[4e] E6 for 4th edition

[kieza]

So, the other day I was reflecting on how long combat takes in 4e now that my party is 11th level. It seems that fights take about 2 hours these days, where back around 5th level they took maybe 1. And then I remembered something called E6 from 3.5, which capped level progression at level 6. This is my attempt to do something similar with 4th.

Changes to the PCs:

Leveling: You level up as normal (about every 10 fights) but some things are no longer level-dependent.
HP: You get HP as a 1st level character. This never changes.
Ability Scores: Never increase. What you have at 1st level is what you keep.
Attacks and Defenses: Equivalent to a first level character. These never change.
Skills: Increase as normal.
Feats: Gain at normal intervals. Feats which scale by level are applied as though the character were level 1. Paragon and Epic feats are scaled down. Feats which were designed to be fixes for bad math (Expertise, Paragon and Epic Defenses, etc.) are banned.
Powers: Gain at normal intervals. Damage is adjusted to be in line with a
1st level character. Any other effects are unchanged.

Changes to the Monsters:

Monster level, instead of being an absolute measure, is a measure of the discrepancy between them and the party. Level 0 monsters are equal-level, Level 1s are slightly tougher, Level -1s are slightly weaker, etc.

Changes to Items:

Weapons, Armor, and Neck items no longer give enhancement bonuses. Instead, more powerful items now just have better powers.

Changes to the Campaign:

When the campaign starts, you decide on a power level: If the party is going to be fairly "low-level," human soldiers are Level 0. If it's going to be high level, angels and demons are Level 0. If it runs for a long time, you may want to downgrade certain monsters to reflect that people are gradually getting better at what they do.

Now, the important part: Why I like this idea:

4e, for all that it claimed to fix the problems of 3.5 and earlier editions (and don't get me wrong, I like a lot of things about 4th edition), failed in one respect: the developers did a horrible job of setting up the math. HP scale faster than damage, monster attacks and defenses scale faster than players', and although I like that monsters don't have to be built like PCs, I think they went a little too far. This is my attempt to work around the math issues without building a whole new system. Plus, I'm fairly comfortable with homebrew, so I have no issues with reworking items, powers, and feats on a case-by-case basis, which I'm sure will come up.

One last thing: I've got two ongoing campaigns right now. I'm not going to make my players switch over in the middle of one, so it may be a while before I can test this idea. If anyone with an amenable group wants to test this, I'd love to hear feedback.

[Sir Homeslice]

Why is the HP unchanged from level one and on? Same deal with attacks/defenses. I realize this is E6 and supposed to be lower powered, but this is ridiculous. With the changes you put in, you might as well call it E1 and leave it at that.

[Kurald Galain]

Interesting.

However, I'm not sure if this is the solution. As near as I can tell, the reason why 4E combat is so very slow is threefold.

(1) Monster HP. No argument there, moderate to high level monsters have too much of it, especially solos.

(2) Many small bonuses (particularly from feats, leader powers, and items) that have to be meticulously tracked every turn but don't actual influence gameplay if you forget one. This is "the dodge effect", named after the infamously poor designed 3E dodge feat. A character that does +1 damage if bloodied, and +1 damage if his opponent is bloodied takes up significantly more time to play but does not do significantly more damage.

(3) Players who want to min-max everything. An important part of having fun in 4E is realizing that if you 20 damage now, that's more fun for the rest of the table than if you think for a minute and then do 23 damage (or, worse, think for a minute and then miss). This ties in with the second point.

I see your proposal working against the first point, but not the other two. Imho.

[Doug Lampert]

However, I'm not sure if this is the solution. As near as I can tell, the reason why 4E combat is so very slow is threefold.

The biggest slowdown at my table is people incapable of adding. Seriously, how hard is it to roll a d20 and add a bonus you have written on your character sheet?

I have a Physics grad student who can't seem to add. Very wierd, my own memory of Physics grad school indicates that basic arithmetic skills are sort of required. I don't know how she handles exponents in class.

I have a cleric who has an inability to track her character's location, she'll try to use a range 5 attack when the nearest foe is 22 spaces away (we have a battle-mat for a reason). Then if she rolls a 8 or less she'll simply claim to have missed. Her husband has to force her to actually add it up since I have thrown monsters at them that they hit on a 2 on occasion.

