D&D 4E [Orcus/4e] House rules - including a skill challenge replacement

[Sanglorian]

I haven't examined your project, but I will note what I see as a design inconsistency here. The first statement is made from the perspective of gamist concerns, ie, this is a game and no one enjoys when a game drags and is no longer fun. Yet the second smuggles in a simulationist priority--creatures resistant or immune to fear should have the aforementioned bonuses because that's how you imagine morale should work in simulation of some cause-and-effect.

Now, what if a combat against a group of mindless undead that is immune to fear begins to drag? These competing concerns (gamist and simulationist) run at loggerheads with each other.

Thanks for your thoughts, darkbard. You're right that I have competing gamist and simulationist priorities for Orcus (I think all tabletop RPGs do), but I don't think they're at loggerheads here. Introducing morale both makes the game run faster and simulates courage and fear in battle. At times it prefers simulationism to gamism (e.g. with the mindless undead, as you note) - but that's a price I'm willing to pay. It also gives a distinctive quality to encounters with mindless undead ... which may compensate for those encounters running longer than others.

Love to see where you end up. I think more types of systems available the better as sometimes one structure fits better than another depending on the situation you are trying to model.

2 further comments:

1) I'd try to get permission to include Stalker's Obsidian skill challenge as an option. (you can search for it on ENWorld). It stays fairly abstract but is based on every character should get a chance to contribute once per round over 3 rounds. Add up successes over the 3 rounds for graduated success (failure, partial, full). Everyone should be using a typical skill for the type of challenge (social for social, etc) but can occasionally come up with something creative to use an off skill (athletics in a social challenge) but not all the time otherwise that feels silly. The key is that you are always incentivized to try to contribute. Even if you have a low score in a skill, 30% chance of success is better than 0%. AND the math takes this into consideration. which leads to...

2) the math. extended skill checks are not trivial to evaluate so you have to make sure to do the math. otherwise you can easily get to situations like where the DM thinks they are presenting a moderate challenge say but in reality the math tells you its very very easy or impossible. The One Ring 1e and 2e have cool looking non combat encounter systems where the math is totally broken.

Thanks bert1001. I'm reasonably confident on the "reactive challenge" numbers, but it's definitely worth running them again and with a few different level ranges in mind.

I have been thinking again about how clever the Mentzer reaction roll rules are. PCs not only choose how they approach negotiating with the monsters, but also (implicitly) have the option to flee or be the first to attack. Both of these are often viable alternatives to pushing one's luck and risking the monster(s) being the first to attack. So maybe reactive challenges need to have:

• A risky way of exiting the challenge altogether and
• A "mitigated failure" option that can be chosen over the "total disaster" option if they keep trying their luck.

More to ponder and playtest!

As the author of Obsidian, permission granted. all I ask is for a credit if you use it in any formal document

Thanks for this generous offer, Stalker0. Have gotten in touch directly to discuss details.

 

[Sanglorian]

Multiple attacks and scaling critical hits​

Background​

I would like to do without mooks, elites and bosses if possible, relying on the game mechanics to make higher and lower level monster encounters satisfying instead.

Two design elements from PF2e - the ability to make an attack with any action and the way higher attack bonuses lead to more critical hits - may make this possible by effectively letting higher-level creatures make more attacks and do more damage on those attacks.

Early tests suggest these rules work pretty well, although they probably need some changes to conditions to really shine. I'm interested to see what people make of them, since I know minions, elites and solos are often identified as some of the things people like most about 4E.

Secondary Attack action​

All creatures gain access to the Secondary Attack action, described below.

Secondary Attack (swift action)​

Secondary Attack​

At-Will Attack Feature (Swift Action)
Effect You make a basic attack with a -5 penalty to the attack roll.
Special You can only take this action once per round.

Critical hits​

Instead of a critical hit occurring on a natural 20, a critical hit occurs any time an attack roll exceeds the target number by 10 or more.

