D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, I'm not saying 4e did, particularly, though the tendency did exist at times. I actually think of the non-stacking advantage/disadvantage thing as a kind of design constraint which spurs one to more creative solutions.

My problem is...I've never actually seen anything I considered a particularly creative solution. I certainly agree that it calls for one. I just have been profoundly disappointed with every solution I've seen proposed.

"Cancellation" stacking is still stacking, and almost as much bookkeeping as just having modifiers directly.
"One-and-done," as 5e does, leads either to Advantage being too special to use, or (as actually happened) massively over-used and thus often worthless. (And then they went and even broke one-and-done with stuff like Elven Accuracy!)
I want to say Level Up uses a "roll more dice, take the highest for your bonus" approach, which doesn't actually seem like a meaningful time savings, obviating the main benefit.

My preferred solution is to make two separate bonus/penalty tracks. You have Advantage/Disadvantage, which affects the die itself, and you have Boosted/Broken (still looking for better terms there), which is a flat +/- 2. Some things merely give that status (e.g. flanking attacks are Boosted, so a Warlord-style "let an ally make a Boosted attack" at-will doesn't further improve it), but a few can go ~~to infinity and beyond~~ past that, allowing limited and special stacking.

E.g.: the rogue is Flanking an orc. Their attack rolls are Boosted. Their Warlord buddy uses the long-rest attack Hammer Into Anvil, which means any ally flanking with the Warlord (and the Warlord flanking with any ally) is Super-Boosted, getting +4 to attacks instead of +2.

"Advantage" is for things that are uncertain, but likely to bring out your best performance. "Boosted" is for things that are certain to be helpful, but to a generally lesser degree. Each has value. Getting Disadvantage-with-Boost would be something like "making a trick shot you've practiced to death....but now there's a chaotic cyclone making things worse." Getting Advantage-with-Broken would be something like making a coup de grace with an actually broken weapon, you're likely to perform well but have to overcome the inherent faults of the tool. Within each track, it cancels normally: Disadvantage would turn "Super-Advantage" into just regular Advantage and vice-versa, and exact opposites always cancel.

The limitations on stacking static bonuses would mostly apply to combat rolls. Non-combat rolls, such as skill checks, would have looser restrictions on incidental bonuses, to reflect their more varied applications. Those are generally a haggle kind of situation anyway, so hashing out the specific bonuses is expected.

 

[Voidmoji]

"Cancellation" stacking is still stacking, and almost as much bookkeeping as just having modifiers directly.

I don't have a problem with stacking modifiers. Like anything, it can get out of control, but when in control? It works just fine,.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't have a problem with stacking modifiers. Like anything, it can get out of control, but when in control? It works just fine,.

Oh, certainly. I mostly said that because the most commonly claimed benefits of things like Advantage (binary, non-stacking) are:
A) it's impossible for stacking to get out of control if things simply can't stack,
B) all the time that would be spent tracking and tallying bonuses now goes to other gameplay, and
C) if there's only three states (bonus, penalty, standard), players can intuitively know what they're getting out of various buffs or risk-taking maneuvers.

I consider the "cancellation stacking" format (my term, meaning "tally up your buffs and debuffs, whichever is greater is what you have") to be a poor compromise that often ends up being the worst of both worlds. It has, by design, all the limitations of the "no stacking at all" rules (lacks nuance, can't represent degrees of benefit/detriment, easy to overuse and thus make worthless, etc.) But it gives up point C entirely (not that, IMO, Advantage was actually that intuitive to begin with; it's easy to know that it's good, but not how good it is), and weakens point B, possibly to the point of not actually saving any meaningful amount of time.

And that's...sort of the rub for this thing. We want to find something that preserves most of the speed, simplicity, and intuitive effect of the "no stacking" method, while regaining some of the nuances, degrees-of-effect, depth of design space, and room to grow so bonuses are at least almost always actually bonuses and not wasted. But I find instead that sacrifices are made on both ends, giving us more than half of the problems and less than half of the benefits of both approaches.

