I played 3.5 edition for a long time before 4E came out. I switched to 4E primarily because it made the game more accessible to a lot of my friends who had never played before, and were suddenly interested. I'll be honest: I really do enjoy playing 4E, but there are some major kinks and flaws that I'd like to smooth out, and I'd like to do this by potentially reintroducing some 3.5 game mechanics.
So what I am curious about is this:
What are your favourites things about either 3.5 or 4th Edition D&D?
What would you change about 4th edition?
Now before anyone mentions it, yes, I am aware of D&D Next/5E/callitwhatyouwill. That's not what this is about. This is about keeping 4E essentially 4E, but modifying/hybridizing it with 3.5.
So, please, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Please only post if you actually have something to contribute though (let's refrain from '4E sucks' or 'I'm a purist, I only play AD&D' and things like that, mmk?).
I'll start things off.
I'd really love to bring back some of the more specific skills into 4E, such as Spot, Listen, Pickpocket, Disarm, etc., rather than have them all collected in one big skill. I'd probably like to find a way to bring Profession back as well.
Well that would have been the first thing I would have changed back as well. That is one of the reasons my group never switched to 4th edition; We like 3.5's skill system too much. But we also like the Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower rolls. One thing that I really like about skills, is that they provide alternatives to building your character. They are things to invest in, but they can also be RP rewards given out by the DM. Epecially knowledge skillpoints are a lot of fun to hand out to players. The profession system was never my favorite part of the system. It works I suppose, but it's not amazing. Also, 3.5 doesn't have a very good crafting system. But I think I would much rather replace it with a system of my own design.
I much prefer the 9-point allignment system over 4e's 5-point allignment system.
That was always the beauty of 4e's alignment system, it can have however many points you want because it has exactly 0 impact on mechanics. I once had an alignment system based on jelly beans, and no one complained... well at least not until the paladin player ate all the orange ones.
Makin skills more specific has an issue it does tend to devalue the skill, that's why a lot of skills were combined in the first place they weren't useful enough to stand on their own, especially with 4e being a bit stingier with the skills.
Which do you guys prefer, 4E's monster level system, or 3.5's CR system?
Monster level, 3e's system never actually worked and when you wanted more than one monster it got overcomplicated fast. IN fact just about everythign for monsters should come from 4e.
I never really had any problems with the CR level of monsters. But I do agree that sometimes the CR did not quite match the challenge of the actual monster, when facturing in their special abilities. Plus with groups of monsters, and groups of players, things get a bit fuzzy. For example, when a level 9 player is facing three CR 4 monsters, what is the actual CR of the encounter? If the opponents are just ordinary humans, then the CR might turn out quite differently than when they are all ghouls or vampires. And the CR doesn't quite reflect that accurately. (that is how a level 9 player was almost eaten by vampire-like creatures in my campaign yesterday)
So all monster material comes from 4e.
Howabout PC levels? 3.5 or 4e?
I think this would work better if you assumed 4e as the baseline, and then added things you liked about 3e. 4e had a much more polished and consistent ruleset, and will probably handle modification better.
rampant wrote:
I never got to learn the profession system. TO be honest, I really liked 4e. With the exception of a few classes, I loved just about everything. Some themes where leaps and bounds more powerful, and Some classes had way more support then others, but thats fairly small complaints. I know 4e is largely different from other editions, but I really think it was a solid game. The complaints of no Roleplaying is a style issue more then anything. Take any of the background occupations and BAM, your character can build a backstory so quickly
cowleymen wrote:
To say that any edition has a lack of roleplay is a misnomer really. Roleplaying is up to the DM and the players. 4E has skills like Streetwise, which is used primarily to gather information. This is likely to occur in a non-combat situation, and involves some roleplay.
There are a lot of supplemental resources that can be used for a 3.5 campaign (such as Pathfinder's Mass Combat and Kingdom Building rules) which are lacking for 4E. In my homebrew campaign (the one in which I'm trying to do some hybridizing), I've begun adapting a lot of those rules to work with the 4E game system.
