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What if the key wasn't a physical object but a password that only three of the workers, now ghosts, were entrusted with? Aside from hunting one of them down, the party need to persuade them to hand it over and decide which of them they can trust. At least one of them wants to trick the PCs into letting them possess a golem body and run free. E: Also, each one of them knows the password to open the control room, but the room has an automated guardian that won't be fooled unless all three ghosts are there to cooperate and shut it down. However, one of the ghosts knows how to disable the automated turrets in the room, one of the ghosts knows how to turn off the runes that speed up the guardian, and one of the ghosts knows how to stop the guardian calling in mini-golem backup. Whybird fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 09:25
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My current Dark Sun game only has three players and so far it's been going well. Only thing I have to watch out for is to make sure I make encounters that are both exciting and not going to dick the party over because their composition isn't that great (They have a Defender-Battlemind, a Leader-Bard and a Controller-Druid). In other words, I've had some fun making encounters composed mostly of interesting Minions and messing with environments. They sometimes have a fourth party member depending on plot reasons or if they go out of their way to make friends. I always make the companion characters, when they have them, help the party as a whole, like give out damage bonuses if the companion isn't a Striker, or have them just be a straight up Striker.
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Oct 8, 2014 17:27
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My Lovely Horse posted:Refluff the party's potion stash as an NPC. You mean 'refluff the party's NPC as a potion stash' right? Build an entirely lazy pixie warlord who does nothing except grant the party attacks, buffs and healing. Have the party run it as, essentially, a set of common abilities that all the party can draw on when they decide to.
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Oct 8, 2014 18:12
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That's the beauty of it, it works either way!
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Oct 8, 2014 18:33
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thespaceinvader posted:You mean 'refluff the party's NPC as a potion stash' right? I think this is a brilliant plan. Like, don't even put the pixie on the map, just have a limited number of minor or free actions or whatever that anyone in the party can call on. "The pixie lands on your shoulder and yells in your ear to hit harder you pansy!"
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Oct 8, 2014 19:00
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Rexides posted:Even so, it kinda sucks to have to play a character that you didn't build yourself. I want to cast Fist, dammnit, I didn't build Muscle Wizard just so I can only play him every other turn This is why you make them like Baldur's Gate companions and provide a multitude of different ones for the PCs to bring along and kick to the curb as they desire. We did it that way in our 3 PC Dark Sun campaign and everyone loved it. They had 2 companion slots to fill and they got to choose who filled them, and new characters to fill those slots appeared with regularity. They played the companions in combat and otherwise, I ran them as NPC followers.
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Oct 8, 2014 20:19
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Syka posted:I think this is a brilliant plan. Like, don't even put the pixie on the map, just have a limited number of minor or free actions or whatever that anyone in the party can call on. "The pixie lands on your shoulder and yells in your ear to hit harder you pansy!"
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Oct 8, 2014 20:36
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There are a bunch of things I have found to make companion characters work: 1) Do not build them as a PC - make them a monster with one or two encounter powers and a couple of at wills. This makes them a lot easier to manage 2) Make them part of the story, not just a bunch of mechanics following the party about. If the players care about the character they are more likely to engage with them 3) Players control them during combat, DM roleplays them out of combat. Out of combat they pretty much fade into the background unless the players specifically bring them to the front.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:51
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Nihilarian posted:SHUT UP NAVI Welp, that's my PC sorted for the next time I play 4th.
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Oct 9, 2014 09:34
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Mr Beens posted:There are a bunch of things I have found to make companion characters work: If you;re actually wanting a companion character, use the companion character rules from the DMG...
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Oct 9, 2014 23:53
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thespaceinvader posted:If you;re actually wanting a companion character, use the companion character rules from the DMG... Also check Madness at Gardmore Abbey for a couple of really good companion NPCs.
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Oct 10, 2014 00:13
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If you have the offline Character Builder, there are options for building Leader, Defender, Striker, and Controller companion characters right in there. full disclosure though, I have never actually seen these companion characters in play and cannot speak to their fun or effectiveness
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Oct 10, 2014 00:16
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Speaking of small parties: I'm trying to make a combat encounter where the party has to split up to defeat two monsters in separate areas at the same time. It's a six person party with the vital roles always covered by at least two characters, so the split should work fine, but I'm not having a good time actually coming up with the two enemies. Any tips for designing something that can keep a level 4 three-person party decently busy on its own? e: a level 6 elite on each side should do the trick. And man, there are some flat out nasty ones in the Nentir Vale Monster Vault book. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 10:52
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You can do one level 4 elite and a level 4 standard monster, maybe a brute for the elite and an artillery for the standard?
