D&D 4E Fixing 4e

[Mistwell]

You should play the game as written for a few months before making major changes to it. A lot of your assumptions will likely prove false once you watch them in play for a while.

 

[Tehnai]

Well, you would completely kill off the balance of the game, AND take away most of what makes tactical combat fun and exciting for many. You'd also kill off most non-spell casters, unless you rebalance the monster manual completely.

As far as non-weapon proficiency-style stuff goes, that's mostly fluff. If a player goes : "Yo, I'm the son of a blacksmith, can I start working on a sword?", the DMG even encourages you to say yes.

Most possible events that would involve said non-weapon proficiencies could be easily resolved by a simple attribute roll. If your player give you decent background stories to work with, that shouldn't even be a problem.

You are forgetting that the characters in 4E are not average Joes, they are heroes. Super fantasy badasses that kill dragons and save the world when they don't have anything more important to do.

If you want Basic DnD, you should, like Wystan said, go back to Basic DnD. But please stay away from our crazy, high adventure, high fantasy stories and our swordsmen with ridiculously large (and perhaps overcompsating for something) swords.

I'd say that if you did want grittier gameplay, instead of playing with the mechanics, use description. You don't need a system for scars, you just need to tell your player "Oh, your leg hates you right now", every now and then.

And finally, the best advice I could give to shy away from grid-based combat would be to adapt the "Spirit of the Century" zone system.

I'd do it something like this.

You divide the battle field in zones. Everyone in the same room may use a move action to enter, let's call it, a "confrontation". You need one move action to go to a nearby zone, you can use 2 to move to any zone in the battlefield.

A shift allows you to move out of a confrontation in your zone, or move to another confrontation.

Moving one square would break confrontations, moving more then 1 would send the target to another zone, and moving over 5 would send the target into any desired zone.

For ranged attacks, thrown weapons would be useable from within a zone, or to an adjacent zone, and true ranged weapons (say, a bow or a magic missile) could be used anywhere in the field.

For cover and other modifiers, improvise.

If, in a single confrontation, one side outnumbers the other, the outnumbered side grant combat advantage.

I should put that in house rules... I'll work on that.

 

[Keltheos]

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.

Amen. A lot of how 4e functions (not the d20 mechanics, but how healing/advancement/mundane powers are driven by magical affinity and increase in dynamism) was already built into Earthdawn like, what, 10+ years ago?

 

[Otterscrubber]

To the OP: Are you serious? If you honestly kept track of things like scars for every battle you'd be an unrecognizeable lump of scars by the time you hit 10th level. You want some realism in your game apparently, but keep in mind in reality, nobody would repeatedly throw themselves into danger like D&D PCs. They might have one really good adventure, then retire to live their life in peace. Cuz in reality, people want to live and the way to do that is not keep chasing after undead liches and dragons with magic items that are only useful for getting yourself into more danger.


By the way, characters have always been defined by their role; some rigidly so. In 4e characters are less defined by their roles than ever before. Access to any skill no matter what your class, ability to multiclass and get certain powers from any class, more combat options and the open-ended-ness of ritual spells (and accessible by any character willing to get the feats) means a variety unavailable to PCs in any prior edition. Don't get tied up in the wording on your character sheet, look at the actual play options once the game is going. It's quite varied.

Why are you tripping over not having negative abilities? The standard person has a 10 in everything? Why do you expect PCs have to have less than Bob the muck farmer? If you insist on min/maxing your character you certainly have the option of having an 8 in one of your abilities if you so choose. Have fun!

 

[Lizard]

Gosh, someone with post count one trolling. Imagine that.

Unfortunately, he loses a lot of points for "fixing" 4e to include features no version of D&D has ever had, such as scarring or long term injury. Not mention "Let's remove all the rules to 'fix' the game!"

Sheesh. Back in the days of 3e, we had REAL trolls. 4e can't even produce good trolls.

