Creating an Open 4e

[Zardnaar]

Legally you can clone 4E via the OGL. There are several problems though.

1. The 4E players basically want someone else to do the work.
2. The 4E player base is small combined with.
3. The 4E player base is not united (neither is the OSR one).
4. 4E is very complex compared with the OSR games. There is a lot more moving parts.
5. The players argue over cloning 4E or makin a 4.5/alternate 5E.

I know saying 4E is complex is not popular in places and the immediate response is 3.5 was more complex. What I mean by that is you can clone B/X is around 100 pages, that is less pages for level 1-20 for a PHB+MM+DMG all in one than the 4E PHB had just for powers alone.

Case in point.

http://basicfantasy.org/downloads.html

Even if you do not like old D&D the above link is an interesting example of how they cloned Basic D&D. Its not exactly the same of course but all the spells for example clock in around 20 pages while a single PHB 4E class clocks in at around 12-15 pages for a single class. If you cloned just the 1st 3 4E books that is around 800 or 900 pages.

I did try and write my own D&D/errata/fix 3.5. My 2 pages of houserules for 3.5 has grown into around 60 for a homebrew D&D perhaps best described as Basic D&D+feats and skills. ANd I have my own Bestiary with around 30 or 40 monsters I am revising. I also cribbed a huge amount from existing D&D's mostly the 4E combat chapter with 5E round structure. I use 5E spells, skills, proficiency system and the xp tables from BECMI D&D. I rewrote the 5E classes and simplified thembut I only use 4 classes and 4 races atm, I plan on converting the AD&D 2E PHB classes to this system so I wil have around 8 classes. Feats are micro feats using some of the craapier 5E ones and a few 4E and 3.5 feats. I cut the crap ones or merged them so instead of Iron Will, Great Fortitude etc I have 1 feat that grants +2 on all saves.

The reason I cut it down is I am doing it all by myself, its a huge amount of work and I did not have to write any spells or a combat chapter as I stole 5E's as a place holder. SOme things I would recommend if you want to update 4E or make a successor game.

1. Get more than 1 person to do it, have 1 person as project lead.
2. Simplify it. Do you really care about epic levels in 4E? Cut them, make it level 1-20 or chop the tiers down to tier 1-6, 7-14, 15+ is epic level.
3. Use smaller numbers, cap ability scores at 18 or 20.
4. Have defences top out at around 25 or 30.
5. Cut it into smaller jobs. Level 1-5, then 6-10 then 11-20, 4 or 5 classes to start off with.
6. Overhaul the 4E powers, basically dump the similar powers. With smaller numbers 2W+condition becomes 1W+ condition. The encounter powers or whatever just add a condition or more damage to the basic power. Have the extra W dice be tied to the base class, saves on repetitive powers.
7. Tweak things, rather than have some weapons at +2 to hit and others at +3 just shave +2 off them or dump those numbers. Tweak monster defences accordingly.

An example of my homebrew.



I got the class down to 2 pages and have tweaked it since this photo (take 1 off the fort save numbers). I also merged all the 5E styles into weapon specialization (+2 to hit and damage with any weapon). Its kind of a mix of the 3.5/5E fighters with OSR type saves (I overhauled DCs they are now DC 11-19)

[MwaO]

Legally you can clone 4E via the OGL. There are several problems though.

1. The 4E players basically want someone else to do the work.
2. The 4E player base is small combined with.
3. The 4E player base is not united (neither is the OSR one).
4. 4E is very complex compared with the OSR games. There is a lot more moving parts.
5. The players argue over cloning 4E or makin a 4.5/alternate 5E.

Err...the problem is not that. The problem is using the existing options without an effective SRD with WotC likely to C&D if not done correctly. Every other edition either has the effective SRD(WotC can't legally challenge) or WotC doesn't care(WotC won't legally challenge).

[Zardnaar]

Err...the problem is not that. The problem is using the existing options without an effective SRD with WotC likely to C&D if not done correctly. Every other edition either has the effective SRD(WotC can't legally challenge) or WotC doesn't care(WotC won't legally challenge).

Still you would think someone would have cloned it and released it. Hell they have done that for Star Wars and they don't even have an OGL of any sort for that and Disney is a bit bigger than WoTC.

General consensus seems to be that you can clone 4E with the existing OGL although you might need to change the language here and there a'la early 5E support before it was clear they were gonna use the existing OGL.

You would also have to make your own character creation rules a'la Paizo.

