Worst Parts About 4e?

Interesting.

I just opened one of the monster files in Notepad to see what it looks like. It actually includes definitions for any of the keywords you use with the monster despite the fact that there is no way to access those definitions when viewing a monster. That's lazy coding... and if I can spot that despite having no coding skills, I can guarantee there's a lot of other bad coding being used and a lot of room for improvement.

But, yes, there is not RoI.

Yeah, the character files are a BIT better coded.* That's why you'd also need a hypothetical program to access the main data-file as well as the character file because the character file just references the element names for class features, powers, feats and equipment rather than reproducing them inside the save file.

Indeed, one of the reasons I KNOW a new interface for the dataset could be built is because WotC already did it when they moved the builder online. It didn't take long for the Silverlight app to have its dataset hacked by someone or the other and it was confirmed that they were using the exact same source data format as was sitting in the offline builder.

* To be fair to the offline monster builder, it never made it out of beta before the project was abandoned and later moved online by people who weren't the original developers. If the original project had been seen through to completion the coding probably would have been cleaned up a bit and that cleaner code carried over to the online builder as well.

Just another case of everything 4e had for it being abandoned... *sigh*

4e really did deserve better. If only WotC would have just assigned a team to all of 4e's projects that knew what they were doing, and, actually cared about 4e.

Felorn Gloryaxe wrote:

(snip) 4e really did deserve better. If only WotC would have just assigned a team to all of 4e's projects that knew what they were doing, and, actually cared about 4e.

Don't worry, in a year or two the Next fans will be saying, "If only WotC would have just assigned a team to all of Next's projects that knew what they were doing, and, actually cared about Next."

Chris24601 wrote:

skwyd42 wrote:

I know you can rearrange the panes, but my complaint is that the individual panes just look bad to me. The whole front sheet feels cluttered. I don't use the Essentials-style layout, but I do like the look of the standard sheet on the current online builder. It is just a matter of preference to me. However, I have several rookie players in my current campaign and when they saw the off-line builder's front sheet they all said something to the effect of "ewww".

I'll agree it is less clean than the online one, but then again I don't use the online one either.

For the last three years or so I've actually used character sheets laid out very similarly to the 4E monster stat blocks using 10-pt Mentor Sans (the font used for the actual 4E monster/power blocks)...

-------

-initiative, hit points and defenses in an upper left block
-senses, speed and languages in an upper right block
-abilities mods with scores in parenthesis on a single line beneath that
-trained skills (or otherwise improved beyond the base ability) and their bonuses on the line(s) beneath that.
-any special elements like critical dice, conditional skill bonuses and the like on the line(s) beneath that.
-powers (and power-like elements) sorted by action type (triggered, standard, free, minor, move) and written out like monster powers (with green, red or grey title bars to denote usage) on about two lines each. Check-boxes on the power's title bar are added if the power can be used more than once per encounter/day (ex. healing word, lay on hands, power strike, et cetera).
-a miscellanea section at the bottom with gear, rituals, unused powers in a spellbook, or anything else that doesn't fit elsewhere.

Feats aren't listed directly since they don't usually come up in play, instead we just apply their effects to anything relevant (skills, defenses, attacks, et cetera) or list a feat out as an actual power if its necessary.

-------

I know from experience that an 18th level human mage can fit onto a single page using the above layout and would only need anything more if they actually swapped out their spells on a regular basis (though I've yet to meet a wizard/mage player who actually does so).

My experience has been that having your party be able to reference your entire character without shuffling papers is well worth the time it takes to actually type them up (once you have a template down you can cut and paste a lot of it and when you're leveling its pretty quick because it often just +1 to some numbers and adding another power or the effects of a feat).

I actually tried making a lvl 1 Fighter in the Monster Builder and it does work fairly well:

Scrivener of Doom wrote:

Felorn Gloryaxe wrote:

(snip) 4e really did deserve better. If only WotC would have just assigned a team to all of 4e's projects that knew what they were doing, and, actually cared about 4e.

Don't worry, in a year or two the Next fans will be saying, "If only WotC would have just assigned a team to all of Next's projects that knew what they were doing, and, actually cared about Next."

More than likely, yes.

Part of me kinda chuckles at the thought of this.

It's even better in the newer monster builder where you break the powers down into action types.

Scrivener of Doom wrote:

It's even better in the newer monster builder where you break the powers down into action types.

Quoted for emphasis.

