D&D 4E Testing "Try 4e" house rules

[MerricB]

Well, I've just run a pretty successful session of my 3.5e Savage Tide campaign, using a number of "4e" house rules in the mix.

Currently we're using
* Second Wind: 1/day, swift action to recover 1/4 hp.
* Diagonals: 1-1-1.
* Death or Dying: Die at -25% of hp; d20 saving throws to die/stay dying/recover.

Oh, and there's a Crusader/Cleric and a Warblade in the group, so we've been using a lot of encounter powers.

Missing a couple of PCs for the game, but we did have...

* Warblade 10 ... AC 20, hp 110, F+12, R+14, W+3
* Cleric 6/Crusader 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 3 ... AC 22; hp 71; F+10, R+3, W+13
* Rogue 11 ... AC 25, hp 50; F+3, R+11, W+3
* Wizard 11 ... AC 12; hp 49; F+4, R+5, W+7

Encounter 1: vs. 6 Hook Horrors (spd 4) (EL 11)
This encounter was in a set of connecting tunnels of 15'-20'. The HHs were able to approach from two directions, but the Cleric & Warblade blocked the 20' tunnel and the Rogue blocked the 15' tunnel allowing the Wizard to target the HHs with spells unmolested.

Diagonal movement was used, slightly increasing the movement of the HHs, but the terrain & defensive positioning made it impossible for them to get past the PCs to the Wizard.

Craig and Rich used Second Wind to stay alive long enough to defeat the monsters.

Encounter 2: vs Rhagodessas
Martin cast mass fly and the group evaded the monsters. This would come in important later, as the group didn't have fly available! (full XP awarded, btw)

Encounter 3: vs unearthly spellcaster with good melee skills & hp
Terrain for this encounter was around a great pool of water, with scattered patches of difficult terrain & cover. The distances were so great (and movement restricted enough around the pool - about 80' diameter!) that any effects of diagonal movement were minimised. Besides, the monster was moving at 12-18 squares per turn due to haste!

Excellent use of spell and counter-spell in this combat; both sides used invisibility, and then see invisibility & faerie fire (from a ring) to counter the opposing side's invisibility. Hold Person knocked out the rogue for most of the combat.

Martin's wizard used "True Strike" and then cast an Orb of Force. His subsequent attack roll? Natural 20... on an immune-crit creature. That's so frustrating!

Second Wind used by Craig to stay alive. (This was a different day than Enc. 1)

Encounter 4: vs large melee creatures with fly & dominate
Terrain was on a ziggurat, so limited movement sideways and hindered movement forward. Once again, with opponents with speed of Fly 12, diagonals really didn't matter - they could get anywhere they needed to!

At one stage, both the Wizard and the Warblade were dominated (poxy saving throws from both), and the Cleric was knocked to negative hp as a result. Then the Rogue was unfortunate to suffer an attack routine that knocked her to 1 hp and then took a 15 point blow... enough to kill her.

At that point, the Cleric rolled a natural 20 to recover, and rejoined the fray. Cleric player was very, very happy. I think it was in this encounter that the Warblade was unconscious and failed a couple of rolls before the Cleric healed him, but I may be confusing it with another encounter. Too late for the Rogue, alas.

Notes on the "4e" house rules
Second Wind is very popular; we've been using it for several sessions, and not only does it protect the PCs, it also frees up the cleric. Thumbs up.

Negative effects of the 1-1-1 Diagonal really didn't apply here. Look, 3e monsters at this level often move so fast that it's a neglible effect in any case. If 4e has more restricted movement, perhaps I'll notice it. Not really in these high-level campaigns I'm running. The Warblade and Rogue players certainly appreciated the extra mobility (and lack of calculation) it gave them.

Death or Dying worked pretty well, although the death threshold may be too low considering the high damage of many monsters in 3.5e at these levels. (-12 for death for a 11th level rogue is achieved too easily from one hit; I may bump the threshold up to 33% for these games). The Cleric really, really appreciated the recover rule, and the Warblade found the "dying" rolls increased tension. (My view of hp is "when you're dead, you've been wounded. Otherwise it's negotiable!").

