Fixing 4e

[Zinegata]

A clarification regarding monsters:

So you want to keep the paradigm where monsters have their own special schtick, but this schtick is generally non-transferable to the PCs. Hence making each monster largely divorced from the system as a whole?

Also...

What is your position on roles?

[JonSetanta]

What is your position on roles?

Complete hogwash.

[Username17]

- Keep the paradigm of having everyone be able to contribute every round.

- Fix the math so that characters succeed hitting and are hit by monsters around 1/2 the time

These are wholly incompatible. If your actions are filing half the time, you are not contributing every round. Full stop.

-Username17

[Ghostwheel]

A clarification regarding monsters:

So you want to keep the paradigm where monsters have their own special schtick, but this schtick is generally non-transferable to the PCs. Hence making each monster largely divorced from the system as a whole?

Sure, I don't mind monsters being cool, special, and awesome in their own right. Plus, tons of games that have monsters that are tons of fun (thinking mostly of computer/video games here for the most part) give them abilities that players don't have access to.

Also...

What is your position on roles?

I could take them or leave them. Don't really care much either way--they're not going to stop me from giving a class whatever class abilities I think it should have from making it work even if it steps on the toes of another "role", though it won't do the specific shtick as well as that other class.

The only thing I would really use them for is as a quick-view guide for players--when I write "defender", they know that the class's primary shtick is to absorb hits and make enemy attacks worthless by forcing the enemy to attack them (when they have oodles of HP from class abilities and recovery mechanics), for a striker they know that their main shtick is to deal oodles of damage and bring monsters down fast, and for controller... well, that's where everything else goes. I felt "leader" was kind of a dumb shtick and would leave people feeling as though it means that they need to play a healbot, so I folded that into controller.

- Keep the paradigm of having everyone be able to contribute every round.

- Fix the math so that characters succeed hitting and are hit by monsters around 1/2 the time

These are wholly incompatible. If your actions are filing half the time, you are not contributing every round. Full stop.

-Username17

I believe you're wrong on two accounts there, both theoretically and implementation-wise.
On the theoretical front, characters can have the ability to contribute every round, but might not some rounds. There's the potential there--basically by that line I meant that people wouldn't end up worthless like a straight paladin, ranger, or monk in 3.5.

On the implementation front, there are tons of ways for a character to contribute even if they miss with their attack during their turn. You do this by giving them multiple attacks per turn (lessens the chance that they'll end up actually doing nothing), giving them effects that stay in place even if they miss, and giving them abilities that they can use when it's not their turn.

[Username17]

On the theoretical front, characters can have the ability to contribute every round, but might not some rounds. There's the potential there--basically by that line I meant that people wouldn't end up worthless like a straight paladin, ranger, or monk in 3.5.

That is stupid and you should feel stupid for having said it. A 3.5 Monk can contribute every round too. He's just not going to, because he is going to miss and bounce off DR and shit.

If you don't contribute in a round because you didn't roll well enough, you aren't fucking contributing that round. And no amount of sophistry about how you could have made different choices or rolled higher numbers is going to change that.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Also...

What is your position on roles?

They work really great for monsters. One of 4E's better ideas. They fucked it up unfortunately for several reasons (one being that monster roles are too similar, the other being that some roles are better than others among others) but the idea in of itself is a good one. Really, it should be one of those paradigms that is the standard for RPGs with a heavy combat system from now on like critical hits. Unfortunately the idea originated in 4E so it's not prominent as it should be.

PC roles in 4E I can take or leave. They're good for new players and players that don't deconstruct their classes (which is like 50% of the D&D playerbase) but 4E implemented it in a profoundly stupid way. Part of it was just bad mechanics, like having a striker role or having four roles for a 5-person party, but part of it was the bad philosophy it encouraged. Such as shoehorning class design towards fitting the role system. Occasionally it works out and you get the warden. Most of the time though you get a bowl of donkey dicks and something like a battlemind or an ardent. It also encouraged unnecessary class segregation in a system where it should otherwise be at its lowest, which is why the multiclass system is so non-functional. But then again, after the debacle of hybrid classing (95% of the time you get a bupkiss buiild, but 5% of the time you get pure gold) it might be for the best.


Personally, I say leave 'em out for the PCs. Even if 4E actually managed to get the role system right, which it didn't, there's always the problem of basket weavers whining about 'OMG MMORPG' regardless of whether the change improved play experience.