Separating things by action type made a huge difference in how quickly people got through their turns because they only had to look at any one section at a time.

It was observing the differences that this arrangement made and the differences with the same player using different characters who's actions were more evenly distributed (i.e. fewer standard attacks, more free actions triggers/minor actions) that, along with some additional research about option paralysis, led me to my conclusions about how to improve a new iteration of the game by limiting powers to about three per action type (3 immediate/opportunity, 3 standard, 3 on-turn free/no action, 3 move and 3 minor... 15 powers total... though you could go as high as four per type... 20 powers... and the level of option paralysis would probably still be in acceptable limits).

Scrivener of Doom wrote:

Actually, one other question if you don't mind.

Alternative rewards are a huge part of my games. I would love to be able to create my own but also to rename the existing ones as I can do now in the character builder. Can this be done with CBLoader?

I am very interested in what people are doing or have done with alternate rewards...

And pretty much any content can be put in to cbloader doing so is editing/creating xml files

Yeah it's time to get CBLoader up and running.

I've installed the character builder already now I just need to find CBLoader and how to add the updates.

Chris24601 wrote:

Scrivener of Doom wrote:

It's even better in the newer monster builder where you break the powers down into action types.

Quoted for emphasis.

Separating things by action type made a huge difference in how quickly people got through their turns because they only had to look at any one section at a time.

It was observing the differences that this arrangement made and the differences with the same player using different characters who's actions were more evenly distributed (i.e. fewer standard attacks, more free actions triggers/minor actions) that, along with some additional research about option paralysis, led me to my conclusions about how to improve a new iteration of the game by limiting powers to about three per action type (3 immediate/opportunity, 3 standard, 3 on-turn free/no action, 3 move and 3 minor... 15 powers total... though you could go as high as four per type... 20 powers... and the level of option paralysis would probably still be in acceptable limits).

Interesting .... 20 is a nice round familiar number to shoot for isnt it.

Garthanos wrote:

Interesting .... 20 is a nice round familiar number to shoot for isnt it.

Actually, I'd shoot for 15 powers from the classes because it minimizes option paralysis. That then leaves room for a racial, theme or other power to push a category or two to four choices each which will slow it down a bit, but not nearly what 5-7 choices will.

15 maximum powers with 5 starting powers (basic attack, 2 at-wills, 1 encounter, 1 daily) means you can add 10 over the course of the next 29 levels... 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16 and 22 and then use other levels to provide choices to either replace or upgrade those 15 powers.

It's also worth pointing out that providing multiple uses of the same power doesn't increase option paralysis... being able to power strike four times an encounter is still just one choice of action when your turn comes up. Indeed, I think multiple uses for a signature encounter power or two would probably be a good thing in terms of making each PC unique.

Limiting power selection by action type is a great idea. A maximum of 3 powers per action type is plenty, although an argument could be made for 4 or 5 standard actions and less of the rest.

I'd exclude opportunity actions by the way. You're going to run into trouble with powers that are both standard and opportunity actions, and there are very few opportunity actions in the game anyway.

svendj wrote:

Limiting power selection by action type is a great idea. A maximum of 3 powers per action type is plenty, although an argument could be made for 4 or 5 standard actions and less of the rest.

It could be, but 5-6 is going to cause a greater degree of slow-down in decision making (three is optimal for most people and four is probably acceptable).

If possible, I'd slide anything that's essentially an encounter or daily "basic attack plus" (i.e. it hits like a basic attack plus something more) into free actions (it changes the decision point from "what do I hit it with" to "now that I've hit it, do I want to do something more?" turning one big choice into two smaller ones) or minor actions that modify the at-will attacks and save the standard action category for truly STANDARD actions (as in readily available and commonly used).

Personally, unless the class concept really required otherwise, I'd only have basic attacks and at-will attacks as standard actions, put most of the encounter attacks into the free action category and make the daily attacks into mostly encounter long effects that are activated by minor actions. Defensive utilities would be triggered actions and non-defensive utilities would be move actions.

Quote :

I'd exclude opportunity actions by the way. You're going to run into trouble with powers that are both standard and opportunity actions, and there are very few opportunity actions in the game anyway.

Honestly? I'd dump all the immediate and opportunity actions together in a single category named "triggered actions" and run them like opportunity actions (i.e. 1/turn rather than 1/round) because there's less of a hassle over when they can be used. But I'd also limit the usage of triggered actions to encounter and daily powers so even if someone DID want to blow all of their triggers in the first round of combat, they'd still only be able to interrupt the normal flow of combat three times during any battle.