(For the slow-witted among you, the above was sarcasm. Sahr-kah-zum. Though I'm pretty sure that, even now, someone is writing a 1500 word rebuttal on how on 4e's design leads to a much higher class of internet trolling and that 3e internet trolls were broken, unbalanced, and no fun.)

 

[Keltheos]

Sheesh. Back in the days of 3e, we had REAL trolls. 4e can't even produce good trolls.

Give it a few weeks at least. People are still huddled in their basements trying to break the core rulebooks 15 ways to Sunday without having played a game yet.

 

[Sanzuo]

Remove Daily, Encounter and At Will powers except for racial powers, magic item powers and Encounter/Daily spells and prayers.

what

 

[Family]

You don't fix 4e, it fixes you.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-c_P5wHr3fo&feature=related

 

[77IM]

House rules require effort (to balance them, to keep track of them all, etc.). Lots of house rules require lots of effort. An easier option is to just play a different game that matches your game play preferences right out of the box.

I'm not trying to drive you away from D&D, just pointing out that the changes you are suggesting are extensive and will be very difficult to manage, and that there are easier alternatives. FYI.

-- 77IM

 

[DM_Blake]

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

Remove 1/4 of the PHB? And replace it with other stuff?

Why even have a PHB at all? Just write your own.

Besides, if you replaceall combat powers exept those of races, items, and spells, won't you just be reversing the problem? Won't all characters (especially melee characters) be defined entirely by their out-of-combat role?

2) Combats take way too long and are not dramatic enough.
2) Reduce starting HP to equal your Constitution ability score. Reduce monster HP appropriately.

This is doable. It will shorten combat a little. Each player will die in one less hit, and so will each moster if you reduce them correctly. Except minons - they're still one-hit-soapbubbles either way.

I'm fairly sure this will shorten most battles, but I don't know how it would make them more dramatic. Doesn't the drama come from exposure to risky live-or-die situations? If everything is dying faster, you will still have those battles where the players kill off a weak encounter with no real risk or danger, which means no real drama.

If you want drama, then build each encounter, or at least each dramatic encounter, so that there is a believable risk that the player characters will die, or at least lose. If the players believe this risk exists, then the drama exists. This can, of course, be done with the exisiting HP rules too.

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.
3) Either generate abilities with 3d6 or have a 6/8/10/10/12/14 array.

Your proposed standard array has a net bonus of zero. Adding racial mods, this gives a maximum net bonus of 2.

This will result in very weak player characters. Combined with reducing their HP and stripping their powers (your points in 1 and 2 above), you will surely be killing them off left and right.

The game as written, and as balanced, is to allow each PC to have between +5 and +8 net ability scores. Encounters are balanced on this assumption. Breaking this assumption would be very dangerous and woudl put the PCs at great risk of ending their adventuring career very young in an unmarked grave.

Unless you also redesign every encounter to allow a party of PCs to encounter single orcs, kobolds, etc., all just one or two at a time. Which also means redesigning the entire reward system (coin, magic, and xp).

That's a lot of work.

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

True, they are expensive. But fun. At least for me.

Imaginitive players can visualize the map without needing a real map or figures before them. I can personally play an entire game of chess without a board or pieces, and even win some times.

Regardless of whether a fighter is "hacking the orc with my axe" or "using my at-will Reaping Strike to hack the orc with my axe",either way, the DM and all players need to know where the fighter is, where the orc is, whether the fighter can see and reach the orc with his axe. They also need to know where the rest of the PCs and monsters are, where the walls, trees, furniture, pits, lava, etc., is, and how they can move around and engage the enemy.

I don't see why the 4e abilities require more or less of this, other than the mental conversion between "squares" and "inches".