I have another session with different players (a 15th level game) on Sunday. I'll see how it goes then.

Cheers!

 

[satori01]

Could you go into further detail about the Death or Dying rule? Does it merely make the death threshold more personal for each character, thus a Fighter with 100 HP now dies at -25hp....or is it more like a death from massive damage rule, if the fighter takes 25 hp of damage, he or she must make a save or die?

 

[KarinsDad]

Isn't there a 4E rule that if bloodied, all D20 rolls are at -2 or some such?

And, isn't there a rule that all 20s are auto-crits?

 

[Sir Brennen]

Isn't there a 4E rule that if bloodied, all D20 rolls are at -2 or some such?

And, isn't there a rule that all 20s are auto-crits?

I don't know if the actual standard effect of being bloodied has been revealed. We only know that some creatures/classes have abilities that trigger when they or their opponents have become bloodied.

Switching over to 20 = auto-crit seems like it would require more work on other 3.5 mechanics, particularly threat ranges and anything which modifies them. We know that there are other mechanics in 4E which balance weapons around the auto-crit rule, but don't know the specifics on those. This isn't a rule I'd use in an current 3.x game without more info.

 

[MerricB]

Could you go into further detail about the Death or Dying rule? Does it merely make the death threshold more personal for each character, thus a Fighter with 100 HP now dies at -25hp....or is it more like a death from massive damage rule, if the fighter takes 25 hp of damage, he or she must make a save or die?

You can find the Death or Dying house rules on the Wizards site in a recent Design & Development article.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

I don't know if the actual standard effect of being bloodied has been revealed. We only know that some creatures/classes have abilities that trigger when they or their opponents have become bloodied.

Switching over to 20 = auto-crit seems like it would require more work on other 3.5 mechanics, particularly threat ranges and anything which modifies them. We know that there are other mechanics in 4E which balance weapons around the auto-crit rule, but don't know the specifics on those. This isn't a rule I'd use in an current 3.x game without more info.

Indeed. That's why I wasn't using it.

I can see the effects of the rules I am using; some of the other rules require too many dependent rules (like lesser attack bonuses) to apply correctly.

Cheers!

 

[Phaezen]

You could try something like this for critical hits:

Natural twenty = confirmed crit for all weapons, max damage
if the weapon does x3 or x4 damage on a crit, add a dice to the damage
if the weapon has a 19-20 or any other range for crits they only crit in that range if the normal attack would have hit.

Phaezen

 

[baradtgnome]

Our group is kicking around the following idea:
Confirmation rolls are no longer needed. A weapon does critical damage on its former threat range. Instead of rolling additional damage just add ½ of the total maximum dice value as bonus damage, no more doubling other damage like the weapon plus, strength etc. Undead, constructs and any creatures that one can make a case for hitting sensitive spots are no longer immune to critical hits. Oozes for example would still be exempt

for example
'crit' with a d8 weapon that does x2. add 4 to damage roll
'crit' with a d12 weapon that does x3. add 12 to damage roll

 

[fnwc]

You could try something like this for critical hits:

Natural twenty = confirmed crit for all weapons, max damage
if the weapon does x3 or x4 damage on a crit, add a dice to the damage
if the weapon has a 19-20 or any other range for crits they only crit in that range if the normal attack would have hit.

You need some other kind of rule that prevents certain situations where being extremely hard to hit (only on a 20) means that you're only hit 5% of the time, but are critted 100% of the time.

I think this is the situation that helped develop the critical confirmation rule in the first place.

Perhaps you could add a rule that requires you to be able to at least hit the monsters AC with a 16 or better. Unfortunately, that means you can't critical a monster with a very high AC at all, which doesn't seem like much fun.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Do you use any rules to let rogues sneak attack previously unsneak attackable foes such as undead and plants? I plan to do that if I ever run 3e again, along with a lot of other 4e inspired ideas such as simpler monsters.