... 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.
I was actually able to pin down some answers here tonight. Firstly, 4e won me over from a highly skeptical attitude after the first gameplay. I immediately saw the fun in it. It has changed how I play RPGs and how I run them, and all for the better.
However, it does have a lot of what I don't like. I don't need fifty powers. I need a few key ones that I can customize via feats, and maybe a way to augment on the fly, not unlike the Psion can. I want a wide variety of options to choose from to create a character with, but every round my choices need to be clear and simple and yet flexible. What 4e got right was the ability to let the player describe the actions that led to the mechanic that the power represented. You had fluff text defaulted in, but no description the player wanted was ever wrong. So, if I felt like I wanted to explain my arcane magic as being a Vancian wizard whose dailies vanished from his mind afterwards, I could. Or I could make up a whole new tradition. The effects were the same. Perfect for me. Still, that left too many options on my sheet. Old schooler that I am, I liked a classic two sided character sheet. Not five pages I need to reprint every time I level up. Save a tree!
Also, I dislike how there's no discrenable difference between what makes a power a 3rd level power vs a 1st level power and so on. Magic items have the same issue, only worse. Some items at higher levels do less than at lower levels. There's also no guide to this, so when making your own, you can't set a level and have it be anything but arbitrary and a best guess.
There's too much math, short term riders we still struggle to track even after all this time playing it, and a lot of damage calculation that in some cases takes long enough to go get pizza during. It went overboard in certain areas, despite being a very good idea in some ways, and even with all its flaws, led me to some of the best RP times I have had. Dial back all that stuff and simplify and you have a winner for me. I didn't like and never played Essentials because I couldn't character build the way I wanted to, I was pigeon-holed into one build vs another. I never bought one book, and never played an Essentials only game, or an Essentials character. I understand now maybe I should try it and see if it hits the sweet spot I would like to see. Maybe I will.
Lastly, I strongly dislike the way Wizards transitioned to and supported 4e. The terms of the game license changed, the content was hidden by a subscription, and to compound this player-hostile action with seeming incompetence, the character builder was a hunk of junk, and you more or less needed one to build a current character...and you had to pay for that too. And it loads a loading screen FFS. Yer killin' me.
That was when I lost faith that WotC understood what good public relations was and how to enact it with their work. 5e efforts so far leave me with that feeling not only entrenched but a deeper, creepier feeling that they may not understand a good direction to develop the game in at all.
Considering they offer a first glimpse to an international audience of what D&D will look like, and it has typoes, bad layout, a poor module choice and write up, inattention to detail, and is otherwise a generally needlessly difficult drafting of a key document that should have been designed to do its utmost to inspire people towards the product. I'm not asking for retail ready, but organized and proofread would have been nice. This was your moment to create buy-in, Wizards. I'm more skeptical than ever now.
Sorry for the tangent, I'm not fussed about one edition over another, I'm wanting to feel like the product is in good hands, and frankly, I don't. That's been true for years, and it started at the time of 4e, and in spite of what I love about 4e.
More on what I would keep from 5e later, there are some things. Some good things. They need much better treatment to suit me though. Up too late though. Thanks for asking.
Feats should be seperated into multiple categories. Flavor feats (talents) like Linguist. Combat feats like Weapon Focus. Abilities like those should never come from the same pool.
They already said feats are for combat only and the other two pillars will have completely separate mechanics so you aren't forced to gimp one for another.
I would have ditched combat encounter powers, and stuck with only at-wills and dailies (for both utility and attack powers).
I would have ditched utility powers.
I would have aimed to have at wills on par with basic attacks, so that starting players who say "I just hit him with my sword" aren't making an inherently bad choice. That includes not having any at-will that can potentially boost damage.
I would have made implements and weapons work the same (and scrapped the base +2 weapon proficieny modifier), meaning that NADs and AC would be on the exact same scale, and anyone could use any weapon or implement.
Superior weapons are gone (all they do is cause problems where noon can use loot).
Feats are gone.
+1/2 level is gone from everything (and subtracted from monsters too).
Expected treasure is tuned way, way down, but limits on noncombat items are removed. You might end up with an amulet OR magic armor OR a magic weapon with a good +, but not all 3 for every party member.
I like 4e overall but the combats take WAY too long. Anything that would speed up combats would be a good thing in my opinion.