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Oct 13, 2014 18:20
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Crazy coincidence that small parties are the topic du jour. I was just talking about running a Dark Sun game for 2 players. I'm envisioning two Bad Dudes collecting debts and cracking skulls for some trader king in a city state. I'm not sure handing out companions will go over well since they're new to the system and I haven't run 4e yet. Should I even attempt this or am I gonna be too hamstrung with a very small variety of encounters and ultimately end up with a boring game?
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Oct 14, 2014 00:56
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Bosushi! posted:Crazy coincidence that small parties are the topic du jour. I was just talking about running a Dark Sun game for 2 players. I'm envisioning two Bad Dudes collecting debts and cracking skulls for some trader king in a city state. I'm not sure handing out companions will go over well since they're new to the system and I haven't run 4e yet. I would definitely do it, just keep in mind that the action economy is going to be your biggest enemy. If four kobolds is a balanced fight for a 4-man party, two kobolds should be more or less fine for your 2-man party, but some of the solo's might be: A) Tougher than you'd think B) Take a reallllly long time to kill. And that problem will probably persist even if you choose lower-level monsters for them to kill. Let the players know that because of the small party size the math might not always work out, and don't be afraid to communicate with them when a fight's not working how you planned. As you get a feel for what's working out and what's not, here are some things you might want to look at: - Reducing monster HP - Letting players roll initiative twice and go twice as often. - Using encounter powers twice or whatever. It might turn out that just using XP budget system RAW is enough to cover the loss in actions. If you're planning a more RP-heavy game anyway, I'd try to do your first few fights as sort of one-offs rather than doing a few in a row. The game is balanced around the idea that the "average" difficulty fights sap resources which spikes the difficulty of a later, harder encounter. Until you understand what that resource loss looks like and how tough the harder fight should be to begin with, you might end up with two tough encounters and a TPK instead of two easier encounters and a set-piece.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:07
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30.5 Days posted:
I hadn't even thought about doing the latter two. That also plays into how I want my PCs to be feared. Thanks!
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Oct 14, 2014 02:36
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Bosushi! posted:I hadn't even thought about doing the latter two. That also plays into how I want my PCs to be feared. NP, just keep in mind that they still have half as much HP as a normal party, will be hit harder by disabling effects (although twice as many saves per round will help with this), and have limited role coverage, so please be careful in what you throw at them until you understand how things are. The roles they choose will also have a big effect on encounter difficulty, but I don't know which ones to go with. Maybe a leader and a striker?
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Oct 14, 2014 02:40
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Hmmm. So I ran a first encounter today with 2 battles. I planned up the Campaign in Masterplan but it's combat runner annoys me for a few reasons and the reasons annoy me more than the convenience atm. Anyone got anything that use that work better than it?
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Oct 14, 2014 07:15
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Cerepol posted:Hmmm. So I ran a first encounter today with 2 battles. I planned up the Campaign in Masterplan but it's combat runner annoys me for a few reasons and the reasons annoy me more than the convenience atm. Anyone got anything that use that work better than it? What issues were you having?
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Oct 14, 2014 08:29
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The second best combat tracker I've used was 4E Turn Tracker. Maybe give that a shot, but yeah it does depend on what your issues were. (Also, when I say second best, I only ever used two, so, y'know, grain of salt.) Actually speaking of this, I had this idea that I could use Maptools, but on a first glance it seemed extremely hard to set up properly. Any tips for using it, first for 4E and then in a setting where the players are all looking at a second screen hooked up to the laptop? Gort posted:You can do one level 4 elite and a level 4 standard monster, maybe a brute for the elite and an artillery for the standard?
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Oct 14, 2014 09:40
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Did they move the Character Builder or something? http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/tools.aspx I'm clicking on the Character Builder link while signed into Insider (and definitely subscribed) but I just keep getting looped back to the main page. When I go to this link, http://dnd.wizards.com/go/insider I get a 404. Edit: Nevermind, cleared my cache, the options show up now. Power Player fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 18:44
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My Lovely Horse posted:The second best combat tracker I've used was 4E Turn Tracker. Maybe give that a shot, but yeah it does depend on what your issues were. (Also, when I say second best, I only ever used two, so, y'know, grain of salt.) You would need two computers to run MapTool at the table, unless you were either 1) keeping track of all sorts of things the players weren't supposed to know separately on paper, or 2) didn't care if players could see the GM version of the map.
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Oct 14, 2014 20:23
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homullus posted:You would need two computers to run MapTool at the table, unless you were either 1) keeping track of all sorts of things the players weren't supposed to know separately on paper, or 2) didn't care if players could see the GM version of the map. This is incorrect. You can simply run two instances of map tools on a single laptop since it is just a Java program; you have one act as the DM/server and the other connect to your own IP as the player. With two monitors this is easy and it is how I do all my map testing when building encounters in Maptool and testing macros for the MacroPolicebox framework. The real issue with Maptool is that for a lot of DMs, it is like trying to learn about custom filters for GIMP when all you want to do is draw stick figures. It is a very powerful tool, but you need a practical knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Java to really get the most out of it. I've been using it for years and I still have to occasionally look up something or ask questions on the Maptool forum.
