D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[James Gasik]

Frankly, it doesn't really matter what the books say. Because people constantly make claims, even to this day, about what the 4e books claim or instruct, which are either flagrant misinterpretations of the text, or explicitly contradicted by the text.

They could have explicitly said in bright red letters on every page "we have used fewer rules for non-combat mechanics because we expect DMs to have a better idea what they need for that than we do," and people would still make these claims. The actual content of the books is entirely unrelated to what people think about the books.

I know, I know. A lot of people came predisposed to hate 4e because they were invested in 3e (well, at least a version of 3e, since a lot of people seemed really shocked at the changes in 3e, as if they hadn't seen the signs of a new set of design principles after the Warlock, the Magic Item Compendium, and the Tome of Battle). I mean, I was. I was perfectly happy to play 3.5, and the first time I played 4e, I was like "uh, hard pass".

It was several years later that I was talked into going to D&D Encounters at the FLGS, and, to my shock, I had a lot of fun. I instantly became a convert.

There are legitimate reasons not to like 4e. I can totally get that. But just like you, I've weathered a storm of disinformation that has been spread so thoroughly, that people who never played the edition perpetuate the falsehood ("it was just an MMO"). Or how "4e was the edition that failed" when, in the reality, it had lots of loyal fans. But the corpo suits decided it didn't have enough fans, and we were totally betrayed when they pulled the plug, and half the game simply vanished from existence.

The emotions are still raw, when I think about it. For years, I've jumped up any time I see people say things I know not to be true, hoping to teach and inform. But slowly I've come to the realization that the people who believe 4e was garbage, or "not D&D", or "not their D&D" don't want to have their opinions changed. And the newer players simply make the assumption that if 4e was good, there wouldn't be a 5e. At this point, any time someone expresses a desire to bring back 4e's good ideas, I support them. But we're never going back.

And I know someone who is so stuck in the past that they cling to their 2e books and refuse to acknowledge anything has happened since 3e came out in 2000. I don't want to end up like that.

So I've accepted that D&D is whatever people are playing at the moment. And whatever they have fun with. Two years ago, the people who complained about 5e and WotC's handling of the hobby were considered grumpy old crackpots. Today, more and more people claim dissatisfaction with the game. "WotC can do no wrong because 5e is the most popular version of D&D ever" has started to give way to the truth: Wizards of the Coast is a company. And companies exist to make money. All stop.

Wizards wants to not rock the boat and change as little as possible, but they're going to realize very quickly that you can't please everyone all of the time. People who want something different from D&D will go in a different direction, and take their dollars with them.

The fanbase broke before over this, and it will again. One day, a bunch of 5e fans are going to realize they've been left behind, just like the 4e fans before them, and the 3e fans before them, and the 2e fans before them.

And it's going to take a lot of outrage (and lost sales) before Wizards really listens, as we've seen. They know what people want, but until it affects their profit margin, they won't care. Because there is a huge silent majority who are still buying their products, many of whom I'm sure are barely cognizant of D&D One.

What we need to do is band together, find common ground, and push Wizards to develop a game we can all accept as being "our D&D". Because as long as everyone wants very different things, it's inevitable that nobody fully gets what they want.*

*Well, I mean, probability says that someone will get exactly the game they want, with nothing to complain about or wish was different, but who cares about them, lol.

 

[Baumi]

I love 4E, but all the minor crunchy bits aged badly for me (litte feats with conditional minor buffs, tons of +1/-1 modifiers,..).

But I think a 4E-Style Class-Book for 5E would be great. Have alternative Classes with Powers, Roles und everyone at-will/short/long Powers (with a bit of flexibility like the Essential Books), but with 5E as the base System (bounded accuracy, Advantage/Disadvantage, big Feats,..).

 

[Odysseus]

The house rules that made 4E much better for us were.
1. Everything stacked. This made everything easier, you just had to be careful about allowing to many bonuses.
2. Changing DC 10 saves, to DC 12 ability checks(no level adjustment). For instance Domination went from DC 10 to a DC 12 charisma check.
3. No interrupts on your turn, and a max of one per round.
4. Defenses used both attributes not just one.

And the thing I wanted to change but couldn't is change the math so that magic items arn't required, but don't break the game if one PC has them and another has less.

 

[Voadam]

they didn't have good or neutral monsters in the MM, to the point that dryads, I believe, became plant monsters

The MM had almost no good monsters (it had one lawful good celestial charger horse).

It had no neutral monsters because the new terminology for neutral alignment was unaligned.

A quick control f search of my PDF of the 4e MM1 shows 186 entries of unaligned. .

4e, particularly early on, focused on the MMs being for game stats of monsters you would fight, and it turned a bunch of normally good things in prior editions (angels, metallic dragons, fey, demihumans) into any alignment/unaligned things that could be potential default adversaries.

 

[Voadam]

And the thing I wanted to change but couldn't is change the math so that magic items arn't required, but don't break the game if one PC has them and another has less.

DMG 2/Dark Sun Campaign setting optional inherent bonus rules address that directly. The level appropriate buff math of items is (attack and defense bonuses) is inherent in characters, so items just give the special aspects and are not necessary for baseline combat math to work.