And, to be clear, I don't consider my proposed solution very clever either. It's just trying to...sort of play the weaknesses of the two methods against one another so they end up cancelling out and thus being a minor improvement on most fronts. It's still pretty simple (either ±4, ±2, or 0; either best/worst of 3d20, best/worst of 2d20, or just 1d20), but not quite the ur-simplicity of "nothing stacks." It's nuanced enough to cover unusual situations (like having Super-Disadvantage and Super-Boost, meaning you have a very high floor but it's very unlikely that you'll do much better, or the reverse, where you're likely to get a high roll but you have a small chance of utterly bombing) without being a sprawling morass of modifiers. It allows for at least some design depth, but prevents things going off the deep end. And it should still be fairly quick and not particularly counter-intuitive, though it might still take some time to get used to.

It's just not really all that elegant, and still leaves things fairly shallow in terms of design space.

 

[Voidmoji]

I consider the "cancellation stacking" format (my term, meaning "tally up your buffs and debuffs, whichever is greater is what you have") to be a poor compromise that often ends up being the worst of both worlds. It has, by design, all the limitations of the "no stacking at all" rules (lacks nuance, can't represent degrees of benefit/detriment, easy to overuse and thus make worthless, etc.)

Not sure how it doesn't allow for degrees, but otherwise, this has not been a problem for me in 4e or my own game, really. I consider it a perfectly fine compromise. YMMV.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not sure how it doesn't allow for degrees, but otherwise, this has not been a problem for me in 4e or my own game, really. I consider it a perfectly fine compromise. YMMV.

Er, 4e does not use "cancellation stacking," as I defined the phrase. 4e just has ordinary modifiers. To whit...

4e: You can get many different bonuses of different sizes or which affect how many dice you roll.

5e: Non-stacking. Either you have Advantage, or you don't, same for Disadvantage. If you have both Advantage and Disadvantage, then you have no effect.

Other systems/supplements others have described: "Cancellation stacking." Either you have Advantage or you don't, same for Disadvantage. If you have both, you must count how many sources of Advantage and Disadvantage you have. Whichever one is larger, is what you have. Only if they are precisely equal do you end up with no effect.

(IIRC) Level Up/A5e: "Best of" stacking (again, my phrase.) You can stack up Expertise Dice, but you only get one die to add. More dice simply give you a better chance of getting the best possible bonus (+6.) Some versions of this could include cancellation as well, I don't know the specific implementation in A5e.

In my opinion, "non-stacking" (how 5e does it) throws out the baby with the bathwater, and the efforts at compromise feel like they end up throwing out the baby and keeping some bathwater. 4e does not use "cancellation stacking" nor "best-of" stacking. It just lets modifiers stack as they are, good or bad.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmm, lets think about this...

My problem is...I've never actually seen anything I considered a particularly creative solution. I certainly agree that it calls for one. I just have been profoundly disappointed with every solution I've seen proposed.

"Cancellation" stacking is still stacking, and almost as much bookkeeping as just having modifiers directly.

Well, it avoids all the adding and subtracting and looking endlessly for one more thing. Generally on the GM side if the bad guys have advantage or conversely grant the PCs disadvantage, there's a short list of ways that can happen (if your monster/scenario design makes that a long list maybe you should sharpen up the design). In practice we have found it speeds up play when it replaces all situational modifiers, but YMMV I guess?

"One-and-done," as 5e does, leads either to Advantage being too special to use, or (as actually happened) massively over-used and thus often worthless. (And then they went and even broke one-and-done with stuff like Elven Accuracy!)
I want to say Level Up uses a "roll more dice, take the highest for your bonus" approach, which doesn't actually seem like a meaningful time savings, obviating the main benefit.

I hear what you are saying, OTOH we decided way back when it would be utilized in certain specific situations and not in basically any others, though there is some slight wiggle room outside of combat. It hasn't presented an issue at this point. It comes up enough to matter, but not enough to become just an ordinary thing. Given that I am the one designing my game, I don't have to let things get borked up.

My preferred solution is to make two separate bonus/penalty tracks. You have Advantage/Disadvantage, which affects the die itself, and you have Boosted/Broken (still looking for better terms there), which is a flat +/- 2. Some things merely give that status (e.g. flanking attacks are Boosted, so a Warlord-style "let an ally make a Boosted attack" at-will doesn't further improve it), but a few can go ~~to infinity and beyond~~ past that, allowing limited and special stacking.

E.g.: the rogue is Flanking an orc. Their attack rolls are Boosted. Their Warlord buddy uses the long-rest attack Hammer Into Anvil, which means any ally flanking with the Warlord (and the Warlord flanking with any ally) is Super-Boosted, getting +4 to attacks instead of +2.

