Altered 4e

[vagrant-poet]

What changes would I have to account for if I wanted to:

• Replace the 4e skill system with the pathfinder one?
  
• Replace the 4e alignment system with the pathfinder one or none at all?
  
• Remove Healing surges?
  
• Remove Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies?
  

I think the skills and alignments should be easy enough.

What if healing surges were gone, fewer encounter per day, etc?

How much weaker would characters be without Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies?

[Uchawi]

Replace the 4E skill system with the pathfinder one? This will affect skill powers, rituals, etc. but I see it as adding more skills, and maybe substitute some of the core ones. So it shouldn't be a big impact.

Replace 4E alignment system with the pathfinder? I don't see a big influence, except for alignment of dieties. I don't know of any powers or feats that are alignment dependent.

Removing healing surges? I would not remove it as that is one of the best features of 4E, and would have significant impact, unless you change the CR system and amount of combat. You may need to counter with an increase of at-will, encounter, or daily powers (depending on your end goal). But perhaps this is a matter of how you percieve healing surges as magical means of healing, versus just shrugging of damage. There has also been concerns healing surges don't allow for a grittier style campaign, where healing is scarce, but all you would need to modify is how surges are recovered each day or not.

Remove Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies? Don't have enought experience yet as we are entering paragon at the moment, but the biggest downside I have heard of is the complexity it adds to combat, and more effects like daze/stun.

[Celestial Healer]

vagrant-poet wrote:

What changes would I have to account for if I wanted to:

Replace the 4e skill system with the pathfinder one?

I don't think this would be a big problem. Anything with a skill prerequisite could be decided on an ad hoc basis. You would have to assign a number of skill points to each class, of course, using PF as a model.

Quote:

Replace the 4e alignment system with the pathfinder one or none at all?

I don't see a problem. Very little of 4e is alignment-dependent.

Quote:

Remove Healing surges?

You would have to rewrite the way healing works in 4e entirely, including the powers for classes that can heal. Every "leader" class has abilities that let other characters spend healing surges, and take the place of things like "cure" spells in prior editions. You would need to develop an entirely new system to use.

If you removed healing surges entirely without replacing them, the party would have difficulty facing one encounter of appropriate level per day, and two would be virtually impossible.

Quote:

Remove Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies?

Difficult. To avoid balance issues, you could consider allowing PC's to choose appropriate-level paragon path/epic destiny powers and features as they level, so that they're not locked into any one. You might run into balance issues, though, if players find combinations that were never intended. (In fact, the potential for abuse is probably really high with this method, and will require significant policing).

Striking them entirely will nerf the characters and result in major dead levels. Rebalancing encounters to account for this will be tricky.

[Matthew Koelbl]

vagrant-poet wrote:

Replace the 4e skill system with the pathfinder one?

Relatively easy, as long as you are willing to go through each class and figure out an appropriate number of skill points for them. They all have reasonable ratios and an easy last of class skills to build from, though, so it is more a matter of time than difficulty.

vagrant-poet wrote:

Replace the 4e alignment system with the pathfinder one or none at all?

Beyond trivial. 4E cut alignment from most real mechanics in the game, allowing it to exist largely for defining your character and their perception or place in the world. Thus, while the 4E alignments themselves aren't that great, many groups simply use the standard nine alignments, or none at all.

vagrant-poet wrote:

Remove Healing surges?

This is the tricky one. But doable. The key would be to take any power that says, "a character may spend a healing surge", and instead state that it heals the equivalent amount instead. Or instead to figure out an appropriate scaling value. At level one, most characters have a healing surge value or 6-9, and it goes up by 1-2 points every level. So replace healing surge with 2d8, plus an addition d8 every three levels, and you are probably relatively close to the right amount of healing. (Plus whatever bonuses and modifiers the powers would get in the first place, of course.) (Note I'm largely pulling these numbers out of the air, so more detailed analysis might have different results - but they are probably a good place to start from.)