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Oct 14, 2014 22:07
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RGCrab posted:This is incorrect. You can simply run two instances of map tools on a single laptop since it is just a Java program; you have one act as the DM/server and the other connect to your own IP as the player. With two monitors this is easy and it is how I do all my map testing when building encounters in Maptool and testing macros for the MacroPolicebox framework. I forgot that some people have non-sucky laptops. This answer is the correct answer.
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Oct 14, 2014 22:22
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quote:The real issue with Maptool is that for a lot of DMs, it is like trying to learn about custom filters for GIMP when all you want to do is draw stick figures. It is a very powerful tool, but you need a practical knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Java to really get the most out of it. I've been using it for years and I still have to occasionally look up something or ask questions on the Maptool forum. Slow software from the early 2000's that requires being a geek to get basic functionality out of has only had competition in the last year or so from Roll20. Online tools for tabletop games are still in a pathetic state in 2014.
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Oct 15, 2014 00:45
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Slow software from the early 2000's that requires being a geek to get basic functionality out of has only had competition in the last year or so from Roll20. Online tools for tabletop games are still in a pathetic state in 2014. The majority of the community is comprised of hidebound traditionalists that staunchly refuse anything that alters the "D&D Experience". You should count yourself fortunate that there's been this much progress.
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Oct 15, 2014 03:53
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Mostly I was having trouble with Masterplan getting maps in properly aligned to the grid. Also the inability to zoom in/out without entering a zoom mode and then being unable to move tokens without exiting it again. Is there a decent maptools tutorial out there for just running games through it? Also I just realized I really want a large touchscreen now to set up as a player tool on the table that they can then move their own things around in. The biggest touchscreen I have atm is only my surface so not big enough for more than one person. Cerepol fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 06:18
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Back when MS used the Surface name for their table-sized tablet, they actually did a D&D demo which detected the location of the player models on the map. It's conceptually pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n94E3IeBquY
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Oct 15, 2014 07:59
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Cerepol posted:Mostly I was having trouble with Masterplan getting maps in properly aligned to the grid. The zoom thing, yeah, that's just what Masterplan does. I'm getting around that with the fixed map size, but I'm gonna experiment with a larger one in my next session. quote:Maptool
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Oct 15, 2014 08:06
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My Lovely Horse posted:If you use a map that has a grid drawn in, you have to crop it exactly so there aren't any partial squares at the edges, and of course enter the same width and height (in squares) that your cropped map has. If you make your own maps, it helps a lot having a fixed size for everything and working on it with Masterplan in mind. For instance, we use an old non-widescreen monitor, so when I make maps I usually start with an 800x600 canvas and overlay a 40x40 pixel grid. That gives me a map of 20x15, which is a little on the small side from a realism point of view, but is a very good size for 4E battle maps. And then I just work within that; I have a bunch of graphics assets for mapmaking that all get resized to 40x40 pixels or multiples thereof, and from that point on it's smooth sailing. It's been a couple years now, but Maptool does a pretty good job of lighting and line of sight. Fairly easy to setup and it's pretty quick to update things when a token moves. You don't need to go into coding to get this part of it to work either, the coding is generally for the automation of powers and their effects. There is a 4E Framework available, which seemed to work pretty well when I used it years ago, but I never used it extensively, as we had our own framework of sorts custom made for our group. Edit: I should probably warn you that Maptool can have issues sometimes. My group eventually was forced to abandon it for Klooge.Werks after it destroyed our DM's campaign and macro framework so hard not even a fresh install of Maptool, Java, and Windows would fix it. Lord Justice fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 08:54
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My Lovely Horse posted:What I'm hoping to get out of it is mostly lighting and line of sight stuff. Masterplan is very good but dynamic darkness zones, shadows, light sources etc. are the one thing where it's garbage, particularly with line of sight around corners. The Maptool wiki actually has a great basic explanation of lighting and vision blocking layers. If that is all you are looking for from Maptool it can absolutely provide that with no major knowledge of programming.
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Oct 15, 2014 09:03
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Well I'd also very much like it to do what Masterplan does on top of the lighting  Upon review of the darkness/vision rules the encounter I have in mind is strictly "do the enemies have concealment y/n" and I can probably simulate that easily with overlays for light sources in Masterplan, but I might as well muck about with Maptool in my spare time. ... this Klooge.Werks sounds alright actually, would that work in my localized, secondary monitor setting with the same trick of running two instances?
