D&D 4E [+] Streamlined 4E Heartbreaker

[overgeeked]

This is a [+] thread to cover things like arguing about editions (specifically 4E), arguing about playstyles you don’t like (specifically cinematic and heroic), arguing about RPG movements (specifically the OSR), and design philosophy (specifically tabletop RPG design influenced by video games). If you want to gripe about those things, argue about my goals, or generally be a nuisance, feel free to find another thread to do so.

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To steal and mangle a thing. “This is my heartbreaker. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

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This thread is going to be me thinking through the design on this and working through options.

My goals here are simple. To me. I love almost everything about 4E, except skill challenges, how long combat takes, and the insanity of hundreds of powers per class. So what I’m trying to do here is dramatically simplify the system, to the point where it maybe looks and reads like an OSR game.

I’ll be drawing freely from the D&D 5.2.1 SRD and the Draw Steel open license.

Some first principles:

Frameworks, not infinite examples.

Effects-based design.

Options as baseline, opt-in limitations.

Balance as baseline, opt-in unbalancing.

Real choices, not trap choices.

Let players do cool things.

Player creativity.

Accessibility, not system mastery.

Rigid mechanics, flexible fluff.

Fast play.

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The easiest bit is skill challenges so I’ll handle that first. Use clocks.

There, done.

Wasn’t that easy?

How long combat takes is going to be much more involved and a result of all the other choices, so it’ll come last.

Which leaves us with the insanity of the powers lists, which leads us directly into the first few principles. Frameworks, not infinite examples and effects-based design.

But to deal with powers, we need to talk about classes, so…

Classes in D&D are a combination of fluff and mechanics. This is great if you want to play one of the prefabricated options, and it’s also great for the company because they get to sell you a bunch of prefabricated options, but if you want something different you’re out of luck. Either you have to homebrew it yourself, use someone else’s homebrew, or buy something from a 3PP.

So instead of all that, I’m stripping things down to the basic mechanics and leaving the imagination (the fluff) up to the player. There is also a distinct break between combat and non-combat mechanics.

Like 4E, classes here are defined by their combat role. Unlike 4E, classes here are only defined by their combat role.

The five classes are: tank, melee damage, healer, ranged damage, and controller.

Final names to be determined.

Yes, these are mostly from video games. Yes, video games got them from D&D. They’ve always been a part of the game from the start, 4E just made them explicit.

Tank. AC 20 and 10 HP.

Melee damage. AC 18 and 8 HP.

Healer. AC 16 and 8 HP.

Ranged damage. AC 14 and 6 HP.

Controller. AC 12 and 6 HP.

And this is where we come to the first major divergence.

AC and HP are fixed by combat role.

Players who’re new to games like this might make “suboptimal” choices for armor while players with some system mastery always make the exact same choices. Everyone who knows enough about these games always picks the highest possible AC. So most of these choices are traps waiting for newbs, with no real choices for veteran players. So I’m removing them.

Same with HP. Rolling hit points is fun… so long as you roll well. Some players are simply unlucky. (Hello, that’s me.) So, to balance things and keep things playable and fun, HP are fixed. Some players might like the schadenfreude of watching their fellow players rolling poorly for HP, but that’s no reason to keep rolling for HP.

To “compensate” for removing the trap choice of armor, the player gets to define the fantasy of what their AC looks like for themselves. You’re playing a tank with high AC and HP. Great. You get to determine what that means. You pick the skin. You flavor the fiction. Is that a plate armor wearing warrior or a lithe and agile swashbuckler or a magic-user in robes with arcane shields? Same stats, but you get to imagine it how you want. But you are required to justify it in the fiction. This is not “disassociated mechanics.”

There’s going to be a lot of that, so if what’s here is already a line too far, I’ll see you around.

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That’s it for this time, next up is actual powers…

 

[Mannahnin]

Interesting project! Hits a lot of my intrigue buttons, as I sometimes say that my favorite two editions of official D&D are B/X and 4E.

