D&D 4E Imaginary 4E ideas - what would you like to see ?

[Modeus]

These are the classes I'd like to see for 4E. It is hoped that 4E would be able to strike a stronger balance and facilitate non-miniatures game-play. I have added a defining feature to make something exclusive for each core class in such a way as to distinguish itself. It can also double up as some kind of mechanic to make prestige classes and feats exclusive. Adjustments should be made such that characters can gain defining features at level 1. )

Monk has been eliminated as 4E should focus on cultural books which bundle Oriental classes into a single volume. There are 16 proposed classes but can be pared down to 13 if spontaneous casters are all taken out.

This looks like a good starting blue-print for a new PHB as well. Anyway if you have the time, maybe you can add to this thread on what you'd like to see.

Classes

Fighter - All round combat class. Should have the highest number of feats. Should always have the highest to hit bonus.

( Defining feature : Manuevers. Feats which are exclusive to fighters )

Paladin - Fighting class. Some clerical spells. Good mounted/defensive fighter. No more turn undead and auras. Some damage reduction and enhancement to saving throws.

( Defining feature : Smite evil - Should be enhanced to make up for some ability losses. )

Ranger - Fighting class. Emphasize skirmish fighting in light armor with animal companion. Minor druidic spells. ( Get rid of favoured enemy and combat styles in favour of more flexibility )

( Defining feature : Skirmish since is is so good with the scout and works wonders with ranged weapons. )

Runeguard ( Gish ? ) - Fighting class. Some arcane magic spells. Armored spellcasting. Arcane fighter which attempts to deviate from the Elf stereotype.

( Defining feature : Runic Weapon/Armor. Attuning weapons and armor with enhancement bonuses and makes heavier armor suitable for arcane spellcasting. )

Barbarian - Fighting class. Best in class in hit points. Tank. Focus on damage and absorbing punishment. Should not have subtlety. Get rid of fast movement.

( Defining feature : Rage )

Cleric - Prepared Divine Spellcasting class.

( Defining feature : Turn undead )

Mystic - Spontaneous Divine Spellcasting class.

( Defining feature : Aura. Abilities which reflects their favoured nature. Extremely irritating to opposing outsiders )

Druid - Prepared Druid spellcasting class.

( Defining feature : Wild Shape )

Shaman - Spontaneous Druid spellcasting class

( Defining feature : Totem Animal )

Wizard - Prepared Arcane spellcasting class.

( Defining feature : Sage. Some kind of Knowledge ability. Can lead to more powerful prepared arcane spells. )

Sorceror - Spontaneous Arcane spellcasting class.

( Defining feature : Bloodline abilities. Emphasis on heritage of the character. Warlock character can be reconstucted by choosing infernal or abyssal bloodlines. )

Rogue - Skill-based character. Enhanced abilities in movement. Able to use all skills untrained.

( Defining feature : Sneak attack )

Assassin - Skill based class with minor arcane spellcasting.

( Defining feature : Poison creation and poison use. Good at creating attribute loss. )

Bard - Middle of the road fighting, skill based and arcane spellcaster.

( Defining feature : Performance. Specializes in influencing enemies and modifying the status of listeners. )

Noble - Middle of road character with no spellcasting abilities. Emphasize on resource use.

( Defining feature : Command. Abilities to assist all other characters in their endeavours. )

Artificer - Tinkering class with minor spellcasting of Infusions. Specializes in manufacturing magical items. Don't you love Eberron ?

( Defining featire : Craft pool. )

 

[Psion]

It seems to me we had two or three instances of this thread in the last month already.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

It seems to me we had two or three instances of this thread in the last month already.

Game design is fun. Speculation is fun. And you guys would just lock the thread if I posted my Paranoia/Blue Rose crossover.


Anyway, I think 4e is going to resemble how epic classes currently work. A core power set with bonus feats that you can get from a specific feat list. The Fighter and the Rogue currently work along these lines. I think we'll see more of that.

 

[Modeus]

Apologies if I repeated stuff from previous threads.