I suspect thats also why everything is FR, and they are mixing rules into into the FR books. FR is not OGL so you can't clone the mechanics in those books so well. Online the OSR movement is bigger than 4E, but 4E is bigger than any individual fragment of the OSR games on the virtual tabletops. There is something of a player base left, make something even if its just a small adventure (8 or 16 pages).

Get something made and grow from there if you get smacked down its 8 or 16 pages down the drain.

[Beoric]

Err...the problem is not that. The problem is using the existing options without an effective SRD with WotC likely to C&D if not done correctly. Every other edition either has the effective SRD(WotC can't legally challenge) or WotC doesn't care(WotC won't legally challenge).

I think you probably could clone 4e using the 3.5 OGL - it is after all how people cloned 0e, 1e, 2e, B/X, etc. There is no intellectual property in the system itself, just the trade dress and some copyright issues in respect of the language used in presentation (I'm not sure where the line is drawn between words being a component of the system and words being artistic expression and therefore subject to copyright, but I'm sure it can be found).

The hard work is establishing a basic ruleset, and being conscientious enough to make sure it doesn't inadvertently make any copyright infringements. But it can be a really basic ruleset and omit a lot of the bloat from the core rulebooks, especially since you are probably marketing to people who already play 4e and already know the rules and have established a style of play.

I mean, if your "fighting man" is mechanically similar to a weaponmaster, and the system only has a few powers that don't include a close of Come and Get It, will that really prevent you from taking Come and Get It when you are making your character?

Once you do that, you are probably good to start publishing adventures that would be runnable by anyone running a 4e game - and with a lot more flexibility than you would have attempting the same thing using the 4e GSL.

[Duff]

Perhaps the way to reduce the amount of work is to avoid creating all the powers. Instead devise rules for powers.
For example (making up numbers on the fly to illustrate how it could work rather than thinking this is the right numbers - please don't argue about the specific numbers unless there's a consensus that it's a workable system).

A defender at will power will get 7 points

Implement - 0 points, weapon 2 points

W damage is 2 points, attack stat damage is 1 point

Targeting NADS is 3 points

push 1 or pull 1 are 1 point each, slide 1 is 2 points
add stat to movement is +1 point

Use as a basic attack is 2 points
Use as basic under limited circumstances is 1 point (eg charging)

So my first level defender has 2 at will powers and I want my first one to be an MBA so

Duff's Hack
Weapon. Str vs AC (2 pts)
Damage W+Str (2+1=3 pts)
Use as MBA (2pts)

Cost 7 points

Maybe my 2nd power will be
Duffs Slash
Weapon. Str vs Ref (2+3=5 pts)
Damage W (2pts)
Use as MBA (2pts)

also 7 pts.

Maybe strikers and leaders get a few more points for powers and controllers get noticeably more. And I know I haven't list all the riders and effects etc.

But it would reduce the amount of boring grunt-work.
Maybe feats then become more guidelines - "Add +2/3/4 per teir to a skill" add a rider to a specific damage type. List of suitable riders would be nearby in the book

[Duff]

Another way to reduce the amount of work in putting together the whole game would be to Formularise roles and power sources.

For example, Defenders get bonus HP a "Marking Power" and an "Enforcing power" They start with scale amour and heavy shields but can swap them for equivalent protection. They get athletics and endurance
Strikers get "Targeting mechanism" (such as a curse, or a rogue's sneak attack") and a damage bonus. They get up to leather armour. They get 2 of perception, stealth and acrobatics

Leaders get a heal with a rider. they get up to chain. They know healing and diplomacy

Controllers get no special mechanism, reduced hit points and only get cloth armour. They get 2 knowledge skills (Arcana counted as a knowledge)

Martial characters start with military weapons. They get intimidate
Primal characters start with simple weapons They get nature
Divine Characters start with Holy items and simple weapons They get Religion
Magic characters start with 3 implements and 2 types of weapons. They get Arcana

With some limited ability to add extras and trade away some abilities.
Optional extra to add ability based modifiers as well.

[Yakk]

What I would like to do is to use CharOp guildes. And build a open 4e where the only choices are dark blue/light blue/gold.

Drop the dross, in effect.

Also, use different formatting for powers. 4e's formatting is ... trademarked? ... and comes with license restrictions.

There are generally 1-3 powers per level that are top quality for each class. Only port the equivalent of those. Sure, fewer choices, but also fewer traps.

[ThePurple]

Another way to reduce the amount of work in putting together the whole game would be to Formularise roles and power sources.

This is how I've basically been doing it, though I don't really agree with all of your formulae.

