D&D 4e successor

Hey Veeky Forums, I'm part of one of the several groups adjacent to Veeky Forums working on a game inspired by D&D 4e, and I figure it can't hurt to discuss the concept.

We're all people who liked the game and are hoping to make something that retains its strengths while improving on its weaker aspects, but it's always good to get more information on what people would want, both those who liked and who disliked the prior game.

There are some things we're not going to change. We liked the combat system and how powers work (although we're slightly broadening the definition of Dailies, to allow powers with other usage restrictions to occupy the same slot), we like the focus on heroic high fantasy stories about badasses doing awesome things, along with structures like the three tiers and Themes/PP's/ED's.

On the changes front, improved non-combat is a large focus, with dedicated slots for non-combat powers and a removal of permanent costs from non-permanent rituals. We're also looking at a more abstract wealth system, having less magic items but making those you have more interesting and significant, focusing on interesting traits and powers rather than raw mechanical focuses.

There's other stuff of course, but I can answer any questions people have. Keep in mind that we're not really considering 5e- People who like it already have a game that caters to them. We're looking at 4e as an alternate evolution of the D&D formula, and trying to improve on it and create a more refined version of it.

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I'm very interested in an updated 4e successor. I'd like to streamline the skill system as much as possible (I know you said you're not into 5e, but that system is one of my favourites.)

Can you expand on what you like about how 5e does it? Something we're currently looking at is the skill system. Something we dislike is how the mental stats (Int/Wis/Cha) get significantly more associated skills and skill uses than the physical stats, but we're finding it quite difficult to rectify that and are pondering ways to do so or alternative approaches.

Fixing feat bloat and taxes as well as situational bonuses (many of which comes from feats and magic items) would be a good thing.

Some sort of universal bonus stacking rule, that is a bit less reductive than 5e's Advantage/disadvantage maybe? Which reminds me, I liked that in SW SAGA edition you really only had 1 more "improvement" to a skill by being an expert at it, and could not stack item bonuses and the like up to infinity; something that only the 4e arcana abuser is going to miss.

Oh, if you are possibly redesigning classes, design them with hybriding in mind, and possibly make multiclassing with feats a bit less painful.

Shorten weapon lists and possibly just eliminate the +2/+3 difference, or make it so a +2 weapon is actually worth it.

Can you clarify and specify what you mean by feat bloat a little? We're still currently a bit up in the air with feats. We're playing with the idea of splitting them up into combat and non-combat feat slots, to make picking up some interesting utility or fluff things not a direct loss in combat potential. Removing feat taxes is something we entirely intend to do though. We want to make every single feat choice feel interesting and meaningful in and of itself, reducing the overall number of feat choices as part of that.

Something else we're pondering is 'Class Talents'. Take all the boring feats that only provided a direct mechanical bonus or upgrade to a class features and repackage them as discrete, mutually exclusive choices every few levels, so we can focus class feats on interesting variations or extra utility rather than just 'more numbers'.

Hybrid is something I'm not familiar with, although members of my team are so I'll raise it with them. We like how 4e did multiclass feats, but in line with what I said above, we want to make every single feat a cool, interesting choice in and of itself, which should hopefully help.

With weapons, we're still playing around with options but the +2/+3 thing is certainly dead, we don't think it adds any real value to the game and just restricts player choice.

I mean there are a lot of feats but a lot of them are low impact direct improvement and do boring numerical stuff, like situational more damage or bonus to hit. I think it'd be better if feats were exciting, and had higher impact; like getting new powers and other such options.

>Class Talents
This is not a bad way to remove about half of my complaint.

>multiclass

Yeah, the feats were OK, but having to go Paragon Multiclass for replacing At-Wills (and just Paragon Multiclass in general) sucked aass. Adding some sort of option that nabs you a hybrid talent even when you don't hybrid, would work wonderfully.

>weapons

Made this post a while ago:
For 4e, I'd have set it up so each weapon has tags only, (no damage listed, bonus damage is a tag). Higher "tier" (simple/military/exotic) weapons have more tags.

Two handed weapons have 2 extra tags. Versatile weapons have 1 extra tag labeled "versatile" (like "versatile: damage" or "versatile: reach") that applies when you two-hand it.

