D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[cavalier973]

The four cantrips of the wizard really sold me on that class. The ability to routinely do minor magic tricks—especially “Prestidigitation”—fits my idea of what a storybook wizard can do.

I like the little background ideas it gives in the intro for several of the classes. For the fighter, it suggests that the character could be a “prince on the run from assassins”, while the rogue might be “a member of the deposed king’s shattered intelligence network”. The warlock could be “a libram-toting scholar captivated by ominous lore”, etc.

The names of the paragon paths make me want to play those characters. “Pit Fighter”, “Combat Veteran”, and “Radiant Servant”, for example.

 

[Kannik]

A smallish one but one that came to mind today: A shield adds to a character's Reflex defense. Finally a fighter can take cover behind their shield against fireballs and more!

 

[Red Castle]

I really loved how the value of healing surge was 25% of the character health and that the number of surges varied depending on roles, it reinforced the different durability of each class, more than just the number of HP.

For exemple, in my current campaign where the characters are level 4, there is one swordmage with 17 constitution, which give her 50 HP and 11 surges, and a ranger with 8 constitution, which give him 35 HP and 5 surges.

Now, if you take only the HP difference, it doesn’t look like the swordmage is that much more resiliant and you could wonder why it’s so important that she takes the hit instead of the ranger… after all, they only have 15 HP different. But the surge value is also different, the swordmage have a surge value of 12 while the ranger has only 8 HP… so healing the swordmage will gives you more bang for your bucks since it will technically heal 4 HP more.

But it doesn’t stop there. Since the swordmage has 11 Healing Surge, it means that ahe can potencially heal a total of 132 HP which gives her a potencial total of 182 before needing to take a long rest. Meanwhile, the ranger with 5 surge of 8 HP will gives him a potencially healing of 40 HP, for a maximum of 75 HP. So the swordmage has a potencial of almost 2.5 more HP than the ranger.

Granted, this exemple is with an extreme of a 17 const defender compared to a 8 const striker, but still, it shows the tactical value of working so that it is the swordmage that needs to take most of the hit… which is her job and what the game encourage you to do.

Love it!

 

[cavalier973]

Just having a PC’s starting HP be equal to the CON score was brilliant.

 

[Red Castle]

Just having a PC’s starting HP be equal to the CON score was brilliant.

I’ll raise you having a first level character not risking getting killed by the first attack of a 1 hour combat was also brilliant! Combined with Critical Hit being a fix value of Max possible damage instead of being a multiplier is pretty nice!

Oh! And using Intel modifier for AC! A Wizard with a great AC! What kind of sorcery is this!?

 

[Dustin Cooper]

I’ll raise you having a first level character not risking getting killed by the first attack of a 1 hour combat was also brilliant! Combined with Critical Hit being a fix value of Max possible damage instead of being a multiplier is pretty nice!

Oh! And using Intel modifier for AC! A Wizard with a great AC! What kind of sorcery is this!?

Yeah, and making the floor for healing abilities to be 1/4 of a character's HP also helped a lot. It meant you never got into one of those situations where you spent one of your resources on healing, rolled like garbage, and felt like you wasted it. Healing is always useful.

 

[cavalier973]

Bonuses rather than penalties (usually).

A wizard can pick up the spear of her fallen comrade and stab at the hobgoblin king without a penalty to the attack roll—she doesn’t get a proficiency bonus, but, unless her STR is less than 10, she isn’t penalized, either.

 

[Red Castle]

Bonuses rather than penalties (usually).

A wizard can pick up the spear of her fallen comrade and stab at the hobgoblin king without a penalty to the attack roll—she doesn’t get a proficiency bonus, but, unless her STR is less than 10, she isn’t penalized, either.

I just had a discussion with my friend yesterday about how DnD 4 always built on positive play experience and moving forward instead of slowing things down.

First, they removed the negative racial attribute modifiers, so no race was really discourage to play anything, every race could start with a 18 or even 20 in the attribute of their choice. Great decision I think, and a step forward away from old stereotypes.

But secondly, and that’s what my conversation with my friend was about yesterday (came on while talking about the topic of the other current 4e discussion on this forum), they came up with a way to mark that your character is wounded with the bloodied condition, but made it a positive condition.

In some other games, as your character or the enemy gets wounded, he start to get negative modifier to attack as he gets more and more weak: -1 at 75%, -3 at 50%, -7 at 25% health… it certainly goes for a more realistic feel, a more survival style where you have to think before going into a fight, because the consequences can be really bad. But in play, it might just drag the fight longer than it should and if all party gets wounded and have more trouble to hit, so it becomes a series of miss and miss and miss, etc…

4e introduced the Bloodied Condition, but instead of getting some negative modifier to attack once you got bloodied, it could actually gives you a bonus. Like the Dragonborn fury that gave you a bonus to attack once you get bloodied as you get angrier. Or attacking a bloodied enemy could be the trigger/condition for certain powers… or it could trigger some immediate reaction action once you or the enemy got bloodied.

But in all cases, a character becoming bloodied triggered only positive abilites, never negative ones (there might be some exceptions, I didn’t read all abilites). So instead of risking to slow things down, it could only accelerate them. Positive instead of negative

 

[Staffan]

But in all cases, a character becoming bloodied triggered only positive abilites, never negative ones (there might be some exceptions, I didn’t read all abilites). So instead of risking to slow things down, it could only accelerate them. Positive instead of negative

IIRC, Bloodied was positive (well, other than being down 50% hp) if you only looked at your own sheet. But I'm pretty sure there were some monsters that had special attacks that they could only do on Bloodied opponents, or that had increased effects on them.

 

[James Gasik]

IIRC, Bloodied was positive (well, other than being down 50% hp) if you only looked at your own sheet. But I'm pretty sure there were some monsters that had special attacks that they could only do on Bloodied opponents, or that had increased effects on them.

Oh boy, were there ever. In the 4e Dark Sun game I played in, we got attacked at level 1 by some critters that not only made two attacks, but if they bloodied an enemy, they got a third reaction attack! Brutal, to say the least.