D&D 4E House Rules for a 4e WoW Game- Looking for constructive criticism

[Ashodin]

If I were to re-create WOW in light of the 4th edition rule set system, there are probably a few things I would do first to adjust wow, and of course allot of this maybe bias to my own opinions on WOW.

#1 – Open class choices up. I wouldn’t restrict class/race combination. I think it would make your class/race combinations much more varied!

#2 – I wouldn’t make ‘guilding’ a group thing, make it an individual thing, create guild feats the obtained freely for joining that guild, kind of like a background, but since generally the backgrounds do not vary in WOW, you drop background and turn it into Guilds, or throw in the background as Regions. And Guilds again as feats. Either way you’d have some building from the ground up.
Region: Born of Ashenvale Forest, gain Training in Nature - +2 to perception.
Guild: Ashenvale Elites, gain +1 atk & dmg vs forest creatures.
Just a though on that.

#3 – Design PVP encounters, with opposite faction, and put in both factions, but the team as a whole has to choose which faction to build from. If you want you can cross faction, but idk that was sort of a defining factor of WOW so.

However, if your trying to change as little as possible and just latterly DUMP wow into 4e, then I’d say compare simliaries with race and class and simply rename. For instance:

Alliance
Elf and or Drow becomes Night Elf
Dwarf stays Dwarf
Human stays Human
Goliath or Deva becomes Draeni (theirs allot of choices here lol)
Gnome stays Gnome

Horde
Eladrin become Blood Elf
Shadar-kai, Revenant, or Tiefling’s become Undead
Orcs stays Orc
Minotar become Tauren
Githzerai, Githyanki become Trolls

Obviously theirs allot of choices and you could make a list of every class of each game, and combine a few together to match up. The dump the rest lol.

There are many ways it can be done, keeping the base ruleset is all that really matters, don’t try and factor in all that stupid fluff that wow put in place that recked the game, such as resilience, and chance to hit, and blah blah blah blah blah.

I’d personally gather a list of every power off of a certain class, reform it to meet 4e Rules, rinse and repeat. Until I’ve reconfigured every wow power. Then I would take all the extra fluff abilities and powers and turn them into feats. However you would probably have to boost how many abilities one got for each level. Rather than keeping the the current grid up it so that ever level they get 1 at will, 1 encounter, and 1 daily. Or create a spec system, and only makes spells available to them if their speced that way. For instance a Mage.
*Builds*
Frost
Fire
Arcane
Hybrid


Frost:
At will 1 – Frost Bolt
At will 2 – Frost Warding
Encounter 1 – Ice Block
Daily 2 - Blizzard
Daily 5 – Cold snap (allows all frost encounters to be reused 1 time in this encounter)

First:
At Will 1 – Fire Ball
At Will 2 – Fire Warding
Encounter 2 – Fire Blast
Daily 1 – Pyro blast
Daily 5 – Impact

Arcane:
At will 1 – Arcane Missiles
At will 2 – Amplify Magic
Encounter 2 – Mage Armor (resist 5 of all damage)
Daily 1 – Remove Curse
Daily 5 – Polymorph

Then hybrid obviously would be the use of two different builds, and having to choose from each one.

If you think about it WOW doesn’t really have that many powers / spells. You could essentially remove the “leveling” system of powers and just gather up all the basic powers, and distribute them accordingly. Remote the levels and just use the basics. If you run out between level 1 and 3, then you add some ranks. Or just make it so that the powers are available from 1 – 15, then they start ranking up and are replaced by the higher ranking one.

There is definitely allot of room to play around, and with removing the weird crit %’s, obscured damage boosts, retarded mana pools, 14,000 hp players, and so on, you could definitely make it into a really neat and balanced 4e version.

Hey if you want help I’ll do it with ya!

 

[Xphile]

#1 – Open class choices up. I wouldn’t restrict class/race combination. I think it would make your class/race combinations much more varied!

For the most part I agree. There are some classes, like the Druid, which wouldn't be found outside of Night Elves or Taurens... but then again it could make for a very interesting plot to have an Orc or Human be the first druid in the land.

#2 – I wouldn’t make ‘guilding’ a group thing, make it an individual thing, create guild feats the obtained freely for joining that guild, kind of like a background, but since generally the backgrounds do not vary in WOW, you drop background and turn it into Guilds, or throw in the background as Regions. And Guilds again as feats. Either way you’d have some building from the ground up.
Region: Born of Ashenvale Forest, gain Training in Nature - +2 to perception.
Guild: Ashenvale Elites, gain +1 atk & dmg vs forest creatures.
Just a though on that.

For this I would leave it up to the players to choose which route they would find more fun. I know that in Warhammer Online, you had "Guild XP" which unlocked things for the entire guild. I personally am a bigger fan of something like that, as you can find ways that everyone can contribute to it and bring the party closer together.

#3 – Design PVP encounters, with opposite faction, and put in both factions, but the team as a whole has to choose which faction to build from. If you want you can cross faction, but idk that was sort of a defining factor of WOW so.

Yes and No? The storyline of WoW is based upon the war between the Horde and the Alliance, but there are plenty of instances of them working together for the greater good. Even the WoW Comic books have a mixed "faction" group of people from both the Horde and Alliance. The Warcraft storyline in generally usually has a mixing of the factions are certain points. I guess the main question is if you want to play D&D in a WoW setting or play WoW with D&D mechanics.

 

[ToddBS]

As someone who left WoW after nearly 4 years of playing, I think you've done a great job of capturing the game in a D&D ruleset. This is something i've considered doing myself though I fear it would just make me "homesick" for the "real thing".

It will be interesting to hear how your campaign goes, though I have to admit I think it would be an infinitely better campaign if you were Horde

edit: I meant to mention the achievements. I'm not sold on those. They've only been a part of WoW since 3.0 and I haven't found they really do anything for the game. Yes, a few give some tangible reward but most don't. I'm not sure it's really needed and you could maybe lower the complexity of your own job by leaving it out.