So for example, you have a short sword in your main hand (light blade, precise+1, damage + 2).

In your off hand, you could have a dagger (light blade, thrown, damage+1, off hand), or a shield (bludgeoning, defense + 2, off-hand), or if you got military weapon training a parrying dagger (light blade, defensive+1, damage +1). Empty hand is considered an off-hand weapon as well (a bad one probably), and you'd have feats to add a bunch of tags to it, monks would improve it, etc.

All your tags of the weapons you are holding apply always when you could make the relevant attack with a weapon (so your shortsword's extra damage/precision doesn't apply when you are doing a ranged attack with a dagger).

In terms of numbers, our progression currently includes 8 combat feats, 5 non-combat feats and 6 class talents, split across 15 levels (we're halving the number of levels, making each level a significant bump in power, although we're also going to provide an alternate 30 level progression chart if people would want a slower pace)

Paragon Multiclassing is something else I'm not particularly familiar with, but it's something we'll probably avoid just because nobody seems to like it. Figuring out how to make Hybrid work more smoothly, or how to allow a minor feature-splash, is something we'll have to look at.

We're actually considering a tag driven weapon system. The only trouble is how to make the various utility options worthwhile alongside 'more damage'.

Why not turn it into a grid-based skirmish wargame? Might be more profitable

Because we enjoyed 4e as a roleplaying game. If we were doing this entirely for the sake of profit, we wouldn't be making an RPG aimed at a pretty niche audience in the first place.

We have vaguely considered how you'd do the mechanics as a board game though. In some distant, far off theoretical space where we actually finish the damn thing, we thought boxed boss fights could be kinda fun. A bit like Sentinels of the Multiverse. Sell a box containing an environment, a boss encounter and a set of premade characters. Maybe some preliminary encounters if just the boss fights wasn't enough to appeal to people. Each box would be a self contained game, but you could also mix and match heroes, encounters and environments to change things up and add more replay value.

For multiclassing/hybrid ideas, maybe you should check out Shadow of the Demon Lord and Legend, if you haven't yet.

Both approaches are pretty cool.

Legend is something we're familiar with, I love the game and I'm still sad development on it ended. Shadow of the Demon Lord is something I've not had a chance to look into, but I've heard it mentioned a few times. Thanks for the recommendation.

I think characters get enough powers in 4e as is, giving them more powers via feats doesn't really help

I think the main problem with feats is that too many of them are only active in very specific situations outside of the feat taxes, which results in bookkeeping getting a bit arduous.

Also, the way I'd do weapon is pretty simple, all weapons have a +3 proficiency modifier, all weapons are either off-hand, versatile, or two-handed, are either simple, martial or superior and have one weapon type by default. Damage is decided by which combination of off-hand/versatile/two-handed and simple/martial/superior the weapon has (1d4 for simple/off-hand, 1d6 for simple/versatile and martial/off-hand, 1d8 for simple/two-handed, martial/versatile and superior/off-hand, 1d10 for martial/two-handed and superior/versatile and 1d12 for superior/two-handed) Then have tags as another system on top of this I haven't quite thought of yet, this is to cover the fact that accuracy is by and far the most important aspect a weapon can have, and the very few used +2 proficiency weapons in 4e are used due to having unique characteristics not available on +3 proficiency weapons. Therefore any system that lets you build a weapon and has accuracy as a tag, well, there's never a point to taking other tags until you've maxed out accuracy

>4e as a roleplaying game.

You'd need to consider adding a few roleplay elements first then.

In b4 you don't need rules to roleplay and can just improv act it out . I can play a game of Warhammer 40k and 'roleplay' during it. It doesn't make 40k a good roleplaying game.

Meh, backgrounds in 5e had a horrible sense of trying to tell people what characters they should play rather than letting them play their own, I'm not really sure if "roleplaying elements" are desirable if that's the sort of thing it entails

Power bloat is something we are considering. We're reducing the base number of Encounters and Dailies to 3, rather than 4, but we still have Support powers (splitting Utilities into in and out of combat forms, Supports being in combat utilities) along with powers from Theme/PP/ED. It's a bit of a difficult balance, enough to be a fun breadth of options without being overwhelming.

Given the number of feats and equivalents specified in , along with making individual ones more meaningful, do you still think it might be too much?

