# How Can I Make 4e Into A Gritty Survival Game?



## Nagol (Jul 11, 2013)

You've included unintended side-effects as PCs get weaker comparative to their default cousins.  By making Encounter powers effectively Daily and Daily effectively once per adventure, you have skewed the balance between classes and I would expect PCs to have a more difficult experience dealing with "any monster, any adventure, any challenge".


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

He adjusted XP budget...  to end run around that issue Nagol


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

However I think for me you would feel very very safe at the beginning of the work week, not actually a desired effect.  

Keeping dailies daily and simply reducing the number of surges available (1/2 or 1/3 or even just a static amount) and allow only 1 surge recovery per night might be simpler - its side effects including reduced durability which  fans of earlier editions seem to desire and also the side effect of clerical surgeless healing being *more valuable *which may also be desired) . Regeneration abilities might also need nerfed.

My modification doesnt address blind hatred of surges but rather addresses I think more the underlying issues.


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## Nagol (Jul 11, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> He adjusted XP budget...  to end run around that issue Nagol




I got that.  I was just taking exception to that last assertion.  There will be a lot of adventures -- notably designed for the default play -- that won't work as expected since the PC capabilities have limited recharge.  Two or three back-to-back moderately hard encounters that the PCs are normally expected to blow Encounter powers on and suddenly the group is struggling to survive the final one.

Now if you're playing a class with limited Daily/encounter powers and have moderately powerful at-wills, you'll be in reasonable shape.  If you're playing a class with extra Daily powers, you'll need to be really circumspect in use.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

Not thinking it was intended to work with premade adventures without adjusting those encounters to have gaps between them or be perhaps largely minionized or more interestingly a mixture there of. (though yes any adventure etc doesnt seem to be quite right)

The essentials classes really torque that divergent resource impact up eh.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 11, 2013)

nagol said:
			
		

> There will be a lot of adventures -- notably designed for the default play -- that won't work as expected since the PC capabilities have limited recharge.




The thing that mitigates this is that the PC's have more to begin with. It's a slow slide, rather than an up-and-down. In a standard adventure, when your PC's are meant to be at about half healing surges and max HP, these PC's will have 0 healign surges, but much more HP.



			
				nagol said:
			
		

> By making Encounter powers effectively Daily and Daily effectively once per adventure, you have skewed the balance between classes




I don't follow you. Encounter and Daily ratios don't vary between classes in 4e, with the exception of some Essentials classes. In these cases, the E-classes aren't in need of Daily abilities.


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## Nagol (Jul 11, 2013)

<snip>



> I don't follow you. Encounter and Daily ratios don't vary between classes in 4e, with the exception of some Essentials classes. In these cases, the E-classes aren't in need of Daily abilities.




I may be mis-informed, but I thought later classes, such as pisionics, varied daily--encounter--at-will ratios (with at least some psionic classes trading encounter powers for pools of augmentation points used with at-will powrs) and that variance grew largest among the Essential classes.

Classes with fewer Daily or Encounter abilities, or with the ability to fine-tune their expenditure (using psionic points, for example) fare better in a system where the recovery delay is substantially increased.  Slayers as I understand them, should sparkle in this hack.

It also tends to skew the value of abilities such as Remembered Wizardry / Expanded Spellbook by affecting the underlying assumptions of frequency of use though I'm unsure if the relative value goes down or up in actual play.


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## Nagol (Jul 11, 2013)

I'd be tempted to leave the short rest power recharge mechanism alone and decouple the extended rest / healing mechanism so as to not muck with power recharge.

Say have the extended rest grant up to 1/4 of yor hp total and can be gained from one night's rest in a Sanctuary, or a flat DC 15 saving throw from a regular location.  That way a Sanctuary provides everyone with some hp recovery and an extended rest anywhere allows for Daily power recovery with some slight chance of hp recovery so eventual recovery over time is possible if trapped on a ship at sea, for example.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

I do think we have to remember that ummmm divergent experiences because you have some at-will classes and some daily is part of that I am shooting for retro experience thing.,,, ie its a feature.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The thing that mitigates this is that the PC's have more to begin with. It's a slow slide, rather than an up-and-down.




Too much more...  I think


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 11, 2013)

Heh, well, I did go with the _most extreme_ version.  But the amount they have is the amount of actual HP that a standard 4e character can call upon, so it doesn't give them anything above and beyond what 4e already assumes they have. 

That said, it's possible to only convert HALF your surges into more max HP, or whatever, if you want some bit of the up-and-down without quite as much as 4e typically assumes.


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## Nagol (Jul 11, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> I do think we have to remember that ummmm divergent experiences because you have some at-will classes and some daily is part of that I am shooting for retro experience thing.,,, ie its a feature.




