Your last errata

So, you're in the pilot seat for one last batch of errata. You've a greenlight to make it big, but you can't turn it into a 4.5. (that's a separate thread )
You can also order some DDI articles for the month in which the errata is released, but you can't go overboard.

Ready go!



My last errata and dragon mag articles would include:

power updates like the warlock got for the classes that need it (Assassin, Seeker, maybe monk, off the top of my head)
-Assassin: Increase most daily powers' damage by one die. Improve all the at-wills, and add at least one more. Increase the range of some powers. Make a new build that focuses on ranged weapon attacks, and include a suite of those. UPdate Shrouds so that you get to place one shroud when you roll initiative, so that it's easy to get 3 shrouds in the first round, and if your shroud target dies without you invoking, you get to place a shroud on someone as a reaction.

New build and suite of powers for artificers.

Half all monster HP. Their other numbers are more fiddly, so I'm not sure exactly what the best way to handle that is. Maybe make the feat tax bonuses automatic.

Make most sources of damage bonus have a type. Untyped damage should be very, very rare.

Alchemical items use your basic attack, replacing the Hit: line with whatever the alchemical item does. All classes use their primary stat for basic attacks. Delete redundancies created by this change.

Delete redundant feats, change them if it's simple to do so.


I'm sure there are more.

I wouldn't halve monster HP *per se*, but I'd likely put their HP at 75% and adding one die of damage to all their attacks. But I would half the HPs of all insubstantial and regenerating monsters whose HP is equal to that of a normal monster (because both traits effectively double their HP). I'd also likely have solos doubled or even tripled in damage, due to their limited fighting capabilities.

Additionally, if I'm going to do major revisions to the game math, it'd involve

• lowering monster attacks and defenses by 1/2 their level
  
• cutting magic item bonuses by half and removing all feat bonuses to hit (since they're no longer needed mathematically)
  
• heavily limiting stuff that grant bonuses to hit; why add more than +2 per source? Or better yet, why not just limit it to "grants combat advantage", with Aid Another as the sole exception?
  

While for a complete overhaul of the system, I'd include

• getting rid of having to make multiple variations of the same power, and instead just like how some powers (including at-wills) work, just provide players with the option to upgrade existing powers.
  
• more love for the less recognized classes like Runepriest and Seeker, and failing that just merging those classes to others as builds/class features or subclasses.
  
• remove all modifiers to healing surge value, and lowering the number of surges available drastically. PCs are tough enough with just the base surges, do we really need to make some PCs have as many as 15 surges on them?
  
• overall (re-)lowering of system mastery required to play the game effectively, especially with regards to feats.
  

I'd start with a lot of Essentials "fixes" that actually caused a lot of unneeded havoc.

1) I'd restore the original 'requires a to-hit roll' version of magic missile.

2) I'd restore full ability modifier damage to the melee training feats.

3) I'd add a general rule into the damage section stating that, regardless of why it is added, you may only add the modifier from a given ability score once to any damage roll (i.e. a slayer with melee training: dexterity and their class damage feature which adds their dexterity modifier to damage would not be able to inflict 1d10+Dex+Dex with a greatsword). This is specificially to avoid abuse of the melee training feat or similar cheese that would stack the same ability modifier onto a single attack roll repeatedly, while still letting it be fully effective for those classes that do not rely regularly on melee basic attacks.

I'd then move on to fixing some of the horrible E-classes...

1) I'd switch the bladesinger's secondary stat from Dexterity to Wisdom and replace the "encounters used as dailies" with just flat out "encounter attacks."

2) The executioner loses its Death Attack and Improved Death Attack powers (levels 3 and 13) and instead gains an additional use of Assassin's strike at levels 3 and 13. This brings it more into line with other AEDU classes.

3) There is no simple fix for the Binder. I'd simply include a heartfelt apology and direct people to the Warlock class which can use all the binder's toys.

Finally, I'd fix the multi-classing feats.

1) I'd do away with the three power-swap feats. Instead anyone who takes a multi-class feat gains the benefits of those feats at levels 4 (encounter attack), 8 (utility power) and 10 (daily attack).