 

[jdrakeh]

I haven't played Orcus yet, but Friday was my birthday and I discovered that WotC has made both their Eberron and Dark Sun 4th edition books available on DriveThruRPG, so I hope to get it to the table soon!

 

[Sanglorian]

I haven't played Orcus yet, but Friday was my birthday and I discovered that WotC has made both their Eberron and Dark Sun 4th edition books available on DriveThruRPG, so I hope to get it to the table soon!

Would love to hear how you get on!

 

[Tigris]

Multiple attacks and scaling critical hits​

Background​

I would like to do without mooks, elites and bosses if possible, relying on the game mechanics to make higher and lower level monster encounters satisfying instead.

Two design elements from PF2e - the ability to make an attack with any action and the way higher attack bonuses lead to more critical hits - may make this possible by effectively letting higher-level creatures make more attacks and do more damage on those attacks.

Early tests suggest these rules work pretty well, although they probably need some changes to conditions to really shine. I'm interested to see what people make of them, since I know minions, elites and solos are often identified as some of the things people like most about 4E.

Secondary Attack action​

All creatures gain access to the Secondary Attack action, described below.

Secondary Attack (swift action)​

Critical hits​

Instead of a critical hit occurring on a natural 20, a critical hit occurs any time an attack roll exceeds the target number by 10 or more.

I personally dont see why you would want to remove elite, minion, and solo monsters. Having these specially designed monsters, increases a lot on how different encounters can be. Solo monsters can be quite different with having more actions, reactions and more area attacks etc. so having a normal monster instead, really will not be the same.


This especially since 4E has a LOT stronger conditions you can apply to enemies. To make bosses work in PF2 they had to reduce how strong crowd control can be a lot. Thats why there are so many conditions which in the end just give -1or -2 to armor and or attack.


Also the critical hit rule from PF2 increases the scaling per level a lot. This is one of the main reasons why in PF2 enemies double in power per 2 levels instead of per 4 levels in 4E. This further reduces the variance you can have in encounters, since the level difference which is allowed becomes much smaller. Further it makes rolls take longer. Before when you roll a 15+ you know "Oh I hit" now you still have to compare your attack to the enemy defense to see if it was a crit. 4E is already considered to take long, and this makes it take longer.


Additional this rule would make the +hit effect in 4E even more stronger than they already are! Some classes could get (together with the leader) hits when rolling a 2 or 3. This would mean they crit on a 12 or 13 which is an extreme increase of damage.



The secondary attack minor actions also make multi attacking less special and again increases the time needed per turn, since there will be more attack rolls for some (not that high) additional damage and it does not really add any choice. If you dont have anything better to do you will just do a 2ndary attack, especially enemies which dont use the swift action.


Also having 2 attacks in a turn with different modifiers is again increasing time and is not really elegant.



In general I dont see why one would take design lessons from Pathfinder 2 since I think it took some of the worst parts of 4E instead of the good parts and is all just about multi attacking with basic attacks (with different names).


4E combat is a lot more varied than PF2 combat, and also it had to jump through MANY hoops in order to make these things work (the crit and 3 action economy)

• Having a really extreme scaling
• Getting away from a lot of area damage and strong conditions
• Having martials become a lot more similar under the hood (a lot of their "special attacks" are just passives enhancing basic attacks)
• You need heavy negative modifier to make combat work
• Combat needs to be reduced to 3 turns (from the more tactical 5 turns) and the number of enemies in general needs to be halved, to make combat not take too long.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I would like to do without mooks, elites and bosses if possible, relying on the game mechanics to make higher and lower level monster encounters satisfying instead.

Two design elements from PF2e - the ability to make an attack with any action and the way higher attack bonuses lead to more critical hits - may make this possible by effectively letting higher-level creatures make more attacks and do more damage on those attacks.

i mean, if i wanted that, i'd just play pf2e, honestly.