I am agnostic as whether it's a feature or a bug.  It is a consequence and needs to be understood to validate it fits with the expectation/underlying desires.

For example, by limiting hp recovery, a greater emphasis is placed on damage mitigation.  If there is a class that offers temporary hp upfront or damage reduction to the party, that class becomes much more desirable than a 'healing' Leader unless something happens to scale back its effects appropriately.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

3e the precursor had lots of healing available in the form of magic items.. some of that was digested in to healing surges. If you have surge free external healing well..


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 11, 2013)

Nagol said:
			
		

> For example, by limiting hp recovery, a greater emphasis is placed on damage mitigation. If there is a class that offers temporary hp upfront or damage reduction to the party, that class becomes much more desirable than a 'healing' Leader unless something happens to scale back its effects appropriately.




Indeed, I think that's part of the benefit.  It encourages pre-emptive strategy rather than reactive recovery, which fits with a more cautious, thoughtful style of play more akin to the early dungeon crawl gameplay. You can slow that slide. You can't go back up it very much, though.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

Nagol said:


> I am agnostic as whether it's a feature or a bug.  It is a consequence and needs to be understood to validate it fits with the expectation/underlying desires.
> 
> For example, by limiting hp recovery, a greater emphasis is placed on damage mitigation.  If there is a class that offers temporary hp upfront or damage reduction to the party, that class becomes much more desirable than a 'healing' Leader unless something happens to scale back its effects appropriately.




Nods
I think most classes that do temp hp have regular hp healing as well but there is variations within that I am sure.   

I am not expressing my personal desires when saying its a feature...but rather what I percieve as its target audiences response.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 11, 2013)

If you don't like daily and encounter powers, switch to essentials. Really, because essentials characters are build around not having daily powers, under these rules, they'd fare much better than the AEUD cousins.

If you want gritty, bite-your-nails, skin of teeth, survival adventure games, Write the adventures that way. Rehearse your flavor text. Carefully select your background music and ambient noises. Even prepare the snackage available to the players at the table to be a little more appropriate (get some 10-year-old twinkies).


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## Herschel (Jul 11, 2013)

Honestly it's even easier. Just remove surges. Healing powers still restore the same number of HP, but you're now reliant solely on those powers. Spreading the damage across the party becomes a tougher prospect to do well. If you still want some HP restored during a short rest, either set it at a surge worth or 10/20/30 (by tier). It also makes early monster damage expressions just fine again.


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## Argyle King (Jul 11, 2013)

Some of these changes help, but they still dont fix some of the  underlying problems that would need to be fixed for me to play 4E in  this manner and find it enjoyable.  One of the biggest obstacles is that  PCs interact with the world math differently than monsters do; the  underlying "physics engine" (for a lack of better words) is geared  toward a certain style, and that style is not gritty in the slightest.  I  understand (and applaud) the design decision to make monsters and PCs  be built differently; however, that has nothing to do with what I mean.   What I mean when I say that PCs interact with the world math different  is that the numbers the PCs can -very easily- generate can -very easily-  literally break parts of the game world; by contrast, even some of the  strongest monsters can at times struggle to break through even a  relatively flimsy wall or door.  

The changes proposed in the the  OP would certainly make the game harder.  However, I'm not so sure the  game would feel grittier (to me.)  Rougher on the players?  Yes.   Grittier?  Not necessarily, and the two things (more difficult and  grittier) are not necessarily synonymous.  3rd Edition and Pathfinder  are both (in my opinion) rougher on the players than 4th Edition, but I  do not feel they do a particularly good job at feeling gritty (at least  not in the sense I think of the word) either.  Gritty isn't just about a  harsh world; you can actually have a somewhat gritty feeling game  without making the world especially harsh.  For me, a big part of making  a game feel more gritty is making it feel more real, and I believe once  of the biggest steps toward doing that is making the PCs feel as though  they are part of the world rather than above it.  Note that that does  not mean they are necessarily average joes, a hero can still be above  average, yet be part of the world rather than be built in such a way  that they are above the concerns of the world, and a lot of creating  that feeling is building a better world.  You can have monsters be built  differently than PCs, but still have they way the two sides of the  spectrum interact with the math the game world is built upon be more  consistent.  So, I'll again say that while I believe many of these  changes help, they still do not address the problems I have with trying  to run this style of game with the 4E engine.    

