I’m Thinking of Giving 4e Another Shot

[Samuel Leming]

Five pages already! I hope everyone will forgive me for not responding to each point individually. I do appreciate all the advice and responses though. Well, all of them except for the suggestions to give up and get gone.

I'm glad to see that the discussion on stunts will to be useful to more than just me. That's the kind of stuff I was hoping for.

Anyway, onward.

Skill Challenges

Ok, those changes make the skill challenges much easier. Maybe too easy. The math for working out the probabilities is easy, but more than just a little tedious. If I were to make much use of this system I'd write a small program to work out the numbers for me.

Skill challenges are presented as being optional. I've done fine up till now just playing through these kind of things and winging it, but I'm glad the option is there if I need them. I don't see that they're a hindrance to my play style at all so I don’t really think they’re an issue.

Treasure Parcels II

I've reread the treasure information in the DMG and it's just as prescriptive and depressing as I remember it being. I can't use that.

I suspect that the 4e treasure system was designed around the thought of just getting the task done and going on with the rest of the game. Well, that’s understandable, but I want a bit more verisimilitude. I’ve found over the past thirty years that players generally appreciate it.

Selling Treasure

Selling your treasure, including your magic items, defaults to netting you one fifth its market value? Yikes! Maybe if you dump your loot with the first person willing to take it. I understand that the rules are trying to give players an incentive to keep the magic they find, but that’s not my goal. My goal is to encourage players to explore the world through their characters and then react to whatever situations they find themselves in as their characters would be inclined.

If a character is willing to take the time to find a broker for magic items I’d let that character sell the item for around half price. If the character is willing to take the time to go a few steps further and actually look for a final buyer that actually needs the item they should be able to net somewhere around full market price. Now if the character would go so far as to research the history of the item and look for a buyer that would want it for its sentimental or historical reasons I’d even go so far as to let him get 125% or even 150% for it.

I’m never really worried too much about characters getting too much money. In addition to keeping up their magical bling they’ve got general expenses, property upkeep, hireling costs & even taxes to worry about.

Astral Diamonds

I’d forgotten all about these things. Other than planar currency what are they used for? Who’s backing these things up? A money god? Will this money god give you god bonds if you bring in these astral diamonds?

Yes, I know, once again the idea is to just get on with it, but usually financial transactions at that level would be handled using financial instruments issued by banks or governments rather then glowing million dollar bills. I’ll let the concept percolate in the back of my mind for awhile. Maybe I’ll come up with something cool involving them, or one of you guys will.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Most flumphs are lawful good. These are specific flumphs who've been hanging around with a bad element.

Right. And I suppose the same goes for the metallic dragons and the couatl in MM2?

Heh, exactly.

You can bet that I'll be changing those alignments if I run 4e.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Certainly they would also make a good analogue. I would still be very interested to hear the OP's answer to the question.

Ok.

The question was how I justified the barbarian rage ability? I just used the default line of bull from the PHB that raging is exhausting. That was good enough for me.

The 4e PHB doesn't even provide that for martial powers, but I think switching them all over to expendable ki is as good an explanation as exhaustion was for barbarian rage.

 

[illwizard]

I suspect that the 4e treasure system was designed around the thought of just getting the task done and going on with the rest of the game. Well, that’s understandable, but I want a bit more verisimilitude. I’ve found over the past thirty years that players generally appreciate it.

As a player and DM, I agree 100%. If I want a magic bow, then I'm going to have to work for it, perhaps even quest for it. I hate the whole idea of a wish list and such.

Peace!

 

[FireLance]

On the subject of martial powers, about a month back, I started a thread on what the "laws" for the martial power source should be like.

The next step would have been to go through the list of existing martial powers and prune or amend the offending ones, but shortly after that, WotC announced ki was no longer going to be a separate power source, so I also decided to fold ki into the martial power source.

However, I also took some of the principles I thought would be applicable to the martial power source and developed a very simple 4E class. Encounter abilities were the result of adrenaline surges (and you could expend a higher-level encounter attack power to use a lower-level one) and daily abilities were simply due to luck.

 

[FireLance]

As a player and DM, I agree 100%. If I want a magic bow, then I'm going to have to work for it, perhaps even quest for it. I hate the whole idea of a wish list and such.