 

[Psion]

Game design is fun. Speculation is fun.

Sure. But I see he's new here, so it might not hurt to look around for the other threads.

 

[Crothian]

And you guys would just lock the thread if I posted my Paranoia/Blue Rose crossover.

I demand to see this!!

 

[Psion]

I demand to see this!!

You are eebil!

- This thread's going to Cuba!

 

[Romnipotent]

to quote someone else:
Copyright 2012 WotC

and myself: a small pamphlet saying "Try Gurps, its good"

 

[A'koss]

Okay, I'll play... I kinda missed the last discussion on this and, as always , I do have a few ideas of my own...

While I would keep many of the core 3e mechanics - d20, Skills, Feats, Spell breakdowns by Level, Level-based Advancement, Hit Points and the 6 ABility Scores, I would tackle remaking the game with serious eye on game balance - particularly at higher levels.

I would start with a new philosophy - How long should a challenging encounter last at any given level? Then I'd have a guideline as to how far to carry these changes.

That means no more "one hit wonders", no more game fubaring magic and I would greatly reduce the growing disparities in the game between the various classes. Disparities in AC, HP, Saving Throws, Skills and Attack Adjustments. At higher levels, to challenge one character often means that a weaker one is in serious trouble or even one-round roadkill. No more - a fully healed party can expect to last a good number of rounds against a challenging enounter.

I would tailor the game towards allowing more "cinematic" experimentation, allowing for longer combats at higher levels. A fully healed party (of at least moderate level) should have the opportunity to try all kinds of crazy tactics and cinematic stunts without worrying that failure will be immediately rewarded with death. I would mold the game so that power escalation would be more predictable at all levels, especially high level gaming and keeping an "opening" for epic level advancement.

Magic... would be toned down in power, particularly at the higher end of the scale, but I would love to incorporate a spell point system which would allow greater flexibility and simply more spells to cast for Wizard players to compensate. A wizard, in my mind, is all about the magic - he should rarely have to resort to conventional weaponry. But at the same time, his magic should not overshadow what other classes should be able to do at that level. I would change most of the combat spells so that they required some kind of attack roll in order to succeed or to have the maximum effect. You hurl fireballs and lash out with a lightning bolt. Again, magic would be toned down in such a way the damage output would be lessened, but compensated by the fact you can cast spells more often... That, to me, is a big part of the fun of playing a wizard - throwing magic left and right in a big cinematic battle. With a lot more attack rolls for spells, you have the opportunity to score critical hits which I think just adds to it.

Will Save Effects... I would institute something like Resolve Points, which I posted here not too long ago. In a nutshell, Resolve represents a characters ability to resist mental attack, fear, horror, torture, energy drain or do something extra-heroic (like hero points). In my low-magic game I tied it into many feats and character abilities which provided a natural balancing factor. You don't use too much or Resolve goes down and you become more suseceptable to Resolve attacks. That takes care of the Save or Nerf spells and effects.

Hit Points... They would be static for PCs by default, but with the option to roll if you really wanted. The reason being that HPs play a huge roll in game balance and in order to have a more predictable (and therefore DM-manageable) game, you need to control this. I would compress the numbers between the classes, bumping up the low characters and provide more HPs at 1st level. Con bonuses are the biggest problem at higher levels - so they gotta take it on the chin. Even small Con bonus differences at higher levels translate to huge HP disparities between the classes. Con's gotta do something different other than provide bonus HPs - perhaps increasing the character's healing rate (even magical) and other misc. effects.

Stat disparities... can be problematic at higher levels in other ways - it doesn't need a heavy hand, but perhaps characters should get +1 to all stats at every X levels. That would help level things out. I would also remove stat influences from spell saving throws - just have a static mechanic with feats that would allow you to give a small boost to specific classes of spells. No more prestige classes and feat stacking that allow you to create virtually unsavable spells.

Classes... I've touched upon Wizards already and how I'd reduce the disparities between the classes. I'd also like to see more customizability and unique abilities amongst the classes. Fighters for example, they have the flexibility, now I think they deserve a list of Fighter-specific abilities to choose from as well. The same goes for the other classes - provide more options so that not all paladins are carbon copies of one another. Perhaps one focuses on healing more, another in turning, another in demon-slaying...

Combat... Make combat more flavorful for the fighter-types. Wizards have all their neat spells, fighter-types should have multi-round tactical options, cinematic fighting styles and squad-based tactical options. I would change the current iteritive attack scheme so that each character has *one* Base Attack Roll. If you want to make multiple attack, you choose to do so by taking a cumulative -4 penalty to all attacks (for each additional strike). That means if I have a BAR of +20, I can make two attacks @ +16 each, three attacks at +12 each and so on. This reduces the number of useless attacks at higher levels and allows the player to choose from making a small number of accurate strikes - against a powerful dragon perhaps, or making more, innaccurate ones - say against low level mooks.

Open-Ended Rolls... I've used them for a long time and love 'em. Anytime you roll d20 and get a N20, you roll again and add. Skills, Attack Rolls, Saves, Critical Hits (see below), etc.

Critical Hits... They are a bit heavy handed in the core game IMO (too many LL deaths...) but I do like the idea of potentially unloading a real devastating blow. I might change it to what I used in our low magic game - If you roll 10 or more above what you need to hit, regardless of weapon, you inflict Max. Damage + Normal Damage. For each additional 10 you beat the minimum number to hit you roll for damage normally again and add to the total.

Critical Saves... Same idea as Critical Hits. Roll 10 higher than you need to save and you reduce the effects (if any) by half. Roll 20 higher than you need to save and you completely negate any effect. Since I would be instituting some kind of Resolve Point scheme (Will Save powers, among other things, now inflict Resolve Damage instead of all or nothing) critical success is quite widely useful.

Critical Skill Success... You get the idea... Roll 10 or more above what you need to accomplish the task and you get some special perk (dependent on the skill). With open ended rolls you can achieve some fantastic things if you roll well enough.

Spell Resistance... +X to Save vs. Magic. With Critical Saves, you get the idea where this is going... Obviously, this takes away that extra roll and very little chance your wizard's spells won't have at least *some* effect on the spell resistant target.

Die Progression... This are one of those suggestions that has both some nice benefits and some negative reprocussions. One thing that continues to irk me somewhat in 3e is the fact that there are no grazes from high level attackers and their huge damage modifiers allow for little range in damage. We tested a rule in our LM game whereby every +1 to damage increased the damage die rather than a straight modifier. Here's the die progression we used:

1 - 1d2 - 1d3 - 1d4 - 1d6 - 1d8 - 1d10 - 1d12 - 1d8+1d6 - 2d8 - 1d10+1d8 - 2d10 - 1d12+1d10 - 2d12 - 1d10+2d8 - 2d10+1d8 - 3d10 - 1d12+2d10...

For example, if you had a Fighter with a 20 Strength (+5), Weapon Focus (+1) and a +3 longsword (base 1d8, +3), he'd have a total of +9 damage modifier. So the Fighter would inflict 1d10+2d8 (3-26, Avg. 14.5) damage per blow. That gives you some greater variability in damage, a chance for some grazing wounds to occur and our group found it a lot of fun.

The flipside of course is that with greater variability in damage means less predictability and that generally favors the monsters in the long run. But since I made a point earlier that I would definitely be looking to increase the survivability of characters (particularly at higher levels) it should work out alright.

Damage Reduction... One of the benefits of the die progression scheme is that if you want powerful monsters to have DR - just say that they reduce the damage die you inflict. For example, a dragon has say... DR 4. The fighter in the first example would now reduce his damage by 4 steps against the dragon if he could not bypass it. Now he's inflicting 1d10+1d8 damage per blow. It has a certain elegance to it I like and it gets around problems where weaker attackers can't inflict any kind of damage because of a high static DR modifier.

Cheers!

A'koss.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

More player versus GM standoffs. Like Hackmaster.