D&D 4E My 4e problem.

[RyvenCedrylle]

I like a good homebrew as much as the next guy, but at this point you might as well write the game from scratch. It's not even 4E, really, because you're shifting focus from role by class to role by ethos. Class and ethos are becoming redundant in the design space you're headed into. You're going to save yourself and your players a lot of time and headaches by not reinventing this wheel.

4E is effect-based design. Cleave, Great Cleave, Twin Strike, Divine Bolts and Dual Strike(? - the Tempest Fighter one) are all the same thing in different strengths: hit two things. Thunderwave and Thunder of Judgement are the same thing: blast enemies away from a central point. Sly Flourish, Curse of the Dark Dream and Tide of Iron are the same thing: Hit one thing and move it. If I were going to try this, I would eliminate classes completely and assign an ethos to each power based on its crunch, not its fluff. Stuff that all does more or less the same thing -- another one, Ray of Frost, Frostblade and Grasping Shards: hit and slow -- is all the same ethos. Ignore damage types, they're easily changed.

Each level, figure out how many powers you have from each role (Defender, Striker, Controller and Leader) and gain HP appropriately. For class features, pick a class you have at least one at-will in. It's kinda dirty, but you don't need really well defined classes for your setting anyway, at least from the outside looking in.

 

[Cadfan]

Resilience is not a virtue all magi embrace, and frankly such a choice should belong to the players, not the system.

That has nothing to do with it.

Look, the game designers set the bounds in which the players can improvise. For example, no character built with the standard rules can begin the game with less than 18 hit points. Likewise no character can begin with more than 42.

So players get the ability to choose to be more or less sturdy, in terms of hit points, but there are limits. They cannot choose to have a hundred hit points at level 1, nor to have 1 hit point at level 1. The game designers have ruled this out because its not good for the game as a whole for characters to be that extremely disparate on this very important issue.

That's the approach you have to taken when you design material. Its not about flavor or player's rights. Its about designing the environment in which flavor and player's decisions can exist.

Or in other words, let your players spend too many healing surges for extra offensive power, and pretty soon you'll have at least one player who wants to burn most of his healing surges in the first fight, and then rest.

Also, Daze is too good at level 21. Even at epic tier, stunning at will is too good. Just imagine a fight with a single enemy. The wizard with Daze casts it, repeatedly. If he hits 50% of the time, great. One player uses up all of his actions to cost the entire enemy force half of its actions. Or to put it another way, five players have five turns amongst themselves per round. The single enemy has one turn per round. One player uses up one out of the party's four turns to cost the monster half of his turns. Instead of a 5:1 ratio, now you have an 8:1 ratio. There's nothing in the game this powerful for an at will.

 

[Michael Morris]

I like a good homebrew as much as the next guy, but at this point you might as well write the game from scratch. It's not even 4E, really...

You lecturing me on what does and does not constitute 4e is about as stupid as the endless debates on what constitutes D&D itself. It's elitist, snarky and rude at best, so knock it off.

That has nothing to do with it.

Look, the game designers set the bounds in which the players can improvise. For example, no character built with the standard rules can begin the game with less than 18 hit points. Likewise no character can begin with more than 42.

[snip]

Or in other words, let your players spend too many healing surges for extra offensive power, and pretty soon you'll have at least one player who wants to burn most of his healing surges in the first fight, and then rest.

Let him. Let his companions refuse to let him. And let him die. You might like D&D on training wheels. I don't. Bad choices and / or risky choices are a part of the game.

Also, Daze is too good at level 21

It's too good at level 1 as an at will - but I put it in there to see if anyone was paying attention. It has been my experience in my long years on this board that if every I is dotted and ever T is crossed just right a powers post will get ignored. Make a mistake and everyone wants to talk about it. In so doing the stuff I might have missed that was an honest mistake may get noticed. For instance, I still have reservations about remand.

Daze can go two ways. The most likely way is to give it some damage (1d6+intelligence mod) and make it an encounter power, or let it stay at will and limit it to working on a given foe only once (which is at best an odd approach).

The trick is where the red mage has the best damage opportunities, the blue mage has the worst. His ability to control is through repeated denials (counterspelling), terrain and time manipulation, not damage.

 

[Cadfan]

Let him. Let his companions refuse to let him. And let him die. You might like D&D on training wheels. I don't. Bad choices and / or risky choices are a part of the game.

Bad choices IN GAME are part of the game. Bad choices as in "Whoops, the power you chose screws you! Guess you shouldn't have picked it!" is just poor design.

Realistically though, in this particular case, that's not going to happen. Your players are just going to use powers like this to nova, get high damage in one fight, and then find an excuse to rest. You'll fight back by creating plot based reasons they can't nova and immediately rest, and they'll fight back by making choices to facilitate their ability to be as powerful as possible. You'll retaliate by ambushing them when they think they're safe, and they'll respond by stopping even earlier so that they're combat ready if or when they get ambushed. Eventually your actions will become more and more logically strained, and your players will get frustrated, or you'll give up.

