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[MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] - this almost sounds like a classless system...

On the contrary--the way I see it, it's very strongly classed, with a heavy emphasis on class-as-concept. Taking the concept I laid out:

"Okay, my character is a grizzled old mercenary veteran..."

We got a fighter.

"...who fights with a battle-axe in each hand..."

Dual-wielding fighting style. Specialized weapon: Battle-axe. (This is skirting the "no stacking" principle, but as long as a fighter can only use one fighting style and one specialized weapon at a time, and every fighter has at least one fighting style and at least one specialized weapon, it's okay. The abilities stack, but there's not a choice about how much stacking to do.)

"...is good at scouting..."

This might be a matter of choosing the Stealth and Nature skills, or it might be a single "Scout" talent.

"...and can drink a dwarf under the table."

This could be a feat (Iron Constitution or some such), but is probably just character flavor without an associated mechanic.
 
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"Okay, my character is a grizzled old mercenary veteran who fights with a battle-axe in each hand, is good at scouting, and can drink a dwarf under the table." And having made those decisions, I want to be able to quickly and easily translate the relevant ones into mechanical terms, without having to worry about whether I'm gimping my PC in the process.

My hack gets a little bit of this in how you pick skills.

Trained Warrior: Grizzled old mercenary from the Lost Legion, known for their two-axe style.
Manual Labourer: Hunter/woodsman from the village of Deepwall.
Physical Trait: Drinker. I can drink a dwarf under the table.

The skills as they appear in the skill list are:
[sblock=skills]
* Trained Warrior - Your years of martial training have hardened you. Define your training - gladiator, mercenary, soldier, hired killer, etc., where you trained, and who trained you.
* Manual Labourer - You've worked hard all your life. You know the environment you worked in well and all the skills necessary to perform your job. Name the job, the environment you worked in, and the village you come from.
* Physical Trait - A physical trait. Define it. You can only have one of these. Examples: Big as a House - You are huge.[/sblock]

These are 4E skills in that you get a +5 trained bonus when the skill is obviously tied to your action.

In my hack, you also get to add a +2 bonus if you've got a skill that's applicable but not obviously related. That +2 bonus applies to skill checks, attack rolls, and defences; it's a big deal. In addition, you can make a skill check if you're not attacking your opponent but "directly affecting him" (grappling, etc.).
 

What I would really like is a system that de-emphasizes mechanical decisions during chargen, and emphasizes concept decisions instead.

The only problem I foresee with what you are proposing, Darsuul... is that you are basically winnowing things down to only a select few possible archetypes. By cutting out the huge swathe of feats and power choices in an effort to create a more streamlined process to build your archetypes... you'll invariably leave out huge numbers of archetypes that other players might want.

Sure, your grizzled veteran scout dual-wielding battleaxes might be able to be built... but what about someone else's archetype of the magical warrior dandy who uses magic to freeze his opponent in place while he runs circles around him throwing knives at him? How would you expect to build something like this without having the applicable feats and powers available to select from? And if you DO start adding in more feats and powers to make these new archetypes viable... you just eventually end up with just as many possible choices to select from as we have now.

***

Now that being said... I do think what you want to accomplish IS possible, even with the game currently as is. And it can be accomplished simply by having the Dungeon Master build your character for you.

You write up the concept of the character you want... as detailed or as lacking in detail as you want. You then hand the concept to the DM and then let him do all the work fiddling over the details. You don't look at a single rulebook and don't decide in any way, shape or form what skills, feats, powers, or equipment you might need to accomplish the character generation. That way, you never have any impetus to think "Well, feat W is good, but if I take feat X and then change this power to this other one, and then multi-class into Y to get skill Z then my character is much better..." and all that crap. Instead, you have a character concept in your head, and you get handed back a character sheet that has built and gets over as much of the concept as possible with the chargen items involved that the DM could choose from. And most likely, the DM has also looked ahead to later levels and plotted out an advancement plan for you as well.

And what's good about this method... is that if during play your character starts moving in a certain direction that you weren't expecting... you never have to worry at level-up whether you are shooting yourself in the foot by selecting a power that might conceptually be more in line with where your character is going, but when placed right next to other powers at that level, isn't as "good". Just don't look at the rulebooks and you never have to worry that you aren't being "optimal".

Because the only thing that is putting optimization and game mechanics ahead of concept is you... not the game system itself.
 
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On the contrary--the way I see it, it's very strongly classed, with a heavy emphasis on class-as-concept. Taking the concept I laid out:

"Okay, my character is a grizzled old mercenary veteran..."

We got a fighter. or warlord, or rogue, or ranger, or barbarian.

"...who fights with a battle-axe in each hand..."

Dual-wielding fighting style. Specialized weapon: Battle-axe. (This is skirting the "no stacking" principle, but as long as a fighter can only use one fighting style and one specialized weapon at a time, and every fighter has at least one fighting style and at least one specialized weapon, it's okay. The abilities stack, but there's not a choice about how much stacking to do.)

This does whittle it down to remove rogue/warlord likely.

"...is good at scouting..."

