The Valley #13
I keep trying to think of ways to improve 4E.
In other words, I think 4E can be saved from itself.
What I would like to do is remove certain aspects of 4E that waste time, seem pointless, or are needlessly complicated.
First: temporary effects that target anyone but the creator of the effect. This is on top of the list for good reason; I’ve seen it waste so much time for so little gain. One or two of these don’t mean much, but once you add in multiple such effects and effects that change from round to round, it gets old fast. Computers can easily and near instantaneously deal with things like this, we cannot.
Example I’ve seen: The first young black dragon fight I ran in this campaign.
Every round everyone had to determine what attack modifiers were in effect. And I’m not kidding when I say every person, every round.
The dragon had multiple penalties to its defenses, but only if the cleric or rogue had hit with their attack and the dragon had multiple penalties to its attacks depending on whether it had been marked by the paladin or the cleric had hit with a different power. Oh and don’t forget concealment from an ally, second wind defense bonuses, darkness effects, and so on.
Solution: There is no simple solution as each power would have to be looked at individually, but a simple attack or defense bonus for the user of the effect would be fast and simple, maybe with a further bonus to make up for any meta-changes to the power (like reducing your target’s AC).
Example: Griffon’s Wrath (level 7 fighter encounter power); it’s a standard strength attack for 2 dice of damage + str mod (and others) and the target takes -2 to AC until the end of your next turn.
How about we change it to a strength attack + 3 and no penalty to AC?
Exception: Powers that last the entire combat. Since they are not conditional and they are persistent, remembering your +1 to attack from Bless is much easier.
Second: Marking.
First off, the DM is the brain of the monsters. He should be able to decide what a monster would do based off of its experience, intelligence, and role-playing qualities and not be forced to attack the “defender” or be faced with a ton of penalties.
This is a tabletop RPG, not an MMO.
Solution: Marking has to go. It causes way too many slow downs and conditional effects.
Unfortunately marking is incredible ingrained into the system that pulling it out may not be so easy.
My current thought is to take every class with marking built into it and replace the marking with something flavored to the class but gives an all-combat-long effect.
A paladin would lose his ability to mark and all powers associated with it, but would gain an encounter power (maybe daily) that would give his allies a +2 to defenses (not himself) for the combat while the paladin gained vulnerability 2 (or 5). This would make the other targets less appealing, and make him more appealing to monsters. To me, this fits in with the classical flavor of the paladin sacrificing himself for others.
Third: Ongoing damage and “beginning of your turn” damage.
I don’t hate ongoing damage, but I’m not a fan of it. I have had way too many BBEG’s get totally slaughtered thanks to standing next to something or someone (a fighter using Reign of Steel, or a Flaming Sphere) and then getting pounded with ongoing damage attacks. These are all from daily powers that the party saves until needed for a big fight, which is what they were meant for, but it goes over the top (IMO). The issues swings against the party as well when they’re taking ongoing damage that will drop them unless they save, which they fail over and over again.
Solution: Give a bonus to the initial damage, but only have it affect one time and without ongoing damage. This, like all the others, may have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis as to make sure a simple little at-will power doesn’t turn into something more powerful than a level 10 daily.
A side-effect of this may be that leaders may be giving more temporary hp rather than free saves, but kind of means the same thing.
Example #1: Flaming Sphere (level 1 wizard daily power); anyone starting their turn next to it takes 1d4 + int mod damage.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to say 2 + int mod damage?
Will changes like this be worth it?
I certainly think so and so long as we’re only changing the constant and pointless interruptive powers, we’re still rolling plenty of dice for our attacks and healing.
They make take some of the glory out of the combats, but level 1 combats should not take 2 hours, even against the BBEG.
Has someone already done this work?
If so, let me know.
If you have anything to add, let me know.
I love to read the comments I get.
Knowing that people read this blog helps to keep me writing.
Now the session was a special one.
‘Twas the night before Halloween and I felt that such a night needed something a bit more than my usual setup.
