D&D4E General

Take out half-level bonuses and change skill progression to allow for more granularity. Fix the math appropriately.

Trim out all the bad or redundant powers and feats.

Give some of the neglected classes like the artificer, assassin, seeker and runepriest more options/buffs.

Separate combat and out of combat character progression options so that you never have to decide between one or the other.

You could also slow down the magic item progression so you're not always having to chase the +'s and can focus on interesting item powers.

Repostan:

I want to run a 4E megadungeon crawl.

Any good premade ones? Any other ideas/advice?

One idea I had to spice things up from "another week, another set of doors to kick down" was to have the players be one group out of many that's in a race to finish the dungeon. So they could have some social encounters with other teams and stuff. Think maybe Darkest Dungeon (in terms of gameplay, not mood) combined with Blood Bowl and Mordheim. They've got to manage their group and gain support outside the dungeon to get the resources to go further.

Key the cap to level.

Or key type to mechanical source (powers, etc) so you don't have to list them

So long as we're talking about ways we'd want to see people following up 4e's design:

I want something that combines the power system of 4e with the near-classlessness of True20 and the Feat system from Fantasy Craft.
Feats would give you a typical sort of bonus as per usual, but are also how you get powers, stances, and what might typically be considered class abilities.

You wouldn't have a class, but instead have a broad character type (or perhaps you pick two definitive aspects a la Gamma World 7e) that decides what categories of Feats you have access to and gives you a broadly applicable and thematic way to use Action Points, as well as deciding how skills and secondary combat statistics or modifiers scale.

I'd love to see a version of 4e without the focus on attrition based gameplay. Take out healing surges and maybe change dailies, so that I can throw encounters at my party without having to follow them up with two other encounters, to actually make wounds & dailies matter.

Surges are necessary IMO, but I also like the idea of changing dailies.

You could houserule so that you don't get the benefits of an extended rest until you reach a milestone.

My biggest problem with 4e (and all of D&D for that matter) is that feats don't feel very meaningful.
In fact a lot of "stuff" in D&D doesn't feel very meaningful.
That 1d20+20 you're rolling probably contains a bunch of +2s and +1s.
I'd rather have my feats, magic items and such be more impactful.
So I would actually liked granularity somewhat reduced but instead give characters cool stuff(tm).

Also more meaningful (maybe optional) subsystems for stuff like rituals, alchemy, kingdom management / controll etc... would be nice.

One more thing: I love healing surges and such but I'd like a system that has the resource based stuff of 4e (encounter and daily powers, healing surges and so on) without having to rely so heavily on attrition based combat.
I've heard of the rule that you can't take an extended rest until some point but for me that is to gamey for my tastes.

I can see keying the cap to level. To mechanical source though seems like it would be a bad idea. If we're to obsolete some feat selections, I'd sooner cut the truly pointless ones out entirely and make some of the lesser used ones more viable instead.

I made all dailies recharge one daily per short rest on a d6 roll of 5 or 6, or by spending a surge. Surges I feel need to stay as they are. They carry players well enough through a day. A group should need to take an extended rest some times after all.

Self sufficient mechanical design is always the optimal choice, but sometimes giving simple +1 feats can be nice. It does feel nice to get a +1 feat on level up and suddenly do something in particular better with noticeable results. Too much can be a bad idea though, so scaling back math is step one for removing heavy bonus bloat from the game.

Bump

>I want to run a 4E megadungeon crawl.
They did do an official first floor of Undermountain which was huge.

Adding bonuses is the main draw of playing DnD though so it's better for you to look at other more rules-lite systems if you dislike all that.
Magic items do have impactful features apart from the small bonuses though due to item daily and encounter powers.
Some feats are so called feat taxes that I never bother to enforce and some are too situational to be useful but it's there for the players to make their characters more true to what they have in mind.

I agree that more subsystems that utilize the same power and resources trait that 4e have going will be great.

Even ten fuckin years ago, 13 year old me could clearly see the issues with 4th edition. While there's tons of numbers that can be tweaked, none of that matters when every class operates on the at-will / encounter / daily system.

Classes needed disparity based on power source, which could open the way to new subsystems.

Tome of Battle, if you remember, was testing the waters for encounter-based powers come 4th edition. I was genuinely excited when I first discovered that way back in the day, mainly because it created such a unique way of delineating martials from casters, with melee characters shifting from constant movesets, to the utility of casters on their per-day capabilities.

