In looking at this, I wonder whether 4E could stand in for the old Heroquest game, maybe using the first tier. The set piece nature of it, including using Skill Challenges, would make for interesting "board campaigns" (for lack of a better word).

Quote from: cranebump;966308In looking at this, I wonder whether 4E could stand in for the old Heroquest game, maybe using the first tier. The set piece nature of it, including using Skill Challenges, would make for interesting "board campaigns" (for lack of a better word).

The way it is set up, 4E would be ideal for a sports based fantasy skirmish game like Blood Bowl.

Quote from: cranebump;966308In looking at this, I wonder whether 4E could stand in for the old Heroquest game, maybe using the first tier. The set piece nature of it, including using Skill Challenges, would make for interesting "board campaigns" (for lack of a better word).

Which is funny as WOTC switched HeroScape to D&D. HeroScape uses some of the mechanics from HeroQuest. Same designer.

Quote from: Batman;966130This is a very valid point. What would 4e evolve into if they were to refine it? What changes would you like to see, aside from better math that is?

Hm, I'm not sure exactly what a refined 4e would look like. Obviously build those expertise, improved defenses, and masterwork armor bonuses into the math this time around, as you say. There are a couple of fan projects floating around the internet, one of which I'm excited to try!

I'd also like a return to pure AEDU design, with a module/variant/option to replace EDU powers with super-simple passive features. The E-classes always seemed like an answer in search of a problem to me, but 4e fans have mixed opinions about that. And for all that I think the complexity complaints about 4e are overblown, I'd like to see niggly little conditional widgets removed from default positions. Like the ranger's Prime Shot, that sort of fiddly advantage ought to be a feat -- obviously buffed, to make it worth its conditional nature.

Quote from: Batman;966130Personally I'd love to see more variations on classes. Instead of pegging them each into a single-defined role I thought it would be far better to change their role based on in-class options provided. For example a Paladin in 4e is simply a Defender that can kinda branch into a Leader or Striker role but they're always a Defender. I'd love to have it so they could fit either of those 3 roles better and simply lose the Defender roll altogether. Same with the Wizard, which is almost always a "Controller" in D&D but I'd love to have a sort of Abjurer-style Wizard who wears mage armor and "defends" like a Fighter.

Roles have always been prevalent in D&D, even without being defined with specific features that 4e did. But I've always found that to be rather inflexible as a system. 4e, as it's very much power based, would be an excellent platform to allow more variation in terms of what each class can do to provide different play styles.

Personally I don't have any objection to 4e's clearly defined roles; in fact I'd like the controller to be better defined. Going with your paladin example, by my way of thinking, a non-defender paladin is just a paladin by another name -- cleric, avenger, or invoker. The exception where I can agree with your desires are those classes that got rolled into one power source or other -- usually arcane -- but probably should have had their own power source. Like the warlock -- using powers granted by eldritch entities seems more divine than arcane, but not so much that I want it to actually be divine -- and the artificer -- I feel like it's this lone steampunk class, locked into the leader role. With those sort of classes, yeah, I'd like to see build options that present clear variation in primary roles...or separate classes of that power source, each one of a different role.

Quote from: Batman;966130Isn't that what Pathfinder is? :rolleyes: But again I agree. 3e is pretty bloated with loads of issues that can't simply be patched. I give credit to Paizo for trying but their house ruled 3.5 isn't much better mechanically speaking. Having played 5e though I think that's the best we can get from a "rethought" 3e honestly. It has all the tell-tale signs of 3e such as how multiclassing works and lower numbers earlier on (3e unfortuanatley ramps those numbers up exponentially to ridiculous heights) and has a lot of leeway when it comes to character creation and customization (class skills, backgrounds, feats, sub-paths for classes). When looking at them side-by-side I really can't see what 3e does "better" than 5e? Prestige Classes were just different options players picked to give their character more mechanical depth and power, usually with little regard to the setting as a whole. It doesn't matter that Greyhawk doesn't have Red Wizards or Harpers because *poof* now they're there! By doing away with most of these options, it kept players from being ridiculous power-wise.

Lol yeah, I love Paizo as a company but their edition is more "carefully marketed" than "carefully rethought." By the end of my 3.5 days, I had a collection of house rules that I mostly like better than the system tweaks that Paizo has made.