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue
We had jumped ahead a few days and wrote Ander out of the story for this session with a reasonable excuse of him having gone back to the Valley to let Polaris and the others know what happened in the Shadowfell.
The party had stayed behind a few days in the town of Two River’s Rest, and Pehr’All had not shown his bony white visage,
The party was chatting with some friends they had made recently who were also adventurers:
Bjorn, a typical headstrong dwarf warrior who prefers to fight first and ask questions later
Norris, an elven archer, whose skill with a bow is overpowered by the yellow streak going down his back
Valance, a brave human warrior whose heroic nature will some day lead him to greatness or death
Norbert, a halfling who loves money almost as much as Troy McClure loves fish, and would gladly sell out his mother for a gold piece
Grinder, a wild and crazy human whose giant muscles draw much needed oxygen away from his brain
Jaycee, the group’s wizard and brain trust, and a bit of gold opportunist herself
Now we have the cast of a bad zombie movie, and all we need are zombies.
The two groups are exchanging war stories before heading on their separate ways on the porch of the Tavern of the Dancing Wyvern when they screams coming from multiple places.
The next thing they know zombies begin charging down the street attacking every living humanoid in sight.
That is how this one and a half hour long combat began.
Every round for the entire combat 20 zombie rotters and 2 zombies would come in from the multiple entry points on the map. On the third round and all subsequent rounds a modified flaming skeleton would enter as well (modified = replace all fire effect with disease/poison).
For several rounds the party tore through the zombies, killing the zombies almost as fast as they were entering.
But like all zombie movies, that wouldn’t last.
At first they were cocky and were using encounter and daily powers in a near wasteful manner, but they had no expectation that this horde had infinite numbers at the time.
The NPC combatants did as their personalities dictated.
Bjorn and Grinder charged in and started hacking away. Bjorn chose his targets a bit more carefully while Grinder just mowed down whatever was in front of him.
Soon Grinder was surrounded and had to begin hacking his way back to the porch of the inn while Bjorn was able to maintain a position near Edward.
Norris shot at everything that was closest to him. But he was quickly surrounded and unable to get back to the group.
Valance chose to protect Duncan, who ran off to fight off one side of the zombies almost alone.
Norbert quickly saw where this was going and he fled into the Inn with the rest of the staff and then upstairs to safety.
Jaycee had stayed close to the door of the inn and ran inside when the zombies started getting too close for comfort, but unlike Norbert, she still attacked targets. When the situation got worse, she was going to run upstairs, but found that Norbert had nailed the door shut.
Kergan was having a rough time with this combat as his talents went to a lot of waste with the number of minions present. But he did serve a valuable purpose in blocking off an alley that was rapidly filling with undead.
And the star of the session was Admon, the not-so-controlling wizard with multiple burst and blast spells and could only miss a zombie on a roll of a natural 1. His job didn’t really change much for this combat, which was kill as many zombies as possible, as fast as possible, and occasionally make room for the rest of the party to maneuver.
Now the zombies had other things going for them, and none of them would become apparent until someone was bloodied.
This was guaranteed to happen once you were bloodied and you had taken any damage from an undead. At the end of your round make a saving throw or you lose a healing surge, or take a healing surge in damage if you have no surges left. Repeat this until dead.
The only way to save someone is 3 DC30 healing checks in succession.
When someone dies, they immediately join the initiative of whatever creature type they are part of (zombie rotters for NPC’s, and zombies for PC’s).
So when Norris and Valance dropped and Edward and Duncan healed them, the damage continued.
When the party noticed this happening (specifically, Norris healing above bloodied, and then inexplicably dropping back to bloodied at the end of his turn) and still see no end to the undead supply, they went from a casual “let’s get back to the inn” to an “everyone back to the inn now!”
Over the next couple of rounds the party made back to the inn, facing up to 5 opportunity attacks each. And this includes picking up their fallen allies Norris, Grinder, and Valance.
Unfortunately those allies are about dead and Norris and Grinder eventually turn, and are then “put down”.
But Duncan is able to save Valance by making the three healing checks and using his clerical healing spells to keep him up when failed (he couldn’t help but like a guy who refused to leave before him when faced impossible odds).