Controllers get no special mechanism, reduced hit points and only get cloth armour. They get 2 knowledge skills (Arcana counted as a knowledge)

This is one of the biggest problems I have with Controllers. First off, controllers *are not just wizards*, which is what you've basically done here. It means that every controller is basically forced to be a wizard in different skin, which is boring. A martial controller should *not* follow this formula, nor can I see a decent reason for any other power source's controller. Secondly, a role that is defined by no special role, fewer hp, and the worst armor is a role that you are insisting is supposed to have the absolute best powers in the game because, otherwise, there's no point in using them at all. Controllers need a special mechanism and it was one of the biggest faults of 4e to not give them one like they did with the other roles.

Imo, controllers shouldn't be about powerful powers. They should be about making sure powers stick for longer; not *interminably longer* (original Orb of Imposition), but longer nonetheless. They should be about putting penalties on saving throws, forcing rerolls on successful saving throws, and/or making effects last for 1 more round after a successful saving throw. Restrict the forced rerolls/extensions to 2-3 times per encounter and throw a penalty to saving throws on an at-will and you've got a pretty decent class gimmick.

As such, controllers would go from being the "I have incredibly awesome powers but nothing else impressive about my class" role (which makes multiclassing problematic) to the "I make save ends powers more predictable and powerful" role.

Martial characters start with military weapons. They get intimidate
Primal characters start with simple weapons They get nature
Divine Characters start with Holy items and simple weapons They get Religion
Magic characters start with 3 implements and 2 types of weapons. They get Arcana

This is yet another case where the power sources don't really balance out properly. Primal gets *hosed*. Hard. And, if you're taking this from the existing classes, you're not even doing it properly. In the existing classes, primal gets additional surges and hp, arcane gets fewer surges and hp, and divine gets better defenses.

Honestly, though, power source doesn't really do much to me, from a balance standpoint. It's just a difference in method (power source is the "how" while role is the "what" that classes do). In my homebrew, I'm using each power source as a thematic link for each class's gimmicks: all martial characters get special effects based upon the weapon they're using; all primal characters are either totem-based (with the ability to change totem in combat), seasonal (with the ability to change season in combat), or lunar (with the ability to change phase in combat); all divine characters are based off of their deity (based upon classification of the deity into one of 10 different classes); all arcane characters are based off of either schools of magic (for INT based) or creating their own powers/effects (for CHA based); etc.

[ThePurple]

What I would like to do is to use CharOp guildes. And build a open 4e where the only choices are dark blue/light blue/gold.

Drop the dross, in effect.

Also, use different formatting for powers. 4e's formatting is ... trademarked? ... and comes with license restrictions.

There are generally 1-3 powers per level that are top quality for each class. Only port the equivalent of those. Sure, fewer choices, but also fewer traps.

I agree with this, but it doesn't mean that you should only take the most powerful powers from each level/etc. One of the biggest problems that I saw with 4e's power structure is that, for classes, there was too much desire to create new powers that were unique from everything else before.

Sure, it's interesting, but that also meant that you ended up with some low level powers that people loved that never got high level versions (and some low level powers that ended up being more powerful than many high level powers) recreated for them. One of the things that should be done with any new powers created is ensure that there's a way for them to scale effectively when you increase in level, as many of the theme powers in later books ended up doing. Keep in mind that, sometimes, you don't need to make a power affect more targets or what have you in order to make it scale properly: allowing 2 allies to make basic attacks as a free action with your standard action doesn't need to start affecting more allies as you increase in level because your allies' basic attacks are already scaling.

You also ended up with some massive balance problems where a power was written to be unique and ended up doing an utterly insane amount of damage. Don't just trim the dross. You need to get rid of the ridiculously OP powers as well.

[Yakk]

Boring "power X but hits harder" has two problems.

First, having one "come and get it" is strong; a second upgraded one multiplies it, because the second one's damage applies *if either hit*.

So if you have CAGI at 7, and an upgrade at 23, at level 23+ you not only get a stronger CAGI but you get *two* if you want it.

This can be avoided by either (A) making CAGI "upgrade" if you take it at a higher level (which can be boring), (B) have the higher level CAGI be "mutually exclusive" somehow with the lower level one, or (C) have "upgrade" powers that merge with lower level powers and provide kickers.

L 23 power upgrade: And a boot too
Upgrade: Any Heroic-tier Close Weapon Fighter encounter attack power
Hit: +1d12+Str additional damage and the target is knocked prone

[ThePurple]

First, having one "come and get it" is strong; a second upgraded one multiplies it, because the second one's damage applies *if either hit*.