Almost everyone but the wizard seems to forget that they have action points till forcibly reminded, which means that things are slowed down whenever someone with a per round damage bonus misses and someone has to ask, "do you want to use an action point". Most of them have an allergy to using dailies (the wizard and sorcerer are the exceptions here, they're also my most experienced players).

My wizard's player tracks everyone's initiative in combat with index cards. I recommend this highly. It's worth it's wieght in gold and may double our speed of combat resolution. Tracking initiative isn't all that hard, but having the DM do it slows down the single biggest bottleneck.

I find that power cards aren't even close to being worth the trouble. Check boxes on the character sheet work better, just print a new character sheet every few sessions and there's no problem.

All that said, my experience with 3.x is that if I'd had 7 players in 3.x rather than 5 or so, with many of them running full casters, and foes present in anything like 4th ed numbers and complexity of arrival (i.e. they're not all standing in one spot for a fireball) then 3.x combat was if anything much, much slower.

It could be speeded up. The dodge effect is real and significant (all your allies get a +1 to initiative, who ever thought that was a good idea?). The HP totals for monsters are maybe a bit high, but solos have fewer HP than the five standards they replace (equal for level 11+ prior to DMG II) so I don't understand claims that solos have so many HP that they slow combat down; granted they're less vulnerable to AoA attacks, but they're far more vulnerable to debuffs and strikers.

[kieza]

Why is the HP unchanged from level one and on? Same deal with attacks/defenses. I realize this is E6 and supposed to be lower powered, but this is ridiculous. With the changes you put in, you might as well call it E1 and leave it at that.

Keep in mind that everything they fight is going to do level 1 damage or thereabouts: instead of both sides getting stronger at (nominally) the same rate, now everyone stays roughly even and the descriptions change.

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Example: At level 1 in this variant, a regular soldier is a Level 0 minion. His sergeant is a Level 0 normal monster. The elemental that's killing them is a Level 0 Solo.

At level 11, the minion is an unstatted speedbump, the sergeant is a Level 0 minion, the elemental is a Level 0 normal monster, and the demon that set the elemental on the soldiers is a Level 0 Solo.

The sergeant at level 1 and the elemental at level 11 (and the demon at level 21, for that matter) have different powers, different appearance, different tactics, but they all do about the same damage, have about the same HP, and have about the same defenses.

Whereas in standard 4e a level 11 party might fight 8-9 level 8s or 3 level 14s, here they fight 8-9 level -3s or 3 level +3s. The idea is to play at the level where the math seems to work best. (Which, depending on who you ask, is level 1 or level 5. I lean towards 1.)

Kurald, I don't usually have trouble with the dodge effect. A while back, I got an industrial-size batch of index cards, and now whenever a player hands out a bonus (or I hand out a penalty) the affected player gets a card saying what happened to them and how long it lasts. I do have trouble with a player who optimizes every single action, but I recently bought a 1-minute egg timer, and I plan to tell everyone that if they don't start rolling the dice before it expires, they just do an at-will against the nearest target.

The perceived slowness might just be me, too. My party has a wizard with lots of no-damage illusions, a pacifist cleric, and a paladin with stratospheric defenses, HP and surge count, but almost no offense. Thankfully, a couple of them seem to realize what they're doing wrong, and they're leaning towards heavier offense these days.

[Draz74]

The perceived slowness might just be me, too. My party has a wizard with lots of no-damage illusions, a pacifist cleric, and a paladin with stratospheric defenses, HP and surge count, but almost no offense.

Oi, shoot me now. I don't suppose you also have at least two strikers? Maybe a Ranger and a Sorcerer?

[Mando Knight]

The perceived slowness might just be me, too. My party has a wizard with lots of no-damage illusions, a pacifist cleric, and a paladin with stratospheric defenses, HP and surge count, but almost no offense. Thankfully, a couple of them seem to realize what they're doing wrong, and they're leaning towards heavier offense these days.