That is a solid idea for a weapon system though. Using category and handedness to define damage frees up tags to be focused on utility.

They're not worth replying to. They're either trolling or wilfully ignorant.

How do you differentiate between combat and non-combat?

Things like movement abilities, perception aids, and stealth aids are useful both in and out of combat

Anything with a discrete, specific use in a fight is a combat ability. That doesn't mean it's impossible to use a non-combat feat or power in a fight, but they won't be designed with that in mind and doing so will likely rely on the improvised action rules.

Whether that's too much is a bit hard to tell without knowing what sort of feats they will be

That's fair. We're still figuring it out ourselves, although our rule of thumb is that no feats will just be a flat mechanical bonus of some sort. They might include one, but they'll also include something flavourful alongside it.

Pulling something entirely out of my ass, our equivalent of Headsmans Chop, doing extra damage to prone targets with an axe or heavy blade, might also include a clause that when you bloody or kill an enemy with the weapon, you could intimidate a nearby opponent as a free action, your brutal execution sewing fear into your foes.

Not that a feat like that will necessarily find its way into the final game, but contrasting an existing 4e feat with how we're trying to make them feel more interesting and worthwhile.

Players are going to pay the game in front of them the vast majority of the time.

If your game is heavily designed towards a series of long tactical miniature based combats as 4E is then players are going to spend most of the game resolving conflicts with long tactical miniature based combat as that's what all their abilities are geared towards.

Moving something like character background to be part of character creation as part of the system at least goes some way in getting players to treat the game as an RPG. Albeit a little clumsily. Likewise then freeing up the design space as 5E does to force the DM and players to freeform a lot more creates actual engaging roleplay choices beyond I use my daily power to do an awesome thing.

Yes you , but again I can give my Warhammer 40k captain a backstory , it doesn't make 40K a roleplaying game.

Actually read the OP, dumbass.

I have.

That's my suggestion.

Tone down the tactical miniature elements.
Add in actual elements that encourage roleplay.

I.E make 5e.5

So either you haven't read it, or your reading comprehension is utterly pitiful.

My favourite 4e feats tend to be feats that give mechanical bonuses that lean towards a particular playstyle, resulting in defining traits

For example, a really fun feat is surprising charge, which yes, gives a mechanical bonus, but it encourages behaviour you wouldn't normally see in a rogue, namely, trying to constantly charge almost like a barbarian. Or the monk weapon style feats, which kinda annihilated the "unarmed" nature of the monk, but all added different bonuses to the flurry of blows that changed how you wanted to use it (except for stupid crashing wave which is just MOAR DAMAGE)

Feats that give you bonuses for doing things you already want to do (for example, warforged tactics giving bonuses for ganging up on a single target) are the ones that are boring, because they just give a bonus without changing anything

>backgrounds in 5e had a horrible sense of trying to tell people what characters they should play rather than letting them play their own
How do you mean?

That's a really interesting angle I hadn't actually considered before, but it's a very good point. Thanks, I'll try to keep that in mind for our feat design going forward. You're right, things which prompt you to change up your playstyle, rather than just reinforcing the same thing you're already good at, are interesting. I don't think all feats can be like that, or you'll end up with characters being an unfocused mess, but it's certainly something we'll want to support.

...but they want to make something based on 4e, not 5e.

What I'm mostly suggesting is that you have feats that reinforce particular playstyles that aren't inherently obvious, not that they all have to reinforce different playstyles

Stacking feats that boost the same sort of thing to get a host of benefits is fun. Like how a charging barbarian gets bonus speed when charging from a power, free action charge after a kill from a class feature, phasing while charging from a paragon path, extra damage on charges thanks to feats and a helmet, and the ability to use an encounter power on a charge once per day from a pair of boots resulting in really powerful charges

Being able to build a character for a purpose is fun, in fact i think it's the most fun thing about character building, having a mechanical goal in mind like "teleport everywhere", "be awesome at charging", or "scariest guy in the world" and then taking all the disparate qualities you can to make it reality

That makes a lot of sense and is something we'd certainly want to support. The feat example I gave earlier seems like it'd contribute to the 'scariest guy in the world' goal, for example.

Inb4 Strikefag

I feel like 4e doesn't need a successor, it needs to be completed.