Characters needed subsystems. Barbarians could have a rage-based mechanic, where building and taking damage enables capabilities. Fighters and rogues easily fall within the realm of maneuvers. This is all off the top of my head, but a lot more could be done to create a definitive difference between every class.

>I've heard of the rule that you can't take an extended rest until some point but for me that is to gamey for my tastes.

That's just a houserule that some DM used so that players will stop abusing resting before boss fight to nova strike the entire encounter as if they are playing a jrpg and there's a save point before the fight.

As DM, you can allow your player to rest anytime they are wanted or allowed to by your campaign.

Same problems DnD encounter in every edition that players with spellcasters like to rest before a showdown happened to have all their spells ready to rumble with similar devastating effect on the enemies.

It is great that players have such easy time?
Not exactly because it kill the tension and mood if they one-shot the threat of the boss within the first round (2, 3,3,.5,5) or during the second round (4).

Best solution is either force the situation by not allowing them to rest via story urgency or create the encounter with exception the players will attempt a nova strike with lots of henchmen or bosses with second and third form.

This meme again.
Play the game before you comment like a faggot, user.
Anyone who play the game before can see you didn't even bother to try.

I played 4th edition for 7 years you retarded mongoloid shitnigger. Our group ended up with our own heartbreaker version over time, mostly bothering with tweaked numbers and some rejiggering with skill challenges.

It's objectively better than Pathfinder / 3.5, it just happens to have some glaring flaws that could've been addressed to make a better RPG.

>Lies.
If you actually play it before, then you did realize the garbage called essential is what you supposedly wanted.

No, Essential sucked the life out of martial characters by making them simplified as fuck. I want something MORE complex than codified at-will / encounter / daily systems.

I wanted classes or power sources to be their own microcosms of mechanics.

Plus, controller is a gay role.

>Characters needed subsystems.
[citation needed]

This is where that "every class is the same" meme comes from. In previous editions of dnd classes were heavily segregated based on how they progress. Do they mostly get spells, or class features?
But it needn't be so.

>controller is a gay role.

What, you don't like bathing in your GM's tears? Controller and defender are the best because of that.

Tying extended rests to milestones does feel a bit too artificial to me, but I like the idea of making them less the "every night on the road" rest and more the "proper R&R". Daily resources would basically be per adventure, or per leg of an adventure if it's long enough to feature significant breaks.

It might go well with some means of recharging dailies (for instance by spending surges, like a previous user suggested, or possibly per milestone).

Actually, to continue on that last though, even if it's playing up the artificiality a bit again, you can make milestones more significant, say to the tune of an action point, recovering a surge, AND a recharged Daily.
Though I don't know whether that'll be enough surges to make the number of encounters per extended rest significantly higher.

Does someone have a pdf of Reavers of Harkenwold? I want to run it, but I can't find a copy anywhere.

No, I hate bounded accuracy with a passion.

If this thread is still up in three days I'll let you know. Otherwise ask again in the next thread (or realistically, the thread after that)

Picking up on the bunded accuracy the OP mentioned, a 4e game with 5e thematics of low heroics (instead of fantasy super heroes that 4e did so well) would be cool? The tactical approach of 4e but on a not-so-high-fantasy-we're-gods-now game?

Not really. That pretty severely limits the kind of abilities available.

Wouldn't that be just... 4e in heroic (first 10) levels only?

13-year-old you was an idiot and nothing has changed since.

Do you know what 4e could do good? Front Mission style games. Tactical, swappable weapons, each pilot focusing on one type of weapon... You just need to make the powers more clean so when the pilot changes equip or chassis he can still use his powers on the new mech.

>Barbarians could have a rage-based mechanic
They did

5e paladins have the subclass oath of the ancients where at level 20 you can become an "Elder Champion", gaining the once a day ability to transform into an avatar of nature, taking on inhuman qualities like mossy skin, hair of fire, etc.

The 4e warden does the same thing at level 1, and can do it up to three times a day at level 10.

Even heroic tier 4e is well above the scope of 5e.

Right, but the warden is a druid thing, and 5e druids can transform from level 2 (the warden just transforms into natural concept things instead of animals).

The warden is a warden thing, and if the 5e playtest is any indication, oath of ancients was meant to be the closest equivalent as they literally called it a warden back then

>The warden is a warden thing

So why compare it to the Paladin?

>, and if the 5e playtest is any indication, oath of ancients was meant to be the closest equivalent as they literally called it a warden back then

Well, they did a shit job then. Druid is a lot closer to the warden than the Ancients Paladin is.