However, a few other issues arise. For one thing, many healing powers are encounter powers, on the basis that the healing they provided is limited by how many surges the party has over the course of the day. By removing the surge concept, you'll need to decide what to do about these encounter healing powers. You could instead make them daily powers, instead, and just have leaders come with a lot more of them - multiplying by how many combats you expect the group to be able to handle in a day, perhaps. Or you can leave them as encounter powers and just specify they only work in combat.

You would then have to decide how to handle out of combat healing, currently dealt with primarily through healing surges. If healing is not the domain entirely of daily powers, forcing groups to heal out of combat will significantly reduce how active they can be in a day. If you leave healing powers as more reusable, then healing out of combat might be completely trivial. One solution might be to tie it to the 'Heal skill', and provide things like 'healing kits' that can be used for healing out of combat. That lets you keep it tied to resources without completely shutting the party down.

Finally, such a change would also return the party to pretty much absolutely needing a cleric (or other healer.) Right now, 4E has made things self-sufficient enough that you can get away with a non-standard party balance. Removing healing surges would definitely undercut that, and so you'd have to make sure someone was willing to play a healer. (Or provide the group with a lot of free healing items.)

So, all in all? I think it could be done. But it would take a decent bit of effort, and would be really hard to do without unbalancing the game. All that said, I am pretty sure others out there on the internet have no doubt already made some attempts at it. If you are intent on this, doing a search for how others group have handled it might be the best place to start.

vagrant-poet wrote:

Remove Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies?

Probably not as hard as one would think. Paragon Paths generally give:

-A power involving Action Points at level 11.
-Abilities at levels 11 and 16.
-An Encounter power at 11, a Utility power at 12, and a Daily power at 20.

The Action Point element is relatively small. Instead, let them get a bonus feat at 11 and 16, and from their class an extra level 13 encounter power, level 16 utility, and level 19 daily power. The extra options probably balance out the reduced direct power of the Paragon Path features. Not perfectly, certainly, but will probably be workable in actual play.

Epic Destinies are a little harder. They offer the following:
-Powerful features at level 21, often involving a bonus to ability scores.
-A feature at level 24, often involving the ability to avoid dying once per day.
-A utility power at level 26.
-A really major feature at level 30.

If getting rid of them, I'd instead offer the following:
-A bonus of +2 to two ability scores of the player's choice, at level 21.
-A free epic feat at level 24, and the ability once per day to ignore the death penalty from raise dead.
-An extra level 22 utility power from their class, gained at level 26.
-A unique ability at level 30 that you work with them to create on a case by case basis.

Again, definitely not a perfect balance with current characters, but close enough that in a home game, with you keeping an eye out for problems, it should be relatively manageable.

Now, if you don't want to make that effort, and just remove Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies entirely... well, characters will be weaker, but not hopelessly so. The loss of the powers from their Paragon Paths will reduce their versatility in combat, and the loss of features probably translates to being a level or two behind in terms of effectiveness. Reducing encounters by one to two levels would probably be enough to compensate.

[vagrant-poet]

Thanks for all the input everyone, I has thinking that healing surge based powers could just heal 1/4 hp, but that a character can only withstand so much forced healing in a day, in a kind of Steven Erikson way.

I think healing kits, or potions are the way to go to ween off healing class reliance. I'll look more carefully into it.

[Celestial Healer]

vagrant-poet wrote:

Thanks for all the input everyone, I has thinking that healing surge based powers could just heal 1/4 hp, but that a character can only withstand so much forced healing in a day, in a kind of Steven Erikson way.

I think healing kits, or potions are the way to go to ween off healing class reliance. I'll look more carefully into it.

What you're describing is healing surges - a limit to the number of times a character can be healed. Can I venture a guess here - is the real issue the "Second Wind" ability? I think those could be removed somewhat more easily than healing surges as a whole.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

vagrant-poet wrote:

Thanks for all the input everyone, I has thinking that healing surge based powers could just heal 1/4 hp, but that a character can only withstand so much forced healing in a day, in a kind of Steven Erikson way.

