Fixing 4e

[Ghostwheel]

First off - Kaelik and ubernoob, please don't post in this thread.

So; the idea of this thread; fixing 4e. We'll be going by the errata'd numbers--the point is to make 4e work with the monsters already created while removing much of the sumo-paddedness, "must have" aspect of certain classes, feats, and ability scores, and more. The math as far as the RNG is fairly easy to fix (though it was a pain to do so) and amounts to basically getting +1 to everything at every level, while getting damage down was a bit harder. Fixing will mean redoing a major part of how things work. On to some of the ideas I've had thus far:

Fix the math:
- Reduce attacks to 7 + stuff instead of 10 + stuff
- Non-AC Defenses are 13 + stuff with another +1 at levels 8 and 16
- Proficiency gives a straight +2 to attack for all weapons. Replace old proficiencies and other crap that no one cares about with a weapon focus system. This works a little like Tome armors, giving a basic ability for all weapons with an added one if you take "Weapon Focus" (NOT +1 to attack, but...) which gives extra benefits unlocking weapon-specific powers.
- Cut monster HP in half. If we didn't do this then the damage that characters would need to put out would be pretty damn bad.
- Characters get +1 to attacks and defenses from magic at level 3 and every 4 levels afterwards.
- All characters have starting HP of 18 + Body Score + Class modifier x level

Stupid-fixing stuff:
- Tear the game down to 20 levels. Even if you advance at a level every 3-4 weeks, you're still barely going to get to level 20 within a year.
- Create multiclassing that works. This involves creating classes from scratch. The classes that were created in the past are gone. Same with a number of feats, though inspiration may be taken from some of them (and some 3.x feats like Robilar's Gambit and Stormguard Warrior).
- Classes come in multiple of 4 called "paths". So you can take a path of rogue followed by a path of fighter followed by a path in rogue, then shadow assassin or whatever. This means that the game is split into "tiers", so a Rogue 4 / Fighter 2 would be B tier, while a Rogue 6 / Fighter 4 would be C tier. Total game is tiers A-E (20 levels).
- Create tons of classes with tons of subsystems. One of the great things about 3.x was all its subsystems that one can mix and match. Bring that back. Some of them could even have mechanics that work off of each other (psions and psywars both using PP, for example).
- Remove ability bonuses from races.
- Minions have 6 + double their level HP.

Others:
- Fold "leader" archetype into Controllers. 3 role types - Defender (Big Stupid Fighter), Striker (Glass Cannon), and Controller (Everything else).
- 2 types of armor, heavy and light. Each split into another two, "regular" and "masterwork". Masterwork requires a feat to wear but gives +1 to all defenses.
- Heavy armor wearers and/or defenders gain 4 HP/level, light armor weapers and/or strikers gain 3 HP/level, armor-less and/or controllers gain gain 2 HP/level.
- Create oodles of feats that do awesome stuff. Fold anything NEEDED by a class into the class itself.
- Three ability scores total. Body (Str + Con), Agility (probably need a new name, Dex + Int), and Savvy (Wis + Cha). Characters have a primary, secondary, and tertiary score. Primary increases by one every odd level except for first and 19th, secondary increases by one at level 5 and every 4 levels afterwards.
- Add tons of different status effects. They're part of what makes the game interesting and differs characters from each other.
- Bring back all those funky action types (full-round actions, one-round actions) for more things to do with them. Can allow something to be extra powerful if it takes longer to take effect or has a chance of being interrupted.

[A Man In Black]

So what's your goal here? Hammer 4e into some sort of playable shape, or come out with a good successor to 4e? This is all over the place.

[Ghostwheel]

Mostly the first--take new classes, create new feats for them, and use many of the paradigms of 4e. Furthermore I don't have the time or resources to create a "successor" for 4e, what with how tedious monster creation is.

I'm looking to mostly have gameplay that doesn't suck incredibly hard along with a semblance of balance and math that just works, since WotC seems unable to do basic addition/subtraction on their own.

That said, here are a few threads that look really good and that caught my eye I'm looking to steal/incorporate ideas from (in no particular order):
One
Two
Three (and links)
Four
Five

[Shazbot79]

So you want to fix 4E by reverting it back to 3rd edition?

This begs the question...why not just play 3rd edition?

Or better yet:

Fantasy Concepts. It's a Sword & Sorcery hack for Star Wars Saga Edition. Will require porting over of 3rd Edition spells.

[Ghostwheel]

Mostly because I don't agree with many of the paradigms that 3e brings along.
Let's just leave it at that. If you want the specific ways I dislike 3e, I'll be happy to explain them to you in PM so the thread doesn't get derailed.

