I'm not just talking about feat taxes. Those are really a composite problem, and as I'll be addressing each part in turn, I don't think they need their own section. No, this is feats as a whole. One thing I've noticed over the years is that every new idea in D&D seems to go through a sort of hazing period, where it'll be published one way, then refined a little before too long(if it's kept). Generally, this works out. The idea gets tested in the field, as it were, then gets its act together and starts being a good to decent part of the game.
Feats have been around for a dozen years now, and they have not really improved at all. They're stupidly vaguely defined. What is a feat? I have a full, comprehensive practical understanding of what feats do, when I get them and how much to expect out of them and even on pain of death, I wouldn't be able to give a cleaner definition of feats than "Minor Character Customization" without listing those levels at which you get them. I mean, as of this writing, a feat can get you weapon proficiency, new powers, a multiclass, three languages, angel heritage, guild admittance, tribal affiliation, a dragonmark, vampiric powers, skill training, a subrace or math fixes that should have been errata. Feats need an actual design purpose, and Idea Graveyard isn't good enough. As a player, I don't need to be told what that design purpose is(though it'd be nice), but it's painfully clear that the devs don't know, either.
I really like rituals. Rituals were a nice way to make utility magic ready to go(no resting/re-prepping) and to divorce them from your daily allotment of combat spells, which has made them get used way more often than I saw in previous editions. The numbers on component costs and casting times needed some tweaking though, and they never got it. Support for rituals wasn't exactly lacking, but it always came in the same form: more rituals. More rituals wasn't what was needed, really(after a point, obviously). What would have made rituals so much better would have been to have other elements tie into them, perhaps giving bonuses or freebies. Like the Bard class ability that lets you cast a free one a day. Bring on the paragon path that gives free rituals. Show me a magic ritual book that lets you use rituals with key skills you aren't trained in as if you were trained in them or lets you sub in Skill X for whatever the ritual usually uses. This potential was basically left to wither, and rituals never really got traction within the player base.
I like power sources, too. At first they were a simple nicety, codifying a concept that most players were already familiar with. But they started to take it further. There were source specific paragon paths and epic destinies. Source specific feats. Then it kinda stopped. They should have taken it further. Source specific utility powers, maybe? Or even just less class specific things and more source specific, to tie the classes within a source together better. If i were remaking 4e, I'd put in Power Source specific powers. Maybe not at every level, but at some.
I was also unhappy at first about the "abandoned" power sources, like Shadow, Elemental and Ki. But abandonment isn't the right problem. Arcane continues to be the Beast That Devours All Design Space. Shadow almost got a foot in the door with the Assassin before Arcane mugged it and finished taking its stuff. Shadow was left with two classes to itself, the Assassin and the Vampire, two of the crappiest 4e classes. Elemental didn't even get that far. What were they gonna do for Shadow? A Warlock? Nope, Arcane ate it. For Elemental, maybe some kind of element wielding caster? Nope, Arcane ate it. Ki was devoured by Psionic, and I was irate at Psionics until I realized it needed the sustenance to survive. What are Psionics good for in fiction? Telepathy, Telekinetics and Starting fires with their brains. Arcane ate all that for breakfast. If you could kill Arcane as a power source, we could have Psionics, Ki, Shadow, Elemental and probably two more from raiding its stuff.
Modularity, Everywhere I don't want it and nowhere I doShow
Modularity is the hot buzzword that is usually invoked to ensure the reader that 5e will be all ponies and sunshine(or rather, ponies and sunshine will be available in an optional module for those want them), but actually 4e has a bit of it. It turns up a lot in character creation. Can we use Background Benefits? Can we use Themes? Which ones? Can we use Essentials? Psionics? These are all things clearly intended to be used with a normal game, but easily separated and left out, in a modular style. And honestly, it kinda irks me. I mean, Psionics, sure, you can exclude those for entirely solid campign reasons, but I've only ever seen Themes, Background Benefits or Essentials exluded for one these two reasons. First is "I don't have access to that material." That one's fair enough. The other is that they think it's going to be power creep, not meant for a normal, right thinking man's game(yes, I've even heard this said about using a background benefit for +2 to Insight). I can't muster up the illogic to blame the devs for not having these ideas earlier than they did, but not having them printed in the core really hurt those ideas.
The second bit of this is that the modularity of 4e never seems to be where I want it to be. Because most of the systems in 4e are either independent, or have very simple connections to the rest, it's quite easy to rip things out and plug things in. The Inherent bonus system is a good example. Take magic items out, put Inherent Bonuses in. Modular in action(albeit a small module). They could have had a lot of fun with this, and I really think 4e could have handled and even been better for a good volume of unearthed arcana. Maybe two.