I just find this to be too much mental effort for my 60-year-old brain to put it bluntly. When I play I want things to MOVE and FLOW and just not get hung up on if something did or didn't stack and focused on adding up 6 different tiny little bonuses. So, maybe that's part of why my design feels right for HoML, because it is not a game of little nitty gritty stuff. The heroes are not grubbing for points. They are being clever, and deploying skill in terms of obtaining advantage whenever they can, and in how they deploy their power points, etc. Combat is supposed to be tactical, but you are more likely to do crazy stuff and focus less on small numbers of opponents. The '5x5' format of 4e combats is fine, but I find it too limited.

"Advantage" is for things that are uncertain, but likely to bring out your best performance. "Boosted" is for things that are certain to be helpful, but to a generally lesser degree. Each has value. Getting Disadvantage-with-Boost would be something like "making a trick shot you've practiced to death....but now there's a chaotic cyclone making things worse." Getting Advantage-with-Broken would be something like making a coup de grace with an actually broken weapon, you're likely to perform well but have to overcome the inherent faults of the tool. Within each track, it cancels normally: Disadvantage would turn "Super-Advantage" into just regular Advantage and vice-versa, and exact opposites always cancel.

The limitations on stacking static bonuses would mostly apply to combat rolls. Non-combat rolls, such as skill checks, would have looser restrictions on incidental bonuses, to reflect their more varied applications. Those are generally a haggle kind of situation anyway, so hashing out the specific bonuses is expected.

Well, I have a bit more specifically specified process for how a situation is mapped onto a roll, though I don't think it really is much different from what you are saying in practice.

In any case, you'd have to play it to see, as in some sense there is terminological variation here too. Like, your 'fixed' bonuses CAN actually be dependent on situation. Permanent bonuses in particular frequently have things like keyword bindings, so "Cold Iron Knife: +3 permanent bonus to attack and damage rolls vs fey creatures" is a thing. Now, you might have some other +3 permanent bonus and not care about this, but chances are you don't, so its likely there's going to be a bit of figuring at the start of a fight, though I tend to stick to a theme for at least the arc of a challenge or quest, so you probably just write down your total adjusted base bonus the first time this comes up. That's a bit like your 'boosted' kind of idea, but more restricted. I guess technically powers could play games with this, but I have not really wanted to go down that path, beyond maybe some that do extra damage vs certain keywords.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Er, 4e does not use "cancellation stacking," as I defined the phrase. 4e just has ordinary modifiers. To whit...

4e: You can get many different bonuses of different sizes or which affect how many dice you roll.

5e: Non-stacking. Either you have Advantage, or you don't, same for Disadvantage. If you have both Advantage and Disadvantage, then you have no effect.

Other systems/supplements others have described: "Cancellation stacking." Either you have Advantage or you don't, same for Disadvantage. If you have both, you must count how many sources of Advantage and Disadvantage you have. Whichever one is larger, is what you have. Only if they are precisely equal do you end up with no effect.

(IIRC) Level Up/A5e: "Best of" stacking (again, my phrase.) You can stack up Expertise Dice, but you only get one die to add. More dice simply give you a better chance of getting the best possible bonus (+6.) Some versions of this could include cancellation as well, I don't know the specific implementation in A5e.

In my opinion, "non-stacking" (how 5e does it) throws out the baby with the bathwater, and the efforts at compromise feel like they end up throwing out the baby and keeping some bathwater. 4e does not use "cancellation stacking" nor "best-of" stacking. It just lets modifiers stack as they are, good or bad.

The only thing 4e did, which might hint at another possible general solution is to define certain 'conditions' that exist, mostly CA, which always grant a specific bonus (+2). You could get CA from 12 sources, but you still only have CA(+2). Not that 4e really developed that idea, but it is kind of a nascent version of your 'boosted/busted' thing. The only difference being, in principle you could have a dozen of these 'conditions', though obviously more than a very few would probably be kind of silly. I mean, most of the formal 4e conditions work similarly, you can only be 'dazed' and get the penalty from it one time.

