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Mordiceius posted:I see the Zeitgeist adventure path listed in the OP. Has anyone tried it out? Is it any good?
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Jan 11, 2015 17:55
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dwarf74 posted:My group is 90% of the way through Adventure 4, and yeah, it's really good. It is much better if you have involved players, who track npcs, try to uncover mysteries, learn about the world, and generally buy into the campaign's conceits, though. There's plenty of combat, but make sure your players are on-board. That's awesome to hear. How long do each of the adventures take? I think Zeitgeist may be the way to go for my party. Since they're all basically new to the game, I don't think it's going to be hard to get them to buy in. They're not jaded grognards.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:31
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My Lovely Horse posted:e2: my party has a strange relationship to insight Sounds like the players know it's a trap but are going in anyway because, well, that's clearly where the fun adventure is. If they were the kind of people who didn't spring traps then they'd use their incredible magical, social and martial skills to get proper jobs instead of trying to murder flying alligators.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:55
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Mordiceius posted:That's awesome to hear. My advice, FWIW... (1) The maps are huge. Either prepare to accept this as a given and use a huge table, or be prepared to do some extra work. I've been printing the map pages as Posters, at whatever zoom is necessary (usually 400% or 500%). The climax of Adventure 4 has a map that fills my entire table; I think it's like 5 sheets x 6 sheets. Adventure 1 kicks off with a super-giant map, too, so you can get a sense of what you're in for from the free download.  (2) Encourage - strongly - that the players pick a Zeitgeist theme and work up characters that fit the setting and campaign (that is, "you're basically fantasy secret agents somewhere between CIA and FBI, and are generally loyal to Risur"). You don't need to have an iron hand about this; I offered a "1 more stat point to build with" carrot, and it was enough; it helps that the themes are both powerful and awesome, and it really makes a difference. Also, if they can glance through the basics about the world (like 3 pages or whatever) it's good. If they read the Player's Guide section on Flint before Adventure 2, it makes a big difference. (3) Use inherent bonuses. This is general advice, but it works. There isn't that much treasure the PCs get to keep by default, so this keeps you sane. (4) Guns are awesome, but they tend to be pretty useless with the way 4e works. I implemented a house-rule that lets you use your highest stat and all applicable accuracy/damage feats on ranged basic attacks with firearms. They're everyone's favorite backup ranged weapon, now, which is perfect. I have a "gunslinger" Ranger in the party who has a Musket reskinned into a brace of pistols, too. (5) Laugh at the grenades in the Player's Guide. (6) Rituals are really important; someone should know how to use them. I have 3 Ritual Casters; one is a Fighter who spent a feat for it. Otherwise... yeah, have a blast. 
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Jan 11, 2015 19:39
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dwarf74 posted:(2) Encourage - strongly - that the players pick a Zeitgeist theme and work up characters that fit the setting and campaign (that is, "you're basically fantasy secret agents somewhere between CIA and FBI, and are generally loyal to Risur"). You don't need to have an iron hand about this; I offered a "1 more stat point to build with" carrot, and it was enough; it helps that the themes are both powerful and awesome, and it really makes a difference. Also, if they can glance through the basics about the world (like 3 pages or whatever) it's good. If they read the Player's Guide section on Flint before Adventure 2, it makes a big difference. Docker is a solid enough theme, but Escatologist's power is actively bad and its features aren't much better unless you're doing a serious gimmick build, Gunsmith's power is a bit on the novelty side but its features are very nice, Martial Scientist could be interesting but it really depends on how well they've designed the techniques (and the level 10 ranges from kind of a novelty on some characters to like four free feats on others), Skyseer is okayish but would be better if it functioned more like all the other "alter fate" powers where you can choose to use the banked roll instead of being locked into it for better or for worse, Spirit Medium is solid, Technologist has a high potential for shenanigans, Vekeshi Mystic's extra uses of its power drop off a fair amount since you can only use them once per round and its features are rather story-dependent (but this is a campaign theme, so that's not really a problem), and Yerasol Veteran's features are nice but I think its encounter power needs to do a bit more or be pared down to fit in a move action. Most of them aren't bad (with the exception of Eschatologist, which is garbage aside from your ability to fiat away character death) and are pretty workable to good, but I'm not sure how powerful I'd rate them compared to the existing all-stars. Though if you're in the mood for comedic horror, check out the Pathfinder version of the player's guide. Spoiler Alert: only the Gunsmith comes out of this one looking good. Those poor deva  .
