D&D 4E 4E - What Rules Need Fixing?

[Nail]

No thanks. Less reliance on treasure, please.

Amen!

I hope they are able to tame the "Gear-dependence" monster of 3.Xe D&D. Kill it, kill it!!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I do as well. The problem is that the game rules do not allow for a non-masterwork magical item.

All magical items have to be masterwork and better crafted. Why?

Mechanically, no particular reason.

It is a not illogical 1eism that an item must be high quality to be enchanted.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I hope they are able to tame the "Gear-dependence" monster of 3.Xe D&D. Kill it, kill it!!

LOL. I have always thought that 3e was a vast improvement in that respect.

(Not saying there are not areas that could stand improvement in 3e with respect to treasure and magic items.)

 

[KarinsDad]

LOL. I have always thought that 3e was a vast improvement in that respect.

I've always thought the opposite. I do not remember "Wealth by Level" charts in 1E and 2E. They may have been there, I just do not remember them. If PCs found stuff, great. If not, oh well. A PC sometimes had just one nice magical item (like a Ring of Regeneration or in those days, a Cloak of Elvenkind) and it was cool.

The fact that the entire game now comes down to a bunch of per-level equations seems to make the game very gear-centric.

 

[frankthedm]

There needs to be less stat damaging. Low end threats can wind up more dangerous by virture of attatcking the ability score. Things like Shadows and Allips can take even high level PCs out very fast.

If shadows weaken those they hit, they can cause fatigue / exhaustion to those they damage, rather than treating someone's STR as a separate pool of HP that barely goes up with level.

Something sucks blood out of you should do a similar thing. HP damage and a fort save to avoid fatigue, then exhaustion. When the HP hit zero, KO like every other attack.

Ray of enfeeblement ought to become a penalty on melee to hit and all damage rolls. Recalculating encumbrance and taking away prerequisites with a 1st level spell makes things slow down more than is worth it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ray of enfeeblement ought to become a penalty on melee to hit and all damage rolls. Recalculating encumbrance and taking away prerequisites with a 1st level spell makes things slow down more than is worth it.

Ditto for Energy Drain. In our house rules, it lowers to hit, etc. as per the normal rules on the first day, but if the save is failed on the second day, the PC just loses XP. He does not lose levels because it takes too long to figure out and is just a mess.

And, it is not entire levels worth of XP, it is a substantially reduced amount. This just means that it takes longer to level up to the next level, but does not destroy the PC in the process.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I've always thought the opposite. I do not remember "Wealth by Level" charts in 1E and 2E. They may have been there, I just do not remember them. If PCs found stuff, great. If not, oh well. A PC sometimes had just one nice magical item (like a Ring of Regeneration or in those days, a Cloak of Elvenkind) and it was cool.

The fact that the entire game now comes down to a bunch of per-level equations seems to make the game very gear-centric.

From my POV, the fact that 2 PCs were often mechanically identical (except for stats, perhaps) meant that gear, gear, gear was the only means of differentiating PCs with any crunch whatsoever.

Feats allow two PC with the exact same stats, even the exact same gear, to be very different functionally.

While there can always be too much of a good thing (e.g. the corner MagickMart), the wealth guidelines (which are, I should emphasize, only guidelines and not rules), the sale price for magic items, and the magic item creation feats imply some degree of player control over gear. I find that experience superior to waiting for a magic item to fall out of the sky so that my PC is allowed to be different from every other PC of the same class.

As for wealth by level in pre-3e, it was certainly there under the covers only even if it was not explicit. First of all, most of your XP was likely to be gained directly from acquiring wealth (1 gp = 1 XP in 1e). Second of all, there were a number of non-rare monsters that were nearly undefeatable if the party lacked the appropriate magic weapon.

I am not really sure why a hidden wealth by level guideline is superior to one that is written down.

It is also my personal experience is that 3e PCs tend to be less wealthy than their 1e/2e equivalents, but obviously these things vary by campaign.

 

[KarinsDad]

From my POV, the fact that 2 PCs were often mechanically identical (except for stats, perhaps) meant that gear, gear, gear was the only means of differentiating PCs with any crunch whatsoever.

Feats allow two PC with the exact same stats, even the exact same gear, to be very different functionally.

I think you are overstating this. Sure, feats give differences. But, they are just one additional difference out of many (ability scores, hps, alignment, equipment, race, gender, personality, class abilities, etc.). Most PCs only have a few feats, but many other abilities. Spells, for example, outshine feats drastically. And in many cases, PCs with everything else the same tend to take similar feats as well.

Skills differentiate PCs as much as feats.

I am not really sure why a hidden wealth by level guideline is superior to one that is written down.

It was written down in every version, but it was done in a different manner.

In 1E/2E, it was wealth by encounter, not wealth by level. So, given an encounter of set difficulty tended to result in set wealth (on average).

One determination.

In 3E, the wealth by encounter is still there, but it is also tempered by wealth by level. So, if the PCs manage to wipe out a Dragon that was actually extremely difficult for them, in 2E they got the treasure. In 3E, there is a chart that says "Mr. DM, you gave them too much treasure, so you had best lower their treasure in future encounters to make up for it". Granted, this is only a guideline, but many DMs do follow it as near canon.

I'm not saying that the guideline itself is a bad thing, but the extreme growth of it is a bit much. PCs can increase a level in a matter of a few game days and can go from 1st to 20th level in less than a game year, but each time they do it, their wealth typically increases by over 50%. How many times in your life have you seen your wealth repeatedly increase by over 50% in a few days or 250000% in less than a year? It's a bit steep. Sure, it's fantasy. But, it's a bit farfetched even then (and yes, there are millionaires and billionaires in the real world who get that wealthy that quickly, but they are not finding their wealth in treasure chests, poorly protected enough that someone else can come along and take it).

Commoners cannot even afford a single Potion, but Adventurers find vast sums of wealth lying all over the place. At least according to the Wealth by Level chart.

 

[Nifft]

IMHO 3e was an "improvement" over previous editions regarding treasure because 3e made the reliance explicit. It had always been the case that you needed +x weapons to harm certain critters. 3e generalized that.

Now I'm glad 3e did that, because once the wealth requirements have been made explicit, the next step IMHO is to make them fungible -- to be able to remove loot / gear / components as a balancing factor, or at least make it so different games with different wealth levels can utilize the same monsters / resources / etc. without unexpected consequences.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Most DMs IME are well aware that certain kinds of opponents yield much more loot for the amount of risk than others. Dumb monsters tend to be poor. Classed humanoid NPCs often have a valuable trinket or two.

So it is not necessarily a matter of giving less treasure as tweaking the mix along the way.

Extreme rapidity of advancement when measured against the pace of the world has been a problem in all editions. While this is potentially worse in 3e, whether you get bizarre results here depends entirely on whether your DM cares or not, not which edition you play.

I do agree with Nifft that the next logical step is to give guidance on how to run high or low wealth campaigns. FREX, MAD is usually thought of as a disadvantage, but in a very high wealth campaign it is a potential advantage -- the Monk can afford to be packed to the gills with stat boosting items in a way that cannot benefit the Fighter. The other side of the coin is that I consider the Monk and Paladin unfun in a low stat and low wealth campaign -- that is a design flaw.