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There's also the issue that making 1's into Super Bad things is that some characters just roll more often. A slayer based around charging is basically gonna do that one attack/round, while the two-weapon ranger is having to carry an arsenal because he can attack like 7 times in a single round. The problem I have with making 1s into Super Failures is that, like, what if you're rolling a skill check and you have a +38 to, I dunno, diplomacy, and you're level 3? You're obviously going to blow through any and all skill checks and have probably based your entire character around diplomacy, so at the core of the character is "Diplomatic as all get out." Except you roll a 1 (which isn't even an autofail RAW) so instead you openly insult a person's mother while taking a dump on their national flag? It's weird to have a Horrific Failure when you're basically the paragon of that ability. I had a DM who did the whole "If you roll a 1, something terrible happens", which resulted in, every single combat, someone rolling a 1 and setting large fires, breaking weapons, destroying treasure, hitting themselves, etc. It was horribly unfun, so I left. If you want to make rolling a 1 fun, have everyone learn from failures and give the entire group a teeny-tiny bit of XP each time someone rolls a 1. A goofy small amount. Keep a running track of xp gained via rolling 1s, and see how big it gets.
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Jan 26, 2015 19:15
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Gharbad the Weak posted:There's also the issue that making 1's into Super Bad things is that some characters just roll more often. A slayer based around charging is basically gonna do that one attack/round, while the two-weapon ranger is having to carry an arsenal because he can attack like 7 times in a single round. Yeah thats the main reason I left his campaign. Its the only time I ever really wanted to lie about my die rolls.
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Jan 26, 2015 19:18
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Yeah, I find it weird enough that someone who's good enough at swording to successfully sword gods, can automatically fail to sword someone who's lying unconscious on the ground in front of him 1/20 of the time, without needing him to also slip and fall on his arse like a chump if he does so.
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Jan 26, 2015 19:21
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If you want it to be something that doesn't necessarily harm the players, have a 1 in combat be a change to the terrain in a place (and of a type) that the monsters can also be affected by. The 1 becomes a miss and a change in tactics; if the players roll another 1, you could have it go away, rather than piling stuff on.
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Jan 26, 2015 19:21
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ImpactVector posted:Hell, even a lot of powers just completely stop working without a weapon. I once played with a DM that thought starting a brand new group, most of whom had no 4e experience, with a classic "you're a bunch of prisoners with no stuff" scenario would be a good idea. I thought there was an unarmed ranged attack?
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Jan 26, 2015 20:32
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Echophonic posted:I thought there was an unarmed ranged attack? So I suppose you're right that his character would have functioned RAW, but it's still a pretty brutal way to have to fight an encounter. Especially in the context of "natural 1 weapon breaks".
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Jan 26, 2015 20:53
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Echophonic posted:I thought there was an unarmed ranged attack? You can always make unarmed attacks in melee, but only if you actually have something to chuck at range. And unarmed attacks suck unless you're a brawler or an arena fighter (one of these days I want to play an arena fighter with inherent bonuses turned on for the 'literally anything is a weapon' thing. And be fully functional when hitting people with the gnome wizard.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:10
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When you roll a 1, take a shot.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:18
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thespaceinvader posted:You can always make unarmed attacks in melee, but only if you actually have something to chuck at range. And unarmed attacks suck unless you're a brawler or an arena fighter (one of these days I want to play an arena fighter with inherent bonuses turned on for the 'literally anything is a weapon' thing. And be fully functional when hitting people with the gnome wizard. Just don't do that in a campaign where a natural 1 results in the gnome wizard snapping in two.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:18
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I stopped playing with a guy in part because he was going to make us use critical failures on a one. His reasoning? "If you can get critical successes, it just makes sense that you can get critical bad stuff too."
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Jan 26, 2015 22:22
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homullus posted:Just don't do that in a campaign where a natural 1 results in the gnome wizard snapping in two. S.J. posted:I stopped playing with a guy in part because he was going to make us use critical failures on a one. His reasoning? "If you can get critical successes, it just makes sense that you can get critical bad stuff too."  how do people not get that automatically missing without any means to avoid it other than a VERY expensive reroll IS critical failure?
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Jan 26, 2015 22:24
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thespaceinvader posted:I thought that was the goal it's a gnome. Irritating little fuckers. The monsters getting critical hits can also represent a critical failure on the part of the PC, it's just that the monster is the one rolling for it.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:25
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homullus posted:The monsters getting critical hits can also represent a critical failure on the part of the PC, it's just that the monster is the one rolling for it. This was my rebuttal. It fell on deaf ears unfortunately.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:48
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It's not the most balanced thing ever, but my group just makes it so that a natural 1 on either provokes an opportunity attack (if it's melee) or goes errant in whatever the most humorous way possible would be (if it's ranged). Everyone has great fun when the opposing archer accidentally shoots his friend's eyeball out, at least. At this point we just keep it for tradition's sake, but it helps we have a group that embraces the concept of hilarious failures on the part of either side. If I were playing with a group of strangers I wouldn't do anything special on a 1.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:58
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If you're all on board with it, and you're all signed up to that kind of game, I have no doubt that it can indeed be great fun. but you have to all be on board with it.
