D&D 4E Brainstorming new 4e subsystems

Stalker0

Legend
Remember in 3rd edition the explosion of new abilities and spells that came out of the swift/immediate action mechanic? That was a subsystem that allowed others to create a myriad of new things.

This thread is designed to do just that for 4th edition. Just as the brutal property we have seen previewed will allow people to create new kinds of weapons, what other mechanics can we introduce that will open the door for the imagination of others?

The idea of this thread is not to create new weapons, but new categories of weapon. Not new powers, but new ways that powers could be used so others can craft them.

Here are my first few attempts:

Heroic Powers: These powers gain some benefit if you are using them while spending an action point.

Combination Powers: These encounter powers or dailies get some benefit if you use them right after using a specific at-will power.

Patient Powers: These powers gain some benefit if you did not attack at all last turn.

Status Dependent Weapons: These weapons gain a bonus if used against a target with a specific status effect. For example, crippling weapon gains a +1 to attack rolls against dazed or stunned targets.

Status Helping Weapons: These weapons gain a bonus when used in conjunction with a power that causes a status effect. Example: A barbed weapon that grants a +1 to attack rolls in conjunction with powers that cause slowing or immobilizing effects.

Minor Powers: Instead of getting 1 new encounter power, you could get 3 minor powers for example, each of them working once per encounter and providing a much smaller bonus. Or a power that could be used multiple times per encounter...but not at will. Further, some of these might be gainable by a feat. Example: As a minor action, once per encounter, gain +1 to your speed.

Milestone Powers: You can get this instead of a daily. Weaker than a daily, but usable every milestone.

Healing Surge Feats: Allows you to spend a healing surge to gain some extra bonus to your actions.

Teamwork Powers: Gains a special bonus if used in the same round as another teamwork power.
 

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Heroic Powers and Healing Surge Powers, as you describe them here, are both things that have already been officially done. Sure, mostly in a small way, but they are things that are there and so quite obviously have have potential.

I would be against Minor Powers and Milestone Powers in my game, though. Unless something official (in other words, heavily playtested) came out that functioned like those, I don't like them much. I would only grudgingly allow them then as it is generally my habit to allow official material. Don't get me wrong, though, they are both still fine ideas.
 

Replenishing Powers: Those encounter and daily powers are somewhat weaker than their normal counterparts, but have a chance to restore themselves depending on some factor. (for example, after a critical hit or spent action point)

heroic powers - I would rename that to avoid confusion with heroic tier. Perhaps gambit powers?

Hivemind Powers: You can swap a hivemind power with another such power possessed by another character that is up to X squares away as a minor action.

Fatality Powers: Attack powers only. If you kill with such power you gain some benefit until end of encounter.
 
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I can see "feat families" gaining popularity:

Feat Families: Two or three feats across two or three tiers, with the feat from the higher tier improving on the original in every way. Instead of purchasing both feats, the lower-tier feat can be retrained for the higher tiers.

For example, "Improved Reflexes (Heroic)" grants a +1 bonus to Reflex. At 11th-level, retrain for "Lightning Reflexes (Paragon)". At 21st-level, retrain for "Instantaneous Reflexes" - a +3 bonus.

At first glance, it would be just as easy to adopt the Weapon Focus model and have the feat improve at each tier. However, imagine if the feats "Cleave" and "Great Cleave" were introduced. If "Great Cleave" is only worth one feat, Cleave could be available at Heroic for retraining into Great Cleave at 11th-level. That way, the two feats with two different effects are kept separate (reduces confusion) but you still only have to spend one feat on Great Cleave.
 

The other day I was looking at Magic cards for inspiration, and I saw the Flashback mechanic. From that, I got a similar idea to a couple posted above: the daily power would recharge after two milestones. It's like the one where it recharges every milestone, but since it's less frequent the power itself can be a little stronger. This should usually end up being a 'twice per day' power, and actually encourages the players to go longer. The every-milestone powers might as well, but they might not be concerned if they've already used it twice. If the player has to wait for two milestones (so the second use would be available starting in the fifth encounter of the day), the player would constantly be striving to stretch out the adventuring day so he can get his second usage. If each player had one such power, then their adventuring days would be consistently long.

Another idea is from this thread. One idea there is to make 'attacks' using your skills as your attack modifier, or using some strange number as the defense you're attacking, such as [encounter level + 10].

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Focus Based Effects: Characters would have a changeable numerical quantity, called a "focus." This focus value would start at zero at the beginning of an encounter and could go up (or in some cases down into the negatives). The meaning of this would be different for different classes - for example martial classes might be "offense/defense", magic classes could be "magical charge level," etc. There would be powers and ways to alter your focus, and then powers that depend on focus (for example, if you are in a "defensive" focus you could activate a power that adds your focus to your AC).
 

I have a suggestions though it might be a little dark:

Rituals: Ritual Sacrifice to mitigate cost. Like a druid opening up an animal to see the future or, of course, the obvious. I suppose this is an evil campaign thing (as NPC's can sacrifice others for whatever reason though I suppose some mechanical symmetry is always nice).
 

the daily power would recharge after two milestones. It's like the one where it recharges every milestone, but since it's less frequent the power itself can be a little stronger. This should usually end up being a 'twice per day' power, and actually encourages the players to go longer. The every-milestone powers might as well, but they might not be concerned if they've already used it twice. If the player has to wait for two milestones (so the second use would be available starting in the fifth encounter of the day), the player would constantly be striving to stretch out the adventuring day so he can get his second usage. If each player had one such power, then their adventuring days would be consistently long.
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I must say that I like this idea, although you would probably have all the players using the power at the first possible moment, in order to have it recharge ASAP. this means that adventures would have to be a certain length to ensure that pc's have their '1/2 dailies' for a boss-fight.
 

I must say that I like this idea, although you would probably have all the players using the power at the first possible moment, in order to have it recharge ASAP. this means that adventures would have to be a certain length to ensure that pc's have their '1/2 dailies' for a boss-fight.

Actually, I was thinking it would recharge after the second milestone of the day, not the second milestone after it was used. The power would recharge at that point, regardless of when during the day it had previously been used. Of course, if it hadn't been used, then the 'recharge' is useless.

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