When I start a new 4e campaign, we inevitably discuss what modules are going to be in use(usually no one calls them modules, but the question is the same). I'd much rather that discussion be about how much we're going to get out of the Seafaring Module, or if we want to use the Kingship Module or the Low-Magic Module rather than whether I can train in Nature to represent all those years my character lived in a forest.
I don't hate errata itself. I'm actually really keen on the idea that at least one person at WotC has time in their schedule set aside to give us free solutions to issues that might come up. But the implementation of errata in 4e was bad. Whenever an element popped its head up as being abuseable or overpowered, they had a marked tendency to go overkill on it, taking the offending element down so far that most people didn't want it anymore. More care should have been taken to get these elements back down to say, 8-9/10, rather than cutting them from 13/10 to 4/10.
At the same time as they were being reckless with little errata, they were being too cautious with big ones. We'd have been saved all manner of feat tax crap just by the devs taking a deep breath and issuing errata directly to the math rather than offering up feats to fix it. Then they flipflopped again by updating monster damage in MM3, but the Feat Tax had already been born.
This one probably irks me most often. Support in 4e is wildly uneven. You could make an entire class just out of Fighter support that I've forgotten about, while Seeker fans no longer have it in them to even weep softly at night. Maybe it's a natural consequence of being a big commercial game. You make support for the popular classes. But even then, it cycles, because more people will play the more supported classes.
It's been there since day 1, when weapon users got Weapon Focus and casters got a weird array of damage type focus spells that kinda sucked because very few classes at the point were going to specialize in a damage type, other than clerics and radiant. When Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise came out in a book that had classes who needed both but Versatile Expertise had to wait until PHB3. But at least in the early days they'd throw us a bone once in awhile. Then Mearls took over and there was some consternation when he said there might never be a martial controller because they weren't going to be too careful about "filling the holes". I wasn't too concerned about the martial controller, but I was upset later, when I realized this also meant "To hell with trying to address uneven support issues."
At first I thought that maybe it would be okay, because the essentials sub-class design meant that new classes wouldn't take the support spotligh from old, and they couldn't be fully left to rot, either. That the Mage would be Wizard support, while having access to a bunch of old Wizard support, and to future Wizard support. This much was true, sadly, this mostly just benefitted the Wizard, and a few other "Core" classes, like Fighter and Rogue. It didn't really solve the problem because it didn't boost the classes that needed support the most, but did a lot to support those who already had it in spades.
I think the way uneven support hits races bugs me most, though. I don't know if WotC doesn't understand the uneven support problem, if they don't see it as a problem, or if their hands are just tied by pagespace, but there's so much support for the 'main' races, like Elves, Dwarves and Dragonborn that new races are already undersupported the day they hit print. They'd have to be printed with a good batch of useful feats and a paragon path each to actually be on par now, but they don't get that. I love Hengeyokai, and I'd like to love them so much more, but realistically they are undersupported now and they will never get that support, because hey, we need 5 new types of not-really-elemental-anymore manifestations for Genasi and another round of Elf articles for the 27th subrace of Elves. And the subraces are feats.
Seriously, though, you should check out the PbP Haven. You might also like Real Adventures, IF you're cool.
Knights of W.T.F.- Silver Spur Winner
4enclave, a place where 4e fans can talk 4e in peace.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />Magic Items -- they should be *awesome* and completely unnecessary to the viability of the character, rather than vanilla and vital and boring as hell.
Awesome magic means it will be very necessary to the PC. Our heroic PC can get an awesome +5 sword, at which point the DM's only choices are to have really easy encounters or ramp the encounters up to where the loss of the sword means the PC retires or dies. You can give the PC wimpy stuff without needing to adjust, but awesome stuff just can't be ignored.
.Magic Items -- they should be *awesome* and completely unnecessary to the viability of the character, rather than vanilla and vital and boring as hell.
Awesome magic means it will be very necessary to the PC. Our heroic PC can get an awesome +5 sword, at which point the DM's only choices are to have really easy encounters or ramp the encounters up to where the loss of the sword means the PC retires or dies. You can give the PC wimpy stuff without needing to adjust, but awesome stuff just can't be ignored.
Nahh. You just have to think differently. There's "OMG you never miss"-awesome! and then theres "Damn, that sword is _cool_"-awesome. Cool things are not necessarily mathematically necessary for the PC to be effective.
