D&D 4E How Do You Plan to Fix 4E?

[shilsen]

...I'll ask hong.

And if I don't like his answer I'll beat him with a stick. There isn't enough hong-beating going on around here these days, not like the Good Old Days (tm).

Damn right.

*looks sadly at dusty old stick with hong-shaped indentation in it*

Aah - good times!

 

[Piratecat]

Yup. Beat Ask Hong. It's the only possible, legitimate choice.

 

[Lacyon]

If something is broken in the sense of being severely mechanically overpowered to the point of ruining the game, I'll be pretty disappointed, but route around the damage with houserules/errata/whatever.

If something is "broken" in the sense of not working according to my personal preferences, I'll house-rule it, enter a gentlemen's agreement with my players not to poke too hard at it, or get over myself and play on, depending on the specific details of the "problem".

Just like I do with every RPG.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Splatbook or houserule.

I've been doing this long enough (30+ years) and played with enough systems, that once I feel comfortable with a system (which does take a bit, but I really study the games I play), I have no problems houseruling things. The fact that my D&D play will mostly be solo (me and the wife trading GM duties for the other) changes that impact balance won't really matter.

 

[Duelpersonality]

Healing, i hate how it works in 4e, just from to bottom hate it. So I'm gonna use the healing from 3e.

I'd be really interested as to how you're going to work that into the powers set up of 4e. Sounds like it might be tough to do, but interesting.

And skills, everyone getting a flat bonus based on level instead of being able to customize and personalize your character also irritates me and frankly seems like a lazy way to handle skills by turning everyone into a jack of all trades. So i'm also gonna use the skill system from 3e. Coming up with a little chart for each new class and copy and pasting the skill descriptions from the SRD, (slightly tweaked) should fix that problem though.

I would ask you, as someone who felt the same way when I started running Star Wars Saga: give this system a shot. When my group switched to Saga from the RCR everyone had reservations about the new skill system, to the point that I began working the ins and outs of modifying the old skill system to work with Saga. But we decided to give it a try for a few sessions (mostly because I had been too busy to finish up my house-ruled system) and it works. It seems awkward coming in from 3.x to not have skill points and for everyone to be getting this "1/2 level bonus" to skills, but it is actually really good and allows for some really fun encounters that would otherwise be terrible for the players (I'm thinking here specifically of a jungle based chase scene in the Star Wars Dawn of Defiance campaign: not one of my players would have ever invested skill points into the Ride skill under the RCR, and, come to think of it, none of them did in D&D 3.5, either. This entire encounter was a blast instead of a lot of missed rolls and fudging on my part).

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'm sure that as the cracks appear in the armor of this system, we will all come together and find a path for overcoming it.

 

[Saitou]

I can't really imagine I'll find anything that I will really hate, but frankly...

...I'll ask hong.

And if I don't like his answer I'll beat him with a stick. There isn't enough hong-beating going on around here these days, not like the Good Old Days (tm).

Minus the beating, plus asking Wormwood too.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I will take the books into my sanctorum in the steam tunnels, place them within the ritual circle, sacrifice a whole bunch of rats from my bag o' rats to summon a demon (or are they devils now? No matter I'll call them whatever I feel like) whom I shall command to fix the broken parts of the rules. Oh, and also to get a chocolate glazed doughnut for me so I can have a snack because I usually get hungry in the steam tunnels.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I'm not sure is "ask hong" was included as a joke or not, but I often find it's a very productive and helpful thing to do. He's a statistician, you know.

My Iron Heroes campaign (which I play in, not DM) has liberally borrowed from his Hack.

I think there's a checkbox missing from the poll: "Play the RAW for a while to make sure I'm giving the rule a fair shake." Many rules can only be well judged "in motion", and not from a dry reading of the rules.

 

[Greg K]

I chose the following:

I'm not going to 4e and will stay with 3.0/3.5 and other games until someone else provides alternative systems to replace per encounter/daily magic and combat abilities.

Of course if I win a large multi-state lottery, I'd attempt to buy the rights to the game and hire Green Ronin to develop a new edition with Steve Kenson as the lead developer/designer.