Maybe 5e is a rethought 3e; if I ever play it maybe it'll take 3e's place as my second fave D&D. But there're some pretty specific things I'd like to see in a carefully rethought 3e, the really big one of which you happened to touch upon here. I don't think the D&D brand name will ever give it to us, so I'm tinkering with a heartbreaker edition, where each level of each class is a neat little brick and 3e-style multiclassing just works, without XP penalties, favored classes, partial-1st-level-bennies, prime requisites, or other special-exception rules. I really like the idea of a game where Beer n' Pretzels Joe can write 'Fighter 3' on his sheet, grab a weapon, and be ready to adventure 5 minutes later; and Backstory Actor Arty can spend an hour crafting his fighter/wizard/priest...and nobody has to worry that one of them will deeply regret their chargen decisions. This is kind of a holy grail for me.

Can't remember if I posted this already:
http://legrumph.org/Terrier/?Jeux-de-role/D%26amp%3BD-4E-Gamma-Edition
French language fantasy take on GW 4e, while I'd hardly play 4e I may one day be convinced to play this.

Add some of the stuff from here:
http://boldpueblo.com/dazed/blog/tag/gamma-world/
(Uber level characters, rules for designing monsters...)
And you've got a pretty cool game IMHO.

Quote from: Voros;966237I found the core rules of 2e quite solid. What was ill-thought out?

The core rules of 2e were, for the most part, the core rules of 1e. The Player's Option books were mostly bad. In the core, weapon proficiency system was just a bad idea. NWPs are incoherent. The updated reaction table is significantly more complicated without really being any better. With the exceptions of initiative and THAC0, just about every difference I've found from 1e makes the game worse, not better.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966443The core rules of 2e were, for the most part, the core rules of 1e. The Player's Option books were mostly bad. In the core, weapon proficiency system was just a bad idea. NWPs are incoherent. The updated reaction table is significantly more complicated without really being any better. With the exceptions of initiative and THAC0, just about every difference I've found from 1e makes the game worse, not better.

Certainly at first glance 2e looks like 1e with some of the expansion rules like proficiencies and weapon specialization rolled in, 'simplifications' like ThAC0 and new initiative rules, and then specific/superficial stuff like recasting rangers and rebuilding bards.  

I can kind of agree with both you and Voros, in that I feel 2e was solid, but also ill-thought out. Ill thought out in that they didn't seem to know what they were trying to do. If they were just trying to make a better-edited, less confusing 1e, then it would have ended up looking more like OSRIC. Instead, they tried to do something different, but it isn't clear what. If the change from gp=xp default is any indication, they were recognizing that there was a movement away from a "go to the dungeon and haul out all the loot" method of playing. But if that is the case, why make that change, and not do more to facilitate the style of gameplay they thought was becoming prominent? And why not make more changes to the rules to acknowledge changing playstyles? For instance, it's oft said that people didn't want to turn their fighters into lords at name level and continue on as a leader of armies, but instead keep adventuring and fighting more and more advanced enemies. They certainly toned down the rules on what to do with followers and build castles (except for a specific splatbook). But they still balanced name-level spellcasters and martials with the martials getting more usable followers and expected roles. It makes it look like they clearly understood a disconnect between the game and audience--and then did nothing about it. It's more perplexing than anything. That's my overall take on 2e--it's a perfectly fine game that I don't understand why it exists as it does.

Quote from: Batman;966130This is a very valid point. What would 4e evolve into if they were to refine it?

I don't think there is any thing wrong with 4th edition in regards to high fantasy. What would be interesting is taking it the design apply it to other sub genres. It will take a lot of work because of the exception based design but one keep the fundamental including the frequency of when powers can be invoked but by redoing the effects and flavor text, impart a completely different feel to the system.

Also don't focus on combat as much.

QuoteIt's more perplexing than anything. That's my overall take on 2e--it's a perfectly fine game that I don't understand why it exists as it does.

It seems like it mostly came down to Lorraine Williams not having a goddamned clue about the game business. First, you had this enormous drain of talent with Gygax & the original crew leaving. I'm not a Gygax cultist, but the fact is that with Gygax, Mentzer, Kask, and Moldvay gone, most of the people with developmental knowledge and experience of D&D were gone. It is really hard for any design-focused company to recover from that kind of loss. Doesn't matter if you're making drive shafts or board games. Personally, I think that if I were to hire anyone in a lead design/editing role for AD&D 2e based on what I've read of the pre-Williams stuff, it would be Frank Mentzer.