The problem with breaking the 4e skills into smaller chunks (eg. "Perception" becomes "Spot" "Search" and "Listen") is you have to give more skill slots to compensate, and that would require a significant rework of the system of handing out skills. This is particularly true since not all of the 4e skills can be broken up that way; "Heal", for instance, is pretty much identical.
If I was tinkering with the 4e skill system (correction: the way I tinker with the 4e skill system), I would do two things. The first is to borrow a page from 5e and have skll bonuses be a modifier for ability checks, as opposed to having skills married to a single ability. So, for example, when using "Streetwise" to hear "the word on teh street" you use Charisma, but when trying to use reason to determine crime patterns you use intelligence. Or use intelligence for "Religion" knowledge checks, but use wisdom for the checks required by Rituals.
The second thing I do is a fix for the lack of 3.5 skills for which there is no correlation, like craft or profession. Basicaly, I just add the skill. For an example of how this looks, the associated skill training feat uses the following language: "Benefit: you gain a +5 bonus to ability checks and untrained skill checks relating to the practice of [Profession]". This language ensures the new skill follows the same math as the existing skills, without the necessity of rebuilding the entire system.
Now, the problem with addings skills is you don't get that many slots to begin with. And most players won't want to use feats as a fix because most character builds are feat starved and can't afford to blow a feat on largely RP-related activities. There are, in fact, a lot of things that are suboptimal that I would like players to have access to, and I have been trying to figure out a mechanic that doesn't break the math. I tinkered with a parallel "roleplaying" feat track, but that would require me to figure out how many RP feat to give out per level, if I wanted to systemize it, which seems like a lot of work.
What I decided on instead was to use the alternative rewards rules to grant suboptimal, RP-heavy feats as magic items. Most characters really only need a few magic items to stay in the game, leaving a lot of slots open for other things. If a feat would be ranked red or green for a particular build by CharOp (or maybe even purple), I'm happy to give it away as a divine boon in lieu of a magic item, or let the player pick up such a feat with some additional training at the cost of a magic item of the character's level. This way the character can afford to take some of the new skills you want to introduce without overhauling the system.
The biggest thing I'd wanna change about 4e is probably the armor system. Specifically I'd like to go to an Armor as mitigation model rather than avoidance, and just let reflex pull double duty since it uses the same stats anyway.
AC uses the same stats as Reflex only with no or light armor.
Are you thinking a static damage resistance, or a percentage of damage, or something else?
Well in 4e's case I was thinking a tier based reduction. Since weapon damage scales with tier then Armor reduction shuld as well.
So armor would have a resistance of 5/10/15? I expect that would require a serious revamp of monster damage in heroic. Consider that the level range for threats goes from level-4 to level+4. That is a difference of 8 hp damage on at-wills, or 10 or 12 on encounter powers, which means the monsters at the top of the range will do disproportionately more damage than those at the bottom of the range. This would even be true if you limit the range from level-2 to level+2.
And then what do you do with resistances to typed damage? Would it stack with the resistance due to armor? Because that would also mess up the math. Would armor resistance only apply to untyped damage? That still changes the math, because it introduces resistances as the rule rather than the exception.
I don't think what you are suggesting can be accomplished with tinkering, I think it changes the foundations of the system. That is not a bad thing in itself, but it is beyond the scope of just tweaking the game with some houserules.
YOu're probably right. but i had a few thoughts on how to compensate.
As far as the resistance thing, what if we used the 5e model there and specific type resistances just cut the damage in half after applying armor? As to monster damage a lot of that would be comped because the armored characters would get hit more often since the reflex defense is generally a few points lower than AC, even then we'd probably need to knock the prof bonus on weapons down 2 points so instead of 2 or 3 its 0 or 1. As to scaling think more 5/5/10 since basic attacks are 1w/1w/2w.
Hmm... to be honest I have no problems with the 4E armor mechanics. It makes sense to me.