 

[NotAYakk]

In 4E, with baseline 60% PC hit rate and monster 40% hit rate, a +1 level on a monster (with no other stat changes - same HP, damage, etc) makes it 60%/55% tougher and 45%/40% deadlier, or about 23% more dangerous. Every 4 levels this is enough to scale monster danger by 2.3x - basically, the majority of the XP scale comes from ATK/DEF, not HP and damage.

The level gradient at low levels is far steeper, because monster HP scales with (L+3) and damage with (L+8) - a level 5 monster has +4 ATK, +4 DEF, x2 the HP and 44% more damage output than a level 1 monster. This was a flaw in 4e monster math; the XP table basically doesn't account for HP/damage changes!

And past low levels, the range of monsters you fight have basically no changes in HP/damage. At level 20, a level 23 monster has +30% HP over a level 17 one; at level 5 +/-3 level foes differ by 120% HP! Damage wise it is even flatter.

But if you leave the +/- 4 level sweet spot, combat becomes auto-hits and wiff-fests, and +ATK bonuses get even better than they are. (ATK bonuses are sleeper powerful; making them even stronger makes the game worse).

This honestly makes high level 4e combat get a bit snoozy. A level +4 monster is harder to hit and hits more often, but isn't more threatening; thus elites and solos. But they boost HP more than they do damage, so we get high level low-risk combat feeling.

4e XP expects monsters to get 2x tougher every +4 levels. If we flatten ATK/DEF to +1/2 levels (lots of ways to do this), and we kept the same XP tables, we'd have to take a look at both player and monster HP/damage.

Now a level X+4 monster is "worth" two level X monsters in encounter building. Those two level X monsters get killed one by one. If you take a monster with half the threat and half the toughness and make 2 of them, you actually end up with closer to 75% of the threat of the bigger monster.

We can get a decent approximation of this this by taking (threat) * (toughness) and taking the 1.6th root - for triangular numbers in the 1-5 range it is very accurate, and good enough beyond that.

So if we want a X+8 monster to be worth 4x the XP, it needs 4^1.6 = 9.2x times the total threat volume. A +4 ATK/DEF boost (+level/2) contributes 2.3x, leaving a 4x factor in HP and DPR that needs to be made up.

Ie, every 8 levels, x2 HP and x2 DPR, or 1.4x every 4 levels.

We'll take level 5 as our baseline. So 64 HP and 13 DPR.

L 1: 9/46 (compare with 8/32)
L 5: 13/64
L 9: 18/90 (compare with 17/96)
L13: 26/128 (compare with 21/128)
L17: 36/180 (compare with 25/160)
L21: 52/256 (compare with 29/192)
L25: 73/358 (compare with 33/224)
L29: 104/512 (compare with 37/256)

As you can see, this first principles 4e monster design agrees with monsters in heroic, but starts divering in paragon. Monster HP stays similar in paragon, but damage starts climbing significantly.

Baseline 4e monsters go from 18 to 28 damage over paragon, or +5% per level. We basically want to double this percent-per-level.
Baseline 4e monsters go from 28 to 38 damage over epic.

Now, if you do this, you also need to tweak PCs or lower the number of expected foes they can handle at a given level.

Keeping track of exponential curves is annoying. And we can make it piecewise linear to simplify it.

Heroic remains (8+L) damage and (3+L)*8 HP baseline.

For Paragon, level 10 is 18 damage and 104 HP. We want to hit 43 damage and 250 HP by level 20; that is +25 damage and +146 HP.

L 01-10 Heroic: L+8 damage, 24+8L HP (9 to 18 DPR, 32 to 104 HP)
L 11-20 Paragon: 2*L damage, 16L-50 HP. (22 to 40 DPR, 126 to 270 HP)
L 21-30 Epic: 5*L-50 damage, 25L-250 HP (55 to 100 DPR, 275 to 500 HP)
L 31-40 Legendary: 15*L-350 damage, 75L-1800 HP (116-250 DPR, 525-1200 HP)

and that should make monster threat ratios remain very high; higher level monsters will feel scary not just because of wiffs, but because they have a lot more damage and HP.

