D&D 4E 4E Modern

[dirklancer]

I've been working on a 4E take on d20 Modern for the last few weeks, and I thought I would post the latest version to see what people think. While it does have elements of the old version, it ended up being more of a mix of D&D Essentials and the current version of Gamma World. I tried to keep things simple, but I also tried to add a little more customization than traditional 4E. Mind you think is still a work in progress, as you will see from the unfinished sections on skills, feats, and equipment. And I am still tweaking some elements it, but opinions and suggestions would be appreciated. Here are the basics of what I am trying:

-You pick one core class that corresponds to one of the 6 ability scores. This core class gives you a special ability, skill bonuses, and a small list of powers.
-You also pick a career, that determines what skills you are trained in, another special ability, and more power options.
-Like Gamma World, the powers are divided into Novice (at-wills), Utility, and Expert (mostly encounters, but a few dailies)
-At different points in your level progression, you may change careers and even your core class. If you focus on one career, you have a more narrow range of options but you have more powerful special abilities. If you change your career and core options, you have more diversity.
-20 levels as of now, but it would be easy to add levels up to 30 if you would like.
-I tried to give the non-combat classes powers that had utility in combat, but ones that were not always a direct attack.

 

[dirklancer]

Two updates. One is a very minor revision to the main document which fixed a few issues with powers and did some formatting changes.

The second is actually based on the comments about an alternative to the ability score classes. I used them to build a racial variant, with humans as the obvious example, and I wanted to see what people thought about this as an variant.

 

[dirklancer]

Another update, not sure if people are actually looking at this but figured I will put it out there just in case. Finished the skill descriptions and the feat list, with most of the feats found in the Essentials players books.

 

[kristoaster]

I really, really like this. I love the daredevil career! Such awesome cinematic possibilities... all I need now is a DM

 

[dirklancer]

Thank you. And I'm glad you like the Daredevil because that was the one that gave me the most problems... LOL I don't know why, but it just took me a while to figure out the abilities for that one. And I noticed a mistake in one of the powers this morning: Take The Hit needs the Trigger You are hit by an attack. Here is an update:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46261220/4EModern

And if you were in PA, I could help you with the DM thing because we are actually starting a campaign with this tonight.

 

[kristoaster]

PA? I assume that's a state... I'm in the UK, unfortunately, heh. I'll have a more detailed look over it when I'm home, Android phones aren't exactly ideal for reading wide PDFs... some career combinations could be both flavoursome and powerful

 

[dirklancer]

Yeah, that would be a bit of a trip for a weekly gaming group... :^)
I think like the old edition, there could be some min/max power gaming issues. But I think overall it should balance pretty well, and I will see tonight once we get started. And no, smartphones are not ideal. I tried to look this over the other day to see how I worded something and I just gave up before the eye strain got too bad.

 

[dirklancer]

We did our first session with the new rules last night, and it seemed to work pretty well. Character creation was pretty simple, taking no more than 10-15 minutes. Characters started at 3rd level and we had a good mix of the different core classes and careers: strong/soldier, smart/techie, fast/gunslinger, charismatic/investigator, and a unique class I made up for the campaign called a Neuromancer that used science to simulate psionics. Another player was using another modern system, and he was frustrated by how cumbersome it ended up being so he is making a fast/infiltrator for next week. Everything seems to work pretty well so far, and some powers really surprised me by how useful they ended up being in ways I didn't think of. One thing that was noted though was at 3rd level the characters needed some more options in combat because they only had a few powers. So I changed it so that characters gain their first Career Expert power at 3rd level, which is more in line with standard D&D. I also tweaked a few powers after seeing them in play, but so far so good.
Here is the file with the updates:
4EModern

 

[dirklancer]

Second session last night, and it seems to be working well after a few modifications and changes. First, we switched it around so you can choose powers from your Core class or any careers when you have one available. This gives you more options initially, but if you stick with one career it gives you less options later. Also switched soldier to Dexterity as the key ability, which made more sense since their attacks are all ranged.

4EModern

 

[dirklancer]

Another version, this time with a completed first draft of the full weapons and armor list, and some minor revisions to powers.

4EModern