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Jan 12, 2015 02:03
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LightWarden posted:Docker is a solid enough theme, but Escatologist's power is actively bad and its features aren't much better unless you're doing a serious gimmick build, Gunsmith's power is a bit on the novelty side but its features are very nice, Martial Scientist could be interesting but it really depends on how well they've designed the techniques (and the level 10 ranges from kind of a novelty on some characters to like four free feats on others), Skyseer is okayish but would be better if it functioned more like all the other "alter fate" powers where you can choose to use the banked roll instead of being locked into it for better or for worse, Spirit Medium is solid, Technologist has a high potential for shenanigans, Vekeshi Mystic's extra uses of its power drop off a fair amount since you can only use them once per round and its features are rather story-dependent (but this is a campaign theme, so that's not really a problem), and Yerasol Veteran's features are nice but I think its encounter power needs to do a bit more or be pared down to fit in a move action.  The Level 5 change to the power is nice, but the "must be bloodied" and "standard action" bits in the power really need to go. (And I've done so in my own game, fwiw, which has likewise made a difference. It's a minor action for us.)e: I checked the link; holy poo poo I am so glad I am not playing Pathfinder. That's another nice thing about this adventure path - it was clearly written with 4e in mind. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 02:46
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The other issue you might have is that not all characters fit the new themes. I had to do quite a bit of crowbaring to get my heretical priest to work as a Docker.
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Jan 12, 2015 03:14
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah, sorry, I was including the extensions into paragon paths, where Logos is arguably pretty busted and more than makes up for the weak Encounter power. Yeah, but Logos is probably the easiest of the paragon paths to qualify for if you don't have the associated theme, since it's just "Diplomacy, History and you like to talk shop about philosophy" so it's easy enough to enter it as a Docker or something since that can also lead to sitting around in taverns talking about the role of man and government or whatever. And then you have actual theme powers and features. And even if it was somehow ridiculously difficult to get into without the theme (like Polyhistor), if you didn't take Logos then you'd just be stuck with a garbage theme unless there's some shockingly meaty story hooks buried in there aside from "you like to talk about endings, here are some guys that like talking about endings, here are some guys that like making them." Changing the standard to minor and removing the "must be bloodied" option does improve it, though I'd probably make it bypass enemy resistance as well unless there's some plot reason for it. If the bloodied condition is part of the power it should be tied to a more interesting option such as sustaining it freely or bypassing resistance/immunities or something. ProfessorCirno posted:The other issue you might have is that not all characters fit the new themes. This too. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 03:23
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ProfessorCirno posted:The other issue you might have is that not all characters fit the new themes. I had to do quite a bit of crowbaring to get my heretical priest to work as a Docker. We didn't do this, mind you, but right now, that's my recommendation, take it or leave it. Still, we got some cool bits in return. Our Docker, for example, is a Bugbear Barbarian who does interpretive crate-throwing dance. Also, Gunsmith was really really hard to figure out. There's no class in 4e which really calls for two pistols, and even for Rangers it's weak. Hence, the reskinned Musket in my own game. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 03:24
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dwarf74 posted:
Rogue has the Two-Fisted Shooter feat, though I've just as often see that one used with a hand crossbow and light blade rather than going John Woo on everything, and you need to get to level 5 before that's really feasible as a Gunsmith.
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Jan 12, 2015 03:31
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah, this is part of the whole "get your players' buy-in" deal. The themes are very ... er ... thematic. You don't necessarily want to go race/class -> theme, you want to go theme -> race/class IMO. Well, sorta. It's more that there's a lot of space in the setting that the themes don't all cover. To use myself as an example, I'm a heretical Deva cleric who fled Crisillyir a few lifetimes ago. Fits the setting perfectly. Not so much on the themes.
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Jan 12, 2015 04:11
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Similarly, "godhand" is literally a job you can hold in Crisillyir, but I have no idea what theme would fit a monk-paladin (well, Zeitgeist theme. Musical theme is a bit of a different story).
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Jan 12, 2015 04:56
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ProfessorCirno posted:Well, sorta.
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Jan 12, 2015 06:41
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Honestly, I think it's awesome that included themes at all. The amount of work poured into this product is completely incredible. Looks like the 9th adventure came out just a couple days ago.
