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Obviouse answer is to just use 2nd edition style initiative where everyone just rolls a D10 at the start of every round.
goldjas fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 10:37
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Yeah, I feel like 4e's initiative was pretty much its dullest combat rule. It always took too long for everyone to roll and then write it on the whiteboard, or arrange the 3x5 initiative cards, or place their little magnetic doodad in the right spot, or whatever system we were using at the time. The length is doubly bad since it just boils down to did you beat team monster on round 1 or not. I don't know that you'd lose all that much if you just went clockwise around the table.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:07
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Having hard rules for determining who goes first in a combat is most important in "rocket-tag" type games where there are large advantages to going first. I don't think a vast amount would be lost in 4e if initiative wasn't a thing. Clockwise around the table means one less thing to track, and it makes it easier to tell whose go is next.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:22
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It becomes a little more rocket-taggy if all the monsters go at once, then all the PCs go at once.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:31
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Really Pants posted:It becomes a little more rocket-taggy if all the monsters go at once, then all the PCs go at once. Hmm, yeah, that is a good point.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:35
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I'd think about going 'PC, monster, PC, monster etc etc', varying which PC starts each combat on a cycle. PCs always go first, they're just that good.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:36
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Gort posted:Having hard rules for determining who goes first in a combat is most important in "rocket-tag" type games where there are large advantages to going first. I dunno. That seems like a pretty good description of 4e to me.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:39
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Indeed, whatever (high level well-optimised) 4e is, or isn't, rocket tag is something it definitely is. More refined rocket tag than most, perhaps, and with lots more ways for the PCs in particular to avoid getting tagged, or to pop back up afterwards, but... Epic LFR has basically been 'do we win init y/n? If y, at least half the monsters die before they can act'. It's great fun for everyone, as long as the DM isn't hung up on his monsters actually doing stuff...
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Jan 17, 2015 12:42
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I didn't have that experience when I played my last campaign to level 30 - but then again my players don't really optimise their characters. Sounds like that might be a good thing from what you're saying, though. I guess you'd just add more monsters if half of them die every round.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:53
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In LFR mods the answer is often 'have an in-combat skill challenge that makes the monsters almost impossible to defeat until at least the start of the second round' - that way they get their big stuff off and the fight feels a bit more tense.
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Jan 17, 2015 13:02
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Sounds like kind of an ugly hack. Couldn't you just give the monsters more HP or some other resistance to the most egregious PC abilities? Presumably somewhere there's a design guideline that says something like "A standard-difficulty fight should last roughly five rounds" - design to that. Though I guess that might lock the door on parties who don't optimise their DPR using the latest builds from the Internet.
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Jan 17, 2015 13:06
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Two to three rounds is the general advice for how long a fight should take as far as I'm aware. 5 rounds in most of the groups I've played in would take way the hell too long and result in most people using at-wills for most of the fight, which is dull. It is a bit of a hack, but it's better than other alternatives. More HP isn't going to fix anything, the PCs have more than enough damage to cope. Giving them resistances to things the PCs do commonly (damage) is basically what we're talking about anyway - the mod we played on Tuesday for instance had a boss monster who had resist all equal to and regen equal to 10x the successes remaining in the SC - basically that IS resistance to the PCs' best tricks, but you can turn it off. LFR Epic in particular has come with some very good difficulty and speed dials though - so for lower-op groups, you can turn things down, and for higher-op groups you can make them a lot harder. They also added speed-increasing options too.
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Jan 17, 2015 13:12
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thespaceinvader posted:LFR Epic in particular has come with some very good difficulty and speed dials though - so for lower-op groups, you can turn things down, and for higher-op groups you can make them a lot harder. They also added speed-increasing options too. Where can I get hold of these?
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Jan 17, 2015 13:41
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Livingforgottenrealms.com. They get better as you go through - the earlier ones didn't have as much customisability, the later ones have a lot - but the earlier ones have much better set0piece fights whilst the later ones use a lot more poster maps and simple fight layouts. Search 'EPIC'. It's a complete, and good, campaign, one mod per level, each mod intended to take 3 4-hour sessions, roughly, albeit I'm not a fan of the last couple of adventures, I think they should have chosen a less dickish final boss. There's a lot of good material in there generally, actually. Some really dodgy stuff too. One of these days I really must get around to working out that LFR from 1 to 30 post.
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Jan 17, 2015 13:51
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Is there a place where I can get DTAS rules I want to try running it.
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Jan 17, 2015 18:08
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I think it was forums-poster Fuego Fish who did some rules for that; maybe pm him?
