:Kill the Wizard First

So, I’ve been thinking about 4e so far, and how to push it into a different style of game. More review is forthcoming, by the way — PHB Part II should be up sometime this weekend, depending on my free time.

But in the meantime, below the cut you’ll find a few of my thoughts on how to tweak 4e around to turn those expensive high-production-value hardcovers into a game you won’t feel dirty about enjoying.

Magic Items, Equipment and Challenge Assumptions

Problems:

• The treasure system is stupid beyond reckoning. The magic item crafting system is just as bad.
• You can still buy awesome with gold, and the magic item pricing appears to scale in really strange ways. Also, the magic item economy is pants-on-head retarded.
• You can’t run a S&S-esque game with limited magic items because it jacks up the ability assumptions.

I’d take the same approach to this I’m using in Adventures in Playtesting: magic items don’t have a bonus rating, they’re just magical, and apply a bonus to the appropriate rolls that scales automatically with the character’s level. So if a fighter finds a magic sword, instead of a Magic Sword +1/+3/+5/+whatever, he finds a Magic Sword that gives a bonus to sword attacks of +1/three levels.

If you want to go the S&S route, just make those bonuses intrinsic to the character instead of item-derived. Let people change them up after extended rests. A mighty-thewed barbarian might apply his “magic item equivalent” bonus to Strength-based attacks, while a nimble street rat could apply it to all attacks using daggers. Or something.

Abilities other than flat bonuses are a little harder, but those have been drastically scaled back in 4e anyway, so I’m less concerned about them.

Impacts:

• Since characters can’t buy items more powerful than they should normally have at all, there’s no incentive for them to destroy awesome setting elements just to sell the shinies. Because every GM should be able to have castles of gold and onyx without the players stripping off the walls and using them to buy Pants of Swank +2.
• On the other side, GMs can now go back to having dragons sleep on huge piles of coins and gems, the way god intended, without hosing his ability to challenge the players appropriately.
• You also get to kill the whole “treasure packets” idea, and merchants no longer have to be plot devices of arbitrary power that will take your crappy magic items, sell you awesome magic items, and yet never get robbed or set on fire.
• Players won’t be replacing magic items every four levels, so you can put some real personality into items. “Well, got a +2, time to sell the +1″ is just kind of dull.

Revenge of Save-or-Fucked

Problems:

• HP damage is boring.
• High level effects are the same as low-level effects, but shinier.
• Lack of alternative victory conditions.

Not everyone misses SoF effects as much as I do, but 4e characters are woefully under-equipped to do anything to opponents other than plink away at their hit points.

Really, there are two possible routes to go with this: Old-school “retro stupid” grognardry, or trying to adapt 3e status conditions to 4e’s engine.

If you want to emulate pre-4e hose-job spells like like color spray, wrack, mind jar, or wail of the banshee, here’s what you do: pick about 1/4th of the encounter abilities and 1/3 of the daily abilities of each class (go with the ones named after effects that used to be SoF; when you run out, pick the ones with badass names) and replace whatever damage they do with “fucks you up proper”. Be liberal with stunning, dominating, and paralyzing, and trickle the instant death in at levels 10+. Instantly, you’ve got effects of 2e or 3e wizard potential ready to go. If you want to push it back a little, imitate the action of 4e Sleep (Wiz/D/1) and have it daze, stun, or weaken first round, and if they fail their save next round, they explode. They’re still going to be less powerful than 3e, because it’s a lot harder to totally pimp out your attack rolls and it’s downright impossible to affect their saving throws. This may be good for you, or not.

Impacts:

• Fights will be much, much shorter, and initiative will become all-important.
• Specialists and optimizers will be much more heavily rewarded.
• In general, you’ll need more monsters to challenge the party, because some of them will go down like chumps.

If you want to transfer that kind of thing over to 4e’s assumptions, you’re going to need to get into condition tracks. In a way, 4e has already paved this road with its disease rules, so we’re just going to extend those. Consider the following four tracks:

• Movement: Effects that assail the Movement track are those that limit mobility, either through physical confinement or mental inhibition.
  • Impeded: Movement -2, cannot shift.
  • Slow: Half movement, cannot shift or charge, can only take two actions of standard/move/minor instead of all three.
  • Immobilized: Cannot move at all, can only take two actions of standard/move/minor instead of all three.
  • Held: Paralyzed, helpless (vulnerable to coup de grace), can take no actions.
• Focus: Attacks on the Focus track take the form of distractions or interruptions in the opponent’s ability to react.
  • Dazzled: Cannot take opportunity attacks or use reaction abilities.
  • Dazed: May take only one of standard/move/minor action each turn instead of all three, cannot take opportunity attacks or use reaction abilities.
  • Stunned: Can take no actions.
  • Unconscious: Can take no actions, helpless
• Enchantment: Attacks on the Enchantment track confuse an enemy about who his allies are.
  • Fascinated: Will not attack the caster until the caster next attacks him.
  • Charmed: Will not attack the caster or his allies until one of them next attack him.
  • Enthralled: Will attack only the caster’s enemies, using only at-will powers, to the best of his ability.
  • Dominated: Obeys the commands of the caster to the best of his ability.
• Death: Attacks on the death track directly assail the target’s soul
  • Weakened: Attacks do half damage.
  • Enfeebled: Attacks do maximum of 1 damage, -2 to Fortitude and Will defenses.
  • Enervated: Attacks do maximum of 1 damage, enemy attacks automatically hit.
  • Dead: Dead.