[Ghostwheel]

On the theoretical front, characters can have the ability to contribute every round, but might not some rounds. There's the potential there--basically by that line I meant that people wouldn't end up worthless like a straight paladin, ranger, or monk in 3.5.

That is stupid and you should feel stupid for having said it. A 3.5 Monk can contribute every round too. He's just not going to, because he is going to miss and bounce off DR and shit.

If you don't contribute in a round because you didn't roll well enough, you aren't fucking contributing that round. And no amount of sophistry about how you could have made different choices or rolled higher numbers is going to change that.

-Username17

What have you been smoking? Share some with us, it sounds like some really dope stuff

That said, I was really surprised at the above. Monks can't contribute due to not being able to do anything, even in games that are (lol) fighter-level.

What I meant by that line (and perhaps you misinterpreted it to mean something else) is that people don't suck out of the box, kinda like warblades can grab maneuvers and be half-decent without having to dive through 20 books for other feats.
(I'd mostly say the same thing about most of the Tome classes and a number of other homebrew classes, though the Tome classes are considerably stronger than what I'd shoot for with this 4e revision.)
Basically, I want to do the whole "good right out of the box without anything else" thing, but make it an even bigger part of the what's built into classes.

Also, you forgot to mention the other part of the post where I show how one can contribute even if one misses with an attack.

Also...

What is your position on roles?

PC roles in 4E I can take or leave. They're good for new players and players that don't deconstruct their classes (which is like 50% of the D&D playerbase)...

This is the only major reason I'd keep the "role" label in.

Personally, I say leave 'em out for the PCs. Even if 4E actually managed to get the role system right, which it didn't, there's always the problem of basket weavers whining about 'OMG MMORPG' regardless of whether the change improved play experience.

I don't think enough people are actually going to play this for that to be much of a concern. Like the majority of homebrew ever written, it's going to languish somewhere and only be used by a few people who have read it or ask others to try it.

[Shazbot79]

I'm of the opinion that roles could work for player classes. COULD work.

The problems with 4E's implementation however, are numerous.

1. There are not enough roles
2. Each class is shoehorned into a single role
3. "Damage" is a stupid role and should not be the driving design goal of only a few classes
4. "Controller" is a poorly defined role. What are they supposed to do exactly?

How can it be made better?

1. More roles are needed. I would say have PC roles reflect monster roles, I.E. Brute, Soldier, Lurker, Artillery, Controller, Skirmisher, Leader. Tighten the relationship between them and give each role mechanics that promote it's "schtick"

2. Don't tie roles to specific classes. That is, treat classes like Fighters, Rogues, Clerics, etc. as broad archetypes and give them talent trees or power progressions to promote a few different roles, So a Fighter can be a Soldier, Brute, or Skirmisher, while a Cleric can function as a Leader, Controller, or Artillery.

[souran]

I'm of the opinion that roles could work for player classes. COULD work.

The problems with 4E's implementation however, are numerous.

1. There are not enough roles
2. Each class is shoehorned into a single role
3. "Damage" is a stupid role and should not be the driving design goal of only a few classes
4. "Controller" is a poorly defined role. What are they supposed to do exactly?

How can it be made better?

1. More roles are needed. I would say have PC roles reflect monster roles, I.E. Brute, Soldier, Lurker, Artillery, Controller, Skirmisher, Leader. Tighten the relationship between them and give each role mechanics that promote it's "schtick"

2. Don't tie roles to specific classes. That is, treat classes like Fighters, Rogues, Clerics, etc. as broad archetypes and give them talent trees or power progressions to promote a few different roles, So a Fighter can be a Soldier, Brute, or Skirmisher, while a Cleric can function as a Leader, Controller, or Artillery.

Roles are an excellent idea and honestly any game that uses levels and classes should consider roles as being vital to making the game survive.

Seriously, if a game is going to use the level/class dynamic for creating players you are building in an A-team or mission impossible element from the get go.

Every player should be able to say "X is what I bring to our super team." We can argue about what D&D should be, but "better 4e" would be the five man band version of D&D. The game is about the party, without pretty defined roles you will end up with whole parties of sixth rangers - which was exactly 3.x D&Ds problem a single well built "rocket thrower" could defeat most encounters and so the game became waiting until it was your turn to pull the trigger.