Other minor quibbles:
- Skill challenges are interesting in theory but in practice are usually pretty bland. Hard to point a finger at the problem, but it might be that there's too many situations where some of the players aren't interested in the challenge and don't really feel like they have a good skill to use in them.
- Rituals seem to be underused, at least in my 4e groups. I think it might be partly due to the high component cost of rituals turning players off, or that players simply forget which rituals they know and forget to use them in appropriate situations. If I were to rewrite rituals in 4e I think I'd make learning a ritual a high cost similar to buying a magic item of the appropriate level, so a 3rd level ritual would be similar in cost to a 3rd level magic item, but then once you know the ritual you can cast it for free once per day. That would encourage players to seek out rituals much like they seek out useful magic items and once they have them they'd feel free to cast the rituals more frequently.
- Too many abilities and feats and such per character by paragon level. Even if you've been playing a character from first level to paragon the number of powers, feats, item powers and everything else you have by then can be overwhelming to remember even for experienced players. And heaven help you if you're doing a one-shot adventure with premade paragon level characters! I think this is a case where simpler would have been better, having fewer new abilities as you gain experience levels and instead swapping out old abilities for better ones. You really don't need more than a handful of decent abilities to make a character be interesting enough to be fun to play, so going way beyond that is actually too much of a good thing in a lot of cases.
- I'm not a fan of the automatic level bonus to attack rolls, defenses and skill checks. I think DDN is taking the right approach by basically eliminating or greatly reducing those automatic increases and instead simply having hit points and damage be the main stat that automatically scales to differentiate low level from high level combat effectiveness.
So, to further answer what would I keep/toss from 4 and 5e.
I did start work on a hybrid system, I think I probably hinted at chunks of it elsewhere.
-Stats & mods as written in 3/4e. -Keep AC, Ref, Fort, Will -Unsure about scaling bonuses, but likely. Haven't gotten that far yet. Open to leaving them out. -All pre-4e magic is out on its ear. Not gone, just heavily rewritten for the sake of balance and sensibility. TBD. -Action Points, Healing Surges and Dailies are replaced with a finite number of Surges (probably 3 at 1st, with +1 at every 6th level) that are used throughout the day. You can use one per round, and as many per combat as you have. The catch is, they are gone until a long rest. With these you can: Spend a HD for healing, roll an extra die of damage, take an extra action, grant yourself advantage, cause your enemy's attack disadvantage, cause your enemy's defense or save disadvantage, grant your save advantage, or improvise a possible outcome. Then each player gets a finite ability to sway combat in his or her favor, do something dramatic and have it matter more, etc. Then you don't need an exhausting list of dailies, and spells get surge effects as well. I would go this route because the fun part of 4e was beingable to action point, use a healing surge, or pop the daily whammy on somebody DBZ style. This takes all those options and simplifies them down to one open ended mechanic where the player picks what happens within limits, and has the freedom to get creative with DM permission. -Classes do need abilities, not unlike powers, but I would boil them down to three core components of that class, and make those the aspects the player chooses between at each level. Feats augment how these aspects work. A lot of feats go away in favor of being folded in to the class ability options. Advancing an aspect at various level would happen, but the available advancements would be primarily base don which aspects were already selected. Sure, you could start a new "tree"/"path", but the starting point would be of lesser potency by virtue of not being as developed.
Example: Fighter. The 3 primary aspects would be weapon mastery, fighting styles, and tactics. In line with keeping the fighter simple to use, I would make Weapon Mastery a passive bonus to using specific weapons, so this doesn't unlock powers, just flat "always on" bonuses, likely circumstantial ones too. None of these would be surgable. Fighting Styles would be for what we currently call Stances. Each stance would be free to shift in to, but have a drawback for being in it, as well as an advantage. These would not be affected by surges either. These would set up a triggerable special ability or bonus.
Example: Scorpion Style [Defensive Stance] [Weapon & Shield Style] You hold your weapon above your head and settle in to a low crouch. You brandish your shield and dare the enemy to approach. Effect: While in this stance, you gain +1 AC, but move at half speed. You must hold your attack action until after an enemy attacks you in melee. After your enemy has resolved an attack against you, you may make an immediate attack on your enemy in response with a +2 to attack and damage rolls. If you are armed with a piercing weapon, you are considered Ready to Receive a Charge.