I think healing kits, or potions are the way to go to ween off healing class reliance. I'll look more carefully into it.

Odd...that is what you get with healing surges. As a player I've occasionally been in a situation with my party that was facing this exact situation - I still have healing power and a ton of healing potions but thats no good to us because the characters themselves have done all the can do - their surges are tapped out and their physique can't take any more healing. There are some powers and such that can get around this - ones that don't access the healing surge system at all or some times you can heal some one using your own healing surges - more or less having it so that your transferring your health or physique to the recipient but these are not common and are underpowered compared to healing that utilizes the recipients healing surges.

[vagrant-poet]

I think maybe I've misunderstood Healing surges a little bit. I might remname it though, my players aren't big fans.

[Matthew Koelbl]

vagrant-poet wrote:

I think maybe I've misunderstood Healing surges a little bit. I might remname it though, my players aren't big fans.

Yeah, part of the trick is understanding what they represent. The idea isn't that they are magical wells of power every character can tap into for healing - they are there to represent how much staying power each person has each day, how much ability they have to 'get back in there' after each fight. 'Second Wind', in combat, represents just that - regaining a measure of their will, determination and focus, and so forth. Remember that HP themselves represent not just physical damage, but also exhaustion, morale, etc. Only a few key blows might represent genuine injuries - the rest, you can recover without magical means.

Think of it like any action movie star - they spend a few minutes wrapping up their injuries and then keep going, just as capable as before, even as bruised and battered as they might be.

Now, some people do feel that there should be some sense of genuine physical wounds in the game - but I think there are better approaches than removing healing surges to get that. One decent one I saw (I believe on Enworld) was creating an 'injury table' that might occur on critical hits, when dropped to a dying state, or so forth - these produce ongoing results that function like a disease (for purposes of natural recover) or can be healed by magic. It seemed a good device that still worked within the framework of the game - I'll see if I can hunt down a link tomorrow, as an alternative to completely revamping the healing surge system.

[Uchawi]

Simple and using games mechanics, I like it. Treat ongoing injuries similar to a disease.

[Matthew Koelbl]

Here's the thread I saw discussing it, which presents a decent number of ideas on how to handle it, along with various suggested injuries.

Using 4E Disease Rules to Simulate Injuries

If the issue at hand is concern over having a more gritty game, and injuries that characters can simply shake off after a few minutes of rest, this might be a good approach that isn't too intrusive in actual play, and lets the core mechanics of the game remain intact.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

vagrant-poet wrote:

I think maybe I've misunderstood Healing surges a little bit. I might remname it though, my players aren't big fans.

Actually I suspect your pretty much spot on in terms of your understanding. The thing is the designers created a healing system to facilitate a certain style of play - its very good for that and I strongly suspect that 'good game design' was the motivation not 'adhere to cool concepts from Steve Erikson books'.

It just so happens that their design concept happens to essentially line up with Steve Erikson's novels. In previous editions healing was something very much outside of the characters themselves and there was no limit to how often they can be healed. In 4E the mechanic relies on something internal to the character and because of that its reasonable to view it as some kind of upper limit to what the body and mind can handle. Hence we have a system where the body and mind can only do so much but their are a number of avenues to tap into the total amount of what a person is capable of. Magic is one way, pushing oneself 110% is another - and dwarves are particularly good at this, a Warlord can get you to perform beyond what you thought was possible etc. Now if your players have a significant problem with this you may want address that - second wind may be an issue, maybe remove that except for Dwarves - or have it be a daily except for Dwarves. but I'd just mainly just stay away from the Warlord Class. Most other leaders use magic which probably does not bother your players so much.

We are used to RPG mechanics deriving from flavour while 4E really went in the opposite direction with the mechanics coming first - but all mechanics ultimately have some kind of flavour and it just so happens that in this case we have a mechanic that mimic's, to a great extent, the flavour of healing one finds in a Steve Erikson novel (I've read the first two - I can't remember a thing except that the novels are nearly as tough to follow as Nietzsche).