D&D 4E Dissociating what I (we?) like from the mechanics

[Undrave]

Monster themes: Monsters have a consistent racial power and some monster role powers, enough to be interesting in the combat but easy to apply and track and fit on a single page without reference to spell or class abilities.

It gets a little too into fine mechanical detail but I really agree with your post. In particular:

Monsters don't require you to flip to other pages which is a result of one of your point below about monsters not being PCs. Having everything in one, simple to consult, place is the best. Having monsters using PC spells is just the worst idea ever.

Monster variations: Most every monster has a few variations across some types and levels.

Monsters are not PCs: Monsters do not follow the same rules as PCs, including different resource management considerations (recharge powers for instance instead of encounter or dailies on a formula).

Totally agree on both. Monsters should be designed with their short life span in mind and with enough variety to make interesting encounters.

 

[Undrave]

Yeah, it's amazing how neglected they were in published adventures (which admitedly had a lot of problems and seem to made by people explicitly trying to do the complete opposite of the DMG/DMG2 advice).

It's baffling how little the published adventures understood of the edition. I remember the Thunderspire adventure and it's room after empty room with 5 feet wide corridors just gumming up fights and making them boring and tedious slug fest...

I bet the first few adventures were just recycled 3.X content that never made the cut but with just new monsters plugged in. Would explain the boring maps and lack of treasures.

I really like the "big cost" rituals as well. These are truly plot coupons and shouldn't be "selectable" as rituals known per se but just introduced by the DM when wanted.

A "Big Cost Ritual" should really be a side quest on its own, yeah!

 

[Kannik]

This might be too mechanical as well, but:

Skill Challenges. How they were presented in the DMG and, even more unfortunately, used in modules and LFR events made them a bit of a dud, but the base idea as originally described and used by (IIRC) Chris Perkins in a preview was golden. Using it as a "hidden" DM tool for adjudicating is where it shines, by presenting it to the players not as a skill challenge but just as a "what do you do now?" and then using the structure as a pacing, tension, and resolution mechanism. AND it works not only with skill rolls, but anything that could add towards solving the challenge, including powers, abilities, spells, assets, contacts, equipment, etc.

I've used this all over to simulate stopping rituals, traversing dangerous journeys, negotiations, creating battlements, and stopping weird situations, such as this (which came from Perkins' example): the players are trying and stop townsfolk from mind-controllingly walking into the lake and drowning themselves. One player might start grabbing townsfolk, another uses magic to try and shock/scare them out of their stupor, another climbs to the roof and parkours to get out in front of the townsfolk, while another wrangles a cart to create a barricade, and so on.

Less mechanical:

Clarity. This is an adjunct to Visual Design: I played an awesome dwarven runecaster from level 1 through 20. It was very evocative and effective, and it was all a re-fluff of the Artificer class. The clarity of 4e made it easy to take things and either repurpose them or rework them slightly to create even more options and flair and flavour.

We used this in an interesting way for some of our campaigns where the DM let us pick an RP race and a mechanics race; the mechanical abilities had to be explained in the fiction for how they presented themselves for our character. 'Dragonborn' fire breath on an elf? Could be an innate spell ability they learned in their youth, or maybe an additional ability of being a druid or paladin, or maybe they were a pyromaniac and always carried a little vial of alchemist's fire...

Though I never tested it, in this vein I would try allowing power selection from other classes without requiring the swapping feats. I might still gate it by requiring the initial multiclassing feat, but using the same 'justify/explain in the fiction' thing as noted above I could see it allowing for some really neat concepts, possibilities, and fun moments.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

It's baffling how little the published adventures understood of the edition. I remember the Thunderspire adventure and it's room after empty room with 5 feet wide corridors just gumming up fights and making them boring and tedious slug fest...

I bet the first few adventures were just recycled 3.X content that never made the cut but with just new monsters plugged in. Would explain the boring maps and lack of treasures.

Yeah could be but I don't think they really got much better. Even the later adventures ppl point to as "good" 4e adventures don't really play to 4e's full strengths IMO. They still have way too many encounters in a row and per level -- too dependant on rigid XP budgets.

4e shines in Zeitgeist where you have big set piece encounters on large interesting maps with lots of roleplaying, investigating, and location changes in between each big set piece.

Multi-room dungeons should have XP spread out with the assumption that not all doors are sound proof and closed and that eventually mutli rooms combine, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah could be but I don't think they really got much better. Even the later adventures ppl point to as "good" 4e adventures don't really play to 4e's full strengths IMO. They still have way too many encounters in a row and per level -- too dependant on rigid XP budgets.

4e shines in Zeitgeist where you have big set piece encounters on large interesting maps with lots of roleplaying, investigating, and location changes in between each big set piece.