To me, a vanilla +5 weapon is not awesome. It's boring. It's even more boring because it's assumed to be available in the hands of a character beyond a certain level (in 4th ed)
A legendary longsword with a name and a history and perhaps does something out of the ordinary - that could be awesome.
A lot of what I'd want has already been said, but for the record:
If I didn't respond, I agree with it.
8) No daily abilities. Replace with daily-like abilities that aren't set to in-game time, but adventure pacing time. At-wills aren't every 6 seconds; they're every Turn. Encounter powers aren't every 5 minutes; they're every Scene. Likewise, Daily powers shouldn't be every 24 hours; they should be every Adventure. Single-handedly negates the "5-minute Workday" problem. I've played around with the Milestone mechanic as a functional replacement for dailies.
I'm not sure about the last term. To me an Adventure can span several game sessions and weeks or months of game time. What are you thinking when you say "Adventure?"
11) Divorce skill checks from specifc stats. Go go Strength + Intimidate for flexed muscle-type threats. I'm sure you can think of more examples.
I don't want to see them divorced from stats, but I would like some skills to have multiple stat options. For instance, it makes sense for strength or charisma to be used for intimidate so they could put the option of using either one of those for the check.
.Magic Items -- they should be *awesome* and completely unnecessary to the viability of the character, rather than vanilla and vital and boring as hell.
Awesome magic means it will be very necessary to the PC. Our heroic PC can get an awesome +5 sword, at which point the DM's only choices are to have really easy encounters or ramp the encounters up to where the loss of the sword means the PC retires or dies. You can give the PC wimpy stuff without needing to adjust, but awesome stuff just can't be ignored.
Nahh. You just have to think differently. There's "OMG you never miss"-awesome! and then theres "Damn, that sword is _cool_"-awesome. Cool things are not necessarily mathematically necessary for the PC to be effective.
To me, a vanilla +5 weapon is not awesome. It's boring. It's even more boring because it's assumed to be available in the hands of a character beyond a certain level (in 4th ed)
A legendary longsword with a name and a history and perhaps does something out of the ordinary - that could be awesome.
If you've never played the computer version of Baldur's Gate, you would love it. Every +1 dagger, or +3 vorpal great axe in the game has a 3 page history on it...
A lot of what I'd want has already been said, but for the record:
If I didn't respond, I agree with it.
8) No daily abilities. Replace with daily-like abilities that aren't set to in-game time, but adventure pacing time. At-wills aren't every 6 seconds; they're every Turn. Encounter powers aren't every 5 minutes; they're every Scene. Likewise, Daily powers shouldn't be every 24 hours; they should be every Adventure. Single-handedly negates the "5-minute Workday" problem. I've played around with the Milestone mechanic as a functional replacement for dailies.
I'm not sure about the last term. To me an Adventure can span several game sessions and weeks or months of game time. What are you thinking when you say "Adventure?"
11) Divorce skill checks from specifc stats. Go go Strength + Intimidate for flexed muscle-type threats. I'm sure you can think of more examples.
I don't want to see them divorced from stats, but I would like some skills to have multiple stat options. For instance, it makes sense for strength or charisma to be used for intimidate so they could put the option of using either one of those for the check.
I'd tie powers and spells to action points. You would start the day with no action points. At the start of each encounter you would gain 2 action points. You could use them for advantage, extra actions, to trigger a maneuver (fighter), trick (rogue), prayer (cleric/paladin), or spell (sorcerer/wizard). Some powers would require only 1 action point, other powers might cost 4 or more. This would allow play to continue all day until Hp ran out and rolls started going bad. In fact you could tie just about anything to this, healing, hp recovery (it costs 1 action point to use a hit dice to recover), etc...etc...
It's not an issue with the pure mechanics of 4E, but it is an issue with the design philosophy of 4E. And it's pretty obvious it was the design philosophy when you look at any of the 4E modules.
I'm not familiar with the published modules, but there have been plenty of LFR modules where things go much easier on the PCs when they talk rather than fight, or run away rather than fight.
In any case, the "design philosophy" is irrelevant. What matters is the kind of game you can make working with (rather than against) the mechanics.
That was always a grey area in the rules, whether the PCs could automatically identify a minion, standard, elite or solo monster.
I agree. This kind of ambiguity was problematic.
Actually, due to the higher amounts of hitpoints and healing vs. damage, it's much easier in 4e for one side or another to retreat from a fight where they're outmatched. Unless the monsters have action/movement denial attacks, of course. In which case, if the DM is expecting PCs to try and retreat from a fight like that, then he's an idiot.
