D&D 4E How could 4E be more elegant?

[glass]

The other advantage of D&D's iterative attacks is that it can make bonuses or penalties which wouldn't make any real diference to one of the attacks significant.

Not sure how big a deal that is, or if there is another way of achieving it.

Just thought of a way: what if the dregree of success of the attack roll was added to damage: that would make all bonuses and penalties count even if the didn't really affect the chance of hitting.

As an added bonus, with the randomness of the attack roll carrying over to damage, the damage roll could go, saving a lot of rolls in combat. Or is attack roll, damage roll too much of a sacred cow.


glass.

 

[maddman75]

Just thought of a way: what if the dregree of success of the attack roll was added to damage: that would make all bonuses and penalties count even if the didn't really affect the chance of hitting.

As an added bonus, with the randomness of the attack roll carrying over to damage, the damage roll could go, saving a lot of rolls in combat. Or is attack roll, damage roll too much of a sacred cow.


glass.

I'd love to see this change. Both WoD and Unisystem use this technique, and it maintains randomness while reducing play time. They could even take Unisystem's route and allow dice rolling if you like. For instance, a long sword may be listed as doing damage 1d8(4) + success margin. So if you roll an 18 total against a 14 AC, you do 8 points of damage. Or 1d8 + 4 if you're one of those people who like to roll for damage.

 

[ashockney]

I think that's certainly an interesting possibility. I can tell you that the group I playtested this with found the damage rolling component to be too "sacred cow". They wanted to be able to roll their damage!

Anyone else have thoughts? Concerns? Think that the above posts are without merit? If not, I suppose we can assume this will be the foundation for 4E right?

We can just ship this thread off to WOTC and have them get to work on it right away...

 

[Larcen]

...Minimizing energy is simplifying stacking bonuses. This would be easiest by saying all bonuses are of the same type and thus do not stack. A d20 roll is modified by ranks/BAB/caster level + an appropriate ability modifier + one circumstance bonus (the largest one) + one circumstance penalty (against the largest one) and that's it. So if you are hasted, attacking from higher ground, and weilding a +3 sword, your attack bonus is BAB + Str + 3. The haste and higher ground bonuses are lost to the sword's better bonus.

Or you can say all bonuses stack, and then stop handing them out like candy.

 

[Ravellion]

Or you can say all bonuses stack, and then stop handing them out like candy.

Indeed. Also remov things that work "sometimes". Like the conditional synergy modifiers. Though I think I'd rather see synergy modifiers gone altogether.

Mantra for 4.0
Everything should fit nicely on a 1 page character sheet (barring equipment and spells known/prepared). Fitting nicely with the full formula for how you got to the total number (Reflex: +3 base, +2 ability, + 1cloak, +1 luckstone, +1 halfling = +8.

Rav

 

[Hussar]

One idea that was brushed off early that I HOPE actually get's taken up by more than just WOTC is hiring decent editors/proofreaders. It's pretty bad that EVERY book has pages of errata that have to be attached afterwords. It would be nice if they could set asside a couple of bucks to actually proof the bloody thing before it gets published. WOTC may not be the worst of the bunch *cough AEG cough* but, considering they have the most money of the lot, it would be an idea to raise the quality level a tad.

Hiring a decent team of editors/proofreaders should be a priority for any new release. I'm sick of seeing books that look like they were written by a third year ESL student. Using Microsoft Word to proof your text IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. If I see "ore" instead of "orc" one more time, I'm heading for a high place to start picking off co-eds. Drives me right around the twist.

 

[Zappo]

Indeed. Also remov things that work "sometimes". Like the conditional synergy modifiers. Though I think I'd rather see synergy modifiers gone altogether.

I dislike them too. If the skill system was simplified to a smaller set of skills (ie, "Athletics", "Stealth", "Perception"...), then synergy bonuses would become largely useless.

OTOH, with a simplified skill set you'd probably need more conditional modifiers for stuff like invisibility and ring of jumping ... uhm, I dunno.

 

[Larcen]

Indeed. Also remov things that work "sometimes". Like the conditional synergy modifiers. Though I think I'd rather see synergy modifiers gone altogether.

Mantra for 4.0
Everything should fit nicely on a 1 page character sheet (barring equipment and spells known/prepared). Fitting nicely with the full formula for how you got to the total number (Reflex: +3 base, +2 ability, + 1cloak, +1 luckstone, +1 halfling = +8.

Rav

Damn, I would love this. I have a hand written character sheet now that lists all the bonuses in a row like that. However, I do it to keep track of bonus TYPES due to the stacking rules. Like so: WILL +15 = base 8 + wisdom 4 + resistance 2 + luck 1

Grrr.... I sure wish I could just keep track of bonus SOURCES like in your example. *sigh*

And yes, my goal is always to fit everything on 1 simple page. That is elegance to me too. However, I find that when your PC starts to get above mid levels, it's very difficult to do.