D&D 4E Simplifying 4E

[Igwilly]

I’m looking for that game, too. Bringing money to buy the PDF. It seems interesting.

AbdulAlhazred
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I never said the Thief needs to “suck” in combat, nor the Fighter needs to "suck" out of it. But yes, one is more effective than the other in certain situations. This would not work only if one case is severely more common than the other.
Let’s face it: the Thief is not a Fighter. If we want a new Fighter, we make a new one.

Oh and you’re wrong about 4e. Classes were never balanced outside of combat. The skill-heavy classes and ritual casters got all the spot-light. The Fighter’s skills were a joke. Trying to raise 4e as anything near an out-of-combat balance is just not right.

 

[MwaO]

Oh and you’re wrong about 4e. Classes were never balanced outside of combat. The skill-heavy classes and ritual casters got all the spot-light. The Fighter’s skills were a joke. Trying to raise 4e as anything near an out-of-combat balance is just not right.

Say what? Backgrounds were an early part of 4e(Forgotten Realms Player Guide) and many of them were 'pick 2 skills as class skills and get a +1 on top of it'. MC'ing almost always added an additional skill and Ranger was one of the top-tier choices for a Fighter interested in damage.

Ritual Casters could cast rituals, but unless the DM was being mean, most of the time, casting a ritual meant spending gold that probably didn't need to be spent.

I mean seriously, the only advantage that Backgrounds in 5e have over 4e ones is that by definition, people are forced to have additional choices of skills - they can't pick a background that's just about power optimization.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't like 1 role per class because I want class to mean something in the world. I want to be able to see a character and say "that's a wizard".

I'd think one role per class would help with that. The guy with the consecrated weapon and holy symbol blazoned on his shield always on the front line, protecting his friends? Paladin.

Drop the class/role distinction and is he a Paladin or a Cleric?

I think each class should handle combat differently, and have some unique mechanic to how they do things.

Could get complicated if you have too many classes - more so if you try to make each unique mechanic work uniquely for each role on top of that.

Barbarians rage: this offers some kind of trade off. Do I give in and rage now? Or do I hold onto my senses and wait?

The HotFW Berserker seemed like a good take on that. Of course, it did involve breaking the 1 role/class mold.

Something like this changes up playstyles for each class. A leader fighter (warlord) is going to be different from a leader rogue (noble?) or a leader cleric (healer) or a leader wizard (abjurer?).

Again, except for breaking out rogue, that's looking like Class = Source instead of Class = Role, it'd certainly be simple & intuitive that way.

It just never really WORKED. ...
Rather in 4e you have a party of equals in combat, and then outside of combat you've got the Rogue with his deftness, stealth, and etc. The fighter had his physical prowess, and various other things, intimidation, survival, whatever. The wizard has knowledge skills and (at the least) some free/cheap rituals.

Yeah, it /almost/ worked in 4e. Most classes had enough variety in applicable skills to participate almost all the time, and many had rituals or the odd out-of-combat utility on top of that, but, as quantum-leap-improved as the martial classes were over all other editions, they still fell short, the Rogue & Ranger were solidly niche out of combat, and the fighter prettymuch out in the cold (and the Warlord not much better).

If the game had continued to advance from 4e, it'd've had out-of-combat Roles, maybe even Roles for each pillar, instead of falling back to the AD&D non-solution of DM-mediated situational balance-of-imbalances.

 

[Xeviat]

I'd think one role per class would help with that. The guy with the consecrated weapon and holy symbol blazoned on his shield always on the front line, protecting his friends? Paladin.

Drop the class/role distinction and is he a Paladin or a Cleric?

My cleric might end up being a lightly armored caster, more like a white mace; I'm not sure. But either way, a cleric is a spellcaster and will be using spells primarily, while a paladin is a weapon user and uses weapons primarily. I actually dislike the overlap between cleric and paladin, and will be attempting to avoid it if possible.

Could get complicated if you have too many classes - more so if you try to make each unique mechanic work uniquely for each role on top of that.

The HotFW Berserker seemed like a good take on that. Of course, it did involve breaking the 1 role/class mold.

That's why my goal is 12 classes. 2 per role, 1 primary and one Gish for the casters, then there's the barbarian, fighter, monk, and rogue. The Fey Wild Berserker is kind of what got me thinking on role switching. A fighter could switch roles by switching their weapons (Great Weapon is striker, shield is defender, bow is controller, two weapons is striker or defender depending).


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[Tony Vargas]

My cleric might end up being a lightly armored caster, more like a white mace; I'm not sure. But either way, a cleric is a spellcaster and will be using spells primarily, while a paladin is a weapon user and uses weapons primarily. I actually dislike the overlap between cleric and paladin, and will be attempting to avoid it if possible.

