JohnSnow said:
Interesting system, but I think you'd have to make critical hits rarer than they are in 4e.
Keep in mind that since the number of opponents has increased, the number of attacks each character is subject to has also increased. In Fourth Edition, with 4 times as many attackers, a character faces as many attacks as he did over the course of 4 battles in 3e. Iterative attacks kinda mess with this, but the general idea is the same.
In other words, I think your system would work fine if you were to add back in the rule to confirm crits.
I tend to agree somewhat. Although criticals only occur on a 20, the amount of damage an attack does can be quite high. So, I might make it half of the damage per critical as opposed to all of it. I also might allow a heal of some sort to heal it once per day (e.g. one Lay On Hands or Healing Word per day per recipient). It really depends on what the rest of the new rules state (instead of powers, I might make it a single Heal skill instead, depending).
JohnSnow said:
It seems you're having trouble with one of the basic design tenets of 4e. Which is this:
"The 'threat of death' created by attrition-based adventures does not lead to a fun gaming experience for most people. Ergo, 4e will move away from 'attrition-based adventuring' in favor of making each and every encounter more exciting, dramatic, interesting, and life-threatening."
And yes, each encounter IS life-threatening. But no encounter's threat level is dependent on what went before it. The daily rules are primarily a nod to the reality of the gameworld, and to allow players to engage in a little bit of long-term resource management.
I think people have been playing attrition-based adventuring for over 30 years now and have had a blast. The earlier versions of the game would not have sold if they were not fun.
Don't believe everything the new 4E Marketecture tells you. Sure, a lot of it is simpler. But, not all of it is better than earlier versions.
There's nothing wrong with a bit of attrition and it can result in some really fun and challenging adventures. Some of the best adventures that my players remember for years are ones where they are on the edge, nearly out of resources, and barely hanging on. They don't remember the "same old same old" adventures.
Reset Resources adventuring might just get too repetitive for some people. I've seen a lot of "I'm Entitled" type posts over on the Rules Forum for the last 5 years and the 4E model here seems to want to enforce that (i.e. yes, you are entitled to go into every single combat with most of your resources).
JohnSnow said:
However, if you regard attrition-based adventuring as "the heart and soul of D&D," then it would be (mostly) correct to say you've been "fired" as a customer by the 4e designers.
I don't consider it the heart and soul, but I do consider it another way to challenge the players.
And no, it's not correct to say WotC lost me as a customer. It just means that I will house rule some of the 4E stuff out of the game system for my game.
What I consider the good 4E stuff, I will keep (or possibly even enhance).
Don't get me wrong. I think they did some really good things in 4E. But, there are some stinkers in there too (like no self stabilization rule which is a staple of Sword and Sorcery literature, e.g. after getting knocked out and left for dead, Conan wakes up hours later and then has to track down his enemies, alla Conan the Conqueror).
