*D&D 4ed*

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I had the unfortunate experience to talk with someone at the game store yesterday (don't worry, I try not to talk to them, but this one talked first) about 4e and he asked me what I thought. I said that I thought that they had taken all of the awesome out, warriors (F&K) no longer get weapons that cut through walls, wizards no longer get to cast Teleport or sleep in a Rope Trick, no more Venetian casting, no more epic Bardic Knowledge checks even. To which he told me that it was better because it was more like WoW, which is more fun than D&D.

(He also said that 1e was better than 2e despite the conversation having not brought them up until that point)

*sniffle*

[Cielingcat]

WoW is only (arguably) more fun than D&D because it's a computer game. It'd be horribly boring if measured in rounds instead of real time.

[Voss]

The truly sad thing about the WoW comparison is that WoW characters seriously have more options than 4e characters. A 30th level character has all of 17 discreet things to do.

rapa-nui- that orb thing is seriously the only thing that wizards get that make them worth playing. Thats really the highlight of the class.

Your second house rule should be to change the skill challenge system into something functional, and fun.

Your third should be to change magic item creation. Sticks to +6 Godplate of the Hydra isn't OK

But really, just reading it sucks my desire to play it right out, which is sad because I had some cautious optimism going. Stat out 5 30th level characters with equipment and look at the Tarrasque. Look at the characters again. Consider playing through that encounter. Yeah. Put the books back and find something fun to do.

[Harlune]

Okay, three things... It's rather hard to pick just three.

1) Reduce the hp of every bloody thing that's not a minion or pc and the solo monster concept just needs to go away. Making a fight last longer doesn't make it epic, it just makes it fricking long. Boss monsters should ideally last just long enough to make the group burn through a few surges and give every one a chance to use their encounter and daily on it and no more. I don't want to play a goddamn tabletop version of a Molten Core raid.

Alternatly, you could just ramp up the damage of encounter and daily powers so they can actually take huge chunks of hp out of something and could even (in the case of dailies) outright one-shot a regular creature. The at-will stuff should be supplimental damage, not your primary means of putting something down.

2) Rituals need to be fixed. They cost too much, there are rituals that really should be class abilities, and there are class abilities that really should be rituals. All in all, they could be more like a multiperson version of reading a magic scroll in 3.5e, (which I thought it was a perfectly fine mechanic, they just should have gave everyone UMD as a class skill)

3) A better multiclassing system. The current one of horrible, I have yet to see any builds that use it for something beyond cherrypicking a couple of powers or just to qualify for another class's paragon path. With this system we're just going end up with the 3.5E problem of every archetype beyond the basic classes needing their own specialized Prc in order to not suck all over again, only this time with paragon paths.

and if I had one more, it would be to tweak the defense/save RNG of encounter and daily powers. Something you can only use once a bloody day should, right out of the box, have a better than 50/50 chance of working.

[Username17]

Three things:

1. House rule in a skill system. Does that count as only one? Holy shit, there needs to be a skill system, because 4e doesn't even have one, which is totally unacceptable.

2. Shorten combats. Combats in 4e are long and uninteresting past about first level. This can be done by giving out more damage and more uses of abilities. Is that one house rule?

3. Remove 4e economy. Add a completely different economy.

---

That's minimal. But the problem is that you are reworking so much there that you are practically making a new system. It is easier to remove things that are bad than to add things that are good. When the system has to have things written for it to be decently playable, it makes house rules difficult and long.

-Username17

[Cielingcat]

The truly sad thing about the WoW comparison is that WoW characters seriously have more options than 4e characters. A 30th level character has all of 17 discreet things to do.

Admittedly, it's more than you do in a raid. Unless, of course, only a few of those abilities are worth using, in which case it's not.

[Tydanosaurus]

Edit: the game should work fine at low levels, according to everyone on the internet who has posted about their IRL games (doesn't count for all that much, but still). Cut down on HP for the monsters at higher levels, and fix skill challenges somehow.

Oh yeah.

IMO, the overarching problem w/ 4E is that they gave Boss and Elite monsters MMO-style hitponts, but they didn't realize that unlike their playtesters, real players don't have want to roll 3[W]+Cha 27 times. And then do it again. And then do it again. And then do it again. And then do it again. Over and over and over.

[RandomCasualty2]

2. Nerf that stupid Orb combo, and give the wizard some more (non-broken) shit to make up for that loss.

I think just capping the orb at at most -4 or -5 modifier should do it. It's main crazy breaking point is when you start getting really high wisdom scores at high/epic level, and is a good example of why you don't apply scaling modifiers to a non-scaling dice roll.

The other power that really needs a nerf is the ranger's blade cascade. Just stack on a bunch of bonuses to hit and it's godly.

