources and coming up with new ideas too, rather than building every class as "modified AEDU".

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's possible you're reading something here I'm not saying - that Fighters should be underpowered or that all they should be able to do is hit things. That's not it at all. But I think that early on in 4e the answer to the question "How do you make non-casters interesting?" was "Give them a zillion powers to pick from!!!" I don't believe that that is the only answer or even the best answer.

To be fair, it's more like a few powers at each decision point, totaling hundreds only across all levels and after /two/ Martial Powers books.

It's also the way to make casters more interesting: /reduced/ them to just a few (or 10 or 16) spells, each chosen from a fairly small list, instead of 'zillions' (actually only a thousand or few).

Funny how that works out. I think humans just don't like being choice-less or overwhelmed with too many choices. The range of 3-6 seems pretty good, with another 3-6 once the first set become too familiar.

I honestly don't have TOO much interest in coming up with a 4e 'Heartbreaker' because I already have one and it's called 13th Age. In that game the classes all work very differently, yet all of them are more interesting than "I hit it with my sword" and they also balance fairly well.

I've only played 13A 3 times, but each time, while the system was nice, the class I was playing proved disappointing. The cleric was too Vancian, for instance, and the fighter was just - sad. I've gone into it elsewhere, but the poor fighter pre-gen had 7 things chosen for it, and in the course of 3 exciting battles with an excellent DM, none of those 7 things had /any/ impact on the game whatsoever. Might as well not have had 'em. (The third class was Paladin, and the game was short, but it had an ability that actually did something 1/encounter +several/day - it would have gotten old fast.) I'm optimistic about 13TWs, though. FWIW.

But even within 4e we see that there are different ways you can approach the problem. Psionics showed another great approach to building classes. Essentials had some good ideas as well. I would recommend stealing from all three of these sources and coming up with new ideas too, rather than building every class as "modified AEDU".

Psionics was cute because it did follow AEDU, but re-jiggered in such a way that it looked and felt different. There's a lot could be done with tricks like that.