The one exception to the encounter/daily requirement might be the basic opportunity attacks/defender punishment, but only if I couldn't rework those into some sort of aura effect... maybe "enemies in the aura who do 'A' must make a 'B' check vs. 'C' or take 'D' damage." Defender auras might even be auto-damage (enemies in the aura who shift or make an attack that does not include you take X damage) to make them truly sticky without having to slow the game down with extra rolls.

Personally I kind of like abilities that trigger on enemy or ally turns because well combat is really simultaneous and having turns all be ploddingly one after the other breaks versimilitude ;p - evil word.. evil word evil word...for shame.

I really like the idea of encounter and daily powers being free/minor actions that add to you at-wills. An interesting side effect is that they are now "reliably" in that you only use them once you have already hit. Like the power attack for the essentials martial classes. Of course this only adds 1W extra damage, so you have to balance out many of the powers - take away from some encounter and dailies. You could also take some that have an effect and make them a free action "when you make and attack do this also" then they could be used even on a miss.
The idea of the defenders aura being auto-damage is kinda meh. The cavalier has this already, and it is really boring compare to a free attack from a knight or berserker. And the auto-damage is pretty weak so it doesn't feel like much. What is the math of this - [avg weapon damage + str + enhancment]x avg chance to hit = auto-damage? You need to scale it with enhancement bonus, maybe at 1/2 level to the damage?
TjD

Durriken wrote:

I really like the idea of encounter and daily powers being free/minor actions that add to you at-wills.  An interesting side effect is that they are now "reliably" in that you only use them once you have already hit.  Like the power attack for the essentials martial classes.  Of course this only adds 1W extra damage, so you have to balance out many of the powers - take away from some encounter and dailies.  You could also take some that have an effect and make them a free action "when you make and attack do this also"  then they could be used even on a miss.
The idea of the defenders aura being auto-damage is kinda meh.  The cavalier has this already, and it is really boring compare to a free attack from a knight or berserker. And the auto-damage is pretty weak so it doesn't feel like much.  What is the math of this - [avg weapon damage + str + enhancment]x avg chance to hit = auto-damage?  You need to scale it with enhancement bonus, maybe at 1/2 level to the damage?
TjD  

I have been thinking an evocative method to describe a Berserkers attacks are if they have an extra attack but against any adjacent creature till the effect wears off (the beginning of their next turn?), thats right including allies (You might be nice and let them have a Wisdom check to stop the attack I suppose). I think the purpose of auto damage is largely just to keep things simple.

The power split would really only be practical for new classes or a massive rebuild/4.5 style project. For a smaller scale you could probably get away with a power or two of each type as options at each level so you could build closer to the goal of three per action type. You could probable save on design work too by using the skald style (lesser, standard, greater) only maybe just built into a single power with level notes if you select it as a higher level selection.

I can see the point about rolling being more fun than auto-damage. My suggestion was, as much as anything, about how to speed things up, but I do have to remember to balance that with keeping the fun sometimes.

Maybe a hybrid model would work better. Keep the free attack for defenders because its fun and their schtick, but switch over bog standard opportunity attacks into an auto-damage aura effect so they can be adjudicated quickly (and they don't come up all that often in 4e anyway... at least compared to defender punishment).

Chris24601 wrote:

If possible, I'd slide anything that's essentially an encounter or daily "basic attack plus" (i.e. it hits like a basic attack plus something more) into free actions (it changes the decision point from "what do I hit it with" to "now that I've hit it, do I want to do something more?" turning one big choice into two smaller ones) or minor actions that modify the at-will attacks and save the standard action category for truly STANDARD actions (as in readily available and commonly used).

Personally, unless the class concept really required otherwise, I'd only have basic attacks and at-will attacks as standard actions, put most of the encounter attacks into the free action category and make the daily attacks into mostly encounter long effects that are activated by minor actions. Defensive utilities would be triggered actions and non-defensive utilities would be move actions.

But I'd also limit the usage of triggered actions to encounter and daily powers so even if someone DID want to blow all of their triggers in the first round of combat, they'd still only be able to interrupt the normal flow of combat three times during any battle.