But the secondary thing is that it doesn't matter who your talent is if your management sucks. Sure, TSR lost a ton of core talent, but I don't think Cook, Winter, and Pickens had bad credentials. What they did have was a mandate to maintain backward compatibility with AD&D and a testing budget of $0.00. With those kinds of constraints, I'm not sure anyone would have done much better with AD&D 2e.

I'm not going to disagree with any of that. However, I feel it still doesn't really explain why we got what we got. There is a theoretical alternate version of 2e that I think would be what they would have made if they simply got an order from on high from an incompetent boss to make and update and make back-compatible. I think it would be 1e with some of the UA-type expansion material rolled in, removing 'evil' stuff (devils, demons, assassins and half-orcs) to appease the moral guardians, and updating the organization, etc.  It is where 2e deviates from that that interests me. As I said, the axing of assumed gp=xp and moving keeps, castles and armies to the background makes it look like they knew about emerging trends in the way people played, but then why stop exactly there?

How much further can you realistically go if you have to stay compatible with 1e and can't test your ideas at work?

Quote from: Batman;966130This is a very valid point. What would 4e evolve into if they were to refine it? What changes would you like to see, aside from better math that is?

The biggest change that needs to be made is the concept of the DM as pink, squishy server for a multiplayer co-op game. Nearly everything a PC does should be something the player tracks & computes on his own turn. Auras, marks, ongoing damage, etc are great ideas...for a game where a computer tracks all that crap. The basic AEDU system is fine.

I'd also like to see qualitative changes as you level up. Low-level 4e daily is "you can do 3[W] and maybe a rider." High-level 4e daily is "you can do 3[W] and like 3 different riders while having a stance active plus a zone effect." Meanwhile, you still don't do enough damage to fell a low-level enemy in one hit.

Basically 4e went from LFQW to Linear Everybody; I'd prefer to see Quadratic Everybody. So much like a Traditional D&D Wizard gets the ability to flat-out nuke a group of 3-HD monsters once or twice a day around level 5, rather than nerfing the crap out of Fireball like 4e did, I'd like to see the Fighter get a nuke-quality power. Powers at even higher levels should be mechanically simple, but involve tremendous heroics like smashing enemies through walls, instilling terror in a whole group of foes before tearing through them in a flash, etc,

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966479The biggest change that needs to be made is the concept of the DM as pink, squishy server for a multiplayer co-op game. Nearly everything a PC does should be something the player tracks & computes on his own turn. Auras, marks, ongoing damage, etc are great ideas...for a game where a computer tracks all that crap. The basic AEDU system is fine.

Agreed. Especially having played the D&D Neverwinter MMO, which is based on 4E.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966479The biggest change that needs to be made is the concept of the DM as pink, squishy server for a multiplayer co-op game. Nearly everything a PC does should be something the player tracks & computes on his own turn. Auras, marks, ongoing damage, etc are great ideas...for a game where a computer tracks all that crap. The basic AEDU system is fine.

I dunno, my players didn't have too much trouble tracking who was marked and who did what on theirs, or others, turns. Coming from a predominantly 3e/3.5 background it was very similar in terms of who was affected by what spells and effects. Keeping track of statuses of abilities, spell duration, immunities, mid-battle Skill Check DC's (like when the party's cleric wants to identify the spell a bad-guy is casting), etc. all take time too. I expect my players to know when certain stuff goes into effect, certain pluses/minuses are applied, and if they're missed....oh well. There were times in our 4e games a party's Fighter will forget to use their feature because of Marking or adding in a bonus here or there and I just say "Well, next time remember" and move on.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966479I'd also like to see qualitative changes as you level up. Low-level 4e daily is "you can do 3[W] and maybe a rider." High-level 4e daily is "you can do 3[W] and like 3 different riders while having a stance active plus a zone effect." Meanwhile, you still don't do enough damage to fell a low-level enemy in one hit.

I get what you're saying. This largely plays in part to the poor math early on where low-level monsters had FAR too many Hit Points. Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale was a LOT better supplement in terms of common monsters that were re-done with appropriate-level Hit Points and Math. A high-leveled Daily (we'll say a 15th level one) should be able to completely destroy a 1st level Standard monster. Unfortunately that's not the case in 4e. Cone of Cold (15th level Wizard daily) sadly deals 3d8 + Int damage and assuming an Intelligence of 24, with +3 implement and maybe a feat to boost cold damage (another +2) will only result in approximately 25 or so damage while a Dire Rat (level 1 Brute) has 38 Hit Points. So on that note I completely agree. Riders and effects like being frozen in place are cool and fun but the disparity between a mid-level daily and a lv. 1 Brute is simply FAR too little.  