4e shows some signs of an early death and some rushed development near the end. The essentials line all basically replaced arcane/divine/primal/psionic power 2, leaving some conspicuous holes in the design structure of the game.

The addition of weapon expertise feats and other taxes exist because WotC wasn't able to publish a better solution. The game would have been better off creating a player's handbook deluxe collection with errata as a final project.

The dungeon master's guide 3 is absent even though it's obvious based on the essentials materials and the monster manual 3 that the math behind the system design changed drastically since the first DMG. Those hoping to accurately update older monsters and traps were forced to reverse-engineer newer materials. The updated monster math would be continued in the monster vault and the essentials line, but only a tiny portion of the monsters were fully updated.

To be completely frank, a "new" 4e is not something anybody wants. One of the good things about 4e is how much content and development it has, and throwing that out of the window seems like masturbatory vaporware. What some people might actually want is a project that finishes what 4e started. After all, why repeat all of the effort that went into creating 4e, when a tiny fraction of that effort could be put toward finishing it?

This is a fair judgement

You could probably say the same thing about 3.5, which had a lot of really cool stuff introduced right near the very end that never really got explored

Completing 4e is a noble goal, but it's one that there's no potential reward for. No matter how much work you put into it, the best you'll end up with is a big chunk of homebrew that most people won't use or know about, and you have no ability to be rewarded for without risking annoying WotC. Plus, even then, there are some issues with the base systems and structures of 4e that we dislike and want the opportunity to fix.

Is it taking on a bigger job? Sure. But we believe that the end result is a better game that we'll wholly own and will, hopefully, be able to get financial support to keep developing and expanding it. Of course, that's a long way away, we intend to have a fully functional core book available before we even start to think about making money from it.

My ideal would be heavily informed by the design of Gamma World 7e, Legend, and Fantasy Craft.

Every character is a hybrid of a sort: Gamma World has PCs comprised of two character types.
In Legend a class is built of three thematic ability tracks and to multiclass is to swap one of those with one from another class or the separate single tracks that add entirely new spins to any character.
Fantasy Craft has you choose a 'Specialty' at character creation that adds its own direction to character concept and ability. Specialties also encompass the 'classic' fantasy classes: Fighter, Wizard, Sorcerer, etc., all mix and mash with Fantasy Craft's actual classes.

In Gamma World there are broad and simple weapon and equipment categories: Heavy weapons are a tiny bit less accurate but more powerful, and are based on the higher of Strength or Con. Lighter weapons do less damage but are more accurate and based on the higher of Dex or Int.
In Legend every weapon does the same base damage and has different tags granting modifications.

Ability scores all have passive bonuses in Legend, and in Legend and Fantasy Craft skills effectively contain free utility powers.
Additionally in Legend different classes and features can grant different "key offensive modifiers" or "key defensive modifiers," so your AC and attack/damage bonus can be much more freely based off of different things.

In Fantasy Craft the more interesting combat abilities are gained through feats (and spending proficiencies, but that's a bit more esoteric). Feats grant passive bonuses, but also stance and attack abilities--effectively granting a normal feat bonus as well as one or two powers.
Legend has "Iconic" feats that add very specific and character defining exploits or hooks, though you can only ever have one.

As said, I think feats are the key revision needed for 4e. There are too many fiddly ones as is, and most aren't really that interestig to begin with. Your idea of splitting them is good tho. Another good thing would be to integrate themes from the beginning, maybe even keeping just the static traits more than the power choices.

Fuck off you cockmongling fucknugget. This is a thread where Veeky Forums is getting shit done. Go troll someone else with your stale memes.

Youuuuuu fucking fucker 4e already has more systems for roleplaying than any other fucking edition of the fucking game.

OP, please keep skill challenges. Tweak them if you need, there's a few newer games that have similar subsystems that can be mined, but the idea is worth keeping.

Integrating Themes into the game by default is something we're very much going for, trying to give them as much weight as PP's or ED's, even if in different ways. It's not quite 'Combine two things' as suggests, but we like the greater flexibility of getting to vary up your choices each tier.

So wait, what are you doing about party roles?