Really because dnd armor mechanics traditionally make no sense to me, 1.) Armor actually tends to make people easier to hit, but takes some bite out of each hit (when it's working correctly anyway). 2.) Heavy armor classes almost invariably end up with lower AC than classes that use light or no armor, so heavy armor is almost always a sub-optimal if not outright suicidal choice despite the classes that get it being touted as being tough, or considered to have a High Defense, so I get the distinct impression that it's not working as intended even if you ignore point 1.
I've actually found the opposite to be true.
In our current group, the characters that are wearing heavier armour have much higher AC than others. We have a Dragonborn Fighter with a proficiency in Plate Armor whose current AC is 30. Our leather-wearing Elf Ranger's AC is 25. Other characters have around 24, and none of them wear plate.
The High AC combined with higher HP allows the Fighter to get in close and take way more damage than the other classes could manage, which in reality reflects the class perfectly.
As far as armor making it easier for somebody to be hit, I'd say yes and no. Does it theoretically create a bigger target? Perhaps. But it also means that less hits will actually damage the person wearing the armor. Think about it (especially in a fantasy world with magically crafted armor): it takes more than a glancing blow to get through plate armor in order to deal the wearer damage. On the other hand, leather armor is easier to cut through, and also won't absorb as much damage from blunt weapons as heavier, thicker armor will. There are enough powers and feats available for light or no armor classes that can make them harder to hit, without comprising the fact that their armor, by itself, won't be as effective as heavier armor.
When you factor in the other defenses - Reflex, Fortitude, and Will - it also makes sense and balances things out. A class that favours heavy armour typically has a lower Reflex defensive score than a class wearing light armor. Which makes sense. Heavier = slower but more durable. Lighter = less durable but quicker and better able to evade.
I really don't see any issues with the 4E system, and have no desire to fiddle with it. 
I'm going to respectfully disagree with rampart and move on to the next thing on my wish list.
I think there is a lot to be gained by using the disease mechanic for things other than diseases. For example, it has always been hard for me to accept that pretty much all poison effects only last for a few seconds. I would introduce some poisons more similar to those in past editions (i.e. more deadly), using the deiease mechanic to determine if/when somebody succumbs. Intervals between checks don't have to be daily, either; for a virulent poison you could require a check every 5 or 10 minutes. This allows you to introduce longer-term or more disabling effects, while avoiding the save or die mechanic.
Wait a minute, how is there that much of a difference in those character's ACs I mean the ranger should have a higher dexterity, neither class is big on int, and the magic item bonuses should be about the same. While the Plate armor obviously offers more protection than the leather it also nukes the dex/int mod to AC so Unless the Ranger is playing really off type His Ac shouldn't be that far behind. EVen if we take shields into account. Is there some sort of level difference or something?
As to armor itself, Let's not go assuming that the basic gear in the PHB was magically manufactured. Armor especially heavy armor slows you down, making you easier to hit, it relies on blunting the force of attacks in order to make taking hits survivable. I can see why it was folded into an avoidance mechanism in the past, simplicity for starters, however I don't htink it's turned out well.
But I guess I'll try to move on.
I believe the disease track was also re-tooled for curses in heros of the fey-wild, and I was wondering could it also be used to represent a character with certain struggles, like a recently turned vampire trying to controll his blood lust, or maybe a cambion that's trying not to let their demonic heritage overtake them?
Exactly. In the Eberron Campaign Setting, it was also used for the effect of the mind seed power of certain quori. I have also seen it for contracting lycanthropy. Basicly, whenever you are going for an effect with a longer duration than the end of the encounter, that is the mechanic to use. And because it is a mechanic where death is an acceptable final state, you can use it to impose conditions that are not acceptable by the combat math.
My beef with 4e, which I think I share with a lot of people, is there are very few mechanics for adjudicating how players affect the world outside of combat, except the skill challenge. I think a lot of things that people missed could be reintroduced without messing up the game math, if you use the disease mechanic. Spells that impose longer term conditions, for example. Drugs, addictions, longer term injuries, possession, all sorts of plot devices that have been replaced in 4e with DM fiat.
