This is a house rule my group has just decided to try.
One oddity in our new "fixed math" system, is the remainder of Armor check penalty. ACP has been greatly reduced, but a plate fighter in heavy shield can still get a -4 penalty on certain skill checks.
Considering how even a +1 modifier to skill checks can be important in 4e, that's a very large penalty to be giving a character whose primary focus is likely on physical type skills.
However, my group didn't want to eliminate ACP, afterall, that's the price for getting the big AC, but we did want to tone it down a bit.
So we are using this rule:
Heroic Surge
Whenever making a skill check that has an ACP, you can spend a healing surge to negate the ACP penalty to your check.
Clean simple and easy. This allows defenders to negate their ACP at the price of a healing surge. Now they get lots of surges so its not a huge price, but certainly an important resource.
One oddity in our new "fixed math" system, is the remainder of Armor check penalty. ACP has been greatly reduced, but a plate fighter in heavy shield can still get a -4 penalty on certain skill checks.
Considering how even a +1 modifier to skill checks can be important in 4e, that's a very large penalty to be giving a character whose primary focus is likely on physical type skills.
However, my group didn't want to eliminate ACP, afterall, that's the price for getting the big AC, but we did want to tone it down a bit.
So we are using this rule:
Heroic Surge
Whenever making a skill check that has an ACP, you can spend a healing surge to negate the ACP penalty to your check.
Clean simple and easy. This allows defenders to negate their ACP at the price of a healing surge. Now they get lots of surges so its not a huge price, but certainly an important resource.