Trickster, healbot, and rock, but no Striker? If combat is taking too long because you packed a pacifist cleric and an illusionist wizard rather than any kind of Striker, it's your own fault. Defender, Leader, Controller can work really well, but not in that configuration. (I'd prefer something like Tactical Warlord, Fighter, and pretty much any of the Controllers)

[Kylarra]

The perceived slowness might just be me, too. My party has a wizard with lots of no-damage illusions, a pacifist cleric, and a paladin with stratospheric defenses, HP and surge count, but almost no offense. Thankfully, a couple of them seem to realize what they're doing wrong, and they're leaning towards heavier offense these days.

There's definitely some slowness to the game, but your lack of strikers isn't helping at all...

[Draz74]

Although I helped de-rail this topic, I am interested in seeing more feedback/development on the original set of ideas. They seem to have had a lot of care put into them.

[Kylarra]

A major issue I see is that if you're scaling down the damage from the higher level powers, then a lot of them are pretty redundant and you've got a bunch of "well, what riders do I actually want to have now?"

I can't see this really helping the game all that much. It'd run at the speed of level one, but you'd not have any appreciable growth whatsoever since everything is shafted back to that. Admittedly, since everything scales with you, you don't tend to have appreciable growth in capability over the full levelset, but at least you can feel like you're getting stronger. With this, all you do is gain more utility powers as you level.

That's my first impression anyway.

[imperialspectre]

I find it hilarious that 4e was supposed to be smoother and quicker than 3.5. Last night, we had a 5-hour session with 3 combat encounters, some RP, having to resurrect, scry, and set up other utility options. The party was level 13 with 6 characters (4 PCs and 2 cohorts), it was our first session with this party, and we had to fix a bunch of holes and calculate a bunch of bonuses mid-session (with 3 full casters in the party, no less). Hmm.

With regards to the OP, I think your design intent rocks, but it doesn't function at all within the 4e mechanics. The concept of having different-tiered games with little character advancement is interesting and I like it a great deal, but if you're advancing character powers you're not going to scale well against those "level 0" angels after the first few sessions. If you're going to keep the game's difficulty relatively static, you'll end up giving the PCs even-level powers off of other classes' lists, which means that eventually the PCs will probably look very similar to each other.

On the flip side, if you do advance the PCs' power access, but not their HP, you're going to see a great deal of "rocket tag" in the game, and 4e isn't remotely equipped to handle that. There aren't nearly enough near-absolute or high-probability defenses, and stacking them is tough, which means that as powers progress and do more damage it'll make it harder and harder for anyone to survive.

You're probably better off playing something like Shadowrun if you want relatively-controlled PC advancement over a series of sessions. SR4 is a really phenomenal system, and a non-level based system is much more geared to limiting character advancement and exponential complications than a level-based system is.

[Asbestos]

A major issue I see is that if you're scaling down the damage from the higher level powers, then a lot of them are pretty redundant and you've got a bunch of "well, what riders do I actually want to have now?"

I can't see this really helping the game all that much. It'd run at the speed of level one, but you'd not have any appreciable growth whatsoever since everything is shafted back to that. Admittedly, since everything scales with you, you don't tend to have appreciable growth in capability over the full levelset, but at least you can feel like you're getting stronger. With this, all you do is gain more utility powers as you level.

That's my first impression anyway.

Indeed, the only difference would seem to be an increasing amount of 'save ends' riders.

[kieza]

Although I helped de-rail this topic, I am interested in seeing more feedback/development on the original set of ideas. They seem to have had a lot of care put into them.

Heh, no. I came up with this half an hour before I made the OP.

Also, no, that isn't the entirety of the party. There's a decent bow ranger--doesn't really know how to get the most out of his stuff, but not bad--and a damage-focused Warlord.

[kieza]

Since my original idea is sort of controversial, by all appearances, I'll put forward another idea that I've been mulling over: Don't level up, or level up only slowly. Seriously, how fast did you level up in 1st-2nd edition? One level every 40-50 combats is one number I heard. Anyways, just make 5th level characters and have the DM adjust the levels of higher-level monsters.

[Cybren]

I actually like the idea of just calling everything that scales with level a wash and keeping it at the base.