Lastly, would be Tactics. These would be special combat maneuvers. I would start with all the old edition options. like Grapple, Pummel, Overbear, Cleave, Power Attack, Disarm, et al. These are the abilities that could be surged, and each would be aimed at complimenting a particular class of Fighting Style. Many would have some special effects built in to be added on top of the base effects, triggered by a surge. Cleave, for example would work like the 3e version, but when a surge is applied, also hits a third target.
So, by third level, if the fighter wanted to, he could be gaining bonuses with axes from Mastery (1st), Using a special two axe Fighting Style (picked at 2nd) and be able to do a Flurry of Blows with them from the Tactic of the same name (picked at 3rd). With his Surges, he can envision himself as a battlerager if he wanted to, and explain his sudden ability to do two flurries on a boss for a round with the rage he feels against the ogre for being of giantish descent.
That's just the fighter. Each class would have its own options and feel. A cleric would have Domains, Spells, and Healing abilities. A wizard would have Sorcery, Rituals, and Lore. A rogue would have Ambush Tactics, Traps, and Skills. Very rough sketch there, but that's the basics. The key is that there may be some static effects associated with the class, but the players choices are only in one aspect at each level.
-Feats roll in as much as possible to developing class or theme aspects, so you don't need as many of those vying for your precious feats lots, which I would keep as being every other level.
-On top of that, you can stack Themes and Backgrounds, and I'm not opposed to making those the basis for your skills, and at least one special ability. I would not keep the lazyman's feel of handwaving all RP on the subject of social interaction, such as the knight always automatically getting respite with his order. I would instead perhaps grant a limited use of this known as something like Brotherhood and allow the player to seek services once per encounter with a group of his own order with a bonus on any rolls equal to your level. So they will help you, but it's not unlimited.
-Multiclassing would be handled very simply. You drop one of your three aspects and pick up one of another class's aspects instead. So a Fighter/Wizard might have Weapon Mastery, Tactics, but forego Fighting Styles to take the Wizard's Sorcery Aspect. Most spell choices he makes would reflect and compliment his more martial nature. But if he chooses to advance that path, he neglects the other two to do so.
-Speaking of Magic, I would have the Wizard be at At-Will caster, but the spell powers would start low enough that they are not imbalancing. They would also always roll to attack each target, just like in 4e. No auto-hit, no save or die. Some spell choices might require a surge to activate, thereby allowing powerful effects, but ones that effectively wind the wizard and cause him to have to forego the possibility of spending a HD to recover hp while in combat. Then you mimic spell slots/dailies if you must. Perhaps a Wizard gets a few extra to spend on spells as s/he levels. Alternately, you could selects pells that can only be cast once per day, due to the extreme fatigue they represent. You can later use the Lore path to unlock Spell Secrets and add an extra casting of one of the Whammy Spells. Lots of options, but not an area I've made any headway on. I might keep some old school spell names, but magic, particularly arcane magic, is where I deviate sharply from the notion that to have this feel like D&D we have to drag along 30 year old ideas and design elements concept for concept. I suppose that might be a dealbreaker for some, fair enough. Enjoy yourself.
That's what I've gotten so far, in a condensed form. You can see where I've swiped a lot of the 5e ideas, and that's because I like them, but would presentthem much differently. I'm trying for a balance of simplicity at the core, so it flows quickly enough, with complexity being allowed via expansion.
I go back and forth on how to do certain things, and even whether or not I want to pursue it. But that's an idea of what I would keep from each edition, and where I would put it. Thanks again for asking the question.
-- Don't make magic items neccessary for game math to work. They start feeling very mundane if they're required. How about getting rid of the scaling +1, +2, etc. and just giving them special abilities, such as flaming, cold, vorpal, etc.
-- Feat taxes. Weapon Expertise feats, anyone?
-- Overly long combats (especially pre-MM3). I loved the tactical aspects of the combat, it's just the fact that it took a good hour and a half for each fight.
If I had to rewrite 5e to be similar to 4e, it would go as follows:
The Obvious (Which Everyone Should Like) Martial classes would be closer to the essentials style. Basic attacks, stances, you get some really good roleplay out of that, more than from the at-will powers, I think.
Get rid of +X magic weapons. Or, at the very least, reduce it to +1 per tier. Over-reliance on magic items is... eh. Same with armor, reduce the overall progression, especially of masterwork armor which adds a higher AC bonus. Armor made out of unusual materials should be interesting based on the material, not the armor bonus.
