Condensing 4E to 12 Levels - Suggestions?

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 9:56 am

I'd like to play a "complete" 4E campaign without the bother of 30 levels of it or extreme enemy HP inflation. Here's what I come up with...

-The level range goes from a wide 1-30 to a narrow 1-12; levels 1-4 become heroic, 5-8 become paragon, and 9-12 become epic.
-Characters get a feat every level and an extra feat every even level. Paragon feats become available at 5th level and epic feats become available at 9th level.
-Characters get thier level bonus every even level as normal.
-Characters get to add one point to any two scores at 4th and 8th level as normal and add one point to all scores at 11th level as normal.
-Characters gain their 2nd, 6th, and 10th level heroic utility powers at 2nd, 3rd, and 4th levels respectively, thier 16th level paragon utility power at 7th level, and thier 22nd level epic utility power at 10th level.
-Characters gain thier 3rd and 7th level heroic encounters powers at 2nd and 3rd level, can substitute in thier 13th level and 17th level paragon encounter powers at 6th and 7th level, and can substitute in thier 23rd and 27th level epic encounter powers at 10th and 11th level.
-Characters gain thier 5th and 9th level heroic daily powers at 3rd and 4th level, can substitute in thier 15th and 19th level paragon daily powers at 7th and 8th level, and can substiute in thier 25th and 29th level epic daily powers at 11th and 12th level. -Characters pick a paragon path at 5th level; obtaining thier 11th level paragon path features at 5th level, thier 16th level path feature at 8th level, thier 11th level encounter power at 5th level, thier 12th level utility power at 6th, and thier daily power at 8th level.
-Characters pick a epic destiny at 9th level; obtaining thier 21st level epic destiny feature at 9th level, thier 24th level epic destiny feature at 10th level, thier 30th level epic destiny feature at 12th level, and thier epic destiny utility power at 11th level.
-At-wills power up at 9th level.

How does that sound?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:05 am

It might end up making combat too easy--4E strictly rations the amount of healing and bonuses you're supposed to get so facing level 11 opposition while being able to throw out 3 minor-action encounter heals and having 2 encounter powers that heal might go beyond the assumptions made by the game. Though if you force players to go through the four-to-five encounter workday players will probably start rationing it anyway.

Same for powers and whatnot. A melee pit-fighter ranger would be able to seriously bring the pain; by level 6 they would start one-shotting elite monsters without dipping into their dailies. Then again, that might be what you want to accomplish.

What are you doing about magic items and magical item dailies?

I would enjoy a playtest of this kind of game, or hell, even participating in one.

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:43 am

Likewise, actually, although my experience with 4E is purely theoretical.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 11:19 am

I'm not quite clear on what you mean by the "bother of 30 levels of it". If you want quicker levelling, have folks level after each encounter. If you want fewer discrete levels, have folks start at level 3, and move directly to level 6 when they level up, and so forth. If you want something else, what do you want?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 11:21 am

As things currently stand, you won't be able to qualify for Epic feats when they nominally become available at 9th level. You've had two stat raises, do you have a Strength and Con of 19+ to qualify Bludgeon Mastery? Fuck no. How about a Strength of 17 and a Dex of 21 to qualify for light blade mastery? Probably not. Now those restrictions serve no in-game benefit even in their original context, so simply removing all stat limitations on everything is probably the way to go. After all, the game still has plenty severe "soft" attribute limitations simply based on the fact that Rogue powers require you to have a Dex bonus and either a Charisma or Strength bonus to be any good without additionally teabagging the Charisma Rogue with the inability to take Light Blade Mastery.

But beyond that, I am highly skeptical of any plan to procedurally generate stuff out of 4e. 4e material is frankly not that interesting, and spending effort to convert that material to a different system seems like wasted effort. Why spend time and effort to convert Chains of Sorrow or Anvil of Doom to something that is available before 13th level when you could just write something from scratch? The original document is just made by Hamlet typing monkeys, so doing better your self isn't even difficult.

