D&D 4E Adding a little 4E to my Pathfinder

[Tom Ponzi]

Ok, I am wearing my flame retardant shorts, but go easy all the same.

Now that I have your attention, I was thinking of adding two teeny, weeny little bits of 4E to my PFRPG.

1) Marking - My fighter loved the idea that threatened opponents ignored him at their peril.

2) Moving my allies about the board on my go with Powers like Covering Attack and Get Over here.

I was toying with the idea of making these feats as I did not really want to make them class abilities.

Here are my thoughts so far.

Mark - As a swift action you mark an enemy you have just attacked (not necessarily hit). Until the beginning of your next turn, should that enemy make a melee attack against someone else, and they are threatened by you, you get an attack of opportunity.

Greater Mark - As mark above except that it is now a free action and the target suffers a -2 penalty on all melee attacks where you are not the target. Prerequisites: Mark, BAB6+?? Maybe more??

Covering Attack - As a standard action you make a melee attack at -2. If you hit, an ally adjacent to the target gets to make a 5-foot step as an immediate action.

Get Over Here - As Covering attack, but this time it is in place of a melee attack, rather than a standard action. Can only be applied once per target per round, but can be used more than once per round. Prerequsites: Covering Attack, BAB 6+??

Good idea, bad idea? Have I just broken the game?

 

[kitsune9]

Hey Tom,

Welcome to the boards! I don't think you've broken the game. If you want to take your Pathfinder game and add more 4e-ishyness, go for it. I wouldn't have mind some way to have smaller stat blocks myself....

In looking at these as maybe feats, I think the ideas are fairly cool.

 

[mach1.9pants]

yeah I'd love a monster generator which makes close enough monsters with the discrete 4E still stat blocks. That is probably the main thing for me as a DM.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

you picked 2 things i dislike, but it's your gaame. If you want to use such rules there isn't a thing wrong with useing them with it

 

[Starbuck_II]

Ok, I am wearing my flame retardant shorts, but go easy all the same.

Now that I have your attention, I was thinking of adding two teeny, weeny little bits of 4E to my PFRPG.

1) Marking - My fighter loved the idea that threatened opponents ignored him at their peril.

2) Moving my allies about the board on my go with Powers like Covering Attack and Get Over here.

I was toying with the idea of making these feats as I did not really want to make them class abilities.

Here are my thoughts so far.

Mark - As a swift action you mark an enemy you have just attacked (not necessarily hit). Until the beginning of your next turn, should that enemy make a melee attack against someone else, and they are threatened by you, you get an attack of opportunity.

Greater Mark - As mark above except that it is now a free action and the target suffers a -2 penalty on all melee attacks where you are not the target. Prerequisites: Mark, BAB6+?? Maybe more??

Covering Attack - As a standard action you make a melee attack at -2. If you hit, an ally adjacent to the target gets to make a 5-foot step as an immediate action.

Get Over Here - As Covering attack, but this time it is in place of a melee attack, rather than a standard action. Can only be applied once per target per round, but can be used more than once per round. Prerequsites: Covering Attack, BAB 6+??

Good idea, bad idea? Have I just broken the game?

I think these might be good feats, but I think Get Over Here is not done like the 4E power.

 

[jreyst]

you picked 2 things i dislike, but it's your gaame. If you want to use such rules there isn't a thing wrong with useing them with it

Completely agree. It's your game, do as you like and whatever you enjoy. I'm with Hunter in Darkness though, you picked two of the specific things I specifically dislike about 4E lol.

 

[Rechan]

I'm not as familiar with PF fighters. But if they get talents or extra stuff, I can easily see dropping these things into their class features.

Otherwise? I think they make great feats. These look fine to me.

You might even beef up the Mark feats with something like this:

Improved Mark
Pre-req: Marking

Benefit: Not only do you get an extra attack if the target does not attack you, but if the target takes a 5' step away from you, you may make an attack of opportunity.

 

[jreyst]

you might even beef up the mark feats with something like this:

gahhhh!!! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!!!!

 

[Remathilis]

I added the bloodied condition and 1-1-1 diagonal movement.

I also added 3e-style action points.

Its nice to have a house-rule list go from 7 pages to 1. Course, I'm sure that will change as the game progresses...

 

[erisred]

No, you aren't breaking Pathfinder with that...IMO, anyway, but I'm not a big "rules as written" sort of guy, anyway.

I've been playing/DMing for over 30 years now, and I've always used something like Marked...if an attacker is in melee with a "target" and the target ignores or moves away the attacker gets an attack of opportunity and/or some positive dm's on a to hit roll. For me and the folks I play with that's always been common sense. Works that way on ranged attacks, too.

