D&D 4.5E (Not Essentials)

[Nemesis Destiny]

There are quite a few things I'd liked to have seen them do with a theoretical 4.5e

Eliminate the Cruft - Get rid of junk feats, powers, items, etc. These things should be powerful and dramatic, IMO, especially Feats and Items. Powers should have more options for scaling, rather than replacement in each tier.

Streamline Similarities - roll in a lot of the similar powers by power source into common lists. This includes less base classes and more subclasses. Obviously some powers could be unique to certain subclasses, but for the most part, powers can be pretty universal and subclasses can differentiate based on keywords and rider effects.

Math Tweaks - most of the math works pretty well, certainly far better than other editions, but there are still holes.

More Flexibility - in all aspects. Short of assassinating ability scores entirely, giving players more choice of stats to use with powers (based on power source and or role) and skills (many have justifications for multiple stats) would go a long way to satisfying this for me. Next is taking this in the opposite direction, which I dislike greatly.

Nix the Item Treadmill - I think Inherent Bonuses are the way to go. I've implemented a way to make them compatible with items in my games, but I'm sure someone paid to do this could do better. This is less of an issue if the best part of an item is its effect rather than its plus. I also really like alternative rewards.

Language Cleanup - Some terms, like Healing Surges, are just awkward and contentious and should be replaced. Other things, like Extended Rests, are incredibly powerful tools that suffer from a lack of good explanation on how to use them for best effect in the game. This should be fixed. Skill Challenges are another aspect of the game that suffers from this.

Rituals Are Awesome - They are a great addition and should be given a thorough tuning pass. I have converted them to burning surges in my games (which decreases as you out-level the ritual). Martial Practices are also cool, and would see more use if the feat cost weren't there.

Surge Flexibility - I've houseruled many more uses for healing surges. They're a great and very flexible meta-mechanic that can serve many functions, from power-recharging, to healing, to fuel for rituals, to story pacing. They are an under-leveraged resource in stock 4e.

Three Pillars - Early in talk of Next, much was said about the Three Pillars of character creation: Race, Class, Theme/Background. I think more emphasis needs to be placed on Race and Theme where it concerns build options. Perhaps additional powers or on-demand power-swaps coming from Theme and Race could fill this void. Other ideas include drawing skills from Theme/Background rather than class, or having each one contribute to skills in some way. Tweaks made to the relative importance of the two neglected pillars should remain significant for more of the character's career.

I could go on and on, but I'll leave it at that for now. I've seen quite a few ideas in this thread that I like and are similar to my own. I hold out hope that someday WotC will decide to revisit this edition and give it a revamp. Not holding my breath though. Maybe someday we'll get a Paizo-like answer to this issue.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'd go a lot farther. The 'Trained' bonus needs to be drastically reduced. In general, skill bonuses need to fall inside a narrower envelope.

At first level, it's by no means inconceivable that the gnome rogue in your party has a +11 Stealth check while the dwarf cleric in heavy armor has -1. That's a 12 point swing already, and it's only going to get worse as the party levels. With those numbers, a DC 15 stealth check is extremely difficult for the cleric and almost impossible to fail for the rogue.

As people were noting in a recent thread on level 27 characters, skill challenges become very dangerous in epic tier play as the gaps widen enormously!

The simple fix is to tighten the numbers up and then not have them advance with level. A more interesting fix might be to allow players to train in new skills as they level. Of course this might simply turn into an arms race as the rogue trains 'stealth' every time.

I'm not really wedded to a specific approach but there's gotta be a better way.

What I would consider if you want to keep modifiers not too extreme is looking into stuff like:
- Rerolls
- Ignorning Dice Results that are below a certain threshold

For example:

Skill Training: You gain a +3 bonus to the skill check, and can treat any d20 roll below 5 as a 5.
Skill Focus: You gain a +2 bonus to the skill check and, and if your d20 roll is below 10, you may roll a second time and keep the higher result of both rolls.