Collapsing the game collapses the crazy. When people are taking their at-will twin strike and pumping out 4d8+24 (or more, much more) damage at 9th level, those 98 hit point Battle Wights aren't going to stand up very long. Even less long, because the player will never even use his at-wills because he has a full suite of Paragon tier Encounter powers to chew through before he even pretends to care. On the flip side, Paladins still blow. So you're going to see some crazy fucking hurricane strike guy get off six attacks in a turn while adding two stats and a pile of numeric bonuses to each - and just remove an enemy straight away, while another character is going to swing his sword for 3d8+8 and provide a paltry AC bonus or something for a round.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 12:21 pm

I'm not quite clear on what you mean by the "bother of 30 levels of it". If you want quicker levelling, have folks level after each encounter. If you want fewer discrete levels, have folks start at level 3, and move directly to level 6 when they level up, and so forth. If you want something else, what do you want?

The original poster wanted to avoid number inflation, especially that of monster hit points and defenses.

But because you're limiting the amount of numeric bonuses both players and the opposition get, you should theoretically be spinning your wheels in place without having to go long stretches of time getting bullshit powers and the like. For example, it's quite possible to get absolutely nothing you want for levels 17 to 19; a lot of characters seriously wouldn't want to trade up for new powers because a bunch of dumbasses wrote the power structure and can't ensure that higher level powers are better than lower level ones. I mean, c'mon, it's just pathetic. If you have the stats for it, Rain of Blows is probably best fighter power you'll ever get. Rangers get an encounter attack power at level 1 that's better than 90% of the powers they'll ever get. I mean, that's just fucking bullshit. Even 2nd Edition D&D did a better job of ensuring that higher level spells/powers = better shit. That is completely essential to the power structure and yet we have stuff like Boundless Endurance and Pass Forward at level 2.

But anyway, if you're not getting new powers, all that time period gave you were some small bonuses and some minor magical item upgrades. Why torture your players that much? 4E expects you to believe that swapping out an old power for a new one should count as advancement for a level.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 2:33 pm

If the problem is that epic 4e becomes padded sumo because of the high hit points of high level 4e monsters, then it seems simplest to fix that at source. In paragon, reduce all hit points by 33%. In epic, reduce them all by 50%.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 2:42 pm

I'm running my 4e game with the "cut all monster HP in half, reduce all monster levels by 1" quick-fix.

So far, this seems to do at least a reasonable job of reducing the padded sumo, while keeping the opposition challenging.

It's far from perfect, but it only takes a couple seconds to implement - and sign me up with Frank for not wanting to spend much time rewriting 4e.

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 5:49 pm

@Lago: Yeah, I figure the combat will become very few vs. many-like running monsters straight out of the tin but I'm partial to that. As for magic items, I have nothing definite yet but I am leaning towards characters simply getting the standard one daily magic item power use for levels 1-4, two daily magic item power uses for levels 5-8, and three daily magic item powers uses for 9-12, having some if not all paragon-level and epic-level properties kick in at the appropriate level ranges (e.g. the belt of vigor would grant a +1 item bonus to healing surges for levels 1-4, +2 for levels 5-8, and +3 for levels 9-12) and cutting down some of the higher-level item prices down so they fit into the new scale (e.g. I wouldn't mind having flying carpets available at 8th level).

@Frank: About feats and prerequisites, thanks for the catch - in my original proposal, I was going to include accelerated stats increases but chose not to and the crazy ability score requirements just skipped my mind. I also never considered the possibility of simply creating lists of appropriate powers for the 1-12 range but I think it's something I'll mull over.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 5:53 pm

The problem with epic 4E is that there's absolutely no agreed-upon power scale. The game tends toward padded sumo, and most of the builds they want you to play don't get any super-special offence at epic, but there are plenty of builds which bust things wide open at epic and will continue to be more as epic destinies and multiclass combos proliferate.