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Oct 15, 2014 09:23
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My Lovely Horse posted:Well I'd also very much like it to do what Masterplan does on top of the lighting It does, yes, but it handles that sort of thing much differently from Maptool. In Maptool you can kind of switch between DM and player mode on the fly, Werks just kind of forces you into one mode on startup. I don't think it would really matter that much in your case, it only was kind of a nuisance in mine as I was usually a backup DM of sorts keeping things running behind the scenes. Some things I should mention, though. Werks is a paid program, and honestly kind of expensive for what it is. Second, last I checked, while the people involved in creating it are around and capable of helping you with problems, active development on the program itself has basically ceased at this point. It works pretty well for what it is, and it is a lot faster and simpler to get things setup on it than Maptool (I can have a character inputted into the system in about 20 minutes compared to the 2-3 hours it took me in Maptool with our framework). I'll send you a PM and we can discuss the program further if you're really interested in it, don't worry about the paid part too much.
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Oct 15, 2014 09:33
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Lord Justice posted:It does, yes, but it handles that sort of thing much differently from Maptool. In Maptool you can kind of switch between DM and player mode on the fly, Werks just kind of forces you into one mode on startup. I don't think it would really matter that much in your case, it only was kind of a nuisance in mine as I was usually a backup DM of sorts keeping things running behind the scenes. Some things I should mention, though. Werks is a paid program, and honestly kind of expensive for what it is. Second, last I checked, while the people involved in creating it are around and capable of helping you with problems, active development on the program itself has basically ceased at this point. It works pretty well for what it is, and it is a lot faster and simpler to get things setup on it than Maptool (I can have a character inputted into the system in about 20 minutes compared to the 2-3 hours it took me in Maptool with our framework). I'll send you a PM and we can discuss the program further if you're really interested in it, don't worry about the paid part too much. I'm down for more info. Grabbed the demo version to check it out. Off the bat seems decently slick. How much automation can it do? The Demo seems to lock a lot of things out, or makes it hard to tell what I can/can't do.
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Oct 16, 2014 02:07
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Cerepol posted:I'm down for more info. Grabbed the demo version to check it out. Off the bat seems decently slick. How much automation can it do? The Demo seems to lock a lot of things out, or makes it hard to tell what I can/can't do. I'll send you a PM, but as for what I can answer here: A fair amount, I'd say, although it's not perfect and can get things wrong sometimes. The two biggest things it has are automatic attack and damage calculation, I.E, you target a token with the system it has, roll your dice, it tells you if you hit, you roll your damage, and it applies to the token. Well, almost, the DM needs to approve the damage before it applies, but it's quick and easy. It's a bit fiddly with targeting when you first start, but after a while it does speed things up and keeps organized on who is attacking who. The second biggest thing is the text parser. It can parse the text in a power you've put into it, apply that effect automatically, and even know when to turn it off according to the initiative. Issue being is it can be a bit spastic, sometimes finding effects in the text that aren't really effects, and if you mess around with the initiative order in combat it might cause it problems. I think it had other issues, but it's been like 2 years since I used it, so specifics escape me. On the whole, however, I found it pretty useful, you just needed to get used to its quirks. Effects can also be done manually, which I find hugely useful. Basically you can setup a database of effects for all the powers your PCs or monsters are using, and apply them as needed. They can be put on a token and just left there indefinitely, and just turned on and off as needed, or be set to delete themselves after a few turns or just a turn, whatever. Classes like the Runepriest become much easier to play and keep track of with this system.
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Oct 16, 2014 03:11
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I have a friend who has his heart set on making a workable necrotic damage build as warforged at level 25. This is pretty hard, as in most cases necrotic is the single worst energy type to specialize in. He has tried wizard so far and we have gone over it a bit, but wizard doesn't make good use of necrotic damage at all and doesn't really have a way to exploit multiclassing to make it better. I did find dark clovers and Kartan's Void Ring but I'm leaning on the idea that he should make an avenger or a warlock.
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Oct 16, 2014 08:06
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Have you considered letting him reskin some powers to necrotic damage? He's working himself over pretty good because of everything that resists that type anyway, and reskinning powers elementally is supported by the DMG as it is.
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Oct 16, 2014 09:19
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RPZip posted:Have you considered letting him reskin some powers to necrotic damage? He's working himself over pretty good because of everything that resists that type anyway, and reskinning powers elementally is supported by the DMG as it is. Maybe he could just add a second keyword with a weapon?
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Oct 16, 2014 09:24
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Necrotic weapon adds it as a half so get blades heavy or light as an implement and all your powers do part necrotic, allowing you to still use the other damage type. Vampiric converts all and is lower level, but still like level 9. Before 9, not much you can do. Of course, the only real way to PIERCE necrotic resistance - which lots and lots and lots and lots of enemies have - is with...a weapon. Soooooo... EDIT: There's a druid paragon that adds necrotic to all your animal form powers and pierces resistance, but warforged aren't very good druids, that's at paragon, AND I dunno if it even matches their idea for the character. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 09:31
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