>Well, they did a shit job then.
Pretty much the case with any 4e to 5e translation. Remember how battlemaster fighters are supposed to be warlords?

Wardens are basically druidic paladins, they're a close-range class that uses armor and weapons infused with nature spirits instead of being infused with holy spirits

They're their own thing, but at the same time if you wanted to translate it into 5e they literally gave their powers to the Oath of Ancients paladins, just watered down for the new power level.

>I wanted classes or power sources to be their own microcosms of mechanics.

That's precisely what a class is in the game. You just can't realize it because you're not paying close enough attention to the way each individual class plays and instead are going off certain keywords shared among game elements like "Mark" or "Stun".

And we've already discussed a few threads back why power source being a mechanical item beyond 'this allows me to grab X feats' is bad. Check the archives for more information.

Long story short, what you wanted is possible, but only if you actually learn the game on a whole, not just the way the mechanics are laid out and the numbers stack up. You need to play every single class in the game before you can say they all play exactly alike. A Fighter and a Warden are two very different beasts despite both being Defenders.

>they literally gave their powers to the Oath of Ancients paladins, just watered down for the new power level.
Oath of the Ancients plays nothing like a warden.

But they didn't, since it can't transform into a guardian, nor mark, for that matter.

The abilities a 5e paladin has a 4e paladin can easily emulate. The Warden meanwhile isn't anything like the 5e paladin or vice-versa.

I'd also like to point out the cognitive dissonance that there already are classes that shapeshift at lower levels anyway, so I don't see why having another shapeshifting class actually be a bad thing.

And water is wet.

Nothing in 5e plays like something 4e because the two games are incompatible. As a thematic equivalent, it's the closest thing.

>since it can't transform into a guardian
Capstone feature.
>nor mark
As a variant rule anyone melee can mark.
It's all mangled and fucked up, but the parts are there. OoA is meant to be a 5e warden

I once ran a 4e oneshot where the PCs were actually fantasy super heroes, complete with super-hero names, secret identities and an organization that was effectively fantasy-Avengers/fantasy-Justice League

It was a lot of fun, I'm thinking of running a tokusatsu-heroes 4e game for the same group

I found a copy that has everything except the last page of part 2 (I mean, it's there, but its blurry).

^This guy probably has a better version

mediafire.com/file/4hw5fkn1hc6d66u/reavers_of_harkenwold.pdf

anyone got the compendium, that runs as an app and you can search classes, spells and shit it was offline (i think).

pastebin.com/paPzDyS4

This pastebin has links to the online and offline compendiums. I's usually in the 4e General's OP.

funin.space/

Good enough for me, thanks.

Top notch bro right there.
Also I doubt mine was any better. It was probably the same pdf given how often that happens.

Bump?

If this thread is alive tomorrow I could post home brew stuff. Maybe a pitch for a dungeon crawler, plus system agnostic kingdom building stuff. All with a 4ish vibe.

I know this is a 4e thread, but does anyone have the pastebin to the 5e docs? I would greatly appreciate it!

Just go to the /5eg/ thread instead?

You know, I didn't see it. I feel dumb, oh well, thanks guys!

I'm getting into 4e

what should I expect?

What is bounded accuracy?

4e has attack bonuses and defenses both increase at (about, math fuck ups and all) the same rate thus making it a wash if you keep fighting things of your level, you effectively have the same % chance to hit, just bigger numbers are involved.
Bounded accuracy is what 5e does, attack bonuses and defenses stay about the same for your characters entire career.

It keeps the total bonuses down, and means that you can still hit a monster way above your level, and monsters way below your level can still hit you as well.

As a GM or Player?

Either way, go play Final Fantasy Tactics, Divinity: Original Sin, Disgaea, and Front Mission to truly prepare for 4e.

Ah, okay. I thought it might refer to that. Thank you.

Depends on the group, but I found it's always best to go in with expectations of ______fun______ and ____games____

Does anyone know where I can find the monster maker/encyclopedia offline?

RFG Runepriest

Fuel dailies with surges.

That makes Con the most important stat in the game, super-enhancing Con based classes and screwing everyone else.

>Would you like another view on 4E, redesigned to keep this down? More bounded accuracy, with the difference between levels being more choices of actions and HP/damage? Or rolling 1d20 + 45 gives the player a better feeling of "I'm Epic! See how much I grew from that +5 at level 1?", even if, mathematically speaking, it meant nothing?