Many of these  ideas are things that will make the game rougher on the players; they  succeed at doing that.  I can in no way deny they do.  Though, with that  being said, I believe it's also worth pointing out that many of the new  limitations imposed are fairly easy to work around.  In particular,  there are a large number of items, powers, and rituals which make safely  resting virtually anywhere pretty easy.  It seems to me that step one gives PCs raw HP totals more similar to their foes, but the PCs still have significantly more firepower than their enemies, so I'm not convinced the end effect is really meaningful; as my personal philosophy to "healing" is to never get hit in the first place rather than spend later actions healing (and is one of the primary reasons I feel the warlord is more useful than the cleric,) I don't see much of an effect.  I see some merit in Step 2; I like adding more HP related conditions, but some of the other changes make some of the parts of 4E which feel meta-gamey seem more so, and I'm not sure yet how -in play- that would weigh against my desire for a grittier (grittier than contemporary D&D anyway) experience.  As I'm also not exactly a fan of 5E's views on how certain things work, I'm cautious about porting some of its philosophy into 4E. 

In an attempt to not be entirely negative, I will say that I would have to try the changes before having a more solid opinion.  While, from a first glance, they do not appear to address the issues I have with using 4E for a gritty game, it may be that they work out much differently in play than they look.  With that in mind, I'd be open minded to trying a game with the proposed changes.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> If you want gritty, bite-your-nails, skin of teeth, survival adventure games, Write the adventures that way. Rehearse your flavor text. Carefully select your background music and ambient noises. Even prepare the snackage available to the players at the table to be a little more appropriate (get some 10-year-old twinkies).




Yes its mostly atmosphere and presentation that makes for gritty


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> One of the biggest obstacles is that  PCs interact with the world math differently than monsters do;



same as 1e and 2e and 0e...


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## Argyle King (Jul 11, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> same as 1e and 2e and 0e...





As I have limited familiarity with those editions, I cannot comment on them in a way I would even hope to describe as knowledgable.  That being said, it is my impression (whether right or wrong) that the difference is not quite as pronounced as today's D&D.  I believe that because converting adventures from those earlier editions to different systems has lead to results which appear to be consistent with the ideals behind the originally designed adventures in so much that PCs and non-PCs are on roughly equal footing in how they interact with the surrounding world.  An example which comes to mind is a GURPS game I was in in which the group played through Ghost Tower of Inverness; how things played out in actual play seemed (again, I have very limited familiarity with the earlier D&D editions) consistent with what I believe was the designer's intent behind the adventure; things seemed to play out roughly how I'd imagine them to in those older D&D editions -based on my limited understanding of them.  In contrast, some of the 4E adventures I've converted change quite drastically; mostly because the monsters are able to use tactics which are virtually impossible for them to use in 4E due to their physical inability to use them effectively in 4E.  I do expect things to change between systems; especially when converting between systems which have a vastly different underlying philosophy, but it's some of the small and often not noticed details which change drastically enough to attract my attention the most.  Like why is it that I can use an at-will power and destroy things which monsters who are supposedly (according to the fiction) can barely scratch with their strongest attacks?  Later 4E books did greatly help in this regard, but it's not just attacking I'm talking about... slap a pair of dimensional shackles on a monster and see what their chances of breaking out are compared to a PC of similar level.    

I enjoy 4E.  That's not to say I feel it's perfect; I've been very vocal about some of the parts of it which bother me in the past.  Still, I've come to enjoy it, but I've come to enjoy it because I realized I was better off embracing it for what it was rather than trying to fight against the system.  Do I believe you can play different styles with 4th edition D&D?  Certainly, I do believe that, and I even believe there are some groups for whom using D&D 4E to play a hardcore gritty game work quite well.  I believe that because I've used GURPS to do game styles which other people feel you cannot do with that system.  However, for me personally, the changes proposed in this thread wouldn't fix the problems I have had in the past when trying to use 4E for a "gritty" playstyle because the elements the ideas are fixing arent what I see as broken (for a lack of better words) when trying to perform that style with D&D 4E.  That's not to say I believe they are bad ideas, but I'm not convinced they would make 4E feel "gritty."  Instead, my initial impression is that I'd be playing 4E with the difficulty setting turned up, and for some reason I'd be able to use encounter powers even less often than I can now... which presents problems of its own because I already have players who feel it's strange to only be able to trip or disarm someone once every 5 minutes.


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## Garthanos (Jul 11, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> As I have limited familiarity with those editions, I cannot comment on them in a way I would even hope to describe as knowledgable.  That being said, it is my impression (whether right or wrong) that the difference is not quite as pronounced as today's D&D.



I figured you werent familiar with earlier editions... 
Monsters included in my 1e MM included elfs and humans (of various types)  and similar things... they didn't have stats or levels at all like the pcs just damage and hd and there was no basis for a comparison of how they interact with the world as you put it even.... the games designer said it was ludicrous to treat D&D like a simulation.