Multi-room dungeons should have XP spread out with the assumption that not all doors are sound proof and closed and that eventually mutli rooms combine, etc.

This almost ties in with the too-many-levels point raised above, in that in a system where the PCs are levelling up that fast any adventures of any decent size/length have to be designed to take this levelling - and accordant gains in powers/abilities - into account.

This results in linear (and thus, boring) adventure design, because the author needs the PCs to have gained the budgeted xp from rooms* 1-5 in order to be able to deal with what's in rooms 6-10; ditto again before they get to rooms 11-15, and on it goes.

A slower levelling rate would allow writers to make bigger and less-linear adventures, because there wouldn't be this pressing need for the PCs to have gained enough xp within the adventure to level up and thus "qualify" for the next bit, if that makes sense. Put another way, it shouldn't matter which way the PCs enter the adventure site (and ideally there's multiple ways in), in that they'll find level-appropriate encounters wherever they go.

* - substitute "encounters" for "rooms" if you like, it's the same thing here.

 

[TwoSix]

The Seeker felt like a last minute filler just to have 6 classes in the book, and it was a CONTROLLER, not even a Striker. It felt like them trying to sludge together a spell caster Ranger somehow... But I think there is room to explore with the idea of a character that channels magic through thrown weapons. Personally I would have made them more primal and have the sling be their range weapon of choice, with their ammos now being enchanted seeds and maybe like... enlarging thrown weapons? Turn spears into snake? That sort of thing. Dunno what'd you call such a class... Maybe just 'Forrester' as in they bring the forest to you?

The Seeker had MAGIC BEES. I'll hear no Seeker slander.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Clarity. This is an adjunct to Visual Design: I played an awesome dwarven runecaster from level 1 through 20. It was very evocative and effective, and it was all a re-fluff of the Artificer class. The clarity of 4e made it easy to take things and either repurpose them or rework them slightly to create even more options and flair and flavour.

It seems to have negative conotations for some, but I might call this Mechanics first approach.

It does have to do with clarity as you say. The mechanics are clear but they are also primary.

If it says Prone you are going to get the mechanics of Prone. If the fiction of Prone doesn't make sense then the fiction or perception gets altered not the mechanic. So slimes split and take a moment to reform or whatever. I never had a problem with this 99.9% of the time and the .1% we just looked the other way like you have to do in all D&D games once in a while.

And there are a lot of benefits of this mechanical clarify and primacy. It cetainly makes re-fluffing very, very easy.

 

[Undrave]

The Seeker had MAGIC BEES. I'll hear no Seeker slander.

Bees alone doesn't make for an entire class! Though, Magic Bees are pretty sweet.

 

[Aldarc]

I never really connected the dots until reading through the responses in this thread, but I think that 4e D&D did extraordinarily well with the themes of its gameplay. The World Axis presents a thematically coherent cosmology that is filled with theme-ladened classes, player ancestries, and creatures/monsters. These themes are engaged with at all levels of play. Ultimately 4e D&D presented a game that was more concerned about its central Themes than encyclopedic Lore. Moreover, these themes were also reinforced at a mechanic level (again, see classes, races, monsters, etc.). IMHO, that level of thematic coherence in gameplay has been unmatched in D&D before or after. I think that this is one of the strongest reasons why 4e D&D resonates with me more than any other edition.

 

[Undrave]

I never really connected the dots until reading through the responses in this thread, but I think that 4e D&D did extraordinarily well with the themes of its gameplay. The World Axis presents a thematically coherent cosmology that is filled with theme-ladened classes, player ancestries, and creatures/monsters. These themes are engaged with at all levels of play. Ultimately 4e D&D presented a game that was more concerned about its central Themes than encyclopedic Lore. Moreover, these themes were also reinforced at a mechanic level (again, see classes, races, monsters, etc.). IMHO, that level of thematic coherence in gameplay has been unmatched in D&D before or after. I think that this is one of the strongest reasons why 4e D&D resonates with me more than any other edition.

The only thing it would be missing is an Elemental power source I blame the 'Arcane' power source for being way too vague. That's probably an area I would break with D&D tradition if I was making a new game: define and limit 'magic' so other power sources can better stand on their own and relate better to the rest of the cosmology.

For an Elemental Class, I had this idea for years now of a sort of close combat Controller/Defender that channeled the Elemental Chaos through their equipment, transmuting their heavy armor and other gear into fonts of elemental power. Imagine this heavy armoured character who suddenly gets engulfed in flame, or his armor becomes blades whirling around him or sprouts spikes of sharp rocks...

I wonder if it would have made sense to connect the Sorcerer to the Elemental Chaos?