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

[Atlatl Jones]

The only specific rules that I think need to stay are the ones that make D&D D&D, and even those can be tweaked to improve gameplay.

One thing that no one has mentioned yet is spells that have discrete effects. As much as I like spontaneous magic systems like mage and ars magica, it just wouldn't be D&D without a big list of spells at the back of the book. I do want them to get rid of vancian "fire and forget" magic though. I like the AE approach.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

king_ghidorah is correct, those of us who have been playing other games have been seeing feat-like mechanics since the 80s. D&D 3e brought the game up to date to vanilla RPG design philosophies and technologies of circa 1990.

The open gaming license is the one true innovation that has zoomed us to the cutting edge of the 21st century, at least in certain respects.

What is slightly unusual about 3e Feats is that they are wrapped into a system that has Skills, Feats, Class abilities as more or less distinct bins. Arguably that has some degree of redundancy. Most games just blend Skills and Feat together into Skills, although some Skills are much more coarse in their effects than others. Or we could go the other direction and remove Classes entirely, leaving Skills adn Feats only.

I do like Feats. It holds a middle ground where the character can make modest but qualitatively significant changes.

In my ideal world, Feats would only give big tactics shifting bonuses like Mobility, Combat Reflexes, Mounted Combat, Spring Attack, etc. and we would get away from +1 or +2 to X type bonuses.

 

[KarinsDad]

king_ghidorah is correct, those of us who have been playing other games have been seeing feat-like mechanics since the 80s. D&D 3e brought the game up to date to vanilla RPG design philosophies and technologies of circa 1990.

The issue TSR/WotC was facing in 1997 was that the industry no longer had many game systems that had classes.

Classes were considered archaic at the time. But, if WotC got rid of classes, they would basically destroy one of the major sacred cows of DND and it would be considered a GURPS Clone no matter how they did it.

So, they added skills and feats in order to add versatility to the game. They made it a Hybrid of DND 2E and GURPS/HERO/other systems. Not totally a class system with no extra options. Not totally an ability purchase system like the others. A Hybrid system with class abilities plus additional skills/feats purchase during certain levels.

Class system rpg computer games with additional abilities first showed up around 1991, but were few and far between then.

So yes, the Hybrid concept was not unique to DND 3E and actually showed up in class level computer RPGs games first because the computer game designers saw the same problem that WotC saw. To maintain classes, they needed to add extra abilities for character uniqueness.

The Class/Feat/Skill Hybrid concept did not show up in the games king_ghidorah mentioned, just the perk/talent/feat concept. But, it is not feats that were important to DND 3E, it was the ability to maintain the class system in an industry that thought they were old fashioned by bolting on an add-on system of feats and skills which allow for additional versatility and character uniqueness. It was merging the two drastically different types of RPGs into a single Hybrid one.

 

[Nail]

Things I Like in 3.xe D&D:

1) the d20 system (d20+mod vs. DC)
2) Ability score purchasing (rolling 3d6 is lame)
3) PCs and Monsters using the same (class/level/feat/skill/equipment/etc) system
4) Classes (rather than everything being point buy)
4) b) The Sorcerer (the beginnings of true flexibility of a spell caster)
5) Multiclassing (and multiclassing penalties)
6) XP dependent on CR and CL
7) Feats
8) AoOs and Miniature play
9) Consistent spell levels and guidelines for all major sepll-casters.
10) ToB:Bo9S Martial Adept Manuevers (but play-tested for balance this time!)

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The issue TSR/WotC was facing in 1997 was that the industry no longer had many game systems that had classes.

The open question is whether the particulars of 3e were cobbled from off the shelf pieces that could be found lying around the RPG industry, or whether there is a direct conscious mimicking of CRPGs as you suggest (if I understood you correctly).

This is rather difficult to resolve decisively, as CRPGs have always aggressively and very consciously borrowed mechanics from RPGs.

As to the question of class-based systems in existence in 1997, FASA released Earthdawn in 1993 and Highlander Games revived Chivalry & Sorcery in 1997. While these were not resounding commercial successes, they were both far from obscure.

These were both skill-based systems at their heart, that happened to use a class framework to control the pacing of access to skills.

Earthdawn was very consciously mimicking the feel of D&D with souped up High Fantasy elements as well as unapolegetic kick down the dungeon door adventures. Interestingly, FASA used class-based system, in spite of the fact they were springboarding off of the success of Shadowrun -- an almost pure Skill based system (except for certain wrinkles about magic access).

 

[KarinsDad]

The open question is whether the particulars of 3e were cobbled from off the shelf pieces that could be found lying around the RPG industry, or whether there is a direct conscious mimicking of CRPGs as you suggest (if I understood you correctly).

I suspect it is a little of each.

They probably used many sources for their ideas. For example, although Fallout was not class based, it was level based and had Perks every 3 levels. It came out in 1997, the year 3E development started. With feats being every 3 levels, it's possible that Fallout was an influence.

