Things that are Easy to change vs. things that are Hard to change

[StarFyre]

my list

From my experience on our house rules for 3.5E that we will be using in 4E as well:

Easy:

* critical hit system
* magic item changes (hell, give as many items and even give them for 'body parts' that hte game system doesnt define if you like; as long as you are ok to live with what you doand are experienced enough to handle it, it's really not a problem)
* monster changes - don't like that dragon's may not have spells? give them back. modify them a bit if needed.really, it's a simple change, ever since back in 1e and 2e, people been doing it.
* alignment system changes...we are adding neutral back in 4E, since neutral and aligned really are different meanings...but those are really for players who play very religious/follow the god's belief system style characters OR those who want to follow an ideal like an angel or devil might. we actually use a real life 'alignment' style system which means there is no real such thing anwyays for beings that aren't made of belief anyways (we follow planescape style philosphy )

Moderate:

* item damage system (i say moderate since it's easy right now what we do, but it requires items to have their own hardness/hp type system or something equivalent). if they assume items are immune to damage for example, then I will have to use the 3.5E values or make my own. If they have a new system, then that could be integrated into our framework

* spell system changes - cleric and wizard will both have entire re-writes to fit into a) our concept of D&D universe and how magic works, and our background fluff that we use, and b) to do some custom stuff that we wished 4E would do but they are not. players are looking forward to this; my notes for this also take into account my players beliefs on 'fantasy' and what they want...

high:

* level limits (if friends want to go higher for unique type adventures or to try and ascend a chracter to a god (we always use custom rules for gods, demon lords, etc), then I will have to make up my own experience chart beyond 30 (I doubt we will though) and make up a new type of path (divine rights, or something at lvl 31).

* specific class changes (always interesting..takes time to get it right, but well worth it IMHO)

Regards,

Sanjay

 

[Bishmon]

Magic items for example--their functions are really not all that different between 3E and 4E, yet in 3E they're virtually impossible to uncouple from the rest of the rules, while in 4E it's the work of a few minutes.

Supposedly.

I mean, designers don't always achieve what they set out to do. I can't imagine the 3E designers set out to make it virtually impossible to uncouple magic items from the system. And even with the benefit of hindsight, people don't always completely remove a problem with their first shot at fixing it.

Hopefully what Mike says is true. It wouldn't exactly be surprising if it wasn't. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[Woas]

Actually races can be a difficult thing the change but it boils down to how integrated they are into the setting (if there is an implied one). An example is Arcana Evolved, which I love dearly. But all the spells in AE have one or more descriptors which is fine except for some of those descriptors that are racial, along with tying into specific feats that grant special abilities and access to these racial spells.
I've wanted to run an AE campaign with mostly different races than the ones present in the book but its difficult to go through the entire list of spells and figure out what new races should get what spells and then explain it all to the players and not have to re-explain it every other session.
So it will be interesting to see how interwoven the races are with the rest of the rules in 4e.

 

[Bishmon]

Easy:

* magic item changes (hell, give as many items and even give them for 'body parts' that hte game system doesnt define if you like; as long as you are ok to live with what you doand are experienced enough to handle it, it's really not a problem)
* monster changes - don't like that dragon's may not have spells? give them back. modify them a bit if needed.really, it's a simple change, ever since back in 1e and 2e, people been doing it.

I think those tend to be more difficult, because it usually ends up affecting encounter balance, and that can be a tricky thing to deal with.

 

[Cadfan]

There are certain things that are very easy for a DM to change, but very hard (or impossible) for a player to change. And vice versa, there are certain things that are very easy for a player to change, but very hard for a DM to change.

Feat names is one of the latter, I think. For a DM to change all the feat names that don't fit his personal campaign flavor (for the record, I think this is a pretty anal thing to do, feat names just aren't that important), he would have to not only come up with names for a bunch of feats, he'd have to convince his players to USE those names. That's the hard part. But for a player to change the name of feats that don't fit his character concept, that's a lot easier. First, he only has to change the names of feats he's actually selected. This is a much smaller subset of the whole. Second, only two people really need to remember the changed name- him and the DM.

