D&D 1E 4.1E - now without classes

[Ambush Bug]

I got my copy of the 4E PHB yesterday afternoon. It looks like a game with a lot of interesting elements, bundled in a package that railroads you into one particular play experience. That's fine if you want to spend all your time crawling through dungeons and killing what you find, but less fine if you want your characters to be focused on things beyond killing. Here are the changes I'm considering; I'd be interested in anyone's feedback.


POWERS: Characters are now based on their powers - you don't even make attack rolls much anymore, you just use a power that involves attacking. Trouble is, 85% of the powers are designed to be used in combat. Combined with the gutting of the skill system, this pushes characters (and therefore adventures) into constant tactical combat situations. The lists of powers need to be expanded so they have more non-combat physical options (climbing, jumping, etc.). I'd also like to see social options - you could do some cool stuff with social powers.

ABILITY SCORES: Instead of handing out specific scores to characters like the book says, give everyone 75 points to distribute among their 6 abilities as they see fit. That lets you have the horribly clumsy dude who's extra intelligent, if you want that kind of play experience. The players I know want it. And you can easily alter the power scale of your campaign by adding or subtracting: 60 points gives you a commoner, while 100 would be a young demigod.

LANGUAGES: Why can't first-level characters speak Abyssal? It's the default language of gnolls (among others). I know my players. Some of their characters will have been raised by gnolls. If only because they want to speak Abyssal.

DRAGONBORN: Female reptiles should not have breasts. End of discussion. It would be cool if the dragonborn had more racial powers to choose from than just breath weapons.

ELADRIN: Hey, look! It's the Noldor Elves from Tolkien!

ELVES: And the Sindarin! The "Group Awareness" ability doesn't make sense - why am I more perceptive just because a friendly elf is standing a few yards away? I could see "Group Stealth" instead.

HALF-ELVES: The "Group Diplomacy" ability also doesn't make sense, for the same reason as above. I'm still figuring out a good replacement. Instead of a cross-class power, they can pick one at-will power of their chosen Power Source (see the CLASSES entry below) to use as a per-encounter power.

CLASSES AND THEIR POWERS: Your choice of class is integral to your character, and nearly irrevocable. I don't like having that kind of limitation slapped on my character. Fortunately, you can eliminate classes without ruining the game. All the classes in the PHB are based around one kind of Power Source: Arcane, Divine, or Martial. So when you make a character, pick one of those three sources as your primary. Half of your at-will powers, per-encounter powers, and daily powers must come from the class lists belonging to that primary source. The other half can come from any list you like. GMs can alter this to set up any style of campaign they want: for example, nobody's allowed to take any Arcane powers, or every character must start with at least one Divine power.

DEFENSES: In a classless game, just let each player decide where to put this +2, including splitting it between two saves.

STARTING OUT: New classless characters get 12 HP, 5 HP/level, 6 Healing Surges/day (plus bonus ones from Con), 4 skills of their choice, proficiency with cloth armor, and proficiency with 5 other weapon/armor/shield types of their choice.

FEATURES: New classless characters get 5 Features of their choice. This includes any Class Feature; increasing HP to 15 new and 6/level; 2 more daily Healing Surges; 2 more skills; or 3 more choices of weapon/armor/shield proficiency. Certain Class Features count as two choices (Channel Divinity/Cleric; Channel Divinity/Paladin; Sneak Attack; Eldritch Pact [only 1 Pact/character]; Cantrips; Spellbook). If you take a Class Feature that comes from a different Power Source than your primary source, it uses an additional choice. For example, a Martial character who wants to have the Arcane class feature of Cantrips will have to use 3 choices for it.

GETTING MORE FEATURES: You can get another Feature by reducing your HP to 10/4, or your starting wpn/armor/shield proficiencies to 3.

SKILLS: Put the "take a 20" rule back in. It's a good rule. And the Craft, Perform, and Profession skills from 3rd edition fill useful niches outside combat (and sometimes inside it). I also wonder if Disguise and Handle Animal could be reintroduced.

FEATS: Feats that currently have class membership as a prereq will instead have that class's Power Source type as a prereq. All the multiclassing feats are eliminated. Is there a feat or something that gives you a new skill? If not, there needs to be.


