D&D 4E Fixing 4e

[Galadrin]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on ENWorld. I just started to browse, but it appears I've stumbled across THE Mecca for 4e discussion! I bought the basic books for 4e and read through them, but ran into some initial problems. I've started to come up with a few ideas to fix them, and was wondering if you had any advice? First, a few problems...

1) Characters are defined entirely by their combat role; i.e. there is no "ranger" outside of combat.
2) Combats take way too long and are not dramatic enough.
3) Characters do not have "weak" ability scores to contrast their "strong" ability scores. No PC I have yet seen has multiple negative ability modifiers.
4) Maps and miniatures can get expensive to collect and inhibit the player's imagination.
5) Knowing the magic items in the PHB, being able to identify items immediately after the battle and being able to break magic items down into Residuum kills all the mystery in the magic items.
6) Damage and healing has been reduced to simple hit points, with no injuries, scars etc.

So, here are the solutions I am considering...

1) Remove Daily, Encounter and At Will powers except for racial powers, magic item powers and Encounter/Daily spells and prayers. In their place, each class gets appropriate out-of-battle storyline abilities (perhaps like Non-Weapon Proficiencies in 2e); the player need only ask "my guys a fighter, can I give tactical advice to the king?" and the GM will consider it (when a roll is involved, such a class will get a significant bonus).
2) Reduce starting HP to equal your Constitution ability score. Reduce monster HP appropriately.
3) Either generate abilities with 3d6 or have a 6/8/10/10/12/14 array.
4) Removing many of the Powers will allow you to play without maps. Other rules like Marking can also be dropped to make this easier.
5) The magic items in the PHB do not exist (they are just legends you heard of as a child). Magic items must be identified by a Wizard (a one-time per item per Wizard Daily spell, with a percent chance equal to 3x his level - i.e. Wizard 10 has a 30% chance) or a sage (some wise man, based on storyline goals the GM has in mind and perhaps for a price). Residuum doesn't exist.
6) Each time a character takes a significant amount of damage (perhaps a quarter or half his total HP in one hit), he suffers an injury that penalizes him some how in and out of battle (up to the GM). Healing Surges are once per day and do not restore injuries.

So, what do you think?

 

[Keltheos]

I think you should play it a few times before making broadbrush 'fixes' to the system. I haven't played a game yet so I'm holding off any changes until I have a few games under my belt.

(and sorry if that seemed wankerish, I've been skimming threads on EN reading people's different takes on the game, but few threads on what someone would change/like/disliked after an actual gameplay session or 5).

 

[mach1.9pants]

I think you should play it a few times before making broadbrush 'fixes' to the system. I haven't played a game yet so I'm holding off any changes until I have a few games under my belt.

I agree for the games mechanics; fluff stuff change b4 you play if you want but otherwise run some games with an open mind before you make dramatic rules changes.
Oh an I gotta ask "6) Damage and healing has been reduced to simple hit points, with no injuries, scars etc." DnD has always been hit points and nothing else. why 'reduced to'?

 

[baberg]

So, what do you think?

I think you'd be better off playing a different game.

The changes you're proposing will affect game balance hugely - you're modifying HP and healing, so all monsters would have to have their abilities toned down, and you're decreasing PC power with your lower stat buy so the monsters' HP would have to be reduced. I don't think you'd be able to use any monster without some major tweaking. And since you're also ditching the magic items and powers, I have to wonder: What are the books for? You've already gutted 50% of the PHB and forced changes to 100% of the MM.

4e is not what you're looking for, and that's fine. But the changes you want are turning 4e into a completely different game, so why put yourself through that? Just play a different game.

 

[Particle_Man]

5) Knowing the magic items in the PHB, being able to identify items immediately after the battle and being able to break magic items down into Residuum kills all the mystery in the magic items.

I thought the DMG (I don't have it) had artifacts, those special intelligent magic items with their own agendas. I assume they can't easily be broken down for residuum.

 

[Wystan]

All of your fixes seem to push it back to Basic D&D, might as well also make it so elf and such are classes?
Or remove the option to do a lot of other things, like level above 10 or so? Remove hitpoints above 10th level?


This seems like a case of feeding a troll.

 

[LostSoul]

1) Characters are defined entirely by their combat role; i.e. there is no "ranger" outside of combat.