It’s not hard to figure out which attacks should have which conditions attached to them. Conditions aren’t cumulative up the track – you only get the penalties you’re on. Anytime someone smacks you with a power of the appropriate type, you move down the track. Any time you spend a healing surge (or regain hit points as though you had spent one), you move up on all tracks. At the end of each turn, roll a saving throw for each track you have an effect on: 1-9, you slide down the track; 10-19, you slide up; 20, you throw it off entirely and move all the way up the track. As long as you’re not on the last condition, you heal all tracks after a short break — if you are, what happens is up to the GM. Minions don’t get a full track – as with damage, if you smack them with a condition, they’re out.

Impacts:

• Obviously, this is a lot more bookkeeping for the GM.
• Fights will tend to be shorter, especially against enemies with limited access to healing surges.
• Expect players to specialize the entire party around a single track so they can pull Disgaea-style four player combos and blow an enemy straight through to Fucked in one round.
• Optimizing is rewarded more than it is now, but not as much as in 3e.

Ritual Sacrifice

Problem:

• Rituals are stupid. Setting money on fire for a magical effect is a terrible idea: it’s another part of the money->superpowers link that results in the Greyhawking of perfectly innocent terrain features, and it permanently jacks up level-appropriate-wealth train.

Just get rid of the reagent costs for rituals. Seriously, just ignore them. The only resource that actually matters is time anyway.

Impacts:

• Players will actually take and use rituals.
• Crafting magic items becomes more attractive — it is recommended you use this in conjunction with the magic item fix above to keep things from getting a little nuts.
• Players will be less worried about death because it won’t cost them actual money to come back. How to handle this is a game-by-game decision, but let’s be honest: either the player wants to replace the character anyway, so who cares, or they don’t, so they’ll find a way to pay the cost and you’ll just have to hand out more gold to get them back on the wealth-by-level train anyway. So it doesn’t even matter.

When You Wish Upon a Star

Problem:

• I miss wish.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think around level 20+ (which appears to be roughly equivalent to 3e’s level 15+), characters should be able to do stuff more interesting than “re-use the last encounter power you used if you’re out of encounter powers”, which is seriously a power that fucking Demigods get and that’s weak whiskey distilled from the finest of weakgrains and weak sauce.

I’m just not sure what to do about it.

My thought is a series of rituals from levels 18-30 that have wish-like powers and other sorts of utility effects currently missing from 4e. Off the top of my head, how about:

Prescient Edge (Level 18 Ritual)

20 minutes, Arcana (no check)

You gain an additional use of one of your daily powers. You may use this power as a free action, but you must expend a healing surge when you use it. If you do not use it by your next extended rest, it fades.

True Creation (Level 21 Ritual)

1 hour, Arcana or Nature (no check)

You create up to ten times your level in pounds of a single, unworked, homogeneous mundane material.

Song of Forging (Level 23 Ritual)

1 hour, Nature (no check)
You shape raw materials into a finished form of your choosing. The resulting creation is mundane, so it must be physically possible. You can affect any unworked, unliving raw material within the range of your voice.

Anima Transformation (Level 25 Ritual)

20 minutes, Arcana

For 24 hours or until your next extended rest, you replace one of your daily powers with a daily or encounter power of another class. This power can be of a level no greater than the lower of your level or the result of your Arcana check.

Shape Reality (Level 27 Ritual)

24 hours, Arcana (special)

You wield tremendous influence over a region with a radius of one-half your level in miles. While you continue the ritual, you are aware of the terrain and weather of the region, and may alter it slowly. As a general rule, it takes one hour to effect a moderate change, such as stirring up a thunderstorm or opening a mountain pass.

All creatures of your level or higher who have mastered this Ritual or succeed on an Insight check with DC equal to your level are aware as soon as this ritual begins, and may enact it themselves to counteract your alterations. Conflicting alterations are resolved with a contested Arcana check for each change.

Planeshift (Level 30 Ritual)

1 round, Arcana (no check)

This ritual contains the Words of Binding and Unbinding, which control the walls between planes. If you speak the Word of Unbinding, you shatter these walls. A region extending 1 mile from you is shifted abruptly into another plane of your choosing, leaving only a great crater behind. You may travel to a specific planar destination you have visited before, or you may let fate choose. A creature that has mastered this Ritual can speak the Word of Binding as an immediate reaction to counter you.

Alternately, you may speak the Word of Binding, which prevents all teleportation and interplanar travel effects from working within a radius of a mile. Only speaking the Word of Unbinding as an immediate reaction can prevent this effect. The Words can only be spoken by living creatures. Using this ritual more than once between extended rests is immediately fatal (as though a third save against Dying had failed), though the second invocation still takes effect.

Are those balanced? Probably not (though remember, I’m assuming you’re using revised magic item rules so they’re not creating big stacks of gold then buying free passes to Awesometown), and this is just off the top of my head, no real refinements. But at least they’re interesting.