D&D 4E House Rules for Old School 4e

[hailstop]

A large part of our last gaming session involved airing out what bugged us about 4e after playing it for 18 months. One of the comments was that there are no 'quick' combats anymore.

I mentioned to the player that while I agreed with him on that, the reason is that earlier editions involved one or two monsters of roughly equal level to the party, or several weaker creatures that normally weren't much more of a speedbump. The balance was brought in through attrition...the party usually wasn't in major threat of death until the 3rd, 4th or 5th encounter. Whereas 4e had encounters that involved several creatures of roughly equal level of the PC's. 'Weak' creatures were replaced by minions, and the single or pair of creatures were now Solos and Elites...but had the staying power of 2-5 creatures now.

That said, there isn't any reason that the 'old school' combat couldn't work. Either a single Elite...or 2-3 standard creatures with minions, or even just a pack of minions.

The one problem, as Sly Flourish mentioned in this post on his blog:

Sly Flourish» Blog Archive » Giving 4e an Old School Feel

Is that some house rules may be needed (although he didn't specify).

But what ones?

The resources in 4e are a bit different than earlier editions. Hit points aren't really a 'day' resource, but an 'encounter' resource, since they can easily reset by applying Healing Surges. Instead the daily resource there are the healing surges themselves. This actually isn't too different than 3e, due to the existence of Wands of Cure Light Wounds. However, PC's usually have too many hp that the short combats can't possibly threaten to drop them.

So you'd either need to alter damage, or healing, or both...or mix up the encounters with small ones (which would allow the return of wandering monsters) with the big set piece battles (which 4e excels at).

Another is 'spells'. In previous editions, every spell was technically a 'daily', but not necessarily, as often there would be multiples being memorized or cast (ie Sorcerors, or multiple Fireballs). Chances are, in most smaller combats (unless it's against say, a single Elite of Lv +4 or something), the PCs probably won't use Dailys at all...instead just relying on their Encounter Powers or At Wills. I'm not sure this is a bad thing...since that saves up the big guns for those set piece battles.

One thing that definitely would need altering is what constitutes a Milestone. It'd have to be more than 2 small combats.

Any thoughts?

 

[RangerWickett]

Right now, to take out the 8th level Warforged Warden in a game I play in (he has, like, 90 hp), you have to deal something like 200 damage in a single encounter, when you factor in his warforged temp HP, his warden ability to get regeneration, his second wind, and the fact that the party cleric can heal the hell out of him.

It is 'balanced' within the system, but if you want to change how the system plays, I think you'd need a fairly drastic revision, or just cut out character options by the bushel. No leaders, no class powers that grant regeneration or extra healing unless they're dailies. You don't necessarily have to change any rules, just restrict options to accomplish what you want.

One of my friends likes to use the term 'balanced high.' Two foes can be evenly matched, yet still capable of ending a fight quickly, like in jiujitsu. 4e, to him (and me), feels more like boxing, where a fight goes on for rounds and rounds, which leads to any given exchange usually not being that interesting.

If you change the game so that the PCs are all strikers, though, it speeds right the **** up.

 

[FireLance]

Perhaps I could ask: what do you hope to get out of "quick" combats? And as a secondary question, how much of a threat do you want the fights to be?

You can have quick combats in 4E: just send the PCs against one or two equal-level monsters. This is fine if you just want the PCs to roll dice and experience the thrill of combat, but it doesn't work if you want the PCs to feel a sense of danger or if you want to attrition the PCs' resources.

Alternatively, you could go back to the "combat as attrition" model by changing the default time frame of the game: the PCs now need to rest 8 hours to gain the benefits of a short rest, and for a week or so to gain the benefits of an extended rest. This effectively turns a day's adventuring into a single, extended "encounter". Encounter powers now effectively become daily powers, and healing is also more limited: each PC can take a second wind once per day, the cleric can only use healing word twice per day (three times at higher levels), and so on. The PCs can still pull out their daily powers if the fight turns against them, but they require a much longer rest to get them back.

 

[Starfox]

Maybe restricting 4E to strikers only would do what you want?

 

[ravenheart]

I'm for more small encounters with two (maybe three) same-level foes or an elite (or lower level solo) with a bunch of minions. Make it fast paced, allow resting only once in a while, add some fun terrain, intermittent skill challenge (even in the midst of all the battles - reward them with an instant short rest for example) or conditional mods (like some minions escaping and alerting the BBEG).