Party roles are an utterly vital aspect of 4e, but I feel like doing the Strike! thing is a bad idea because it ends with all your classes feeling watered-down to make them all work with every role

Not him, but I'm glad for that. I think if 4e's Themes and Backgrounds were there at launch it would have gone a long way towards ensuring people were satisfied with it from the outset.

OP here, that wasn't me. We're sticking with 4e's roles and making each class specifically tied to a role. I agree that dividing the two is a weakness in Strike's design, and one of the reasons I don't much care for it, although I can see why people do.

One thing we are changing up is having Support and Utility powers (in combat and out of combat utility power split into two different categories) drawn from Power Source rather than Class. We think it'll make sources more meaningful and open up choices a bit more, if someone does want to splash things outside their role or pick up a particular trick.

Hmmm, I agree in terms of out of combat, but in-combat utility is pretty closely tied to role

Things like mass marking or instant defense bonuses for defenders, damage boosts and mobility for strikersl healing and buffs for leaders and terrain alteration for controllers. I mean, it's not clear cut, certainly you have defensive controller abilities, mobility stuff on defenders and strikers offering minor buffs to allies. But as a general rule, in combat role is more tied to utility powers than power source

We'll see how it goes going forward. The idea is that every source will have its own ways of fulfilling those various role staples, but tying it to source also allows characters to splash different kinds of power if they want to do something a little different. Still, very little of this is set in stone, we're trying to keep our design flexible and to adapt if something isn't working.

No. Get rid of dailies, they were a pain in the ass to keep track of. Have encounter powers and at will only. Stop fucking cementing the brainless rest fight rest structure with meta currency and resource management. Reduce the fucktarded hp bloat. Get rid of meaningless combat bloat like modifiers that hang in the air and have to be written down or forgotten mid combat. Make ongoing damage rare instead of a constant thing. Nothing is more anticlimactic than a monster at 3 hp dying from ongoing damage instead of an actual attack. Delete proficiency bonus, and delete feats which are basically extraneous. Cut out the racial powers they are useless bloat. Give wizards good utility but give fighters good options to counter them (i.e. you can cast spells while flying but each time you get damaged in the air you have to make a check or the spell ends). Do that and maybe your game will be good. Ignore my advice and you'll have a retroclone that no one will play.

I think the important thing about dailies is that you should have them operate on some other schedule than "per day"

"Per session" or "per story arc" I think works better, it's how 13th Age does it and while there's elements of 13th Age I'm really not fond of (give me my grid back), this is something I like about it

Not him but they were pregenerated concepts and assumed that all soldiers would be good at chess or playing cards. The backgrounds were crap and the "make your own" option was even worse. Just make char options that allow you to build to what you want, instead of "muh role-playing mechanics." If you need rules to roleplay, you are a shitter. Combat is different because it cannot be acted out at a table very well. Words can.

Can you explain your logic behind some of those? Just asserting them it more seems like you stating your playstyle preferences than making points about game design.

>that all soldiers would be good at chess or playing cards. The backgrounds were crap and the "make your own" option was even worse
That strikes me as immediately contradictory. The "make your own" option is essentially to not assume all the backgrounds are always the same, by changing the skill, language, and tool proficiencies to ones that suit your character's history.

Why? They add nothing. If everyone's carrying around a trump card they'll either hoard it for the boss fight or blow their load instantly them rest. Story arc is arbitrary as fuck and session based economy is metagame crap that ends in characters not wanting to do shit for half the session because they are down on resources and the only way to refresh them is to end the session. Try playing savage worlds and have to end early because no one really wants to start the battle now that they are out of bennies so you either dick them over and they all die because the combat in that game is based around characters having bennies, or you end session because of some gay ass mechanic.

No, that shits fucking stupid. Encounter powers are bad enough but at least you can just remember them and move on. AEDU was a mistake. That's why wizards of the coast moved away from it for 5e (except for vestiges of it in fighter action surge and second wind which are even more gay shit).

Basically just copy 4.0 but add better roleplaying options. The limited alignments didn't make sense and seemed like forced gaminess to me.

>assume all the backgrounds are always the same, by changing the skill, language, and tool proficiencies to ones that suit your character's history.
Then why have it at all? Just let people pick their fucking skills, and for fucks sake just remove skills entirely. You're a ranger? Yes you can do survival and track. Why does that need to be a choice? Let us actually choose interesting skills, fuck the backgrounds.

