Out of a party of 7 (me +1 switched as DMs) only 3 players (myself included) knew their character well. The others, some which had played the same character for 3 years, lost track of their character around lvl 9 and around paragon path they usually sticked to what they knew from the early levels. They usually knew about new powers, but overlooked new properties, feats, items and so on...
There have been attemps to play other games, such as Rogue Trader, D6, and so on. But it never reached to interessert 4e had at it's peak (around lvl 6).
Therefore an idea grew. What about making D&D 4e more streamlined? Not so many choices, fewer but more powerful powers, more flavour, and so on. You could call it a merge of D&D 4e and Dota/HoN/LoL.
Development has gone slow, since I have only been playing with the though. But I thought I might include an example power. If this looks interesting to you maybe we could develope it further? For now I have only this power, designed in html/css. I will include an imagedump if it:
What do you think? This is only an example
I have not balanced it or anything, just to show you an idea.You don't need to follow the exp system. Some DMs just level up the characters based on story proression.
There's no reason that your group can't decide to throw the EXP sysem out the window and just play the game at the levels your group has fun at.
Rather than redesigning the classes to be fun at each 'level'... re-design the exp system to put you at the fun levels.
But I'll look into it.I have the Essentials books and they are pretty cool, but the idea of having a more streamlined 4E game system appeals to me as well. I just haven't yet taken the time to put anything together and if anyone else has started it then I could save myself some time.
I was thinking about:
1. Full array of races
2. Limit classes to the "big four" (fighter, cleric, magic user, thief) at least early on. Maybe later develop the other class options.
3. Limit the number of options per level.
And dxlr8r, I like your Eldritch Blast example!
the at will powers already step there power up as you teir up, if you think lvl 6 or whatever is the perfect amoutn of powers to have then I sugest adding a similar step up in power per tier to lvl 6 and below encounter and daily powers and allow mutiple uses of those powers. Maybe grant a couple free feats or something at paragon and epic lvl (or just paragon and retire the chars at lvl 20) this would keep same class powers and what not that your group seams to like at lvl 6 while allowing those powers to retain full usefullness at lvl 11+
Also since the problem seamed to be that your players wern't familure with there chars at higher lvl then perhaps half the xp gains so that each lvl takes longer to get allowing much more time to get used to the curent powers and such of each lvl before having to learn new ones. If a player has used the same char for 3 years (though I am not sure how a char wouldn't have retired before 3 years time unless u hardly ever game) then.....hell; then I am not sure what to say. never heard of a person taking THAT long to learn any char hell thats almost long enough to have a degree. if after 3 years they still not able to learn the char past lvl 9. Then I guess I would sugest going back to original D&D where classes and races were the same thing.
(A)
For still running 4e, I was considering very simple changes, so as not to cost more sweat than 'twas meant to save. I was going to ditch encounter attack powers entirely and select daily powers less frequently.
As said, At-Wills scale in damage at Lv 21, so it might be okay if monster hp is cut down to at least half (so use the Bloodied entry). You can ditch feats (other than class feature-granted ones) and give each character a +1 attack to compensate.
(B)
The quick, messy fix is to ditch non-At-Will attack powers entirely, change Wizard and Cleric Dailies into (Standard action) Rituals of their level, and reduce monster HP to at least half. Now you (possibly) have an older edition of D&D with a more streamlined core.
Just curious if anyone has followed up on this idea.
...
I was thinking about:
1. Full array of races
2. Limit classes to the "big four" (fighter, cleric, magic user, thief) at least early on. Maybe later develop the other class options.
3. Limit the number of options per level.
And dxlr8r, I like your Eldritch Blast example!
Thanks both for your interest and kind words. I haven't followed up on my idea, I would like to, but there is simply to much work for one man to do alone... I agree on limiting the classes, atleast from the start. I would also limit the races. What about taking the races and classes fra PHB1 first...
- Classes and races from PHB1 (to start with)
- ~5 upgradable iconic attack powers to the characters pact (2 at wills, 2 encounters, 1 daily)
- Feats are generic, like boosting a skill or improving to hit or damage
- Keep rituals as it is
- Have generic weapons and items, like "Bag of holding" and "Boots of teleportation"
- 2 iconic utility powers. With only generic feats more feats could be assigned to do what utility powers do today.
- Paragon path/pacts would be included. Like there could be three kinds of Wizards. One based on controlling/orb with the most iconic PP (given as tier bonuses or levels to their powers), and the same for wand and staff...
Some of my thoughts. I don't know how we would realize it, I thought about programming it in PHP (what ever OO language would do), or one could make it as a "book" where the players are their own character editor.