What will need to be done is to change feats and powers to work with the system. Just like E6 the feats will have to be adjusted, and it seems somewhat inelegant to just downgrade the damage of powers.

[Kurald Galain]

Since my original idea is sort of controversial, by all appearances, I'll put forward another idea that I've been mulling over: Don't level up, or level up only slowly. Seriously, how fast did you level up in 1st-2nd edition? One level every 40-50 combats is one number I heard.

I find that hard to believe. But then, 1E/2E doesn't have a top level where the game is expected to end, either.

At any rate, I think that slowing advancement in 4E isn't such a great idea; one of the major attractions of 4E is the "ooh, shiny" factor, which means that players are expected to get New Items and New Powers at a steady rate, to prevent their existing powers from growing stale. For instance, there's only so many combats you can do with a level-1's four different powers before it gets repetitive.

[hamishspence]

0th Ed (Basic, Expert, etc) did though, if you discount Immortals.

The Companion set basically stressed that level 36 was the point where mortal advancement stopped. This was also the point at which wish spells and the like arrived.

Maybe D&D is reverting to its roots in some ways?

[Kurald Galain]

Maybe D&D is reverting to its roots in some ways?

In some ways, sure. In some other ways, it is moving away from its roots. I fail to see how it matters, though. For instance, Monopoly may be the "roots" of most board games, and Tolkien may be the "roots" of most fantasy novels, but I'd consider both pretty boring by today's standards.

[Swordguy]

I find that hard to believe. But then, 1E/2E doesn't have a top level where the game is expected to end, either.

There was absolutely no way to predict how fast one would level in 1E/2E. Rate of leveling changed based on what class you were, for one thing. Monsters were worth a comparatively tiny about of XP, for another - one Orc is worth, IIRC, 20XP, split 4 ways among the party...and you'll need something close to 2000 XP to level up (so go kill 500 Orcs. If you do it 10 at a time, you'll get your 50 encounters). But then there's the last thing: treasure generally got you XP (class dependent, edition depending). So depending on how much treasure the GM put out (or randomly rolled) you could level up incredibly slowly or incredibly quickly. Finally, story and RPing awards were pretty huge then.

There were simply too many factors (mostly dependent on the GMs style) to accurately predict how fast a 1E/2E party would level up. It's entirely possible to play once a week for a year and be about 2nd-3rd level. It's also possible to play for the same amount of time and be near level 20.

[Kurald Galain]

It's entirely possible to play once a week for a year and be about 2nd-3rd level.

Sure, it's entirely possible, but I find it hard to believe that people actually play that way. That the rules can be interpreted in a way that gives a weird result doesn't mean that the rules commonly are interpreted like that in actual play.

[Swordguy]

Sure, it's entirely possible, but I find it hard to believe that people actually play that way. That the rules can be interpreted in a way that gives a weird result doesn't mean that the rules commonly are interpreted like that in actual play.

What interpretation are you talking about?

If you're GM doesn't give out much treasure, you start at 1st level, and don't fight critters that give out very much XP, you're not going to level. There's not an "interpretation" there - level-appropriate critters are worth X amount of XP, and you need a couple-hundred times "X" XP to level without taking treasure or story award bonuses into account.

You just don't level very fast in older D&D by doing nothing but killing stuff. You level fast by gaining treasure and completing plot lines and gaining the story awards (or, alternatively, thinking completely outside the box and killing monsters WAY above the level of appropriate challenge for you...but that's pretty rare). If your GM doesn't give out a lot of treasure or story awards, you won't level fast. I fail to see an "interpretation" about this.

As an example: grabbing a random "Dungeon Magazine" adventure...Dungeon #49, "Castle of the Blind Sun". It's an adventure for 5, 10th level PCs. There's 5 "expected" combat encounters, with the following XP totals (what each PC would get if all 5 were successfully fought)
1) 2560
2) 1400
3) 1960
4) 1000
5) 3000
Total: 9920 XP

Now, if you complete the story, each PC gains a 10,000 XP story award, and there's the potential for PCs who attempt to resurrect the victim of the murder which the adventure centers around to gain up to a 30,000 XP bonus for RP (though they aren't aware of the bonus until the actually try it). So a PC can earn pretty close to 50,000 XP from this adventure, but only 20% of that comes from killing stuff.