Justin: “He’s like Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump. He did everything he could to die in this combat and he still couldn’t do it.”
So we fast-forwarded to the next bit as the fight ended up taking a lot longer than I expected.
The party boarded up the windows and doors, helped or killed their friends and then made it upstairs where we glossed over whether or not they got revenge against Norbert.
They got on the roof and looked out at the devastation from undead horde, which was still going on.
They saw what appeared to be a ring of death spreading out from a central point; a Temple of Thirus (god of adventurers) that was flying a new flag. The flag was white with red blood dripping from it, the symbol of Nazuel (god of undeath).
Unlike in the movies, the party could not wait this out as ghouls were batting clean up. Ghouls are not mindless zombies and they can climb. So the party had to act then and there.
They gathered what material they could and traveled from rooftop to rooftop as fast as they could.
This was a skill challenge of sorts, where each poor roll or failure added more zombies to their next fight. And for each natural 1 they rolled, a ghoul was added.
Edward, who has no athletics or stealth training, was pretty bad at this.
But as they fell off the last roof (a build in bad need of repair), the pair of ghouls and handful of zombie rotters were only a minor impediment.
Soon they were inside the incredibly dark and quiet temple, now defiled to Nazuel.
They find absolutely nothing in the entire place until they reach the chapel, where they find a very dark and barren room with lone man standing in the center.
“Thank you for coming. I was afraid we were going to be left alone all day. I was hoping to have company for dinner.”
His barely seen fangs and pale skin gave his origins away.
The party is not interested in playing verbal games at this point, so they attack. And so do the dozen vampire spawn that have been clinging to the walls above.
This combat went pretty fast in comparison to the others during the night.
There was also a special mechanism in the place that involved a series of mirrors to focus light and move it about the room, but the party didn’t get that far. The fight was easier on the party then the DM expected.
Vampire Lords are dangerous when they have combat advantage, and their healing abilities are powerful (regeneration, second wind, blood drain).
For several rounds this guy kept bouncing back and forth from being bloodied to not.
The party was not as lucky as he was able to dominate Edward for a round (who beat on Duncan) and he dominated Kergan a few rounds later (who later apologized to Admon for the welt).
But thanks to Admon’s minion sweeping powers, the vampire was soon out of flanking partners and the party wore him down slowly until Admon critted the vampire to exactly 0hp.
At which point it looked at Admon and laughed as it turned to dust.
Then Admon woke up with the sound of the Pehr’All’s laughing still in his ears.
But it was ok. He was safe and in his bed and it all was just a nightmare.
In other words, I think 4E can be saved from itself.
What I would like to do is remove certain aspects of 4E that waste time, seem pointless, or are needlessly complicated.
First: temporary effects that target anyone but the creator of the effect. This is on top of the list for good reason; I’ve seen it waste so much time for so little gain. One or two of these don’t mean much, but once you add in multiple such effects and effects that change from round to round, it gets old fast. Computers can easily and near instantaneously deal with things like this, we cannot.
Example I’ve seen: The first young black dragon fight I ran in this campaign.
Every round everyone had to determine what attack modifiers were in effect. And I’m not kidding when I say every person, every round.
The dragon had multiple penalties to its defenses, but only if the cleric or rogue had hit with their attack and the dragon had multiple penalties to its attacks depending on whether it had been marked by the paladin or the cleric had hit with a different power. Oh and don’t forget concealment from an ally, second wind defense bonuses, darkness effects, and so on.
Solution: There is no simple solution as each power would have to be looked at individually, but a simple attack or defense bonus for the user of the effect would be fast and simple, maybe with a further bonus to make up for any meta-changes to the power (like reducing your target’s AC).
Example: Griffon’s Wrath (level 7 fighter encounter power); it’s a standard strength attack for 2 dice of damage + str mod (and others) and the target takes -2 to AC until the end of your next turn.
How about we change it to a strength attack + 3 and no penalty to AC?
