D&D 4E 4E Oldschool

[timbannock]

Just adding: I wonder how much you could retool the "default 4e" by adding more minor quests and exploration skill challenges/trap encounters to the mix? I.e., rely slightly less on all-out fights, and instead have more of those exploration-based events drive what is "an encounter" in order to still get the right number of XPs in the hands of the PCs but have less grindy fights.

Aside from that, all I have to say is that I really, really like the ideas put forth so far in this thread. All great stuff.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think one of the things which hasn't been mentioned and really deserves mention is that things like pulling off stunts were practically unknown in classic Old D&D. What was the reason for this? I think the main reason was the weakness of most individual monsters. Essentially monsters threat level in OD&D was based on two things. One was SOD type effects, an insta-kill or at least "combat lethal" effect certainly made many monsters frightening. The other was simply the fact that they proportionally did a lot of damage and in the more powerful monsters (especially in 2e) the damage was virtually SOD-like. Dragon breathes on you, you're toast.

What was the point of stunting in this kind of environment where attacks could easily be lethal and the PCs had the majority of the lethal firepower?

Reducing monsters back to individually weak opponents has the same effect. There's no point in doing anything out of the ordinary when a good solid hit on any given monster kills it outright. It makes the game quite a bit more dull. Every fight against orcs is pretty much cookie cutter, you slice them up, maybe drop a spell or whatnot on them if you're in a hury or low on hit points, etc. Given that monsters now lack their old time lethality vs the PCs its going to be even more boring. "Yawn, some orcs. OK we concentrate fire on orcs 1 and 2 the first round, and run up and gang kill orc 3 on the 2nd round." Meanwhile what do the orcs do? Die. They aren't even going to get a hit in edgewise that means much.

And reducing short rest to being an hour or a day is not going to make things cool. Its just going to mean that the party runs away for an hour or day to rest up when they're down a little bit instead of resting for 5 minutes like they do now. That just makes DM narrative control even harder than it is currently. Its going in the wrong direction IMHO.

I'm still not convinced by this premise that any of this is really going to speed up the game much either. You're going to have more lower quality encounters and each one still burns up some amount of time. By the time you've equally challenged the party its still going to consume basically about the same time as 4e standard.

Instead of going in this direction I'd go more in a new direction and do a lot more with skill challenges and trap/puzzle type situations. Make the PCs negotiate lots of terrain that requires skill challenges. Make them figure things out. Make each encounter (except maybe a few trivial ones) play into the plot of the story. OD&D was fun in its way, but it was also pretty limiting in what you can do. 4e is more of a quality vs quantity type game and I think its better if you play to its strengths and not its weaknesses.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Just adding: I wonder how much you could retool the "default 4e" by adding more minor quests and exploration skill challenges/trap encounters to the mix? I.e., rely slightly less on all-out fights, and instead have more of those exploration-based events drive what is "an encounter" in order to still get the right number of XPs in the hands of the PCs but have less grindy fights.

Aside from that, all I have to say is that I really, really like the ideas put forth so far in this thread. All great stuff.

It might be important how you reward things here. If there is still XP to be gained for killing every monster, why not do it if you can?

Well, the solutions might be:
- Give only XP fo the challenge/quest, not the monsters
- Have the monsters be something you cannot or do not want to kill.
Maybe you need to steal an item from the city council vaults - you don't really want to kill the guards there, but you might still need to break and enter and take some down.
But you must still have monsters/guads that you can actually run away from.

 

[ren1999]

I Agree

I noticed that module designers have been jacking up the hit points on some monsters, (to equal the total hit points of the party?) Also, the damage monsters do compared to characters of the same level is often too much.

I'm going to try the 1/4th hit points 1/4th experience. Combat takes too long in 4e and many monsters shouldn't be that tough to begin with.

 

[LostSoul]

A Bump

This is an interesting discussion.

Please continue.