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Dec 11, 2012 -- 6:42AM, Rupert_ADnD wrote:

Dec 8, 2012 -- 4:41PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Nov 28, 2012 -- 1:55PM, Rupert_ADnD wrote:

After This years playing 4E do you play 100% RAW? you discovered some house rules, or subtle modifications that you think suit your game style better? I was reading comments on Inherent bonuses and Rituals in the other thread and I got curious to know what major or minor tunning other people have made to D&D along the way. If you can explain why you did it and the result in you group it would be great.

I've never used any house rules per-se in 4e. You can simply play anything that is in CB and it all works like the book says.

OTOH I think you'd find that HOW the rules get used may vary a lot from what I've seen in other games. Usually when PCs take feats and powers for instance there's a good story reason why they end up with what they get. There's no rule about this, but it just works that way. For instance one of the players decided that it would be GREAT if the party took all took a tribal feat (The one that adds to everyone's HS value), so voila when they ran into an orc shaman he 'blessed' them (with a big huge fight that knocked most of them out cold, lol) and the spirit of the fire mountain made them tougher. They also hit 8th level and consequently took the feat.

Things are always like that in my games. PCs acquire or make items, get boons, etc in odd ways. Encounters are often quite an extrapolation from what you would imagine 4e design is about, etc. Many times the story implications and narrative needs of the situation mean that things work in ways that don't necessarily match with specific mechanics.

Exactly, this is key, HOW the rules get used, makes a huge difference imo. That´s how I envision it in my groups, everything, every feat, every boon or MI acquired must be a consequence of a story element, not the other way around.  Sometimes one player picks a feat just for the mechanical benefit, but I try to work as much as I can with him to make it work within the character's concept. That's the fun part to me. And the simple idea that some feats acquired in game simply require some kind of ritual or training are great for adding interesting story hooks.

I love your story about the tribal feats. Recently, a dragonborn paladin in our group have to face a red dragon as part of a ritual to gain his improved dragon breath... We tie the dragonborn origin and appearance with his breath type in our campaign. The player would have just  picked it up from the PHB and added it in his record sheet, but it was much more interesting the way we did. I don't do it for every feat each character acquires, but sometimes it´s pretty neat, and creates endless missions, small adventures, that can be an end on itself, or became a hook to a bigger adventure. Sometimes it can be considered rewards acording to something a character did during the adventure. My players seem to like this method a lot, instead simply picking from the book when you level.

Right. I have to admit I'm far from clever enough to work in every feat or item like this of course, but at least some of them get worked in and that adds hugely to character development. I think if I were rewriting 4e I'd break down things into more of one bigger pool, like make items and feats all a sort of "boon" type of mechanic where you basically get them on a schedule, but it is all story-oriented. It relieves a lot of design constraints for one thing. Honestly I sort of think that when people are designing an RPG they tend to imagine that everything will get used that way. 4e really doesn't present its options in a way that encourages that.