The one exception to the encounter/daily requirement might be the basic opportunity attacks/defender punishment, but only if I couldn't rework those into some sort of aura effect... maybe "enemies in the aura who do 'A' must make a 'B' check vs. 'C' or take 'D' damage." Defender auras might even be auto-damage (enemies in the aura who shift or make an attack that does not include you take X damage) to make them truly sticky without having to slow the game down with extra rolls.

Congratulations, you've just invented the entire Essentials class design philosophy  

I think there's a world of difference between embracing a streamlined design flow and embracing boring spammable powers (I hit so I use power strike for more damage again).

For that matter, a lot of the E-classes add a degree of needless complexity to the process... there was no need to replace replace traditional at-wills on the fighter with stances that don't do anything more than eat your minor action each round for example.

I'm talking about a design where the fighter uses a traditional at-will as their standard action and can then pick from one of three different free action powers if that attack hits (or misses depending on the power) and in tough fight might choose to activate a minor action stance that provides some sort of improved tactical option for that fight.

Superficially that may resemble bits of Essentials, but in practice, not so much.

Chris24601 wrote:

I think there's a world of difference between embracing a streamlined design flow and embracing boring spammable powers (I hit so I use power strike for more damage again).

For that matter, a lot of the E-classes add a degree of needless complexity to the process... there was no need to replace replace traditional at-wills on the fighter with stances that don't do anything more than eat your minor action each round for example.

I'm talking about a design where the fighter uses a traditional at-will as their standard action and can then pick from one of three different free action powers if that attack hits (or misses depending on the power) and in tough fight might choose to activate a minor action stance that provides some sort of improved tactical option for that fight.

Superficially that may resemble bits of Essentials, but in practice, not so much.

Ah, so you'd replace the boring old BA with a choice of 3 at-will powers. I agree that would do a lot to avoid the feeling of having to spam one or two powers. OTOH, you'd have to design a bunch of powers that are all equally useful and good, otherwise you're only going to get the Twin Strike problem again (while Rangers have 12 at-will powers, none come close to Twin Strike). But that's a balance issue.

I also like the idea of gaining a new free action encounter power at levels 1 ,3, 7 etc. instead of getting another use out of a boring one. You can easily offer a choice of 4-10 different encounter powers at each level that the player can choose from when he levels, so there are some actual choices.

I understand the differences, I think. It's basically Essentials, but done right.

svendj wrote:

Ah, so you'd replace the boring old BA with a choice of 3 at-will powers. I agree that would do a lot to avoid the feeling of having to spam one or two powers. OTOH, you'd have to design a bunch of powers that are all equally useful and good, otherwise you're only going to get the Twin Strike problem again (while Rangers have 12 at-will powers, none come close to Twin Strike). But that's a balance issue.

Personally, I think the Scout class handed the ranger twin-strike issue properly by turning the offhand weapon attack into its striker damage feature. For an improved ranger class I'd drop both twin-strike and hunter's quarry and replace them with a free basic attack (melee or ranged) on your turn.

Quote :

I also like the idea of gaining a new free action encounter power at levels 1 ,3, 7 etc. instead of getting another use out of a boring one. You can easily offer a choice of 4-10 different encounter powers at each level that the player can choose from when he levels, so there are some actual choices.

I'd shoot for maybe 4 powers per level, but then give the powers scaling. For example;

Hindering Strike * Fighter Attack 3
"when you get an opening in your target's defenses, you direct a savage blow at their legs to keep them from escaping you."
Encounter * Martial
Free Action   Personal
Trigger: you hit a target with an at-will attack on your turn.
Effect: your attack deals [1W] extra damage and the target is slowed until the end of your next next turn.
Level 13: [2W] extra damage and the target is immobilized until the end of your next turn.
  Level 23: [3W] extra damage and the target is restrained until the end of your next turn.

This saves space and avoids a lot of repetition in the power choice lists. It also gives you room for far more exotic powers on the paragon and epic tier lists because if you just want an improved bread and butter power, you can select  a power from one of the lower tier lists and it will still be a solid choice.

Quote :

I understand the differences, I think. It's basically Essentials, but done right.

More or less. I think Essentials had some things right in the desire to streamline the game, but I think where they went wrong was trying to make it feel like older editions by cutting down on the interesting choices in powers.

"I hit it with my sword" has its place (we use E-martial classes in place of companion characters in our campaigns for example), but that should be a CHOICE not a limitation on a given class.

The only problem I see in that design process is that power effects overlap like that. Cleave, for example, would both deal extra damage to an adjacent enemy, and slow the target with the above proposed idea. This isn't so bad at its base, but the potential for abuse is there when you start slapping certain effects together, so I would advise to mind how you work it. and keep an eye out for combos that could be "too good".