Is everyone saving their special move for a boss fight a bad thing?

I like what dailies add to a system, big special moves that you can bust out when you need them, and at least in a 4e context I've never seen it lead to the behaviour you describe, since you still have encounters and at will powers. Surges are the reason you stop and take a rest, not dailies.

>Then why have it at all?
Essentially to trick people to commit to character definition who wouldn't otherwise.

Dailies make no in-world sense, promote metagaming, provide no real benefit besides "muh resource management", and are a pain in the ass to track. If you start designing from a vacuum there is no reason to create daily powers. Interesting options for martials != make martials spellcasters. Just give them interesting manuvers for them to do on their turn. Give a fighter three at will powers that each do something different, and an encounter power for some double attack or extra damage or whirlwind attack or something else. Then as fighter levels up he can pick new powers to replace what he has. Restructure the entire damage system. Use 5e action economy and resistance/ vulnerability system. One of the few things it did intelligently.

>better roleplaying options
No. Stop. Why do you need options to roleplay? The best part of 4e was that it stayed the fuck out of roleplay. I agree they should bring back the old alignments though. Even though d&d has had no understanding of law vs chaos for almost 20 years now.

Powers are implicitly a narrative mechanic, and we on the design team are okay with that. If that's not your preference, your view makes sense, but it's not an aspect we have any intention of changing. As I said in the OP, we like the powers system as it is, we just want to expand its scope, having more flexibility in the limitations you can put on daily tier powers as well as more options for powers outside of combat.

Exactly. It's to pander to normalfucks, powergamers, and spergs.

So if they only come up in 1/10th of the encounters, why have them at all? Why not just use action points, let characters burn them for double damage or something like that? Why make a bunch of powers that get hoarded and barely used? Surges are also dumb. You should regain 25% of your total hp after a 10 minute rest anyway because that first 25% is supposed to just be you getting tired anyway.

Since this is a 4e related thread, does anyone happen to have a link to the 4e trove?

How is that pandering to anybody? That doesn't follow.

Because something being used rarely but being more powerful because of it is a narrative trope people enjoy? It's the whole idea behind finishing moves and special attacks. Something showing up less often, but being more powerful, is a common narrative formula and as a mechanic a lot of people find it fun.

Surges are also, like powers, more of a narrative mechanic. In a movie, you'll see characters beaten up all the time, but unless things get very serious they'll generally only have aesthetic damage going into the next fight. As a mechanic it allows every fight to threaten enough damage to take people down, without every fight potentially ending the adventure or forcing people to retreat. It's a stylistic choice, not a realistic one.

Because if you need to be "tricked" into role-playing, it's because you either don't know how (normies), or don't want to (powergaming spergs).

I like the resource management elements. It's one of 4e's stronger aspects imo. I've never experiencedthe 5 mib workday you speak of either; that was more a 3.5 thing.

Then make dailies conditional, or give them a consequence for use beyond "you cant anymore". Hell, make them trigger or refresh on a natural 20 crit or something. Do something interesting with them. I mean, do what you want, but the way they are structured now is going to give the potion/wand problem. It also solidifies the fight rest fight rest structure that makes most dungeons hardly challenging at all and makes combat not an issue of whether the characters all win without losing people and more about how much hp/spells/powers/healing surges they spend to do so. It's about as compelling as tracking rations, because that's basically what it is. 3.5 and 4e and 5e all have this problem. If you don't believe me, play an OSR game for a bit.

Honestly, this just seems like a playstyle conflict. We aren't making an OSR game, we're making a game based on 4e. I can understand the appeal of OSR, even if I don't particularly enjoy the playstyle, but I don't think it'd add to our design if we attempted to spread ourselves so thinly across all possible forms of D&D. We'd probably end up looking something vaguely like 5e.

Not OP, but one of the devs on it who works with them. This is basically something we're intending to do - Dailies are being replaced with powers that are specifically NOT once per day, but instead on a rare refresh or trigger, so that if you specifically seek out opportunities to recovery your 'daily' you can have a chance at doing so.