Come and Get It falls into that category of "ridiculously OP powers" that need to be culled as well. A massive AoE and weapon v. NAD, combined with the whole "anything the fighter attacks is marked" is insanely strong as an encounter power.

(also, the "If the target is adjacent to you after the pull, it takes 1[W] damage." is in the hit entry so it would only deal damage to a target that was hit; for it to deal damage to any adjacent target whether they were hit or not, it would need to be written as a separate effect entry)

But it also demonstrates that you're misunderstanding exactly what I'm saying about upgrading powers. I'm not talking about powers that have different versions that are stronger at different levels. I'm talking about powers that, when you hit level X become stronger, akin to the theme powers (which get more powerful at levels 11 and 21). You don't end up taking a different power; it's the same power, only stronger now that you're higher level.

Any power that doesn't naturally scale an appropriate quantity should be given the same treatment.

A good example of this is one of my players' all-time favorite powers: Open the Gate of Battle. He took it immediately at character creation and kept the power well into the paragon tier because he just loved it *that much* (and only got rid of it when it became patently obvious that it was doing less damage even against a full hp target than even the crappy options at those levels). If there had been an improved version (as there should have been, imo), he would have taken it but he wasn't allowed to keep it because they never made one. Instead they preferred to make a whole slew of other powers that he didn't find even remotely interesting (and many of which were straight up bad).

Just like with feats, they were more interested in creating quantity of options to maintain the illusion of choices rather than creating quality of options in order to create actual choice. Making it so that all powers improve themselves when you get to certain levels is an easy way to do that without making things needlessly complicated (and the "kicker" option would do).

[Duff]

Controllers *are not just wizards*,

You're right. I would have liked to think of something better but was limited by time at work.
It's generally agreed that the controller role is the least well defined. You say the penalties to saves is the defining feature of the controller. In 4e as done (and without considering any Char-op consensus) that's not really the case. They seem to be defined by imposing conditions and AOE effects.
If you were to use my "Build powers by number" system my intuition is you simply give them more points for their powers.
If in the Path4e game you wanted to say controllers are defined by making powers stick with save penalties, you'd then need to have all (or at least most) or their powers have a save ends condition.

Maybe allow them access to minor action control effects? for example a martial controller can as a minor action slide one character Int bonus squares, - target one entity with close burst 3? Primal controllers could slow one enemy for a round, divine ones give a save penalty and psionic ones.. I dunno, run out of ideas.


Re the hosing of Primals - Right again. They should get the extra HP and surges as well. That was pure oversite on my behalf.

But please don't mistake my "This is an indication of how an idea might work" for anything I would consider ready to play.

[Duff]

What I would like to do is to use CharOp guildes. And build a open 4e where the only choices are dark blue/light blue/gold.

Drop the dross, in effect.

When dropping the dross, you'd need to consider whether you are closing out situational powers which may be worth it for some builds or in some campaigns. For example there's a "leaping charge" power that gives a (I think from memory) bonus on athletics for a leap as part of a charge. Not usually worth it for the level it is but in a campaign with particularly lots of rough terrain or ships or up in the treetops it could be a good choice.
Also, this removes the flavor choices which might be better to tidy up - power is too situational? give it a basic effect which improves in that situation (but not so much that it's OP if that situation is more common in a campaign). Effect is too weak because the powers that be over estimated how long monsters survive after being hit by "save ends" effects? make it an encounter instead of daily or drop it's level.

But also, tap the gold powers with the nerf bat, otherwise they are effectively a "power tax" - unless you want to change them to the status of class feature. I'm looking at you level 7 battlemind.

[Zardnaar]

What I would like to do is to use CharOp guildes. And build a open 4e where the only choices are dark blue/light blue/gold.

Drop the dross, in effect.

Also, use different formatting for powers. 4e's formatting is ... trademarked? ... and comes with license restrictions.

There are generally 1-3 powers per level that are top quality for each class. Only port the equivalent of those. Sure, fewer choices, but also fewer traps.

You would also want to drop the gold.

When I tweaked my feats from 3.5 for example power attack and natural spell were goneburger. The crap feats got merged or deleted weak feats from 5E were fine the 4E racial feats made it in along with 4E power attack.

I also capped ability scores and eliminated ability scores increasing with level. Power up the crap and nerf the gold.

Frostcheese and radiant mafia need to go.