I've not seen Fantasy Concepts, but from what I saw SWSE was even more borked than 4e as far as math and such went, and in the end I'd have to basically do the same thing I'm doing here.
Also, this is pretty far from 3e due to all the paradigms that 4e brings along--but again, if you're interested enough to hear what I'm talking about, I'll be happy to explain in PMs

[Username17]

You really do need to explain what the fuck it is that you want to do, because it totally isn't clear. 4e Math doesn't do what the author's said it was supposed to do, or what people want it to do, but it does do something. You could "fix" it to diverge from or converge to anything you wanted. You can't just say that you intend for the math to be fixed, you have to explain what you want the math to do.

Do you want to be able to use the monsters in the manuals or not? That's an extremely heavy restriction either way. If you are going to use them, you need to line fit your numbers to those monsters (PCs, in short, need to do huge damage and have very little in the way of healing/DR/hit points themselves). If you are not going to use those monsters, you have to do a huge amount of work in making an entire set of monsters.

-Username17

[Ghostwheel]

Sure thing; here are a few things I'd like to do:
- Fix the math so that characters succeed hitting and are hit by monsters around 1/2 the time, with the actual % upped or downed due to abilities used, terrain taken advantage of, combat advantage, etc. The result is most of the numbers stuff above, with defenses on both sides diverging by a larger amount at higher levels as some numbers grow higher or fall behind. (NOTE: This allows effects to be a little more divergent in how far they can wander off the RNG, allowing for status effects and other things to play a larger role.)
- Fix the math so that a "normal" of your level goes down in 4 attacks on average while PCs require 6-8 monster attacks of the same level to go under. (NOTE: This means that monster and PC damage is comparatively increased on both sides of the board, somewhat alleviating the problem of a level 20 PC being unable to take down a 5th level monster with a single attack or whatever.)
- Not really math related, but I hate the way 4e classes work; they all feel the same. I want to go away from this by creating new classes with new subsystems. Here are a few examples of ideas I've had:

-- The wizard is a "You activated my trapcard!" sort of person who gains the ability to interrupt enemies, damage them on triggered actions, and so on.
-- The elemenalist is a AoE/terrain sort of person who can lay down fire storms, make fire bloom, trap enemies in ice, and so on.
-- The priest has abilities that can pre-empt damage, heal, and reflect damage back at foes.
-- The barbarian has a rage bar that fills up and which he can deplete to use crazy maneuvers.
-- The paladin has an at-will smite attack that recharges powers that stack debuffs against an enemy and damage them if they attack someone else.
-- The mageblade can lay offensive and defensive aegises on enemies and friendlies, being a melee-ish version of the wizard.
-- The harrier moves around a lot, gaining bonuses and stacking damage depending on how many squares he's moved during his turn.
-- The marshal plays chessmaster, moving his allies as he wishes and granting them a variety of buffs and his powers are greater when he has more allies in range or enemies to demoralize with his shouts.

- Not math-related either, but I'd like to eliminate the obvious options that are plain stupid not to take and the feats that must be taken to be good (such as the orbzard in pre-errata 4e).
- Not math-related, but I'd like to bring back a semblance of 3e multiclassing without the fail or newbie trap options.
- Not math-related, but I'd like feats to be awesome, granting new options and fighting styles, perhaps like some of the non-made-of-suck tactical feats in 3e and allowing near-epic PCs to fight in a way reminiscent to the combat in Dead Fantasy. (Main points--extended combats (this means 4-8 rounds in tabletop), battles going back-and-forth, crazy stunts and higher levels fueled by feats, etc.)

And all this... while being able to use most of the enemies in the MMs, following the guidelines as presented in the last page of this errata.

It's a big order, but I think I've done most of the math and it works for the most part--with the bigger damage and the halved HP for monsters, it takes a lot of the sumo-paddedness out of the picture.

That's about it, but I'm sure I might have missed something-or-other.
That help clarify?

[hogarth]

- Not really math related, but I hate the way 4e classes work; they all feel the same. I want to go away from this by creating new classes with new subsystems.

This is my main complaint about 4E, and I don't know how you can fix it without turning the game into something almost completely unlike 4E.

[Username17]

- Fix the math so that characters succeed hitting and are hit by monsters around 1/2 the time, with the actual % upped or downed due to abilities used, terrain taken advantage of, combat advantage, etc. The result is most of the numbers stuff above, with defenses on both sides diverging by a larger amount at higher levels as some numbers grow higher or fall behind. (NOTE: This allows effects to be a little more divergent in how far they can wander off the RNG, allowing for status effects and other things to play a larger role.)
- Fix the math so that a "normal" of your level goes down in 4 attacks on average while PCs require 6-8 monster attacks of the same level to go under. (NOTE: This means that monster and PC damage is comparatively increased on both sides of the board, somewhat alleviating the problem of a level 20 PC being unable to take down a 5th level monster with a single attack or whatever.)