Well no, not really. The problem is that likely at least one of your PCs is wearing heavy armor, which instantly puts him at a drawback since most monsters have a speed of at least 6. Add attacks of opportunity to that, and you'll hardly ever see a successful retreat actually happen, because it's very hard to get a faster speed than the monsters you're fighting.
This was even more of a problem in 3e. And yet, in 4e, one OA isn't going to drop a non-bloodied PC. Plus you can double run. Or hit with a slowing/proning power and run.
power/feat/item bonuses are cool; untype bonus need to go. I would not mind adding feature bonus.
Clearly label sections/tables that are guildlines vs rules at the being of the section. Sprinkled in 3 subheadings is very annoying.
Completely lopside race and class support. If you can not provide even support then the associated class or race should come as a themetic suggest and not a requirement on feats/powers.
I hate hate HATE feats like Power of Skill. I don't want any feat that makes or break a class to be tide to specific religion choices.
The +3 weapon proficiency bonus. I really don't care about simulating that swords are better then everything else.
Imagine a world where the first-time D&D player rolls stats, picks a race, picks a class, picks an alignment, and buys gear to create a character. Imagine if an experienced player, maybe the person helping our theoretical player learn the ropes, could also make a character by rolling ability scores and picking a race, class, feat, skills, class features, spells or powers, and so on. Those two players used different paths to build characters, but the system design allows them to play at the same table. -Mearl
I hate hate HATE feats like Power of Skill. I don't want any feat that makes or break a class to be tide to specific religion choices.
This reminds me of one of my personal 4e hates.
Now, any system is going to have some natural tension between "I'd like clerics of different deities to really feel different from each other mechanically" and "I'd like deity choice to not feel too mechanical-power motivated." In a perfect world we'd have a number of different choices that are nicely balanced against each other, but we don't live in a perfect world and so things like the dozen sub-sub-choices that a few classes make don't really get as much balance attention.
4e managed to somehow totally blow it on both counts, by making deity choice almost irrelevant to the overall mechanical feel of a divine character (barring houseruling spells to do different types of damage) and simultaneously providing options so poorly balanced against each other that certain deities were just straight-up better than others. (It was actually most egregious in my mind in the initial FR offering.) Most of the deity-specific options were so bad that it wasn't worth taking them at all for many deities, meaning your deity had no mechanical effect on your character at all, other than that your character was less strong for not worshipping a better one. Even the ones worth taking tended to be incredibly lightweight and nearly all of them in general had only an extremely tenuous connection to the deity or deities in question (That guy just healed someone, only kind of slow? Obviously a devout worshipper of the goddess of the sea and the wilderness!), or required you to use a certain at-will power for them to have any effect at all. I'm very comfortable saying that I hope that whatever Next's domain system looks like, it looks nothing like 4e's.
Dwarves invented beer so they could toast to their axes. Dwarves invented axes to kill people and take their beer.
"Feel free to claim I said anything you like. How's someone going to call you out on it? Are they going to be all like, 'I know all of the things that Gary said, and that's not one of them?'" - Gary Gygax
.Magic Items -- they should be *awesome* and completely unnecessary to the viability of the character, rather than vanilla and vital and boring as hell.
Awesome magic means it will be very necessary to the PC. Our heroic PC can get an awesome +5 sword, at which point the DM's only choices are to have really easy encounters or ramp the encounters up to where the loss of the sword means the PC retires or dies. You can give the PC wimpy stuff without needing to adjust, but awesome stuff just can't be ignored.
Nahh. You just have to think differently. There's "OMG you never miss"-awesome! and then theres "Damn, that sword is _cool_"-awesome. Cool things are not necessarily mathematically necessary for the PC to be effective.
To me, a vanilla +5 weapon is not awesome. It's boring. It's even more boring because it's assumed to be available in the hands of a character beyond a certain level (in 4th ed)
A legendary longsword with a name and a history and perhaps does something out of the ordinary - that could be awesome.
The premise of 4e is that you will throw away any legendary sword of +1, no matter what its name or history and pretty much no matter what non broken thing it can do, about as soon as you can get hold of a generic +2, and that seems to largely be the case. There will be the corner cases of Sword With The Ability That Really Fits Your PC when you will prefer it to the +2 generic, but when you can have the generic +3... You had better have access to special Sword +2 or you will take that generic. Even if we assume you will stick to that special sword, we can see the general preference for the generic. And we are trying to design a game all will want to play, not one that only you will want to play.
