Roles?

Seems one of my posts has incited some additional activity from The Geek Emporium.

..."Now, I may be calling maestrod out, which isn’t my intention, but it was a catalyst that forced me to realize that not everyone knows how I, and my group, play D&D."

"Maestrod" is me, I really should be consistent about my blogger tag. My original comment was on this and was in direct a response at “…the roles are something I can’t stand about 4e…”

Now where do I start?

I like 4e. But that isn't because I don't like 3.X. I like for 4e for what it brings to the table that's new and different. And because it's a new, it has renewed my interested in classic fantasy role playing. The fact is, I still have a shelf full of 3rd edition rules, and dozens of other games. (plug for Dark Heresy here!)

When I play a game, it is for what it *has* is not what it doesn't. Everyone (unless you're running something within a larger organization such as the RPGA) is free to write house rules and ignore any rule that they're not comfortable with. For example, I've long ignored any alignment rules that D&D has used. They just do not interest me.

One thing that's very apparent in all of the 4e rule books is that there's an obvious effort to spell out everything that more experienced gamers may take for granted. Just like the oft-repeated "What is role-playing" section in the intro chapter, much of this effort is not aimed at experienced gamers. I appreciate this content even though it's really not for me. The class commentary that explains what ability scores a particular class build should focus on is wasted in the eyes of an experienced gamer, it's *not* wasted on someone like say... my wife. For her, an explicit instruction saying "A warlock's main strength is dealing damage at range" and "choose constitution, charisma and intelligence as you ability scores" for an infernal-pact warlock is what she needs.

I don't think that these hints and instructions and labels make 4e any less flexible for the experienced gamer than 3.X or 2nd ed, or Advanced or Basic/Expert/Companion/Master, especially if you're okay with throwing the rules you don't like out the window and writing your own house rules.

Five of my house rules that 4e implemented

I have embraced the 4th edition Dungeons of Dragons rules. In case nobody has noticed, Pathfinder is still around for those that would like to continue in the 3.X/D20 direction, but for me, the 4th Edition is closer to what I've always wanted.

In particular I've been looking at the house rules that I've been using for Alia. And many of them are mirrored with this latest edition of the world's most popular fantasy role playing game.

Alignment

One thing that has always annoyed me is the implementation of alignment and it's impact on the game.

Alignment has always been an oversimplification of morality and ethics. It's a simple on-paper justification for killing things and taking their stuff.

I've often tried to remove the alignment system from my D&D games but it is, in fact, quite ingrained into the D&D system. There are a rather large selection of spells, abilities and other rules that:

• Detect alignment (Detect Evil)
  
• Protect against alignments (Protection from Evil)
  
• Have effects only on an alignment (Dispel Evil, Smite Evil)
• Magic items with alignment effects: (holy, unholy, axiomatic and anarchic weapons)
• Monsters that have damage resistance dependent on alignment ( /good /evil /lawful /chaotic)

With some work, the long, long tendrils of the alignment rules can be removed from D&D 3.X. You can see some of my efforts here.

4th edition has really downplayed the alignment rules. They are still present, (in a form that many find distasteful) but those tendrils are not nearly as present as those that were there before.

And that makes me happy. My only house rule so far in relation to alignment is: "Alignment doesn't exist." Don't choose one, and ignore Alignment where it comes up. So far I haven't come across any rules that are particularly tied to alignment.

Death and Damage

The death at -10 hit points rule has always worked well for very low levels. When a PC's total hit points are less than 20 and monsters are hitting for 1d8 damage, those 10 hit points between unconscious and dead are meaningful. At higher level, where PC's have more than a 100 hit points and monsters are hitting with multiple attacks of 2d12+17 those 10 hit points make little difference.

One of my first house rules was to define the point of death based on the total hp. Of course then I went on to construct complex wound recovery rules, that are thankfully not present in 4e.

Magic Item Creation

I've read a few rants about how overpowered the item creation feats were in 3.X, many elaborating on just how powerful a class like the Artificer could be given the time to juice up.