A trip in 4e is a DM managed page 42 maneuver (there is no power named that) probably involving an athletics check (but it might be something else depending on how you try it like clipping a chair with a magic missile so that it falls in front of an enemy and makes them fall over it? ).. it doesn't normally do damage but might if you find a situation that allows it.  A successful knockdown assault is a Fighter At-Will maneuver doing STR mod in damage... it is weaker than it ought to be.. and ought to have some the larger you are the harder you fall leveling but that is me being picky)

A disarm against a fully aware fully trained adversary in real life is actually harder to do than killing somebody (or delivering a disabling injury). - 4e made it a high level daily for fighter but its reasonable to do with a skill challenge or as a finishing stroke, or adapt the rule for the combat use of Intimidation. (which is really the primary end impact of a disarm - if somebody can do that to you I recommend running)

If you can disarm somebody every 5 minutes you seriously outclass everyone you are fighting  
Just being picky ... is that the grit that you really want? Cause its a DM using the tools the game gives him... You arent restricted to doing just the powers you have on your sheet.


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## Warbringer (Jul 12, 2013)

I was thinking on this a while a go and the completely insane idea I came up with was dump Hit points, use surges only...

The base idea is everyone is a minion, one hit and see ya. Heroes has a pool of resources (surges) to mitigate the hit. For each 25% of hit points (the only real reason they exist to establish a threshold) the player must burn a surge or drop.

Other burn on surges is would be exhaustion (consequence from skill challenges), using non at will powers (encounter burn a surge on a failed "save", daily burns 1 surge automatically, 2nd on a failed "save"). This mirrors exertion and fatigue, possibly even for fear (1 frightened, 2 terrorized) 

Recovery, 1 per short rest, plus 1 per 5 healing surges base. Long rest 3 plus 1 per 3 healing surges base.


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## Argyle King (Jul 12, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> I figured you werent familiar with earlier editions...
> Monsters included in my 1e MM included elfs and humans (of various types)  and similar things... they didn't have stats or levels at all like the pcs just damage and hd and there was no basis for a comparison of how they interact with the world as you put it even.... the games designer said it was ludicrous to treat D&D like a simulation.
> 
> A trip in 4e is a DM managed page 42 maneuver (there is no power named that) probably involving an athletics check (but it might be something else depending on how you try it like clipping a chair with a magic missile so that it falls in front of an enemy and makes them fall over it? ).. it doesn't normally do damage but might if you find a situation that allows it.  A successful knockdown assault is a Fighter At-Will maneuver doing STR mod in damage... it is weaker than it ought to be.. and ought to have some the larger you are the harder you fall leveling but that is me being picky)
> ...




What I want is PCs who are part of the world; not above it.  That doesn't preclude them from being above average; I'd just simply prefer the PCs not be so far beyond the world that there is a disconnect.  On the other end of the spectrum, non-PCs struggle with the world around them.  When you put the two pieces side by side, it's pretty noticeable.

For me, the most success I had with 4E was when I stopped trying to design encounters as though it was a fantasy game.

As a player, I'm aware you are not restricted to the character sheet.  I only used the disarm as an example; another example would be a trip or a grapple which is actually effective.  The problem I found with page 42 -when used in conjunction with 4E- was that either the improvised actions were not worth it compared to powers or they were worth it and then the question of "well, why wouldn't I do this all the time instead of using my powers?" came up.  

I prefer being able to create encounters without worrying that the numbers the world is built upon aren't so easily broken by the PCs.  Some time ago, I spoke on this topic by using the example of an encounter I designed on a suspended gondola.  The PCs were on one gondola; the enemy was on a second gondola.  In my head, I thought it would be cool.  In actual play, it was barely any effort at all for the PCs to destroy the enemy gondola and send them all to their doom.  The power the PCs could generate was so overwhelming compared what the game said the hardness and HP that the suspension mechanism of the the gondola should be that it turned what was supposed to be a cool encounter into one that really wasn't even an encounter at all.  I *did* expecting cutting down the enemy gondola to be a valid tactic.  However, I expected it would take far more effort than what it did.  Now that I have more experience, I realize that I should ignore the numbers proposed by the DMG, but I didn't know that at the time I was a new DM.  My point being that -even with the changes proposed in the OP- the PCs are still built in such a way which is way beyond the rest of the world they live in.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 12, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> I was thinking on this a while a go and the completely insane idea I came up with was dump Hit points, use surges only...
> 
> The base idea is everyone is a minion, one hit and see ya. Heroes has a pool of resources (surges) to mitigate the hit. For each 25% of hit points (the only real reason they exist to establish a threshold) the player must burn a surge or drop.
> 
> ...




This idea excites me, and it's got some good grounding! It kind of works on the other way, but I like thinking about what that might add to the game.


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## Garthanos (Jul 12, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> I was thinking on this a while a go and the completely insane idea I came up with was dump Hit points, use surges only...
> 
> The base idea is everyone is a minion, one hit and see ya. Heroes has a pool of resources (surges) to mitigate the hit. For each 25% of hit points (the only real reason they exist to establish a threshold) the player must burn a surge or drop.
> 
> ...