So, is there a more generalizable concept there?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Level Up/A5e: "Best of" stacking (again, my phrase.) You can stack up Expertise Dice, but you only get one die to add. More dice simply give you a better chance of getting the best possible bonus (+6.) Some versions of this could include cancellation as well, I don't know the specific implementation in A5e.

expertise dice in a5e start at 1d4 and stack up to 1d8 (or 1d12 if you have certain features)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

expertise dice in a5e start at 1d4 and stack up to 1d8 (or 1d12 if you have certain features)

Ah, I must have conflated that with some other thing then. I know I've seen the described approach somewhere.

 

[Atomoctba]

Ah, I must have conflated that with some other thing then. I know I've seen the described approach somewhere.

Perhaps conflating it with boons and banes from the Shadow of Demon Lord?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

expertise dice in a5e start at 1d4 and stack up to 1d8 (or 1d12 if you have certain features)

I'm not very versed in any of the variants of 5e, so how is this different from the Battlemaster Superiority Dice?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I'm not very versed in any of the variants of 5e, so how is this different from the Battlemaster Superiority Dice?

...because it's for a completely different purpose? superiority dice fuel maneuvers. a5e expertise dice replace rogue/bard expertise (and make the feature more commonly available).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Perhaps conflating it with boons and banes from the Shadow of Demon Lord?

Now that you mention it, yeah, I think that's what it was.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I haven't the time to review this entire thread, but besides rules, what packaging/marketing approaches would people take with a new 4e?

For example - is there a setting that seems particularly well suited to highlight what's great about 4e? Is it Nentir Vale? Or perhaps another one?

Is there an existing adventure or adventure path that seems well suited?

Is PHB/MM/DMG the best way to release? Or is there another way to do it, again to showcase 4e?

What else?

 

[James Gasik]

Nentir Vale's world was incomplete, but that was likely to it's advantage. Even so, I felt it needed a little more work, since it seemed like every race had a lost ancient empire out there. I did appreciate making a setting around the edition's rules, instead of the other way around (though they immediately went back and totally stood the Forgotten Realms on it's head). The other settings were...ok. They felt a little watered down from their previous versions, but Eberron was meant to be pure 3.5 gonzo madness, and Dark Sun...well, go see the Dark Sun thread, I guess, lol.

Dark Sun was D&D with certain of it's limiters removed, and you really felt like you were playing a John Carter-esque superman in a savage land, not a good fit for 4e's more balanced game.

My favorite adventure path was Scales of War, the kinda-sorta sequel to the epic Red Hand of Doom.

While the 4e DMG is decent, I think something like Pathfinder 1's core rules would be better; one giant book with all the things you need to run a game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I haven't the time to review this entire thread, but besides rules, what packaging/marketing approaches would people take with a new 4e?

For example - is there a setting that seems particularly well suited to highlight what's great about 4e? Is it Nentir Vale? Or perhaps another one?

Is there an existing adventure or adventure path that seems well suited?

Is PHB/MM/DMG the best way to release? Or is there another way to do it, again to showcase 4e?

What else?

4e should be articulated as an engine for low myth Story Now sort of play. This doesn't require ANY actual hard rules changes (some cleanups and fixes are good), but simply a more coherent presentation. Ideally a few areas would be adjusted a bit to conform more to that sort of play, and particularly the techniques of reconceptualizing the color over the advance from tier to tier. The only piece of actual crunch that impacts is things like jumping distances and a few specific things like that. Jumping distance itself is a bit tricky, as in combat you'd like a fairly well-defined and limited value that can be calculated, but more the opposite in a general sense (IE Epic PCs jumping giant chasms is totally cromulent). I'm not sure how to address that aspect exactly, as 4e is a bit of an odd duck of a game in the sense of wanting to be both very narrative AND have a detailed tactical combat system. It works, but now and then you do run into these conflicting design goals.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hmm, lets think about this...

Well, it avoids all the adding and subtracting and looking endlessly for one more thing. Generally on the GM side if the bad guys have advantage or conversely grant the PCs disadvantage, there's a short list of ways that can happen (if your monster/scenario design makes that a long list maybe you should sharpen up the design). In practice we have found it speeds up play when it replaces all situational modifiers, but YMMV I guess?

My experience has not been one of "endlessly" getting Just One More Thing any more nor less than with other forms of stacking. That is, there's just as much "oh wait, I also have X!" or "shouldn't this have Y?" either way. Yes, there is somewhat less incentive, but I find that that compensates for (most) of the time gained by meaning people aren't as driven to remember.