I doubt they strongly used GURPS or HEROES for their models since both of those are point purchase systems, both have both abilities and flaws of various sorts, and the ideas of flaws (such as being colorblind) did not enter the 3E picture.


Regardless, I think feats are a very good idea (for the purpose of adding versatility). However, I think the 3E implementation of feats was poorly done. Course, it was their first time.

For example, Fighters get all armor and all standard weapons.

That makes sense.

Spell casters should get all "standard" item creation feats (maybe more for Sorcerers/Wizards/Bards, less for Druids/Clerics).

Then, characters who multiclass from a non-spell casting class to a spell casting class might be able to pick up one or two item creation feats when they do that, but not all of them without spending feats at later levels.

Characters who multiclass from a spell casting class to a Fighter type class might be able to pick up an armor proficiency and/or a weapon proficiency when they do that, but again, not all of them.

This is what Star Wars does for multiclassing and I suspect that 4E might do something similar.

But, the problem with the feat system is that SO many feats are created that PCs have a hard time doing fairly standard RPG type things, otherwise they restrict their PC from doing other things they want to do. With several hundred feats, it's a bit of a mess. They should get rid of a lot of the feats that are just D20 modifiers and keep the ones that have real flavor and advantage. They could also get rid of the Improved Feat concept. Cleave and Great Cleave could be one where the feat emulates Cleave when first acquired and emulates Great Cleave 6 levels later or some such.

There are many ways to clean up and balance the feat system.

 

[Nifft]

They probably used many sources for their ideas. For example, although Fallout was not class based, it was level based and had Perks every 3 levels. It came out in 1997, the year 3E development started. With feats being every 3 levels, it's possible that Fallout was an influence.

Trivia: XP chart is identical, too.

- - -

Anyway, stuff I want to keep:

Item Crafting -- I like that there are rules for this, though the specific rules could be streamlined / made more accessible.

Multiclassing -- The base mechanic is good. Again, specifics could use streamlining. I like how SW Saga and ToB:Bo9S handle it. This includes the unified XP table.

Metamagic -- The idea that you can customize your spell list is great. The cost is often too high (or too low), but that's an issue of tuning. I want something like Metamagic (or Spell Templates) in 4e.

Skills -- Seems too basic and not particularly threatened, but still, I like the mechanic. It was a good step up from 2e, and it mostly works, though at high levels skills can become less relevant.

Scaling XP Awards -- Again, simple, but a big improvement over 2e, IMHO. In fact, the whole idea of CR is great. (It'd be nice if CR were more reliable and each critter / trap / encounter had caveats about non-standard party composition, but even without such decoration, it's much better than nothing.)

Combat Tactics Round-by-Round for the heavy hitters -- More! More! More! Even if I decide to do things differently, I always appreciate the advice.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

Trivia: XP chart is identical, too.

Interesting. That is a simple mathematic progression, but to use the exact same one???

It seems that Fallout might have been a strong influence on 3E. Are there any other similarities?

I noticed that Endurance / 2 is added to hit points in Fallout. Similar to (Con - 10) / 2 is added to hit points in 3E. Fallout also rounds down here.

Skills -- Seems too basic and not particularly threatened, but still, I like the mechanic. It was a good step up from 2e, and it mostly works, though at high levels skills can become less relevant.

Here is one I do not want them to keep as is. I want them to go to a simple progression system like the Star Wars game. This is done for BAB and saves now, why not skills? This only works real well if they trim down the skill list as well (e.g. combine Spot, Listen, and Search into a single Perception skill, having to purchase all 3 to be an alert PC was one of the "Arrrggghhh" moments of 3E). They did go out of their way to add too many rules in 3E and I'm glad they will be trimming some of that down. Balance, Climb, Jump, Swim, and even Tumble could be combined into Athletics, etc. Open Locks and Disarm Traps into some form of Mechanics skill. Having different levels of ability in these types of things is not really necessary. The model does not need to be that detailed and it would make leveling up or creating a high level NPC a lot lot easier.

 

[Nail]

.... The model does not need to be that detailed and it would make leveling up or creating a high level NPC a lot lot easier.

Leveling up should be easier, true.

...But we also want choices at most levels too, right? For example, I find it quite fun to chose new feats or spells. I find it quite unfun to figure out the skill point distribution each level.....especially for NPCs. Eeeek.

 

[Nifft]

Here is one I do not want them to keep as is. I want them to go to a simple progression system like the Star Wars game.

I actually don't want either. D&D multi-classing is more complex, but also much more rewarding for high-skill second classes. SW Saga is simple, but it's painful to expand your skill options after 1st level.

I'd like to see something like: when you multi-class, you either gain a starting feat and a Talent, or training in a number of new class skills (which is less than you'd get at 1st level).

I also hate the granularity of some of the skills. IMHO SW Saga did a much better job lumping things into logical packages. My one complaint is Athletics should replace Jump, Swim, Climb and Endurance. Then Athletics would be just as awesomely tempting as Computer Use or Acrobatics.

But the basics of skills I like: some classes get more, many checks are opposed rolls.

Cheers, -- N