D&D 4E 4E Fans Would You Play This?

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is a good way of putting my idea. Less stuff more meat.

SWSE is very close to 4E mechanically except they don't use AC, which is folded into your NADs. Weapons and armor are more 3.5 style than 4E. They're basically using the 4E engine, classes are different, force powers are encounter powers.

You could use the 4E engine mix it with 5E bounded accuracy and use it to clone B/X, 3.x, 4E or a slightly more complicated 5E. A tweaked B/X fighter could have a single power that scales and still be very very basic. THe SWSE character sheet is really elegant and I thought I could clean it up even more.

I didn't especially go for 'bounded accuracy', though the maximum DISPERSION of bonuses is deliberately restricted in HoML (there are no ability bonuses beyond +5 and ABIs are almost non-existent). So it has some of the effect that 5e's BA has. However I didn't fundamentally alter skills, they work like in 4e, except again there is MUCH MUCH MUCH stricter stacking limitations, so again dispersion is far less.

I also removed AC and replaced it with a small DR factor. This makes armor modestly useful, but its less utterly critical to have a LOT of it. That is because having DR 2 already does a lot for you (blunting or even negating a lot of trivial minor damage sources). Sure, having DR 5 would be a bunch better, and your hardcore melee defender is probably eyeballing that, but the difference is not stupid vast, whereas the difference between DR 2 and DR 0 is pretty stark, everything hurts you!

The main result of this is that there is no weird 2 point difference in defenses that has to be papered over or prevented from being exploited constantly as there is in 4e. All attacks are vs a NAD (the term is kind of redundant, lol) and you can thus freely change up from weapon to implement or back and it all 'just works'. Ability/skill checks also align 100% with attacks. So you can literally use a skill to attack someone and the math works, always. Enhancement is not a bonus type, but some items can give up to a +3 'permanent bonus' to attacks. Usually by the levels where you find +3 weapons you'd likely already have a +2 permanent bonus from SOMETHING anyway, so its nice, but if you decide to just punch someone you won't suddenly become utterly unable to hit, as you would in 4e (without weird rules like monks combat powers being 'implement' powers using a 'ki focus', which is just a hack for broken 4e core).

 

[Zardnaar]

I didn't especially go for 'bounded accuracy', though the maximum DISPERSION of bonuses is deliberately restricted in HoML (there are no ability bonuses beyond +5 and ABIs are almost non-existent). So it has some of the effect that 5e's BA has. However I didn't fundamentally alter skills, they work like in 4e, except again there is MUCH MUCH MUCH stricter stacking limitations, so again dispersion is far less.

I also removed AC and replaced it with a small DR factor. This makes armor modestly useful, but its less utterly critical to have a LOT of it. That is because having DR 2 already does a lot for you (blunting or even negating a lot of trivial minor damage sources). Sure, having DR 5 would be a bunch better, and your hardcore melee defender is probably eyeballing that, but the difference is not stupid vast, whereas the difference between DR 2 and DR 0 is pretty stark, everything hurts you!

The main result of this is that there is no weird 2 point difference in defenses that has to be papered over or prevented from being exploited constantly as there is in 4e. All attacks are vs a NAD (the term is kind of redundant, lol) and you can thus freely change up from weapon to implement or back and it all 'just works'. Ability/skill checks also align 100% with attacks. So you can literally use a skill to attack someone and the math works, always. Enhancement is not a bonus type, but some items can give up to a +3 'permanent bonus' to attacks. Usually by the levels where you find +3 weapons you'd likely already have a +2 permanent bonus from SOMETHING anyway, so its nice, but if you decide to just punch someone you won't suddenly become utterly unable to hit, as you would in 4e (without weird rules like monks combat powers being 'implement' powers using a 'ki focus', which is just a hack for broken 4e core).

THe bounded accuracy thing could be higher than 5E, just things like capping ability scores and lower numbers overall.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

THe bounded accuracy thing could be higher than 5E, just things like capping ability scores and lower numbers overall.

Yeah, as I say, BA wasn't especially a goal. Depending on how you define it there is less total range of bonuses in my game than in 4e proper, although if you extrapolated to level 30 it would be about the same.

I never have gotten the whole thing with not advancing skill (proficiency) checks in 5e anyway. It just breaks a lot of things. There are just a few bizarre things about that system I never could deal with...

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, as I say, BA wasn't especially a goal. Depending on how you define it there is less total range of bonuses in my game than in 4e proper, although if you extrapolated to level 30 it would be about the same.

I never have gotten the whole thing with not advancing skill (proficiency) checks in 5e anyway. It just breaks a lot of things. There are just a few bizarre things about that system I never could deal with...

It's more things like in 4E/SWSE with skill training+skill focus+ mod + racial you can get + 18 PR so level one while poor Bob or Kate has +0. I would to e that down a lot or maybe grant advantage. Perhaps 5E numbers lvl 1 but scaling like 4E with a static bonus of + 2 or 3.

5E could go 5,or so higher, ACs could top out round 30 instead of 25. Bitmorof a range and less of a cluster round AC 15 but no AC 40+ sort of thing.