The Gaming Den

NB: I do not think this is where 5e is going, but I suppose it could lean on some ideas like this to retain a little of 4e's tidy encounter budget.


So I did some math on how AD&D-through-3e compares with 4e. A useful assumption for that study is that 4e Levels vs AD&D HD relate as L/2 + 3 = HD (ignoring elite and solo types all through). Turns out there's only a couple of major differences in 4e from there.

• 1: 4e monsters have four times too many hit points, and PCs recover their limited mojo like hit points and spells about four times too fast to compensate for that.
  
  2: All 4e characters are like E6 characters for 3e, only starting at level 6 and fighting the same bloated monsters forever. The math never really changes, they just get slightly more junk to track all the time. It's like every 5000xp your +1 swords stop working and you have to find a new one so you can keep fighting the same monsters. There's certainly no high level spells.

Now, to fix that up, all one has to do is reverse it.

• A: Use quarter monster hit points (round as you will, half bloodied and round up looks fine). This cuts fights down to about 3 or 4 rounds, slightly more as you progress. Monster healing and regeneration effects can be 2 per 5 normal. Monsters get their "Bloodied" status with any wound.
  
  B: Use only 20% normal experience awards for monsters, though full amount (or even double) for the quest bonus. Do not add monsters to compensate. If you have to fill out a 4e-style module, repeat some of the encounters, just with swapped up monsters, whatever makes sense.
  
  C: "Encounter" powers, second wind, etc, recover with a long rest, and that's where you get your free healing surge spend too. "Daily" powers, healing surges, etc, recover with a week of R&R, basically once per adventure.
  
  D: You can't change the math without fixing the damage expressions, nor give high level characters back their AD&D-style awesome without rewriting the whole game, so screw that. E6 isn't that bad of a game anyway, 4e just cuts out all the flavour of it with a bonus treadmill.

The effects here are as follows.

• I: You can do a day of adventuring in one session, several fights at ~15-20 minutes each, and leave the party much more time to do some exploring and social bullshit. Classic modules and dungeon-delving adventures become playable because the recovery cycle for PCs is very similar to classic D&D.
  
  II: Because fights are short and individual monsters weak, the issues around great stacks of penalties and conditions building up fade away; fight's already over, monster's already dead.
  
  III: The game becomes more about your strategic limits, what you can finish today. That adds a player-controlled difficulty dial back into the game. Awesomesauce.
  
  IV: Monsters mostly have enough variety to do something different every round, though they have to focus fire to achieve much with it in their short little lives. Characters who are losing too many healing surges need to sit back for a bit.
  
  V: The crappy default Dwarf Fighter can damn near one-shot Irontooth with his "Daily" power. A striker with advantage can do it in two. It's vital to take every advantage you can in such short and brutal battles, making things like marking and combat advantage shine in relation to their complexity.
  
  VI: After four or five fights and a night's rest, you're back where 4e puts you after one fight and a short rest, in the same time. Actual progress made though.

Next up, skill challenges. Hey, at least losing a healing surge means something with these mods.

This actually sounds good. And here I thought there's no easy way to make DnD4 more fun without a serious effort...

Damn...

Sounds fun.

I have some ideas but I haven't tested out the math. Say with the HP bloat problem...

"when bloodied, any damage you take is maximized". It's functionally something like a 25% hp reduction and adds s'more flavor to the Bloodied mechanic. It would also encourage folks to save up an encounter/daily to finish off a bloodied foe, instead of just shooting all your best moves out first few turns and then going into at-will grinding.

I don't quite see the point of dailies recovering once per adventure/week. I would have thought they should recover faster, not slower.

Maxus wrote:I don't quite see the point of dailies recovering once per adventure/week. I would have thought they should recover faster, not slower.

Resource management is a sought after experience for some groups.

virgil wrote:

Maxus wrote:I don't quite see the point of dailies recovering once per adventure/week. I would have thought they should recover faster, not slower.

Resource management is a sought after experience for some groups.

Fair enough. Cutting monster HP really would make individual attacks worth more...I'd still have left the recharge schedule alone, but that's me.

This is interesting to read.

I'd still have left the recharge schedule alone, but that's me.

It's difficult to challenge the PCs at that without getting into bigger monster damage and more hit points for them too. No real problem with "half monster hit points and double monster damage" for just speeding up what 4e already does.


Anyhoo, thanks all.

NB: Does change the class and power balance a little, but I can't see anything that becomes stunningly good or bad (ongoing damage powers will change the most one way or the other).

Are people going to sit well with Wizards shooting fireball only once a week though?

If they play for a real challenge, cooperation and tactical combat? Sure. I'd go for it. I've played Earthdawn for a while, and had only one opportunity to cast a high-yield combat spell. And that was a surprise attack opening. Chucking it right-and-left wouldn't be that much fun...

reducing a 4e character's options seems like the opposite of what people want. The 'bloodied' -> maximize damage taken thing sounds good, although it really encourages dog-piling.

You could cut out bonus items and reduce monster numbers to 4/5 (or whatever), but the advantage (your frost sword no longer gets worse and worse until you need to buy a new one) is probably outweighed by the annoyance of multiplying all monster statistics. Better to institute Tome-style scaling for items.

reducing a 4e character's options

I'm pretty sure my calculations to get here leave PCs with the same number of options on a per-round basis. It's a bit easier to waste a good "daily" if the DM doesn't foreshadow the bosses for you I suppose.

Otherwise though, your at-will attacks are getting the job done just fine. You get three of them and can easily spend one "encounter" power per fight past the low levels. That's something different every round if you want it.

Fireball once a week? Yes, but that one you cast every round works pretty well now too. A little flavour renaming may be in order.

Dailys are not significantly stronger than encounter powers. Making them come out once every 4 encounters is already plenty of balancing IME.

Quarter hp is way over blown. The game then becomes a 'who's won initiative? rest is foregone conclusion' affair like 3.x high level play.

Here's my own house rules to address some issues you addressed.

I use 1/2 hp for both monsters and PCs, and slowed regeneration. PCs only regain 1d6+CON-modifier healing surges, and 1d6 per level in hp (per two levels if resting in unfriendly environment), after an extended rest. At-will/encounter powers which give (temporary) hp only work once in the time between two combat encounters. This is totally arbitrary, but is required to avoid at-will spamming f*cking up slowed regeneration.

In my paragon tier games I got round the 15-minute work day by the (level 11) PCs having to make 100k a month in gp . They can't clear out dungeons 1 room a day to meet that objective within the 30 day limit. But it requires that the players accept the campaign objective (mine did, hooray).

I also award more XP for exploration and meeting such financial objectives. That's an AD&D thing, to award more XP for treasure than killing.

These puts the strategic and tactical perspectives back into the game, and I don't have to fiddle with the mechanics over and above the hp regeneration (the one big offender in 4E).

I also use scavenging - PCs can scavenge killed monster for ritual components. That way, they get plenty of resources without this compromising their 100k objective.

Quarter hp is way over blown. The game then becomes a 'who's won initiative? rest is foregone conclusion' affair like 3.x high level play.

Quarter monster hit points. Monsters that do some damage and then die.

The rest of it just ties the recovery schedule back to the amount of damage and combat rounds that 4e set it to originally. Plus or minus. Gives room to play more like the player-driven exploration cycles of yore (being mathematically very similar to AD&D at mid levels, or no-healing-stick 3e).


Like what you've got there too, Windjammer. Seems to do what you want it to, even if it does hit the players over the head with a big stick to get there.