The roles SHOULD focus on the most robust mini-game you have in your system. For D&D that is always going to be the combat minigame. This is not bad, combat is inherently dramatic. It brings lots of narrative elements together with little work. Combat has danager, it brings instant conflict, it involves the possibility of loss or altering your focus. Ask any english professor: violence is useful for narrative storytelling. The problem is when violence becomes gratutitus or adds nothing to the narrative that its a problem. Fortunatly, as long as the game we are talking about improving is D&D I think we can say that we have a lot of room to focus on ass kicking before people complain that its all about fighting and nothing else.

Additionally, there should only be 1 or 2 more roles than a party of 4 or 5 can have in a single group. If there are going to be more roles than players the party should be able to get along without any partiuclar role. If you fewer roles than your standard party size there should a reason to consider doubling up each one.

4E's conceuptual space for characters isn't actually any smaller than any previous version of D&D. The problem is that a 4E concept determines which class you should play instead of most classes being able to be fix to several concepts. This is actually fine as long as you have Frank's oftenmentioned "Classplosion." Honestly, classsplosian works better than any multiclass system anybody has ever really put togther. Seriously, fighter/mage does not work, and has never really worked well. "Hexblade" at least stands a chance.

The thing I find the most frustrating about 4E is that for a game made by wizards of the coast, who have produced the longest running, most liked, and quite clearly one of the BEST CCGs of all time managed to not harness ANY of that experience in making 4E powers.

That was FUCKING STUPID. There should be a 4E "powers editor" position and that person should be selected from the M:TG card designers.

First: Your power source should really matter. The "colors" for 4E should be primal, martial, arcane, divine, shadow, and phsychic. Each of these power sources should have a real impact on how your character plays. The mage hand and other cantrips they gave to wizards and no other arcane class, all that stuff you get for be an "arcane" character. But further arcane characters should ALL have the ability to learn a bunch of their powers and have to memoroize or something. Martial powers shouldn't be expended on a miss. Your power source should not just be a forgettable aspect of character.

Finally: the powers themselves should be rewritten so that interacting with your party members is more beneficial. Also classes should be less SELF complimentary.

It is retarded that a lot of powers are written so that they work best in single class parties.

"defenders/tanks/heavy armor characters" what ever we call their role should set up the opposition so that rogue and ranger powers have their damage enhanced. Controlers/Artiliary powers should help heavy armor types get positional advantage and not overwhelmed.

Again, WOTC has been doing this for decades with M:TG. The abilities should be like magic cards. The use of powers by each player should unlock different action choices of their compatriots.

[For Valor]

GW, I believe it was the way you made your point that created Frank's response. You said there should be "potential" for every class to contribute, and he said that the monk has "potential" to contribute.

It's effectively a warning. Your balance should not be judged by whether a class may or may not be able to contribute, but by how well he/she contributes and how often those contributions occur.

As to your stuff about contributing even if you miss.... well, everybody's going to have passives going, and everybody's going to have special abilities they can use when they're not rolling attacks. Those are a given, and if you don't have those abilities you are BAD, not the other way around. In other words, missing your attacks is effectively not being able to contribute on your turn (in comparison to the average adventurer), which is bad.

Your revised statement about characters being playable out of the box makes much more sense, though it seems completely different from the original.

[TheFlatline]

I'm still trying to figure out why sticking to 4e is desirable over, say, starting over from scratch with concepts and ideas that you liked from 4e and having the potential to not suck by divorcing yourself from the design philosophy (or lack thereof) that helped tank 4th.

For example:

With errata being what it is, you already have to recalculate every monster stat block in Monster Manual 1.

This is terribad and needs to not be retained in the new system.

[sake]

because you'll piss more people off with a full edition change, than you will by making some sort "Big Damn Book of Rules That Have Been Updated to Actually Work this Time" Even if it causes everything to be a bigger pain in the ass than if you just made a whole new edition from scratch.

It's why WotC tried so hard to PR Essentials as not being "4.5 Edition" even though it was... more or less.

[Ghostwheel]

Few reasons; first, 4e comes with a number of assumptions by people that I like, and don't want people QQing about things like, "Wizards can't fly automatically by 5th level!" This is mostly basic assumptions people make, and doesn't actually have much to do with the design goals--it's just that people are more comfortable if they start thinking of this as 4e than if they start thinking of this from a different perspective.