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Jan 26, 2015 23:04
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Did WotC ever release their Lair Assault adventures in PDF form? I never got into organized play, but in retrospect I'm interested in seeing what they did with that design space. A quick scan of internet suggests it was in-store only.
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Jan 27, 2015 22:43
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I'm all for handing over narrative control to players for telling the table exactly how they failed badly, but I still wouldn't attach any mechanical effect to it unless everyone was on board.
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Jan 27, 2015 22:49
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homullus posted:Did WotC ever release their Lair Assault adventures in PDF form? I never got into organized play, but in retrospect I'm interested in seeing what they did with that design space. A quick scan of internet suggests it was in-store only. Pretty sure they didn't, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't  them somewhere.
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Jan 27, 2015 23:12
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The Dungeon Delve book might scratch the same itch, although it was released in 2009, so is pre-MM3.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:14
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Dungeon Delve was the best 4e adventure book. A series of locations with fights in them, one for each level of the game, maps and monsters included. Come up with a quick plot and you've got yourself an adventure. It was a pity it was pre-MM3 maths though 
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Jan 28, 2015 00:20
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:The Dungeon Delve book might scratch the same itch, although it was released in 2009, so is pre-MM3. I do own Dungeon Delve. I'm interested in how they paced "no rest" situations and what kind of global conditions/unusual features they introduced to make the combats more interesting tactically in Lair Assault.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:43
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First one had a bunch of rooms with various smaller-than normal encounters in them plus the odd hazard. One of the best ways to handle it wound up being to load up on End of Encounter dailies and then just murderball your way through it, so every Lair Assault after that one instituted a break point somewhere where End of Encounter effects ended but you didn't get a short rest.
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Jan 28, 2015 01:15
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thespaceinvader posted:
I'm sorry but critical failures are just as great as critical successes. Beating a man to death with my own leg that I managed to cut off and jetpacking into a wall twice braining myself justifies critical failures for me forever, but that could just be the group I play with.
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Jan 28, 2015 01:58
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LightWarden posted:First one had a bunch of rooms with various smaller-than normal encounters in them plus the odd hazard. One of the best ways to handle it wound up being to load up on End of Encounter dailies and then just murderball your way through it, so every Lair Assault after that one instituted a break point somewhere where End of Encounter effects ended but you didn't get a short rest. I made a paladin with TONS of lay on hands for a lair assault. Had more heals than any leader, while still being a defender. Heals were melee-only, but that's the tradeoff.
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Jan 28, 2015 22:28
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xNarUtoRKOrton420x posted:Beating a man to death with my own leg that I managed to cut off and jetpacking into a wall twice braining myself justifies critical failures for me forever, but that could just be the group I play with.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:03
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Lair Assault was generally "get owned by this module once, come back with the build that handles whatever aspects the monsters are exploiting." That being said, it still took my group five tries to handle Tyrantclaw because people wanted to go to bed more than they wanted to get to round five.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:08
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I would genuinely have actually liked to try lair assault. It sounded like fun, albeit it wasn't anywhere near high enough level for tweaky optimising to actually work out. BUt it was store based and store-based support for D&D is lovely in the UK.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:43
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Is D&D encounters still fourth edition based or have they moved to... fifth edition, a game shop nearby is doing them, I have discovered, and work stuff means I might have Wednesday nights free in a month or so.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:56
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Critical Failures are fun to read about/experience for other people in a schadenfreude sort of way. Like the drunk dwarf monk in a game that critically failed, then rolled poorly on the "Critical Failure table" to determine what happened, and then ended up punching his liver, blowing it out his back. If you're going to run a slapstick comedy game where characters don't really mean anything? Maybe it's an okay idea. In a somewhat serious game, they are loving stupid as all hell.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:06
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Prison Warden posted:Is D&D encounters still fourth edition based or have they moved to... fifth edition, a game shop nearby is doing them, I have discovered, and work stuff means I might have Wednesday nights free in a month or so. Our shop is an anomaly, we have one 5E table (with mostly kids) and my current group of die-hard 4rries who all generally agree that 5E is terrible.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:12
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homullus posted:"If you want me to keep running this for you, I get to run short-run games every now and again, and I get to pick the system. Learn and play in good faith, and I will happily keep coming back to the game you most want me to run." (or something similar) At least some of them are interested in other systems. One of them will play anything once just to see what it's like. Another recently asked if we were going to play 13th Age again any time and I just went 
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Jan 29, 2015 08:43
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My Lovely Horse posted:I probably would regularly run one-shots if we didn't meet up only once a month as it is. I've got to move back closer to these folks. I guess I don't advocate this as often here as I do in real life, but play online on a weeknight. You won't be able to play as long, but you will get to play most weeks, year-round. You'll usually get more gaming in from 7-9:15 pm weekly than you will once monthly, given the same cancellation rate.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:25
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So we're 4 adventures into Zeitgeist and doing a quick reality shift... My players (well 4 of them) want to try different characters, but the adventure path expects continuity. I'm doing "80's sitcom continuity" and just saying these characters were there all along. My players are cool with it, and that's dandy for me. But it means new rules challenges as we're hitting 10th level. For starters, I love me some Zeitgeist, but the shotgun and grenade are super hosed. I've just blanket banned them for now. Second we now have two leaders, but one is an artificer at least. I do not dig losing strikers, so I hope the we musket warlord can fill in for damage alongside the existing Barbarian and Hexblade. I also don't like going leader-heavy but at least we're not controller-heavy...