So dump the STR/battle/weapon Cleric stuff and the CHA/implement Paladin stuff?

That's why my goal is 12 classes. 2 per role, 1 primary and one Gish for the casters, then there's the barbarian, fighter, monk, and rogue.

??

I though you said each class could be any role? Or did you mean 2 roles per class, one of them primary (which was how 4e went anyway)? Oh, or 1 primary in the sense of default?

How much do you plan on re-writing-to-simplify, anyway? It's sounding like quite the undertaking.

The Fey Wild Berserker is kind of what got me thinking on role switching. A fighter could switch roles by switching their weapons (Great Weapon is striker, shield is defender, bow is controller, two weapons is striker or defender depending).

Yeah, it feels like a cool idea. Weapon-swapping (like the Dragon mag weapon master is meant to do) is neat, but enhancement bonus expectations screw with it, unless you use a Dynamic weapon or Inherent bonuses... probably other things you could do, too... or add.

 

[Xeviat]

I though you said each class could be any role? Or did you mean 2 roles per class, one of them primary (which was how 4e went anyway)? Oh, or 1 primary in the sense of default?

Miss said "role" instead of "source".

Martial: fighter and rogue
Ki: barbarian and monk (they both tap into inner power that the fighter and rogue lack)
Arcane: wizard and bard
Blood: sorcerer and warlock
Divine: cleric and paladin
Primal: Druid and ranger

How much do you plan on re-writing-to-simplify, anyway? It's sounding like quite the undertaking.

I'm probably going to be rewriting the entire character side of things it's seeming. But since there are thousands of powers in 4E when you take all the insider sources into account, anything will be simpler.

Yeah, it feels like a cool idea. Weapon-swapping (like the Dragon mag weapon master is meant to do) is neat, but enhancement bonus expectations screw with it, unless you use a Dynamic weapon or Inherent bonuses... probably other things you could do, too... or add.

I may use inherent bonuses or accept the cost of an additional weapon as the fair cost for role switching. But it wouldn't work for the warlord fighter, so it might not be something I do.


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[pemerton]

you’re wrong about 4e. Classes were never balanced outside of combat. The skill-heavy classes and ritual casters got all the spot-light. The Fighter’s skills were a joke. Trying to raise 4e as anything near an out-of-combat balance is just not right.

I'll leave the debate about balance to others - D&D is so unstructured and open-ended in its non-combat resolution (especially in comparison to the tightness of its combat resolution) that I don't know how you'd even start to show that classes were balanced in that respect.

But I certainly don't agree that fighter's are a joke out of combat. The fighter in my game performs feats of heroic strength and endurance, which sometimes include saving his friends. And he performs feats of diplomacy and initimidation too, which sometimes produce the desired result and sometimes unexpected ones.

Weapon-swapping (like the Dragon mag weapon master is meant to do) is neat, but enhancement bonus expectations screw with it, unless you use a Dynamic weapon or Inherent bonuses

The figher in my game swaps between Overwhelm (his dwarven thrower artefact reforged as a mordenkrad) and his Defending Black Peak halberd (a homebrewed superior halberd - as a normal halberd but Brutal 2).

He uses a Heward's Handy Haversack for stowage, and uses the at-will power that allows swapping between weapons (I'm guessing it's from that same Dragon article) to swap between them - or else a minor action if the at-will doesn't suit.

And of course he uses Dwarven Weapon Training for getting his feat bonus to damage. (We don't use Expertise feats, so that issue dosen't come up.)

 

[Cleon]

Whether you call it 'versimilitude,' 'realism' (as we did in the olden days), or just say 'the fighter can't have nice things,' it's only messy if you hold fantasy to a RL standard and prioritize it over game balance, fun, and playability.

Oh this old chestnut. Let's assume we have the usual argument about "my fun is enhanced by a rule system that plays more lip service to suspension of disbelief" and proceed.

Anyhow, I'm kind of looking at it in the other direction. A high level fighter ought to be way better than any possible real-world fighter. Even an expert SEAL team member or multi-black belt martial artist is probably equivalent to, say, 4th or 5th level in D&D terms. They can perform their equivalent of "encounter level" abilities multiple times in a melee if it seems appropriate, so I'd prefer them to be able to do so in game as well.

There a wide gap between punched through armor with lethal force and missed completely, but D&D simplifies it down to a an attack roll. It also simplifies a whole round of attacking & parrying down to an attack per round.