56289098
>Hell, make them trigger or refresh on a natural 20 crit or something.
That does not support tactical play. You seem to be treating dailies as if they're just bigger damage. When you need a fighter's lasting threat daily, it's a specific situation you need it in. It's not always valuable and triggering off a crit is pretty worthless or even detrimental. The barb triggering rage of the swift panther when he has no need for mobility is wasted, warden triggering winter's herald when there's nothing worth slowing is wasted, etc. Many dailies are powerful but situational effects that really would only be needed rarely. That is the niche they fill and its a good one. If you want to argue the big damage dailies should be relegated to a seperate mechanic or eliminated altogether, fine, but other dailies are a useful mechanic as they are.

I'm not saying make it an OSR, I'm saying learn what makes an OSR combat compelling. It's very different than 3.x+ and if I try to explain it I'll just make it sound retarded.

That sounds better. Definitely better than arbitrary once per day.

I'm saying make dailies completely different, not just copying 4e dailies and making them refresh on a nat20 that'd be retarded I agree.

I'd like to see something like 3.5 tactical feats (as intended not executed) where you need to set up a situation for them to work. Just don't require pcs doing stupid shot to set up their powers, but encourage them to get into certain situations where they can use a power that has certain requirements to be used.

But we're not going for OSR combat. We're going for 4e combat.

In 4e combat, sure, it's pretty inevitable that the PC's are going to reach the end of the dungeon, and the question is how much it costs them to get there. But that's an aspect of it I enjoy. Surges and dailies are tangible losses you can suffer getting through the fights, and doing well or badly can have a huge impact on how the final fight at the end goes, as without enough resources it can be a really rough ride for everyone involved.

>and if I try to explain it I'll just make it sound retarded.
If you can't articulate how it works or why it's a good idea, what makes you think you have a firm enough grasp on it to recommend it to others for a particular scenario?

>town down the tactical miniature elements

fuck you, fuck you you fucking mongoloid.
I know you are just baiting here but this mindset is what i hate about DnD fans.

Nobody cares about your fucking middle school method acting you fucking cretin

What sort of refresh/situation trigger would you be thinking about. I love 4e still think it's the best game I've ever played, but the idea that dailies are going to be replaced with something that triggers only under certain circumstances or triggers sounds a bit off since all of 4es powers are meant to invoke a specific moment in an action movie type of combat, what sort of refresh would you give then? something along the likes of Maneuvers from PoW/BoNS then? each class having a specific way of triggering a refresh or something like that?

'Replaced' is the wrong word. We're expanding the scope of what daily powers can be, rather than removing daily powers and implementing something else.

OK. that's good to know. I'll definitely be following this thread so keep at it user. You're doin God's work.

mostly covered it, but keep in mind I am primarily talking about a *recovery* trigger for those daily-tier abilities, rather than a *usability* trigger, which seems to have been a misunderstanding you made.

I suppose it's worth asking here how people would respond to an abstract wealth system, as opposed to granular D&D GP spending. It's something the design team is divided on, with some people loving granular currencies and others preferring abstract systems and not having to fiddle around with exact values.

Granular wealth has never made sense or aided in any aspect of play imo. I'd be okay with an abstract system

I was one of the first ones to reply.

Strike! is a different beast from 4e. It doesn't really work as a successor. I like the way it handles things, but stuff that's enjoyable in 4e (more complex builds, for example) just has no place in it.

make it abstract. At lower levels nobody likes to play accountant with every dime and penny, and at higher levels single characters are richer than most kingdoms.

strike does have classes that are inherently very strongly tied to a role, such as the Warlord or the Shieldbearer.

Third in favor of abstract wealth. Granular is fine for gritty low-fantasy games, not for 4e's heroic fantasy.

On top of granular wealth, we're pondering a system of magic item slots. Probably 1+tier slots, where items outside slots aren't useless, but attuning to an item gets you extra benefits and is generally what you want for your core pieces of gear.

An idea I've had to make empty slots not feel useless is that, if a slot is empty, you can instead fill it with a number of consumables in a town. This is somewhat justified with the idea that maintaining a magic item takes money and work, and without the pressure of doing so you can instead pick up more temporary supplies, but I worry that might feel overly gamey, even if I don't want empty slots to just be useless.

This isn't the only way you can gain consumables, but it'd be a way of reliably having access to some.