Second, I think that 4e had a lot of good design goals--the thing that sucked so hard and made them tank was their horrible implementation and execution of those design goals. Anyone remember the "design goals of 4e" book Races and Powers I think it was called? That had a bunch of good idea. But their implementation once 4e came out sucked.

Lastly, it's exactly because I don't want to recalculate every monster stat block. By tightening up the numbers and making combat considerably shorter in duration and a lot more lethal (relatively, though nowhere near the "go first, win the encounter" degree of 3.5) a lot of monsters fall into place where I want them, even from the early MMs. I've checked some of the numbers and halving the HP that they have makes a big difference, as well as lowering the overall HP that PCs possess.

So yeah, the big one is that I don't want to rewrite the MM from scratch, and 4e has a bunch of monsters that work in a way that fits well with what I think the game should look like.

EDIT:

because you'll piss more people off with a full edition change, than you will by making some sort "Big Damn Book of Rules That Have Been Updated to Actually Work this Time" Even if it causes everything to be a bigger pain in the ass than if you just made a whole new edition from scratch.

It's why WotC tried so hard to PR Essentials as not being "4.5 Edition" even though it was... more or less.

Yeah, that about sums up point #1, thanks!

[Ghostwheel]

So; another aspect of the system that I've thought about--powers.

All classes come with powers. A character can have 4 powers prepared at first level, and may have another prepared for every tier they've completed. Thus, a 4th level character can have 5 powers, prepared, an 8th level character 6 powers prepared, and so forth, until at level 20 they reach 9 powers prepared at a time. This may be further brought up through specific feats and/or (prestige?) classes.

Different classes have different way of regaining (and readying) powers. For example, a rogue at first tier can ready one power at the start of combat, and regains another of their choice whenever they apply sneak attack damage (that is, whenever they successfully hit an opponent while they have combat advantage). On the other hand, a paladin might regain a power whenever they successfully smite an opponent (an ability they get at will).

A character may regain powers from only one class per round. Thus, if a level 8 character (Rogue/Paladin) successfully sneak attacked with 2 attacks and one of them was also a smite, they could choose to ready two of their prepared and unreadied rogue powers, or ready one of their prepared and unreadied paladin powers. Since that character is level 8, they would have a total of 6 readied powers, and they might all be rogue powers, or all paladin powers, or some from one and some from the other.

Might give some classes "augmentation" options if they choose to ready a power that's already ready again, hrmmm. Need to think about that some more.

[Doom]

One thing worth mentioning at some point:

No interrupts.

Interrupts work fine in M:TG, when it's just two people. Ok, it can get annoying, but one thing that makes big multiplayer Magic unpleasant is when there are loads of interrupts flying around.

At a 4e table, with 5 players, each with one (or, God forbid, more) interrupt ready to burn off every single bloody encounter, the game turns into five rounds of "Simon Says" before the MC can even hope to roll a die without someone saying "oh no you can't". It massively complicates combat as players have to discuss who's going to interrupt, in what order, for each monster as the monster moves.

This goes above and beyond the "cancel monster attack" action denial that is just too strong against any solo monster.

[Josh_Kablack]

Stuff I would consider doing if I was gonna do a 4e rewrite:

