D&D 4E 4E - more rules or less?

[Hairfoot]

I'm hanging out for a combat system which makes simultaneous action plausible. Initiative order is helpful for bookkeeping, but the inconsistencies are frustrating.

 

[jdrakeh]

I'd like to see far, far less *rules* in the sense that HERO has a fraction of the rules of D&D

IME, I have not found that to be true. I haven't found it to have significantly more rules than D&D, but IMO both systems suffer equally from a glut of power-specific or skill-specific rules subsets.

 

[Mark CMG]

I'm hanging out for a combat system which makes simultaneous action plausible.

What game (rpg, wargame, other) have you played where this is true, even if only, mostly true?

 

[Remathilis]

A hardy tweaking is all the current rules need. Some simplified skills, re-balanced spells, touched up races and classes (with customization options) and some work on the finer elements of combat is what the system needs.

I fail to see how moving backwards into "less rules" is going to create anything more than the incohesive mess that was 2e.

 

[Hairfoot]

What game (rpg, wargame, other) have you played where this is true, even if only, mostly true?

None. That's why I'm so keen!

Breaking combat rounds into 2 rounds of a move/standard action each sort of works, but makes combat slow.

 

[jdrakeh]

What game (rpg, wargame, other) have you played where this is true, even if only, mostly true?

Most game systems that use a count-down style shot clock (e.g., Console, Feng Shui, Arduin Adventure, etc) make allowances for simulatenous action (i.e., actions are resolved in successon, but effects are applied simultaneously).

 

[jdrakeh]

I fail to see how moving backwards into "less rules" is going to create anything more than the incohesive mess that was 2e.

Honestly, that's pretty short-sighted -- the D&D Basic Game and True20, for example, both have less rules than full-blown D&D and do not lose any cohesiveness as a result (indeed, they're both arguably more cohesive than full-blown D&D).

 

[Lanefan]

Re: swimming

Too much rock'n'roll. And, in addition, you propose another trait to keep track of.

True, but it only needs to be noted once (or once every very long while); it wouldn't be tied to a stat or anything else that changes all the time.
Re: roll-up randomness

So what do you do when the rolls disagree with player's character concept?

Just like now; players adapt. Or, they come in with a few different concepts and see where the dice take them. In 3e, most concepts can be done with most rolls anyway.

The wealth increase rate of a moderately succesful adventuring party is atrocious. I'd prefer people to pay with their character health (and deal with subsequent recovery) instead of hauling sacks of costly ingredients.

Then don't give out so much treasure. This is one game aspect the DM has complete control over. And to avoid the "sacks of ingredients" problem, clerical spells in particular could be paid by sacrificing anything of value; it'd be easy enough to come up with something similar for wizards.

The overuse of transportation spells tends to reduce importance of travelling, borders, distances, fortifications, labyrinths, islands, mountains, jungles, planes and so on. In short, the element of mundane architecture and geography loses its appeal.
Also, the infamous SH&T combo can easily reduce any monarchy to anarchy within fifteen minutes.
(SH&T - Scry, Haste & Teleport, also used to describe any raid type of action during which supercharged group of characters assassinates key figures of opposing force - particularly succesful against any type of lawful government, difficult or impossible to prevent for anyone relying on core rules).

Then don't rely on core rules. Any decent palace, temple, or whatever will be proofed somehow against entry by means other than mundane, never mind that the key individuals inhabiting such places will have personal scrying defenses.

You're quite right about the lessened impact of travelling due to transport spells, but a very simple limit is to only allow travel spells to get you to somewhere you have already been; thus new ground has to be explored the old-fashioned way. (and your SH+T problem goes away unless the person providing transport has been there before...)

Re: failed resurrection rolls

"Say-Lee, you've failed your roll. You die. Roll another character. Ooops, you failed another roll. You die. Roll another character. Oops, you failed again. Dice don't like you today, roll another character."

In 1e, resurrection failure chances were fairly low provided you had a better Con. score than a fieldmouse. But perma-death can and does happen, though not to the rather overstated level you imply above.

I'm talking about streamlining the rules and improving the scaling of the system. Since it seems that you haven't run as many high level campaigns as I did, let me inform you about several rather cumbersome issues.

At higher levels amounts of hitpoints deducted through damage practically eliminate "dying" condition from the game. Whenever one takes 30 or 40 points of damage, it is rather improbable to hit -1...-9 range. Usually one either is left standing (0+) or dead (-10 and less). BAD SCALING.

This can become a problem, agreed, but even with this it still seems that people hit the 0 to -9 range quite often. The only real way around this is to have opponents deal out damage more often but in less amount each time; most parties don't let the bad guys survive long enough to be dangerous this way, so I find myself running more and more monsters with lots of small-ish attacks each round.

Numerous high level spells take advantage of weakness of particular classes of characters. Direct damage destroys spellcasters, death spells take care of rogues and mind control eliminates weak-willed warriors. At low levels spell casters usually end up dying, rogues and warrios have about 30-40% chance to save. At higher levels similar tactics change outcome from dangerous (disabling and removing character from encounter) to deadly (killing and removing character from adventure). DISRUPTIVE.

Only disruptive if your game is predicated on everyone surviving. At those levels, revival effects are available and most parties will try to bring back a valued companion even if there's a chance it won't work. Fine with me.

Stereotyping the roles (as mentioned above) leads to uninventive rock-paper-scissors gameplay, overuse of buff spells and, worst of all, unbalanced encounters (generic encounters become dangerous if a team of likeminded characters sharing similar weaknesses appears, say... a military patrol meets a Kobold Sorcerer with Charm Person).

Disagree, agree, disagree. Regardless of the "roles", gameplay will always be exactly as inventive as the players can or will roleplay; the characters are much more than just numbers on a page, and if the players give them some character the mechanics being the same pales into insignificance. Buff spells will be overused regardless of the role mechanics. What you call an unbalanced encounter I call interesting...a military patrol meets a lone Kobold "Yeah, Sarge, leave it to me; I can take 'im with one 'and behind my back" "OK, Private, go to it" then gets the shock of its life when Private turns coat...I fail to see a problem.

In short, the game should scale well up to 100th level, not merely to 8-9th (the average level, where differences in power become drastic... 9th caster level level fireball vs 9th level wizard hitpoints, 9th caster level Heightened Hold Person vs 9th level Fighter and so on).

To scale the game to 100th level you'd have to make it mighty boring for the first few levels, and as that's where most gameplay usually takes place (particularly for new players) that'd end up being somewhat self-defeating.

Interesting discussion!

Lanefan

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I'm hanging out for a combat system which makes simultaneous action plausible. Initiative order is helpful for bookkeeping, but the inconsistencies are frustrating.

AD&D had this, and it would be simple to implement in 3e. On ties, resolve both actions before rolling damage. The wizard takes the sword in the gut, but simultaneously gets his fireball off toasting most of the orcs before he falls.

 

[Lanefan]

AD&D had this, and it would be simple to implement in 3e. On ties, resolve both actions before rolling damage. The wizard takes the sword in the gut, but simultaneously gets his fireball off toasting most of the orcs before he falls.

In this specific instance, we roll sub-initiatives, as the spell could be interrupted just as it resolved; but for two melee foes hitting each other at the same time, or just about anything else resolving that doesn't affect a caster trying to resolve, the above is exactly what we do (and as we use a d6 initiative, this happens a lot!). But 3e for some reason has this abhorrence of ties in initiative...

Lanefan