Bump

What are people's thoughts on the Shadow power source? It was never really explored much in 4e (Only 1 non essentials class) and doesn't have as much historical backgrounds as the other power sources had.

There were also other power sources that were debated as well (ki, elemental) plus there are some from other games (fel from Warcraft for example).

OP here, we're currently playing around with reworking Power Sources a little, making Shadow a more general power source for indirect, subtle action. This is in addition to our idea that each Class might have multiple Sources, one from class choice and one from feature choice, for example.

We're pondering making the Rogue class Shadow based, but with a Martial feature choice alongside some others.

Well I'd say tension and lethality but those are just buzzwords. It's more the fact that it feels like a real fight, with messy swings, solid hits that roll shit on damage, dying at 0 or close to it, every fight feels like it's down to the wire and there's no power attack or shit to speed it up. But the PCs still win most fights. And it's still a d&d fight. Just because I can't articulate it doesn't mean I don't understand it. That said you guys seem to know what you want so carry on. I just hope you cut out some of 4es bloat (d&d's bloat honestly) and focus on the maneuvers being interesting and low bookkeeping.

Additional thing-

We're trying to make humans less of a generic race, and more an interesting choice in their own right. How would people react to Humans losing their bonus feat/at will power in exchange for more focused, thematic features?

Something like Heroic Effort?

To be honest, I like how 4e portrayed humans. Versatile but corruptible.

That's a cool idea. Gamey as hell but I mean you're already going balls deep with that side of 4e so why not?

For gaining consumables, how about class features or utility powers that let you refresh consumables mid-adventure (out in the field, or after harvesting foes with certain tags like poison)?

So one guy might have a rogue who uses complex traps and an enchanted dagger (getting some Corvo vibes here) and this guy is extracting that giant spider's poison sacs and drinking his own piss out in the forest to get the job done. Corvorogue has a feat where he 'knows a guy' who gets him more bang for his buck re: his consumables. He has a notVatican connection who can hook him up with some silver stakes for the Lycans or a Virgin Wail-mimic for the bloodsuckers. One cleric has a holy crucifix for better heals, another cleric is a nature worshipper and has ALL the goodberries. The fighter has a suit of magic armour, a magic shield and a flaming sword and calls them all pussies.

You could do a lot with this.

Seconding, I also really loved 4e's 'the big action protagonist' feel to humans. The party says 'someobe's got to hold the door closed and sacrifice themse-' and the human' already gone, no questions asked. 'Nobody could survive that,' say the bad guys, and the human is holding onto the ledge by his fingernails and sweating blood. Like most racial choices they were at their most iconic and flavourful in 4e already.

Well, I hope you'll like our current plans, as they're pretty much like this, but in less "direct numbers" ways.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was hoping that could enable.

Although pondering it, specific and powerful consumables would also make perfect sense as just straight up equivalent to a magic item, rather than simply a way to occupy the slot while not using one. You could even have items like bandoliers or potion pouches which augmented the use of a slot to hold consumables. A lot to think about there.

Isn't 13th Age a D&D 4th successor?

...

It's more like a mesh of 4e and 3.5.

Easy mode: take all of your 4e stuff, douse it in gasoline in your back yard, light a match and then go out and get 5e stuff.

Personal thought on the daily debate: I agree with both sides in some regards. dailies are one of those things that gets annoying as sin to keep track of, but it's also cool to have a "fuck it" button that blows holes in the enemy ranks, or deep fries a boss. When I dabbled in unfucking 4e (after realizing I hated it as D&D but loved it as a game) My personal solution was to just MMO the fuck out of it, and have the powers on cooldowns, with "dalies" having a crazy long cooldown that either didn't tick down outside of combat, or did so at a painfully slow rate.

My personal take on the powers were:
>At-Wills
Keep as is but generally allow the players to have a few more (like what psionics did)
>Encounters
I just gave my group an extra one at 1st level that could be replaced at 11th which would then be replaced at 21st.
>Dailies
Could be used twice per 8 hours but only once per combat.

I adjusted the fights accordingly by giving enemies some (in order of use by me) more abilities/harder to hit/more health

Could always check some retroclones for streamlining ideas, so here

taxidermicowlbear.weebly.com/dd-retroclones.html