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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 9:43AM
#21
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Date Joined:
Aug 26, 2007
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The biggest thing that I would have changed to 4th edition was how bloody long combat became. Everyone at my table had a character sheet with 2-3 sheets of 9 combat cards, each card with a paragraph or two of text. EACH turn took forever as people had to read over what they could do. Even if they were reading and planning in advanced this would take a long time.
I liked the fact that the Fighter could do more than just swing his axe. Some of those powers really helped out, and made my players feel like more than a one trick pony.... but after a while, too many powers just bogged our group down.
Also, the multiple effects affecting creatures got to be cumbersome. My group used the ring around plastic cola bottles to mark various effects.... but still. By the end of a standard game, the evil necromancer had rainbow hula-hoops surrounding him.
When I play and not DM (which is seldom) I tend to play magic users. And while they had some cool spells in 4th ed, I felt like there weren't as many that I could use outside of combat. Our D&D games are full of fun/funny uses for spells beyond dealing damage and status effects.
Lastly, I would have changed the book layout. While the art was beautiful, and the stat-block approach to powers and magical items were great..... there wasn't as much of the fluff. When I would thumb through a new book, I would see pages and pages of powers, items, feats. But very little on background, suggested ways of playing, advice, wacky d% charts. I missed those.
All said, I did enjoy 4th edition, it just got too big too quickly for my tastes.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 10:21AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Jun 13, 2010
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I´m not very demanding, but the things I would change about 4E are, in level of importance:
1 - Combat must be faster. Not that I dislike tactical combat, I love it, but I don’t´ like when it replaces the RP time. So, drastically lowering monster HPs could be essential.
2 - I would make miniatures optional, so you use when you need it, when you like it. I like them, I collect them, but I´m aware some people don’t care for it very much, making it not optional is bad for the game.
3 - Less meaningless choices, meaning feats/powers. There are to many powers that do almost the same thing, just a tiny bit different. For that they call it with a different name and put another stat block for it. Too many feats, it gets overwhelming some times. 4 – Less mechanical elements that are not tied in some acceptable description in the game world, I mean powers that do stuff, but don´t really explain how that actually happens. Sometimes it’s a bit of a trouble to figure these out if you are more in to a storytelling mode. For example, why wouldn’t a creature grant me cover? Those type things. I woul like thing that makes sense only in a war game redesigned. 5 - Adventures that are more open ended rather than a succession of encounters. More focus in Story.
Anyway I think 4E is a great game, I play it right now, and I love lots of things in it. I´m not too mechanics oriented, but I really enjoy the elements tied to story, like paragon paths, backgrounds, ohhh... backgrounds are great, themes, all the approaches in DMG 2 are amazing. So, it’s a great game, I only house rule some tweaking in Monster HPs, and use lots of minions, other than that I mostly play by the book, Its great and you can build great stories using it. I can play it for years, even essentials or regular 4E.
I´m confident that DnD 5E will keep up with the story elements and add more flavor to it. I´m not too worried about the mechanical changes at al. I survived Thac0, I guess I´m all set.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 10:26AM
#23
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The thing my group has found to be the root of our gripes with 4e is the (to us) artificial construct of the "encounter" as a timing/recharge mechanism.
Resource management boils down to dailies and healing surges: you get a "reset to zero" at the end of every encounter until you run out of these two things. And then you die in the next encounter.
Fixing that would require reworking a lot of stuff... Not sure how everything else would hang together afterwards.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 1:04PM
#24
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Date Joined:
Feb 17, 2010
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Flat Math: this is all important to me. The Math ladder makes things difficult to balance and doesn't really serve any purpose except to make people think their character is getting stronger. However if we make the game assumptions just a bit more protagonocentric (meaning that the math is always an abstraction from the PoV of the player characters) we can mantain the feeling of power progression while still having solid math.
No more +Xs: It just doesn't serve any good purpose. This is the root cause of feat taxes AND the magic item treadmill. It has to go.
Wealth detached from advancement: We already have a numerical value for advancement in the form of EXP, I don't see why wealth has to be part of advancement. I prefer wealth as a fun tool you can RP with. Perhaps you arm millitias in local towns to help protect villages from attack. Perhaps you open chaples to your deity wherever you go, perhaps you bribe politicians in a corrupt city. Whatever you do with money it shouldn't be a neccesary part of the magic item treadmill.
Retool Skill Challenges: Other people have made this point better than I can.
Rituals need work: No more cash cost. Give us some other mechanic to control ritual use.
Exeption based Class design: Like the psionic, I think the idea of using AEDU but with exeptions would work well and be interesting. Of course you would have to work to avoid the essentials failure of making some classes dummy versions. However I would love to see a fighter that had stances, Encounter powers and recharge powers in place of dailies. I think a system like that could be made to work.
