D&D 4E Help me improve my sci-fi homebrew 4e rules

[Matrix Sorcica]

Though saga is already designed to handle scifi better than 4e, you could take a step forward and use HERO 6. It is a great system for modern and scifi, and has current design 'sentiessibilities'.

Isn't the whole purpose of the OP's musings to use 4E for Sci-Fi?

Suggesting Hero (or any other system not D&D 4E) is really missing the point? Or am I missing the point?

 

[RangerWickett]

Well ultimately the goal is to have a sci-fi game that feels right for me. So far my own house rules work pretty well (though I need to have a better space combat system than Star Wars; I should probably look at SpaceFight!).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't know, I am not convinced of the battle surge thingy. I think it would better if you used battle surges as a currency to activate 4E style encounter or daily powers, instead of trying to model it with more actions spend. That sounds a little too fiddly to my taste. You have to count how many of your battle surges you have used and how many of your battle surges you have left seperate basically.

One thing I have been experimenting with was powers that gained different special abilities based on your characters role. An area burst feat for a defender type character might mark foes, for a controller type it might slide them, for a striker type it might just deal more damage, for a leader type it might get your party defensive or offensive benefits...

 

[RangerWickett]

I don't know, I am not convinced of the battle surge thingy. I think it would better if you used battle surges as a currency to activate 4E style encounter or daily powers, instead of trying to model it with more actions spend. That sounds a little too fiddly to my taste. You have to count how many of your battle surges you have used and how many of your battle surges you have left seperate basically.

Either you're misunderstanding me or I'm misunderstanding you. Maybe there's confusion on the similarity between healing surge and battle surge. They're two different things. Healing surges work the way they always did. Battle surges are new.

The way it works, basically, is that a battle surge opens up temporary options based on your fighting style. Your first battle surge is a minor action, the second is move, and thereafter it's all standard (which makes it usually a bad choice, from the standpoint of an economy of actions).

So there's no keeping track of spent vs. unspent. It's more like "you can be a bad-ass once per encounter easily (minor action), but if you want to be bad-ass more often, it will cost you more time."


I did have my first playtest of the rules last week. The PCs used these rules, and I based the opponents on monster stats from the Monster Manual 2. But since I let guns deal more damage than core D&D weapons do, that made the aliens less challenging than I expecting. Whenever we have our second session, I'll probably use slightly tougher foes as a baseline. I'm still figuring out how this balances.

 

[bardolph]

The main components of the system are the fighting styles. Each fighting style consists of two parts, each of which requires one feat. Style Basis gives some minor static ability, or a modifier to your basic attacks, and Style Expertise gives you a few tricks you can pull off if you battle surge (which you can only do a few times per combat) or have combat focus (which requires a standard action to achieve, but remains until you expend it to perform some sort of immediate interrupt).

For instance, the Two Weapon Fighter style lets you, instead of attacking with one weapon as a standard action, spend a standard and minor to make two attacks against the same target. That's the basic ability. If you spend a second feat to get the expertise, then a few times per combat you can battle surge to make two attacks (at the same or different targets) as one standard action, and if you have your combat focus you can expend it to reload two weapons at once, even if you have no free hands.

Just want to throw an idea into the mix:

Keep 4e-style powers, but instead of putting them into classes, put them directly into the fighting style. So spending a feat on a style allows you to pick powers from that style's list.

You can also create scalable powers that can be set at a variable level. For example:

• the "Force Sword" style might have a power called "Sweeping Arc" that comes in three flavors: "Alpha (level 3)" "Delta (level 6)" and "Omega (level 9)", with different levels of damage for each.
• the "Jedi Force Sword" style might be a Paragon Tier feat that has a power called "Deflect Blasters", with Alpha (level 11), Delta (level 14) and Omega (level 17) variants.

There could be a list of "generic" powers that are available to all characters, regardless of fighting style. This would make sure that characters who elect not to study a fighting style can still have powers to choose from.