• Fold enchantment bonuses into the scaling level bonuses.
• Have all at-wills come with small optional adds, akin to the domain feats from Divine Power. So even when you're down to using Reaping Strike each turn you can choose if you want to use the Reaping Strike that deals additional damage on a miss, the Reaping Strike that adds a push effect on a hit, or the Reaping Strike that counts as a basic melee attack.
• Have a list of UNIVERSAL powers that everyone can select off of - and thereby cut the amount of writing needed per each new class in half. There's no reason that each class needs their own version of "MELEE WEAPON: STAT vs AC for 2W + STAT" as a 3rd level encounter and there's no reason that each class can't get access to stuff like "Minor Action: Move your speed" as a 6th level utility.
• Have each and every single Daily power in the game either A> be reliable; B> have a meaningful effect on a miss or C> be some sort of Buff / DoT that doesn't depend on a single attack roll.
• Either massively cut the HP of heroic tier enemies and/or set the game start level so that PCs got more than one encounter power when they started the game (probably also more than one daily)
• Do something to make increasing the number of [W]s an attack power does at all competitive with getting multiple attacks. This could be a heavy nerf of stuff that adds to damage, it could be shifting some of the bonuses inside the [], it could be multiplying the value of W at each half-tier, or something else.
• Have each race allow multiple stat allocations. The PsiHB had the right idea here, but I would take it further with assignments like "+2 to any pair of Str, Con, Int or Cha"
• Put skills onto the RNG. This is not as easy as it might seem.
• Standardize durations and effect timing.
• Eliminate the Stunned condition entirely. Powers that used to Stun can now do some combination of Daze, Slow, Immobilize and/or Weakened
• Either eliminate or massively power up the Marked condition. If the MC needs to track this, it needs to fucking matter.
• Realize that Push 1 by itself is not generally meaningful and get rid of a lot of the forced movement. Stuff that does forced movement should also have a chance to cause Prone or Slow or something that at least can deny a melee attack
• Unify the status conditions for suffering attack penalties, defense penalties and vulnerabilities, so that they don't stack into crazy town with pacifist clerics and morninglords.
• If I was sticking with roles, I would much more clearly define what each did well, did a little, and didn't ever do.
• Add more enemies with meaningful ranged capabilities and/or add a status condition that prohibited the making of ranged attacks against anyone but the effect generator
• Add some way for PCs to interact with Auras other than "Take Damage" or "Regret your playing a melee character"

But looking at all that and the length of writing even a single 4e class, that's just a bigger project than I would ever really want to do.

[Lago PARANOIA]

In addition to Josh's list, I would:

1) Ban multi-attack At-Wills. And off-action attack powers that are not part of a defender mechanic. This would mean getting rid of the ranger entirely, which is a pity, but it's the best way to balance things without doing a massive rewrite.

2) Massively reduce the amount of healing surges parties get in exchange for having them come back more frequently (like a defender only gets three to burn, but they all come back after an hour) and making the healing surge action (like Healer's word, etc.) unlimited. The shit of a five-leader party being the king of a low-level workday is ridiculous.

3) Ban racial stats altogether. Everyone gets to add two +2s to any two stats of their choice.

4) Ban racial feats altogether.

5) Rewrite everyone's skill lists.

6) As far as multiclassing goes, you only need one feat before you can start swapping powers in. Adept power and all that gets rolled into those class-specific multiclass feat.

7) Compress all of the game levels. There should only be 20 levels for the game. There actually should be even less than that given 4E's power level, but people would throw a fit at the idea of there only being 15 levels.

8) Magical item acquisition system becomes this: every level you get to pick one magical item up to 1d4-1 level of your choosing. Every encounter has two 10% chances of having a magical item at the end of it, which lets someone in the party have a chance to pick something. There are so many item slots in the game and magical items are so weak (even the 'good' ones) that it seriously won't make a difference.

9) All ritual costs are reduced by 75%. Moreover, you can choose either to do the ritual for FREE at the cost of it taking up 5x the listed time, or you can do it in a standard action by paying the now-reduced cost.

10) Rewrite the status effects so that you become easier to kill. Being slowed doesn't let you use movement powers and imposes a penalty to defense, dazed gives you a 50% chance of suffering a critical hit for a regular attack, etc..

11) Eliminate stat-based defense bonuses. This was a retarded idea. Your class gets a one-time bonus to NADs. Light armor AC is recalculated to be the equivalent of its heavy armor counterparts. Meaning that chainmail and scalemail needs to have a couple of defense-based incentives to it.

12) Make radiant and psychic resistance more common for monsters, make fire/poison/necrotic resistance a LOT less common for both monsters and PCs.