...and that's what I've come up with after a day's review of the PHB. I think these rules would allow for more flexible character design without compromising the game's mechanical balance. Any opinions would be welcome.

 

[mattdm]

responding to everything but the classless bit

The lists of powers need to be expanded so they have more non-combat physical options (climbing, jumping, etc.). I'd also like to see social options - you could do some cool stuff with social powers.

This exists — look at many of the Utility powers. I agree that it'd be nice to have a lot more. And it might be nice to allow more of them known, but that's hard for me to judge at this point.

ABILITY SCORES: Instead of handing out specific scores to characters like the book says, give everyone 75 points to distribute among their 6 abilities as they see fit. That lets you have the horribly clumsy dude who's extra intelligent, if you want that kind of play experience. The players I know want it. And you can easily alter the power scale of your campaign by adding or subtracting: 60 points gives you a commoner, while 100 would be a young demigod.

There was a thread on this recently. I think the increasing expense of higher numbers used in the point buy system presented in the books is good.

LANGUAGES: Why can't first-level characters speak Abyssal? It's the default language of gnolls (among others). I know my players. Some of their characters will have been raised by gnolls. If only because they want to speak Abyssal.

Definitely a campaign/world-specific thing. Nothing wrong with changing those assumptions — there's a decent if short section in the DMG about what basic things are assumed and some suggestions of things one might play with.

ELVES: And the Sindarin! The "Group Awareness" ability doesn't make sense - why am I more perceptive just because a friendly elf is standing a few yards away? I could see "Group Stealth" instead.

I saw someone rationalize this as "Elves are really annoying. They're constantly talking and pointing out things they notice. Shut up already!"

 

[ajaxtorbin]

i got an answer for all this, its very simple, White Wolf. what you sujest is EXACTLY like the Exalted system from white wolf, even to the social skills you recomend.
even so i agree with your statement about railroading, i just decided it wasn't worth fixing.
i'll stick to my house ruled 3.5 and White Wolf products.



i very much dislike $ED. crap WOW knock off

 

[Plane Sailing]

ABILITY SCORES: Instead of handing out specific scores to characters like the book says, give everyone 75 points to distribute among their 6 abilities as they see fit. That lets you have the horribly clumsy dude who's extra intelligent, if you want that kind of play experience. The players I know want it. And you can easily alter the power scale of your campaign by adding or subtracting: 60 points gives you a commoner, while 100 would be a young demigod.

The big problem with this kind of point buy system is that it makes it too cheap to buy '18s' in key stats and hang the rest.

The good thing about the sliding scale as per 4e (and to a lesser extent 3e) is that there is a tradeoff - getting to an 18 vs accepting a 16 and being much more well-rounded in terms of other abilities.

 

[proto128]

I saw someone rationalize this as "Elves are really annoying. They're constantly talking and pointing out things they notice. Shut up already!"

I wholly endorse this interpretation.

 

[Ambush Bug]

The big problem with this kind of point buy system is that it makes it too cheap to buy '18s' in key stats and hang the rest.

The good thing about the sliding scale as per 4e (and to a lesser extent 3e) is that there is a tradeoff - getting to an 18 vs accepting a 16 and being much more well-rounded in terms of other abilities.

I don't see it as a problem in 4E - one thing the designers did well was balance the utility of the six core stats. Someone who loads themselves with 18s in certain stats will pay the price for shortchanging other stats.

Also, the system as designed makes it virtually impossible to have a stat below 8. There's no reason for that - if a player wants to give themselves a 4 CHA or a 6 DEX, why can't they? Not to go on about "my wonderful campaign," but I've encountered a lot of players who want to play characters with those kinds of flaws. The system should (and can) permit that.

 

[Sylrae]

I like almost all of your ideas, but your 75 point idea I don't like much. as you get higher and higher numbers the attributes should cost more. going from 16 to 18 shouldnt only cost you 2 points, it should cost you more. like 6, or 8. that way if people want a stat to be that high they will be trading other stats for it. I agree that if you want people to have lower than 8 in a stat thats fine. set the base amount lower and give them the extra points to compensate (I wouldnt go lower than 6 myself)

Also, your classless idea is a whole game decision, not an individual person decision. I get the impression that your classless characters will be able to do more than standard classes. they shouldnt really be able to, they should be equivalent to the standard classes. if you can't use your classless system to build all the standard classes, then it isn't quite balanced.