And you don't have to use it for conditions that get worse over time. Take injuries, for example. What if, when you failed 2 death saves, you rolled a save to see if there was a long term injury, and if you failed you incurred a -2 penalty of some sort (pretty common fare for the initial stage of a disease). You roll after every extended rest to see if you get better, but you don't get worse - or maybe you can get worse, but only if you fail another death save. Or maybe you suffer long term effects of a spider bite. There are all sorts of things you can model with it, and you can probably refluff existing diseases for a lot of them.
I'm definitely interested in having long-term effects. Perhaps a larger category of Conditions should be created, of which long-term poison effects and diseases are sub-categories. It could also include injuries, curses, negative spell effects, etc. Definitely things that are lacking in 4E!
Might be an interesting mechanic to implement with things that are less good vs. bad, and more a matter of being a spectrum. Take the concept of the berzerker and stretch it out a bit, so at one end they're complete raging psychos that are wailing on anything in reach, on the other end they are under complete control, alert, aware, and have their heads completely in the game. and each stage along the way has it's own mix of benefits and drawbacks, instead of one side being the best, and the other being the worst.
Another thing to lokk into would be grafts, and symbionts, some aggressive variants could even have side effects that require th euse of the tracker bars.
For grafts and symbionts I might use the artifact concordance mechanic. The higher the concordance, the more power you unlock, but also the more side effects you suffer.
I have actually started to mix some of the good things from 5th Edition to merge it into some kind of 4.5 Edition, but as 5th Edition is closer to 3.5 Edition I guess I can be discuss it here as well.
My take on Skill system are very close as to what have been discussed here earlier, you can find what I have done here:
http://community.wizards.com/forum/4e-general-discussion/threads/4148241?page=2
However, one area I think 4th Edition was right but at the same time wrong was the Rituals concept. It is very off-combat centric (i.e. an area 4th Edition was not focusing that much on), but provided the flexibility to get as many rituals you wanted or could afford. However, I felt like many 3.5 spells was not transfered over into rituals (some lower level ones appeared later in Dragon Magazines). There was also a lack of guidance in how you as a DM could add challenges or obstacles that could be solved by rituals at the appropriate level (information gathering, transportation, stealth, etc.) I think the system could have become really good if some more effort was put into it. Just looking at 5th Edition they are trying to merge these concepts into the new spells, so my gut feeling is there are things that could be done here.
I haven't abandoned the discussion here, just been busy with a tonne of stuff haha.
One question I'd like to put forth is concerning Knowledge checks. In 4E, there is no Knowledge skill. You simply make knowledge checks using the skill that pertains most to that area of information (nature, arcana, religion, history, etc.). 3.5's system seems to cover more areas of information though, with specified knowledge skills for things like local, nobility, etc.
I don't necessarily want to scrap the 4E system, but I'm wondering if we could come up with a list of every type of knowledge check that might conceivably be used, and perhaps create a framework for what type of skill check would be needed to determine knowledge about that topic? Does that make sense?
So for example, in 3.5 there's Knowledge (local). I don't really see this type of knowledge fitting exclusively into any of 4E's skills. So where would we put it?
Well to be honest I was never sure how knowledge local was suppsoed to work in 3e. I get that it was supposed to be a way of showing that you know an area or areas, but the game was kind of fuzzy on how to define an area and whether you tracked them as separate skills or what. I'm really tempted to call it streetwise and hopeit goes away.
I would use Streetwise, modified by Int or Wis rather than Cha.
If you learn something through reason it is Int.
If you learn something through intutition it is Wis.
If you learn something through asking it is Cha. Wait, isn't that Diplomacy? This is why I prefer ability checks modified by skill bonuses.
BTW, the Rules Compendium has a list of modifiers to checks depending on familiarity with the settlement, which I find workable.