Wish lists have nothing to do with treasure parcels, though. Even if a DM doesn't use the treasure parcel system, he can ask his players what kinds of magic items their PCs would like to have and work them into the adventure somehow (and some DMs actually do this).

At the most basic, treasure parcels simply mean that the DM decides in advance what treasures the PCs are going to find before they gain the next level, and gives them out at appropriate points in the adventure.

One valid criticism of treasure parcels is that they need not necessarily have any link to the creatures defeated by the PCs (unlike 1e-style treasure types, for example). Nonetheless, it is something that a DM should be able to handle quite easily, for example, ensuring that the magic bow in a treasure parcel is assigned to a group of humanoid enemies that includes an archer who uses it, or is found in a treasure vault or given as a reward, and not discovered on the body of animal (unless the DM has a really good reason why it happened).

 

[Keefe the Thief]

You´re still supposed to quest and work for the stuff on your wish list.

 

[FireLance]

You´re still supposed to quest and work for the stuff on your wish list.

This. Having a wish list is like being able to choose what staff benefits you get instead of passively accepting what your HR department gives you, but you still have to work.

Come to think of it, that's even better than a wish list. A wish list is more like your HR department asking you what staff benefits you want. You still have to work for them and you still don't have the final say, but there's a chance that you might get what you ask for.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I’m thinking about giving D&D 4e another chance. I’ve tried to play it three times and attempted to DM it once, but playing the system as is doesn’t really match up very well with my play style. Now that most of the blatant omissions have been covered by the PH2 & MM2 I’m willing to take another look. What I’m going to try to do with this thread is to go over what I think needs to be house ruled in order to make the game fit and to get some advice from others with similar play styles on how they’ve managed to make use of 4e.

Play Style

When I play a RPG I make decisions for my character based upon what I think my character would do given the information he has in the game world situation he finds himself. That’s my goal as a player and how I have fun in these kind of games. Pursuing my own rules related goals is something that will occasionally happen, but it’s not why I play role playing games. When I was introduced to D&D back in 1977 it was sold to me on the concepts of exploration and pretending to be a fantastic character living in a fantastic world. This is the style the GNS folks have referred to as 'simulationism', but it’s always just been regular role playing to me. This is always how I played, how most of the groups I’ve gamed with over the last thirty some years have played and I know there must be at least a few others like me left here on EN World.

I am not entirely sure what "Rules related Goals" mean. At least on the surface I don't see a problem with 4E here, so I would not worry about it.

Treasure parcels don’t work and will never work for the type of game I want to run or play. This concept can’t be saved and must be thrown out completely.

If an encountered monster uses a bow and that monster is defeated then the party now has that bow. The creature and its bow doesn’t just evaporate leaving behind a scroll and a +2 dagger. The creature may indeed have those items and if it has items that can be used to defend itself then it will most likely do so.

I think one of the core thnigs in 4E is that monsters usually don't need any magical items. Even humanoid NPCs don't need to have magical weapons to achieve their attack bonuses and values.

On the other hand, we have treasure parcels, that tell you how much "wealth" you should distribute over the course of a level so that the characters get a fair amount of items. (The wish list suggestion exists so that you give the characters item they will find useful, too, to avoid them commonly disenchanting or selling their items to buy or enchant new ones - you might not be a fan of magic item shops...)

Now, to pull this two things together:
1) You can equip some monsters or NPCs with items from the treasure list. (There are also rules how this would affect their abilities in the DMG).
2) You can put some items in the usual treasure chests and heap of treasures characters might find.
3) Other items might be rewards for "quests" - e.g. if you provide the Wizard with the desired Bullywug skins, he will give you a magical item as reward.

The treasure parcels provide a guideline on how much items are "appropriate" on average. I don't think you need to be that strict.
The PCs mostly need: A magic weapon or implement, a magic armor, and a neck item slot, and each item should have a level within 5 levels of the individual PC, they won't be too overpowered or too weak.
(If you remove the item bonuses to attack and defenses and hand them out simply by level, you are even more free in what you hand out - or if you hand out something at all.)

 

[Hairfoot]

I'm not sure if it still works this way, but it always bothered me that a relatively nice athiest/agnostic person in the Realms faces enternity built into a wall of undying people

But they'd be rare in a fantasy world where, as Terry Pratchett noted, believing in gods is like believing in the postman.