D&D 4E My Idea on Making 4E Combat 'Grittier/More Realistic'

[Talaeden_Denthiir]

This is an email that I originally wrote to my DM:

4E Rocks. It Rocks harder than 3E. Yeah, we both know that I've been harsh on the system so far, but that's just because I see it potential and am a little miffed that the game designers kind of did a half-assed job with some things while leaving other things out for the sake/pressure of deadlines/money.

One of the problems that people have with 4E is the lack of realism. They ascribe it to being too 'video-gaemy'. While I don't wholely agree with them as I think what WotC did was a wise decision both from a marketing stand-point and a standpoint of getting new/disenfrancised players into the game. But, some lack of realism is still there.

Many people correlate this with combat. They cite examples from taking an extended rest and washing away all of your wounds and within combat they cite the abstract nature of HP's and Healing Surges. While I haven't found any 'solutions' to the Resting thing and don't know if we need to' I've come up with a possible solution to making combat 'grittier'.

Others (including myself) have come up with ways in 3.5 to make crits count more. Things from crit cards to crit charts to imposing penalties with crits. What all this boils down to though is just more book keeping. What's my minus to attack now? How many points lower is my Str Score? I lost Con, so how many HP did I lose? A Crit to the stomach is like being poisoned, so has it been 10 rounds yet, do I need to make a secondary save? Stuff like that.

During the later months of 3.5 I tried to change rules by working within the existing system. I.E. I tried using existing mechanics to modify the system instead of further burdening it with added mechanics == new rules. For example I developed a Defense/Armor Acts as DR System using the existing Save Mechanics). That said, I (finally) bring up my idea for 4E:

Healing Surges are already a part of 4E. Your characters health is not only a reflection of your HP anymore. In the LFR 4E Preview adventure, 'Escape From Sembia', written by Chris Tulach, the characters had a Skill Challenge that involved escaping the city while being chased by the city guards. In this example, if a character attempted to scale a wall (climbing challenge) and failed it and fell, he would loose 1 or 2 healing surges to represent that. So how about this:

If a Character gets Critted, they loose a Healing Surge. Simple. All you do is check off a surge. Elegant, because it represents so much. Said character has less healing surges for suffering more 'heinous' wounds. They are effectively 'more wounded' roleplaying wise. A character with less healing surges do to Crits is gonna want to rest sooner and be less effective during combat. RP wise, "Tordek took a beating from that Orc Horde and is seriously f'ed up, and we need to get him to a safe place to rest soon".

What do you guys think?

 

[cjais]

I suppose the obvious question to ask would be: "What happens if a PC with no surges left gets critted?"

 

[Bold or Stupid]

I suppose the obvious question to ask would be: "What happens if a PC with no surges left gets critted?"

He looses a random limb?

 

[Gort]

I heard one guy was working on a way to use the "disease track" to model specific injuries, like broken legs or a stab to the gut or something like that. You'd then have to give these "disease attacks" to specific monsters or situations - for instance falling damage. They might have survived that fall, but both their ankles are twisted backwards and they can't move.

 

[eleventh]

You should underline or boldface the actual idea so that people who want to skip all the foreplay can do so easily. That said, I like the idea. My main concern would be that it adds power to monster criticals, while making no difference to PC criticals. Maybe this doesn't matter. I need to think more about it.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Gort, that would be 77IM over in the Wound System thread in the house rule forum.

Talaeden, I had a very similar idea but haven't had the right group to playtest it yet...instead of losing a healing surge in combat, the PC would reduce their max number of surges.. meaning the wound lingers until at least the next day. THe details are in post 13 of the thread linked above.

My concept was that when your character goes below 0hps they gain a wound. When faced with a crit, the player can choose to negate the crit effect and accept a wound instead. The attack would then deal normal damage.

 

[eamon]

I don't think crits have much impact on realism. I don't think making crits more powerful is a good idea.

What exactly is realism? I think your idea is a good one, I also find 4e quite fun, but I prefer a system which is gritter, more tilted towards realism and less towards balance. Frankly, if a particular strategy seems overpowering in-game, then I prefer the solution which looks to either remove that strategy (i.e. if save or die spells are overpowering, then don't make a campaign world in which they're readily available) or finds some in-game counterbalance. 4e certainly does the first - witness the removal of many save-or-die effects. However, 4e doesn't do so well on the second count, instead often opting to reduce the effectiveness in a meta-game (i.e. utterly nonsensical) fashion.

For instance, if a huge epic creature has your heroic tier PC grabbed and pushes you over the ledge into a pit of lava, 4e by default grants a save to fall prone instead. That kind of meta-game "be nice" rule is plain nonsense in my mind.

So, if you really want a grittier, more believable 4e, the aim should be to first make a list of particularly unreasonable 4e mechanics, and then fix those. The fixes will probably entail changes to the implied world the campaign takes place in.

 

[dragon23ca]

A add on to that

I like the idea, and I had one of my own. What do you think?

Healing and After Effects
When you recover from dying the strain of it drains you, having the effect of temporarily loosing healing surges for certain periods of times.

AFTER EFFECTS OF HEALING
✦ Lost of Healing Surges: When you recover from dying and take an extended rest you regain 1 less healing surge for each time you are reduce to 0 hp or less. Plus 1 for each failed Death Saving Throw, up to 3 surges per time you are reduced to 0 hp or fewer.
✦ Regaining Healing Surges: For each extended rest that passes without you loosing a healing surge, you regain 1 healing surge.
✦ 0 Healing Surges: You can never go below 0 healing surges due to repeatedly loosing them, instead you simply keep counting up from zero when regaining them.

 

[defendi]

I'd be a bad business man if I didn't mention Critical Matters, our critical hits system. EN World PDF Store - Final Redoubt Press - Critical Matters (Combat Essentials 1)

This is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to do when I wrote it.