2) I'd create hybrid options for the rest of the E-classes. The gist for the daily-less martial classes would be that they get a daily power from their other class (if it has dailies) at level 5 and can retrain that power at every level it gets a new daily choice (9, 15, 19, 25, 29).

I'm sure there's more I'd put in as well, but these are the biggies for me.

Yikes. Some of those I'd fight against with great effort.

I'd much rather the executioner have Death Attack than more of it's horrifically boring encounter power. I'd rather get rid of AS entirely, and replace it with real encounter powers. Even a short list of powers, unique to the executioner.

I like the powerswap thing, except that I'd simplify it to: when you take an mc feat, you can then choose encounter, daily and utility powers from either class, but at least one of your powers must be from your main class.

This might make hybrid mostly redundant, but I'm fine with that.

Chaos: why not fix solos by making all solos get two turns as a general rule, and maybe give them extra saving throws. Maybe they save at the beginning and end of their turns.

Seems like it would make them work without making fights with them as swingy as tripling their damage would.

Only other thing I'd say is, I'm not cool with the idea of power bonuses to attack and damage going away, at all. Granting combat advantage is not a valid replacement, because it's too easy to get without a power buff. I'd be fine with other player's powers being pretty much the only way to get bonuses to hit, though, other than magic items.

oh, and the surge thing. I'd be down to reduce the number of healing surges, but healer classes should provide strong healing. taking away modifiers to healing surges (if this is what you meant by that) would be too much, IMO.

doctorbadwolf wrote:

Chaos: why not fix solos by making all solos get two turns as a general rule, and maybe give them extra saving throws. Maybe they save at the beginning and end of their turns.

Seems like it would make them work without making fights with them as swingy as tripling their damage would.

Not all solos make sense in giving them two turns, and granting saving throws at both the start and end of their turns as well as giving them multiple attacks just adds to the bookkeeping. It might be "swingy", but that's the whole point: simple, potentially deadly to actually deadly depending on the die roll, and it'll encourage players to unload as many dailies as possible just to kill the solo ASAP.

I learned the value of making combat with solos as deadly as possible when I ran SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption: Dark Seeds with my LFR group, plus in 13th Age the basic design is that Large creatures deal double damage (and have twice as much HP) as normal creatures, while Huge creatures deal triple damage (and have three times as much HP) as normal creatures. Nothing captures the attention of the group like a big demon queen who can eat through the HP of the toughest PC so badly that it takes a daily utility that grants DR for a round + poor multi-attack rolls on the monster's side for the PC to survive from full to bloodied.

doctorbadwolf wrote:

Only other thing I'd say is, I'm not cool with the idea of power bonuses to attack and damage going away, at all. Granting combat advantage is not a valid replacement, because it's too easy to get without a power buff. I'd be fine with other player's powers being pretty much the only way to get bonuses to hit, though, other than magic items.

Then perhaps the solution is to remove the stuff that make gaining combat advantage ridiculously easy in the first place?

Personally I'd rather have combat advantage grant no bonuses at all aside from unlocking powers that require combat advantage to be used, while the (hard-to-stack) +2 would be limited to certain powers.

doctorbadwolf wrote:

oh, and the surge thing. I'd be down to reduce the number of healing surges, but healer classes should provide strong healing. taking away modifiers to healing surges (if this is what you meant by that) would be too much, IMO.

Why? Remove healers, and the primary if not only source of PC hit point recovery during combat is Second Wind, which makes the addition of any healer (including the Leader type Character Companion) a welcome sight to any group.

Plus, the primary complaint about healing in 4E is generally that there's too much healing available, making PCs virtually unkillable in some tables. But I suppose a good compromise would be to shift healing to be a specialization: have players invest in feats to allow more than the basic healing.

Two turns on solos might work, but the main issues has always been lockdowns shutting down many of their off-turn actions that help get them up into the proper damage range.