[Ghostwheel]

Stuff I would consider doing if I was gonna do a 4e rewrite:

• Fold enchantment bonuses into the scaling level bonuses.
• Have all at-wills come with small optional adds, akin to the domain feats from Divine Power. So even when you're down to using Reaping Strike each turn you can choose if you want to use the Reaping Strike that deals additional damage on a miss, the Reaping Strike that adds a push effect on a hit, or the Reaping Strike that counts as a basic melee attack.
• Have a list of UNIVERSAL powers that everyone can select off of - and thereby cut the amount of writing needed per each new class in half. There's no reason that each class needs their own version of "MELEE WEAPON: STAT vs AC for 2W + STAT" as a 3rd level encounter and there's no reason that each class can't get access to stuff like "Minor Action: Move your speed" as a 6th level utility.
• Have each and every single Daily power in the game either A> be reliable; B> have a meaningful effect on a miss or C> be some sort of Buff / DoT that doesn't depend on a single attack roll.
• Either massively cut the HP of heroic tier enemies and/or set the game start level so that PCs got more than one encounter power when they started the game (probably also more than one daily)
• Do something to make increasing the number of [W]s an attack power does at all competitive with getting multiple attacks. This could be a heavy nerf of stuff that adds to damage, it could be shifting some of the bonuses inside the [], it could be multiplying the value of W at each half-tier, or something else.
• Have each race allow multiple stat allocations. The PsiHB had the right idea here, but I would take it further with assignments like "+2 to any pair of Str, Con, Int or Cha"
• Put skills onto the RNG. This is not as easy as it might seem.
• Standardize durations and effect timing.
• Eliminate the Stunned condition entirely. Powers that used to Stun can now do some combination of Daze, Slow, Immobilize and/or Weakened
• Either eliminate or massively power up the Marked condition. If the MC needs to track this, it needs to fucking matter.
• Realize that Push 1 by itself is not generally meaningful and get rid of a lot of the forced movement. Stuff that does forced movement should also have a chance to cause Prone or Slow or something that at least can deny a melee attack
• Unify the status conditions for suffering attack penalties, defense penalties and vulnerabilities, so that they don't stack into crazy town with pacifist clerics and morninglords.
• If I was sticking with roles, I would much more clearly define what each did well, did a little, and didn't ever do.
• Add more enemies with meaningful ranged capabilities and/or add a status condition that prohibited the making of ranged attacks against anyone but the effect generator
• Add some way for PCs to interact with Auras other than "Take Damage" or "Regret your playing a melee character"

But looking at all that and the length of writing even a single 4e class, that's just a bigger project than I would ever really want to do.

1. Already done, +1 to defenses and attacks at level 3 from magic, and another +1 at every 4 levels afterwards, as I mentioned.
2. Rather than that, I'm mostly removing at-wills, making them primarily be a way to regain encounter powers.
3. I'm thinking of just bringing basic sunders/trips/etc back. Since weapons scale with your level (as per #1) sunder isn't a SoD anymore--just an action suppression that forces you to waste a move action to bring out another weapon.
4. No more daily powers really, sticking with a per-encounter design.
5. All monsters in the game have their HP cut in half, as I mentioned.
6. This comes from halving monster HP.
7. Removing statboosts from race altogether.
8. Will work on this once I've finished a few classes.
9. Maybe.
10. Maybe.
11. Eliminating, using other things to make PCs "sticky".
12. Thanks, will probably do that.
13. Thinking of just making it overlap rather than stack. Thoughts?
14. Dunno if I'll be sticking with roles, they're not important enough for me to agonize over.
15. Don't think I'll be making too many monsters.
16. I could see that as an ability, sure.

In addition to Josh's list, I would:

1) Ban multi-attack At-Wills. And off-action attack powers that are not part of a defender mechanic. This would mean getting rid of the ranger entirely, which is a pity, but it's the best way to balance things without doing a massive rewrite.

2) Massively reduce the amount of healing surges parties get in exchange for having them come back more frequently (like a defender only gets three to burn, but they all come back after an hour) and making the healing surge action (like Healer's word, etc.) unlimited. The shit of a five-leader party being the king of a low-level workday is ridiculous.

3) Ban racial stats altogether. Everyone gets to add two +2s to any two stats of their choice.

4) Ban racial feats altogether.

5) Rewrite everyone's skill lists.

6) As far as multiclassing goes, you only need one feat before you can start swapping powers in. Adept power and all that gets rolled into those class-specific multiclass feat.

7) Compress all of the game levels. There should only be 20 levels for the game. There actually should be even less than that given 4E's power level, but people would throw a fit at the idea of there only being 15 levels.

8) Magical item acquisition system becomes this: every level you get to pick one magical item up to 1d4-1 level of your choosing. Every encounter has two 10% chances of having a magical item at the end of it, which lets someone in the party have a chance to pick something. There are so many item slots in the game and magical items are so weak (even the 'good' ones) that it seriously won't make a difference.