Chris24601 wrote:

I think there's a world of difference between embracing a streamlined design flow and embracing boring spammable powers (I hit so I use power strike for more damage again).

For that matter, a lot of the E-classes add a degree of needless complexity to the process... there was no need to replace replace traditional at-wills on the fighter with stances that don't do anything more than eat your minor action each round for example.

I'm talking about a design where the fighter uses a traditional at-will as their standard action and can then pick from one of three different free action powers if that attack hits (or misses depending on the power) and in tough fight might choose to activate a minor action stance that provides some sort of improved tactical option for that fight.

Superficially that may resemble bits of Essentials, but in practice, not so much.

Sounds a lot like how 13th Age flexible attacks work, as well as the design philosophy behind my early attempt at classless 4E.

[ 13th Age moves some encounter powers into selectable class features, while other powers are made into flexible attacks. Flexible attacks work kinda like how you described it: make the basic attack, then choose which flexible attack triggers based on the natural result of the d20 roll. Flexible attacks trigger on hits, misses, natural odd/even hits, natural odd/even misses, natural 16+ and even in conjunction with another of 13th Age's features [Escalation Die] for the more powerful ones.

The mathematical likelihood of each trigger means you can change some encounter powers and technically even feats into flexible attacks -- e.g. encounter powers like Unbreakable could trigger on a natural even miss (25%, smaller if you're really accurate, higher if you're not as optimized as you should be in the upper tiers) -- and get enough variety of powers to do a whole assortment of stuff regardless of the roll, and as basic attacks in 13th Age scale quickly (1/level), there's less need for static damage modifiers as well as a whole assortment of damage-only powers. Essentials design simplicity, pre-Essentials dynamics complexity ]

ToeSama wrote:

The only problem I see in that design process is that power effects overlap like that. Cleave, for example, would both deal extra damage to an adjacent enemy, and slow the target with the above proposed idea. This isn't so bad at its base, but the potential for abuse is there when you start slapping certain effects together, so I would advise to mind how you work it. and keep an eye out for combos that could be "too good".

The biggest way to deal with it is to just keep the at-wills from getting out of hand in what they can do. Bread-and-butter attacks shouldn't be doing much beyond slowing, 1-2 squares of forced movement or shifting, grant combat advantage, deny opportunity actions, mark a target, grant some temp hit points, provide a +/-2 modifier to a check or grant a basic attack to another character. Diceless damage at-wills (ex. Beguiling Strands or Hypnotism) should have a larger magnitude (ex. push more than 3+ squares), but it shouldn't slip over into bigger effects without a LOT of consideration.

Anything bigger, even the prone condition in my opinion (as its basically costs the target an action on their next turn to undo), should be limited to encounter and daily powers. While an encounter-long daily might overlap with a free action encounter power to produce something really potent, its a DAILY and deserves to be able to pull off a really big effect once during the encounter where you're burning one.

chaosfang wrote:

Sounds a lot like how 13th Age flexible attacks work, as well as the design philosophy behind my early attempt at classless 4E.

Personally, I cannot stand flexible attacks and would rather be stuck with nothing but E-Martial power attacks than flexible attacks. This isn't even an exaggeration. One of my groups started up a new campaign where we created our character concepts first and then decided on the system that would best represent them. It ended up with a choice between 13th Age and 4E and I ended up picking an Essentials Scout to represent my character concept over a 13th Age Ranger precisely because I dislike flexible attacks so much (this is also why you'll never see me play a 4E chaos sorcerer as well).

There is nothing I hate more in a game system than having what actions I can attempt in a round determined by what amounts to a context-less flip of a coin. I much prefer such things to trigger off of a discernible pass/fail condition because that puts the trigger into context for me ("Your first hit opens up your enemy's defenses allowing you to take a second swing" is good for me while "This turn you get a second swing at the target because of luck" irks me to no end).

Pass/fail triggers you can build tactics around ("if this hits, then I can follow with that to achieve X") while random triggers you can't ("if this hits I may or may not be able to follow with something to achieve X").

I have actually "GHAHHHH!!!ed" out-loud to my screen three times just in the process of writing this. It bugs me that much. Some people like them and it works for them and that's great. It just flat-out doesn't work for me so you'll NEVER see anything like flexible attacks in a system I'm building.