For PCs, strip half-level bonuses. It also requires some boost to PC damage and durability in paragon and epic levels.

1. Double your per-level HP increase in paragon, and 4x it in epic. So a fighter gains +6 HP/level in heroic, +12 HP/level in paragon, and +24 HP/level in epic; a 20 con level 30 fighter has 20 + 9 + (10*6) + (10*12) + (10*24) = 449 HP (comparable to a level 30 normal monster!).

2. Increase damage output of powers:

• At-will powers do 2 dice of damage at level 11+ and 3 dice of damage at level 21+
• L 10-19 powers have their damage dice x2ed
• L 20-30 powers have their damage dice x5ed

Now the downside... the numbers just get too big. If you thought high level 4e was buckets of dice before, we are talking Exhalted RPG buckets of dice now.

So we have to roll stuff back; the power gradient can't be this steep (reconstructing 4e standard encounter building) with flat ATK/DEF curves (allowing for a wider range of foes to be in the zone of validity). The buckets-of-dice came from the fact that we need a monster 10 levels higher to have 2.4x the HP and damage, and if you repeat this 3 times off a monster that starts with 10 damage and 30 HP, you get 140 damage and 400 HP.

Another approach is to extend the window of viable foes and change the XP curve as well. The window of viable foes is limited by the scaling of ATK and DEF (within +/- 4 of "evenish") - if monster ATK/DEF scaled at +1/2 from level 1 to 10, but then slowed down at higher levels, the window opens up. That in turn allows monsters with a wider range of HP and DPR to be selected without exponential scaling of numbers.

We can even do this while keeping PCs relatively unmodified (ie, strip the half level, but not much else); nothing requires that monster ATK/DEF scale exactly like PCs do, so long as the rules for building encounters are simple.

OTOH, doubling the damage dice of paragon tier and above powers is a great improvement to the game; 4e didn't scale PC damage dice fast enough as published, leading to multi-tap attack spam.

So as a compromise, what if monster ATK/DEF scaled at +1/2 level in Heroic, +1/3 level in Paragon, and +1/5 level in Epic?

PC assumed attack is (3+L) in baseline 4e. Monster AC was 14+L, and PCs hit on a 11+. Viable foes could be hit from 7+ to 15+. So 10+L to 18+L AC are "viable" foes, which corresponds to L-4 to L+4 foes in baseline 4e.

We change accuracy to be about (3+L/2).
L1: +3; viable monster AC is 10 to 18
L11: +8; viable monster AC is 15 to 23
L21: +13; viable monster AC is 20 to 28
L30: +18; viable monster AC is 25 to 33

Monster AC is changed to 14+L/2 in Heroic (14 to 19), 16+L/3 in paragon (19 to 22), 19+L/5 in epic and legendary (23 to 25 epic, 25 to 27 legendary)

L1: Viable foes are Heroic (+/- 10 levels)
L11: Viable foes are Heroic or Paragon (+/- 10 levels)
L21: Viable foes are Paragon, Epic or Legendary (-10 levels to +20 levels)
L30: Viable foes are Legendary

pfah, this is tricky.

If we can shave off a few more +bonuses to ATK and DEF on PCs it could tighten up. Like, cut masterwork light armor, and drop masterwork heavy armor to +2 AC per tier (shaves off 2 AC off every PC), halve enchancement bonuses down to +1 per tier (shave 3 ATK and 3 AC and 3 NADs). (Honestly, NADs are already bad enough).

That should be enough that +/- 10 levels is a valid foe range from level 1 up to 30.

...

Gotta zzz. I enjoy this, hopefully someone will enjoy reading it.

