Fewer conditions?

[Mouseferatu]

So I've seen on several threads that there's a number of people who wish 4E had fewer conditions to track. And that's got me curious...

What would you remove? What conditions do you feel are unimportant enough that they could be taken out without harming the overall system? (Or are you referring to non-specific conditions, like -2 to defenses--which, IMO, really fall more into the category of "penalties" than "conditions"?)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So I've seen on several threads that there's a number of people who wish 4E had fewer conditions to track. And that's got me curious...

What would you remove? What conditions do you feel are unimportant enough that they could be taken out without harming the overall system? (Or are you referring to non-specific conditions, like -2 to defenses--which, IMO, really fall more into the category of "penalties" than "conditions"?)

The latter I would say. The existing status conditions seem like a pretty fundamental set for the most part. I don't really know which ones you could get rid of easily. Perhaps we COULD live without Immobilized AND Restrained.

The large number of 'penalties' as you put them do get annoying. Over time the number of them that are likely to be in play at any given moment has grown. 4e was supposed to be clean, simple, and fast and now its definitely competing with 3.x for bookkeeping chores. Go back and play a game of 1e sometime, this aspect is almost non-existent.

Heck, I played in the very early days of the original D&D, you tracked hit points and your spells, and maybe some item charges, arrows, and how much gold you had. It took literally 2 minutes flat to do up a character. Play rarely interacted with the character sheet, there are advantages to that. Often I find with 4e I have to focus my brain so much on tracking things that there's little room for anything else. If there were ever a 5th edition I would strongly advise its designers to restrict each character to one ongoing effect and remove that as a concept from monsters except as a special feature of exceptional monsters.

 

[ggroy]

In older editions, failing a saving throw and dealing with the consequences is a lot easier to do. If my player character falls unconscious, then the other players will deal with my character (ie. healing, etc ...). If my player character dies, then I just create a new character.

Doing a saving throw every round in 4E adds to the bookkeeping, especially when there is more than one condition which require individual saves.

 

[RangerWickett]

Stunned and Weakened are too severe. Effects that would stun instead daze. Effects that would daze instead just make a creature grant combat advantage.

I'd like to condense the various small benefits and small drawbacks into a couple of new conditions:

* 'Empowered' -- An empowered creature gets +2 to attack and damage rolls. Any at-will or encounter power that currently grants a special bonus instead just empowers the creature. (Dailies can still have special benefits.)

* 'Weakened' -- A weakened creature gets -2 to attack and damage rolls. Any at-will or encounter power that currently impairs a monster instead just weakens it. (Dailies can still have special benefits.)

Monsters might on occasion have specific bonuses or penalties, but that should usually be saved for effects that apply for the whole combat, or that are created by elites and solos. We don't want to have to track lots of numbers on a round-by-round basis.

 

[Markn]

Effects that would stun instead daze. Effects that would daze instead just make a creature grant combat advantage.

I think allowing 2 actions a turn would be a good concept. It would make for some difficult tactical choices - drink a potion? Attack and move? Quarry/curse and attack or quarry/curse and move? Daze would still be pretty good with only 2 actions instead of 3, with the dezee getting choose which 2 actions he uses.

 

[FireLance]

I wouldn't remove any conditions. I would just manage encounter design so that the DM doesn't have to track more than two or three conditions in any one encounter. As for effects like stun and daze, I would simply use them sparingly. I wouldn't use a multi-target one-round stun effect or a single-target save ends stun effect more than once per encounter (i.e. of all the monsters in the encounter, at most one will have one of these two abilities). A single-target one-round stun effect may be fine as a recharge ability or conditional ability (e.g. stunned if already immobilized), but I would hesitate to include a monster if it had a stun ability that could be used at-will with no conditions (perhaps if it was the only monster in an encounter). In general, the same restrictions would apply to the other more hindering conditions such as daze, blind and weaken, but to a lesser degree since they aren't as bad as stun.

 

[BobTheNob]

There is another way of looking at this. The software we all sawy so long ago now, the "virtual tabletop". If WOTC could just get it done and take tracking conditions out of our hands and into the software, things would be alot simpler then.

 

[jbear]

Less conditions, less magic items, less hps, less monster defenses, simplified class features ... (all talked about often on these boards and i'm sure I'm missing a few)what will be left? And people say it's the dummed down version of D&D...

They aint seen nothing yet!

 

[ggroy]

Less conditions, less magic items, less hps, less monster defenses, simplified class features ... (all talked about often on these boards and i'm sure I'm missing a few)what will be left? And people say it's the dummed down version of D&D...

They aint seen nothing yet!

THAC0 = dumbed down

 

[firesnakearies]

Less conditions, less magic items, less hps, less monster defenses, simplified class features ... (all talked about often on these boards and i'm sure I'm missing a few)what will be left? And people say it's the dummed down version of D&D...

They aint seen nothing yet!

Right?


I, for one, like all of the conditions. And special bonuses and penalties. And I like daze and stun and weaken, too.

I don't find any of it to be a problem at the table, neither as a player nor as a DM.

Then again, I hear all sorts of tales of players who have to use calculators to add up their 2d6+11 damage, and that's not the kind of guys I play with. So I can imagine that the bookkeeping is more onerous for certain groups.