Cool I recall thinking something of that sort once as surges were when all was said and done the real unit of longer term durability attrition...


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## Garthanos (Jul 12, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> For me, the most success I had with 4E was when I stopped trying to design encounters as though it was a fantasy game.



 no clue what that is supposed to mean ...

The strength for instance in 3e high level fighter characters is actually much much higher than anything in 4e.... if they cant smash through castle walls - when able to lift some of the numbers I have heard quoted... then the system is unrealistic as hell... and they are being strangely constrained in to mundane for some odd purpose.



Johnny3D3D said:


> As a player, I'm aware you are not restricted to the character sheet.  I only used the disarm as an example;



Whatever... I am still hearing "I want it done exactly the way I am used to."



Johnny3D3D said:


> another example would be a trip or a grapple which is actually effective.



A school yard bullies I stick my foot out is gonna need some reason to be better than the maneuver which is part of a trained combatants fighting style. I mentioned the knock down assault which is a martial take down....

Thing is... people who are actually competent at what they do almost never improvise in order to get "*normal*" things done...* there has to be something situational* that makes doing that odd thing which is not part of there normal style better... If there is something special in the environment or set up it absolutely should be better than an at-will power akin to an encounter ability or daily... if its absolutely repeatable? shrug why do want it to be potent.

I like to use the characters abilities as a starting point for a improvised thing for instance a ranger pc came upon enemies on a wall where the patrolling guards were on two levels he was able to by patience and a bit of guess work (and a skill roll - I think we used perception, enable his twin strike to hit two off the wall at the right moment causing them to fall down and hit the two below... the likelihood of guards being set up like that isnt that huge and is something I as dm can control the frequency of.. so why not.

I have allowed a player to improvise using a spell to perform a heat weapon maneuver where he was attacking the weapons of the enemy instead of the enemy...

A thread on wizards ... about this kind of stuff.

http://community.wizards.com/go/thr...sation_or_page_42_use...&post_num=6#514389547


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## Argyle King (Jul 12, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> no clue what that is supposed to mean ... I prefer actual fantasy to fantasy vietnam paranoia and the strength for instance in 3e high level characters is actually much higher than anything in 4e.
> 
> Whatever... I am still hearing I want it done exactly the way it used to ... nothing really coherent.
> .





You seem to be assuming I'm saying I found 3rd Edition better.  I'm actually not arguing that at all.  However, I am comparing 4E to other games I play -which includes games that are not D&D.

I'm also not even suggesting "fantasy vietnam."  What I am suggesting (and have said several times) is that the PCs are part of the world; not set so far above it by default.  Note, that's not the same thing as saying PCs are average or the same as NPCs.  I'm merely suggesting that I find it a bit jarring -especially if my intent is to run something "gritty"- that PCs are built on a scale which so easily exceeds the scale which the rest of the world is built upon.  To me, this is especially noticeable when you put the mechanics of 4E up against the early "Points of Light" idea.  

The fiction talks about terrors in the night; demons; things man was not meant to know, and how hard the world is, but I dont feel the mechanics often do a good job of supporting that.  That's actually part of what I meant when I said I had the best luck with 4E when I didn't run it as a fantasy game; I ditched many of the default setting assumptions and went with what I can only describe as some sort of gonzo sci-fi/fantasy mix.  Again, I'm not suggesting it wasn't fun; it was a lot of fun.  It's just not anywhere near what I would consider gritty, and I believe making 4E gritty requires reworking a lot of the underlying math of the system.  Not math involved with HP or surges, but math even deeper than that; the math upon which pieces of the world are assumed to be built with; encounter budget guidelines, and things of that nature.


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## Argyle King (Jul 12, 2013)

Another thing I would personally do if I were trying to make 4E gritty would be to ditch the default save system as much as possible and replace it with what would essentially be the disease track.  I feel that is a 4E idea which should have been used a lot more, and there are a lot of things which can be handled with it.  An injury might be a "disease" which is treated by heal checks to set the bone or wrap bandages or whatever the case may be; success gets you closer to being healed, but doesn't heal you completely.  This can be handled in a way similar to some of the ideas suggested by the OP, but without needing to fiddle with HP or surges at all.  Instead, different types of injuries can take different amounts of time.  A twisted ankle or a stress fracture may be something which can be cured with a few checks over a short amount of time.  In contrast, something like a compound fracture may take several checks, and the amount of time between checks would be greater.  

I'd even go so far as to look for ways to use the disease track to handle things such as crafting.  Success would move you closer to creating the product desired; a failure might stagnate your progress; bad enough failure would take you further away.