It's not that there's zero time savings. It's that the time savings is quite modest, but because the net effect is identical to 5e-style non-stacking, you make exactly the same sacrifice. Getting less time savings for the same cost is unsatisfying, and doesn't feel like a creative solution.

I hear what you are saying, OTOH we decided way back when it would be utilized in certain specific situations and not in basically any others, though there is some slight wiggle room outside of combat. It hasn't presented an issue at this point. It comes up enough to matter, but not enough to become just an ordinary thing. Given that I am the one designing my game, I don't have to let things get borked up.

I mean, that's fair, but I still feel like there's this severe tension going on here, the precise inverse of the aforementioned "looking endlessly for one more thing" problem. That is, as I said, it severely flattens the gameplay space: either you have a thing, or you don't. I fully admit that it's very easy to go overboard with situational stacking modifiers, but having things HARD stop at "well you have an effect, get on with it" can be very disempowering: if you don't hand out bonuses when the players do something clever or effective (likely, to preserve the utility of the one and only bonus they're allowed to pick up), then there's far less incentive to actually DO clever or effective things and much more to simply pursue satisficing; and if you do hand out bonuses to reward clever/effective play, well, now you run the risk of over-use. It sounds like you prefer to err on the side of not giving out bonuses even when it might feel warranted, in order to preserve the specialness. Since I don't like either of these outcomes, I'm not really keen on stuff that requires me to choose between them.

I just find this to be too much mental effort for my 60-year-old brain to put it bluntly. When I play I want things to MOVE and FLOW and just not get hung up on if something did or didn't stack and focused on adding up 6 different tiny little bonuses. So, maybe that's part of why my design feels right for HoML, because it is not a game of little nitty gritty stuff. The heroes are not grubbing for points. They are being clever, and deploying skill in terms of obtaining advantage whenever they can, and in how they deploy their power points, etc.

Personally, I think this is a function of how you design the rest of the game around it, rather than the bonuses themselves or lack thereof. Really good design should always have this as its loftiest goal, a smooth-as-butter approach where things just naturally work. But sometimes, to hone a finer edge, you need a finer grit, as it were. A blunt instrument's simplicity can be its strength and also its weakness. Hammers are great for a lot of things, but the moment you have a screw, they're useless.

Combat is supposed to be tactical, but you are more likely to do crazy stuff and focus less on small numbers of opponents. The '5x5' format of 4e combats is fine, but I find it too limited.

Are they more likely to? I haven't personally seen that much of an impetus. I instead see, as I said above, "satisficing": doing just enough to get the one-and-only bonus, and then not engaging further. Why bother? It doesn't get you anything. Note, this isn't a matter of not roleplaying. It's a matter of disengagement. Do what you need to do and no more; any further effort is wasted, that could've been put toward anything else. Doing "crazy stuff" requires that the reward be well worth the risk, and with a one-and-only bonus, it frankly often isn't. Especially since Advantage doesn't actually let you succeed better, it just lets you succeed more often.

Well, I have a bit more specifically specified process for how a situation is mapped onto a roll, though I don't think it really is much different from what you are saying in practice.

In fairness, that thing is (like most stuff I share on here) completely spitballed. If I were actually doing a design rather than a mere conceptual proposal, I'd be more rigorous about it (and expect quite a bit more testing.)

In any case, you'd have to play it to see, as in some sense there is terminological variation here too. Like, your 'fixed' bonuses CAN actually be dependent on situation. Permanent bonuses in particular frequently have things like keyword bindings, so "Cold Iron Knife: +3 permanent bonus to attack and damage rolls vs fey creatures" is a thing. Now, you might have some other +3 permanent bonus and not care about this, but chances are you don't, so its likely there's going to be a bit of figuring at the start of a fight, though I tend to stick to a theme for at least the arc of a challenge or quest, so you probably just write down your total adjusted base bonus the first time this comes up. That's a bit like your 'boosted' kind of idea, but more restricted. I guess technically powers could play games with this, but I have not really wanted to go down that path, beyond maybe some that do extra damage vs certain keywords.