[Yakk]

One of the things that makes 4e so awesome was and is the character builder.

So either you'd have to make your open 4e somehow work with the character builder, or write an equally good one. (Note that certain rules simplifications could make the character builder easier to write, like reducing the myraid sources of static attack/damage bonus).

Said character builder has to generate printable characters with power cards. The format of said cards cannot match the WOTC formats I suspect.

[ThePurple]

Frostcheese and radiant mafia need to go.

I actually liked frostcheese and radiant mafia, though I'll agree that they were overpowered. Frostcheese needed to be reduced in effectiveness a tad and radiant mafia was primarily OP because the designers seemed to assume that you only had 1 person dealing radiant damage, not the entire party.

I'd actually like to see *every* damage type get the frostcheese treatment, however. Frostcheese wouldn't have seemed *nearly* as obscene if there had been similar constructs for other damage types. Stuff like "if you hit a target taking ongoing fire damage with a fire power, it can't make saving throws against ongoing fire damage effects until EoNT" and the kind. Thematically appropriate feats and combos that encourage the party to work together.

I'd also like to see similar things done with weapon and common status conditions, as was done with the prone mafia that my players all seem to absolutely love (since prone can come from so many different sources). The problem, imo, wasn't so much that X-cheese and mafia feats/choices were too powerful; it's that they were so limited in scope that you only had a handful of options.

[Yakk]

Frostcheese was 2 feats and a weapon pick in exchange for +5 damage/tap. At paragon, it was 1.67 damage/pick, plus combat advantage.

Weapon Focus was +2 damage/pick.

In effect, Frostcheese is mainly strong because Weapon Focus is already strong.

And old observation was that if all of your feats are as powerful as weapon focus, by level 30 you deal +54 static damage. If you can average 3 taps/turn and a 60% accuracy rate, that is 97.2 damage per second from your feats against average monster HP of 264, or a 2.7 round striker. And that assumes everything else you have deals 0 damage (your weapon, your enhancement, your powers, etc).

In reality, you lose some feats to feat taxes and boosting multi-tap chances, but +6 item, +6 enhancement, +8 stat, +10 Power damage frees up 10 "weapon focus value" feats for that.

The fact that feats grow in power linearly (in terms of damage per feat) 4e, and the number of feats grows in power linearly, while monster HP grows linearly, and monsters per combat remains relatively static, means either everything else must get less and less important for the game to remain balanced.

When there is a limited set of feats, you cannot get a pile of feats "all as good as weapon focus". That frostcheese was so good, yet was about as good as weapon focus, and in late 4e it is no longer considered a must-take, is because options kept on opening up.

---

Small static bonuses end up being extremely powerful, yet pretty flavorless. But if you have 40 "fun unique" or "fun conditional" things to do (roughly how many picks (feats, powers, items, etc) a level 30 character has in 4e), your character becomes unmanagably complex to play.

---

One approach would be to make Paragon Tier feats cost you a Heroic tier feat, and Epic tier feats cost you a Paragon tier feat.

This would mean that feats can have "neat things" on them *without* having 18 "neat things" to remember on your character. Instead, you'd have about 6 fully upgraded feats.

Offensive Focus: (Heroic) +1 feat bonus to damage rolls
Critical Focus: (Paragon) +2 feat bonus to damage rolls, critial hit on a 19-20.
Perfect Focus: (Epic) +3 feat bonus to damage rolls, critical hit on an 18-20

Expertise: (Heroic) +1 feat bonus to attack rolls. Gain one mastery effect on one weapon or implement.
Mastery: (Paragon) +2 feat bonus to attack rolls. When you equip a weapon or implement, pick a mastery effect to use with it.
Perfection: (Epic) +3 feat bonus to attack rolls. When you equip a weapon or implement, pick two mastery effects to use with it.

Focused Mind: (Heroic) +2 feat bonus to Will defence. You can expend your second wind at the start of your turn to make a save against a stunned, dominated or dazed effect. If the save fails, your second wind is unexpended.
Still Mind: (Paragon) +3 feat bonus to Will defence. You can expend your second wind to remove one stunned, dominated or dazed effect at the start of your turn.
Tranquil Mind: (Epic) +4 feat bonus to Will defence. You can expend your second wind to remove all stunned, dominated or dazed effects at the start of your turn.

Steady Body: (Heroic) +2 feat bonus to Fortitude defence. When you expend your second wind for any reason, gain 5 temporary HP.
Abiding Body: (Paragon) +3 feat bonus to Fortitude defence. When you expend your second wind for any reason, gain your healing surge value in temporary HP.
Solid Body: (Epic) +4 feat bonus to Fortitude defence. As Abiding body, plus gain an additional use of Second Wind per encounter.

