D&D 4E What to do with 4th Edition

[Jacob Lewis]

This has got me thinking now...

What if we could fold "daily powers" into "encounter powers" and just have "powers" you could power up by spending your surges? For example, you have a weapon attack power that normally does "2[W] and slides the target 1 square". But if you expend a heroic surge, it becomes "3[W] damage and knocks the target down" and adds the Reliable keyword (just an example off the top of my head). Fewer powers with greater versatility. Thoughts?

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I love the idea of a 4e OGL base being out there, as 4e is just such an amazing platform to develop an even better game.

But, if original 4e play is what people are looking for then seems like a good foundry ruleset (exists?), PDF to Foundry, and offline character builder to Foundry character sheet would do the job. I'm pretty sure the community could post their own new creation monsters, adventures, etc. without issues as well. Repuposing new adventures from PF2 and 5e is not too difficult if you want fresh adventure content.

 

[Undrave]

This has got me thinking now...

What if we could fold "daily powers" into "encounter powers" and just have "powers" you could power up by spending your surges? For example, you have a weapon attack power that normally does "2[W] and slides the target 1 square". But if you expend a heroic surge, it becomes "3[W] damage and knocks the target down" and adds the Reliable keyword (just an example off the top of my head). Fewer powers with greater versatility. Thoughts?

Just treat them like Smites and let people spend the extra Surges on a hit. Adjust accordingly, with higher level powers demanding more surges. 4e is about exciting encounters after all.

 

[Zardnaar]

Of course you can. You cannot do it under the GSL of course, but you could not doing anything under 1e's open licence because it did not have one at all. You would do 4e using the OGL, SRD precedents, and rewriting, in exactly the same way OSRIC did 1e.


That is mostly true, but not universally so IMNSHO (in both directions). On the one hand, standard action point-to-point teleport came online at about 29th level, which was much higher level than in previous editions even taking into account the level range being multiplies by 1.5. OTOH, there was nothing much like the "once per day when you die" ED powers in previous editions at any level.


IME and IMNSHO, making your "do fun stuff" resource the same as you "do not die" resource just leads to a lot less "fun stuff" happening. Also, your proposal basically ends in-combat healing. There is no way any leader is going to be able to activate their * Word powers more than a couple of times per day. EDIT: Your idea regarding the generalised Skill keyword is great, though.

ETA: Missed a bit:

May I remind you that while B apparently sold gangbusters, I not so much, to the point that is was completely redesigned rather than reprinted when the rest of BECM were compiled into the RC.

_
glass.

Bare minimum you have to rename all the powers and you can't use NADs.

When I did mine I essentially copy and pasted the 4E engine, used micro feats mostly copy and pasted from 3E/4E, and I wrote a small bestiary.

Revised it when 5E landed stealing it's skill system and bounded accuracy.

Didn't write any spells etc you can use 3.5 or Pathfinder.

I stole the xp charts from basic and you add the 5E proficiency bonus to all saves.

It's a huge amount of work and that was more editing due to the amount of copy and pasting. I used a lot of 4E and 5E math in the engine mining those editions plus SWSE and Pathfinder.

Goal was to do as little work as possible and even that was rough. That was also just a word document.

It's in no state to be published and I stole like a mofo.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I'm pretty sure the community could post their own new creation monsters, adventures, etc. without issues as well. Repuposing new adventures from PF2 and 5e is not too difficult if you want fresh adventure content.

Can you though?

Under what license would you publish it?

I don't think you can just make a new adventure under the OGL and say "It's for the 4th edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game". I think the GSL makes that real precarious.

 

[Retreater]

What I think you'd do is start with the extremely similar chassis of PF2. Then make Encounter Powers a version of Focus Powers. Then make the feats to duplicate other powers. Like racial powers would be ancestry feats.
Make a couple simple changes to the way combat works and I think you've got a solid hybrid. I think you could probably do a basic 1-5 level game in a couple weeks in this method.

 

[Emryys]

So on the one hand I see the space for a 4e retroclone and have lamented before that none of them are quite right - though I've been looking at ORCUS off and on since the last time this subject came up and it was pointed out to me - it looks pretty good. Home

ORCUS is probably the closest for a 4E baseline to start from... then folks can publish 'OGL alternates' incorporating their 'fixes'... but at least it creates a central hub similar to OSRIC

 

[Composer99]

Bare minimum you have to rename all the powers and you can't use NADs.

[...]

Apropos of NADs, the 3.5e SRD does have 3.5 UA content that might be adapted in a way that could fill in that gap. Maybe.

 

[Zardnaar]

Apropos of NADs, the 3.5e SRD does have 3.5 UA content that might be adapted in a way that could fill in that gap. Maybe.

Wanna test it via C&D?

 

[Composer99]

Wanna test it via C&D?

There's no call to get shirty. Those save scores are Open Game Content. Also, ORCUS is using them.

I'll add WotC hasn't gotten on Paizo's case about, say, aasimar, which although not "Product Identity" are unequivocally not Open Game Content - they're purely creations of TSR for Planescape and don't appear as Open Game Content in the OGL. They've been part of Pathfinder for 10 years now across both editions.