Essential Paradigms

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Essentials took a serious look at the 4E Design Paradigms and altered many of them.

• Classes can have multiple roles and power sources
• The Power Structure was radically reworked
• The Tiered Feat system was scrapped
• The Magic Items got a rarity system to limit player access

What other 4E paradigms need to be examined?

Personally, I think ritual casting time and cost should be examined. The casting times don't relate to game mechanics very well. Casting times should be in game terms, not real life time. The "standard" casting times should be one round, one short rest, and one extended rest (with most falling into the one round or one short rest frame). I think it's okay for some rituals to break this mold with special cast times (like from sundown to sunrise, etc).

Ritual cost should also be examined. At high levels, the cost becomes an exercise in book keeping (let's see, I need to cash in this Astral Diamond to get 10 gp). At low levels, the cost is prohibited, making ritual casting and learning undesirable. Personally, I think the initial cost to learn the ritual should be the barrier. Once learned, allow X number of rituals to be cast per extended rest per tier (say 2 at heroic, 4 at paradigm, 6 at epic). Only rituals like enchant items would require expenditure of gold past the original purchase.

 

[Shin Okada]

# Ritual Components
IMHO components should be combined into one. Just let PC buy Residium. Or even Residium itself can be the "cash" in the default D&D world. It is a fantasy world full of magic. Why "the source of magic" cannot be the main currency? It will eliminate a lot of bothersome book keeping.

(By the way, as I have stated in another thread, the new Item Rarity system is the only one paradigms which I think must not be changed in that way.)

# God and Domain
It seems that it is already started in a certain way, but God and Domain rule can be eliminated. A god chosen by a player just for taking appropriate domain feat is ..... not a good idea.

# Having one Patron God
Also, not restricting Divine characters have one certain patron deity will be the way to go. In fact, many of the clergy men/women in pantheistic culture have been worshiping multiple deities related to his temple/shrine/communion, or worshiping all the gods in their mythology. And non-clergy people in such culture usually revere all the gods in their mythology.

# Mount
I understand that most adventures are assuming that adventurers are walking by their own feats. And using mounts will be too complex as a default rule. But by current rule, unless a PC takes some specific paragon path and such, he must "buy" his mount. And that mount will eventually become useless as that one is too low in level. There maybe special feat which all the character can take and have reasonably tough (i mean durable, not strong in offense) mount. That will help when a DM wants to run a campaign which involves a lot of long-ride and wilderness adventures.

# Much clear, dedicated 3d combat section
Terrain is an integral part of combat encounters in 4e. And we see a lot of elevated terrain in official adventures. And there are a lot of flying monsters. Yet, we don't have clear and easy-to-understand rule to handle 3d combat. Namely, handling blast area and such in 3d. Now we need it.

# Ranged Defender, maybe?
There are ranged controllers, ranged leaders & ranged strikers. Maybe it is time to introduce some ranged defender. By using marked condition rule, I guess now R&D team can make one.

 

[OnlineDM]

Rituals: I think Essentials has already addressed this paradigm by leaving rituals out entirely and switching some ritual-like effects to become utility powers of certain classes. We can talk about whether that's a good or bad way to go, but I'd say they've addressed it.

3D combat: I don't have the book with me at the moment, but I'm pretty sure the Rules Compendium did address bursts and blasts in 3D - they do indeed fill a cube. So, a blast 3 fills a 3 by 3 by 3 cube (either starting from the ground and going up, or, if in mid-air, your choice of any adjacent 3 by 3 cube), and a burst 2 fills a 5 by 5 by 5 cube centered on the origin square (usually the caster), though in the case of the burst 2 40% of it will usually be lost to the ground (so it reaches 3 squares high in the end).

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Rituals: I think Essentials has already addressed this paradigm by leaving rituals out entirely and switching some ritual-like effects to become utility powers of certain classes. We can talk about whether that's a good or bad way to go, but I'd say they've addressed it.

Then I disapprove
Hopefully rituals can get looked at again. For my buck, the concept of rituals can survive the original poor implementation. Perhaps HotFK will re-introduce them.

 

[jbear]

How about at-will powers which have a choice between different effects. I guess this was introduced in some measure in the PHB3 with Psionics and the Runepriest, but it has definitelty continued and solidified into Essentials.

Feats that offer a solid mechanical bonus and a secondary situational bonus. Maybe this would be a good way to clean some of the clutter: combining feats.

Encounter powers that have a miss effect. Will this remain a wizard exclusive feature?

 

[TerraDave]

The WotCies have known about the problems for rituals for a while, and my guess is they may roll out some alternatives at some point. But the essentials aproach--totally ignoring--is one approach.

As for the ranged defender...I had one super-heated discussion on this in another thread, were I gave it as a passing example (think covering fire, thats all I am saying...). Will see if anyone picks up on it here.