Quick: (Heroic) +2 feat bonus to Reflex defence. You may reroll your initiative d20 die once, but must keep the second result.
Fast: (Paragon) +3 feat bonus to Reflex defence. When you roll initiative, roll the d20 twice and keep the better result.
Fleet: (Epic) +4 feat bonus to Reflex defence. Your initiative d20 roll is always a 20 plus any modifiers.

Here we have scaling static modifiers and scaling kickers.

[Zardnaar]

Frostcheese was 2 feats and a weapon pick in exchange for +5 damage/tap. At paragon, it was 1.67 damage/pick, plus combat advantage.

Weapon Focus was +2 damage/pick.

In effect, Frostcheese is mainly strong because Weapon Focus is already strong.

And old observation was that if all of your feats are as powerful as weapon focus, by level 30 you deal +54 static damage. If you can average 3 taps/turn and a 60% accuracy rate, that is 97.2 damage per second from your feats against average monster HP of 264, or a 2.7 round striker. And that assumes everything else you have deals 0 damage (your weapon, your enhancement, your powers, etc).

In reality, you lose some feats to feat taxes and boosting multi-tap chances, but +6 item, +6 enhancement, +8 stat, +10 Power damage frees up 10 "weapon focus value" feats for that.

The fact that feats grow in power linearly (in terms of damage per feat) 4e, and the number of feats grows in power linearly, while monster HP grows linearly, and monsters per combat remains relatively static, means either everything else must get less and less important for the game to remain balanced.

When there is a limited set of feats, you cannot get a pile of feats "all as good as weapon focus". That frostcheese was so good, yet was about as good as weapon focus, and in late 4e it is no longer considered a must-take, is because options kept on opening up.

---

Small static bonuses end up being extremely powerful, yet pretty flavorless. But if you have 40 "fun unique" or "fun conditional" things to do (roughly how many picks (feats, powers, items, etc) a level 30 character has in 4e), your character becomes unmanagably complex to play.

---

One approach would be to make Paragon Tier feats cost you a Heroic tier feat, and Epic tier feats cost you a Paragon tier feat.

This would mean that feats can have "neat things" on them *without* having 18 "neat things" to remember on your character. Instead, you'd have about 6 fully upgraded feats.

Offensive Focus: (Heroic) +1 feat bonus to damage rolls
Critical Focus: (Paragon) +2 feat bonus to damage rolls, critial hit on a 19-20.
Perfect Focus: (Epic) +3 feat bonus to damage rolls, critical hit on an 18-20

Expertise: (Heroic) +1 feat bonus to attack rolls. Gain one mastery effect on one weapon or implement.
Mastery: (Paragon) +2 feat bonus to attack rolls. When you equip a weapon or implement, pick a mastery effect to use with it.
Perfection: (Epic) +3 feat bonus to attack rolls. When you equip a weapon or implement, pick two mastery effects to use with it.

Focused Mind: (Heroic) +2 feat bonus to Will defence. You can expend your second wind at the start of your turn to make a save against a stunned, dominated or dazed effect. If the save fails, your second wind is unexpended.
Still Mind: (Paragon) +3 feat bonus to Will defence. You can expend your second wind to remove one stunned, dominated or dazed effect at the start of your turn.
Tranquil Mind: (Epic) +4 feat bonus to Will defence. You can expend your second wind to remove all stunned, dominated or dazed effects at the start of your turn.

Steady Body: (Heroic) +2 feat bonus to Fortitude defence. When you expend your second wind for any reason, gain 5 temporary HP.
Abiding Body: (Paragon) +3 feat bonus to Fortitude defence. When you expend your second wind for any reason, gain your healing surge value in temporary HP.
Solid Body: (Epic) +4 feat bonus to Fortitude defence. As Abiding body, plus gain an additional use of Second Wind per encounter.

Quick: (Heroic) +2 feat bonus to Reflex defence. You may reroll your initiative d20 die once, but must keep the second result.
Fast: (Paragon) +3 feat bonus to Reflex defence. When you roll initiative, roll the d20 twice and keep the better result.
Fleet: (Epic) +4 feat bonus to Reflex defence. Your initiative d20 roll is always a 20 plus any modifiers.

Here we have scaling static modifiers and scaling kickers.

If you power everything up to frostcheese levels then everything will be kind of broken.