This allows trained people to skill achieve better results than untrained people, and grants them more consistency in their results*, but keeps the gaps between trained and untrained people lower.


*) Which to me is a big issue - I dislike the spread in results possible for a well-trained character, I would expect more consistent results for trained people.

 

[captpike]

one idea I had was instead of giving trained people a bonus you let them roll two d20s.

it lets trained people be more consistent and lowers the ceiling on skills

 

[sabrinathecat]

*) Which to me is a big issue - I dislike the spread in results possible for a well-trained character, I would expect more consistent results for trained people.

Even Han Solo can step on the only dry twig in the Endor rain forest.

I thought it was funny as hell in one game when a 6-yo child with 2d in brawling parry out-rolled a wookie with 9d of brawling skill.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Even Han Solo can step on the only dry twig in the Endor rain forest.

What if I play Person of Interest - The Moscow Team, instead of Star Wars?

If you insist, you could have a "natural 1 stays a natural 1" rule.

 

[sabrinathecat]

The Game system doesn't matter. My point was there should always a chance for a blunder or extremely bad luck.

 

[Uller]

A way to speed up combat without losing the range of choices for each character.

After 5e playtest started I introduced my son to it. He had only played 4e up to that point and liked it but wasn't excited about it. He loves 5e...because in one session we can play several minor combats and do some RP that advances the story.

But we stuck with 4e to finish up our campaign with the following changes:

All PCs had healing surges divided by 1/3 round up - too much healing really slows combat...there were some other changes related to feats and powers around healing surges. I'd have to dig them out.

We did away with minions and instead "Miniony" monsters were just normal monsters with 1/4-1/3 normal hit points and tougher leader type monsters had about 1/2-2/3 normal hp. So a typical fight might be 4 orcs at 1/3 hp and one or two tougher orcs with 1/2 normal hp. The result is a character could take out lower level monsters with a single at-will hit. Monsters around the same level go down with 2-3 at-will hits or 1-2 encounter hits. Monsters higher level than the party take more punishment.

We also emphasized that when it is your turn, you must say what you do, then count out moves and areas...no counting out spaces, weighing options, etc. If you don't know what to do on your turn, just default to a basic attack...and it is no big deal because a basic attack now has a decent chance of being meaningful anyway. One of the biggest slow downs was players looking through all their powers and seeing if they could maximize a daily or get a good result from an encounter. Instead I encourged them to just use basics and at-wills unless you saw an obvious use of a favorite encounter or daily power.

Combat times dropped from 1-1.5 hours to 20-30 minutes. We even experimented with Theater of the Mind style play and that seemed to work okay too. 3e is my favorite version. I liked 4e a lot but the slow combat times really wore on my me and my players, especially for on-line play. My son has completely written 4e off but he did enjoy it a lot more with my changes.

 

[Pour]

I agree with a ton of the stuff listed, particularly with Nemesis. My only two cents add-on would be... can we have a real Necromancer?

 

[sabrinathecat]

I agree with a ton of the stuff listed, particularly with Nemesis. My only two cents add-on would be... can we have a real Necromancer?

Oh, you mean someone that can animate dead, control undead, drain life energy, and not be a total wuss in battle? Yeah, that would be nice. I think the illusionist is the only specialist wizard that didn't get short-shrift.

 

[Pour]

I'd also like to see more attention given to the possibilities beyond what's written, be it suggestions on what a monster can do that isn't exactly listed but rather implied, or how powers can work in skill challenges or general play- not just combat. The basic nature of the power blocks and stat blocks is extremely convenient for a lot of us as a skeleton to build on, but far too many people saw them as the limits of what could actually be done with a given power or monster. Cut the head off one of the major hate-ons of the edition and draw attention to the freedom of play it actually gives and the convenience/quickness/improvisation aspect of the simplified or organized blocks in conjunction with good math.