[4e] Gritty Version

[Yakk]

HP:
Level 1: Unchanged
Level 2: Gain 1/2 standard HP increase, round down.
Level 3: Gain no HP.
Level 4: Gain 1/2 standard HP increase, round up.
Level 5: Gain no HP
Level 6: Gain 1/2 standard HP increase, round down.
Level 7: Gain no HP
Level 8: Gain 1/2 standard HP increase, round up.
Level 9: Gain no HP
Level 10: Gain 1/2 standard HP increase, round down.

Level 11: Gain 1/2 standard HP increase, round up.
Level 12-20: As levels 2-10.
Level 21-30: As levels 11-20.

Feats: You never leave the Heroic tier. So any feat that requires paragon, or a level above 10, cannot be gained.

Magic Items: The level of all magic items doubles. Magic items are not for sale, and are divorced from the gold piece economy. The expected rate you'll find magic items is 1 every 5 levels or so (so 1 per level for a party of 5).

Power progression:
Level 1-10: Unchanged
Level 11/21: Gain a level 1 daily power.
Level 12/22: Gain a level 2 utility power.
Level 13/23: Gain a level 3 encounter power.
Level 14/24: Gain a level 1 encounter power.
Level 15/25: Gain a level 5 daily power.
Level 16/26: Gain a level 6 utility power.
Level 17/27: Gain a level 7 encounter power.
Level 18/28: Gain a level 1 at-will power.
Level 19/29: Gain a level 9 daily power.
Level 20/30: Gain a level 10 utility power.

(Psionic and Essentials progression not designed).

Damage expressions: When you use a power, you may only use 1 source of additional damage above the expression. This does not include class features (like sneak attack), nor does it include powers that provide a one-shot damage boost (like power attack), and critical damage bonuses from the High Crit weapon property and magic item critical damage dice. This does include vulnerability, feat bonuses, non-feat bonuses from feats, enhancement and item bonuses, and bonus dice from items such as a horned helm.

Additional Attacks: Excluding action points, you may only use 1 free, minor action, or immediate action attack per round. This is your "bonus attack". (This is to avoid massive nova builds that have 9 different non-standard action attacks as encounter powers that they burn through in 2 rounds.)

Attacks, Defences, Skills, Attribute checks: You do not gain a 1/2 level bonus to any of these.

Healing: Once per day when you take an extended rest, you can make an endurance check with a bonus equal to your maximium healing surges. Divide it by 10, rounding down. Regain that many healing surges. All surge-less healing grants temporary HP.

Criticals: When you score a critical hit, you deal [W] extra damage (increasing to 2[W] at level 11 and 3[W] at level 21). This damage bypasses the damage expression limitation above.

Rituals: Rare, and double in level. DCs remain unchanged.

Encounters: Treat the party as being 1/2 their level, roughly. Even though the party doesn't "leave heroic", feel free to use paragon tier monsters.

---

The power growth of these characters is about half that of standard 4e characters. And the "flashier" powers at paragon/epic are forever out of reach.

Thoughts? Did I miss anything? Can you produce ridiculously broken characters using the above system?

[Xechon]

Dude, it's 4e. It's meant to give the players at least twice the power of monsters their level, so no one dies and gets upset. Why you are doing this for 4th edition I would very much like to hear.

And for balance, all classes are pretty much the same anyways, so if you apply the same changes to all classes, you'll be fine.

Sorry for my hating, I've just never been a big fan of WoW.

[MagnusExultatio]

Dude, it's 4e. It's meant to give the players at least twice the power of monsters their level, so no one dies and gets upset. Why you are doing this for 4th edition I would very much like to hear.

And for balance, all classes are pretty much the same anyways, so if you apply the same changes to all classes, you'll be fine.

Sorry for my hating, I've just never been a big fan of WoW.

I think it's fairly implied that Yakk was looking for legitimate advice, not for someone to fling mud in his thread.

Yakk: No power replacing for powers gained at Paragon/Epic levels? This makes the rules somewhat more palatable, but as for the rest I can't comment too well, although I'm not a huge fan of the extra attack limitations, but that's because I mainly play Leaders. Damage limitation I don't quite agree with either, considering the latest generation of monsters and how limited damage boosting shenanigans can be when confined to just the Heroic tier.

P.S: I personally think levels 11/21 should give an extra at-will.

[Yakk]

No power replacing for powers gained at Paragon/Epic levels?
Yep. You just gain extra level 1/3/7 encounter and 1/5/9 daily powers.

This came from the observation that the oomph you get from a heroic tier power over an at-will is about the same as the oomph you get from taking a heroic tier power and replacing it with a paragon tier power (very roughly).

I was attempting to allow for further power growth at a steady pace, and via the mechanism of powers. My original attempt had you gaining powers as usual in 4e (but with the static damage limitations I listed), but I was concerned about paragon/epic tier powers being rather over-the-top in some cases.

Repeat heroic tier powers isn't as "cool" as new paragon/epic tier powers, but it does at least give you something neat to look forward to.

This makes the rules somewhat more palatable, but as for the rest I can't comment too well, although I'm not a huge fan of the extra attack limitations, but that's because I mainly play Leaders.
Yes, where you grant extra free action attacks to party members. Not sure how to word it right -- I wouldn't mind leaders being able to grant other players attacks (burning their standard action to do it).

The problem I had was that without extra attack limitations, a level 30 ranger would end up with 9 encounter powers, and many of them could be minor actions and immediate action attacks (a ranger|rogue hybrid could probably fill all 9 with minor and immediate actions). Make them a ranged character, and on round 1 you get standard action, minor, minor, and an interrupt -- burning 3 encounter attack powers/round, basically. And you could keep this up for maybe 3 rounds...

The nova potential was too dominant.

Damage limitation I don't quite agree with either, considering the latest generation of monsters and how limited damage boosting shenanigans can be when confined to just the Heroic tier.
I'm trying to drop your damage output growth by half. Outside of serious charop, about half of the damage increases a character gets comes from static damage boosts, the other half from power damage dice growth. (In serious charop, almost all of the damage boost comes from static damage boosts).

As I'm basically granting full damage dice growth, and I need to halve damage output growth, I need to remove the damage growth from static damage boosts to keep player damage output even roughly on track.

...

Xechon, I'm sorry about what 4e did to you. But you need to move on and forgive in order to grow as a person. Let go of your anger, as anger leads to hate, and hate leads to d8s.

[Xechon]

Sorry about that, I'm usually a lot more professional about all of this. I don't know why I was so angry.

However, I believe I did give a comment in the second line. You cannot unbalance the characters from each other by putting in the same change to each one, because they all work pretty much the same. The only problems you have to watch out for are the monsters, but that's good as you are going for gritty gameplay. Just be careful you don't nerf everyone too much so they cannot succeed, none of the D&D versions have given enough tactical options to do anything well without superpowers.