9) All ritual costs are reduced by 75%. Moreover, you can choose either to do the ritual for FREE at the cost of it taking up 5x the listed time, or you can do it in a standard action by paying the now-reduced cost.

10) Rewrite the status effects so that you become easier to kill. Being slowed doesn't let you use movement powers and imposes a penalty to defense, dazed gives you a 50% chance of suffering a critical hit for a regular attack, etc..

11) Eliminate stat-based defense bonuses. This was a retarded idea. Your class gets a one-time bonus to NADs. Light armor AC is recalculated to be the equivalent of its heavy armor counterparts. Meaning that chainmail and scalemail needs to have a couple of defense-based incentives to it.

12) Make radiant and psychic resistance more common for monsters, make fire/poison/necrotic resistance a LOT less common for both monsters and PCs.

1. Why? I'm not completely clear on why this is necessary...
2. I'd still like some kind of soft cap per day on how many encounters a party would go--why make this change?
3. As previously mentioned, just removing them.
4. Why?
5. Why? Could you give some examples?
6. See previous posts, multiclassing will be far more like 3e multiclassing.
7. As I said before, chopping it down to 20.
8. Could you expand a bit more on why this would be a good change?
9. I want the MC to have the ability to force characters in limited resource situations, though I could see the reduced casting time thing.
10. I could certainly see that, sure.
11. Why remove stat-based defense bonuses? (So Body wouldn't add to your Fort defense?)
12. As I said, not really touching monsters too much.

[DragonChild]

For GW...

1) Ban multi-attack At-Wills. And off-action attack powers that are not part of a defender mechanic. This would mean getting rid of the ranger entirely, which is a pity, but it's the best way to balance things without doing a massive rewrite.

Simply put, trying to keep attacks that get twice benefit from magical weapons, feats, buffs, etc, balanced compared to attacks that only get a single benefit but a stat added in is really hard, and damn near impossible.

4) Ban racial feats altogether.

Racial feats basically make it so that there are a lot of race-class combination that are too good. A bunch of racial feats are "Like this other feat, only better."

[Lago PARANOIA]

2.) Because unless you're doing a Diablo-esque dungeon crawl that has no story whatsoever to it, the workday should be limited by the needs of the story, not some disconnected tickbox.

It's lamer than lame to have parties go 'well, we're up to the throne room but we're out of healing surges. Guess we don't save the princess after all'. That is, again, only justifiable for strict dungeon crawls, Elennsar games, or Grimdark games.

3.) You still need to give players those +2s, since 4E math assumes that you will have them.

5.) That's beyond the scope of this thread, really. Search 'anatomy of failed design' and 'skill challenge' to see what needs to be changed. It needs a complete overhaul.

6.) You can't do 3E multiclassing in 4E and have it be balanced. Your idea will just flat-out not work. See the entire fiasco with hybrid classes if you don't believe me. Just stick to something small.

8.) Search 'anatomy of failed design' and 'treasure parcels'. This honestly isn't a very good idea, but it requires the least amount of rewriting. 4E's treasure system is 95% trash drops and even the good stuff isn't very noticeable. That shit you did in 2E where you dropped a Holy Avenger and everyone shat their pants just does not exist in 4E and with the way the game is balanced and magical items are designed it won't ever be. The best you can do is just give players the cheap thrill of getting what they want.

9.) Rituals in 4E are so underpowered as to be unusable. Don't even bother thinking of ways to limit their uses until you can actually think of a way to get people to use them. But they're such trashy things that even if you made them free most people still wouldn't use them.

11.) Because all it does is give people a chance to screw themselves and go off the RNG. It also screws over people who have their character builds force their stats into a sub-optimal array (INT/DEX, STR/CON, WIS/CHA). It doesn't add anything to the game even when it 'works'. Just make it a level-based defense bonus.

[Ghostwheel]

For GW...

1) Ban multi-attack At-Wills. And off-action attack powers that are not part of a defender mechanic. This would mean getting rid of the ranger entirely, which is a pity, but it's the best way to balance things without doing a massive rewrite.

Simply put, trying to keep attacks that get twice benefit from magical weapons, feats, buffs, etc, balanced compared to attacks that only get a single benefit but a stat added in is really hard, and damn near impossible.