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966479Basically 4e went from LFQW to Linear Everybody; I'd prefer to see Quadratic Everybody. So much like a Traditional D&D Wizard gets the ability to flat-out nuke a group of 3-HD monsters once or twice a day around level 5, rather than nerfing the crap out of Fireball like 4e did, I'd like to see the Fighter get a nuke-quality power. Powers at even higher levels should be mechanically simple, but involve tremendous heroics like smashing enemies through walls, instilling terror in a whole group of foes before tearing through them in a flash, etc,

Oh I agree. That's a great place to start. The problem I see though is that there's a notion that Fighter's (and other non-magical types) don't need or shouldn't have this sort of power. Look at Pathfinder and 3.5 and you'll see that these characters largely don't possess such amazing abilities. They can do some moderate amount of damage but knocking monsters through walls, jumping high and attacking a winged monsters, etc. are considered "super-heroic" and deemed only fitting for people of magical talent. Of course this runs counter to all myths and legends of warriors of renowned skill and heroism yet people still play D&D like it's Real Life + Magic...

Quote from: estar;966463I don't think there is any thing wrong with 4th edition in regards to high fantasy. What would be interesting is taking it the design apply it to other sub genres. It will take a lot of work because of the exception based design but one keep the fundamental including the frequency of when powers can be invoked but by redoing the effects and flavor text, impart a completely different feel to the system.

This can largely be done currently by messing with a few things:

• Rate of Rest: While the assumed norm is at-will, encounter, and daily there's nothing stopping someone from changing it to encounter (formerly at-will), Daily (formerly encounter), and Weekly (formerly daily) and maintain the ritual-based powers as-is. What you have to ensure is that monster's HP is drastically reduced to fit the model. I'd say 1/3 of their overall Hit Points but keep the distinction of Role. So our Dire Rat (level 1 Brute) normally has 38 Hit Points but under this system it'd have only 12 (rounded up to the nearest even number) and bloodied at 6. Additionally, I'd beef up monster AC by a point or two AND probably only add 1/2 ability mod to damage rolls. That way a Fighter using a greatsword (1d10) with a Str of the normalized 18 (+4 mod) isn't 1-shot killing monsters at this level that should normally take 2 solid hits to kill.

• Healing Surges: I'd cut these down by 1/2, based on class. Keep the 1/4 healing that you get from it but only recover 1/2 of them, like in 5e, during a long rest. I'd require 24-hr bed rest to recover all your Healing Surges.

• Apply the disease track more often AND perhaps add in the possibility of losing limbs. Something that 4e does well are the disease you can contract and the fight to remove them slowly. Unfortunately this system isn't used very often but it should be. Also loss of limb was always something that was terrifying when added into the Critical Hit aspect. Maybe some sort of installment of that could make it seem more gritty or help to change the sub-genre.

• Require the necessary things the power says it needs: This is something that I already do in my games. If a Rogue's power says "Sand in the eyes" then I'm going to require sand or something similar to a fine, but gritty substance, to throw into someone's face. Just because the power says this is what you do does't necessarily mean you can do that when you're depraved of said material. This should be applied to all spells for components and probably other things too.

Quote from: estar;966463Also don't focus on combat as much.

Downtime rules, background info and things that 5e did for your character's ideals, flaws, bonds, etc. are all excellent avenues to add into the game. Not entirely sure what else should be added that doesn't just sound like more mechanical constructs to promote the system-as-reality that 3e did?

Quote from: Batman;966485Oh I agree. That's a great place to start. The problem I see though is that there's a notion that Fighter's (and other non-magical types) don't need or shouldn't have this sort of power. Look at Pathfinder and 3.5 and you'll see that these characters largely don't possess such amazing abilities. They can do some moderate amount of damage but knocking monsters through walls, jumping high and attacking a winged monsters, etc. are considered "super-heroic" and deemed only fitting for people of magical talent. Of course this runs counter to all myths and legends of warriors of renowned skill and heroism yet people still play D&D like it's Real Life + Magic...

I think if we're talking about improving 4e, we're already taking for granted that anyone who thinks the 3.PF fighter, with his I Can Do A Bit of Extra Damage and I'm Not So Useless at Tripping abilities, is as powerful as a martial class should ever be is not going to be in the target audience. That ship already sailed when fighters got daily powers.