Gritty gone?

[Fallen Seraph]

I personally don't like making them weaker in Health areas since, I prefer to keep my PCs alive the whole way through. So with 4E's higher Health I feel more comfortable throwing them into more dangerous and deadly circumstances, since I know it is more likely they will survive.

I like to give the illusion of grit, without actual grit, as it were

 

[Stalker0]

While 4e as a base doesn't seem like a gritty game, I think its healing mechanics are simple enough to tweak to provide what you want.

Examples:

Healing Surge Adjustment: Players regain healing surges at half the rate, one quarter, etc.

Unconscious equals permanent injury: When a player goes into unconsciousness, his maximum number of healing surges decreases by 1. For every saving throw he fails while unconscious, his maximum decreases by another 1. The character regains one maximum healing surge for every week of bed rest.

Permanent Bloodied: A character that goes unconscious can not be healed above the bloodied limit until he has one full day of bed rest.

The bloodied limit:A character can not use healing surges to heal himself above the bloodied limit. He only regains these hitpoints after a week of bedrest.


These are just a few ideas, and of course tweak the amount of bedrest and healing surge loss to your taste.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Healing Surge Adjustment: Players regain healing surges at half the rate, one quarter, etc.

Unconscious equals permanent injury: When a player goes into unconsciousness, his maximum number of healing surges decreases by 1. For every saving throw he fails while unconscious, his maximum decreases by another 1. The character regains one maximum healing surge for every week of bed rest.

Permanent Bloodied: A character that goes unconscious can not be healed above the bloodied limit until he has one full day of bed rest.

The bloodied limit:A character can not use healing surges to heal himself above the bloodied limit. He only regains these hitpoints after a week of bedrest.

For anyone who wants to play a grittier game, these are great ideas. Really nice.

I was also thinking that if you lost all of your Healing Surges in a day you start losing Con. Now that's gritty.

The best part of all these rules is that they are simple and short. You could probably release a fairly complete Grim Tales 4E as a short article in Dragon. Just a couple pages would be all you'd need as long as you were comfortable with using the (tweaked) PHB classes.

We also know that we can strip out the magic items and play a low magic campaign pretty easily too.

I think 4E is going to be more than flexible enough to meet many, many campaign styles.

 

[BASHMAN]

Powers at will =/= strong

Too much grittyness is bad for a game, I say. It was the problem perhaps, especially older editions.

That's right. A Six-hour extended rest a day makes those 18 hour-old sword blows to the neck that left you at 1hp fade away.

 

[hong]

That's right. A Six-hour extended rest a day makes those 18 hour-old sword blows to the neck that left you at 1hp fade away.

Now you're getting it. Wasn't so hard now, was it?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

While 4e as a base doesn't seem like a gritty game, I think its healing mechanics are simple enough to tweak to provide what you want.

Examples:

Healing Surge Adjustment: Players regain healing surges at half the rate, one quarter, etc.

Unconscious equals permanent injury: When a player goes into unconsciousness, his maximum number of healing surges decreases by 1. For every saving throw he fails while unconscious, his maximum decreases by another 1. The character regains one maximum healing surge for every week of bed rest.

Permanent Bloodied: A character that goes unconscious can not be healed above the bloodied limit until he has one full day of bed rest.

The bloodied limit:A character can not use healing surges to heal himself above the bloodied limit. He only regains these hitpoints after a week of bedrest.


These are just a few ideas, and of course tweak the amount of bedrest and healing surge loss to your taste.

I think "Bloodied" and Healing Surges are both interesting points to adjust "grittiness".

- When a character is bloodied the first time during an encounter, he suffers an injury. Decide what kind of injury, and select some kind of penalty for it (maybe a simple -1 to all defenses or checks), or something like "leg broken - reduce speed by 2 squares" "hand crushed, use with -5 injury penalty".
Magical healing that requires a Healing Surge (either from you or the caster) can heal an injury outright. If you want, the penalty only applies while bloodied (but they stack, so if you have multiple unhealed injuries, being bloodied can hurt a lot.). Otherwise, injuries heal slowly. Maybe use the Saving Throw mechanic - n succesful saves in a row heal the injury. (Saves only once per rest period), or the injury rolls an attack against the characters fortitude defense. n failed attacks mean the injury is healed.

- Healing Surges regenerate slower. 6 hours of rest regenerate 1 surge. A missing Healing Surge represents always an injury that isn't healed yet (consider further penalties for that), unless it was "lost" due to magical powers (Lay on Hands, healing prayers)

 

[Derro]

As I understand the term, 'gritty' implies 'versimilitude = realism'. That is to say, 'gritty' at least in part is an attempt to emulate something reminescent of the real world or a real historical period, often with the additional assumption that real world myths and legends were real. Hense, common features of 'gritty campaigns' are overt magic is somewhat rare, diseases should be prevelant and feared, injuries require some amount of rest to recover from, filth is common, the natural environment is to be feared and respected, travel is difficult, anachronisms are avoided, and so forth.

Well put.

There's also an element of consequences in grittier gaming that is lacking with what we've seen of 4e. It surprises me somewhat that the Bloodied condition is only a trigger for other special effects. You'd think it would inflict fatigue or something.

I think some manner of wound track a la SWSE would bring the grit into finer focus.

One of the problems with hit points is that it has always been a very binary system. You're up and fighting or you're down and dying. Not gritty. There are variations, 3.x disabled and Diehard come to mind, but the results are pretty much the same.

The abundance of magic at low levels detracts from the grit as well. Not so much that it is there but more that it is there without cost or consequence. The at will/encounter/daily set up is fine for high magic heroics. But it's the default rather than a setting on a scale and it can't do some types of gaming without surgery. Up until now D&D could do that with only a little snip rather than surgery.

And I'm not saying that the system is bad but it does reflect on of the worst qualities of the previous magic system and that is the absolute dependability of the power. Which tends to turn spell-casters into mobile weapons platforms and med-evac units. Not gritty.

I saw two interesting suggestions here re: magic. One was to remove the magic using classes and the other too cross train with the appropriate feats. That sounds intriguing, particularly if you combined the ideas.

It vexes me that with the tiered approach they have taken to advancement they started so far up the ladder. I think that speaks very strongly as what the target market is.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well the level is really relative to the monsters. The powers may seem big compared to 3e but the monsters are also more powerful.

I think the magic isn't that bad since, well like you said just use martial characters. As well, I think if you tweaked the magic it won't seem so all powerful, again it is relative to what monsters are like now.

 

[Will]

It's not really the power of magic so much a matter of fluff and descriptive element.

There's a flavor difference between someone punching a boulder and splitting it, and a wizard intoning shuddering words of power and splitting a boulder.

Power level is a separate topic.

 

[Oku]

It means the PCs can't do anything. DMs love it.

And many players love it as well.