Exception: Powers that last the entire combat. Since they are not conditional and they are persistent, remembering your +1 to attack from Bless is much easier.
Second: Marking.
First off, the DM is the brain of the monsters. He should be able to decide what a monster would do based off of its experience, intelligence, and role-playing qualities and not be forced to attack the “defender” or be faced with a ton of penalties.
This is a tabletop RPG, not an MMO.
Solution: Marking has to go. It causes way too many slow downs and conditional effects.
Unfortunately marking is incredible ingrained into the system that pulling it out may not be so easy.
My current thought is to take every class with marking built into it and replace the marking with something flavored to the class but gives an all-combat-long effect.
A paladin would lose his ability to mark and all powers associated with it, but would gain an encounter power (maybe daily) that would give his allies a +2 to defenses (not himself) for the combat while the paladin gained vulnerability 2 (or 5). This would make the other targets less appealing, and make him more appealing to monsters. To me, this fits in with the classical flavor of the paladin sacrificing himself for others.
Third: Ongoing damage and “beginning of your turn” damage.
I don’t hate ongoing damage, but I’m not a fan of it. I have had way too many BBEG’s get totally slaughtered thanks to standing next to something or someone (a fighter using Reign of Steel, or a Flaming Sphere) and then getting pounded with ongoing damage attacks. These are all from daily powers that the party saves until needed for a big fight, which is what they were meant for, but it goes over the top (IMO). The issues swings against the party as well when they’re taking ongoing damage that will drop them unless they save, which they fail over and over again.
Solution: Give a bonus to the initial damage, but only have it affect one time and without ongoing damage. This, like all the others, may have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis as to make sure a simple little at-will power doesn’t turn into something more powerful than a level 10 daily.
A side-effect of this may be that leaders may be giving more temporary hp rather than free saves, but kind of means the same thing.
Example #1: Flaming Sphere (level 1 wizard daily power); anyone starting their turn next to it takes 1d4 + int mod damage.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to say 2 + int mod damage?
Will changes like this be worth it?
I certainly think so and so long as we’re only changing the constant and pointless interruptive powers, we’re still rolling plenty of dice for our attacks and healing.
They make take some of the glory out of the combats, but level 1 combats should not take 2 hours, even against the BBEG.
Has someone already done this work?
If so, let me know.
If you have anything to add, let me know.
I love to read the comments I get.
Knowing that people read this blog helps to keep me writing.
Now the session was a special one.
‘Twas the night before Halloween and I felt that such a night needed something a bit more than my usual setup.
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue
We had jumped ahead a few days and wrote Ander out of the story for this session with a reasonable excuse of him having gone back to the Valley to let Polaris and the others know what happened in the Shadowfell.
The party had stayed behind a few days in the town of Two River’s Rest, and Pehr’All had not shown his bony white visage,
The party was chatting with some friends they had made recently who were also adventurers:
Bjorn, a typical headstrong dwarf warrior who prefers to fight first and ask questions later
Norris, an elven archer, whose skill with a bow is overpowered by the yellow streak going down his back
Valance, a brave human warrior whose heroic nature will some day lead him to greatness or death
Norbert, a halfling who loves money almost as much as Troy McClure loves fish, and would gladly sell out his mother for a gold piece
Grinder, a wild and crazy human whose giant muscles draw much needed oxygen away from his brain
Jaycee, the group’s wizard and brain trust, and a bit of gold opportunist herself
Now we have the cast of a bad zombie movie, and all we need are zombies.
The two groups are exchanging war stories before heading on their separate ways on the porch of the Tavern of the Dancing Wyvern when they screams coming from multiple places.
The next thing they know zombies begin charging down the street attacking every living humanoid in sight.
That is how this one and a half hour long combat began.
Every round for the entire combat 20 zombie rotters and 2 zombies would come in from the multiple entry points on the map. On the third round and all subsequent rounds a modified flaming skeleton would enter as well (modified = replace all fire effect with disease/poison).
For several rounds the party tore through the zombies, killing the zombies almost as fast as they were entering.
But like all zombie movies, that wouldn’t last.
