D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how D&D 4E could have looked

OK on this "I would’ve much preferred the ability to adopt any role within the core 4 by giving players a big choice at level 1, an option that placed an overlay on every power you used or that gave you a new way to use them."
Basically have Source Specific Powers and less class powers. But I think combining that with having BIG differing stances to dynamically switch role might be a better idea so that your hero can adjust role to circumstance. I have to defend this NPC right now vs I have to take down the big bad right now vs I have to do minion cleaning right now, I am inspiring allies in my interesting way, who need it right now.

and the obligatory
Argghhhh on this. " I wanted classes to have different power acquisition schedules"

And thematic differences seemed to have been carried fine.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh I admit it wasn't the best implemented ability being so disruptable by having that tougher enemy the character had to focus on and part of the reason actually is because its overly limited and should be relative level.... ie faced by opponents N levels lower you can use an extra attack vs. that singular opponent. (perhaps its a move that takes one of his normal 2 attacks to be aware of the openings of the schmucks insert better name for this exploiting weakness ability)

So the level 5 hero gets 2 normal attacks but if a bunch of schmucks 4HD lower and 1 challenging enemy attacks he gets an extra one upto 5 against any that are in reach. Or instead of rolling all that just let him do a form of splash damage if he is successful against one enemy (perhaps even that foe that used to disrupt it ... then he deals x damage to adjacent weaker enemies).And yes there was issues with honestly rolling a ton of attacks.

Point was that it felt like the hero adjusting his fighting style and using what might be a different fighting style or a maneuver that wouldn't work against enemies that were not up to snuff.

While it could make the fighter feel awesome more often than not just didnt get used because of implementation issues.

Truth be told, in general I've found the basic fighters in our 1e-like games to be more than capable of holding their own and that they don't really need any further design-level help. I've got far bigger fish to fry in any case: thieves and assassins still need lots of help, bards still don't work right after a fifth complete redesign but I just can't bring myself to scrap them entirely (which would otherwise be the logical thing to do), and so on.

That, and if anything I'd rather flatten the power curve between low and high levels than increase it. I like it when both low-level characters and low-grade monsters have an outside chance of pulling off a major upset at any time against much higher-powered foes. Both 3e and 4e go the other way, as they both have rather steep power curves that reduce the chance of an upset to basically zero outside of a quite narrow window; while 5e to its credit has flattened it out again somewhat.

Examples from my current game: in their first adventure a raw 1st-level party somehow took down a full hill giant that by rights should have squashed them all flat (and I wasn't pulling punches!). Much later a party of about eight 5th-ish level PCs met some more giants - the big ones didn't last long but one of the giants' children (statted as a basic ogre) singlehandedly put up a heroic last stand that delayed the party for about six rounds - they just couldn't hit it (poor rolling) and, as it had just watched the PCs kill its parents, it rage-blindly refused to yield. It also managed to give out a decent amount of damage in return. So impressed were the PCs with this guy that when it finally did die they actually gave him a decent burial...

 

[Imaro]

Not sure how to state it, as it seems fairly intuitive to me: both games, being RPGs, are story using some mathematical systems as a bone. Both put story as a priority, and both are easily modded too desire.

Maybe I'm not understanding what fiction first means... if 4e has tiers and those tiers are defined by fiction and said fiction then informs resolution... is that fiction easily disregarded or changed? And if so what is the difference between that and 5e as some posters such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] discussed earlier in the thread?

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe I'm not understanding what fiction first means... if 4e has tiers and those tiers are defined by fiction and said fiction then informs resolution... is that fiction easily disregarded or changed? And if so what is the difference between that and 5e as some posters such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] discussed earlier in the thread?

Oh, I don't think it is different from 5E at all on the narrative front, other than presentation and some details of numbers.

 

[MwaO]

Not sure how to state it, as it seems fairly intuitive to me: both games, being RPGs, are story using some mathematical systems as a bone. Both put story as a priority, and both are easily modded too desire.

Right. Both are designed to put story first. You can always choose to ignore story ala massive dungeon crawls that make little sense from pretty much any fictional standpoint.

 

[Parmandur]

Right. Both are designed to put story first. You can always choose to ignore story ala massive dungeon crawls that make little sense from pretty much any fictional standpoint.

The dungeon crawl is the basic mythological type the game is built around, really.

 

[MwaO]

The dungeon crawl is the basic mythological type the game is built around, really.

Right. And they can have story. But most of the AD&D massive dungeons had little to none. Usually a 'hmm, why is dungeon here? Weird Wizard named Werdna!'

 

[Parmandur]

Right. And they can have story. But most of the AD&D massive dungeons had little to none. Usually a 'hmm, why is dungeon here? Weird Wizard named Werdna!'

I mean, they were usually pretty primal stories, but they had them, and they remain compelling. I read through B4 recently, and that is pretty awesome stuff.

 

[Garthanos]

Truth be told, in general I've found the basic fighters in our 1e-like games to be more than capable of holding their own and that they don't really need any further design-level help. I've got far bigger fish to fry in any case: thieves

Oh aye the thief was even more problematic and needed attention more so and maybe a DM who was talented could have managed to keep the 9th
level fighter feeling relevant but that thief was a terribly useless third wheel unless the DM made the adventure very bizarrely different.

What ideas are you thinking to help that one?

One of the things I mentioned earlier was that 4e could have done much
better by the Thief by not following the consistent Damage Dealer model of the Rogue.

Things like being able to hamstring enemies on the run
or make attacks that get blood in their eyes.
once in a while give em a spike with a dirt in the eyes move that reenables there sneak attack.
maybe some larger area effect tossing of dart or dagger barrage
Works better in 4e but its all I got.

 

[Shasarak]

Maybe I'm not understanding what fiction first means... if 4e has tiers and those tiers are defined by fiction and said fiction then informs resolution... is that fiction easily disregarded or changed? And if so what is the difference between that and 5e as some posters such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] discussed earlier in the thread?

Its not really fiction first, everything is based off tier and level as you say. Its all mechanical really, choose the level of your monster and then call it an Ogre (or whatever)

 

[Lanefan]

Oh aye the thief was even more problematic and needed attention more so and maybe a DM who was talented could have managed to keep the 9th
level fighter feeling relevant but that thief was a terribly useless third wheel unless the DM made the adventure very bizarrely different.

What ideas are you thinking to help that one?

That's just it - I haven't really come up with anything that's a) workable, b) not ridiculous and-or fiction breaking, and c) not just as applicable to another class. And I've looked at both in-combat and out-of-combat ideas over the years.

One of the things I mentioned earlier was that 4e could have done much
better by the Thief by not following the consistent Damage Dealer model of the Rogue.

Things like being able to hamstring enemies on the run
or make attacks that get blood in their eyes.
once in a while give em a spike with a dirt in the eyes move that reenables there sneak attack.
maybe some larger area effect tossing of dart or dagger barrage
Works better in 4e but its all I got.

All good ideas but all would be equally applicable - or maybe even more so - to a swashbuckler-type light fighter or ranger.

side note: if I ever do redesign fighters (a long way down my priority list) one of my goals would be to come up with a separate 'swashbuckler' class whose bread and butter would be stuff like this.