Effectronica posted:

I'm going to doublepost and tear apart the skill system at length.

4e's skill system is a mildly modified version of 3.5's skill system, with advancement rules being the biggest change.

There are a total of 17 skills. One is dependent on Strength, one on Constitution, three on Dexterity, three on Intelligence, four on Charisma, and five on Wisdom. We could go into more detail about why a muscular dude is worse at intimidating people than a scrawny charmer, or how a fighter is likely worse at knowing the streets than a paladin, but these are mainly quibbles comparatively. More pressing is that classes have unequal access to skills, and where those sorts of critiques become meaningful is that certain classes are required to be trained in certain skills "appropriate to the concept" and all of them have more or less limited access to the skill list, more for martials and less for arcanes.

Even this is secondary. Yes, it is bullshit that fighters are required to be dumb jocks, but even without these awful and stupid restrictions, there is still the basic structure of the skill system to contend with.

thespaceinvader posted:

I always thought DtAS was about attack scaling, not skill checks. I kinda like the attribute system when it comes to skills, but I think the non-combat utilities ought to go further, maybe even to the point of having a separate non-combat class...

Maxwell Lord posted:

1. I'm not quite ready to go full DtAS, I want this to be fairly close to 4e mechanics with the obvious broken stuff fixed (feat taxes and such.) Of course something like the wizened kung-fu master I could do as a monk-type class that uses Wisdom for most attacks- in fact I think for most classes I will simplify in that direction, your prime requisite score is what you use for your major class stuff (and just say in chargen rules "Put at least this much there" a la Gamma World.)

wallawallawingwang posted:

I guess what I'd ask is what do you hope to do by keeping the sub-skills?

wallawallawingwang posted:

If the game is a 4e-alike, I'd actually be a bit more curious what you plan to do with all those juicy skill utility powers that were written but never used since they conflicted with your staying alive and winning fights utility slots.

thespaceinvader posted:

Based on the fact that this is aiming to retclone 4e, I'd say: GET THE MECHANICS TIGHT FIRST.

P.d0t posted:

I had the beginnings of an idea for a new game, and I can't get it out of my head. I've only just sort of begun to formulate stuffs for it, but here's what I've got. A lot of the ideas are DTAS and DW-ish so I thought it might tickle your fancy.

Each class has a "class die" which they use as basically their weapon die, HD, and for Skills and possibly other poo poo. This is mostly based of 3.5-isms (obvs) and I haven't crunched any of the math yet.

Rolling HP
Each level up, roll 2 of your Class Dice; use the higher result to gain HP. If the result is doubles, you gain HP equal to the maximum value of your Class Die.

Skills/Moves
Would probably be vs. a static DC or use a scale, such as in *World.

Mage (d4)

Iconic Ability: Magic Missile
You make a ranged attack against every enemy on the field. On a hit, deal 1d4+INT(or something) damage

Moves: Arcane Knowledge
When you attempt to remember a significant piece of information or lore, understand the nature of something magical, or when you try to solve a puzzle, roll 1d20 and 1d4; if the d20 roll is less than the d4 roll, you automatically succeed.


Rogue (d6)

Iconic Ability: Sneak Attack
When you hit an enemy, deal 1d6 extra damage for each ally Engaged with the target.

Moves: Arts of Deception
When you attempt a feat of agility or dexterity, or perform an act of deception or thievery, roll 1d20 and 1d6, combining the results to determine if you beat the DC.


Ranger (d8)

Iconic Ability: Twin Strike
You can attack two enemies on each of your turns; roll 2d20 and 2d8 for the attack and damage rolls, respectively. Use the higher result for both attacks

Move: Wilderness Guide
When an ally attempts to recall a piece of information about a natural creature, or tests their awareness of their surroundings, roll 1d8 and add it to the check.


Fighter (d10)

Iconic Ability: Defender Aura
When an enemy Disengages from you, roll 1d10 and deal that amount of damage to it. If an enemy Engaged with you attacks an ally, roll 1d10 and apply the value as a penalty to their attack rolls until the end of the turn.

Iconic Ability: Multi-attack
On your turn, you can attack multiple enemies. The damage from the first attack is 1 step lower than your Class Die (d8), the 2nd is 2 steps (1d6) and the 3rd is 3 steps (d4)

Iconic Move: Marshal
when you attempt a feat of Athleticism or Endurance, or try to sway someone to your cause or way of thinking, roll [blah. i dunno]


Barbarian (d12)

Iconic Ability: Cleave
When you hit an enemy, deal d12 damage to all other enemies engaged with you.

Iconic Ability: Rampage
When you drop an enemy, you Disengage from all enemies and move up to any other enemy. You then make a free attack against that enemy.

Iconic Move: Brute Force
When you attempt to destroy, damage, or move an object using physical force, or intimidate, threaten, humiliate, or cow a creature into submission, roll 1d20 and 1d12, and use the higher roll. If the result is doubles, you can use that roll or reroll both dice.

wallawallawingwang posted:

Fluff!
The world building fluff in 4e is, I think, one of its most under appreciated assets. But I'd argue that character powers (power broadly defined not a 4e power)aren't usually written in such a way to spark the imagination. Take the Stormwarden PP in the PHB. Its level 16 feature is: "As long as you are armed with a melee weapon and are capable of making an opportunity attack, two adjacent enemies (your choice) take lightning damage equal to your Dexterity modifier at the end of your turn." I get that rules need to be clear and concise. But I think having a greybox of text right above that clear and concise rule that explains what is going on in the fictional world would help with some of the bad listed in the OP.