So a mechanic that gives a character a reasonable chance of succeeding at a marginal combat trick once per encounter, with the timing decided by the player is a perfectly reasonable simplification, on the same order as other abstractions that have long been part of the game. It's just one that gives a little more agency to the player of the fighter-types than has traditionally been the case (which can only be to the good).

If a fighter-type gains agency by being able to perform, say, three tricks once each in a fight (trick A, trick B, trick C). Surely they gain more agency by being able to perform three tricks from a choice of three (two As and a C, one of each, or whatever other combination they can manage).

It seems a perfectly reasonable complication.

The main problem is it's a major change to the base rules assumptions so would require some heavy rewriting and rebalancing. The idea doesn't play well with the "simplifying 4E" goals of the original premise.

 

[Cleon]

But you HAVE to be able to articulate how that works MECHANICALLY. I haven't seen anyone succeed. This has been heavily reinforced in my exercise of actually trying to do it!

Well you don't have to include mechanics for everything.

Sooner or later it gets to be too much trouble to keep track of everything.

While I enjoy coming up with game mechanisms as a mental exercize, when actually running a game as often as not it's easier to just "make something up that seems fun and appropriate".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’m looking for that game, too. Bringing money to buy the PDF. It seems interesting.

AbdulAlhazred
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I never said the Thief needs to “suck” in combat, nor the Fighter needs to "suck" out of it. But yes, one is more effective than the other in certain situations. This would not work only if one case is severely more common than the other.
Let’s face it: the Thief is not a Fighter. If we want a new Fighter, we make a new one.

Oh and you’re wrong about 4e. Classes were never balanced outside of combat. The skill-heavy classes and ritual casters got all the spot-light. The Fighter’s skills were a joke. Trying to raise 4e as anything near an out-of-combat balance is just not right.

Yeah, we will just have to disagree. I don't think there was any great degree of imbalance outside of combat. Your most basic stock fighter is short one skill, and if you restrict yourself to the obvious skill choices that only work off your most common high stats (STR,CON,WIS usually, but also maybe DEX) then you have a somewhat niche repertoire, but its very easy to escape that box. I mean humans get an extra skill, which already puts you on a par with most other starting characters. You can pick an MC feat, that's almost sure to give you another, etc. You can pick a background that options you into pretty much any extra skill training, so the actual list of what you can pick from is effectively unlimited (though some combinations might be hard to do at level 1). You could also become a ritual caster (as an example, or pick up martial practices if you care to use those). Even alchemy is an option that might actually be interesting for a fighter (lets assume maybe your DM will let you mark with an alchemical item attack, though by RAW it technically doesn't work).

There are plenty of examples of effective 'Rogues' in fantasy literature, folklore, and myth too. What frustrated me GREATLY about AD&D was the sheer impossibility of developing a character along those lines. Its 'NOPE, YOU CAN CLIMB WALLS, YOU MUST SUCK AT COMBAT!' Its hamstringing the players. Instead, the basic assumption of tactical equality in 4e frees you up. You certainly CAN make a character that is relatively incompetent in combat (and even leverage that into a bit more capability elsewhere if you want). Its just not the default assumption that only certain classes can fight well. Just like it isn't the default assumption that only certain classes can do OO combat stuff well.

4e is of course not quite perfect. Fighters should really have a 4th starting skill (an easy houserule BTW) and I'd be OK with something like say some themes that expanded on certain niches. Say something like a Thief theme that got you a few utility power swaps that granted some really kick ass thing you could do with Stealth or something. Then if you want to be just the sneakiest bastard around, well there's a path to that. You COULD of course optimize Stealth without such a thing, but not to a really unique degree where you have some real signature tricks nobody else can do.

I have some boons I'm working on for my hack where you'd get some utility powers that really amp up specific things like Stealth to do exactly that. You don't HAVE to be a rogue to get that boon, but it does leverage DEX pretty strongly, which is usually favored by rogues, and I can always link it to Rogue, or to some other thematically related boons. Linkage isn't described as 'requirement' exactly, its more like "here's a set of boons that have thematic coherence together, if you want X, the GM will find it easy to provide the narrative justification for Y first." Anyway, you can see how a system like that, which works on narrative justification more than either niche protection or optimization can work that way.

Honestly, the end result is that classes ARE weaker in my system than in 4e. Being a 'knight' doesn't actually preclude being able to cast a spell by acquiring 'Fire Adept' as a major boon, which is a lot easier than the equivalent in 4e (MCing for quite a few levels for instance, or building the character from the start as a hybrid of some sort). OTOH, if the narrative justification is there, that's great. You only get around 5 powers to toss around anyway, so its not exactly like you can gain a lot of mileage by shopping all over for the best boons.