If you use one of the cha op guides and have everything from black to light blue as the default power level you would probably be on the right track.

I also said earlier just lop the epic levels off, why spend a huge amount of time designing for levels no one is really gonna play? make level 14+ the new epic level, and scale the other one from level 11 to 7.

You can eliminate most of the redundant powers by building them into the core class. In 5E for example a lot of clerics get an extra dice to damage at level 8 or an ability modifier to damage. Use that idea, clerics don't get it but a divine striker does get it.

4E PHB weapons that grant +2 and +3 to hit now grant +0 and +1 to hit, lower monster ACs by 2. You could even eliminate the +1 part and add an accuracy weapon property that grants +1 to hit.

If you want smaller numbers have a look at what 5E or BECMI did and use something similar or the 4E half level thing and cap ability scores at 18 or 20. Stops scores like 10, 12, 4,16, 18, 25. It would also give you some good ideas for monster defences say by level 20 you could expect the average PC to have +16 to hit (+10 level, +5 ability, + 3 magical) a decent AC would be 30, while 35 would be very hard (target NADs perhaps).

I would also design the powers for each power source letting all martial for example have the same powers. Kind of like unified spell lists for 2E and 5E but all classes have a power list. The difference in the 4E powers get built into the actual class. Not every martial character requires access to every martial power, this kind of duplicates the 2E spheres or 5E spell lists. For example Rangers and Tempest fighters get access to twin strike, let anyone dual wield but they are the only ones who get to add ability score to damage with the second attack, everyone else gets 1W.

This would get the classes down to 2-3 pages each and you would have say 100 pages of powers.

If the guts of 4E is the powers or something similar and that is what you would want to duplicate/fix/improve on everything else can be cut or simplified if that is your goal. Otherwise just file the serial numbers of and tweak what powers you put in a 4E clone PHB.

[Duff]

I would also design the powers for each power source letting all martial for example have the same powers. Kind of like unified spell lists for 2E and 5E but all classes have a power list. The difference in the 4E powers get built into the actual class. Not every martial character requires access to every martial power, this kind of duplicates the 2E spheres or 5E spell lists. For example Rangers and Tempest fighters get access to twin strike, let anyone dual wield but they are the only ones who get to add ability score to damage with the second attack, everyone else gets 1W.

I'd be more inclined to say the powers work better based on role than on power source - controllers work mostly at range and impose conditions. Defenders are weapon or close range. That said, you could give anyone access to Twin Strike, but without 2 weapon fighting (as a feat or class feature) you only get W on it.

[ahyangyi]

As long as Twin Strike exists I don't see how the game could be balanced. At will power that allows one to strike the same target twice means this thing scales different from everything else in the game.

That said, I don't want it to be removed either. The official practice is to give additional feats that boosts the effectiveness of other at will powers.

My thought is that at will powers that's not twin strike should be a bit more complex. Limiting them to one or two sentences severely reduced the design space. If two at-will powers are similar attack powers with just a bit different kickers, it becomes *very* difficult to balance them. On the other hand, if each at-will power is a mini package of stuff, they are harder to compare against each other.

[Shimeran]

One idea I've been tinkering with is building 4e style classes in Pathfinder. Starting with an existing SRD and modifying from there does seem like an appealing approach when there's no dedicated team to do so whole cloth.

If anyone is up for that iterative approach, let me know. I suspect we could get a plan of attack up in relatively short order.

In any case, I'll likely have a martial proof of concept up in homebrew with in a couple weeks. The biggest parts left are getting a good thematic match on the encounter power equivalents and populating the utility power set up.

[Shimeran]

Alright. True to my word, I've got a proof of concept class up on the forums here. This "Scrapper" class maps most closely to the fighter, with a hint of rogue as it's utility power stand ins are skill based.

I'm still mulling over how archetypes will factor into this as it would be relatively easy adapt the class to other roles though use of an archetype. The role feature currently follows a stance like model to prevent stacking of those features.

[Yakk]

There are way, way too many fiddly numbers in every one of the techniques I read there.

[Shimeran]

Can you provide an example of how you think that would be better done?

I'll admit I'm not really seeing a lot of number in the technique write ups. For example, here's the write up for the basic defender stance:

Steel Trap Stance
Type: Scrapper [Approach, Combat, Extraordinary]
Activation: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Until you use another approach technique
DESCRIPTION
You gain the Stand Still feat.

It's got a total of one number, indicating the single swift action it takes to use. As such, it's hard for me to see where the "way, way too many fiddly numbers" bit comes in.