So you want attacks to inflict roughly half the target's hit points every hit, and for monsters to be inflicting between 1/4 and 1/3 of a PC's hit point complement every attack, right? Just to be clear, that is what you just said.

-Username17

[Ghostwheel]

Correct, missing around 1/2 the time.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not really interested in this discussion either way, 4E is dead to me...


But as someone who has played and ran several games of 4E, I can say that a 50% hit rate is incredibly frustrating for most players. No one likes their once-an-adventure pinch maneuver to have a 50% chance of not working. No one likes having a 1 in 8 chance of going through three rounds of combat and missing every one of them; you may as well have not even participated at that point.

The base accuracy should seriously be much higher than that. I think anything less than 75% without situational modifiers is too low. It just frustrates and tires players and artificially extends combat.

[Ghostwheel]

While I understand where you're coming from, might it be from how long it took to kill a monster, and thus the length of combats?

I've run a number of games and my tabletop DM had adopted a system similar to this based on 3e where people hit around half the time, and 1/2 hit chance worked well for us partially because it made the small stuff matter a lot more often (I've honestly hit a couple of times just because of +2 from Steely Resolve on my crusader), and partially due to how quickly enemies of your level go down.

That said, might simply be different strokes for different folks, but having both DMed and played under a "hit around 50% of the time" system, I've found it enjoyable.

[Username17]

Correct, missing around 1/2 the time.

Uh... OK. Because that is right away inconsistent with this:

And all this... while being able to use most of the enemies in the MMs, following the guidelines as presented in the last page of this errata.

Because while the monsters do inflict roughly +1 damage per level and have +1 to-hit per level in that chart (and thus to a first approximation you could give PCs +1 to defenses and 4 hit points a level and call it a day), the attacks that target two or more targets in that chart inflict 3/4 as much damage (well, between 73% and 77% depending on level, but about 3/4 as much damage).

Multi-target attacks are by definition much larger than single target attacks in the monsters, even after errata. So you won't really be able to find a set of numbers that fits your stated goals as long as 4e Dragons exist.

-Username17

[Ghostwheel]

It's a little late over here and I'm not sure I understand--could you explain why it doesn't work due to dragons and the like?

[Username17]

It's a little late over here and I'm not sure I understand--could you explain why it doesn't work due to dragons and the like?

OK, at 20th level, a normal monster inflicts an average of 28.5 damage with an attack that targets a single PC, and 21.5 damage with an attack that targets 2 or more PCs. So while you could easily enough give the PCs 85 hit points and no healing, that would still mean that the first attack took out one PC in an average of 6 attacks and two or more PCs in an average of 8 attacks. Which means that the number of attacks per player is 4 or less.

The guidelines you linked to have enemies with multi-target attacks inflicting 50% more damage or more than monsters without, which is a bigger difference than your projected range of enemy offensive output.

-Username17

[hogarth]

(I've honestly hit a couple of times just because of +2 from Steely Resolve on my crusader)

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that out of every 20 attack rolls you make, it should make a difference about two times, regardless of whether your base chance to hit is 75% or 50%.

[Ghostwheel]

It's a little late over here and I'm not sure I understand--could you explain why it doesn't work due to dragons and the like?

OK, at 20th level, a normal monster inflicts an average of 28.5 damage with an attack that targets a single PC, and 21.5 damage with an attack that targets 2 or more PCs. So while you could easily enough give the PCs 85 hit points and no healing, that would still mean that the first attack took out one PC in an average of 6 attacks and two or more PCs in an average of 8 attacks. Which means that the number of attacks per player is 4 or less.

The guidelines you linked to have enemies with multi-target attacks inflicting 50% more damage or more than monsters without, which is a bigger difference than your projected range of enemy offensive output.

-Username17

Sure--but isn't that where a lot of the tactics come into play? I mean, if an enemy has a per-round blast, PCs aren't going to stand close enough for it to target more than one at a time, or are going to make sure that it also hits a friend, and so on.

I'm just not sure that it's correct to make the assumption that a monster will always more than one PC at a time, even if it has at-will AoE abilities that deal that kind of damage... Though I suppose it would come down to specific examples, so I'm not sure how helpful that is to discuss.