That's why we actually do the math and make sure it comes out right
The rogue's primary shtick is two-weapon fighting, something they can do at will. (Screw rangers. They're going to be ranged specialists with a pet to tank for them if they like.) However, in recompense for this rather awesome at-will ability, they only get 1d2 SA at first level, increasing a die size (->d3->d4->d6) at every level per tier. Combining this with making it a full-round action (and giving them a B-tier ability to move as a minor action), we can balance them to work. Yay, math!

4) Ban racial feats altogether.

Racial feats basically make it so that there are a lot of race-class combination that are too good. A bunch of racial feats are "Like this other feat, only better."

I guess that means that it's imperative to rework the race-class feats to be cool and open up new options without being overpowered. Doesn't sound too hard, considering that the majority of racial powers are 1/encounter, so you could make something that procs whenever they use an encounter power or somesuch.

2.) Because unless you're doing a Diablo-esque dungeon crawl that has no story whatsoever to it, the workday should be limited by the needs of the story, not some disconnected tickbox.

It's lamer than lame to have parties go 'well, we're up to the throne room but we're out of healing surges. Guess we don't save the princess after all'. That is, again, only justifiable for strict dungeon crawls, Elennsar games, or Grimdark games.

3.) You still need to give players those +2s, since 4E math assumes that you will have them.

5.) That's beyond the scope of this thread, really. Search 'anatomy of failed design' and 'skill challenge' to see what needs to be changed. It needs a complete overhaul.

6.) You can't do 3E multiclassing in 4E and have it be balanced. Your idea will just flat-out not work. See the entire fiasco with hybrid classes if you don't believe me. Just stick to something small.

8.) Search 'anatomy of failed design' and 'treasure parcels'. This honestly isn't a very good idea, but it requires the least amount of rewriting. 4E's treasure system is 95% trash drops and even the good stuff isn't very noticeable. That shit you did in 2E where you dropped a Holy Avenger and everyone shat their pants just does not exist in 4E and with the way the game is balanced and magical items are designed it won't ever be. The best you can do is just give players the cheap thrill of getting what they want.

9.) Rituals in 4E are so underpowered as to be unusable. Don't even bother thinking of ways to limit their uses until you can actually think of a way to get people to use them. But they're such trashy things that even if you made them free most people still wouldn't use them.

11.) Because all it does is give people a chance to screw themselves and go off the RNG. It also screws over people who have their character builds force their stats into a sub-optimal array (INT/DEX, STR/CON, WIS/CHA). It doesn't add anything to the game even when it 'works'. Just make it a level-based defense bonus.

2. Okay, let's talk healing surges. Why not at that point simply make it so everyone gets X healing surges per encounter and not have it be connected to any time limit? (Because that's essentially what it comes down to.) However, while that might be feasible, I still want to have good tactics and the use of fewer healing surges be rewarded somehow--any idea how to do that, or introduce some sort of long-term resource into the mix if we're making healing surges NOT be our long-term daily resource?

3. See previous posts. I'm reworking the math, and the basic numbers are changing. It's no longer 10 + stuff.

5. Will search for 'em--got a handy link to the specific sections I should look at?

6. You can if you do the math right. I have numbers that I want players to be at as far as attack/damage/AC/defenses go. Remember, we're getting rid of the generic 4e classes and rebuilding them from scratch.

8. I'd like to redo how magic items work anyway, mostly giving them cooler abilities, while at the same time making them less "needed" and not as easily able to affect an entire character's playstyle. But that's beyond the scopre of this thread.

9. How to get people to use them--give them thousands of gold, and make items part of a character's innate abilities. Thus characters can spend their gold on huge golden palaces with dragon statues and dozens of concubines who tend to their every wish as well as more than enough money to power any rituals they want. Since magical abilities won't matter as much, will be limited to who can use what, and so forth, giving characters oodles of gold doesn't increase their power.

11. Remember, as I said before, we're cutting down to 3 stats--Body (Str/Con), Grace (Dex/Int), and Savvy (Wis/Cha). By keeping these seperate, it allows for greater diversity between character defenses without having people fall off the RNG. I've checked the numbers, writing up the extremes at both level 1 and 20, and it works.

Just for clarity's sake, could you go back and reread my first few posts? I detail a number of things there that might easily be missed otherwise.