I think one of the key points here is making effective/evocative choices with the limited amount of verbiage you're planning to use for fluff/"skins". If the language is too generic it'll be hard to hook people; making it entirely player-determined runs the risk of the text being too dry.

 

[overgeeked]

All right. If you look at 4E powers for more than a few minutes, you’ll notice they’re all themed by power source and combat role (defender, striker, etc). The damage of powers progresses at a steady pace as you level, you get access to more powers, and you swap out lower-level powers for higher level powers.

Almost all combat powers (AED, but not U) caused damage and had a secondary effect. Most often referred to as a rider.

For example, Vampiric Embrace. Hit: 2d8 + Constitution modifier necrotic damage, and you gain 5 temporary hit points.

That last bit, “and you gain 5 temporary hit points,” is the rider.

Just about every power that dealt damage included a rider. I think it’s every single one, but my memory’s not that good and I’m not checking them all to verify. According to the 4E Database, there are 9415 powers. See what I mean? That’s nuts. Frameworks, not infinite examples.

Just about every single attack that used a power included a rider.

First level through 30th. At-will, encounter, and dailies.

This was especially great for healers (called leaders), as it allowed them to heal and do something fun in combat. Attack an enemy plus healing an ally. It also opened up design space for things like the warlord, who could attack and give an ally a bonus attack.

As fantastic as powers and riders were, they quickly lead to a problem.

Players would find the best strategy, the best synergies between powers, and simply spam those combos over and over and over again.

So not only was combat an incredibly long slog, it quickly became monotonous due to cookie-cutter repetition through use of rotations. Those two combined simply killed 4E combat for me.

I made a post about this over here.

D&D 5E (2014) - [+] What can D&D 5E learn from video games?

I stand by that conclusion.

The best way to break the habit of rotations is provide the players with something that not only encourages creativity, but makes creativity the optimal choice. Like Mighty Deeds from DCC RPG. Give them options in the moment rather than just during character creation or between sessions.

And this leads directly to my first principle.

Frameworks, not infinite examples.

Tank. Damage 5 (1d8).

Yes, I’m porting in 5E’s average with the option to roll concept. It’s great.

And yes, combat roles deal a set amount of damage.

This is the same reasoning as the AC before. Long lists of weapons provide a trap choice for newcomers and the veterans always go for the highest damage weapon or spell they can find anyway. Unless it’s thematically appropriate to their character concept, then they’ll make “suboptimal” choices to build towards a specific aesthetic. So again, remove the trap choice. Pick the thematic weapon without losing damage.

So, combat roles deal set damage.

The tank will wield a butter knife more effectively than a civilian, the melee damage dealer even more so. The healer is not going to wield a battle ax as effectively as the melee damage dealer.

This also means there’s no such thing as a “suboptimal” weapon. You want to focus on using the whip, go for it. You’re not penalized for that choice. You want to do something weird or interesting, like throwing rocks or playing cards, go for it. Again, the player is required to justify this in the fiction.

The damage scales up with levels, but we’ll deal with that later.

The rider is the star of the show. It’s there we get the real juice.

Each combat role has a list of riders with specific choices only they can make, extras, perks, bonuses, etc.

And every combat role will have two universal riders, one called Maneuver the other creatively called Extra Damage. Maneuver covers the wild and off-the-wall shenanigans players get up to. All the stuff they can think of in the moment that no designer could ever account for ahead of time. Page 42 brought front and center. Maneuver is also the standard combat stuff like disarm, trip, knock prone, etc. Provided the referee agrees it’s possible given the circumstances, of course. If you hit, the Maneuver works. Simple as. Extra Damage lets you deal extra damage. This is for those times when you can’t think of another rider or Maneuver to use, or the player simply doesn’t want to engage with the rider system. They can ignore the subsystem entirely and just do more damage. Clean and simple.

To ensure players would actually use riders and Maneuvers rather than always opt for Extra Damage, the extra damage is limited to 1dX. Your baseline damage scales with your level, but the Extra Damage does not.

(It might need to scale with tier, but that’s a much later consideration.)