 

[NotAYakk]

1. No enhancement bonus to hit.
2. Light armor does not give enhancemnt bonus to AC. Heavy keeps it.
3. All armor gives an encounter power to gain +Enhancement against an attack that hit by less than that on AC and (Reflex) light (Fortitude) Heavy.
4. Feat bonuses to hit limited to +1.
5. No enhancement bonuses to NaDs from neck. Instead, encounter power like the armor one (but NADs or saving throws).
6. Gain +2 to all attrivutes at 11 and 21 instead of +1.
7. Gain +1 to all attributes at 24 and 28 as well as +1 to two attributes (so +2/+2/+1/+1/+1/+1).
8. No half level bonus.
9. Bonused to a NAD from a feat capped at +2.
10. Bonuses to AC from a feat capped at +1.

Attributes now gain +10/+10/+4/+4/+4/+4.

Expected scaling is now approx +6 to hit/ac/NADs over 29 levels, or about +1/5.

We scale up damage a tad. At-will powers upgrade at both 11 and 21 by 1 die (so T[W] often). L11-19 encounter/daily powers get 2x damage dice, and L21-30 get x3 damage dice.

A PC traditionally has approx (L+3)*5 HP, (5+kL) DPR, 3+L accuracy, 14+L AC.

(k is between 0.5 and 4 depending on optimization. Typical is 1.5 to 2.5 for strikers, 0.5 to 1.5 for non, but it varies).

Accuracy becomes (4+L/5), AC 15+L/5, HP remains (L+3)*5.

DPR moves less than you might think. Assume a 12 round 3 encounter day. A 3d12 paragon encounter power gains 5 DPR over the day.

A 5d12 daily adds 3 DPR.

Paragon gains 3 encounter powers and 3 dailied, so that is 2-3 DPR per level increase.

In Epic, a 5d12 E power adds 16 DPR, and a 9d12 daily adds 10 DPR. 2 E and 2 D sum to about 5 DPR per level - a bit less due to losing a bigger Paragon power.

Plus a bit for higher stats and stronger at-will, so call it 6.

So DPR goes from (5+kL) to 5+kL+3(L over 10)+3(L over 20).

We then feed this to a power volume equation.

On mosnters we subtract their level from their Atk, AC and NADs. Next we add +3 for Paragon, +6 for Epic and +9 for Legendary tier monsters.

Monsters are now flattened along side PCs.

But we curved PC damage upward. We can scale monster HP/damage upward in turn, and make monsters threatening again.

Monster AC/ATK/NAD scales similar to PCs.

Monster HP DPR used to scale with 6(3+L)(12+1.5L) roughly (MM3, assuming some encounter powers). The PCs are gaining a steeper damage curve in paragon and epic: the monster in turn are permitted a boost.

The easiest solution is to repeat what PCs got. Double damage dice of paragon foes, 3x epic, and 4x legendary (L31+).

But this makes L11 more than a bit of a jump.

At level 10 we expect 18 damage, plus 25%
-50% on encounter powers, so about 20 most rounds. Adding +4 instead of +1.25 per level means at 15 we should be at 40 instead 26.

So: L11 to 15, add +3/6/9/12/15 damage per turn.
L16-20 double damage dice.
L21-30 3x damage dice (small DPR jump at 21, like 30%).
L41+ 4x damage dice
That should return the fear of higher level foes to PCs.

The game will get a bit rocket tag. But that seems ok to me, as standard 4e is a bit too padded at paragon/epic.

Move the +3 AC/ATK/DEF bonus to level 10, 25 and 35 instead of 11/21/31 so it doesn't align with the damage bump, spreading it out a bit.

There, a flattened 4e. PCs are even usable without their gear (but still really want it).

The meta of powers shifts a tad. Multi tap powers are boosted less by the dice multiplication, and big dice powers more. But that is intended: in vanilla, big dice powers didn't scale enough, and tap scaled too well.