As for "covering attack/fire", sure! A PC would have to say something like , "I'm covering Dak, so he can move back." or "Me and Bill charge the Orcs to block them, Joe get your ass behind us!" Then we "work it out"...sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's common sense.

For us, it's not so much rules, as it is common sense that steers things.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Making it a feat makes sense, though you might also want to consider making it available without the feat (at a price).
It could be a combat maneuver - maybe take a -2 penalty to attack for getting the chance for the opportunity attack.

You could allow people that take the Defensive Stance or Total Defense action to apply the dodge bonus to an ally instead yourself. And the same might be possible for Combat Expertise (if that still works in a way it used to.)

I would not allow the bonuses to allies or the penalties to enemies to stack, just to be on the safe side.

A fun thought: Create a feat that increase the dodge bonus granted to an ally by Defensive Stance/TotalDefense/Combat Expertise. Now you can have to Fighters fighting alongside, covering each other backs. They get a benefit from it and it seems very... stylish.

Considering the findings presented in Trailblazer*, I'd suggest that you create feats for higher levels that chance the bonuses from AC benefits or attack penalties to damage mitigation in form of damage resistance.

*) Basically - at high levels, monsters will hit most of the time, so defensive benefits that just manipulate the chance to hit have will likely have little impact, why temporary hit points or damage reduction might help a lot more.

 

[bouncyhead]

We're using passive perception, bloodied. I'm thinking about action points.

 

[Drkfathr1]

Sounds good as feats, I see nothing wrong with that! The good thing about that is as feats, players can take them if they want, and aren't stuck with them if they don't want.

I'm actually considering adding healing surges, the condensed skill list, saves as defenses, and attack rolls for spells...

 

[WesSchneider]

All really neat ideas. I really like the whole cobbling the best from various systems approach. Heck, if we could, I might even be tempted to get some Call of Cthulhu brand sanity stuff in the system. But we'll save that for the day when all game systems are open and we can make PathDungeons & Cthulhus (Cthulhus & Dragonfinders?).

You know, as an aside since we're talking about things 4E does nicely. One thing 4E has done quite well is attracted a number of folks who have never played an RPG to the game. I think an incredible example of this is over on the Penny Arcade forums, where you see tons of threads from folks saying they've never played a tabletop RPG but 4E really appeals to them. This makes sense for a variety of reasons - totally not being snarky here - but I do think there are elements of 4E that appeal to folks well trained in video game RPGs and MMORPGs, and it doesn't hurt that the guys running Penny Arcade and the characters in the comics are 4E fans as well. That's all very cool actually, as in my opinion anything that gets new players invested in the hobby is a total win. The quandary I've been mulling over recently, though, is how do you introduce someone who's played video games all of their lives and has just now been introduced to 4E to other game systems? Sure, in the game stores and person to person works, but I'm starting to feel like there's a very insular sub-community that's formed - folks that don't read ENWorld, don't know or really care about the history of the game, and just play the game they've just found and like while discussing it on forums formerly devoted primarilly to video games. (Again, I think the PA forums are one good example of this, but honestly I've still developing my hypothesis here.) And really, that's all cool, but I think there's the potential to find some very interested and energetic fans should someone figure out how to crack that video-gamer-turned-RPG-gamer shell.

 

[EATherrian]

All really neat ideas. I really like the whole cobbling the best from various systems approach. Heck, if we could, I might even be tempted to get some Call of Cthulhu brand sanity stuff in the system. But we'll save that for the day when all game systems are open and we can make PathDungeons & Cthulhus (Cthulhus & Dragonfinders?).

Where can I preorder said hefty tome? I've actually been tinkering with sanity and fear rules for my games. Once I feel they're perfected I may have to post them.

 

[WesSchneider]

Where can I preorder said hefty tome? I've actually been tinkering with sanity and fear rules for my games. Once I feel they're perfected I may have to post them.

Just a heads up too, our GameMastery Guide is going to cover a lot of GM options and subsystems, with Sanity being one I'm particularly excited about.

 

[Drkfathr1]

Just a heads up too, our GameMastery Guide is going to cover a lot of GM options and subsystems, with Sanity being one I'm particularly excited about.

Awesome.

And as to your comments on 4E bringing new people to the game, I can agree. It's funny, but I kind of see 4E as "Basic D&D" now, and Pathfinder as "Advanced D&D". Hopefully 4E will be the gateway for many that will find their way to Pathfinder.

 

[EATherrian]

Just a heads up too, our GameMastery Guide is going to cover a lot of GM options and subsystems, with Sanity being one I'm particularly excited about.

Sounds good. I just hope it's not better than mine or I'll have wasted my time.