D&D 4E Changing the Combat Parameters of 4th Edition

[Garthanos]

One of the issues with all this speed up combat duration stuff is that certain powers and abilities that I like that are triggered when the player or enemy are bloodied seem basically undermined completely.

Additionally one of my ideas for speeding things up is an idea of that sort which instead of number massaging things enable wild and extreme "desperation powers" which effectively trigger when the fight gets too drawn out.

The intention being instead of slogging... to follow the fantasy combat tropes closer.

 

[Garthanos]

CONVERSION GUIDE

I think I have something solid enough to start trying out at my own game table. In order for others who are interested to try to use the same game changes to make it easier to use the 5th Edition material that is being produced and apply it to your own 4th Edition setting, I have summarized all the proposed changes (as well as some optional ones) in a 4.5 Edition Conversion Guide.

4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

Very professionally presented by the way!

 

[Myrhdraak]

Forgot to add the rule changes related to Healing Word and surgeless healing. Now it is in the Conversion Guide.

4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Mondaynightgamer]

My group and I have read over your conversion and are very much impressed with what you've done. You have a lot of data and good thoughts. I like that you've opened your ideas up for critical analysis as well. Something I was wondering is that you have these PDFs of 4.5 books. Do you/can you share them? My group is already talking about running a new campaign using the 4.5 rule set you posted. Thank you for all your hard work!

 

[Myrhdraak]

I added some more minor things that I have been including in my own game. I have also started analyzing what the impact would be to step away from the bounded accuracy level progress at Epic level, and there use the normal 4th Edition rules. The idea is to have Epic level play have a different feeling than heroic and paragon levels. At Epic level higher level monsters would be tougher as they would not only do much more damage, but you will also have a harder time hitting them due to the faster "To-Hit" and Defense progression.

4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Myrhdraak]

I have now created a 4th Edition version of the excel sheet in order to more easily compare the two systems. Below I show some of the results of the applied 4.5 Edition changes.


COMBAT LENGTH
One of the ambitions I had with changing the rules of 4th Edition was to reduce the average length of battles. This was mainly achieved by reducing the HP of monsters and characters to 75% of the HP progression used in 4th Edition (1st level characters and monsters have the same HP in 4.5 and 4th Editon). Below you can see that we have managed to reduce the average time with 2 rounds in Paragon and Epic levels, keeping the average length within the sweat spot of 5 rounds.



4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Myrhdraak]

BALANCE OVER ALL LEVELS
Another goal was to try to get rid of the problems encountered in Epic level play of 4th Edition, where DMs was forced to use monster 3 to 8 levels over the party level to really challenge them. As can be seen in the tables below, we have managed to get rid of the 4th Edition Paragon “valley”, i.e. that the game get harder at Paragon level, but get much easier at Epic level play. In 4.5 Edition we have managed to get this much more balanced across all levels. Simulated below is the 5 Encounter goal of 4th Edition with a monster of equal level as the party, and the 4.5 Edition is a 3 Encounter example with a monster of equal level to the party.



4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Myrhdraak]

FLEXIBLE ENCOUNTER BUILDING
Another goal was to make 4th Edition to mimic the 5th Edition game play, i.e. turning the 5 encounters per day with 4 short rest (1+1+1+1+1) adventuring day in 4th Edition to the 5th Edition 6 (2+2+2) to 9 (3+3+3) encounters per day with 2 short rests. By doing this change, it would be easier to apply my 4.5 Edition game with 5th Edition adventures.

4th Edition Simulation
If we start to look at simulating 4th Edition game play in the 3 (1+1+1), 6 (1+1+1+1+1+1) and 9 (1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1) encounter scenario using standard 4th Edition setup we get the following results:



We have to adjust the monster levels from Monster Level +2, down to M-2 level compared to party level, in the three scenarios and we see that the average battle length is reduced from 7.26 rounds per encounter, down to 4.11 rounds per encounter in the 9 Encounter scenario. However, with an assumption that the average game table time is half an hour per round in 4th Edition (yes, I know it can be done faster, but in order to compare I use the same in both examples anyway, so it really does not matter). We can see that we get an adventuring day that increases from 11 hour table time to 14 hours and then 18.5 hours in the 9 encounter scenario.

4.5 Edition Simulation
If we now look at the 4.5 Edition simulation of the same 3 (1+1+1), 6 (2+2+2), and 9 (3+3+3) encounter scanrios using 2 short rests during the adventuring day, we get the results below:



As can be seen 4.5 Edition has been built for the 3 Encounters. We use monsters of equal level to the party in the 3 Encounter scenario and then reduce the monster level to M-3 and M-5 when using more encounters between each short rest. The battle length is reduced from an average 3.99 (7.26) rounds per encounter down to only 2.5 (4.11) rounds per encounter in the 9 Encounter scenario. This has a big effect on game table time, going from 6 (11) hours, 9 (14) hours and as high as 11 (18.5) hours for the 9 Encounter Scenario.

Flexibility Conclusion
We have created a game that allows you as a DM to more easily mix and match long tactical encounters, playing like traditional 4th Edition, with a game play more like 5th Edition with small short encounters that still tax the party resources and take little table time to resolve. We have maybe not reached the 2 rounds table time I am hearing from 5th Edition, but 2.5 rounds are not that bad either (for being 4th Edition rules).

4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Myrhdraak]

ENCOUNTER HEALING
In order to achieve this flexibility some of the changes I had to do was to try to reduce the amount of healing the party could do during an Encounter. This was achieved by reducing the Healing Surge value to only 1/6th of the character Max HP, and also reducing the effect of Healing Word (or similar class feature powers). These allow massive encounter based healing. By limiting this to only be regained after an one hour short rest and then running several encounters between each rest I managed to reduce the healing capability per encounter. Another impact was getting rid of surgeless healing, and requiring all healing to have a cost in healing surges.
The difference can be seen in the graphs below. While 4.5 Edition generally have less healing than 4th Edition (see the two graphs to the left), the big difference is when you run the 9 Encounter scenario, where the 4.5 Edition healing greatly reduces the ability to heal per Encounter (see the two graphs to the right).



4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Myrhdraak]

MONSTER DAMAGE
Another thing that we needed to change in order to achieve the equal threat level of monsters at all levels was the damage output of the 4.5 Edition monsters. By reducing monster damage during Heroic levels, and then increasing them during Paragon levels, and then even more during Epic levels, we get a curve that compensates the 4th Edition Paragon level “valley” seen previously and making the threat level more balanced over all monster levels.



4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak