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D&D 4E What would you like 4E to look like.
- Thread starter tx7321
- Start date
Upper_Krust
Hero
Hey all! 
Assuming a purely Pen & Paper format, changes I would like to see (echoing many previous posters) include:
1. Less Classes, or at the very least much better defined classes. If the Paladin is a core class next time around then someone at WotC deserves a wedgie.
2. Starting (Low-Level) Characters not so weak and feeble...I think one way of doing this is giving (medium-sized) humanoids 3 racial hit dice before class levels.
3. Hit Dice tied to Size/Mass (For creatures of natural physiognomy ~ anything except constructs, fey, outsiders and intelligent undead). Base HD = 1/2 feet tall. For 2 biggest dimensions are equal then HD = feet, if all dimensions are equal then HD = 1.5 x feet)
e.g. An 8 ft. (8 x 4 x 3) Ogre would have 4 HD. A 10 ft. (10 x 10 x 4) Elephant would have 10 HD, while an 8 ft. Beholder (8 x 8 x 8) would have 12 HD.
4. Vast simplification of skills...Skill check = relevant ability score + applicable class level.
5. Feat trees...akin to Iron Heroes but forcing you to take them in order. Each feat tree could have 6 feats. So when creating a 12th-level character you could pick weapon focus IV, armour mastery III, shield mastery V and people would automatically know you had all the previous feat prerequisites.
6. Armour as Damage Reduction. Armour giving a dexterity penalty (which can be offset by having a sufficiently high Strength score) rather than a maximum dexterity bonus.
7. Drammatically lower the number of spells known. Maybe, learn 1 spell/level +1 per ability score modifier.
8. Dexterity used for Attack Bonus.
9. Attack bonus divorced from racial hit die altogether. A 10 hit die giant should have an attack bonus of '0'.
10. Proper damage for big creatures. Quodruple the base damage every size category increase.
Small ~ 1 damage
Medium ~ 1d4 punch
Large ~ 2d8 punch
Huge ~ 8d8 punch
Gargantuan ~ 30d10 punch
Colossal ~ 120d10 punch
11. Dragons by size category not age category.
12. Less reliance on magic items, 3E is a twink fest. Limit everyone to 4 magic items working upon an individual at any one time.
13. Arcane (Black) and Divine (white) Magic should be available to any spellcaster at half their level. Druids could operate at 3/4ths for both.
e.g. A 12th-level Wizard could cast 6th-level Arcane spells or 3rd-level Divine Spells. A 12th-level Druid could cast 4th-level Arcane or Divine Spells.
14. Orcs = Lawful Evil, Goblins = Chaotic Evil.
15. Maximum Hit Points as standard.
Assuming a purely Pen & Paper format, changes I would like to see (echoing many previous posters) include:
1. Less Classes, or at the very least much better defined classes. If the Paladin is a core class next time around then someone at WotC deserves a wedgie.
2. Starting (Low-Level) Characters not so weak and feeble...I think one way of doing this is giving (medium-sized) humanoids 3 racial hit dice before class levels.
3. Hit Dice tied to Size/Mass (For creatures of natural physiognomy ~ anything except constructs, fey, outsiders and intelligent undead). Base HD = 1/2 feet tall. For 2 biggest dimensions are equal then HD = feet, if all dimensions are equal then HD = 1.5 x feet)
e.g. An 8 ft. (8 x 4 x 3) Ogre would have 4 HD. A 10 ft. (10 x 10 x 4) Elephant would have 10 HD, while an 8 ft. Beholder (8 x 8 x 8) would have 12 HD.
4. Vast simplification of skills...Skill check = relevant ability score + applicable class level.
5. Feat trees...akin to Iron Heroes but forcing you to take them in order. Each feat tree could have 6 feats. So when creating a 12th-level character you could pick weapon focus IV, armour mastery III, shield mastery V and people would automatically know you had all the previous feat prerequisites.
6. Armour as Damage Reduction. Armour giving a dexterity penalty (which can be offset by having a sufficiently high Strength score) rather than a maximum dexterity bonus.
7. Drammatically lower the number of spells known. Maybe, learn 1 spell/level +1 per ability score modifier.
8. Dexterity used for Attack Bonus.
9. Attack bonus divorced from racial hit die altogether. A 10 hit die giant should have an attack bonus of '0'.
10. Proper damage for big creatures. Quodruple the base damage every size category increase.
Small ~ 1 damage
Medium ~ 1d4 punch
Large ~ 2d8 punch
Huge ~ 8d8 punch
Gargantuan ~ 30d10 punch
Colossal ~ 120d10 punch
11. Dragons by size category not age category.
12. Less reliance on magic items, 3E is a twink fest. Limit everyone to 4 magic items working upon an individual at any one time.
13. Arcane (Black) and Divine (white) Magic should be available to any spellcaster at half their level. Druids could operate at 3/4ths for both.
e.g. A 12th-level Wizard could cast 6th-level Arcane spells or 3rd-level Divine Spells. A 12th-level Druid could cast 4th-level Arcane or Divine Spells.
14. Orcs = Lawful Evil, Goblins = Chaotic Evil.
15. Maximum Hit Points as standard.
Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
Rothe said:
I don't know, he doesn't do rpg forums. If I get the document file from him I'll post it up somewhere unless he has some objection.
Echoing the poster above who suggesting ditching alignment. Ugh. Conceptually, I don't have a problem with it as a non-binding sort of thing, like the Storyteller system's Nature / Demeanor, but when you've got half of the beasties in the MM listed as 'always' this alignment, and then all sorts of exceptions (like Erinyes being 'fallen celestials,' despite celestials being *forbidden* from changing alignment by game rule), you know something is wrong...
Base classes that have role-playing restrictions, like alignments, codes of conduct or multi-classing restrictions, also don't work for me. If the benefits are mechanical, any drawbacks should be mechanical. Leave role-playing to the *player.*
I don't mind the idea of some role-playing restrictions built into PrCs quite so much, since the idea of a focused training style only being available to people who jump through particular hoops and impress the only people who teach said style, but even then, there should be room for adaptation. Not everyone players Realms / Eberron / Setting-of-the-week, so it would be nice to have any class or PrC introduced in the game have a sentence on 'adapting to other settings' even if it's as short as saying, 'Change the name to Radiant Servant of Lathandar, in the Realms.'
However, I'm not sure I like Prestige Classes anyway. A system of base classes, with all of the PrC abilities just broken down into Feats, would allow for a lot more customization, and a lot less 'I take Contemplative 1, for the free Domain, and then go back to Master of Shrouds...' If any Cleric who satisfied the requirements could just blow a Feat on one Additional Domain, or whatever, a lot of these PrCs would serve no purpose.
In a Feat-based PrC-less setting, a Cleric who purchase the right mix of Feats could end up looking almost identical to a PrC Priest in 3.5, and might even role-play as being a member of an organization of 'Sacred Exorcists' who follow that chain of Feats to perform their chosen duties, but it would be a series of *choices,* not a straightjacket that says, 'If you want PrC feature 3, you must complete dead levels 1 and 2 first.'
More choice, less straightjacket, very important to me. All Sorcerers descended from Dragons? Straightjacket. Some Sorcerers descended from fiends, celestials, fey, genies, far realms beasties, unknown sources? Flavorful variety! All Elves have Wizard as favored class, punishing the dude who wants to play a Bard / Ranger? Bad. Alignment and / or multi-classing rules forbidding one from playing a Bard / Monk, Barbarian / Monk or Paladin / Barbarian? Bad. If you want to play Whistling Fist of the Morning Wind, an all-singing all-dancing martial artist, the rules shouldn't stand in your way.
3.5 added a tiny taste of 'choice' to the Ranger (and Monk), being able to focus on Ranged or Melee combat styles, and I hope that this is the way of the future. Every class should have choices to take, and meaningful ones. Will I be a feral rage Barbarian or a Whirling Frenzy Barbarian? Will I get Damage Reduction or a light-armored AC bonus as a Monk? Will my Druid be a Wild Shaper or a Shapeshifter? Will my Rogue use Sneak Attack, or Skirmish?
Alternate Class features and variant classes (from UA and the Dragon) are absolutely the most exiting thing I've seen in a long time, more would be welcome.
As much as I love reading the fun stuff on the WotC Character Optimization forums, they should be a necessary stop for anyone writing a 4th Ed, to see what *not* to do. There are *dozens* of squiffy rulings that a simple word choice could have dealt with, and there are a few that even a novice can look at and see where never playtested. Nothing frustrates a hack like myself when *I* see that a rule as written is just flat-out unplayable, and couldn't possibly mean what it says.
Base classes that have role-playing restrictions, like alignments, codes of conduct or multi-classing restrictions, also don't work for me. If the benefits are mechanical, any drawbacks should be mechanical. Leave role-playing to the *player.*
I don't mind the idea of some role-playing restrictions built into PrCs quite so much, since the idea of a focused training style only being available to people who jump through particular hoops and impress the only people who teach said style, but even then, there should be room for adaptation. Not everyone players Realms / Eberron / Setting-of-the-week, so it would be nice to have any class or PrC introduced in the game have a sentence on 'adapting to other settings' even if it's as short as saying, 'Change the name to Radiant Servant of Lathandar, in the Realms.'
However, I'm not sure I like Prestige Classes anyway. A system of base classes, with all of the PrC abilities just broken down into Feats, would allow for a lot more customization, and a lot less 'I take Contemplative 1, for the free Domain, and then go back to Master of Shrouds...' If any Cleric who satisfied the requirements could just blow a Feat on one Additional Domain, or whatever, a lot of these PrCs would serve no purpose.
In a Feat-based PrC-less setting, a Cleric who purchase the right mix of Feats could end up looking almost identical to a PrC Priest in 3.5, and might even role-play as being a member of an organization of 'Sacred Exorcists' who follow that chain of Feats to perform their chosen duties, but it would be a series of *choices,* not a straightjacket that says, 'If you want PrC feature 3, you must complete dead levels 1 and 2 first.'
More choice, less straightjacket, very important to me. All Sorcerers descended from Dragons? Straightjacket. Some Sorcerers descended from fiends, celestials, fey, genies, far realms beasties, unknown sources? Flavorful variety! All Elves have Wizard as favored class, punishing the dude who wants to play a Bard / Ranger? Bad. Alignment and / or multi-classing rules forbidding one from playing a Bard / Monk, Barbarian / Monk or Paladin / Barbarian? Bad. If you want to play Whistling Fist of the Morning Wind, an all-singing all-dancing martial artist, the rules shouldn't stand in your way.
3.5 added a tiny taste of 'choice' to the Ranger (and Monk), being able to focus on Ranged or Melee combat styles, and I hope that this is the way of the future. Every class should have choices to take, and meaningful ones. Will I be a feral rage Barbarian or a Whirling Frenzy Barbarian? Will I get Damage Reduction or a light-armored AC bonus as a Monk? Will my Druid be a Wild Shaper or a Shapeshifter? Will my Rogue use Sneak Attack, or Skirmish?
Alternate Class features and variant classes (from UA and the Dragon) are absolutely the most exiting thing I've seen in a long time, more would be welcome.
As much as I love reading the fun stuff on the WotC Character Optimization forums, they should be a necessary stop for anyone writing a 4th Ed, to see what *not* to do. There are *dozens* of squiffy rulings that a simple word choice could have dealt with, and there are a few that even a novice can look at and see where never playtested. Nothing frustrates a hack like myself when *I* see that a rule as written is just flat-out unplayable, and couldn't possibly mean what it says.
Malhost Zormaeril
First Post
Ok, starting from the top:
1. Make the attribute modifiers the attributes, since they're the only numbers that matter. This would do away with the "odd attribute" problem.
2. Give combat more colour, not necessarily more options. I had much love for the 2e Punching and Wrestling table, odd as it may seem, and the feats (like from OA) linked with actual moves, which allowed me and my players to visualise combat more completely. Maybe neither of these options is the way to go, but some way to differentiate strikes should be a big win with the younger crowd, at least.
3. Retooling on the experience mechanics so it emphasises adventures played, rather than monsters killed. Perhaps graded by "relevance", for some useful definition of relevance, rather than "challenge" (CR).
4. Making alchemical items and other oddball pseudomodern equipment the province of special gnomish kingdoms, maybe, but not making them as common as torches, lanterns, oil flasks, etc.
5. Official support for cultures as character regions and regional feats, perhaps providing some nine or ten generic medieval regions (English, Viking, Frankish, Byzantine, Visigothic, Levantine, Medieval Baghdali etc.) or Oerth ones.
6. Keep Prestige Classes, and perhaps make the Paladin one. Being a Pally should *feel* special, which in 2e was done with steep requirements, but 3e Paladins don't feel like they're a special breed... Making it a Prestige Class would do the trick, perhaps; I certainly think it did well with the Knights of Solamnia.
7. Talent Trees are cool, and allow the player to spread the burden of these decisions as they increase in level. IMO, having low-level players look more alike and high-level players more different from each other is best, since low-level players won't be overwhelmed by choices and high-level players will have plenty of options to customise their mojo. Giving a static attribute progression and increasing them significantly at higher levels is also a good idea, too.
8. Make the magic system Complexity-based like PO's True Dweomers, or Epic Spells. Then generate some 50-100 "standard" spells with it so new players don't have to understand the spell creation system off the bat, but rather only when they want to create spells not on the standard list.
9. Either let wizards use spells with the same average damage capacity as a sword-strike indefinitely, or limit the number of swings a fighter can do per day. Bar special desperate circumstances, a spellcaster shouldn't have to fall back on using a dagger, even if his fallback is not much better than one. It's the principle of the thing.
10. In general, get rid of "uses per day" mechanics and replace them with a "condition track", perhaps. Even Fatigued > Exhausted > Unconscious is good, with a kind of roll or save to avoid sliding into the next condition. Magic items would have an analogous set of conditions and save.
11. Give XP bonus for upholding cultural and racial memes, like in Dark Sun.
I personally like alignment; it gives some substance to what would otherwise be abstract behavioural judgement calls which facilitates heroic fantasy a lot. But I wouldn't swear eternal vengeance if it went, either. Also, there's probably some other stuff I can't bring to mind just now, but that's a large part of the design parameters I'd use.
1. Make the attribute modifiers the attributes, since they're the only numbers that matter. This would do away with the "odd attribute" problem.
2. Give combat more colour, not necessarily more options. I had much love for the 2e Punching and Wrestling table, odd as it may seem, and the feats (like from OA) linked with actual moves, which allowed me and my players to visualise combat more completely. Maybe neither of these options is the way to go, but some way to differentiate strikes should be a big win with the younger crowd, at least.
3. Retooling on the experience mechanics so it emphasises adventures played, rather than monsters killed. Perhaps graded by "relevance", for some useful definition of relevance, rather than "challenge" (CR).
4. Making alchemical items and other oddball pseudomodern equipment the province of special gnomish kingdoms, maybe, but not making them as common as torches, lanterns, oil flasks, etc.
5. Official support for cultures as character regions and regional feats, perhaps providing some nine or ten generic medieval regions (English, Viking, Frankish, Byzantine, Visigothic, Levantine, Medieval Baghdali etc.) or Oerth ones.