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Jan 29, 2015 20:09
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You've got an artificer to boost attacks, a warlord to hand them out and two strikers to serve as the source. You're going to be fine. We've had player turnover in the Zeitgeist PbP (I am one of them), but it seems to be going ok by just assuming the new guys are also RHC talent who were just working on other cases beforehand. Admittedly if you manage to replace every single starting character you might have recurring NPCs wondering "who the hell are you and when can we get back to the other guys" but otherwise there should at least be some points of familiarity.
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Jan 30, 2015 00:01
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Hey 4e fans, if you've been looking for a new 4e-inspired game that tries to fix 4e's problems using modern design and without going back towards 3.5, I've got a Kickstarter for you! You've probably seen me posting about it over the past couple of years, and now it's finally finished!
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Jan 30, 2015 18:26
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Jimbozig posted:Hey 4e fans, if you've been looking for a new 4e-inspired game that tries to fix 4e's problems using modern design and without going back towards 3.5, I've got a Kickstarter for you! I promise I am not following you around, you are just posting everywhere I was thinking of saying nice things about the game. If you (the reader, not Jimbozig) like D&D 4e, I think you won't be disappointed with this game. The tactical combat is streamlined from 4e, skill challenges have been replaced with a fun skill/creativity minigame, and all the formatting goodness of 4e stablocks remains . . . or at least did, in the last version I saw.
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Jan 30, 2015 18:53
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Houserule chat: I now explicitly allow my players to use Encounter and Daily attack powers with effects when there are no enemies around, just to trigger the effect. However, encounter powers only return after the next combat. Mainly I'm doing this to save myself the discussion whether or not we should play it this way and why. I'm pretty sure it's never going to come up again now because it's never not a waste of a power.homullus posted:I guess I don't advocate this as often here as I do in real life, but play online on a weeknight. You won't be able to play as long, but you will get to play most weeks, year-round. You'll usually get more gaming in from 7-9:15 pm weekly than you will once monthly, given the same cancellation rate.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:02
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My Lovely Horse posted:Houserule chat: I now explicitly allow my players to use Encounter and Daily attack powers with effects when there are no enemies around, just to trigger the effect. However, encounter powers only return after the next combat. Mainly I'm doing this to save myself the discussion whether or not we should play it this way and why. I'm pretty sure it's never going to come up again now because it's never not a waste of a power. Heh I had one DM who kept a chart with each person's character, every 3 consecutive missed gamedays or 7 total gamedays, that were missed, the player would lose a level and one randomly rolled magic item.
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Feb 2, 2015 21:55
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My Lovely Horse posted:Houserule chat: I now explicitly allow my players to use Encounter and Daily attack powers with effects when there are no enemies around, just to trigger the effect. However, encounter powers only return after the next combat. Mainly I'm doing this to save myself the discussion whether or not we should play it this way and why. I'm pretty sure it's never going to come up again now because it's never not a waste of a power. This is generally fine, why would it not be? Bag of Rats is much more applicable to at-wills than it is to dailies.
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Feb 2, 2015 22:17
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Jimbozig posted:Hey 4e fans, if you've been looking for a new 4e-inspired game that tries to fix 4e's problems using modern design and without going back towards 3.5, I've got a Kickstarter for you! Congrats at breaking your goal already man. Any idea for stretch goals?
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Feb 3, 2015 00:23
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