D&D 4E Simplifying 4E

[Tony Vargas]

Heya, how do you think this would work:

All encounter powers are point based, like psionics.

I think Pemerton answers that:

A huge strength of 4e is that a single overpowered ability genrally doesn't break the game, because it can't be spammed. This is why power-point based psionics has been such an issue in the game.

Like mana variants in the olden days, it'd be a more problematic approach.

A multiclass character shares the same points between their powers; all powers cost endurance, basically. Reusing an ability costs more points, to penalize spamming but not disrupt the expectation of "I can try multiple times"?

I do like the idea of 'endurance' though, and upping the cost of 'spamming' could be a way of, well, not reducing issues, but recognizing that a power your spamming must be higher-effectiveness than intended, at least in the circumstance.

Plus, an incentive to 'mix things up' is always good to avoid boredom.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I never bought the non-combat roles thing. I certainly never saw a convincing implementation of the concept, or even proposed implementation. The supposed 'roles' always felt pretty artificial.

An example from outside the hobby would be the show Leverage, the recurring characters are introduced by a sort of role: grifter, mastermind, thief, hacker...

Certainly in the real world people simply cannot be binned into such simple niches.

There's all sorts of real world attempts to do so. Job qualifications, degree programs, team positions, Myers-Briggs, the traditional nuclear family, management fads, org charts, MOS...

4e's skill system, that effectively designates a few areas where each PC can likely excel seemed to me to model things better. Most characters still tend to have one or two niches, but they're more organic and less forced.

Sure, essentially there are 13 roles (skills) and the fighter, for instance, gets 3 of 'em, while other classes get 4 or 5. It really didn't help that some sample skill challenged prominently featured the fighter's social use of intimidate as an auto-fail, either.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I like that in theory.

You could have it so the pool starts out smaller than its maximum so the character has to build it up with a few at-wills before they can pull out the big guns. That would prevent the character chucking out all their most powerful encounter attacks at the start of combat.

That way you have a reason to follow the traditional martial arts cinema / sentai show habit of only breaking out the finishing moves after a few bouts of "normal level" fighting.

Well, if you have your 'HS', as I do, also be your power points, then its not likely most PCs will start at full. So, you could in fact let at-wills add power points, and give a benny to using them when you're at full power. That might not be too bad an idea. I'd just do the simplest thing though, give out a PP to each character every round. At-Will costs nothing to use, other powers cost at least a point each. You could spam encounter powers, but maybe most of them cost 2, so you won't really do much of that. I'd expect in a system like that you'd only have maybe 4 power points, but they're not hard to get back.

Only thing I'm not sure of is just how well they would serve in the 'limiting healing per day' function. Perhaps it isn't strictly necessary that they limit it that much. Every character would be a bit like the 4e Vampire in that model, able to mostly recover with some slow attrition depending on how hard you have to lean on your points.

 

[pemerton]

I'm strongly considering having said pool of points be small, small enough to only allow one use of your highest level encounter power. Then, you recover your points when you use an at-will, including an action like defend or second wind. Some builds may grant bonuses to atwills when your point pool is maxed, for at-will spammers. This makes it so long fights continue to have encounters, but also require them to be spaced out a bit.

You could have it so the pool starts out smaller than its maximum so the character has to build it up with a few at-wills before they can pull out the big guns. That would prevent the character chucking out all their most powerful encounter attacks at the start of combat.

That way you have a reason to follow the traditional martial arts cinema / sentai show habit of only breaking out the finishing moves after a few bouts of "normal level" fighting.

I think Mearls used this sort of "build up/recharge your pool" approach in Iron Heroes. I think, in the end, he found it a bit clunky, but there might be some commentary around that talks about how it worked, how it could be improved, etc.

As far as the pacing issue is concerned, this has been discussed in the current "new to 4e" thread - and as I said in that thread, I think that it is easier to manage pacing on the GM side: use encounter mix and terrain/setting to force choices and prevent pre-scripting by players.

 

[Xeviat]

At one point, I created an excel sheet that tracked expected damage and such across all 30 levels and allowed for comparison to monster HP. It's not directly related to the topic at hand, but I'll see about digging it up if anybody would find it useful.

I'd be interested in seeing this. I was once tackling it from the other direction. Based on the companion characters and the basic NPC guidelines, I was working out how much damage a player should be expected to do and working backwards. I'm more than happy to rebalance the powers to get the 1-9 level structure back in, bring some of the D&Disms that were lost back to 4E. Then I can trick my players into playing it. Hahaha.


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[Cleon]

I'd be interested in seeing this. I was once tackling it from the other direction. Based on the companion characters and the basic NPC guidelines, I was working out how much damage a player should be expected to do and working backwards. I'm more than happy to rebalance the powers to get the 1-9 level structure back in, bring some of the D&Disms that were lost back to 4E. Then I can trick my players into playing it. Hahaha.

If you find such a notion interesting, go for it! Playing around with game systems is fun. I guess the obvious approach is to have three "power levels" per tier, one at the start of each tier (1st, 11th, 21st) and the others evenly spaced within them.

Personally I'd call the steps in the power structure something different from "levels" to (a) clearly distinguish them from character levels and (b) 'cause it sounds better for your PC to declare "I am a Mage of the Sixth Circle!!".

 

[Manbearcat]

Have you seen Strike?

It's a game that hit the sweet spot for me at exactly what the OP is trying to achieve. It has 4e-like tactical combat, but is much lighter mechanically in general, has nearly no numeric pluses and minuses, but at the same time has as much (if no more) depth than 4e.

It also splits class (the main source of combat powers), background, tactical role (striker, blaster, defender etc.) and story role (here called "kit": the naive protagonist, the wise mentor, the smart guy etc.). You may mix and match them any way you want, so you may have, for example, a wandering (abilities that focus on travel and knowing places) martial artist who acts as a blaster (many multi-target attacks and crowd control) or a heroic (heart of the team, maturing zero-to-hero) martial artist defender (powers that block enemy movement and pull aggro).

Definitely worth taking a look.

[MENTION=57494]Xeviat[/MENTION] , if you're just doing this hack for fun, then have at it. However, if you're looking for a genuine alternative, then definitely heed steenan's advice and check out Strike! It seems to hew closely to 4e's dynamic combat engine (tactical decision-points, synergy, mobility), while going with a more Mouse Guard/Powered By the Apocalypse for noncombat conflict resolution with a snowballing narrative (and advancement) as an emergent quality of the dice mechanics (and deft GMing/playing).

Finishing up a Dungeon World game and about to start a Strke! game (along with my stray Torchbearer and Apocalypse World sessions).

 

[Dalamar]

Okay, here's the chart. There are some explanations, but also some very cryptic naming schemes. Sorry about those.

Some features:

• Ability to define the "default" [W] for all powers a character earns over their career
• Change what ability modifier a character is expected to have at what level
• Change what enhancement bonus a character is expected to have at what level
• Change At-Wills to have a different number of [W] at 11th level

Things that I was planning on adding at some point but aren't included in this version:

• Player attack bonus scaling at a different rate than +1/2 levels
• Monster AC scaling at a different rate than +1/level
• Option for other damage modifiers like Weapon Focus