Players get good fee-fees from bigger numbers, even if they don't mean anything. "Flat Math" where to-hit is always equal to 5+level works fine, even if it's pretty much always pointless.

Delete Constitution from the game, desu. It's so easily rolled into Strength that it might as well not exist.

4e could be boiled down into just the three non AC defenses as stats if you wanted to go that route

This. It's a "passive" stat, it's really got no reason to exist beyond taxing those who have to invest in being tanky.

It'd also remove all the shitty "defenders who are forced to go STR/CON" problems from the game.

Body, Mind, Heart?

I guess, yeah.

That would change the game pretty drastically

There's a bunch of feats in the game that require a certain amount of both strength and constitution, armor proficiency feats and some weapon mastery feats in particular. On top of that, there are way too many str/con classes in the game that are garbage as-is, but would be buffed to the point of being totally overpowered if they just used strength for all their modifiers

>Players get good fee-fees from bigger numbers, even if they don't mean anything.

The only reason I don't like bounded accuracy is because the number it had been bound to is too low (or the dice too big, your pick), which makes expressing large differences hard.

See: Asmodeus not being able to get out of manacles reliably and random peasant out atheltics-ing Usaing Bolt.

I had a discussion about this with some friends I'm working on a 4e rewrite with, and the concern is that if you remove the classic six stats you lose a lot of the familiarity that'd get people playing that kind of system.

There are no defenders that are forced to go str/con, unless you're counting Battleminds, who need 15 strength in paragon in order to get heavy blade opportunity

You aren't "forced", but the paths that do go that way are stupid. Hell, the non-defender paths that go that way tend to be pretty bad too.

wardens must for AC
other classes like fighters and barbs have a soft requirement for their secondary features

Defenses suck. I would rather have pretty flat ACs across the board and more resistances and vulnerabilities.

Defences are better than fucking saving throws. Unifying things around the core mechanic is always a good idea.

Wardens can use wisdom for AC

Earthstrength and storm wardens cannot

I still say 3e's biggest problem is the fact that classes were 20 levels instead of 5 or 10 like prestige classes. To me, martial classes should've had 5 levels, martial/spellcaster mixes like Paladin should've had 10, and full casters should've had 20.

Imagine how useful Paladins would be if they had 10 levels and assassin spell progression in 3e. All those prestige classes would become really sexy.

One thing I would do with 4e is lessen the emphasis on powers. Most of the powers, let's be honest here, are boring crap. They aren't WEAK crap, just boring. There are loads of powers that are just a tiny bonus here, a little move there, utterly irrelevant overall: consolidating the powers lists and eliminating the bloat would go a long way in making 4e a better game.

I liked the power points mechanic, and feel like it would be a better fit than the default encounter powers. I also liked Essentials, which had classes that reduced the number of powers certain classes used.

Another thing I would like to change with 4e is simplify or eliminate ability scores. So many things us this score OR that score that you might as well have just three ability scores. Ability scores do not really define a character so much in this game.

Well, those class options suck

Which is a problem, no getting around that, I wish they included some way to apply your secondary stat to another NAD, even if it was another fucking feat tax, it would be better than nothing.

But they didn't, so if you want to play a warden, forget that earthstrength and stormheart exist, and just go wild or life

Why not just give casters as many class levels as they have spell levels in that case?

If you read my post you'd see that I'd want flat ACs, which is what defenses are. They just inflate to madness in 4e.

Earthstrength is really good despite the dual stat issue thanks to feat support.

I would kind of disagree, sure sometimes the optimal powers are boring, but no class is ever really lacking for interesting powers. Even if those interesting powers are subpar

Like for Rangers, they get some really neat stuff, but if what you're taking isn't letting you hit things more times, you're suboptimal as fuck

I think you have a problem with modifiers more than with powers; modifiers in 4e are deceptively important.

I implore you check out Strike! which removed the "small bonus" powers and ability scores; it may be a bit too fluff-light for your tastes but it could be something along the line for what you are looking for.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with, exactly. I think the fact that the optimal choices are Boring choices is a Bad Thing. Agree/Disagree? I would also like to reduce the number of Boring choices so as to streamline character creation and reduce options bloat. Agree/disagree?

I think options aren't a bad thing, bloat only really sets in when a significant number of the options are dull or bad.

I'd love to see something like 4e with plenty of options, but making all the options interesting and good, even if there'll always be some which end up being better after the powergamers get their hands on it.