D&D 4E Is there any 4e Retro Clones out there?

[MwaO]

Well, my 'hack' game uses a 20 level progression with 4e-like math, and while its not exactly HARD to convert things the range of modifiers is smaller and etc, so pretty much every number changes. Lots of things ARE the same, but PCs don't just convert really cleanly. You can get a pretty close approximation with a little bit of sliding numbers around, but...

The goal would be to make the numbers equal essentially to 4e level+7 in terms of to-hit. So a 4th level PC in this clone ought to have a +15 to hit. An 8th level 4e PC with a 20 stat, +2 weapon, and +1 expertise and +3 proficiency = +15 to hit. So if a 4th level PC has a 20 stat(+5), then he simply needs a level*2+ a +2 to make things work. Let's call that +2 to hit proficiency to keep it simple.

I'm just throwing out a 10 level game as an example - it doesn't matter if it is 10 or 100 really as long as the numbers match up to a specific 4e level that's not too hard to figure out from how the game is set up.

One of the major changes I would make is re-jiggering how stacking bonuses would work to heavily favor single attacks over not-single attacks. Basically, you get bonuses to damage from every W/I instead of per attack and every bonus that's not defined as untyped is made into a bonus from the source it comes from - an enhancement bonus to damage is now an item bonus to damage as is Dragonshards and Iron Armbands of Power. So they don't stack, but a +2 weapon with a 5w attack would be +10 damage instead of just +2. Bonuses from class/paragon path are power bonuses, so don't stack with power bonuses from powers. Forced Vulnerability is actually a power bonus to damage.

That would end up speeding up the game because 5w+stat attacks become very competitive with 1w+1w+1w(+stat) attacks. And ridiculous stacking of options just doesn't work, so such a PC might not work in an extremely over-clocked 4e game, but that's a feature IMO.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The goal would be to make the numbers equal essentially to 4e level+7 in terms of to-hit. So a 4th level PC in this clone ought to have a +15 to hit. An 8th level 4e PC with a 20 stat, +2 weapon, and +1 expertise and +3 proficiency = +15 to hit. So if a 4th level PC has a 20 stat(+5), then he simply needs a level*2+ a +2 to make things work. Let's call that +2 to hit proficiency to keep it simple.

I'm just throwing out a 10 level game as an example - it doesn't matter if it is 10 or 100 really as long as the numbers match up to a specific 4e level that's not too hard to figure out from how the game is set up.

One of the major changes I would make is re-jiggering how stacking bonuses would work to heavily favor single attacks over not-single attacks. Basically, you get bonuses to damage from every W/I instead of per attack and every bonus that's not defined as untyped is made into a bonus from the source it comes from - an enhancement bonus to damage is now an item bonus to damage as is Dragonshards and Iron Armbands of Power. So they don't stack, but a +2 weapon with a 5w attack would be +10 damage instead of just +2. Bonuses from class/paragon path are power bonuses, so don't stack with power bonuses from powers. Forced Vulnerability is actually a power bonus to damage.

That would end up speeding up the game because 5w+stat attacks become very competitive with 1w+1w+1w(+stat) attacks. And ridiculous stacking of options just doesn't work, so such a PC might not work in an extremely over-clocked 4e game, but that's a feature IMO.

Sure, but one of my goals was to tone down the bonus numbers a little, so in my reinterpretation of the 4e engine you still get basically +1/level (half from level bonus and half from 'boons', which covers all other elements in my system except powers). So, the math really doesn't quite mesh, its not like you get +30 in 20 levels instead of 30 levels, which is basically what you're suggesting. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and it does perhaps simplify porting stuff, but OTOH I can just multiply levels and bonuses by 2/3, so it doesn't really matter.

Personally I thought 10 levels was a bit TOO compressed, some elements of 13a get rather awkward with its 10 level progression, and it seemed silly to have intra-level advancements like 13a does. 15 levels might work well too I suppose, but 20 just seemed to hit the sweet spot where there's plenty of stuff to allocate to each level, but you don't get more than maybe 2 things every level.

