D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[rjrad]

This is a great thread, 4e had so much to offer, and still does if you could speed up combat.

 

[Haplo781]

Honestly I'm at the point where I'm just gonna port the fluff I like into the MCDM RPG.

 

[Voadam]

As far as powers it kind of bugged me to have low level powers I really liked, then get to higher levels where you swap out a lower level one for a higher level one and to not have an option to do the same type of thing at the new power level. I vaguely remember hitting that with my ranger advancing with cool interrupt/reaction powers at lower level which I worked big into my build as an action economy focus, then later having mostly options to just hit for more damage/attacks on my turn.

 

[Haplo781]

You can always choose to keep your lower level power.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

See, class features... are not created equal. At least not in a vacuum. Some classes actually have better At-Wills than others based on class features that trigger on them.

The system I envision would account for the different power/utility levels of class features by “pricing” them differently. Lesser ones would take a single character build slot. More powerful ones might cost several times as much.

Would there still be better synergies than others? Certainly. No system is perfect. But I’m pretty sure a good game designer could achieve a pretty workable solution with a decent “sweet spot”.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Well, I've already voiced my opposition to reducing things down to either Source or Role, so...yeah, for me, that's no dice.

Well, I've already stated that my goal would be to reduce the number of feats significantly, even drastically. I don't care what the scheme or plan would be to do so. I'm sorry that wasn't clear.

I don't have much problem with the classes, other than trimming a couple. As I said above, I don't think every power source needs all roles.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The system I envision would account for the different power/utility levels of class features by “pricing” them differently. Lesser ones would take a single character build slot. More powerful ones might cost several times as much.

Would there still be better synergies than others? Certainly. No system is perfect. But I’m pretty sure a good game designer could achieve a pretty workable solution with a decent “sweet spot”.

I could see that working.

Though I think you'd have to make the base say, three slots so things like a trigger for an at-will would be one slot and then the class ability dependent powers be two. It'd be a lot of work to map every class ability to that.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I could see that working.

Though I think you'd have to make the base say, three slots so things like a trigger for an at-will would be one slot and then the class ability dependent powers be two. It'd be a lot of work to map every class ability to that.

The actual math would definitely need testing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Step 1: design about 80 new powers

And this is exactly why NOBODY does it! I mean, there were a few 3PP classes. Honestly, I never saw one that seemed very compelling. By the time PHB2 was out, the only class that really didn't exist was the monk. ALL the stuff that came after that was fairly marginal/niche concepts (not that they were bad classes at all). Late 4e had a few nice hits, but its hard to really say by the end of 2009 that there was a compelling reason to design all new powers. Now, a build/subclass could make sense, but then there was MCing and finally hybrids. By that point the idea of homebrew classes was pretty close to dead! Even when WotC made some 'Eastern' stuff, aside the monk it was all just very minor build tweaks and flavor.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is a great thread, 4e had so much to offer, and still does if you could speed up combat.

Combat is not really slow, IF you play in the 'right' style. So, I know I say it often; I just had these totally gonzo off the wall crazy fights. It took some time to really hone that style, but nowadays, you won't even notice time passing, and its rare if the fight requires actually killing off every last monster. OTOH a fight that is a right nasty little tactical puzzle? Hey, you can really enjoy digging on that for a couple hours, hehe! I like those too. Just mix it up.