Ratpick posted:

neonchameleon posted:

And I've continued branching out and working out what the core engine does well.

neonchameleon posted:

The problem with the cost for Rituals isn't that they are too high or too low. It's that the cost starts out as extortion and becomes pocket change at higher levels and the rituals themselves become spammable. With 4e's exponential gold standard there is literally no way I can see to balance rituals using gold as a cost.

And I must get back to Trifold - but I also have in my head the seeds of Microlite 4e - which starts by taking my Trifold, using only d6s, and removing damage rolls (and dividing hp by approximately 4). Character sheets cover only one side of a page of A4 this time. Would this interest anyone?

Maxwell Lord posted:

I had been thinking of making the Monk a defender too, but this may make them too similar now, I'm not sure. The Monk's attacks are all Wis based so that's the main difference but I'll work on making them unique.

gradenko_2000 posted:

3. Cap the number of powers a player can wield at any one time

Transient People posted:

Because it makes the Leaders less fun, is why. What a lot of 'solutions' to the hitrate 'problem' of 4e miss is that slapping down fuckoff huge you-only-miss-on-a-1 attack bonuses is super enjoyable, and the various benefits and features that let you help your pals and yourself out are so ubiquitous that that rule merely makes players miss more, not less. You don't want that poo poo at all, if anything you want a higher hitrate than 60%, period.

Azran posted:

I'm going to try and swap modifiers for dice. So instead of a +2 you roll 1d4, instead of a +3 you roll 1d6. Etc.

Actually, I guess I could post what I'm doing here after I'm done with my finals. 4e is its base, at the very least.

P.d0t posted:

I'm hoping to get some feedback on this.

Maxwell Lord posted:

Obviously, though, the issue is how to have the ship have enough neat things to do so that nobody's on the sidelines. Obviously whoever's in the cockpit can fly the ship and use powers that let it do fancy maneuvers, you can have more than one gunner firing weapons, you can have someone in the engine room repairing damage or giving boosts, etc. Not sure that's enough, though. Don't want anyone trapped doing the boring stuff or just riding shotgun.

Iny posted:

Thoughts? Am I full of poo poo? Is this all super ill-conceived or really superfluous or overambitious or, I dunno, something else?

gradenko_2000 posted:

I was looking at the Dungeon Master's Screen from the Essentials line, and I stumbled upon a Damage by Level table.

Excerpt:

pre:

Level     Single Target     Two or More Targets
  1          1d8+4                 1d6+3
  2          1d8+5                 1d6+4
  3          1d8+6                 1d6+5

What's interesting to me is that using the MM3 Monster Math, the average damage of these die expressions match up pretty well to 3-4 hits to kill an even-level (Soldier) monster.

If one were to use these die expressions for W, how would that work out? Are there powers that don't base their damage off of W? Does W already naturally scale up to keep pace with monster HP even using standard rules?

Ratpick posted:

Yeah, that's another thing: throughout this process I kept thinking whether I even should keep stats as a thing in this at all. I should probably look at other people DTAS projects to see if I can marry some of the ideas from those to this project of mine. I'm not 100% dedicated to the idea of stats, the main point being to make an ultralite but still distinctly 4e-influenced game.

Torchlighter posted:

Here's a question, are Races really all that important to how a character plays?

I mean, they're considered one of the three pillars to make up a character, but really, what they give from a gameplay perspective is:

1) a stat boost to certain attributes (useless in DTAS systems, pigeonholes races into certain classes, could be completely ignore by rolling the stat bonuses into the classes)

2) a vague series of skill bonuses (which is probably the first thing most people would get rid of in 4e, since it's a throwback design with little value)

3) a power (sometimes)

4) a variety of vague bonuses that mean very little (the dwarf gets pushed less. the tiefling has fire resist. the dragonborn hits harder when bloodied.)

Am I wrong in thinking that you could probably do away with a lot of this? it basically boils down to 'I'm Eladrin, I have a teleport.'

Also racial feats, but that's a different kettle of fish.

Covok posted:

Instead of skills, I borrowed an idea from a friend where you mix backgrounds and skills:

pre:

Backgrounds: Character pick X background at character generation. This background starts at a value of +1. 
Each background gives a list of skills. 

Skills: Players receive a list of skills from their background. 
They may distribute X points among these skills.

wallawallawingwang posted:

I just finished up with grad school, so I can switch my rpg tinkering from thing I do to procrastinate to normal person hobby. So, sorta?

One of the big strengths of the OSR is, despite there being about million rules sets, they are largely compatible. Adventures, monsters, and rules modules from all different lines and the originals can all cross pollinate or at the very least provide a bigger pool of content to work with. I was wondering if that is worth trying to replicate in a 4e retroclone?
[...]

Thoughts?

Torchlighter posted:

Scimitar has high crit, meaning that it crits about twice as much... or on a 19 as well as a 20. Hardly a reliable or meaningful difference.

Torchlighter posted:

Anti-Citizen posted:

I think less a bridge to far, and more a lot of the time really oddly specific rules are created to be "simulationist" but then don't reflect reality in any way shape or form.

Initiative is an abstraction because we're throwing dice at each other, facing rules being poorly bolted onto the game feel like it's trying to be "realistic," and usually over peanalize some characters over others.

gradenko_2000 posted:

This was from a while back, but if 1d6+1d10+level is supposed to replace [W] in the heroic tier, what about caster classes with flat damage dice amounts? Would I continue using that same expression, read the power by-the-book such as 1d10+INT for Ray of Enfeeblement, or something else?

Sanglorian posted:

At that point, wouldn't it be easier to blow up ability scores altogether? If the ability scores are so abstracted that any can be applied to any roll, just junk them.

thespaceinvader posted:

'kill them entirely for combat stats, use a fixed progression for attacks and defences'

thespaceinvader posted:

'all attacks use highest ability score to hit, second highest for secondary effects' then keep them for skills