4E Situational Modifiers: Too Many or Not Enough?

[RangerWickett]

There were too many in 3e, there are too many in 4e.

I was heartened by the inclusion of a simple 'combat advantage' modifier that always gave you +2 to attack. I'd hoped there might be something equally simple for buffs, like 'offensive boon,' which gave you +2 to bonus to attack and damage rolls, or 'defensive boon,' which gave you +2 to all defenses. And maybe equivalent 'banes' that would negate a boon or give you a -2 penalty.

Instead we have stuff like "shift 5 squares and make an attack with a +1 bonus for each enemy within 3 squares," or "if you have temporary hit points, add your Con bonus to damage," or "if you're wielding an axe, you get a bonus to opportunity attacks" (but not the interrupt attack a fighter's combat challenge gives you).

So yeah, it could be toned down.

Thankfully 4e only modifies surface stats (attack bonus, or damage, or defenses) and not the structural stats (Str, Dex, etc.). Few things were more frustrating than having bull's strength and enlarge, and then being hit by dispel magic.

"Okay, -4 Str means -2 to attack rolls and -3 to my two-handed damage rolls. I'm smaller, so my Str goes down another 2, so make that -3 attack and -4 damage. But I no longer get the size penalty, and my Dex goes up, so it ends up being -2 attack, -4 damage, +2 AC, +1 Reflex. Oh, wait, my weapon resized, and wait, I was under the effect of slow. It got dispelled too? Okay, wait a sec."

 

[Nifft]

Could I ask for the size of everyone's group?

It's my theory that in 4e group size is what determines encounter complexity, and I'd love to see some data.

Thanks, -- N

 

[Dausuul]

Could I ask for the size of everyone's group?

It's my theory that in 4e group size is what determines encounter complexity, and I'd love to see some data.

Thanks, -- N

My group is 5 people, including the DM - four players.

 

[RangerWickett]

5 here. College educated, including 3 techies and liberal arts guys.

 

[Stalker0]

4-5 players depending, and I do think there are too many situational modifiers in 4e.

Conditions flip on and flip off very frequently, which can get cumbersome to track.

 

[Jhaelen]

Could I ask for the size of everyone's group?

It's my theory that in 4e group size is what determines encounter complexity, and I'd love to see some data.

Our test group had seven players (including three leaders), so there were a lot of modifiers flying around even at level one.

There something else I noticed: Not only are there more conditional modifiers, the conditions themselves are also very convoluted.
Sometimes, I'm reminded of those adverts that boldly claim 'Get XXX for free!' followed by five footnotes that list weird exceptions and conditions, making sure noone will actually get anything for free after all.

 

[wedgeski]

I voted "Just Right" but it's taken a long time for us all to develop brain patterns which can track 4E's modifiers successfully. In essence, we've adopted an unwritten rule similar to Herremann's above: the person granting the bonus needs to ensure that the person receiving the bonus is aware of it.

The bard in one of my groups, for example, will announce in character when she's applied an effect to a bad guy that means everyone gets a bonus to hit it, and then interpose out of character just before someone *actually* trying to hit it rolls the dice. Seems to work for everyone, and it reinforces the Leader role at the table.

Not only that but experience plays its part. "I'm bloodied..." *looks around the table*... "I spend an Action Point..." *looks around the table*...etc.

Meanwhile, the poor old DM has to track all of his modifiers by himself. *sniff*

 

[Davachido]

Much as there is a lot of modifiers and the like, I always keep track of them on a whiteboard and who does them. Thus when it comes round to it I ask if its (save ends) for penalties or just end of turn for penalties/bonuses, then I just rub them off.

For other specific stuff like +1 att with lightning etc, CB does help with that by listing on the card but often I ask players to right down on a seperate note card the list of stuff that can be added. They just have to glance at the card to know which ones they get for the current situation. It does seem daunting at first but if you have it organised it's a lot quicker, so I voted 'just right'.

Compared to 3e where some of our players had pages and pages of seperate things that had lots of pre-calc and confirmation of different modifiers.

 

[Dausuul]

Much as there is a lot of modifiers and the like, I always keep track of them on a whiteboard and who does them. Thus when it comes round to it I ask if its (save ends) for penalties or just end of turn for penalties/bonuses, then I just rub them off.

Wow. Just... wow. No offense to your playstyle - if it works for you, more power to you - but if it ever gets to the point that I need a whiteboard to keep track of all the modifiers flying around, I'm throwing out my 4E books and going back to BECMI.

(Okay, I probably wouldn't actually do that, but I'd start house-ruling the heck out of things in order to simplify the system.)

 

[Storminator]

We have 7 players including DM, with 2 leaders. I've taken to making tokens with the bonus on them. If I hit with a Righteous Brand I hand the token to the player with the bonus. It has the +4, that it's a power bonus and when it ends written on the token. When it's over they hand it back. I've made a couple tent cards for encounter long effects.

My DM made a nifty stack of condition cards and I'm going to make some "duration tokens" so we can slap a condition card in front of a player and put a token on it (save ends, end of monster's turn, etc). We have been writing those conditions on the battle mat in front of the player, so this will be about the same.

Over all I'm feeling more open to experiment with the fiddly bits of RPGs than I have in a long time.

PS