It's possible you meant there's a lot of pieces rather than numbers specifically. For contrast, here's what a stance from Path of War looks like:

Snapping Turtle Stance
Discipline: Iron Tortoise (Stance); Level: 1
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance
DESCRIPTION
The disciple of the Iron Tortoise in this stance holds his shield in a manner to deliver punishing shield bashes without sacrificing his ability to defend himself. While in this stance, the initiator may make shield bash attacks without losing his shield bonus to his Armor Class, and shield bash attacks inflict an additional 1d6 points of damage. This bonus damage increases by +1d6 every 8 initiator levels beyond 1st level.

We can get a bit more compact with information, as seen in this home brewed stance for 4e.

Steel Raccoon Stance
Dervish Attack 5
Like the raccoon, you scavenge what you need from others and horde it with your friends.
Daily ✦ Martial, Stance, Weapon
Minor Action Personal
Effect: You assume the steel raccoon stance. Until the stance ends, your dervish attack powers with the invigorating keyword heal you for an amount equal to your Constitution modifier, and all of your other dervish attack powers gain the invigorating keyword. Once per turn at the end of your turn, you can use a free action to grant an ally temporary hit points by reducing your own temporary hit points by an equal amount.

However, that doesn't really save us much in terms of detail outside of merging the self targeting into the personal range. We do save a little space by using the "stance" keyword in place of "Duration: Until you use another approach technique", though at the expense of expanding the number of keywords the user needs to memorize.

I will admit things bulk out a bit on techniques with variants. For example:

Skill Mastery
Variants: Each time you gain this technique, select a skill.
Type: Skill Trick [Extraordinary, Rote]
Prerequisites: 10 ranks in the selected skill.
Activation: free action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Permanent
DESCRIPTION
You can always take 10 with the selected skill, even if stress or distractions would normally prevent it.

However, the alternative is rewriting this separately for every single skill. I much prefer using templating to allow multiple custom techniques over an exhaustive list with no guidelines.

What I might do is set more defaults for missing section. For example, defaulting to free action activation, self targeting at personal range, and permanent duration cuts the above down to:

Skill Mastery
Variants: Each time you gain this technique, select a skill.
Type: Skill Trick [Extraordinary, Rote]
Prerequisites: 10 ranks in the selected skill.
Range: Personal
DESCRIPTION
You can always take 10 with the selected skill, even if stress or distractions would normally prevent it.

That puts it roughly on par with a feat write up.

[Deleted]

I posted this in response to someone else over on homebrew but...

A lot of 4e can be recreated using 3.5 SRD.

Hybrid Characters (4e) are essentially gestalt characters in 3e: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/cl...Characters.htm

4e Skill System (with some tinkering with the "modifiers"): http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/bu...illSystems.htm

Action Points: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ad...tionPoints.htm

Fort, Ref, and Will defense: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ad...sAndSaveScores (really, the saving throw system in 4we is just "players roll all the dice")

At-Will, Encounter, and Daily Magic: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ma...hargeMagic.htm

Rituals (more or less the same idea, 4e just widely expanded on it): http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ma...cantations.htm

Just recreate the 3e classes to use modified version of these rules and you can almost make an open 4e. Just make sure to call it a 3.5 clone!

[OculusDrake]

One of the things that makes 4e so awesome was and is the character builder.

So either you'd have to make your open 4e somehow work with the character builder, or write an equally good one. (Note that certain rules simplifications could make the character builder easier to write, like reducing the myraid sources of static attack/damage bonus).

Said character builder has to generate printable characters with power cards. The format of said cards cannot match the WOTC formats I suspect.

Speaking of the character builder, is there any way to access it anymore after the discontinuation of 4e?

[Duff]

Try *really hard* to actually be specific with terminology. Any game term should have one (neither more nor less) meaning.
eg "move". Is that:
Any process which changes the location of a character (including slides, pushes, telports etc)
Any move action which uses a characters movement type. Am I moving while climbing since I don't have a climb speed?
Only the standard "Move my movement speed" action only?

Can I hid after a teleport? Is it harder to hide after a teleport if I teleported further? if I have a telport speed can I "Run-teleport"

[LtPowers]

Speaking of the character builder, is there any way to access it anymore after the discontinuation of 4e?

D&D Insider hasn't been discontinued. You can still access all of the tools if you have a subscription. You have to use Internet Explorer for the Character Builder, though, since it's the only browser that will run Silverlight. Edge won't cut it.


Powers &8^]