Some item abilities are still really nice, but not math imbalancing if someone has one and someone does not.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

• Rename it to a different game. Even if it's got the D&D IP, don't call it D&D. Let it be D&D adjacent.
  • Heroes of the Forgotten Realms
  • Champions of Cormyr
  • Champions of Dark Sun
  • Or just reuse some existing names:
    • Heroes of the Fallen Lands
    • Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
• I agree with the 5e Bounded Accuracy and Proficiency approach. The lockstep bonuses were not great, and made it feel like you have to min/max just to keep up.
• Also do the 5e magic item treatment. Keep the abilities, lose the scaling enhancement bonuses.
• Change HD progression. 13th Age's HD progression is much better. Heck AD&D's HD progression is better. Healing Surges are just fine, though. Don't use 5e HD.
• Drop levels 21+. Maybe even drop levels 16+. Maybe add them in much later, but they're a low priority. That cuts down the number of powers and monsters that you need to create by 30%-50% right out of the gate.
• Spend more time balancing and playtesting. The production schedule for 4e was absolutely breakneck.
• Stop with the chart-filling in lieu of design. Just because you have 8 power types and 4 class roles doesn't mean you need 32 classes.
• A better skill system. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do instead, but a game with combat as deep and interesting as 4e needs more from skills. And Skill Challenges are good, but they turn everything into a nail.

I would echo most of this. On the subject of skills, I would move to make skills more than binary pass/fail. May be some kind of critical success, success, success with some downside and fail. Also switch the skill system to the 5e ability system and allow the use of proficiency with different abilities. That would help a lot with skill challenges, which I think were the bases of a good idea but needed work and training of the player base in their use.

 

[Blue]

I'm going to put out a first reply without reading so I'm not biased by what others have written.

Redo of 4e:

1. Bring in bounded accuracy so we can use a greater range of foes and not have such a linear progression in adventures. This also will tie into needing less than +1 to +6 for items causing them to obsolete quickly.
2. Actually, make magic items flavorful - they all have special abilities, and noneof them have a PLUS X that's just a math change. Also means you can carry "your grandfather's sword" the entire game.
   1. Remove magic item treadmill as part of character advancement math. (Also see Bounded Accuracy above.)
3. Correct the math on skill challenges, normalize them as a regular task resolution system that should come up several times a session to strengthen non-combat pillars mechanically.
4. Have a whole set of powers for out of combat. I'm even fine with picking a "non-combat" class or rolethat provides them. Heck, pick a power source, and then a combat class, a social class and a discovery class that goes with it. "I'm playing a ranger-folk hero-scout, and my friend is playing a wizard-noble-archeologist".
   1. Separate out combat and utility powers. It's like the myth that because fighters get more feats they should be well rounded outside combat because of all the non-combat feats, when the majority of them take combat-focused feats.
5. Standardize powers within a class more. With combats wonderfully dynamic things can change a lot and planning before your turn may no longer be valid. But having to read though a dozen powers to check AoE range and stuff to see what's best is time consuming Plus we all have played with people having choice paralysis. That really slowed down games I was in in mid-Paragon and definitely in Epic.
6. Love the concept of minions, but the implementation seemed a bit off. Take the mook concept from 13th Age (written by the lead designer of 4e) which is the next iteration - they have a HPs, just add them together into a pool, and for each set of HPs one dies. So a striker might kill several minions with one attack, and they don't ignore AoE damage on saves, etc.
7. Reduce the gap between the roles so they aren't "required". For example combat shouldn't grind often if the party doesn't have a striker.

There's so much good in the system that some tweaks can really make it shine.

 

[Undrave]

Subclasses earlier. Not wait to level 11 to take a subclass/paragon path/whatever. Like 5e, around 3rd level is a good start.

Paragon paths aren't subclass, they're closer to prestige class. You had optional class features at 1st level that acted like a subclass. Like, you had the level 1 Fighter Talent feature which let you pick between: Weapon Talent, Battlerager Vigor, Tempest Technique, Brawler Style and Arena Training. Furthermore, you had powers that gave you bonus effects if you used certain groups of weapons. If you took advantage of those, a Hammer Fighter and Sword Fighter were effectively two different subclass.

Many Daily Powers were very powerful and were either you do something awesome or you miss completely,

Huuuuh... no. Daily Powers usually always had either: an assured effect, effect/dmg on a miss, granted a passive buff, or had the 'Reliable' keyword (especially Martial powers) that let you retain your Daily if you missed. There was no way to outright 'waste' your daily aside from bad strategic decisions.

Remove Dailies. Let it be a thing for sad wizards to have as their special thing, but everything else gets to be encounter based like god intended.

Hmm... but what about stuff like the Warden's forms? Or the zone created by the Cleric's Beacon of Hope? (AKA 'Bacon of Hope' as we called it)

to the point that most spells with non-combat purposes weren't in the PHB

They were called Rituals.

and they didn't even include the bard

PHB2

More things that hinge on Bloodied

Yes! I miss the bloodied condition!

This is like the thing someone else mentioned, about letting anyone with the relevant skills learn rituals...that's literally already a thing. All you need is the Ritual Caster feat, exactly the same as 5e. And you don't even strictly need that if you don't want it--you CAN buy consumable ritual scrolls that provide one-off uses!

Was it a Skill Power or a Feat or some kind of Feature that allowed you to use BLUFF instead of the linked skill when doing a ritual? Literally faking your way to arcane power! Hilarious stuff.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Was it a Skill Power or a Feat or some kind of Feature that allowed you to use BLUFF instead of the linked skill when doing a ritual? Literally faking your way to arcane power! Hilarious stuff.

There is a feat from Dragon 405 (Nov 2011) which lets you do this with all Deception rituals, and there is also a daily skill power, Improvisational Arcana (PHB3, so March 2010), which lets you do this for any ritual (not just Deception) of half your level or lower.

 

[Undrave]

There is a feat from Dragon 405 (Nov 2011) which lets you do this with all Deception rituals, and there is also a daily skill power, Improvisational Arcana (PHB3, so March 2010), which lets you do this for any ritual (not just Deception) of half your level or lower.

Yeah I was thinking of Improvisational Arcana! Loved that kind of stuff.