 

[That One Guy]

I love the idea of a classless game.

That said, I'd suggest running a session or two with the rules 'as-is' just to see how they play out. Isn't athletics the running/jumping/climbing skill - similar to how they do things in white wolf where one skill can be widely applicable? Rogues get some utilities that focus on non-traditional uses for those skills, so if that's up your alley why not allow generic utility powers everyone can start with (that focus on running jumping skipping etc.)? I do like the idea of social powers (I think the half-elves bonus to diplomacy is sort of like that... I have friends who can help keep people level-headed and rational in a heated debate so it comes across to me as a reasonable thing), at the same time social powers could never be used to target other players... that'd just be too frustrating. I actually think a version of the skill challenge system that is a little bit taken apart could work pretty swell. Like... in a social setting someone has the ability to quote famous judicial decisions that point to a similar conclusion as the one the PC supports and thus gets a bonus (+3?) to the history check in the social exchange (An intelligent eladrin can easily have a +10 on history checks already...).

(Side note about skill challenges... I played one once and it was fun, but I've never been able to really effectively run one w/ my PCs. It just feels too forced and awkward. But, it sounds like that's something which could be fun if epic debates and dinner hall discussions work in your games.)

 

[Ambush Bug]

I like almost all of your ideas, but your 75 point idea I don't like much. as you get higher and higher numbers the attributes should cost more. going from 16 to 18 shouldnt only cost you 2 points, it should cost you more. like 6, or 8. that way if people want a stat to be that high they will be trading other stats for it. I agree that if you want people to have lower than 8 in a stat thats fine. set the base amount lower and give them the extra points to compensate (I wouldnt go lower than 6 myself)

Also, your classless idea is a whole game decision, not an individual person decision. I get the impression that your classless characters will be able to do more than standard classes. they shouldnt really be able to, they should be equivalent to the standard classes. if you can't use your classless system to build all the standard classes, then it isn't quite balanced.

People have made a lot of good points about ability scores. I'll rethink how I'd handle it, and see if I can come up with something that balances better. For some reason I don't like to charge more for 17-18 than I do for stats 16 and below, but I'm sure there's a solution.

And yes, the classless character system is a whole-game decision. I haven't been able to build the standard classes with it, and I'm not sure it's exactly possible. If anything, I'd like the classless system to produce slightly weaker characters than the current system, as a way of offsetting the extra flexibility. However, at least for my preferences, I'm willing to have some balance problems in return for not having what I see as the straitjacket of character classes. Even if the classless characters are more powerful than the standard 4E editions, it's not a problem. As the GM, I can increase the threats to compensate. I'll just keep dropping elephants on them, and I have a whole lot of elephants.

 

[Ambush Bug]

I love the idea of a classless game.

That said, I'd suggest running a session or two with the rules 'as-is' just to see how they play out. Isn't athletics the running/jumping/climbing skill - similar to how they do things in white wolf where one skill can be widely applicable? Rogues get some utilities that focus on non-traditional uses for those skills, so if that's up your alley why not allow generic utility powers everyone can start with (that focus on running jumping skipping etc.)? I do like the idea of social powers (I think the half-elves bonus to diplomacy is sort of like that... I have friends who can help keep people level-headed and rational in a heated debate so it comes across to me as a reasonable thing), at the same time social powers could never be used to target other players... that'd just be too frustrating. I actually think a version of the skill challenge system that is a little bit taken apart could work pretty swell. Like... in a social setting someone has the ability to quote famous judicial decisions that point to a similar conclusion as the one the PC supports and thus gets a bonus (+3?) to the history check in the social exchange (An intelligent eladrin can easily have a +10 on history checks already...).

(Side note about skill challenges... I played one once and it was fun, but I've never been able to really effectively run one w/ my PCs. It just feels too forced and awkward. But, it sounds like that's something which could be fun if epic debates and dinner hall discussions work in your games.)

Again, thanks for the suggestions! The only idea you have that I don't think I can stomach is playing a couple sessions as-is. I've played enough RPGs to know what I like and what I don't. I don't like character classes, and I really don't like how they're presented here. Which is my frustration - I do like the concept of "powers," and I like how a lot of the specific powers work. I just want to combine them my way, rather than hew to one of the half-dozen ways the design team thought appropriate.