This is intentional. At early levels the Extra Damage will be more meaningful, more impactful, to a combat… but less so as the PCs level. This mirrors the players gaining familiarity with the game. Early days, a full list of riders with variable situations in the combat might just be too much. So there’s the easy choice of Extra Damage. But, as PCs level… and as players get more comfortable with the game… and the Extra Damage option is less impactful to any single attack, all those interesting choices on the rider list become that much more likely to be used.

And again, if the player just doesn’t want to be bothered, skip it and just do Extra Damage.

Options as baseline, opt-in limitations.

Here’s a partial tank rider list as an example. Like all of this, it’s a WIP. Any lingering effects last until the end of your next turn.

Tank Riders.

Maneuver.

Extra Damage.

Movement (self or ally).

Forced Movement (enemy).

AC Bonus (self or ally).

To-Hit Bonus (self or ally).

Switch Damage Type (pick from list).

Damage on a Miss (optional).

Gain Temporary HP.

Mark a Target.

Some entries will be shared between combat roles, some will be exclusive to a combat role. I’m still tinkering with it all, so stay tuned for specific numbers on these things.

One of the things I’m thinking about is using “X (1dY)” format for many of the effects besides Extra Damage. For example, the AC bonus would be 5 (1d8), the to-hit bonus would be 5 (1d8), the Forced Movement would be 5 (1d8), etc.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

Tank. AC 20 and 10 HP.

Melee damage. AC 18 and 8 HP.

Healer. AC 16 and 8 HP.

Ranged damage. AC 14 and 6 HP.

Controller. AC 12 and 6 HP.

Are those AC and HP stats just how characters start (level 1), or are they fixed forever and don't change? Has the concept of leveling up been removed?

 

[overgeeked]

Are those AC and HP stats just how characters start (level 1), or are they fixed forever and don't change? Has the concept of leveling up been removed?

At present it’s what first level looks like. I’m not worrying about advancement until later.

 

[Vrindlevine]

Lots of good stuff here, the lack of armor and weapon customization is painful but I get the reasoning, in my own system I went in the opposite direction, but that is a much crunchier game. I think there is plenty of space to simplify this stuff and still have a fantastic system.

I dont really get the issue with skill challenges and how clocks just cleanly solve it, most skill tests in most games are heavily impacted by how much time you have to succeed.

As for power frameworks. I am curious what you come up with. I am definitely the sort to lean towards bespoke lists while also allowing players creative freedom.

My main issue is that players will eventually just record all of their favorite choices and use those in most situations, or having a few variants with slightly different riders, in which case you are back to lists again. One might even say you might as well make the lists ahead of time to make it easier for players, some games even print them on cards.

In either case I look forward to seeing what you come up with, this is a good time for 4e adjacent games.

 

[overgeeked]

The more I think about this and work on it, the more I realize it's a really long and overly-involved way to make a framework for free-form powers in bog-standard 4E. If I'm going to make a whole game, it's going to be wildly different than 4E. Even a streamlined version. That's kind of deflating, but at least I realized that before putting too much work in.

 

[Scribe]

The more I think about this and work on it, the more I realize it's a really long and overly-involved way to make a framework for free-form powers in bog-standard 4E. If I'm going to make a whole game, it's going to be wildly different than 4E. Even a streamlined version. That's kind of deflating, but at least I realized that before putting too much work in.

I feel you on that. Ran into it a few times, and put on the back burner a whole bunch of stuff I spent hours and hours and hours on earlier this year.

It's never a waste though, you figured something out and better to do it now as you say than later.

 

[Vrindlevine]

Aye my own 4e clone took about 18 months to put together, but I've been working on it since then so yea... its a lot of work. Don't blame ya. If you go for rules light that space is a lot more saturated but I find fans of those games to be more interested in trying a different one out from time to time, (rules heavy players seem to stick to one game typically).

 

[josephikrakow]

I recommend you look at Microlite 4e from the Microlite2020 Collection, it’s an interesting hack of 4e that does some of the things you sought out to do however the hack does come off as incomplete. Maybe you could give it a read. It might be a good source of inspiration.