Useful Things Gleaned from 4e

[Talisman]

So I was seriously disappointed with D&D 4e (although not terribly surprised), but there were at least a few useful concepts there that I think are worth adapting to my 3.x games.

The "Bloodied" Condition: Simple yet elegant. I can easily see numerous effects triggering at "bloodied", or having grater/different effects when cast on a bloodied target. This might even be a good way to quasi-nerf SoD's: if they're only useable on bloodied foes, they're still useful but it cuts down on the rocket launcher tag syndrome.

Healing Surges: While I'm not sure I like the execution, I like the idea that healing is accessable to anyone, regardless of class, in the form of a "second wind" (this works well if you remember that some hp loss is supposed to be fatigue). I also don't mind the cap on infinite healing.

Half Your Level Bonus: Specifically on skills, but also on saves. It makes sense that a high-level [fill in the class] will be at least marginally competent at stealth, perception, and knowing what that particular monster is, even if they don't devote limited resources to being great at it. With saves, there's usually such a huge disparity between good saves and bad saves that I think a beter scenario might be having all saves = 1/2 your character level, with bonuses from feats, abilities and class (e.g., wizard grants +2 to Will saves).

Per Encounter Ppwers: It keeps the resource management issues of a per-day power, but cuts down on the five-minute adventuring day. Obviously some powers need to be per-day, but this would work great for many others.

Thoughts?

[ubernoob]

So I was seriously disappointed with D&D 4e (although not terribly surprised), but there were at least a few useful concepts there that I think are worth adapting to my 3.x games.

The "Bloodied" Condition: Simple yet elegant. I can easily see numerous effects triggering at "bloodied", or having grater/different effects when cast on a bloodied target. This might even be a good way to quasi-nerf SoD's: if they're only useable on bloodied foesm, they're still useful but it cots down on the rocket launcher tag syndrome.

I like.

Healing Surges: While I'm not sure I like the execution, I like the idea that healing is accessable to anyone, regardless of class, in the form of a "second wind" (this works well if you remember that some hp loss is supposed to be fatigue). I also don't mind the cap on infinite healing.

I don't like how the execution either, but the idea is cool.

Half Your Level Bonus: Specifically on skills, but also on saves. It makes sense that a high-level [fill in the class] will be at least marginally competent at stealth, perception, and knowing what that particular monster is, even if they don't devote limited resources to being great at it. With saves, there's usually such a huge disparity between good saves and bad saves that I think a beter scenario might be having all saves = 1/2 your character level, with bonuses from feats, abilities and class (e.g., wizard grants +2 to Will saves).

I don't like. For saves and DCs I can see this. For skills it totally kills my idea of being good at some things and bad at other things. I just like ranks better.

Per Encounter Ppwers: It keeps the resource management issues of a per-day power, but cuts down on the five-minute adventuring day. Obviously some powers need to be per-day, but this would work great for many others.

I like, but IMO Tome of Battle did it better than 4E.

[rapa-nui]

I like them all Talisman.

I was an early proponent of 'linearizing' aptitudes. That is: making all attack and defense values increase linearly with level with respect to their target numbers for all classes (this is what the 1/2 level rule does). Defenses (AC, Will, Reflex, Fort, Perception, etc) should definitely be like this so that characters don't have glass jaws (3e suffered greatly from this). Attacks can be more rank-based, although it creates problems with multiclassing.

Per Encounter Powers are neat, but the obvious problem in 4e is that most of them don't do cool enough stuff. Also, it sucks monsters can recover them and players can't.

[Voss]

Bloodied is... odd. I can see some uses for it, but the way 4e uses it drives me a bit crazy, particularly when bound to solo monsters. I dislike the idea that the players will be timing their stunlocks to catch the monster's batshit crazy bloodied reaction. [Even if it gets a bit trivial at higher levels]

Surges- Eh. Its another counter for 'you should rest after X encounters'. It isn't quite as hard-coded as 3rd's 4 encounters per day, but still, it isn't much more than a limit to the adventuring day. I like the surge *value* however. Healing that actually scales as a meaningful number was long overdue. It fits the abstraction of HP much better than 'cure light = a longsword hit', which would either kill you or be completely insignificant, depending on your level.