I think the less complex fix would be something to the effect of solos being able to burn an action point at the start of their turn if they're stunned or otherwise unable to act to end all conditions on them before they take the rest of their turn... and possibly increase their action point total to 3 at paragon and 4 at epic (perhaps to 3/4/5 if 2/3/4 isn't quite sufficient). This gives the solo the ability to be able to use its full suite of actions on its turn while still costing it something that is finite... which keeps the controllers from feeling like they just wasted an action on hindering it.

Regarding my Assassin changes; I chose to dump Death Attack for more Assassin's Strikes largely because I took the OP condition of big, but not huge changes and considered having to create a whole suite of 14 to 28 new assassin powers as beyond the mandate for errata (if the go ahead was for THAT level of changes, I'd be using my time to finish off the Sentinel Seasons and Cavalier Virtues before mucking with the Executioner.

Within the scope of what I think errata should be, I chose Assassin's Strike over Death Attack because I felt it was the less conditional of the two abilities (+1d10 damage to any attack that hits vs. +10 damage if a hit drops a foe to 10 or fewer hit points).

Though now that I look at the damage scaling on Assassin's Strike I've actually changed my mind (I saw that it scaled, I just didn't realize how much until now... I think I understand their thinking on one being enough, though the result is boring as heck). Instead I think my errata would drop BOTH Assassin's Strike and Death Attack for uses of Power Strike... which can then benefit from the MME strike feats and existing power swap feats for more versatility while still being easy enough to drop into an errata document.

Let me just say, first, that you guys have some great thoughts.

Second, remember that the OP post also states that you have control over what goes into Dragon Magazine in the month in which the Errata is put out.

Chris: I like that solution to solos.

Also, I was thinking more like 10 executioner powers, at most. They would be instead of AS, possibly being powerful enough to be once per encounter like AS, just less horrifically boring. And they'd be in an assassin class acts article.

Chaos: IMO, if it doesn't make sense for the to have multiple turns, they should just be an elite boss, not a solo. Extra damage won't save them from getting locked down by conditions.
And to reduce healing, I'd rather reduce healing surge value, and make how much the character is healed more dependent on the leaders healing ability, rather than less.

CA and bonus granting powers, and healing: you seem to want to get rid of leaders. I'm afraid that really would require a 4.5, not just errata and some mag articles. I would also oppose it vociferously.

CA needs to grant a benefit by itself, or just go away. I greatly prefer it giving a bonus. It could be damage instead of accuracy, but it needs to be there, IMO.
Leaders just granting Combat Advantage would, IMO, be really boring. There is a wonderful breadth of options in 4e for buffs, and leaders can turn the tide of battle even without action granting because of it. I'd not take that away from them.

I certainly don't think it's a good idea to take their healing away.

doctorbadwolf wrote:

CA and bonus granting powers, and healing: you seem to want to get rid of leaders. I'm afraid that really would require a 4.5, not just errata and some mag articles. I would also oppose it vociferously.

CA needs to grant a benefit by itself, or just go away. I greatly prefer it giving a bonus. It could be damage instead of accuracy, but it needs to be there, IMO.
Leaders just granting Combat Advantage would, IMO, be really boring. There is a wonderful breadth of options in 4e for buffs, and leaders can turn the tide of battle even without action granting because of it. I'd not take that away from them.

I certainly don't think it's a good idea to take their healing away.

First off, where did I say that I wanted to get rid of leaders? I want the overall power creep toned down, and that includes Expertise-like feats, supposedly-situational bonuses that aren't in practice situational, and greater impact on the few bonuses that would apply in the game.

• What's the purpose of combat advantage granting a bonus? Isn't ganging up on an enemy a big enough bonus since that's more attacks per round that the enemy you're ganging up on is receiving? Even when you look at the various charts, focus fire in on itself is a huge benefit; do we really need additional incentives such as +2 to hit or +X to damage?
  
• The only thematically appropriate class that I see as taking full advantage of combat advantage as done in D&D 4E's PHB rules, as well as classic D&D, would be none other than the Rogue. That's why I'd prefer that only he gets additional bonuses when ganging up on an enemy (i.e. Sneak Attack).
  