As far as other 4E changes, I definitely want to scale down monster hp. The main problem is that monsters progress hp way faster than PCs for whatever reason. I'm not sure why a soldier monster doesn't just get fight hp, but instead of the fighter's 6 hp, he's getting 8 per level. And brutes are getting 10. Why?

Now I'm going to wait until I actually play some before I start screwing wtih monster HP, it's possible that the bunch of factors like critical hits and stuff will balance out the monster's stats, but I'm not sure. At the very least, I'll probably do something with solos and elites.


So pretty much it's:
1. Nerf the few uber combos.
2. Fix monster HP
3. Fix 5 minute workday problems

[Psychic Robot]

I just don't really understand the mindset of the 4e designers. I mean, there's an ability called "Sly Flourish" that lets a rogue add his Charisma modifier to the damage of his attack. ...How is that justified? I mean, I think that things like insightful strike (add Int to damage with Finesse weapons) are a little cheese, but they make some sense: you're picking out a weak point and hitting it. How in the world are you using your Charisma to do extra damage?

[K]

I seriously think that 4E was designed to be easy to program as a Flash game for WotC's Gleemax vehicle. Check out the Flash games Sonny or The Monster's Den and you'll see the resemblance.

You'll note that there are only like 5-6 actual abilities that you'd need to code into the game as subroutines. Everything else is a permutation of a damage algorithm (really just changes in one or more of the three variables).

Then they handed it over to the marketing team and asked them to come up with kickass names for those abilities.

It actually feels a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics, which is a fine game for a Gameboy that I play on the train, but not something I'd go to someone's house to do.

[virgil]

You feint with the Bluff skill, which is Charisma based, do you not? Same principle. Oh, and everything's better when done with style.

[Username17]

I just don't really understand the mindset of the 4e designers. I mean, there's an ability called "Sly Flourish" that lets a rogue add his Charisma modifier to the damage of his attack. ...How is that justified? I mean, I think that things like insightful strike (add Int to damage with Finesse weapons) are a little cheese, but they make some sense: you're picking out a weak point and hitting it. How in the world are you using your Charisma to do extra damage?

Do you have a problem with a Paladin smiting to add his Charisma to damage?

People in D&D are all variously magical. They are in a world where horse sized creatures can fly with wingspreads small enough that they can still go into caves. And it's a world where being wicked bad ass allows you to jump off a cliff onto barbed iron spikes and survive, even continue fighting.

My problem with the Rogue is that when they made the switch to [W] notation only multiplying out base weapon damage dice they seem to have forgotten that Rogues use weapons which are bullshit and that thus none of their abilities actually increase damage very much. Seriously, the bonus damage you get out of adding an extra [W] to a dagger strike is less damage than the Wizard is getting to his area of effect Cloud of Daggers for being able to add Wisdom as ongoing damage.

The fact that the flavor text for why any particular thing is happening is problematic, but not overly so. I can just improvise different flavor text. The problem is that nothing anyone does is any good.

-Username17

[Voss]

Hey! The Tarrasque can seriously bite like 15 people for almost 22 damage each. And at the beginning of their turn, they take 15. Thats some kind of awesome: it can actually kill multiple first level characters with a single action. Thats almost godlike power in 4th edition!

If, you know, they're stupid enough to stand there and take it. If they take two run actions, it can't actually catch and kill them- it will catch one or two with opportunity attacks, but the rest of the village survives. Maybe it can run down a few more later, but really, if everybody scatters, 95% of the village will make it.

Sadly, I'm not even being sarcastic. The first paragraph really is the pinnacle of awesome in 4e, and the second is really how pathetic epic level threats are in 4e.

[virgil]

As far as threats are concerned, I do believe Orcus has the Tarrasque beat, hands down.

[Koumei]

Charisma added as damage is easy. I personally think that making a Sleight of Hand check to re-sheath your sword as part of an attack should allow you to add Charisma to the damage. Seen a samurai movie? You'll understand why: Because it's awesome to attack at blinding speed, no-one seeing the blade itself, then hearing the "click" as the weapon is fully sheathed. At that point, the enemies remember to die (or possibly, there is a flutter of cherry petals floating through the breeze, or autumn leaves, and then they fall over and die).

I was bored and decided to look for "low level things Disintegrate probably won't kill."

The Pseudodragon is a level 3 (non-solo) lurker. It has 40 HP. It will probably survive "Disintegrate".

This makes me sad.

[K]

k

[Psychic Robot]

You feint with the Bluff skill, which is Charisma based, do you not? Same principle. Oh, and everything's better when done with style.

Yes, but...damage?

Do you have a problem with a Paladin smiting to add his Charisma to damage?

Less of one, because that's supernatural and GodPowered (TM?).