Play a couple of these to make the player's feel powerful (and grind a bit at their resources), then BLAM! - drop a nasty, tactical fight with a solo and his elite guard in a room full of traps and hazards in their lap (might as well give them a milestone at the start of the fight, to keep them motivated).

That'll show them.

 

[buddhafrog]

I'm for more small encounters with two (maybe three) same-level foes or an elite (or lower level solo) with a bunch of minions. Make it fast paced, allow resting only once in a while, add some fun terrain, intermittent skill challenge (even in the midst of all the battles - reward them with an instant short rest for example) or conditional mods (like some minions escaping and alerting the BBEG).

Play a couple of these to make the player's feel powerful (and grind a bit at their resources), then BLAM! - drop a nasty, tactical fight with a solo and his elite guard in a room full of traps and hazards in their lap (might as well give them a milestone at the start of the fight, to keep them motivated).

That'll show them.

This is generally how I run our game as well.

I also combine one of the suggestions above -- a full rest at a safe locationi (Inn, etc), would grant 5 healing surges, while a restless night in a dungeon or other non-ideal location would grant anywhere from 1~4 healing surges.

This makes the the minor encounters slightly more important eventually if not immediately, and makes for continued fighting to be more tense and slightly more mindful.

I considered adjusting the healing surges based upon CON scores, but decided against it for simplicity (I'm DM'ing for youngsters). d

So far, this combo has worked well.

 

[S'mon]

I use one house rule: lots of monsters have 1/2 hit points, worth 2/3 XP. I almost always do that with Elites, or regret it.

I use lots of minions, typically with 1-3 standard monsters as their leaders and champions. Using ca 8 standard monsters with half hp also works ok. Strikers like those for the chance at a one-hit non-minion kill.

For many 'random' wandering monster groups, I look for an XP budget similar to a 'standard' 4e encounter. Set-piece encounters are generally at least 'hard'.

I use lots of monsters of up to 7 levels higher than the PCs. They once met one 12 levels higher, and just got away (lucky Ropers have speed 2!).

Edit: Typical fights for 1st level PCs:

8 Orc Drudge minions + 2 Orc Raider skirmishers
10 Hobgoblin Grunt minions +1 Hobgoblin Archer + 1 Hobgoblin Soldier

 

[chronoplasm]

I tend to reward my players for sneaking/running away from fights.
When faced with a combat encounter, the party can attempt a skill challenge to try and avoid the fight. If successful, they gain the same XP reward that they would have gained if they had fought the monsters, and at lower risk.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think you need any special rules. Consider healing surges in a different light. Instead of considering them to be some kind of "extra" resource they are just a limitation on how much healing a character can get in a day. This actually makes 4e healing more limited and HP are a MORE precious resource than they were in pre-4th. In older editions characters had potentially infinite healing resources and in addition they were a pool that was party-wide. Now if the fighter keeps getting beat up pretty soon he's going to be low on HS and its matters not a bit if the other PCs are all unscathed.

Those minor encounters which in the old style were really close to meaningless and just amounted to a way to make someone suck down a potion of healing or a CLW now become actually a good bit more meaningful as the PC can heal easily enough but only at the cost of his daily limit. These kinds of encounters are still quite fast in 4e but can be a bit more interesting as you can deploy a bunch of minions, a lurker, and a soldier for example and have a fun encounter with a bunch of enemies that is still resolved quickly.

The DM also has better pacing options now. He can pile another wave on the party without giving them a short rest if he wants to have a tricky fast paced scenario or allow a short rest before a more in-depth encounter.

I wouldn't worry too much about milestones either. You may want to declare an encounter too trivial to count towards one now and then but you may also be perfectly happy giving away a goodly number of APs and whatnot too. I think giving away more APs tends to encourage the PCs to do more daring stuff personally.

 

[the Jester]

When I want a "quick and deadly" variant game, I halve the monsters' hit points and double their damage dice. So a quick and deadly orc berserker (normally 66 hp, 1d12+5 damage) would instead be 33 hp, 2d12+5 damage.

I used this option a lot in my Fall of Civilization campaign, but they had 2-3 leaders in the (large) party. A couple of the most memorable encounters in the campaign were with monsters using this variant, though. I haven't playtested this is a leader-light group.