At first they were cocky and were using encounter and daily powers in a near wasteful manner, but they had no expectation that this horde had infinite numbers at the time.
The NPC combatants did as their personalities dictated.
Bjorn and Grinder charged in and started hacking away. Bjorn chose his targets a bit more carefully while Grinder just mowed down whatever was in front of him.
Soon Grinder was surrounded and had to begin hacking his way back to the porch of the inn while Bjorn was able to maintain a position near Edward.
Norris shot at everything that was closest to him. But he was quickly surrounded and unable to get back to the group.
Valance chose to protect Duncan, who ran off to fight off one side of the zombies almost alone.
Norbert quickly saw where this was going and he fled into the Inn with the rest of the staff and then upstairs to safety.
Jaycee had stayed close to the door of the inn and ran inside when the zombies started getting too close for comfort, but unlike Norbert, she still attacked targets. When the situation got worse, she was going to run upstairs, but found that Norbert had nailed the door shut.
Kergan was having a rough time with this combat as his talents went to a lot of waste with the number of minions present. But he did serve a valuable purpose in blocking off an alley that was rapidly filling with undead.
And the star of the session was Admon, the not-so-controlling wizard with multiple burst and blast spells and could only miss a zombie on a roll of a natural 1. His job didn’t really change much for this combat, which was kill as many zombies as possible, as fast as possible, and occasionally make room for the rest of the party to maneuver.
Now the zombies had other things going for them, and none of them would become apparent until someone was bloodied.
This was guaranteed to happen once you were bloodied and you had taken any damage from an undead. At the end of your round make a saving throw or you lose a healing surge, or take a healing surge in damage if you have no surges left. Repeat this until dead.
The only way to save someone is 3 DC30 healing checks in succession.
When someone dies, they immediately join the initiative of whatever creature type they are part of (zombie rotters for NPC’s, and zombies for PC’s).
So when Norris and Valance dropped and Edward and Duncan healed them, the damage continued.
When the party noticed this happening (specifically, Norris healing above bloodied, and then inexplicably dropping back to bloodied at the end of his turn) and still see no end to the undead supply, they went from a casual “let’s get back to the inn” to an “everyone back to the inn now!”
Over the next couple of rounds the party made back to the inn, facing up to 5 opportunity attacks each. And this includes picking up their fallen allies Norris, Grinder, and Valance.
Unfortunately those allies are about dead and Norris and Grinder eventually turn, and are then “put down”.
But Duncan is able to save Valance by making the three healing checks and using his clerical healing spells to keep him up when failed (he couldn’t help but like a guy who refused to leave before him when faced impossible odds).
Justin: “He’s like Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump. He did everything he could to die in this combat and he still couldn’t do it.”
So we fast-forwarded to the next bit as the fight ended up taking a lot longer than I expected.
The party boarded up the windows and doors, helped or killed their friends and then made it upstairs where we glossed over whether or not they got revenge against Norbert.
They got on the roof and looked out at the devastation from undead horde, which was still going on.
They saw what appeared to be a ring of death spreading out from a central point; a Temple of Thirus (god of adventurers) that was flying a new flag. The flag was white with red blood dripping from it, the symbol of Nazuel (god of undeath).
Unlike in the movies, the party could not wait this out as ghouls were batting clean up. Ghouls are not mindless zombies and they can climb. So the party had to act then and there.
They gathered what material they could and traveled from rooftop to rooftop as fast as they could.
This was a skill challenge of sorts, where each poor roll or failure added more zombies to their next fight. And for each natural 1 they rolled, a ghoul was added.
Edward, who has no athletics or stealth training, was pretty bad at this.
But as they fell off the last roof (a build in bad need of repair), the pair of ghouls and handful of zombie rotters were only a minor impediment.
Soon they were inside the incredibly dark and quiet temple, now defiled to Nazuel.
They find absolutely nothing in the entire place until they reach the chapel, where they find a very dark and barren room with lone man standing in the center.
“Thank you for coming. I was afraid we were going to be left alone all day. I was hoping to have company for dinner.”