• Leaders are notorious for stacking all their bonuses; in fact, even in my LFR epic tier campaigns it's easy for players to have one round's worth of +10 to hit, +19 to damage with free basic attack on top of it (Warlord + Bard stacking bonuses due to maxed out Bard CHA, feat bonuses to stuff like Action Points etc.). By limiting the stacking bonuses to +2 per leader, we still allow stacking, but not to the ridiculous degree that's currently possible in the game. And by restricting the situational bonus to leaders only, we make them much more important to the party without having to add to the bookkeeping.
  • Aid Another is another game element that either needs some serious love, or has to be dropped altogether.
• There's too much healing and leader dependency in the game. 4E was praised as the first edition where the Cleric was no longer required to play healbot, but in its place we have the leader role playing healbot. I fail to see how making leaders just grant the ability to spend healing surges would lessen their role as healbot, because the only sources of healing that non-leaders would have would be Second Wind, utility powers (sometimes), healing potions (which are subpar to even Second Wind) and magic items (which are either DM-granted or really expensive to purchase).
  
• The only non-leader, non-Character Companion who heals almost as well as any leader -- the Paladin -- requires the expenditure of his own healing surge in addition to the target spending his healing surge, whereas leaders normally have no such requirement. Additionally, the Paladin needs far heavier feat/item/character investment -- to the point where he HAS to take a Paragon Path AND an Epic Destiny -- to make himself almost as powerful a healer as a full-fledged leader. So... what's wrong with requiring leaders to heavily invest in healing if they want to specialize in it?
  

As for bosses & conditions, the problem is primarily in the excessive number of conditions to track. Just change the saving throw mechanic to allow one save to get rid of them all, with the explicit note that game elements that grant a saving throw bonus to a specific type of condition or just one condition doesn't apply to other effects you must save against, so if you have a +2 to saves vs. stun and you're suffering from two conditions -- stun & ongoing damage (save ends both), daze (save ends) for example -- rolling a 9 ends one condition (save & ongoing damage) but not the other (daze).

And of course there's the "until end of next turn" that can't be saved against... normally. It's not like there aren't any monsters in 4E that explicitly have the ability to save against, or even immediately end, specific conditions at the start of their turn even if the condition isn't a save ends effect, so why not just extend that to all solos? It's not like the players are going to be facing the same solo over and over, and as long as you're not applying the exact same mechanic against the exact same condition over and over again, what'd be wrong with that approach?

oook. First and most important, it kinda seems like you think I'm attacking you. Coming from the official 4e forums, I can understand, but I'm not. Just disagreeing.

Anyway, I disagree with you on what the main problem with solos is. IMO, it's the fact that condition locking makes them chumps. You stun a boss, and you've stunned the entire encounter.

And while I agree that there might be too much healing in 4e, the problem isn't the Healing Word type powers. It's the surgeless healing, utility power heals, self heals, item heals, etc. That won't be solved by getting rid of bonuses to healing surges when healing.

On CA, we have an instance where we disagree all the way from premises to conclusion, so there's probably little chance of reconciliation. Might as well leave it at that.

doctorbadwolf wrote:

Also, I was thinking more like 10 executioner powers, at most. They would be instead of AS, possibly being powerful enough to be once per encounter like AS, just less horrifically boring. And they'd be in an assassin class acts article.

Okay, I missed the "you can also order a Dragon article" part as well. Yes, more interesting powers would be useful as well, though if I were going to do an actual article for Assassin's, I'd spend it trying to beef-up/fix the original Assassin class with a feat or two to let the Executioner take advantage of the goodies.

Another Errata I've thought of is that I would adjust the E-class swap feats so you only need one of them to swap all but one of your power strikes for encounters from the parent class. I would have a seperate version for the Scout which would include the line, "In addition, when you use a melee ranger power with a level, you may use your Dexterity modifier in place of your Strength modifer for the attack and damage rolls."

While I think it would be beyond the scope of reasonable errata I would also consider changing the Hunter to be a sub-class of the Seeker instead of the ranger (as the Seeker has more controllerish utilities) and give it an encounter power swap feat akin to the one of the Scout only with the Hunter being able to use Dexterity in place of Wisdom for the Seeker's ranged attacks.