Rules for building your own: Monsters and magic items are the two things that jump out at me. Monsters don't need to change at all but I do think they should do a better job with templates: So say you want a warrior goblin you apply the warrior template to the basic numbers and then give it a goblin flavored feature or two. With magic items it would be even simpler, a table or something of appropriate powers and properties to give magic items.
Escalation Dice: Heard about this mechanic that is being added to 13th age. From what I understand you get a dice pool based on how many rounds have already happened in the encounter and you get to add them to whatever die rolls you want to increase damage/accuracy/ect. I love this idea, seems like it would probably cut a round or two from combat.
Chris Perkins DM AI: Create an AI based on Chris Perkins brain and give us a copy with each purchase of the DMG so that he can run our games for us. I keep asking and WotC keeps failing to make it happen. I would finaly be able to play instead of having to DM all the time.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 1:54PM
#25
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Conservative, rule-based class design. Not every character needs to have exactly the same number and type of resources. This design principle, we can already see, has been thoroughly ignored in 5e, so thumbs up for that.
Rule-based power design. I acknowledge that page 42 of the DMG exists, and that a good DM can encourage whatever behavior he wants, but the vast, vast majority of 4e material carries the implicit message that "You can do what your powers say you can do." 5e needs to do better at telling players and DMs that they are free and welcome to get creative.
Weak multiclassing rules. A feat tax to get a tiny fragment of another class' functionality? Not nearly as cool as "I am a fighter-mage!" The hybrid rules were a better effort, but they were always a bit awkward because the system hadn't been built for them, and they were never well supported.
Feat taxes in general. No. Feats should have interesting and positive effects.
Magic items assumed to be part of character math. They should be special, not required.
Encounter length. Too many complicated off-round actions, too many hit points. I should note that as a player I liked having lots of off-round actions; they made me feel like I had more control. I just didn't like it that everybody else had lots of off-round actions, too. I think this is a bit of a prisoner's dilemma situation: if we all give up off-round actions, we end up better off. As for the hit points, that was just a bad call on calibrating the math. Each hit just needs to do more damage (and attacks probably need to hit more often, too).
Skill challenges. Too complicated, too abstract. Although I will say in their favor that they did tell players and DMs to get creative with how to use their skills, so that part was good and should be expanded on.
The alignment revision. This seems to have been an attempted compromise between those who liked the old two-axis alignment system and those who didn't, and I don't believe the result was pleasing to either camp.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 2:01PM
#26
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Basically? Write a decent version of the skill challenge mechanic (which can be run well, if you do it correctly). Go through the Rules Compendium errata suggestions from the last two years; implement the vast majority of them (notably, something general to prevent infinite looping, something general to limit zones to once per turn or round (depending on which interpretation is favoured). An overall look at feats and items, in particular, and a mass removal of obsolete elements (cf Barreling Charge). A genericised Weapons Training feat giving proficiency and non-scaling bonus to damage with one superior weapon of the user's choice. A better suite of damage-type enhancements (given that Radiant, Cold and Lightning/Thunder are the only ones with really good stuff at the moment). Kill alignment with fire. Ideally, though it would be a fairly major system rewrite, kill ability-score-based attacking with fire - go to a level-based system, possibly with variation depending on the choice of a specialist or generalist array/point buy - thus meaning that not all people who want to use the Fighter's mechanics, need to use STR to do so. Kill class skill lists with fire, and make the base number of trained skills higher for all classes. Rework the class system to include subclasses as a default, rather than a tacked-on addition - thus allowing things which thematically ought to share support, to share support (Seeker as a Ranger subclass, Swordmage, Artificer and maybe Bard as Wizard subclasses etc etc). Ditto for Themes - and allow the use of these, as seems to work well in Next, to alter or define role.
In general, take the good bits that 4e did, and do them more, take the terrible bits and kill them with fire, then innovate to fill up the burned areas - or leave them burned to fertilise imagination.
4e is nearly a really good system. It would be lovely if it were to get a real chance to be so.
I liked what you said but I was confused with the kill them with fire, I really thought you meant something in the game. That was a bit distracting.
I'm not very good with knowing how systems work, I think your ideas sound like good ones cause you aren't just putting down the system. I'm just not that great with systems so if you could explain these changes in terms for someone who is new to the game how would you say it.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 2:51PM
#27
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Date Joined:
Mar 28, 2008
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... what do you think is wrong with it? What things don't work, what would you have changed? Let's for a moment play with the idea, that D&DN was based on the 4E framework. What things would you do away with, what do you find lacking and would like to add to its next iteration? Note, this is meant for people who genuinely like and prefer the fourth edition, so no need to post "no powers, less mmo" - kind of stuff, thank you.