His barely seen fangs and pale skin gave his origins away.
The party is not interested in playing verbal games at this point, so they attack. And so do the dozen vampire spawn that have been clinging to the walls above.
This combat went pretty fast in comparison to the others during the night.
There was also a special mechanism in the place that involved a series of mirrors to focus light and move it about the room, but the party didn’t get that far. The fight was easier on the party then the DM expected.
Vampire Lords are dangerous when they have combat advantage, and their healing abilities are powerful (regeneration, second wind, blood drain).
For several rounds this guy kept bouncing back and forth from being bloodied to not.
The party was not as lucky as he was able to dominate Edward for a round (who beat on Duncan) and he dominated Kergan a few rounds later (who later apologized to Admon for the welt).
But thanks to Admon’s minion sweeping powers, the vampire was soon out of flanking partners and the party wore him down slowly until Admon critted the vampire to exactly 0hp.
At which point it looked at Admon and laughed as it turned to dust.
Then Admon woke up with the sound of the Pehr’All’s laughing still in his ears.
But it was ok. He was safe and in his bed and it all was just a nightmare.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 4:55 PM
4 Comments:
That sounds like a very fun game!
Re: reducing the lingering penalties, etc., my group has been using a lot (A LOT) of markers to keep track of things like 'marked' or 'ongoing damage'. In addition to markers on the battle map, we also have magnetic markers which we add next to character or monster names on the whiteboard where we keep track of initiative (which I highly recommend, btw, if you don't already do it). AND we have printed out 'cards of shame' which a status-affected PC puts in front of them to proclaim their status effect(s), and the cards show all the penalties and limitations caused by that effect. By having all these crazy tools, it makes it much easier to keep track of things, even though it sounds like a big hassle. Once you get used to it all, the whole party can help distribute the appropriate marker, magnet or card to the right person or miniature and it all gets taken care of fairly smoothly.
I worry that radically changing the marking system as with your paladin example would really unbalance the game over time. As for it affecting how your monsters behave, it's only a -2 penalty, which at higher levels is pretty insignificant (monster to-hits are pretty generously weighted towards the 'hit most of the time' side of the spectrum). And it is supposed to at least make the critter have to make a choice, instead of always going for the healer right away. You still can, but now you have to suffer for it a bit.
I'm not a fan of temp hit points, and I completely agree that ongoing damage should be a fixed number, instead of yet another damage roll. You're absolutely right that 4E would work better as a computer game than a pencil and paper game. I'm pretty sure that was the plan all along, really.
All that said, I still really enjoy playing it. I've been in two 4E campaigns so far, played a rogue in one and a warlock in the other, and was very happy with how both 'felt'.
My bet is that 4.5E will fix a lot of the over-complicated stuff, so long as you shell out the $90 for a whole new set of books.
Thank you.
It is.
My responses to your other statements :)
"Re: reducing the lingering penalties, etc.,"
Wouldn't it be nicer to just not have to use markers, tags, chips, etc. at all? Instead you move, you make a d20 attack roll, you add bare minimum modifiers, (maybe) you roll damage, and then you're done.
"I worry that radically changing the marking system as"
I am worried about that as well. The game is so dependent on it that changing it will destabilize every single thing.
And part of me is ok with that if mook fights only last 15 minutes.
The -2 penalty I referred to was just a basic thing, but it would scale will tiers/levels.
I understand about forcing the monster to choose among targets, but the current system is way too much like WoW aggro management.
I don't expect to see a 4.5E.
I'm betting they'll release something with "speed up options".
I might actually buy that book.
As a follow-up to trying to streamline 4th Ed D&D, I did find this free tool that looks like it could be really helpful: http://www.exnebula.org/vcc
Tracks health, statuses (and allows custom statuses to be created and tracked) and when they expire, initiative order (with held, readied actions), etc.
I'm not affiliated with the folks who made it, but it looks useful. Hope it helps, and happy gaming!
Thanks, but every computer tool I've seen ends up taking longer if used during the game.
Tools that can be used prior to the game is a different story.
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