The jist of my errata philosophy is that I DON'T want to fundamentally alter the way the entire game is played. I happen to like the way the game plays, I just want to smooth off some rough edges. Per the OP these errata aren't supposed to be a D&D4.5... which is something I thing changing the hit points and damage of ALL the monsters in the entire game, changing how combat advantage/power bonuses work and changing how healing works for everyone would be a far better example of.

* * * * *

My personal experience with healing is that, even with the bonus healing at 6,11,etc., the healing word powers BARELY cancel out the damage from a single hit once you've gone past early heroic. Our defender needs to be able to recover from bloodied to virtually full with a single heal just to not be dropped in two rounds by the 3-4 monsters swarming him... and that's with him and the leader using their defensive interrupts. In my experience there's barely enough healing as it is to keep a party upright with the newer monster math (i.e. MM3 and later products).

If anything, I believe its been the post-MM3 INCREASE in monster damage that's made leaders absolutely necessary for the 4E party. People may have bitched about 'padded sumo' with the earlier monsters, but at least their damage was low enough that the defender could take more than four hits before dropping and a second wind would actually restore more hit points than a monster could inflict in a round. As with so much of Essentials, it was a "fix" that ended up breaking more than it probably fixed.

As to the leaders being 'heal-bots' now because of all the healing they have to provide. I disagree completely. A heal-bot as I understand it is a character who does NOTHING but heal the party, but in 4E, the leaders' healing is rarely more than a minor action, meaning the still get to make attacks and move normally even while they're healing.

I guess we have different errata vs new edition threshholds.

To me, changing monster math is pure errata, pretty much no matter how much you change it, so long as doing so doesn't require a bunch of PC changes.
-shrug- YMMV

On assassins, I get where you're coming from, but I'd rather not give the assassin more feat taxes, ya know? If we do a warlord style update for the assassin, then we just need a new build with a suite of powers, and maybe an executioner feat that lets them take advantage of assassin encounter powers instead of AS, or something.
There are a lot of ways to do it.

I agree with you on healing. I do think that some classes have too many surges, though.

My last errata/Dragon magazine would include:


- Fixes for some monster HP and damage problems. Perhaps increasing damage by about 1.5x, and decreasing health by 1/4 or 1/3 depending on the critter.

- More Skill Utilities. I loved those things they gave you unique things to do based on what skills you had.

- A few more dangerous effects. I really like save or (insert bad thing here).

- An increase in damage on high level powers. Especially the wizards High level dailies.

- More utilitarian utilities. Utilities are my favorite powers to get because they have all sorts of uses. But I would really like to see a whole new slew of utilities that do more than "You shift your speed" (There were too many of those kinds) or "Regain HP as if you had spent a Healing Surge".

- A complete list of every 4e Ritual and a summary of their effects.

- Errata away many of the useless feats (one that are overshadowed by others) and get rid of many of the +1/+2/+3 type feats.

- Give me more generic themes. I think I had only one problem with themes, and that is that they are WAY too specific. Like the theme: Oracle of the Evil Eye. I want some like craftsman, and farmer.

- A decrease in some class HP here and there. I personally think the Wizard, and Sorcerer still get to much HP.


Most of my stuff is more Dragon magazine stuff. Its hard to think of Errata as 4e is near perfect in that sense.

 

Oh man, I'd love some generic themes.

Especially if it included some that overlap with class concepts, creating another simple venue to mix concepts. Combine that with some minor but important fixes to multiclassing, and I'd like 4e mc options more than 3.5 or Star Wars Saga's options.

One thing I forgot in my list is that I'd make the weapon "mc" feats no longer count as mc feats. As normal feats, I think most of them would be worthwhile (if we also use errata to get rid of the big feat taxes), but as MC feats that don't give a skill training, they aren't.

What if, instead of decreasing Wizard and Sorc HP (i've never liked the "casters are squishy" trope, but to each their own), we decreased their number of healing surges?


Also, I'd like it if there were more things that cost a healing surge.


hmm....

ok, I think we need a 4.5/How you'd build 5e thread. I'll go start that.


Man. it's awesome to be able to have these discussions without the edition trolls!