Looking for ideas or pre-existing work for a 4E/5E mashup

[Theodoxus]

I've been reading through my 4E books recently, and after having played 5E exclusively for the last 4 years, there are a LOT of things I prefer in 4E over 5th - but I vastly prefer the bounded accuracy and Vancian style casting over micro bonuses and powers based casting (powers on martials are actually pretty nifty, but I like 5Es take on casters).

Some are pretty quick and easy fixes; combat advantage just becomes advantage. Saving Throws become Defenses... but I was wondering if anyone else has created a 4/5 edition. I'd be very interested in working on such a beast.

[Grod_The_Giant]

13th Age is pretty much exactly what you want, I think. It's by one of the 4e lead designers.

[Theodoxus]

Cool, I'll look into it, thanks!

[Man_Over_Game]

13th Age is pretty much exactly what you want, I think. It's by one of the 4e lead designers.

Darn, just opened this thread and saw that Grod beat me to it.

I will say this, though: 13th Age is *really* weird the first few times you read it. It doesn't work on a grid like other games, and relies more on the "theater of the mind" concept. Distances are relative to each character.

So you might be Adjacent to a goblin, Close to a dragon (who's dealing with something else), and Far from the Warlock who's channeling a spell, and you'd use abilities that work with those ranges, or you can attempt to stop being Adjacent to the Goblin to close the distance to the Dragon to be Adjacent to it.

[Theodoxus]

Reading over the rules - well, skimming mostly, it looks more of an amalgam of 3.5 and 4th. Not that I have anything against it, but it's not as bounded as I'd like. Though it does a good job of showing how to mash a vancian and powers based system together, so that's useful.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Reading over the rules - well, skimming mostly, it looks more of an amalgam of 3.5 and 4th. Not that I have anything against it, but it's not as bounded as I'd like. Though it does a good job of showing how to mash a vancian and powers based system together, so that's useful.

The latter is by far the harder task, I think. I'm not personally familiar with 13th Age--how does the number scaling work? If it's 4e style, that should be easy enough to cut out.

[Man_Over_Game]

Reading over the rules - well, skimming mostly, it looks more of an amalgam of 3.5 and 4th. Not that I have anything against it, but it's not as bounded as I'd like. Though it does a good job of showing how to mash a vancian and powers based system together, so that's useful.

I suppose you could just work with 5e and convert some of the stuff from 4e over. It'd be work, but not THAT much work.

For example, classes in 4e had At-Will, Encounter, and Daily actions.

Daily and Encounter actions are easy, as Long Rest and Short rest actions.

At-Will is a lot more complex. I'd probably reduce the number of cantrips each 5e class gets, and they get more Cantrips (At-Will) options when they take levels into their specific class. For example, an Updated 5e Wizard starts at level 1 with 2 cantrips, and gets a Bladesinger specific cantrip when they hit level 2 (probably a sword spell of some kind).

The main concern is for the martial classes. Coming up with unique actions for each of them is pretty darn tough, especially if you want a list to choose from. I'd probably take examples from 4e and work on scaling up/down the damage as necessary for each. They convert over easily enough.

[Theodoxus]

Yeah, the idea I'm currently operating from is taking the various 4E classes and converting them to a level 20, Proficiency Bonus (instead of 1/2 level), and stripping out the various micro bonuses from race, class and feats for attacks and defenses.

I'd like to keep the defenses (Fort, Reflex & Will) in lieu of saving throws; I had used a base 14+Attribute for the target DC originally - but it got confusing as I kept both active and passive saves depending on the effect. But I think going full passive, and consolidating them to 3 (Str/Con, Dex/Int, Wis/Cha) will work well even in an otherwise pure 5E environment. (one thing I really do wish WotC kept from 4E instead of trying to shoehorn odd saving throws into the 'minor saves'.)

I like the slower HP growth of 4E (I'd already converted my game to Con Score at 1st level, Con mod on level up); 4E just boosts 1st level a little more, as well as level ups - a decent compromise (my players don't like the smaller HP pools, fearing insta-gibs around every corner).)

The biggest quagmire is the conversion of martial powers to something reasonable in the Bounded Accuracy world of 5E. Weapon powers in particular are quite a bit more powerful. Though I guess if I'm using monsters built for it (4E monster stats, primarily) then it'll be ok. Monsters have always been less of a concern than NPC villains anyway - I've always had a much harder time balancing NPCs to the group - throwing a gaggle of goblins or an extra umber hulk, no big deal. Having a troup of human bounty hunters with a cleric of Tempus... much harder...

[Marcloure]

Take a look at Kryx's houserules for 5e. He takes the core of 5e and rework a lot of things, many of which approaches 4e. The system adds second wind-like action, maneuvers for martials (WIP), spells are picked from themes (no class-specific list), and classes are... hm, divided kind of by power source. Perks also look a lot more like 4e feats than 5e, smaller and more frequent (but yet, nothing like +1s or the like). Some classes archetypes come from 4e, like the Avenger and the Warden, and classes recharge most of their powers on a short rest.

Kryx's houserules look more like 5e than 4e, but it takes a lot of inspirations from there. As someone who loves 4e, I suggest you to at least take a look. I'm currently migrating my 4e group to Kryx's houserules after paragon and epic tier combats became too much, and it's going great so far (I also run another game by these rules, by that table has nothing to do with 4e).