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Jan 17, 2015 18:59
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dbzfandiego posted:Is there a place where I can get DTAS rules I want to try running it. It's in the F&F wiki, alongside other cool stuff. http://tradwiki.foxxtrot.net/index.php/DTAS_Rules
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Jan 17, 2015 20:30
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Thank you!
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Jan 17, 2015 20:47
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Is there a good 4e Star Wars hack? I know saga edition was proto 4e bit I want the whole deal. And I could reskin everything myself but 
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Jan 17, 2015 20:57
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You're welcome! Keep in mind the Skill section is weird as hell and I just ignore it.Otisburg posted:Is there a good 4e Star Wars hack? I know saga edition was proto 4e bit I want the whole deal. And I could reskin everything myself but There isn't as far as I know, but the newest FFG system is really really good, if not especially tactical.
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Jan 17, 2015 21:04
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Azran posted:You're welcome! Keep in mind the Skill section is weird as hell and I just ignore it. I like especially tactical. 
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Jan 17, 2015 21:12
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My girlfriend just got a new phone. Are there any good Android apps around that would be useful for a player? Preferrably with the ability to import a sheet from local .dnd4e files.
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Jan 17, 2015 21:17
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Otisburg posted:Is there a good 4e Star Wars hack? I know saga edition was proto 4e bit I want the whole deal. And I could reskin everything myself but Maxwell Lord is working on a retro clone that would work nicely, but failing that, why not just use the weapons/armor from SE, cull the races to ones with good SW analogues and suggest Battlemind/Ardent? Seems like an easy swap?
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Jan 17, 2015 21:53
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My Lovely Horse posted:My girlfriend just got a new phone. Are there any good Android apps around that would be useful for a player? Preferrably with the ability to import a sheet from local .dnd4e files. Are there any good 4e iOS apps? I would love to be able to eliminate people having always worry about printing out updated character sheets if they could just keep them on their phone.
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Jan 17, 2015 22:04
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iplay4e was always my preference.
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Jan 17, 2015 22:19
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Otisburg posted:Is there a good 4e Star Wars hack? I know saga edition was proto 4e bit I want the whole deal. And I could reskin everything myself but TBH, you could do a fairly good 4e star wars hack by... reflavouring 4e as star wars. It would work remarkably well I suspect. Use 4e for the first person combat, and Star Wars X Wing for the space combat, done.
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Jan 18, 2015 00:20
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Are different levels of weapon proficiency bonuses something that's usually houseruled out? If yes, in what direction? That DTAS guide looks excellent for quickly getting a game started/cutting through a bunch of cruft and I'd like to leverage it to run 4E in the near future.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:35
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My Lovely Horse posted:My girlfriend just got a new phone. Are there any good Android apps around that would be useful for a player? Preferrably with the ability to import a sheet from local .dnd4e files.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:Are different levels of weapon proficiency bonuses something that's usually houseruled out? If yes, in what direction? I've never seriously considered stripping out weapon proficiency bonuses, but my first thought on the idea is that it's going to make some otherwise unattractive weapons mostly useless. For some weapons like longswords, that extra +1 to hit is your main reason for picking it up.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:54
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KSheet is pretty great, I've been using it for ages. Also, on the initiative front: Popcorn Initiative has worked pretty well for my group. It just requires a bit of fiddling for end of this/next turn effects.
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Jan 18, 2015 05:02
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So I've been on a houserules kick lately and have been reading a bunch of blogs and learning other peoples houserules. Here's a few I'd thought I would share: quote:Divine Die This sounds like a lot of fun. Something like this could be like "the moment" of every session. quote:Luck Points Thinking of combining this rule with the "you can spend an action point during a short rest to recharge a daily" houserule. Could add for some interesting management of action points. quote:Action Points are better in early rounds: I’ve seen a number of folks post about this idea in various places. If an action point is spent in the first round, any attack made with that action gets +3 damage (+2 in second round, +1 in third). This helps to encourage PCs not to horde that resource. An interesting idea, but not sure how I feel about it yet. quote:Losing Healing Surges with Fear effects: I’ll often give players the option of losing a healing surge instead of being stunned by a fear effect, or losing the surge to auto-save vs the effect on their turn. HS can be a measure of your willingness to fight, and terror takes away that willingness. Another idea that I'm not sure how I feel about. quote:Two Hit Minions This could be fun to have minions that require 2 hits or 1 crit.
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Jan 18, 2015 06:02
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You got to be careful when it comes to handling out meta currency. Too many different ones and they will become annoying (re: luck points).