That style of power-gaming isn't really mine. It may be fun to think about and discuss on a forum, but in actual play it ends up being boring and/or disruptive in my experience.

On the other side, the rules for making such items demand time, money, feat expenditure and experience. Given many cinematic style campaigns don't give players the time and/or access to a magical laboratory when the big bad is about to destroy the world, players are often reluctant to take the requisite feats in fear that they will never see a use.

I have always waived the XP cost item creation. And 4e has too.

Retraining

I have always allowed for the re-visioning of characters through play. The addition of a new splat book, or a player becoming dissatified with the mechanics of a characters play, but not being dissatisfied with the character itself.

Many times I've had a character express dissatisfaction with their vision of a character, and ask me if they can role up a new one. My usual answer is to say, no need your character can have an *atomic accident* like in Champions, or even be ret-conned in.

For example Thor the human barbarian, has always seen himself as a nature warriorlike woodsman, and a few sessions into the game says he thinks he'd rather be a ranger. If Thor has all along been doing ranger-y things then it really has no impact on the story to re-make the character sheet, maybe switching out a breastplate for hide armor, and redistributing few skill ranks.

Now, the rules in D&D 4 aren't talking about swapping whole classes and rebuilding characters from the ground up as a different one, but they're laying the ground for a flexibility in the rules that allows for modifications of choices that maybe once made don't feel right.

Swap a feat or power when you level. That's a start. It's not like I'm expecting rules for redoing characters. There's a section on character creation. Do it again!

Ritual Magic

It's not like 4e was the first to introduce ritual magic rules, but I've always liked to separate the god-like power at hand magic wielded by Wizards and Clerics, from the idea of the long, complicated potentially multi-participant magic that ritual magic can be.

Skill based, cross-class trainable, slow casting, non-combat ritual magic doesn't have to be the sole domain of spell casting classes. Having "Commoners" perform some ritual magic certainly fits many game settings. And I like it.

4e's ritual magic feats and the ability for anyone to pick up the relevent class skills is certainly not game unbalancing and gives many characters access to useful abilities.

It's also an area that can easily accomodate campiagn specific flavour, and can serve as plot points or even campaign objectives in a campiagn.

Hmm. Maybe I should add some of that. Skulking peasants... ritual magic... maybe some infernal influence? We'll see.

Leveling without Arithmetic

I've never been particularly interested in rules for game masters. Guidelines are awesome, but rules are restrictive. The guidelines for putting together encounters are particularly good in 4th edition, but advancement due to experience has always been an aspect of D&D that I hated as a GM. If you follow the rules as written they are mathematical handcuffs on an aspect of the game that's really important. Reaching a new level is an important reward that evolves the way a PC plays the game, opening new options and keeping the experience fresh and exciting.

I'm currently using an alternate advancement rule. Characters advance in level when I say they advance. Pretty simple, no?

My recommended GM's guideline for when to give PC's a new level is "Advance your characters when you believe it will lead to the most fun." For me, there's a certain amount of fun that is discovering a character through playing him. There's the intrinsic fun of building a character by gaining power as they follow the campaign. There's the enjoyment of choosing that power that you've been looking forward to. There's also fun to be had in trying out that power of feat, seeing how it interacts with the other party members, or how it works against monsters or maybe how it doesn't work. When the shine is beginning to wear off and the players feel that they have a good grip on their new set of powers and abilities and are looking forward to their next level, that's when they should be advanced.

Usually, I'll have a quick discussion about how things are going at the end of a session and if the time seems right, I'll say, you're all now level N+1.

It's dead easy and it works. No arithmetic required!

I've found that a level every two sessions (about seven or eight hours of play) seems to be about right for the current game and if we're not having 10 encounters per level in these two sessions, it's really not a big deal.

I do use the XP values marked in monster stat-blocks. I use them as a guideline to balance encounters, because for that purpose XP works very well. For leveling, the informal approach works better for us.