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Jan 12, 2015 06:47
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Mordiceius posted:Honestly, I think it's awesome that included themes at all. The amount of work poured into this product is completely incredible. Looks like the 9th adventure came out just a couple days ago. The release schedule is really slow, though; the first adventure came out in like 2011. The writing pretty much puts Paizo's to shame, so it's worth it. I'm hoping to run the campaign myself if I can wrangle up a group at my university.
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Jan 12, 2015 08:48
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Dire Wombat posted:The release schedule is really slow, though; the first adventure came out in like 2011. The writing pretty much puts Paizo's to shame, so it's worth it. I'm hoping to run the campaign myself if I can wrangle up a group at my university. Yeah. I hope to start my group around the end of the month. With the amount of content there is so far (9 of the 13 adventures), I hope we're able to make things last until all 13 are out. I might do a month or two break between each act (between 5 and 6 and between 9 and 10) and just run a Gamma World adventure or something to break things up a bit.
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Jan 12, 2015 09:07
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My group has been talking about doing Zeitgeist after Scales of War and I have no idea what theme I'd want. I was planning on building a debuffer Rogue sort of modeled after Reese from Person of Interest (disowned, assumed dead spy, doesn't kill but kneecaps everyone). Any thoughts? I'm thinking maybe a Gunsmith, but I'd honestly rather just do the regular Spy.
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Jan 12, 2015 20:57
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Echophonic posted:My group has been talking about doing Zeitgeist after Scales of War and I have no idea what theme I'd want. I was planning on building a debuffer Rogue sort of modeled after Reese from Person of Interest (disowned, assumed dead spy, doesn't kill but kneecaps everyone). Any thoughts? I'm thinking maybe a Gunsmith, but I'd honestly rather just do the regular Spy.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:04
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I had this idea that I'd change up the formula for a combat and have a three-way battle for some fun tactical challenge, but I don't think it's working out. It only seems to boil down to "this is a combat where the other side reduces its own HP occasionally." Anyone tried something like this before?
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Jan 13, 2015 22:44
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My Lovely Horse posted:I had this idea that I'd change up the formula for a combat and have a three-way battle for some fun tactical challenge, but I don't think it's working out. It only seems to boil down to "this is a combat where the other side reduces its own HP occasionally." Anyone tried something like this before? Yeah - if you make it too mechanically detailed it turns into "the DM plays D&D with himself". Best way I've found to do it is to make great use of minion behaviour and just have the occasional enemy die on each side every so often. It's tough to do and actually have it contribute much to the narrative.
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Jan 13, 2015 23:03
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I can't for the life of me remember where to find the rules for animal companions. I have a rogue who wants a dog. Is it in the essentials books, or do I crib from the druid?
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Jan 13, 2015 23:44
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There are some themes that do it - one is in Heroes of the Feywild I'm pretty sure.
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Jan 13, 2015 23:52
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That'll work, thanks!
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Jan 14, 2015 00:25
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Three way combats thrive in the proper terrain, where Side A can use a combination of mobility and forced movement to make it difficult for Side B to attack Side A but easy for Side B to attack Side C. Assuming the PCs are Side A, too many ranged attackers on B and/or C make this iffy; Zone and Wall capability on the part of A can ameliorate it slightly. The keys are A) Have narrative reasons for Side B and Side C not to ally against Side A, and B) have terrain that allows the aforementioned types of tactics.
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Jan 14, 2015 00:31
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dwarf74 posted:Vekeshi Mystic has lots of fun spycraft. That's actually a pretty cool path and I could work the flavor into what I want to do. Thanks, fellow dwarf-enthusiast! ..now I just have to update the existing Zeitgeist CBLoader file to have the newer stuff. Echophonic fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 00:57
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Echophonic posted:That's actually a pretty cool path and I could work the flavor into what I want to do. Thanks, fellow dwarf-enthusiast!
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Jan 14, 2015 03:15
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At this point I don't know which of you I have to hit up over PMs to get access to a reliable CB Loader application.
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Jan 14, 2015 03:19
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:At this point I don't know which of you I have to hit up over PMs to get access to a reliable CB Loader application.