That....sounds like a lot of the bookkeeping you seem to want to avoid? I'm not really sure how this avoids having to check over things to determine which bonus applies...you're just looking over your list of "permanent" bonuses rather than temporary ones and arguing for the best possible one?

So, is there a more generalizable concept there?

It certainly could work. A small set of bonuses, with particular triggers, and exception-based design for allowing limited, controlled stepping outside the narrow definitions. Perhaps re-factor the bonus types thing: remove untyped bonuses (all bonuses must have some kind of type), and reduce the number of bonus types to a short list. E.g. Action, Item, Inherent, Situational, Other? Default bonus is +1, so normally you only get (at most) +5, but again exception-based design might increase these things further. And then borrow your "Permanent" bonus category, for things that are meant to basically never ever change and (generally) aren't particularly situational. So a +N Sword is a "permanent" bonus, but the "Ogreslaying" modifier gives a Situational bonus (+1) when, y'know, slaying ogres. And then you could have a Warlord daily power (or whatever we call such things) which increases your allies' Situational bonuses by some amount.

There's not much difference between that and having five statuses, e.g. Driven (action bonus), Honed (item bonus), Powerful (inherent), Prepared (situational), Boosted (other), and, just as 4e actually does in a few cases, allowing these diversified Combat Advantage-like statuses to grow bigger than they usually would be IF you already have them. There's still room to search for a benefit you don't have up to a point, but the real meat of play is in leveraging what you have and parleying it into something greater.

As said, this is mostly spitballing, as opposed to your long and considered thought on HOML.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I haven't the time to review this entire thread, but besides rules, what packaging/marketing approaches would people take with a new 4e?

Make it drip with aesthetic style, but also make sure it preserves as much as possible ease of reading, both in the sense of "easy to digest" and in the sense of "easy on the eyes," since the former is useful for new players and the latter for long-time players who have grown not only grey but almost blind in the service of their campaigns

For example - is there a setting that seems particularly well suited to highlight what's great about 4e? Is it Nentir Vale? Or perhaps another one?

Nentir Vale (and the wider cosmology of the World Axis) is very good for 4e, so I would probably keep it. If I chose anything else, it would be Chris Perkins' Iomandra, mostly because he built it for 4e and it is really damn cool. Strong potential for "monster of the week" play because the world is mostly an archipelago.

Is there an existing adventure or adventure path that seems well suited?

If you want an adventure path, go with Zeitgeist. It was originally for 4e, and everything I've heard says it's among the best.

You can also construct one from a sequence of adventures that run up through like...mid-paragon, I think? I don't remember the specifics, but I know Cairn of the Winter King, Reavers of Harkenwold, and The Slaying Stone are part of it. I believe Remains of the Empire is usually also thrown in somewhere, and if you can squeeze it, Madness at Gardmore Abbey.

From this and other things I've seen, you could probably assemble at least two full "heroic tier" adventure paths of solid, well-regarded adventures.

Is PHB/MM/DMG the best way to release? Or is there another way to do it, again to showcase 4e?

I think it's fine. I don't think you would get much benefit from trying to make an omnibus book. Maybe you could get away with trimming down the Monster Manual, merging it into the DMG, and then bulking up the PHB to match (e.g., throw in some of the PHB2 classes)? I definitely don't think it would work well as a single volume, it would cover too much ground.

What else?

Rework the "power card" format so that it feels more naturalistic, while preserving its quick-read functionality as much as possible. There has to be a better happy medium between "literally read three paragraphs before you know what this spell actually DOES" and "sterile six-line description."

Simplify structures with parallelism wherever possible. E.g., don't have 17 armor proficiency feats. Have one armor proficiency feat that can be taken more than once, increasing your armor proficiency in sequence (starting at "cloth/none," going leather, hide, chain, scale, plate.) Have one Superior Offensive Proficiency feat, which has as its text that you may choose any superior weapon or implement. Etc. This wouldn't eliminate all of 4e's feat woes, but it would help a lot, and actually make 4e easier to learn without sacrificing its richness.

There's probably more but I'm sleep deprived so that's all that comes to mind right now.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My experience has not been one of "endlessly" getting Just One More Thing any more nor less than with other forms of stacking. That is, there's just as much "oh wait, I also have X!" or "shouldn't this have Y?" either way. Yes, there is somewhat less incentive, but I find that that compensates for (most) of the time gained by meaning people aren't as driven to remember.