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## Garthanos (Jul 12, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I'm also not even suggesting "fantasy vietnam."
> 
> The fiction talks about terrors in the night; demons; things man was not meant to know, and how hard the world is, but I dont feel the mechanics often do a good job of supporting that.



That latter is the reason the world needs heros, not why the heros are supposed to be afraid and small ... to me the majority of the world are akin to minions, ie lacking the heroic luck, esp and divine providence and desperate arcane shielding... etc.. all that stuff Gary used to explain advancing hit points.


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## Garthanos (Jul 12, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Another thing I would personally do if I were trying to make 4E gritty would be to ditch the default save system as much as possible and replace it with what would essentially be the disease track.  I feel that is a 4E idea which should have been used a lot more, and there are a lot of things which can be handled with it.  An injury might be a "disease" which is treated by heal checks to set the bone or wrap bandages or whatever the case may be; success gets you closer to being healed, but doesn't heal you completely.  This can be handled in a way similar to some of the ideas suggested by the OP, but without needing to fiddle with HP or surges at all.  Instead, different types of injuries can take different amounts of time.  A twisted ankle or a stress fracture may be something which can be cured with a few checks over a short amount of time.  In contrast, something like a compound fracture may take several checks, and the amount of time between checks would be greater.
> 
> I'd even go so far as to look for ways to use the disease track to handle things such as crafting.  Success would move you closer to creating the product desired; a failure might stagnate your progress; bad enough failure would take you further away.




Using the disease track is a common idea for adding a sense of long term implication ... I think its appropriate for Frodo to be able to have his long term injury.

Lancelot is even presented sometimes as having recieved an injury that never quite healed (Though he was also one of the only Round table knights who was never truly defeated - save in visions).

The only issue I have with a wounding mechanic that it be careful to not create too much of a Death Spiral.


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## Argyle King (Jul 12, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> That latter is the reason the world needs  heros, not why the heros are supposed to be afraid and small ... to me  the majority of the world are akin to minions, ie lacking the heroic  luck, esp and divine providence and desperate arcane shielding... etc..  all that stuff Gary used to explain advancing hit points.





I get that, but it was still a bit anti-climactic when the group  I game with (I was a player at the time) stomped Strahd into the dirt  so hard that I don't believe he even got off an offensive move during  the encounter.  That's really not even the point I'm trying to touch on  though.  I'm getting off track.

As I said earlier, my experience  with the older editions is limited.  When I look at the adventures, they  seem to be written in such a way that worldly concerns are still  concerns.  That is to say that I'm given the impression (which may very  well be wrong) that the gondola encounter I mentioned earlier would have  taken a little more work than a few at-will encounters.  When I say  that 4E PCs have the potential to break the world around them, I mean  that quite literally.  In time, I had gained enough of an understanding  of the game to find ways to tweak the experience, but it was a bit of a  shocker when I was first learning the system.

I have a weird relationship with 4th Edition.  Despite what many of my posts may sound like, I do enjoy it.  However, I still tend to have a love/hate relationship with it.  I feel that there truthfully are things it fixed about D&D, and fixed them so well that I really can't go back to 3rd.  At the same time, there are some odd problems that 3rd didn't have that 4th does.  As an aside, I'll say the one thing that worries me about 5th Edition is that I believe the designers don't understand what someone like me didn't like about 4th...  I didn't hate it; I just think there were things that were "fixed" that didn't need fixed, and (much like what I see from 5th now) a lot of early ideas that were abandoned in favor of a direction I didn't care for.



Garthanos said:


> Using the disease track is a common idea for adding a sense of long term implication ... I think its appropriate for Frodo to be able to have his long term injury.
> 
> Lancelot is even presented sometimes as having recieved an injury that never quite healed (Though he was also one of the only Round table knights who was never truly defeated - save in visions).
> 
> The only issue I have with a wounding mechanic that it be careful to not create too much of a Death Spiral.




A death spiral is always hard to judge in D&D.  In GURPS I don't mind it because I have active defenses.  I have a chance to dodge, parry, or block.  In D&D, if my opponent beats my AC, I have to take the hit, so mechanics which make my passive defenses worse (in my experience) turn out to be especially harsh and unfun in D&D.  

For me, what I had in mind for the condition track was just having conditions that last longer than a simple save.  I also believe that some of the broken ways to manipulate 4E saves (like the original version of the Orb wizard) would work better in a system where success and failure weren't such a binary thing.  

When I was running 4E, I handled skill challenges in a similar fashion.  Often, I didnt have a set number of failures in mind.  Instead, I might have a set number of rolls in mind, and the margin or success or margin of failure would determine results.  It was more of a sliding scale instead of pass/fail.


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## Garthanos (Jul 12, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I get that, but it was still a bit anti-climactic when the group  I game with (I was a player at the time) stomped Strahd into the dirt  so hard that I don't believe he even got off an offensive move during  the encounter.  That's really not even the point I'm trying to touch on  though.  I'm getting off track.