6. Keep Prestige Classes, and perhaps make the Paladin one. Being a Pally should *feel* special, which in 2e was done with steep requirements, but 3e Paladins don't feel like they're a special breed... Making it a Prestige Class would do the trick, perhaps; I certainly think it did well with the Knights of Solamnia.
7. Talent Trees are cool, and allow the player to spread the burden of these decisions as they increase in level. IMO, having low-level players look more alike and high-level players more different from each other is best, since low-level players won't be overwhelmed by choices and high-level players will have plenty of options to customise their mojo. Giving a static attribute progression and increasing them significantly at higher levels is also a good idea, too.
8. Make the magic system Complexity-based like PO's True Dweomers, or Epic Spells. Then generate some 50-100 "standard" spells with it so new players don't have to understand the spell creation system off the bat, but rather only when they want to create spells not on the standard list.
9. Either let wizards use spells with the same average damage capacity as a sword-strike indefinitely, or limit the number of swings a fighter can do per day. Bar special desperate circumstances, a spellcaster shouldn't have to fall back on using a dagger, even if his fallback is not much better than one. It's the principle of the thing.
10. In general, get rid of "uses per day" mechanics and replace them with a "condition track", perhaps. Even Fatigued > Exhausted > Unconscious is good, with a kind of roll or save to avoid sliding into the next condition. Magic items would have an analogous set of conditions and save.
11. Give XP bonus for upholding cultural and racial memes, like in Dark Sun.
I personally like alignment; it gives some substance to what would otherwise be abstract behavioural judgement calls which facilitates heroic fantasy a lot. But I wouldn't swear eternal vengeance if it went, either. Also, there's probably some other stuff I can't bring to mind just now, but that's a large part of the design parameters I'd use.
Mouseferatu
Hero
Oh, I totally forgot one important detail when I was listing my ideas earlier.
Specifically, the rules should be written so that you never require a feat to accomplish something; the feats just enable you to do it better.
Want to take a mighty swing with a weapon, sacrificing accuracy for damage? Doesn't require a feat. But Power Attack (or its 4E equivalent) makes you better at it.
Want to wield a small weapon with Dex instead of Strength? You can do it, but there's a penalty. Weapon Finesse removes that penalty.
And so on, and so forth. The presence of a feat in the game should only ever benefit the person taking it; it should never limit the options of people without it.
(Obviously, things like metamagic might have to be an exception to this rule. But honestly, maybe not. I think it would be possible to design a metamagic system where, again, you didn't need the feats, but metamagic was largely suboptimal without them.)
Specifically, the rules should be written so that you never require a feat to accomplish something; the feats just enable you to do it better.
Want to take a mighty swing with a weapon, sacrificing accuracy for damage? Doesn't require a feat. But Power Attack (or its 4E equivalent) makes you better at it.
Want to wield a small weapon with Dex instead of Strength? You can do it, but there's a penalty. Weapon Finesse removes that penalty.
And so on, and so forth. The presence of a feat in the game should only ever benefit the person taking it; it should never limit the options of people without it.
(Obviously, things like metamagic might have to be an exception to this rule. But honestly, maybe not. I think it would be possible to design a metamagic system where, again, you didn't need the feats, but metamagic was largely suboptimal without them.)
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Double the metamagic costs if you don't have the specific feat, and you would both allow everyone access to the simplest metamagic while also making the feats worth taking.Mouseferatu said:
Shalimar
First Post
Mouseferatu said:
Similair to Mutants & Masterminds with stances and challenges. In MnM Players can use stances like aggressive stance (+2 Attack, -4 Defense) or defensive stance (-4 attack, +2 dodge bonus). The players could also use the Defensive Attack feat that is a 1/1 tradeoff instead, or the All out Attack feat that 1/1 trades defense for attack.
The skill challenges are new ways to use skillsthat put your roll at a penalty,the skill challenge feats negate the penalty. Bluffs can happen as a move actionswith a -5, the rapid bluff feat negates that penalty. I would be all for a system like that for 4.0