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Jan 18, 2015 06:10
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Azran posted:You got to be careful when it comes to handling out meta currency. Too many different ones and they will become annoying (re: luck points). Yeah, totally agree. Those were just a few houserules I thought were interesting and worth discussion. I really like the idea of the divine die.
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Jan 18, 2015 06:18
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The Divine Die is alright. A bit of a last ditch measure, certainly not too strong, but with the potential to make a huge difference. Luck Points - eh. An extra standard action is categorically better than something that comes up in 5% of cases, for d20 rolls at least. But for anything else, how often do you really need to just deal 1 more damage? It does come up, but when it does you can still spend a regular action point and make another attack. Actually both the Action Point rules seem to be written by someone whose party tends to hoard or forget about them. My party is the same way but I just occasionally mention "you can still spend an action point" and a lot of the time they go "that's right, and I will", or I say "you know, milestone's coming up after this fight, you'll get a fresh AP". Healing Surges vs. Fear: I don't know how many monster powers actually have the fear keyword but I'm willing to wager it's not enough to make this remotely worth it. Keywords like that are more of a PC thing because they have all this power/feat/class feature interaction going. And sure, you can make it so it works against all stun effects, but a better way to mitigate the annoyance of being stunned if to avoid monsters that stun in the first place.
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Jan 18, 2015 09:47
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I wouldn't go with 'APs are better in the first round' as a house rules because... APs are already best spent in the first round. The focus fire nova is a huge part of getting 4e tactics right, and APs are a massive part of that. Spend them early, spend them often. If the players want to make their spending of APs better, they should MC warlord...
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Jan 18, 2015 10:18
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4e's metagame is a bit weird. Much as with 3e, it inevitably turned towards making the best nova possible, albeit now on a per encounter scale rather then per daily (which is why a fair amount of the big optimization these days is focused on increasing your action points, especially for Leaders), but I feel like nova-ing is generally a tactic most players won't instinctively turn to. In all my experience players are always, always far more likely to save Action Points as a "get my rear end out of the fire" maneuver rather then a "ensure my rear end never even gets near the flames" one. There is always the fear of "what if I need it later" that holds novas back for most people. Rather then try to subvert that and make novas even more powerful, you should if anything do the opposite. Make APs more powerful on later turns. If the natural instinct is to save APs for "when they're needed," why not reward that so players feel like they're doing the smart thing?
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Jan 18, 2015 13:27
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It takes a bit of a leap of logic to get to 'if they die before they act, they don't act' - but encouraging bad play and the game to last more rounds doesn't seem to be a good way to speed up already-long combat.
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Jan 18, 2015 13:33
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ProfessorCirno posted:In all my experience players are always, always far more likely to save Action Points as a "get my rear end out of the fire" maneuver rather then a "ensure my rear end never even gets near the flames" one. There is always the fear of "what if I need it later" that holds novas back for most people. Right now they're level 5, which I feel is a good place to be with resources: use an action point in one combat, a daily power in the next, get a milestone and a new action point, repeat.
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Jan 18, 2015 13:57
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Moriatti posted:Maxwell Lord is working on a retro clone that would work nicely, but failing that, why not just use the weapons/armor from SE, cull the races to ones with good SW analogues and suggest Battlemind/Ardent? Seems like an easy swap? By "working on", read "adding to in fits and starts between bigger writing projects". I've got the non-utility powers for one class written up and most of those I feel like I'll need to replace with something less derivative. A couple of bits of advice if you just wanna hack 4e though: Ranged combat tends to be canonically more prevalent in Star Wars, especially among enemies (stormtroopers, battle droids, etc.) Jedi have the whole 'deflect lasers' trick, maybe other melee combatants should have some similar options so they can close ranks with the enemy and force them into melee. Or just have more melee opponents (the KOTOR stormtrooper equivalent has a melee attack and early drafts of the movie gave everyone laser swords.) Since armor really isn't much of a thing (apart from people who wear it to look badass) you may want to replace AC with a general Defense (apart from the three saves) and give each class a flat bonus equal to the AC they'd get from their class's most common armor (though this does cut out check penalties which I never cared for anyway.)
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Jan 18, 2015 18:46
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I've seen at least one suggestion of a Jedis version of 4e (thus neatly avoiding the whole ranged combat issue that Jedis do a lot less than sensible people anyway) which basically said that armours are replaced by lightsaber combat styles - EU-canonically there were a whole bunch of combat styles which made you more or less defensively oriented, so refluffing AC as active defence might work nicely. But then, AC and Reflex have long been accused of occupying way too similar a set of design space, so just axing AC entirely and killing proficiency bonuses to compensate would probably do the trick.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:16
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