How challenged players are is highly dependent on various elements but largely a choice 4e has made it less up to random chance than previous editions of D&D but obviously still influence by it far more than some other rpgs, That choice is neither just dm or the players some can be attributed to tactical skills but definitely not all (even paying attention to focus fire some may not find heroic), an example unrelated to skill = my players are anti-optimization (they want all around competence from a perceptual angle so even though you can bury the dump stat and concentrate on 1, 2 or 3 stats nope not really acceptable to my players).

At low level the math is geared so level 1 and 2 adversaries even the non-minons are actually lower level than the pcs... in effect it allows you to have a broader range of adversaries in the starting game... similarly at the highest levels prior to the so called math patch feats (which we refuse to use)


It occured to me some of your statements ring in on the man vs machine angle.

In heroic fantasy your heros have "person adversaries" that can be villianized so a trap becomes a mere tool of attrition which may bring the competition between the hero and the living enemy in to a tighter focus in a sense it looses its bite becomes a lesser thing de-emphasided, (an active adversary needs to be interfering with your attempts to break that Gondola)....I think this means you need red-shirts to die for the Indiana Jones while he gets to run away from traps he does trigger like rolling boulders.


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## Garthanos (Jul 12, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> For me, what I had in mind for the condition track was just having conditions that last longer than a simple save.  I also believe that some of the broken ways to manipulate 4E saves (like the original version of the Orb wizard) would work better in a system where success and failure weren't such a binary thing.
> 
> When I was running 4E, I handled skill challenges in a similar fashion.  Often, I didnt have a set number of failures in mind.  Instead, I might have a set number of rolls in mind, and the margin or success or margin of failure would determine results.  It was more of a sliding scale instead of pass/fail.




Binary success and failure is kind of what skill challenges were meant to umm NOT be.. its the same kind of "Yes, but..." mechanic of hit pionts.

I handle skill challenges fairly free form myself awarding multiple successes for ideas that seem just right and similar things but  I best like SC with things where progress was visible and obvious like in a chase scene.

I have had some ideas to make longer term character disabling conditions more palletible and stave off... ye old party death spiral. (using the allies are inspired to greater potential by a fallen comrade trope and allowing the player to manage that inspiration to keep them in the game).


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## Argyle King (Jul 12, 2013)

Garthanos said:


> How challenged players are is highly dependent on various elements but largely a choice 4e has made it less up to random chance than previous editions of D&D but obviously still influence by it far more than some other rpgs, That choice is neither just dm or the players some can be attributed to tactical skills but definitely not all (even paying attention to focus fire some may not find heroic), an example unrelated to skill = my players are anti-optimization (they want all around competence from a perceptual angle so even though you can bury the dump stat and concentrate on 1, 2 or 3 stats nope not really acceptable to my players).
> 
> At low level the math is geared so level 1 and 2 adversaries even the non-minons are actually lower level than the pcs... in effect it allows you to have a broader range of adversaries in the starting game... similarly at the highest levels prior to the so called math patch feats (which we refuse to use)
> 
> ...




In the case of my gondola encounter, the PCs won initiative.  They targeted the suspension cable and the mechanism which supported the gondola.  The encounter was over.

I was not upset they used that as a tactic.  I expected it would be one.  However, as a new 4E DM at the time, I expected to have at least a round or two of fighting back and forth across the two gondolas.  

To touch a little more on what I meant when I said I started to run 4E as though it wasn't fantasy, I'd have to fast forward to the last 4E campaign I GMed.  I completely ditched the Points of Light concept and much of the assumed D&D world.  Instead, I created a world which embraced many of the "problems" I saw with 4E.  I built a world in which some of the gonzo powers and concepts of 4E were part of rather than creating a world that is/was seemingly unaware of what someone like a PC could do.  It was common for some red shirt type enemies to have magic wands; I fluffed them as arcane powered sci-fi laser blasters.  I had a chase seen what was pretty blatantly ripped off from the old Battle Toads video game; the PCs were riding hover bikes powered by a magic.  The plot somehow involved one of the PCs being both the hero of the story and the villain of the story... offhand, I forget the exact details.  I had an excellent time running that game, and the players highly enjoyed it.  I believe -based on that game- I've had the most success with 4E when I went with a vision which is not how I usually imagine fantasy.  That's not a knock on the system; just my observation of how things played out for me.