With that in mind, think about the advancement rate of PCs who have GMs who don't give out RP or story awards (I've run into several). That's why you can't accurately predict the advancement rate, per encounter, of a given party in older D&D.

[Kurald Galain]

With that in mind, think about the advancement rate of PCs who have GMs who don't give out RP or story awards (I've run into several). That's why you can't accurately predict the advancement rate, per encounter, of a given party in older D&D.

I never said this could be accurately predicted. I'm saying that I find it highly unlikely that a group would level up every 40-50 combats. And indeed, the numbers from the magazine you quote suggest otherwise.

[Swordguy]

I never said this could be accurately predicted. I'm saying that I find it highly unlikely that a group would level up every 40-50 combats. And indeed, the numbers from the magazine you quote suggest otherwise.

If a GM was running games without story or RP or treasure rewards (ie, only giving XP for kills), it does tend to be dozens of combats to the level. Some GMs ran that way (I knew two who did). Most didn't, true, but since story and RP rewards vary wildly between adventures and between GMs, you're still stuck with no way to predict level advancement for a given group.

[bosssmiley]

I find that hard to believe. But then, 1E/2E doesn't have a top level where the game is expected to end, either.

2E had an implicit limit of 20th level as the point at which you'd effectively 'won' the game (there was a section on it in the PHB). Dark Sun Dragon Kings and the High Level Handbook later extended this to 30th level. Forgotten Realms had to go up to 11 (of course), and topped out Arcanist progression at 42nd level or something equally daft.

BECM took you to 36, with wish and like coming onstream at ~21st level IIRC.
WotI then added another 36 levels of Immortal madness, and the option of winning the game for good and all by ascending to Immortal 36, then divesting yourself of immortality and starting again as a level 1 character. Gain immortality a 2nd time and your character instantly ascended (probably to the realms of elder cheese).

@OP: You've just invented Glass Cannon D&D. Even TSR D&D wasn't that much of a 'hardcore' mode (beyond 1st level).

[Indon]

Changes to the Monsters:

Monster level, instead of being an absolute measure, is a measure of the discrepancy between them and the party. Level 0 monsters are equal-level, Level 1s are slightly tougher, Level -1s are slightly weaker, etc.

Sir, right here, I think you describe 4E's underlying primary mechanic for combat.

Furthermore, I think this idea could be elaborated on to create a generic, roughly 4E compatible system that's way less minutae-oriented.

This replaces all non-power-specific attack and defense modifiers.

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-Each player has six active values (corresponding to the standard D&D stats) that range from 0-5. These values must add up to 10.

-Similarly, each player has four passive values (corresponding to the D&D defenses). These values are calculated from the same stats as in standard 4E.

-When you use a power to launch an attack, the base DC is 11. You add the active value associated with the attack and subtract the passive value associated with the defense.

-Monsters have a power level associated with them. Each +1 power level raises their passive and active values by 1 (and roughly corresponds with 2 levels), and -1 power levels do the opposite.
-Elite monsters gain +2 power level automatically, Solos gain +5.

Next, let's simplify HPs and damage. Instead, everyone has nonscaling hits.

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When you deal damage to something with any power, it does one or more hits.

Any power which does the equivalent of less than 2[W] damage deals 1 hit.
2[W] equivalent powers deal 2 hits.
3[W] equivalent powers deal 3 hits.
4[W] equivalent powers deal 4 hits.
When you deal a crit, roll one of the associated crit dice, then divide the result by 2, rounding down, to minimum of 1. These are the additional hits you deal.

Minions can take 1 hit.
Normal monsters can take 6+Power Level hits.
Elite monsters can take 10+Power Level hits.
Solo monsters can take 15+Power Level hits.
Players can take 12 hits.

Bloodied is at 50% of your hits.
When you have Regeneration, roll a D6 at the beginning of each turn. On a 5 or a 6, gain 1 hit. Exceptionally strong sources of Regeneration activate on a 4 as well, weak sources of Regeneration activate only on a 6.