Its a pretty standard cycle you get into when you give players the ability to burn fast, hot, and short.

 

[Michael Morris]

And now for time games.


Standstill
Balcra Utility 27

You utter a word and a shimmering pulse emanates from you to include all combatants. Time stops, the effects of the combat end, and time resumes.

Daily + Planar
Standard Action
Effect: End the encounter (This means all effects which last until the end of the encounter halt. Initiative must be rerolled if combat is rejoined).


Temporal Shift
Balcra Attack 10

You vanish. Moments later you reappear, teleported through time.

Encounter + Planar
Standard Action
Effect: You vanish. When your turn comes up roll a 6 sided die. On 6 you reappear in the last square you occupied. If it is occupide you slide to the nearest unoccupied square. No time passes for you from the time you vanish until you reappear.


Time Warp
Balcra Utility 27

With a jump to the left and a step to the right and a few magic words you cause a contortion in time that causes all effects to occur twice.

Daily + Planar
Standard Action
Effect: For the next round The actions of all combatants (including your enemies) occur twice.


Temporal Pulse
Balcra Utility 2

You channel your will to pass your share of time to an ally.

Encounter + Planar
Full Round Action
Effect: An ally gains a bonus turn they take while you lose yours. This doesn't affect their normal turn.

 

[Michael Morris]

Bad choices IN GAME are part of the game. Bad choices as in "Whoops, the power you chose screws you! Guess you shouldn't have picked it!" is just poor design.

Not all powers are for all players. Nor can all the powers be equally useful. 4e attempts to make more powers relevant by spreading the good powers around among the classes and trying to make sure that no class gets too many good powers. The problem with this approach is that as time goes by and the game gets solved by power gamers certain classes will bubble up to the top like the druid did in 3e.

The magi system uses the colors rather than class to enforce a limit on how many good powers each character gets. Some people get Eldritch blast - some settle for magic missile or worse.

Realistically though, in this particular case, that's not going to happen. Your players are just going to use powers like this to nova, get high damage in one fight, and then find an excuse to rest. You'll fight back by creating plot based reasons they can't nova and immediately rest....

:snip:

First, slippery slope logic does not impress me - quite the opposite. Second you presume all the magi will be able to, as you put it, 'nova.' - which will not be the case. It's something I'm considering for red because red has a 'future be damned' impatient streak a mile wide that needs to be expressed in the powers it has. Third, the pattern of play you describe worked well enough for 30 years of D&D's history - so why is it suddenly bad-wrong-fun? Spare me you condescension please.


I'm trying to save the heritage of my setting and put it in terms that will work in 4e. It may not be the best match, but there are ideas in 4e I like that I want to use. There are others that I loathe that won't be using. One of those is the training wheels philosophy. I will be putting some powers in that ostensibly suck or at least look like they suck because there are players out there that like to take suck powers (or in Magic, such cards) and make them useful. They like the challenge of doing such a thing. Who are you to call that bad-wrong-fun??

 

[Nytmare]

It's too good at level 1 as an at will - but I put it in there to see if anyone was paying attention. It has been my experience in my long years on this board that if every I is dotted and ever T is crossed just right a powers post will get ignored.

Honestly?

This and this alone has convinced me to stop paying attention to you.

 

[Michael Morris]

Honestly?

This and this alone has convinced me to stop paying attention to you.

Goodbye, good riddance. Passive Aggressive trolling like this has driven away a lot of members, and the fewer people like you around the better.

 

[Cadfan]

First, slippery slope logic does not impress me - quite the opposite. Second you presume all the magi will be able to, as you put it, 'nova.' - which will not be the case. It's something I'm considering for red because red has a 'future be damned' impatient streak a mile wide that needs to be expressed in the powers it has. Third, the pattern of play you describe worked well enough for 30 years of D&D's history - so why is it suddenly bad-wrong-fun? Spare me you condescension please.

The 15 minute adventuring day issues of 3e is related to the ability to take effects intended by the game designer to be spaced out across several fights and concentrate them into one fight, as compared to other classes which have no such ability, resulting in one class having greater power levels in a single fight and then negating the downside of reduced power later by finding creative ways to rest. If you don't understand that, you probably shouldn't homebrew.

 

[Michael Morris]

If you don't understand that, you probably shouldn't homebrew.

Let me be plain.

No member has any right to tell any other member that.

You have no right to tell that to any member, least of all me. I worked on this site for six years, I've been playing this game the better part of sixteen. You don't even have the semblance of a right to tell me what I can and cannot do.

Take your passive aggressive bs elsewhere, and welcome to my killfile.