Micro-4E

[JDSorenson]

Hello, Gaming Den.

I know that 4E isn't exactly popular on this board, but the members here also have the most insightful critiques about the system.

I'm working on a Microlite-inspired conversion of the game. My goals are to take the elements from 4E that were good ideas and improve upon their execution.

Among the changes I've made:

• Improved game math: No more enhancement bonuses from magic gear; monster stats increase at level/2 just like PC's.
  
  Consolidated action economy into Minor Actions: Moving, drawing weapons, sustaining beneficial powers, etc. And Major Actions: Attacks, Spells, etc. Of which combatants get two per round.
  
  Decreased immediate actions. Not many to be had, and PC's only get one immediate interrupt/reaction/Opportunity Attack per round.
  
  DC's no longer scale with level, and have a hard cap.
  
  Re-Worked skill challenges.
  
  New resource management for powers, action points, healing surges, etc.

One of the other things that I've changed for my conversion is class structure.

First, there are no class powers, or power sources. Player's can simply take any power they like for their character.

Second, classes are based solely on tactical role, with no restriction on available skills. The list includes:

Soldiers (Defender)

Features:

Combat Challenge: Soldier can "mark" an enemy after engaging it in melee combat. Marked enemies take -2 penalty to any attack that does not include the Soldier as a target.

Punishing Attack: When a marked enemy makes an attack that does not include the Soldier as a target, or tries to move away from the soldier, the soldier may make a free attack against that enemy as an immediate interrupt action.

Brute (Juggernaut)

Features:

Brute Strength: Brute is considered one size category larger for the purposes of forced movement effects and carrying capacity.

Battle Rage: When the Brute drops to 1/2 of their total HP value, they deal +1w damage on all attacks. At 1/4 HP, they deal +2w on all attacks.

Skirmisher (Guerilla)

Features:

Darting Attack: When the skirmisher makes a successful attack role, he/she may shift as a free action.


Blade Dash: The skirmisher deals extra damage equal to the amount of squares (or every 5ft.) that they moved before making the attack.

Lurker (Assassin)

Features:

Opportunist: The lurker gains a +4 bonus to hit enemies that grant combat advantage, instead of the normal +2.

Stealth Attack: When the lurker is hidden or otherwise obscured from an enemy, they can spend a minor action to "study" an enemy, after which they deal an extra +1w damage. This effect can accumulate over multiple rounds.

Arbalester (Artillery)

Features:

Sharpshooter: The Arbalester can spend a minor action to aim, gaining a +2 bonus to the attack roll, and +1W to damage.

Rapid Shot: When the arbalester reduces a target to 0hp with an attack, they may make an immediate attack against a second target.

Controller (Mages)

Features:

Oppressive Attack: Enemies suffer a -2 penalty to savings throw to effects caused by the controller's attacks.

Battle Shaping: Controllers may sacrifice damage to attack extra targets. For every -2 penalty to damage, the controller may include 1 extra target as part of an attack.

Leader (Healer/cheerleader)

Features:

Healing Word: The leader may spend a point of heroism to allow an ally to take a second wind, even if that ally has already taken one during the encounter. This does not cost the targeted ally any heroism. (heroism is a replacement for a few of the 4E subsystems)


Inspiring Aura: Allies adjacent to the leader, gain a +1 bonus to attacks, saves and skill checks.

Essentially, I'm trying to make a game that out-4E's 4E...ummm...in the good way.

I've got most of the stuff done, I only need to finalize the power list and right up monster entries (Monsters draw from the same power list as players). But what I really need is feedback on the class features and how well they support the functions of the tactical role, and perhaps inspiration on how I can improve them if they fall short.

Thanks : )

[hogarth]

I'd be impressed if the rules fit on a couple pages a la Microlite d20. But judging from what you've quoted above, it doesn't look like it will.

[JDSorenson]

Unfortunately, no.

The game will be much more condensed than actual 4E, and a lot of the bookkeeping removed or streamlined, but I have about 100 class powers and a reworked bestiary. I'm pretty confident the entire finished product will clock in at under 50 pages.

[Ravengm]

If you can make everything have a standardized duration, that would be awesome. There are too many powers that end at the beginning of your turn, the beginning of the target's turn, during your turn, during the target's turn, at the end of your turn, at the end of the target's turn, 5 minutes later, on a save, etc. etc. etc.. I'm not sure how you've written the powers so far, but the class features of "always on" or with an obvious action taken to activate them (like the Lurker ability) is nice. And it helps that the bonuses aren't something you'd forget about.

The Brute ability seems the weakest, since in my experience playing 4e no one in my party really stayed at Bloodied status for long. Maybe that's just me though.

[JDSorenson]

If you can make everything have a standardized duration, that would be awesome. There are too many powers that end at the beginning of your turn, the beginning of the target's turn, during your turn, during the target's turn, at the end of your turn, at the end of the target's turn, 5 minutes later, on a save, etc. etc. etc.. I'm not sure how you've written the powers so far, but the class features of "always on" or with an obvious action taken to activate them (like the Lurker ability) is nice. And it helps that the bonuses aren't something you'd forget about.

Actually, I did manage to do that.

Powers with detrimental effects all end on a save.
Powers with beneficial effects all require a minor action to sustain.

Also, since players use the same action to shift as they do to move, forced movement effects become much more tactically important.