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Jan 14, 2015 04:36
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fatherdog posted:Three way combats e: Mordiceius posted:What 4e houserules do you use in your groups? Cribbed from 13th Age: everybody gets a background that's good for a +3 skill bonus when it seems cool to everyone. It can't apply to all applications of one particular skill (that's what Skill Focus is for) and it has to suggest application across at least 2-3 different skills. Honestly not working out as well as I thought it would. It doesn't break anything, it's just kind of there. You can use any ritual of your level or lower. Casting a ritual costs 2 healing surges instead of components, which any participant can contribute. A ritual 5 or more levels below yours costs 1 surge the first time in a day and 2 every time afterwards, a ritual 10 or more below is free the first time and costs 1 afterwards. Exceptions are rituals that create items and ones where HP or surges are already at stake (Remove Disease, Remove Affliction, Raise Dead and so on); those cost the stated price. Rituals that already cost healing surges as written, we call those on the spot; I've made Comrades Succor free to use except for the one surge, for example. This is an experimental rule and we said we'd review it as needed, but we haven't been using rituals very much so far. Background on the last one: no one really liked component tracking or the idea of ritual components existing in my last campaign, and I thought it was silly that even at epic levels and with more money than god my players would rather hunker down, cast Hand of Fate 10 times in a row and try to make a logic matrix with the answers than cast one proper divination and get a reliable answer immediately. But I still wanted to emulate rituals getting cheaper to cast as you go along. Like I said, we don't have enough data to say if that actually works as intended. e: more background: you probably noticed that some rituals still cost money. So how do we get around components being a thing after all? We just say you can straight up sacrifice money to the spirits of magic. Just chuck those 65.000 GP into a canyon or into the ocean, or if you like, have people build a secret underground vault for it. The point is that you (and your party) give up possession of the money forever. And that's why the party keeps finding loot in strange places and coming across trapped vaults in the middle of nowhere. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Jan 15, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 15:41
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dwarf74 posted:I got you covered. Will do, just have to actually sit down and work on it and uggghhhhh.
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Jan 14, 2015 17:35
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I remember when 4e came out and everyone was pissed about it and would say stuff like "It's basically like they made a World of Warcraft version of D&D." (Meaning as an insult) But looking back, I begin to wonder if they should have even taken things further in that direction with combat encounters. Basically, I want to see more MMO dungeon/raid style boss fights. The stuff, at least released in WotC-written modules, is mostly (to use MMO terms) "tank and spank" fights. Has anyone here ever made a more "MMO boss gimmick" style encounter?
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Jan 16, 2015 19:09
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Yep http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/2010/04/1511/ I've never understood why 'like WoW' is supposed to be bad. WoW is the most popular RPG of all time, ever. What game WOULDN'T want to learn from that?
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Jan 16, 2015 19:20
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I always kinda thought that was how you were supposed to write/play a boss. Something like the third session of D&D I ever DM'd had a Goblin Alchemist that threw an assortment of different potions at the party - setting squares on fire, putting oil slicks on others, breaking the windows to let other goblins in (adds!) and then when he died he broke open all his bottles and the group had to get away before he blew himself sky high.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:27
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Mordiceius posted:Has anyone here ever made a more "MMO boss gimmick" style encounter? thespaceinvader posted:Yep http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/2010/04/1511/
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Jan 16, 2015 19:28
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thespaceinvader posted:Yep http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/2010/04/1511/ Nerds hate each other and resort to tribalism basically instantly. A lot of it is just pure bitterness. People always compared games they didn't like to video games to prove how uncreative and how bad they were, but video games also used to get full on reviews in Dragon. Then they got WAY more popular and the comparisons started to happen way more often.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:24