What kind of things do you want them to do out of combat? What I mean is, when you're playing, what should the Ranger be doing? What about the Wizard? What happens if the Ranger tries something the Wizard does?

2) Combats take way too long and are not dramatic enough.

What do you mean by dramatic? How long is too long?

3) Characters do not have "weak" ability scores to contrast their "strong" ability scores. No PC I have yet seen has multiple negative ability modifiers.

Why do you want characters to have weak scores?

4) Maps and miniatures can get expensive to collect and inhibit the player's imagination.

They sure can cost a lot. How do they inhibit player's imagination, in your experience?

5) Knowing the magic items in the PHB, being able to identify items immediately after the battle and being able to break magic items down into Residuum kills all the mystery in the magic items.

Yeah, it does. Why do you want it to be mysterious?

6) Damage and healing has been reduced to simple hit points, with no injuries, scars etc.

Why do you want to have PCs with injuries, scars, etc.? What kind of game experience are you shooting for?

That last question is the kicker. What kind of experience do you want? Change the rules to get that experience. Without knowing what you want, I can't really say if I think the changes are going to help you out or not.

 

[Rabbitbait]

To be honest, and no flaming intended - I think 4e is not for you. It looks as you need to gut the system to be happy with it, and there are plenty of other games out there that would probably more fit your style of gaming without such significant changes.

If you have the books already, play it a few times before changing it. As many people have said already - this game plays better than it reads.

 

[timbannock]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on ENWorld. I just started to browse, but it appears I've stumbled across THE Mecca for 4e discussion! I bought the basic books for 4e and read through them, but ran into some initial problems. I've started to come up with a few ideas to fix them, and was wondering if you had any advice? First, a few problems...

1) Characters are defined entirely by their combat role; i.e. there is no "ranger" outside of combat.
2) Combats take way too long and are not dramatic enough.
3) Characters do not have "weak" ability scores to contrast their "strong" ability scores. No PC I have yet seen has multiple negative ability modifiers.
4) Maps and miniatures can get expensive to collect and inhibit the player's imagination.
5) Knowing the magic items in the PHB, being able to identify items immediately after the battle and being able to break magic items down into Residuum kills all the mystery in the magic items.
6) Damage and healing has been reduced to simple hit points, with no injuries, scars etc.

So, here are the solutions I am considering...

1) Remove Daily, Encounter and At Will powers except for racial powers, magic item powers and Encounter/Daily spells and prayers. In their place, each class gets appropriate out-of-battle storyline abilities (perhaps like Non-Weapon Proficiencies in 2e); the player need only ask "my guys a fighter, can I give tactical advice to the king?" and the GM will consider it (when a roll is involved, such a class will get a significant bonus).
2) Reduce starting HP to equal your Constitution ability score. Reduce monster HP appropriately.
3) Either generate abilities with 3d6 or have a 6/8/10/10/12/14 array.
4) Removing many of the Powers will allow you to play without maps. Other rules like Marking can also be dropped to make this easier.
5) The magic items in the PHB do not exist (they are just legends you heard of as a child). Magic items must be identified by a Wizard (a one-time per item per Wizard Daily spell, with a percent chance equal to 3x his level - i.e. Wizard 10 has a 30% chance) or a sage (some wise man, based on storyline goals the GM has in mind and perhaps for a price). Residuum doesn't exist.
6) Each time a character takes a significant amount of damage (perhaps a quarter or half his total HP in one hit), he suffers an injury that penalizes him some how in and out of battle (up to the GM). Healing Surges are once per day and do not restore injuries.

So, what do you think?

So you want to play Earthdawn?


Not being snarky at all: it sounds like the game for you is Earthdawn. Has all of your "fixes" built right in, and the setting is sweet like candy and crack.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Sometimes it's a matter of relative effort -- if you only like a few elements of 4e, and would want to change a ton of other stuff, it's probably just plain easier to instead take a system that does most of what you want, and incorporate some of the 4e stuff you like into that.

So it's not "You can't do that" so much as "There may be much easier ways to get what you want". In this case, it looks like you could just take your fantasy RPG of choice and import the 4e spell lists (although you'd need to re-balance the damage each of those spells does to fit with your HP/injury model).