The Brute ability seems the weakest, since in my experience playing 4e no one in my party really stayed at Bloodied status for long. Maybe that's just me though.

You could be right.

The idea behind the Brute is that they are at home wading into groups of enemies and hewing through them, heedless of the consequences. I wanted a mechanic that encourages them to really embrace danger and melee and that's the first thing I came up with, but there are probably better ideas out there.

Also, healing in my version is more costly than in 4E proper.

[sake]

Leader (Healer/cheerleader)

Features:


Inspiring Aura: Allies adjacent to the leader, gain a +1 bonus to attacks, saves and skill checks.

You might want to increase the range on that to like 3 or 5 squares. Otherwise the people who want to play a squishy, stand in the back row, white mage type healer get shafted on a primary feature, plus it makes movement and positioning much more interesting and important thing for the healer to pay attention to, trying to cover as many people as possible with the buff, instead of pretty much just auto following the tank around.

[JDSorenson]

You might want to increase the range on that to like 3 or 5 squares. Otherwise the people who want to play a squishy, stand in the back row, white mage type healer get shafted on a primary feature, plus it makes movement and positioning much more interesting and important thing for the healer to pay attention to, trying to cover as many people as possible with the buff, instead of pretty much just auto following the tank around.

You're right. Good idea.

[TheWorid]

There actually is a Microlite 4E: http://dominowriting.com/Microlite4e.pdf.

[hogarth]

There actually is a Microlite 4E: http://dominowriting.com/Microlite4e.pdf.

What a cheat. "Consult the 4E books for the list of powers." Feh.

[JDSorenson]

Since the power structure of my version is so different from 4E's A/E/D/U setup, I had to write my own list of powers.

[TheWorid]

There actually is a Microlite 4E: http://dominowriting.com/Microlite4e.pdf.

What a cheat. "Consult the 4E books for the list of powers." Feh.

Well I didn't say it was good, just that it existed.

[K]

I'd think that if you want a rules-light version of 4e you'd just unify most of the powers, things like "Rangers use 4w + stat" or "Wizard powers stop movement."

I mean, 4e powers can be generated with a random generator. Writing out that generator would go a long way to easing the page count.

[JDSorenson]

I think you're on to something.

If you made damage values static, then you could just roll 2 or 3 D10's of differing colors and look up the results on a chart:


ENERGY
1 - Fire
2 - Cold
3 - Lightning
4 - Thunder
5 - Acid
6 - Force
7 - Psychic
8 - Necrotic
9 - Radiant
10 - Poison

EFFECT
1 - Move
2 -Slow
3 - Daze
4 - Poison
5 - Weaken
6 - Immobilized
7 - Curse
8 - Stunned
9 - Blind
10 - Ongoing Damage

DAMAGE
+1
+2
+3
+4
+5
+6
+7
+8
+9
+10

Not really ideal for me personally, But if I ever want to make a 5 page version, there we go.

[K]

You could probably just allocate various damage types and added effects to certain classes. I mean, the Paladin can just be the Radiant guy and no one is going to complain.

Then, to keep the 4e flavor you have something called the Daily Boosts and Encounter Boosts that are charges. These make the effects bigger in effect, damage, and potency.

So the Paladin walks in and has his basic attack, but if he uses an Encounter charge the attack is now radiant and does more damage, and if he uses a daily it causes healing to the party.

The Wizard might use his Encounter to make his basic magic attack cause movement penalties and more damage, and his Daily for Stun.

[Koumei]

And then the classes get the hilarious attack/power/boost name charts similar to Monk Styles?

Anyway, for making 4E work as intended, and cutting out a lot of the real problems we all hate, as well as just trimming the size down, I really like where this project is going. I'm still happy enough with 3.5+Tome that I probably wouldn't end up playing it, but you're going in a good direction it seems.

[hogarth]

There actually is a Microlite 4E: http://dominowriting.com/Microlite4e.pdf.

What a cheat. "Consult the 4E books for the list of powers." Feh.

Well I didn't say it was good, just that it existed.

Oh, I wasn't trying to shoot the messenger. It's just that the only real attraction of Microlite d20 is its extreme brevity. What's the point of making a Microlite 4E that requires consulting a big rulebook?

[JDSorenson]

Anyway, for making 4E work as intended, and cutting out a lot of the real problems we all hate, as well as just trimming the size down, I really like where this project is going. I'm still happy enough with 3.5+Tome that I probably wouldn't end up playing it, but you're going in a good direction it seems.

I doubt anyone will end up playing it. I suspect this will go the way of many free RPG's released on google docs....which is nowhere.

Still, it's something to keep me busy at work besides what they actually pay me to do. And really, I just want to see if I can design a better 4E than ACTUAL 4e.

[JDSorenson]

Anyway, on the subject of modifiers.

I want to get away from that thing that happens where players have to add up several different modifiers from disparate sources to determine what ACTUALLY gets added to their roll.

My solution is that there are three different types of modifiers:

Static bonuses - These come from classes and level modifiers...bonuses that come from constant sources. 9 times out of 10 these will be on your character sheet. Static modifiers always stack with eachother.

Temporary bonuses - These come from powers and in-game situations. They stack with static modifiers but not with eachother. A higher temporary bonus always supersedes a smaller one.

Penalties - These are subtracted from the total bonuses (static and temporary) but do not stack with eachother. A higher penalty always supersedes a lower penalty.