D&D 4E What 'new' rules would you like to see in 4e?

[Pinotage]

3.5e has been around for some time, and addressed quite a lot of things. However, there were a number of rules that never really satisfactorily made it into the core rules or any of the supplements. Of these, two stand out:

Underwater combat
Chases

I was wondering what new rules that weren't in 3.5e you'd like to see in 4e? Those rules that crop up from time to time and make things run smoother.

Thanks!

Pinotage

 

[Cadfan]

Ok, I want to make it clear that I don't expect all of these in the PHB. And that I'm willing to compromise on them for the sake of certain D&Disms. But I have long believed that one of the great strengths of D&D is that any character archetype you can visualize, you can create. It might be a D&D-ized version of that archetype, I'm fine with that, but it will be that archetype. Now, strictly speaking, this has never been completely realized, but its come close. Still, there are certain holes that I'd like filled.

I think that all of these should be valid combat character archetypes. Bear in mind that I'm speaking generally- if I say "sword," and you want "ax," that's fine. And I don't think that the class for all of these archetypes needs to be "fighter." It can be whatever, as long as it genuinely does the job.

Sword, shield, heavy armor. Your knight archetype. Looks like fighters and paladin cover this.

Sword, shield, lighter armor. Realistically, people don't spend all day in heavy armor. Its heavy. Warlords seem to cover this, I think. So does cleric.

Two handed sword, no shield, heavy armor. Fighters, paladin handle this.

Two handed sword, light armor. Barbarian covers this in 3e, maybe it will in 4e?

Two handed sword, no armor. Your wandering ronin type. I can accept adding light armor as a D&Dism. This has not typically been a supported character archetype. It should be.

Heavy armor, polearm. Fighter.

Light armor, polearm. Think Jackie Chan with a broom or a ladder. Was a fighter in 3e, kind of. You could get the spring attack, attacks of opportunity, and so on, but the skills weren't correct.

Two swords, heavy armor. In 3e this was the samurai.

Two swords, light armor. Probably ranger in 4e. Was ranger and rogue in 3e.

Sword and dagger, light armor. This is not the same as two swords. In 3e, this was a poor choice, because the shortsword was better than the dagger, and because you were making it harder to use weapon feats. The difference between this and "two swords" is that the dagger is somewhat defensive, whereas "two swords" implies offensive use.

Dagger and one empty hand, light armor, tendency to cut people's throats from behind. Rogue covers this.

Sword and one empty hand, masterful duelist. This is your "My name is Inigo Montoya!" character. Its not clear whether this will be supported any time soon in 4e. It wasn't particularly well supported in 3e, until the lackluster swashbuckler class.

There are probably more, but I think that all of these should be possible. I don't think they all need their own class. I'm ok with them being blended together. I just think that for any one of these, if a player says "I want to play THIS," it should be possible, and not suck.

 

[Greg K]

1. Fewer Absolutes as per Sean K Reynolds Web article .
2. Culture/environment seperated from race and made packages that can be added to any culture.
3. d20 Modern style occupations, but tailored to fantasy and providing bonus ranks to occupational related skills.
4. Skill and Feat based magic and psionic rules that uses magic points or strain
5. Ritual Magic
6.. Chase Rules

 

[Cake Mage]

chase rules would be very nice.
I think underwater combat was done in the DMG, but it was so clunky that, personaly I just trie dto avoid setting up any underwater combat unless I gave the characters freedom of movement spells.

Also, I'd like to see stunting done well. IH got into this, but it was still a little complex. If they could come up with a system for stunts, I know my players would be very happy.

By stunts I mean, the jackie chan type manuevers, or other wacky things that the players come up with.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Serious rules for running kingdoms, large businesses, The Great Game (ala WotG), castles, fortifications, armies, etc. Not something half-assed like the chain-of-encounters crap in Heroes of Battle. Something like a tabletop wargame minigame that can be played through and resolved if the PCs really want to do it, like Exalted has.

I would be willing to pay for a sourcebook for this, as it'd eat up too much of the DMG. If there was a big book of how to do Pendragon D&D-style, I'd have a joygasm.

 

[eleran]

1. Fewer Absolutes as per Sean K Reynolds Web article .
2. Culture/environment seperated from race and made packages that can be added to any culture.
3. d20 Modern style occupations, but tailored to fantasy and providing bonus ranks to occupational related skills.
4. Skill and Feat based magic and psionic rules that uses magic points or strain
5. Ritual Magic
6.. Chase Rules

I noticed chase rules mentioned twice. What do you need in chase rules that isnt already in the PH or DMG?

 

[DamnedChoir]

Stunts (Honestly, this was my favorite thing from Iron Heroes, stunts, skill tricks, the ability to kick off of walls, do leap attacks, etc. If they don't put in in 4E they've missed an important opportunity to do some awesome.)

Chase Mechanics (Honestly I'd just be happier if anything other than race affected movement speed.)

The Ability For Non-Rogues to ambush and have it be useful. (Seriously, sneak attack is good and all but when the only viable tactic for a Fighter is to rush headlong into a group of 8 bugbears since an ambush doesn't give any numerical bonus anyways, there's a problem.)

Variable Fighting Styles for classes. (I dont' expect this because I've already heard Fighters will be EXPECTED to wear Heavy Armor and that they can go two hander or sword and board. However, it'd be nice if anyone could choose what type of armor and weapons to be proficient in since there's no spell failure now. Obviously the Wizard wouldn't be anywhere near as good as the Fighter but still it'd be nice to play a Lightly Armored Defender rather than having to shoehorn each class into a place it doesn't always necessarily fill well.)

Ritual Magic (It would be nice, honestly, I'd be happy if spell casters could attempt to cast spells above their level with catastrophic results. It's so thematic.)

Expansive Talent Trees (What I'd honestly consider my dream is not to do it like SAGA Edition, but rather have one Talent Tree for each power source, Race, Role, and Class, as well as a generic pool of talents that anyone can take.)

Maybe it's a bit off-topic, but to continue on that last point it'd be cool if all Martial characters had access to one talent tree, all Strikers one talent tree, all Elves, etc. That way two Martial characters can both learn cool weapon moves, but one might have Elf and Striker trees, the other with Dwarf and Defender trees. It'd be nice, I really don't like SAGA that much other than a few of the things they did like perception and defenses. I don't know why people harp it so much.

 

[dinsdale]

The Ability For Non-Rogues to ambush and have it be useful. (Seriously, sneak attack is good and all but when the only viable tactic for a Fighter is to rush headlong into a group of 8 bugbears since an ambush doesn't give any numerical bonus anyways, there's a problem.)

In 3E, it already gives a surprise round with the opponent being caught flatfooted.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

1) Chase rules ala Spycraft etc.

2) Swashbuckler-type class or really good options to support that style of play for Fighters (former being more likely than the latter).

3) Stunt rules.

4) Fighting styles/stances for all (more developed than the sad little stubs in Bo9S).

 

[Zaruthustran]

The Ability For Non-Rogues to ambush and have it be useful. (Seriously, sneak attack is good and all but when the only viable tactic for a Fighter is to rush headlong into a group of 8 bugbears since an ambush doesn't give any numerical bonus anyways, there's a problem.)

I think the surprise round is a pretty big numerical bonus. You get an "extra" attack, and your target doesn't get his Dex modifier to AC.