Damage resistance functions similarly to regeneration, only you roll when you take applicable damage.

Ongoing damage is just anti-regeneration.

-Healing Surges restore 3 hits. Defenders gain +1 hits restored when they benefit from a healing surge. Leaders grant +1 hits restored when their powers allow someone to gain their healing surge value.

-Weapons and Armor now have power levels associated with them. A weapon's power level is added to the hits it does on a crit. An armor's power level is added to the hits the wearer can take.

Get rid of most feats as they no longer fit into the system. Now we can use feats for RP purposes!

Still not sure how to simplify status effects. I suppose you could translate all status effects into a "hit" value, meaning that they just deal damage. Then you could probably boil down powers into:

At-will: Deals 1 hit.
Encounter: Deals 2 hits.
Daily: Deals 3 hits.

And get rid of most of the power system. Instead, you just have a certain number of Encounter and Daily powers.

There, a non-tactical (or at least, way less tactical) combat houserule framework, albeit hastily constructed, for 4E. Flavor as appropriate, serves 1 group.

[ken-do-nim]

I personally think that everyone entranced by E6 and specifically looking for a speeded up d20 game should consider Castles & Crusades.

[Foryn Gilnith]

If a GM was running games without story or RP or treasure rewards (ie, only giving XP for kills), it does tend to be dozens of combats to the level. Some GMs ran that way (I knew two who did). .

Yeah, that happened. Some even threw away treasure and killing and just leveled up by fiat.

[Pronounceable]

Yeah, that happened. Some even threw away treasure and killing and just leveled up by fiat.

Which is an utterly logical thing once story awards are gone. Who in their right mind would want to track gaining of thousands of xp by 5s or 10s?

All xp used for leveling comes from DM anyway. I fully support cutting out the middleman.

[Foryn Gilnith]

Which is an utterly logical thing once story awards are gone

Hey, I never judged it, though judgment might have been implied by the wording.

[Awesomologist]

I don't like the idea of massive house rule changes to the game. I think the biggest problem with game speed is the players. As character's level up, it's the feats and features that bog them down. DM's don't experience this as much since monsters only become mildly more advance as each level goes on.

Another part of this problem is that the default 4e character sheet doesn't handle blocks of text sometimes needed to explain feats and racial/class features. I suggest having your players make a cheat sheet for their character. Have them make notes that they can quickly look up.

For example:
A fighter's cheat sheet may have a section on Opportunity Actions and Interrupts. All the modifiers and extra things he can do during such actions are noted.
Also on the page may be a section just for feats and class/race/paragon path features that happen when certain conditions arise (action points, bloodied, on hit/miss, etc.)
Effects and properties from Magic Items would also go on here.

The sheet need only be as verbose as the player needs. Once they get used to their character's features they'll rely on the sheet less and less until major changes come along (usually upon hitting paragon or epic).

For players that still count with their fingers I suggest having a calculator on hand. (Although if they're kids, I suggest making them get used to doing quick arithmetic in their heads!)

Also consider an egg timer or something that limits the amount of time a character has to choose their actions. I've found this quickly reduces the "Oh wait I think I can do..." moments where everyone is waiting for the player while they read through their powers. Also helps keeping people focus. Be willing to be a little flexible, for interrupts and other immediate actions.

The last little thing I like to do that is a House Rule are Temporary Action Points. While giving a player an extra action may seem counter intuitive, it can actually help keep the pace up by giving them a little extra power.
Here are a few examples:
1) If a player rolls a natural 20 and has no action points, they gain an TAP which must be used before the end of the encounter. This extra AP does not count towards the normal limit of 1 AP spent per encounter.
2) If a player rolls a natural 20 on a skill check, give them a TAP. These TAPs can be limited to move or minor actions.
3) If the player attempts to do something truly genius or would add something significantly to the game but they fail only because of a bad die roll reward the player for their ingenuity with a TAP.

Temporary Action Points only last for the encounter and cannot be carried over. Be careful how freely you give these away and try to be fair to all members of the party. Some character's roll more often and can trigger and abuse the first example.

Just a few ideas that help out around my table with 4e play. We're able to keep most encounters within the 45min to 1hr range using these tricks above.