Get rid of the feat tax. Rework monsters to have lower defenses, lower attacks, less HP, and more damage at higher levels. Then get rid of all sorts of accuracy boosting feats. Take all the "expertise" feats which had some cool effects and roll those into damage boosting feats instead, so you can get heavy blade oppportunity with a side of damage.
Reduce the number of powers. Why does a fighter have rain of steel AND unyielding avalanche? Just let him do a straight power upgrade. Also, some classes can share powers. A power like precise strike (1w only, +2 to hit) could make a large number of classes happy.
Reduce ritual costs, give wizards a little bit of flexibility to cast cheap rituals for free. Honestly, that 10 gp sending spell feels fiddly.
The Personal (Which People Might Hate) Revise the way immediate interupts work. There's nothing innately wrong with them, but they should always be obvious about activation. A great example is the fighter's unbreakable vs the wizard's shield. If a fighter takes more than X amount of damage from a single hit, he uses unbreakable, end of story. But a wizard's response to being attacked is to guess a.) will the +x bonus to my defenses stop the attack and b.) does enough of my turn remain? Either make shield a minor action used on-turn, or make it DR.
I'd even toy and playtest an idea where a bunch of immediate spells get replaced with "ready as minor". Normally readying is a standard, but having powers which you can ready as a minor action would be nifty. That way you might have 3 or 4 interupt powers, but you have to anticipate them. I had a swordmage build which had 3 immediate interupts at level 7, I'd have gladly traded a bump in general utility for the need to actually prepare those actions one at a time.
Personally, I would change AC into Iron Heroes DR. This is probably the most controversial change, but I never found that armor as rolled DR slowed the game up. Give characters with finesse attacks (the kind which target reflex instead of AC) the ability to bypass DR with a melee attack. Make weapons which are a higher magic tier than the armour they face ignore DR (so that your paragon level sword ignores orcish non-magic plate, but does you still roll for DR against beholder skin.)
Revise healing so that each "kind" of healing has a different feel. The warlord might be far more interesting if it gives temp hit points which don't require a surge. Giving every class the same kind of healing feels a tad odd.
If I had to rewrite 5e to be similar to 4e, it would go as follows:
The Obvious (Which Everyone Should Like) Martial classes would be closer to the essentials style. Basic attacks, stances, you get some really good roleplay out of that, more than from the at-will powers, I think.
This is a sure way to get me to not buy it. I think the Essentials martial classes were butchered compared to their PHB counterparts. Everyone else got cool abilities and lots of choices. The martials were reduced back down to "I hit it with a stick". They were the only ones this happened to. They all shared one strategy, too. Charge, charge, charge, charge, charge, charge.
They need to offer something somewhat akin to the phb1 martials or the Tome of Battle classes to get me remotely interested in spending any money at release (even if it is in a module that comes with the core set). Not specifically identical to them, but something far more dynamic than a basic attack spamming robot.
I would have ditched combat encounter powers, and stuck with only at-wills and dailies (for both utility and attack powers). .
If I were to consider ditching anything its the Dailies -- make Vancian true vancian ie something you can study and rememorise to recover ... make martial tricks something its hard to repeat on most any sentient enemy.
This is a sure way to get me to not buy it. I think the Essentials martial classes were butchered compared to their PHB counterparts. Everyone else got cool abilities and lots of choices. The martials were reduced back down to "I hit it with a stick". They were the only ones this happened to. They all shared one strategy, too. Charge, charge, charge, charge, charge, charge.
They need to offer something somewhat akin to the phb1 martials or the Tome of Battle classes to get me remotely interested in spending any money at release (even if it is in a module that comes with the core set). Not specifically identical to them, but something far more dynamic than a basic attack spamming robot.
Interesting. That was not my experience. In the game I ran, the fighter was prone to switching up his stances a lot. I agree that the charge needs to be toned down if the basic attack becomes a core part of the game, and the stances need to have a bit more flavor.
I would probably redesign the fighter to have stances as his at-will power, but to retain situationally useful encounter powers that aren't just +1d10 damage to your basic attack.
What I'd want to avoid is the at-will power spam. It somehow feels worse when a fighter does it. I want a fighter to be able to say "I attack!" and just have that go how he goes. What makes the fighter interesting shouldn't be which at-will he drops, but the stance he holds, the position he takes, etc.