 

[MwaO]

Personally I thought 10 levels was a bit TOO compressed, some elements of 13a get rather awkward with its 10 level progression, and it seemed silly to have intra-level advancements like 13a does. 15 levels might work well too I suppose, but 20 just seemed to hit the sweet spot where there's plenty of stuff to allocate to each level, but you don't get more than maybe 2 things every level.

The advantage of 10 levels is psychological. A big problem of D&D is that most groups don't actually ever play past 10th - so R&D has to come up with interesting things to happen before 10th level and after 10th level without greatly overcomplicating the system. It gets really tricky.

Just look at Wizards in 5e - Level+Int modifier doesn't sound like a bad thing when you run out quickly of spell slots. But when you don't and can reasonably use a couple of spells each combat...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The advantage of 10 levels is psychological. A big problem of D&D is that most groups don't actually ever play past 10th - so R&D has to come up with interesting things to happen before 10th level and after 10th level without greatly overcomplicating the system. It gets really tricky.

Just look at Wizards in 5e - Level+Int modifier doesn't sound like a bad thing when you run out quickly of spell slots. But when you don't and can reasonably use a couple of spells each combat...

IME though it isn't that people only go up so many levels, its that they only climb so far on the power curve. The group I play 5e with actually has several players that want to be back playing 3.5 e6 because there's such a small power curve. If 5e was a 10 level system, or if they were playing 13a they would just stop at level 3 or 4 instead of 6. That may not be everyone, but its a fair number of people.

 

[Balesir]

The advantage of 10 levels is psychological. A big problem of D&D is that most groups don't actually ever play past 10th - so R&D has to come up with interesting things to happen before 10th level and after 10th level without greatly overcomplicating the system.

OK, but the reason we never used to play past 10th-12th level was that the system became pretty un-fun beyond that level. The character of the game changed to one of planned assassination and plotting, and several character classes became more-or-less irrelevant - plus the GM's brain started to overheat trying to deal with the extensive number of options that the characters (well, the spellcasters, anyway) had available. As a result nearly all the games we played before 4E simply fizzled out somewhere around 11th level.

With 4E and (I think, never having run 13A all the way to Epic) 13th Age this limitation no longer applies. Our 4E game is currently at 26th level and still good fun (and managable) to play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK, but the reason we never used to play past 10th-12th level was that the system became pretty un-fun beyond that level. The character of the game changed to one of planned assassination and plotting, and several character classes became more-or-less irrelevant - plus the GM's brain started to overheat trying to deal with the extensive number of options that the characters (well, the spellcasters, anyway) had available. As a result nearly all the games we played before 4E simply fizzled out somewhere around 11th level.

With 4E and (I think, never having run 13A all the way to Epic) 13th Age this limitation no longer applies. Our 4E game is currently at 26th level and still good fun (and managable) to play.

Yeah, 1e and 2e started to have problems as low as 7th level, and things got pretty wonky once you had 6th level spells (11th level wizard). Then it pretty much melted around 14th when you had 7th level spells. Clerics and druids were a BIT less crazy, but still having things like a spell that swallowed up evil guys forever into the earth was pretty zany. Especially when level 9 fighters got A WHOLE BUNCH OF 0 LEVEL FOLLOWERS, WOW!!!! (and only if they spent all their gold on a castle that was bound to be a giant DM plot hook magnet, and not in a good way).

Once we got past our 'Monty Haul' period I don't think there was ever a game where we hit 14th level ever again. My highest level PC was a level 13 Magic User (that eventually got converted to 2e). We did play a fair bit around those levels though, but I'm not honestly sure just how much more powerful being 18th level would have really gotten us anyway, we killed Demogorgon at 13th... We were kind of the ruthless "extrapolate everything to the Nth degree of advantage" sort of lot, and magic user spells in particular left a LOT of open doors for that.