1/2 level- Bleh. The lack of variety is overwhelming. Saves can be done with any reasonably thought out progression (which 3rd's probably isn't), but the lack of distinction is underwhelming. It also fosters the min-max problem that infests 4e. Everything else (1/2 level and item bonus) is set, so the only meaninful variable is your stats. If you don't set them up at the beginning of the game, you never, ever can, not withstanding the minor bumps from class and the save feats.

Skills are absurdly bad done this way (and made worse by the absurd DC scaling DC system). Everyone is innately average, and it doesn't even matter because the DCs are scaled for the specialist. There isn't room for weakness, training, background or anything else.

per encounter- I agree with ubernoob, ToB did it better. The lack of a recovery mechanic makes it absurdly stupid. And so many things don't lend themselves to this model. If I have a 17th level fighter power I can try to disarm one guy, once per battle? Fuck you. I could have accepted a pool of powers with a limit on the number of stunts someone could try. 4 encounter powers, ever, and you can use each once? Hack job.


There are concepts that are decent, but the implementation blows them to crap. I like the idea of rituals, even if I've seen it before, (and some spells are much better off as rituals), but the casting time, cost and sheer uselessness of many of them makes them ridiculous and sad.

[Username17]

The healing surges limit harms the game. People can heal themselves completely from less than zero to full in a single battle and still have enough to use as many as they are allowed in the next battle. It's only after that where the limits kick in. It's just an enforcement of the 5 minute workday. And it simultaneously prevents damage from mattering. It's quite an achievement of bad design.

Damage can't make you care, but the mechanic that keeps damage from mattering also encourages you to sleep after every major battle whether the princess is in danger or not.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Why not just have all damage heal at the end of an encounter?

Look at most action movies, the hero takes a beating, but next fight he's back to fighting strength.

Or perhaps, I'm just projecting my opinions that D&D would be better if you were Batman.

[Username17]

Well, between combats all of your minor damage falls off in TNE. Even major damage drops to a fraction of the effect, but it's still there.

A big wound has a type I, a type II, and a type III. Next combat, all the type Is and type IIs are gone, but you keep your type IIIs. So your dramatic wounds still hurt some, but your non-dramatic bullshit vanishes next scene.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Well, between combats all of your minor damage falls off in TNE. Even major damage drops to a fraction of the effect, but it's still there.

A big wound has a type I, a type II, and a type III. Next combat, all the type Is and type IIs are gone, but you keep your type IIIs. So your dramatic wounds still hurt some, but your non-dramatic bullshit vanishes next scene.

That models cinematic combat the best I think. Where the hero can get beat up, and nothing bad really seems to happen to him next scene, but if he gets shot, then that wound keeps plaguing him for the movie.

[Talisman]

Mind you, I'm not defending the actual implementation of healing surges, just the basic concept. I like that anyone, regardless of class, can heal themselves a little bit in mid combat - less need for a healbot cleric to be chasing people around with a wand.

Frank, what you're talking about sounds somewhat like 7th Sea's damage system (flesh wounds go away at the end of the scene, but dramatic wounds remain until healed) or Spirit of the Century (stress goes away, consequences go away more slowly). I see your point, but I'm not sure there's really a way to implement that in 3.x.

I do find it somewhat bizarre that a PC can be literally bludgeoned to pulp repeatedly, and as long as there's a bard with a CLW wand nearby, he will never suffer any real effects because of it. That's what I meant by capping infinite healing.

[RandomCasualty2]

I do find it somewhat bizarre that a PC can be literally bludgeoned to pulp repeatedly, and as long as there's a bard with a CLW wand nearby, he will never suffer any real effects because of it. That's what I meant by capping infinite healing.

Yeah that's just stupid.

I like the idea that there are different levels of wounds, that way spells like "cuire serious wounds" and shit can actually mean something.

Sometimes you may actually have a serious wound and cure light is useless agaisnt it, you should need cure serious, not just a bunch of cure lights.

[JonSetanta]

Doublejump

No racial stat penalties for basic races

Weeaboo Fightan Magic as a warrior standard

Less mage power (although they did chop too much off)

INT and CON providing non-scaling benefits rather than "x per level"

NON VANCIAN SPELLCASTING

[Psychic Robot]

Doublejump?

[Bigode]

No racial stat penalties for basic races

Thanks for representing the average player's viewpoint for us. If others have a bonus and you don't, you're at a penalty.

[MartinHarper]

Doublejump?

It's a rogue utility power. You can jump twice without touching the ground in between.

[Psychic Robot]

What level?