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I've been thinking about houserules a bunch lately. The ones I used in the last campaign I ran were mostly pretty straightforward: inherent bonuses and free math fix feats, rituals cost surges and you had to be trained in the key skill of the ritual to use it, level up at the conclusion of each adventure, and alchemical items were treated more like 1/ adventure items. The one other rule I used was that instead of giving out money in GP terms, I'd write up a brief description of the loot, occasionally including a plot hook, and then just assign it a level. You could then just trade the treasure in for an item, mount, boon, or what have you that was equal level to the treasure. I was going to have vehicles, buildings, and influence and favor with the powerful pretty much all work the same way, but the game didn't last long enough for that to come into play. I've been toying around with an idea to radically simplify 4e by compressing PC Ability Scores into your Fortitude Bonus, Reflex Bonus, and Will Bonus. Bonus here meaning the number you add to 10 to get your NADs, e.g. instead of a character having a 24 Strength they'd just have a +7 Fortitude Bonus and a 17 Fortitude Defense. Each of the 3 would then just inherit everything belonging to the two stats that you'd normally use to determine your Fort, Ref, and Wil. At the start of a fight you wouldn't roll Initiative, you'd just roll Reflex; you wouldn't roll Athletics or Endurance skill checks, you'd just roll Fortitude. You might also want AC as well. But even that could be: wearing heavy armor sets your AC to Fortitude +2 or +3 and your speed at -1, light armor sets your AC to Reflex +1, and then holding a shield adds another +1 or +2 to AC. This would reduce each PC's numerical statistics from being: 6 Ability Scores, 6 Ability Score Bonuses, 6 Ability Score +1/2 Level Bonuses, 4 defenses, 2 to 3 attack bonus values, 17 different skills, your initiative, your speed, your HP, your Surges and your passive perception and insight (47 or 48 different numbers which scale at slightly different rates!), down to 3 Ability Bonuses, 4 Defenses, 2 to 3 attack bonus values, your speed, your HP, and your Surges (12 or 13 things which would scale at the same rate). There would be a bunch of other possible tweaks and variations one could make here. You could retain 4e's split between acting characters rolling a d20+mod VS a static DC/Defense, or you could make it so players roll for everything and only use the Bonuses and drop the 3 of the Defenses, retaining only the an AC Bonus. You could make it so all of a character's attacks just use their highest Ability Bonus, or translate STR/CON attacks into Fort Attacks, DEX/INT attacks into Reflex Attacks, and WIS/CHR into Will Attacks. It's still a rough idea, but I think there is some promise to it.
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Jan 16, 2015 23:17
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Why not just go the whole hog and DTAS?
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Jan 17, 2015 00:39
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thespaceinvader posted:Why not just go the whole hog and DTAS? Yeah, you could cut out a ton of stuff if you parried it down to: "In combat an attack roll an 8+ hits. On a skill check a roll of 4+/8+/12+ beats an easy/normal/hard difficulty. When rolling skill checks, use advantage to reflect skill training and helpful circumstance, use disadvantage if their is a major impediment." After rejiggering HP and damage values, you'd almost be done. But that always seemed a little too sterile and stripped down for me. So anytime I start going down that road, I end up trying (and failing) to staple 4e's combat system onto a FATE knockoff. Which might actually be pretty cool if someone got that working. Actually, that's pretty much what Strike! is doing. I stopped stripping out parts where I did because there are a couple of things that ability scores (by whatever name they're called) add that I think are worth keeping. I like the mini-game of trying to target the right defense. Ability scores give players a rough guide to what a character is like and that can be helpful as well. In this case, how tough they are, how quick they are, and how zen they are, is enough to give a little bit of form without relying on or bringing in the truly useless stuff 4e inherited from prior editions. Keeping these numbers around also makes it a little easier to work out compatibility issues, in case I ever got this into a playable state and wanted to use a published 4e adventure or monster or whatnot. Though, these are all pretty hypothetical benefits since I'm mostly just brain storming. Ideally, if keep working on this, I'd want to make something akin to a PC version of MM3 on a business card, where you set a level, come up with an idea, grab some powers, and have numbers that are fun and work.
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Jan 17, 2015 02:17
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Mordiceius posted:I remember when 4e came out and everyone was pissed about it and would say stuff like "It's basically like they made a World of Warcraft version of D&D." (Meaning as an insult) yeah i remember doing a fight where some generic Wizard boss got blowed up at half HP and turned into a Flameskull. I got no complaints and it sort of owned, so do it.
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Jan 17, 2015 09:46
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wallawallawingwang posted:Yeah, you could cut out a ton of stuff if you parried it down to: "In combat an attack roll an 8+ hits. On a skill check a roll of 4+/8+/12+ beats an easy/normal/hard difficulty. When rolling skill checks, use advantage to reflect skill training and helpful circumstance, use disadvantage if their is a major impediment." After rejiggering HP and damage values, you'd almost be done. But that always seemed a little too sterile and stripped down for me. So anytime I start going down that road, I end up trying (and failing) to staple 4e's combat system onto a FATE knockoff. Which might actually be pretty cool if someone got that working. Actually, that's pretty much what Strike! is doing. You only DTAS combat. You set a Dungeon-World-style standard array of ability scores you can take (probably two arrays, a balanced one and a specialist one i.e. 18/14 start vs 16/16 start), and the highest one sets your attack, the second highest your secondaries, and the scores do your skills, generally. The only thing I never quite figures was how to make defences and initiative work with DTAS combat, but I'm sure someone else has done the job for me.
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Jan 17, 2015 09:59
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