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How would you redo 4e?
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8985722" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Exactly: I've pointed out both of these issues in various forms and places in this thread, but you and I seem to be the only ones who see both of these issues. On the skill vs defense and DC front, HoML solves this entirely. All the same bonuses with the same values apply in both realms, and in fact at this point defenses are being designed out in favor of a mechanism where the player is able to select an appropriate 'action' to defend with. This can be a skill, a raw ability score, a power, etc. In fact my main rules focus right now is figuring out exactly what the full expression of the rules is which governs which of these are eligible responses to a given attack. Of course this works in reverse too, as skill checks are now perfectly valid 'attacks'. Overall this is a great improvement in the 4e 'engine', but not one you can achieve within the aegis of full 4e compatibility. I'd note that I've also eliminated the oddball 2 point difference between AC and NADS (well, at this point neither AC nor NADS formally exist anymore, but the game has no odd different classes of attacks that get different bonus amounts).</p><p></p><p>On the second issue: I don't fully know how to address this either. I expressed it in terms of the Athletics Jump ability. In combat this is a move action governed by precise rules which generate a distance covered. While these distances naturally grow to fairly fantastical values (high Epic PCs might jump 60' or more, far beyond the 29' outer limits of mundane human performance) they're still not really in keeping with everyone's view of the fantastic nature of almost-godlike level 30 characters (IE they can be actual demigods). Outside of the realm of combat it is quite easy to simply formulate the game in terms of narrative and what sort of fiction will fit with the desired tone, but its hard to see that as a very good approach IN combat. </p><p></p><p>One approach, inspired by my reading of the litrpg Age of Adepts where there is extreme scaling, would be to actually scale the tactical combat spaces. The natural approach there would be to do it by tier. So heroic tier combat uses 5' squares, but legendary (4e paragon) uses something bigger, like 25' squares, and Mythic (Epic) fights are staged on a correspondingly mightier scale still, like 100' or 300' squares. However this is not really addressing the underlying issue, just kind of attempting to converge the two paradigms a bit in terms of what they actually represent. I guess GMs could pick scale factors too, maybe even on the fly, depending on what they feel makes sense in a given situation. Tentatively my idea was to allow for any of the three scales to be used as appropriate, but you wouldn't generally put heroic action on an epic scale, for example. OTOH you might use heroic scale in an 'indoor' setting, even if the PCs are Epic. </p><p></p><p>I guess another approach would be to simply relax combat a bit in terms of stuff like that and just say "well, we will just set a DC to make that jump", though its still hard in that case to portray really gonzo epic action on the 5'/square 4e scale. This was, of course, already true though, and 4e Epic battles actually can be a bit tricky to stage in an appropriately impressive way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8985722, member: 82106"] Exactly: I've pointed out both of these issues in various forms and places in this thread, but you and I seem to be the only ones who see both of these issues. On the skill vs defense and DC front, HoML solves this entirely. All the same bonuses with the same values apply in both realms, and in fact at this point defenses are being designed out in favor of a mechanism where the player is able to select an appropriate 'action' to defend with. This can be a skill, a raw ability score, a power, etc. In fact my main rules focus right now is figuring out exactly what the full expression of the rules is which governs which of these are eligible responses to a given attack. Of course this works in reverse too, as skill checks are now perfectly valid 'attacks'. Overall this is a great improvement in the 4e 'engine', but not one you can achieve within the aegis of full 4e compatibility. I'd note that I've also eliminated the oddball 2 point difference between AC and NADS (well, at this point neither AC nor NADS formally exist anymore, but the game has no odd different classes of attacks that get different bonus amounts). On the second issue: I don't fully know how to address this either. I expressed it in terms of the Athletics Jump ability. In combat this is a move action governed by precise rules which generate a distance covered. While these distances naturally grow to fairly fantastical values (high Epic PCs might jump 60' or more, far beyond the 29' outer limits of mundane human performance) they're still not really in keeping with everyone's view of the fantastic nature of almost-godlike level 30 characters (IE they can be actual demigods). Outside of the realm of combat it is quite easy to simply formulate the game in terms of narrative and what sort of fiction will fit with the desired tone, but its hard to see that as a very good approach IN combat. One approach, inspired by my reading of the litrpg Age of Adepts where there is extreme scaling, would be to actually scale the tactical combat spaces. The natural approach there would be to do it by tier. So heroic tier combat uses 5' squares, but legendary (4e paragon) uses something bigger, like 25' squares, and Mythic (Epic) fights are staged on a correspondingly mightier scale still, like 100' or 300' squares. However this is not really addressing the underlying issue, just kind of attempting to converge the two paradigms a bit in terms of what they actually represent. I guess GMs could pick scale factors too, maybe even on the fly, depending on what they feel makes sense in a given situation. Tentatively my idea was to allow for any of the three scales to be used as appropriate, but you wouldn't generally put heroic action on an epic scale, for example. OTOH you might use heroic scale in an 'indoor' setting, even if the PCs are Epic. I guess another approach would be to simply relax combat a bit in terms of stuff like that and just say "well, we will just set a DC to make that jump", though its still hard in that case to portray really gonzo epic action on the 5'/square 4e scale. This was, of course, already true though, and 4e Epic battles actually can be a bit tricky to stage in an appropriately impressive way. [/QUOTE]
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