[Leress]

What level?

Level 22 Cloud Jump

[Psychic Robot]

At least it's epic...

[MartinHarper]

Thanks for representing the average player's viewpoint for us. If others have a bonus and you don't, you're at a penalty.

It changes the maximum variance from four points to two points, so the worst penalty for not min-maxing is smaller. I think that's a legit (if tiny) improvement.
Also, addition is faster than subtraction, which is why TNE only gives bonuses based on your stats (last I checked, anyway).

[ubernoob]

Thanks for representing the average player's viewpoint for us. If others have a bonus and you don't, you're at a penalty.

It changes the maximum variance from four points to two points, so the worst penalty for not min-maxing is smaller. I think that's a legit (if tiny) improvement.

In 3E if you took a racial stat penalty you expected to lose with that stat 100% of the time because you were "dumping" it. Fuck even if you didn't take a stat penalty just putting an 8 in made it clear you expected to lose opposed checks with that stat.

Also, addition is faster than subtraction, which is why TNE only gives bonuses based on your stats (last I checked, anyway).

Bullshit. Unless you are a third grader they are the exact same thing. Subtraction is just adding up. Try to give correct change some time and you'll see.

[Tydanosaurus]

Thanks for representing the average player's viewpoint for us. If others have a bonus and you don't, you're at a penalty.

It changes the maximum variance from four points to two points, so the worst penalty for not min-maxing is smaller. I think that's a legit (if tiny) improvement.

Absolutely backwards.

The penalties for not min-maxing in 4E are immensely larger than in 3E. A relative -2 to AC in 4E (very easy to get if you mess up) is huge. It's just harder to find those penalties b/c it's virtually impossible not to min-max in 4E.

[Username17]

No, he's right. While the penalties for failing to min/max are on the whole much larger in 4e (because everyone has one one thing they are good at, so generalists don't end up having saving graces in unusual circumstances), the penalty for picking the wrong race in 4e is indeed smaller.

Being an Orc when you should be a Sun Elf gives you +0 instead of +2 rather than -2 instead of +2. That's a legitimate step in the right direction. You don't notice because the Orc Wizard no longer has the option of falling back on no-save spells in order to mitigate the relative intelligence penalty. But the attribute reassignment itself is a real improvement taken by itself.

---

This is something that comes up over and over again in 4e because none of the subsystems work. It's tempting to say that the subsystems don't work because all of the changes are bad, but this is not true. All of the subsystems don't work because all of them are direct enough that if there is at least one thing that doesn't work in the flow chart of each subsystem then each subsystem fails. But that in no way implies that every part of the flowchart fails. Indeed, that isn't true.

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

The penalties for not min-maxing in 4E are immensely larger than in 3E.

The change to races, on its own, reduces the worst penalty for not min-maxing from four points in your primary stat, to two points in your primary stat.
That there are other things in 4e that you believe make it important to min-max is a separate issue.

[Maxus]

That there are other things in 4e that you believe make it important to min-max is a separate issue.

Aren't there? Didn't someone do a chart detailing how even if you max your attack stats at every opportunity, your odds of hitting still go down from about 60% at level 1 to about 40% at level 30? If you didn't min-max, how effective would you be then?

[ubernoob]

That there are other things in 4e that you believe make it important to min-max is a separate issue.

Aren't there? Didn't someone do a chart detailing how even if you max your attack stats at every opportunity, your odds of hitting still go down from about 60% at level 1 to about 40% at level 30? If you didn't min-max, how effective would you be then?

Depends. Is it a party of strenth clerics?

[Tydanosaurus]

No, he's right. While the penalties for failing to min/max are on the whole much larger in 4e (because everyone has one one thing they are good at, so generalists don't end up having saving graces in unusual circumstances), the penalty for picking the wrong race in 4e is indeed smaller.

I don't think you can look at it in isolation.

Take the 4E Wizard. If you pick a race that lacks Wis or Int mods, you Fail. You are either below the RNG on your To Hit or your Orb doesn't knock the BBEG off the RNG for saves as much (or both). That effect is gonig to be at least a 10% effect. Whether that Fail comes from a negative mod, or lacking a positive mod, doesn't really make much difference, does it?

Unless you're going to argue that any racial mods are bad b/c it penalizes racial choices, I don't think the form of the choice makes much difference. A net +4 in 3E isn't much different than a net +2 in 4E.