It's not that there's zero time savings. It's that the time savings is quite modest, but because the net effect is identical to 5e-style non-stacking, you make exactly the same sacrifice. Getting less time savings for the same cost is unsatisfying, and doesn't feel like a creative solution.


I mean, that's fair, but I still feel like there's this severe tension going on here, the precise inverse of the aforementioned "looking endlessly for one more thing" problem. That is, as I said, it severely flattens the gameplay space: either you have a thing, or you don't. I fully admit that it's very easy to go overboard with situational stacking modifiers, but having things HARD stop at "well you have an effect, get on with it" can be very disempowering: if you don't hand out bonuses when the players do something clever or effective (likely, to preserve the utility of the one and only bonus they're allowed to pick up), then there's far less incentive to actually DO clever or effective things and much more to simply pursue satisficing; and if you do hand out bonuses to reward clever/effective play, well, now you run the risk of over-use. It sounds like you prefer to err on the side of not giving out bonuses even when it might feel warranted, in order to preserve the specialness. Since I don't like either of these outcomes, I'm not really keen on stuff that requires me to choose between them.


Personally, I think this is a function of how you design the rest of the game around it, rather than the bonuses themselves or lack thereof. Really good design should always have this as its loftiest goal, a smooth-as-butter approach where things just naturally work. But sometimes, to hone a finer edge, you need a finer grit, as it were. A blunt instrument's simplicity can be its strength and also its weakness. Hammers are great for a lot of things, but the moment you have a screw, they're useless.


Are they more likely to? I haven't personally seen that much of an impetus. I instead see, as I said above, "satisficing": doing just enough to get the one-and-only bonus, and then not engaging further. Why bother? It doesn't get you anything. Note, this isn't a matter of not roleplaying. It's a matter of disengagement. Do what you need to do and no more; any further effort is wasted, that could've been put toward anything else. Doing "crazy stuff" requires that the reward be well worth the risk, and with a one-and-only bonus, it frankly often isn't. Especially since Advantage doesn't actually let you succeed better, it just lets you succeed more often.


In fairness, that thing is (like most stuff I share on here) completely spitballed. If I were actually doing a design rather than a mere conceptual proposal, I'd be more rigorous about it (and expect quite a bit more testing.)


That....sounds like a lot of the bookkeeping you seem to want to avoid? I'm not really sure how this avoids having to check over things to determine which bonus applies...you're just looking over your list of "permanent" bonuses rather than temporary ones and arguing for the best possible one?


It certainly could work. A small set of bonuses, with particular triggers, and exception-based design for allowing limited, controlled stepping outside the narrow definitions. Perhaps re-factor the bonus types thing: remove untyped bonuses (all bonuses must have some kind of type), and reduce the number of bonus types to a short list. E.g. Action, Item, Inherent, Situational, Other? Default bonus is +1, so normally you only get (at most) +5, but again exception-based design might increase these things further. And then borrow your "Permanent" bonus category, for things that are meant to basically never ever change and (generally) aren't particularly situational. So a +N Sword is a "permanent" bonus, but the "Ogreslaying" modifier gives a Situational bonus (+1) when, y'know, slaying ogres. And then you could have a Warlord daily power (or whatever we call such things) which increases your allies' Situational bonuses by some amount.

There's not much difference between that and having five statuses, e.g. Driven (action bonus), Honed (item bonus), Powerful (inherent), Prepared (situational), Boosted (other), and, just as 4e actually does in a few cases, allowing these diversified Combat Advantage-like statuses to grow bigger than they usually would be IF you already have them. There's still room to search for a benefit you don't have up to a point, but the real meat of play is in leveraging what you have and parleying it into something greater.

As said, this is mostly spitballing, as opposed to your long and considered thought on HOML.

Well, I would never say that my ideas have had sufficient testing. And they may only hold up well under specific conditions that are basically 'how I play', but its hard to say. I don't really envy commercial game designers that much.

 

[teitan]

I would have given it another year or so in the development phase and released tokens like they did with Essentials, had the PHB actually be a classic style PHB with the original core classes and improved monster math they implemented. Then avoided the Windows like patches that came out every few months to fix issues that came up in play and feat taxes they issued to fix the math. The magic item economy was too ingrained in the math so that would have been fixed.

Ok I would have released 5e.