[Ghostwheel]

(I've honestly hit a couple of times just because of +2 from Steely Resolve on my crusader)

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that out of every 20 attack rolls you make, it should make a difference about two times, regardless of whether your base chance to hit is 75% or 50%.

That's one way to look at it. Another way is that when you go from 50% to 60%, your chance of hitting actually goes from 50% of 60%, which is actually a 20% increase in the chance of hitting (.6 / .5 = 1.2)

On the other hand, a 75% to 85% chance of hitting only increases your chance of hitting by 13% (.85 / .75 = 1.13)

So relative to the starting point, a small increase can make a bigger change to how often you hit overall than one when you're almost assured to hit.

Or I might be delusional and it might just feel that way

[hogarth]

So relative to the starting point, a small increase can make a bigger change to how often you hit overall than one when you're almost assured to hit.

Yes. But a statement like "I've honestly hit a couple of times just because of +2 from Steely Resolve on my crusader" is dumb -- as long as you're not already hitting 90+% of the time, you'll still be hitting an extra "couple of times" due to the +2 bonus.

[A Man In Black]

You want to...

I want to go away from this by creating new classes with new subsystems.

Tear the game down to 20 levels. Even if you advance at a level every 3-4 weeks, you're still barely going to get to level 20 within a year.

And redo all the math on all the monsters ever.

I don't see what it is exactly that you're keeping from 4e. You're basically writing a dungeon-crawler game from scratch.

[Zinegata]

I think it may be helpful to ask what elements you want to keep from 4E, as opposed to what you want to change.

[Doom]

I have to agree with most others here, what exactly do you intend to keep?

You're basically tossing the classes and monsters (keeping only the names), probably getting rid of equipment....is there anything in the DMG of 4e that you intend to keep?

Don't get me wrong, there's not much in 4e that works as written (past the first few levels), but saying stuff like "classes of the past are gone" pretty much removes the 4e from 4e.

[Ghostwheel]

Some things I want to keep:
- Healing surges, though perhaps change their flavor. These are a long-term resource to give a soft cap to how long adventurers can go on before needing to rest.
- Keeping utility effects and the like to rituals.
- Keep the paradigm of encounters that take more than one round with battles that can change from moment to moment.
- Keep the paradigm of everyone having multiple choices that are all potentially meaningful depending on the situation. (Debateable, but this was what they wanted, I believe.)
- Keep the paradigm of having everyone be able to contribute every round.
- Keep the paradigm of people being more-or-less at the same level of balance regardless of whether they're wizards or fighters.
- Keep the paradigm of requiring magical items beyond the major 3 to a minimum.
- Keep the paradigm of most resources being per-encounter based, rather than per-day.
- Keep the paradigm of being able to reduce most actions to an ability vs. defense check, even things not covered by the rules.
- Keep everyone on the RNG.
- Remove single save-or-sucks/dies.
- Keep the ability to use monsters of different levels, using XP as a "budget" to guage how hard an encounter is even if less monsters of higher levels or more monsters of lower levels are used.
- Keep flight and other abilities that allow one to kill other things without any risk to a minimum.

And I'm not sure where people got the idea that I want to change monsters. The whole point is to be able to keep monsters relatively as-is, with the only difference between cutting their HP in half.

That said, I'm not crazy about the skill challenge system (I've done the math, it's INCREDIBLY hard to actually balance, perhaps impossible), and I've never been much a fan of skills since they've never really been balanced in any edition of D&D. For now I'm mostly ignoring the non-combat elements of the game, since I want to have the heart of the system (the combat minigame) down and working.

[koz]

I find this statement no end of problematic:

For now I'm mostly ignoring the non-combat elements of the game, since I want to have the heart of the system (the combat minigame) down and working.

If I wanted an unbreaking combat simulator, I'd play any MMO on the market ever. That's not the reason people play tabletop - they play it because it lets them problem-solve in a meaningful fashion and contribute to the world and its development. If you make this fix as a combat simulator, I'm not sure what you're doing that a computer with a bunch of programmers and graphical designers can't.

[Ghostwheel]

I find this statement no end of problematic:

For now I'm mostly ignoring the non-combat elements of the game, since I want to have the heart of the system (the combat minigame) down and working.

If I wanted an unbreaking combat simulator, I'd play any MMO on the market ever. That's not the reason people play tabletop - they play it because it lets them problem-solve in a meaningful fashion and contribute to the world and its development. If you make this fix as a combat simulator, I'm not sure what you're doing that a computer with a bunch of programmers and graphical designers can't.

Let me restate that then--I think that having social and non-combat mechanics that work is extremely important, but I want to make sure that combat works first, and will be concentrating on that for the most part in this thread.