You're right about marking. That can be a pain. I've already told my players to keep track of their own marks, and if I tell them they have been marked by an enemy, they keep track of it too. Otherwise I lose track amidst all the other stuff I'm tracking. I think tracking the marking without a map can be done with the same imagination as tracking locations without a map, so if you are used to 3e, or 2e, or whatever, and not using maps or figures, then 4e is much the same. "Fred marks the kobold with the big hammer. Fred, you remind me when I'm making that kobold's actions that he's marked so I don't forget." - that doesn't seem to require a map any more than anything else.

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.
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.

Knowing them isn't a problem. It's been well over a decade since I had a group of players in which nobody knew the magic items in the DMG. There's always someone that says "Ahh, magic boots. Could be springing, could be speed, could be levitation, could be spider climb, could be..."

Doesn't matter to me whether they're in the PHB or DMG, except now I can tell all my players to look up their own magic items, since they bring PHBs but don't bring DMGs.

As for identifying them, sure, the old way added a lot of mystery. But, all too often, many magic items sat in someone's backpack through an entire dungeon until they got back to town, identified them, then finally divvied them up or sold them off. While that is certainly more mysterious, items collecting dust and cobwebs in a backpack are not nearly as much fun as items being put to use.

Arguably, an adventuring spellcaster in a world even remotely like D&D, is expecting to find magic items, is counting on it, is even fantasizing about it. Heck, the whole adventuring group is dreaming and drooling over the idea. Those spellcasters would be chomping at the bit to prepare themselves with all the tools they need to recognize and identify every magic item they find. Assuming they don't is like assuming a mountain climber (in our real world) sets off to climb a mountain without a rope or pitons.

Previous editions made that assumption, and the players muddled through it, acepting it as part of the mystery. This edition kills that mystery, but opens a new door to the fun of actually using the items you find when you find them. And, isn't that what a real spellcaster in a real world of adventure would try very hard to find ways to do?

I agree with you about residuum. My jury is still out on that whole concept.

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

Damage and healing has always been simple HP in all versions of D&D. Admittedly, in all previous editions, it has usually taken longer to heal after a hard battle than it does in 4e.

Beware of penalizing characters in ways that hinders their ability to conduct battle. Remember that each monster has to fight only one battle. What difference does it make if you cut off an orc's hand or stab out a kobold's eye? Either way, he's going to die and you'll never see him again.

But do this stuff to your players, even giving them just one lingering injury (that causes combat penalties) every couple of encounters, and by the middle of a dungeon they might be too crippled to go on.

That might be more realistic, and might simulate the kinds of injuries we in the real world associate with swords and axes and balls of flaming inferno.

But when your PCs have to abandon the adventure because their lingering injuries have whittled them down to helplessness and they cannot beat any monsters any more, then you've gone too far.

And beware of using lingering injuries too rarely. When a player gets hit 5 times with an axe, and one of those times it lops off his arm but the other times it only scratches him, he's going to wonder what was wrong with the other 4 axes. If axes chop off limbs, then you better do it all the time, or the rest of the axes are broken and your attempt at realistic combat injuries just becomes random and punishing, a way for the DM to arbitrarily exert his will and torture his players at a whim, for no consistent reason. That kind of game will drive away your players in a heartbeat - even if you're not doing it that way, they will still see it that way.

As for healing surges, remember the game is balanced assuming you will surge multiple times a day, and at least once per encounter (more if you have a healer letting you do it more often). Limit this and you are making your PCs even more fragile.

So, what do you think?

I think, like others have said, D&D 4e is not for you. Your house rules would be longer than the combined core rulebooks, and nobody you met would know your system. Muche easier to find a system more to your liking and then find players who know that system.

And, put all these house rules together, and you will have a group of hopelessly weak PCs who at best can barely survive a few easy encounters and who will accumulate debilitating wounds that make them weaker and weaker until they die.

And die they will.

So all that said, I'm really feeling like you were not serious in your original post, and that you were trolling to begin with. Which is fine by me, I've enjoyed the mental exercise, and had the time to kill.

But if you were really serious, then I wish you the best of luck and hope this post has helped you at all.