In the event of the Strahd encounter I mentioned, I remember it going something like this:  The GM had the party facing Strahd, a group of what I believe were some kind of minion ghouls, and two portals which generated more ghouls on their initiative count.  Memory of the party composition is fuzzy, but I am pretty sure I was playing a Warlord at the time, and I believe we also had a fighter, a rogue, a ranger, and possibly a sorcerer.  I remember that we didn't have a controller, but we had a lot of strikers. I remember we won initiative; I remember that because having a warlord in the party (my character) gave us a rather significant boost to our initiative.  The rogue used a power which was able to hit Strahd and slow his movement.  I remember stunning him somehow, and the striker heavy party pelting him while we largely ignored the minions because the fighter activated a power which did automatic damage when they got close to him.  Strahd tried to turn to mist and flee,  but his movement was still slowed due to an effect on him, and being insubstantial meant he took more damage from one of the characters due to a feat or a power they had, so he died before he could move.  The reason I remember that encounter is because it prompted the GM of the game to start granting solos multiple initiative counts in hopes that they'd actually get to do something.  

Neither of those issues are things I believe would be fixed by the suggestions in the OP.  It wasn't healing and healing surges that created the problems I noticed.  It was that some of the underlying math of the game seemed so heavily weighted in one direction.  Later books made steps toward fixing this, but there are still some changes I would make if I were still playing the system.  I had been working on a different encounter budget guideline, but I never finished it due to not playing 4E as much anymore.  One of the primary reasons for the project is because I built elites and solos differently when I was running my later games.  Without going into too much detail, the basic concept was that elites had the benefits of being an elite, but had HP values which were somewhere between what a normal monster and an elite would have; solos still had the benefits of being a solo (save bonuses and extra abilities,) but had HP more in line with an elite.  I then just added more creatures and features to each encounter.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 12, 2013)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> So, what do you think? Want to use this in your 4e games tomorrow? Think a 4e game using this rule might be a little more fun than a typical 4e game? Excited for the versatility of games this might offer you? See any problems I missed? Let me know down in the comments!



I don't think I like it. Part of the reason why 4e is my favorite D&D edition is that I tremendously enjoy that 'roller-coaster' effect in every encounter. What I like better when tinkering with the rules is to adjust recovery rates for powers and/or healing surges. E.g. when traveling overland, you don't recover any healing surges until reaching your destination. Or having back-to-back encounters inbetween which you only recover a single encounter power and can only spend a single surge, etc.

Doing completely away with healing surges strikes me as a bad idea. Too many (excellent) game concepts revolve around it. I'm also unsure if it will help to meet the goal of feeling more 'gritty'.

I'd be more interested in exploring Warbringer's idea, although (or because?!) it would probably result in a completely different play experience.


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## LostSoul (Jul 12, 2013)

I think you could run a reasonably gritty 4E game with one rule change:

PCs only get one surge back per extended rest.

There are some DMing things you need to do as well:

Set up the world so that locations have levels.  Challenges and rewards are based on those levels instead of the party's level.

Use wandering monsters & random encounters to make rest in certain places dangerous.

If a PC wants to attempt an action, make sure the player describes the action.  Make a judgement call to determine if that action is feasible or not.  Even if the book says the DC is 15, if it's not a feasible action, the PC can't achieve success.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 12, 2013)

Jhaelen said:
			
		

> I'd be more interested in exploring Warbringer's idea, although (or because?!) it would probably result in a completely different play experience.




Indeed it would! The article was giving a way of getting _away_ from that up-and-down experience, toward one that is explicitly a slow slide to zero. This is to enhance the feel of resource management and conflict avoidance that is weaker in a game with that experience.

That's not to say one is better than the other per se, just that they're different, and one can have a preference for either one. 4e sort of left those with a preference for the latter hanging.

That's also not to say that this is supposed to solve everyone's problem with all of 4e. Just that if the slow slide is an experience you're fond of, and you missed that in 4e, this can help you get to it. Or if you'd like to give it a try, you can try it within 4e like this and see if you like it.

And if you like the way 4e does it already, no sweat. It clearly does what it needs to for you.


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## Herobizkit (Jul 13, 2013)

I haven't read the previous comments (shame on me), but wouldn't it be more efficient to attack their Healing Surges directly?  This would give a sort of artificial ablative armor or Wound Points, but would make some attacks seem more spectacular.  Also, you could make a Critical automatically swipe a Healing Surge in damage in addition to the regular damage.  It could makes for BIG tension when the guy who just got whacked with a critical also lost his last Healing Surge...


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## Nagol (Jul 13, 2013)

How would you handle taking a Healing Surge from someone who doesn't have one?  Direct Damage to hp?


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## marroon69 (Jul 13, 2013)

I can run the players ragged just by keeping the encounters coming. Keeping them on the run from a superior foe or large group that they know is there chasing them. After one or two encounters it seems they get the idea and run. I mix in a few skill challenges in with the combats (ie open the elevator door while zombies are attacking) and it can get down right intense.  I actually think pace and presentation can be used as opposed to rule changes..it has worked for me.


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