July Contest: 4th Of The Edition

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > July Contest: 4th Of The Edition

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Bongo Bill posted:

Here are some principles that are often cited as ways to build on 4e's design trajectory:

Death to ability scores

No feats, instead offload their design effects to things like class features

Never choose between in-combat and out-of-combat powers

Fewer fiddly small bonuses, penalties, and conditions.

Skill challenges need some significant alterations to become worthwhile and interesting.
Really, all non-combat parts of the system�including skills�are bad. It's all binary pass/fail with no gradations or strategy.
Math-fix feats are terrible. Bake all that in (or obviate it), including the MM3's monster-building changes.
Alignments. 4e improved things by removing half of them.
Conditions with varying durations, conditional modifiers (powers boosted by combat advantage, tags that help/hurt certain powers, etc), and interrupt and opportunity powers that allow characters to act out of turn, tend to bog down combat.
Drop essentials characters because they only offer fewer options without actually being any simpler to use in combat.
Paragon and Epic Destinies shouldn't have non-negotiable prerequisites because they encourage planning your character from levels 1-30 on day 1.

Countblanc posted:

You're all going to have big shoes to fill. Not 4e's, but Jimbozig's The Sacred BBQ.

Link to its old thread, requires archives

This might be any good if its DM advice was.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2014 06:14

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 00:27

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

P.d0t posted:

Alternatively, if you don't give any fucks about "unified mechanics", just do roll-under Ability Mods and use a d6 for check rolls.
You can increase the die size for harder DCs, like d8, d10, etc.
Sucks if you have negative mods, but IMHO D&D should really stop doing that.

Obviously, if you went this route you should drop the 3-20 stats and just use the mods.

An alternative for harder DCs = larger dice would be just applying a +bonus to the roll.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 16:15

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

I'm working on a thing. Currently out of town but we'll see how far I get. Class balance will probably be horrible, not sure how much of the DM instructions/monster creation rules/sample map and monsters will be finished before Friday.

Also I just reread God Emperor of Dune so that has probably leaked into my dying space opera setting...

Fuschia tude fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jul 30, 2014

# ¿ Jul 30, 2014 04:15

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Hmm my formatting seems to have been eaten by Google Docs

Sorry to miss the deadline.

Still SPACE DEATH is available here if anyone is still interested. I didn't quite get to enemy design yet after all.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 05:08

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Error 404 posted:

SPACEDEATH
I love the concept, but I think the execution might need some more work. like, I understand composer=HP, but I guess I have trouble understanding the way it's supposed to look in practice. So if I lose all CP, I can only do Move and Minor actions? There are still a lot of powers that use Move and Minor, and most of the ones I've seen heal your CP, and so it kinda makes that a not-really-status effect (Move ends).

Everything looks really interesting, but it also needs more work. I hope you continue working on it because I definitely want to see what it looks like.

Thanks for the review!

CP is kinda like HP in 4e: if you take any damage whose result ends up exceeding your CP max, you're unconscious and need to start saving. So as your CP gets crossed off over the course of a fight, that becomes more and more likely to happen on any given future attack. That can't-standard-action status is only if you have lost ALL your CP, and not a point over. Maybe that's a bit too unlikely; it's based on the 0HP status I remember from a past edition, which was actually subsumed into negative-HP in 4e anyway.

As I mentioned before, I didn't finish everything I wanted, and of course the formatting is messed up. I'll see what I can do with it in the future.

Fuschia tude fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Aug 3, 2014

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 02:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > July Contest: 4th Of The Edition