People in D&D are all variously magical. They are in a world where horse sized creatures can fly with wingspreads small enough that they can still go into caves. And it's a world where being wicked bad ass allows you to jump off a cliff onto barbed iron spikes and survive, even continue fighting.

I really dislike that part.

[RandomCasualty2]

If, you know, they're stupid enough to stand there and take it. If they take two run actions, it can't actually catch and kill them- it will catch one or two with opportunity attacks, but the rest of the village survives. Maybe it can run down a few more later, but really, if everybody scatters, 95% of the village will make it.

Well, you get unlimited opportunity attacks in 4E, you can only take one per creature. but you can seriously just rip apart the villagers if you want.

As far as destroying a village, the Tarrasque, in any edition, has never been particularly good at killing people. People are going to scatter and get away from the Tarrasque, but not before he stomps your village to rubble and stuff. There is in fact very little any monster in any edition can do about villagers who just scatter into the woods. If you want to kill lots of villagers, you're going to need more people, or a lot of time to track them.

The tarrasque in 4E also has a trampel attack that can hit a great number of people, since it has a move of 8 and occupies a pretty big space. So it can really stomp the village down.

Also keep in mind that most villagers are not level 1 characters, they're minions. Town guards and the like may have levels, but regular commoners should just be minions.

[JonSetanta]

Charisma added as damage is easy. I personally think that making a Sleight of Hand check to re-sheath your sword as part of an attack should allow you to add Charisma to the damage. Seen a samurai movie? You'll understand why: Because it's awesome to attack at blinding speed, no-one seeing the blade itself, then hearing the "click" as the weapon is fully sheathed. At that point, the enemies remember to die (or possibly, there is a flutter of cherry petals floating through the breeze, or autumn leaves, and then they fall over and die).

No no, see, it's the petals that actually kill people.
I saw it on Bleach and therefore must be accurate.

[Calibron]

As far as destroying a village, the Tarrasque, in any edition, has never been particularly good at killing people. People are going to scatter and get away from the Tarrasque, but not before he stomps your village to rubble and stuff. There is in fact very little any monster in any edition can do about villagers who just scatter into the woods. If you want to kill lots of villagers, you're going to need more people, or a lot of time to track them.

A few monsters have chain-lightning(ignoring the ones that just flat out cast spells as a sorcerer) that should handle the villagers in fairly short order, they might not get absolutely everyone, but hey, if they did a lot of stories would never get told.

[Draco_Argentum]

Well, I wanna give the game a shot, despite all of its (apparent) shortcomings. I don't feel right bitchin' and moanin' about a system without actually having gone through the painful motions of watching it fail to deliver.

I was trying to read 4e so I'd be able to bitch and moan about it. I got bored after reading up to the paladin. 3e was good enough that it was worth putting the time into finding flaws and complaining/joking about them. 4e doesn't interest me that much.

Don't knock it till you try it is fair enough as an idea. But I'm not going to try every situation exactly before knocking something. Reading an rpg book will give you a decent idea of how it will play and is in fact part of trying it. For something with errors as glaring as 4e thats enough. I don't need to listen to every Led Zepplin song to know the singing is terrible, one is enough.

[Maxus]

I seriously think that 4E was designed to be easy to program as a Flash game for WotC's Gleemax vehicle. Check out the Flash games Sonny or The Monster's Den and you'll see the resemblance.

You'll note that there are only like 5-6 actual abilities that you'd need to code into the game as subroutines. Everything else is a permutation of a damage algorithm (really just changes in one or more of the three variables).

Then they handed it over to the marketing team and asked them to come up with kickass names for those abilities.

It actually feels a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics, which is a fine game for a Gameboy that I play on the train, but not something I'd go to someone's house to do.

Except Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (the GBA one) had better multiclassing than 4e does, and ways to encourage you to do so. Oh, and a notable difference in the amount of damage you can do.

...Actually, that adds credibility to your "They're going online" theory. A lot of MMORPGs find ways to make you spend more time on the game, so, of course, they're going to do that by making you spend forever beating on the monster.

How much you want to bet max party size will about about five or six people?

[virgil]

I wonder how many DMs will disagree with placing AoE effects high enough in the air so as to not hit the bottom 5' layer and basically never worry about friendly fire when fighting Large+ monsters.

[Fwib]

You feint with the Bluff skill, which is Charisma based, do you not? Same principle. Oh, and everything's better when done with style.

Yes, but...damage?

The more forceful are your sword-waving gestures, the more you can put them out of position for a more effective stab, doing more damage. It is acting, which is CHA-based.

Although, I'd have thought that 'sly' would be an INT-associated word, rather than a CHA-associated one.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Nah; D&D is never going to throw negative connotations on being smart, just on being popular. Don't forget who their target market is.