Not every character selected option will work that way. For example, if I don't like that Eladrin can teleport by stepping through the feywild (for flavor reasons, lets say dislike of the feywild), it is the work of but a moment to tell the player of an eladrin character that he can teleport in my campaign, but its just an innate ability- there is no feywild.

 

[med stud]

IMO, compared to the computer games I use to play, D&D balance is about interparty balance. The DM can always turn the power up or down without much problems but the players are, by choice most often, more stuck in their choices. The important thing is not that all PCs get powerful, the important thing is when one PC pulls ahead. As long as classes are designed to be balanced compared to each others you can change essentially what you want.

An example is magic items; in older editions, a level 10 fighter that is naked isn't that tough while a wizard could run around naked all day and still be a force to be reckoned with. So if you took magic items out you would see fighters that are disproportionally weak compared to the casters.

 

[Agamon]

The changes I plan on making look like they'll be easy:

1. Player races. Easy peasy. In fact, I think the players will be limited to human to start with. Dragonborn and Tieflings will be the bad guys.

2. Magic items. Another easy one. Any items found will be extremely old and powerful and/or interesting. There won't be a lot of magic items, but the ones there are will probably have the powers of multiple lesser items in the DMG.

3. Alignment. Again, easy, thanks to it no longer being a mechanical aspect of the game, it will be easy to replace with something like behavioral traits.

4. XP. This was easy to change in 3E, and will be just as easy in 4E. The PCs will gain a level when it's a good time to.

5. POL setting. I like the POL setting idea, but my campaign idea that sprang from it is more like a place where there are POLs that are completely shielded from their surroundings, yet connected to each other, making it more like happy sunshine land. That is, until that shielding disappears. I like to call it a Motes of Light setting.

 

[robertliguori]

One of my dislikes in RPGs is setting fluff explicitly tied to mechanics. This is very hard to houserule.

For example, I like some of the basic concepts in Exalted, but I dislike the Limit Break rules.

But those rules are so tightly integrated into the game that removing them requires a massive reengineering of the whole game.

How difficult can it be? You just don't Limit Break; let limit accrue indefinitely without penalty.

 

[Irda Ranger]

So what about you -- what are the easy fixes or changes? What are the ones you really don't want to mess with?

Too early to really say, but generally speaking the hard ones are the ones that the designers assume everyone has when they're writing the game (Hit Points, Level-Appropriate Magic Items (in 3E's case), Skills between certain numbers, Access to Certain Spells, etc.); while the easy ones are the ones the designers assume are optional (being an Elf, a particular Alignment, campaign world, etc.).

And of course there isn't a "Hard" or "Easy" binary setting; it's a sliding scale from Really, Really Hard to Fall-Out-of-Bed Easy. I have to admit to being somewhat exasperated by the fact that the very easiest to change things about 4E attract so much vitriol; when you can just fix it in 5 minutes.

What I'm very very please by is that the hardest thing of all to change (the core mechanic of d20, and how bonuses accumulate across 30 levels) is being changed by the 4E design team to improve playability at all levels. That's Mt. Everest Hard.

 

[StarFyre]

experience

BISHMON - it comes down to experience in the end.

I customize so much stuff for players, that I find it quite easy now for most stuff.

Even changed rules and customized on the spot. Works fine.

But it really is down to experience and what you are used to.

From Dming back in 2E where there was no real CR system; you had to learn to judge creatures just by some abilities and spells they had. Once you are used to that, d20 styled system is a piece of cake.

You could give a level 10 party +3 and +4 weapons and they can kill a marilith in 2E (I know, our old DM did that to us), while in 3.5E you still aren't killing a marilith at such low level.

But if you can get used to balancing encounters in that type of non-standard system, it gets easier overall.

Regards,

Sanjay