DISCLAIMER: I'm absolutely not trying to start an edition war here, I'm just curious. I personally prefer the earlier ones, but I can still instantly come up with at least two dozen things I would like changed in them.
HP bloat on the monster side at least- maybe a little bit on the player side as well. Long grindy combats suck and when you need to carve through 1k hp and need a 14 or 16 to hit the monster it sucks.
I'd be ok with a bit more flexibility on the part of wizards for their spellbook so maybe they had more dailies and encounters to choose from each day by studying. Allowing them a bit more flexibility so long as they didn't have an unlimited number of spells or automatic "I win" buttons would be ok with me if it made the "oh wizards don't feel like wizards now" crowd hush up.
Ritual casting - great idea HORRID execution. costs and probably time to cast need to be reduced radically in most cases
While I love the reduced number of skills they have -making the existing ones broader I HATE the skill challenge system with a burning pashion- it sucks.
I'd actually prefer a flatter math than exists in 4e.
Magic items - HATE them, hate they are considered part of the math of the game, hate that they are in the phb, hate hate hate the magic item assumtions in 4e. Yes I know they made options later on but I wasn't fond of the rules even with the later additions. My favorite character had 4 magic items in his entire multiyear 9 or 10 level career (1st edition so 9th or 10 level was pretty high). With the exception of his magic +1 horsemans mace I can tell you where he got the other three items -+2 banded mail (which was eaten by a darned rustmonster) and his +2 rod of flailing he recieved from the lair of a deathknight we fought on the way back from crossing the river styx, his helm of underwater breathing he recieved on an island infested with vampires where he picked up his siren girlfriend. In the 20 years since then I could not tell you anything about the many magic items I've gotten from other campaigns where magic was so much more plentiful, in many cases more powerful and in all cases less memorable.
The "economy" so even though those elite orcs have extra special nifty swords and armor I can't loot it and sell back in town? mmmmm-k. We can't skin giant weasels any more to sell their pelts for 1-4k gold each? Rats. You CAN sell magice items but you only get 20% of the listed price? You can SELL magic items gaaaaah (goes back to the last point)
Not a fan of some of the later classes or races (the seeker-really? that weird crystal race-uhh huh sure not in games I run tyvm). Part of that is that I don't think the classes are well designed and part (especially on the race side) is pure aesthetics- they don't fit into what I see as a fantasy rpg world.
Love class balance and for both effectiveness and fun. Love the variety because despite what many people seem to find I see a lot of differences in the way the different classes play.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 3:15PM
#28
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Orzel2) every class if power source should have received their own method of recovering encounter and daily power. Martials rest. Divines pray. Wizards read their books. Warlocks spend healing surges. Druid tap a primal leyline. Removes a lot of the "sameness".I love this, I know they were going for balance with the AEDU powers but I like the idea of recharging, it makes no sense for Fighters not to be able to swing their sword again, unless they were tired or something like that. I believe that they could even have different amounts of these powers. The Skill Challange problem, I really don't see what's wrong with them, I know you have to figure out the challenges as a DM but they seem ok from read the Essentials DM guide. But hey I may not know a darn thing about this game. sorry about the spelling errors darn spell check isn't working and since the invention of the spell check I gave up on learning how to spell. 
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 3:17PM
#29
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I already agree with most (if not all) of what was suggested here, but I'll add the following:
There is a trend regarding expansion of the game:
-You start with just the PHB1 races, classes, feats, and other options.
-All was fine and dandy then and we could make a level 1 character in 15 minutes flat.
Then came PBH2, PBH3, the Power book series, Dragon Magazine, Adventurer's Vault, etc
-Now there are dozens of races and classes, thousands of feats, and hundreds of other options to sift through
-Now creating a level 1 character is at least a 1 hour ordeal
Two solutions:
-Stop making so many extra and unnecessary options, especially when new options make older options invalid, obsolete, underpowered, but you still have to sift through it all.
-Or, in the digital tools, allow us to check and uncheck the source books we want to reference so we can look at a reasonable number of options rather than the hundreds to thousands we have now
I liked all the opitions silly me.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 3:48PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Feb 22, 2011
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Chris Perkins DM AI: Create an AI based on Chris Perkins brain and give us a copy with each purchase of the DMG so that he can run our games for us. I keep asking and WotC keeps failing to make it happen. I would finaly be able to play instead of having to DM all the time.
This is the best suggestion I've seen on any forum. I learned to play by watching his playthroughs with Acquisitions Inc.. I think that's why I never thought 4E was too complicated, or grid combat too restrictive, or any of the complaints grognards flung its way - if you just DM'd and played with a WWCPD attitude, you're guaranteed to have an amazing time.
... congratulations, Monkeygentleman.
You won the unwinnable.
| monkeygentleman, you are the worst thing to happen to the CharOp forums since Mearls took over WotC.
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