This might be a matter of choosing the Stealth and Nature skills, or it might be a single "Scout" talent.

Any class can take these skills, but this is pretty much Ranger's schtick. Barbarian also.

"...and can drink a dwarf under the table."

This could be a feat (Iron Constitution or some such), but is probably just character flavor without an associated mechanic.

as you mentioned RP essentially. Maybe the Fortitude feat or a high Con to denote it.

I see this concept very, very easy to come up with in 4e. Backgrounds provide great ways to get non-class skills (for the fighter to get Nature or Stealth). If you play a fighter, Tide of Iron gives you that at-will push you are describing too.

Agreed that not all of the over 3k feats available are the best in flavour/definition. I also agree very much in the stacking. Remove a lot of the stacking and you'll remove a lot of the arms race between DM's and players.
 

It seems pretty clear that if D&D were split between a Basic version and an Advanced version (hopefully with the latter fairly similar to 4E), that it would satisfy most people.

I sort of see the boardgames (Ravenloft, Ashardalon) as Basic D&D though myself.
 

how about a highly customisable (and possibly complex) fighter that doesn't use pseudo-vancian powers?
the essential fighter may become that, depending on the new options and how essential multiclassing works.


  1. Each PC option has a clearly defined concept attached to it. This is one of 4E's biggest failings in my book, though it happened in 3E too--there are a lot of feats and powers that don't seem to correspond to much of anything going on in the game world. It should be clear at a glance what any given option represents.
amen
 

The only problem I foresee with what you are proposing, Dausuul... is that you are basically winnowing things down to only a select few possible archetypes. By cutting out the huge swathe of feats and power choices in an effort to create a more streamlined process to build your archetypes... you'll invariably leave out huge numbers of archetypes that other players might want. Sure, your grizzled veteran scout dual-wielding battleaxes might be able to be built... but what about someone else's archetype of the magical warrior dandy who uses magic to freeze his opponent in place while he runs circles around him throwing knives at him? How would you expect to build something like this without having the applicable feats and powers available to select from?

Talk to me when 4E supports my concept of a necromancer who has a band of undead minions (that's a band, as in more than one, and they stick around rather than vanishing at the end of combat) to fight for him. Maybe we'll get one in Heroes of Shadow, but I rather doubt it.

Or, for that matter, talk to me when 4E supports any non-Vancian casters at all.

Every system is a slave to its assumptions. Systems that take a granular approach trumpet the flexibility they offer, but in fact I have not found them to provide much more useful flexibility than an archetype-based system. Partly this is because all those options require a standardized framework to fit into, and that framework is itself a limiting archetype. And partly it's because the vast majority of the options provided don't add much of anything.

And if you DO start adding in more feats and powers to make these new archetypes viable... you just eventually end up with just as many possible choices to select from as we have now.

There's nothing wrong with having a huge long list of options available. In fact, we will inevitably end up with a huge long list of options, because otherwise WotC's RPG division doesn't make any money. What I object to is a huge long list of opaque and hard-to-understand options which do nothing to flesh out a character concept.

Instead of books full of feats and powers, give me books full of archetypes (classes, if you prefer) and styles/themes. The PHB2 has 224 pages. If each class takes up 4 pages, and 50 pages are devoted to general roleplaying stuff, that's space for 43 classes in a single book.

You write up the concept of the character you want... as detailed or as lacking in detail as you want. You then hand the concept to the DM and then let him do all the work fiddling over the details.

That's a very accommodating and rules-savvy DM you're assuming there.
 
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I see. Yes, there are rules bloat, but if you want to support any possible concept that a player could come up with there are likely going to be a very large rule base. Again, unless you go claseless like Mutants and Masterminds, where if you want push powers (as an example) it costs you X.
 

The article felt a bit hollow, to be honest.

Generating a fighter in 4E is a lot quicker than in 3E, and Mearls' list of respectively 18 vs. 16 steps feels bogus. The real difference is writing down skill bonuses in 3E and 4E. In 3E that's a lot of work, especially at first level - lots of points to allocate, then go down a list of, what, 25-30 entries?, and calculate all your attribute + rank bonus, + feats (if you invested in these), +racial bonuses (if you had any). It took ages the first couple of times.

Contrast 4E. The skill list basically re-lists your ability bonuses, except for ticking 3-5 skills where you get a +5. And that's it.

The end of Mearls' 18 point list for 4E?

"Calculate healing surge total
Calculate surge value
Calculate bloodied value
Calculate passive Perception
Calculate passive Insight"

These things a) are not actually distinct things (the first three are one-step modifications on your hp value) and b) consume a total of, what, 30 seconds? No comparison to the skill allocation in 3E. (I say that as a person whose favourite edition is 3E.)

What purposes do these Mearls articles serve? I honestly, seriously, do not get it. 'We think 4E fighters are too complex.' 'I am not sure that the rules for cover need the complexity they receive in 4E.' And so on. I mean, it's bad enough that they pulled back so many 4E products, but the added self-deprecation certainly doesn't help.

Edit.: Why do I get the feeling I'm back to reading one of these or these?
 
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