|
So uh how does Alchemy stuff works regarding the pricing of things. I'm looking at Eberron Players's Guide and I'm confused. What would be the prices for Inferno Oil, for example? Inferno Oil Recipe Cost: 200g Inferno Oil Market Price: 200g Inferno Oil Components: 50g Can an alchemist buy new recipes besides the ones he gets for free?
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 03:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 23:17 |
|
|
Sure, you can buy recipes just like rituals (they're just item creation rituals, in the end). A recipe costs the market price. Each recipe then lists what it costs in components to create one alchemical item of a specific level. You go into the alchemy store and buy the Inferno Oil formula for the market price of 200 GP. Then when you actually want to make some Inferno Oil, you check the listing in the formula. One level 5 Oil costs 50 GP, one level 10 costs 200 and so on, and they have different properties depending on level, as listed. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 07:56 on May 28, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 07:49
|
|
|
On the subject of Alchemy, I just want to add that Beastbane is loving hilarious, especially when you realize you are fighting a Demon with the beast keyword. An encounter long vs Beast  zone is worth the price of admission when swarms are thrown at you too.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 08:50
|
|
|
The problem is that almost none of the recipes list an actual component cost, they just say to see the alchemical item. So if it costs me 50g to make the inferno oil, or 50g to just buy a bottle straight up, what's the point of taking alchemy and buying recipes in the first place?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 13:25
|
|
|
Winged Orpheus posted:The problem is that almost none of the recipes list an actual component cost, they just say to see the alchemical item. So if it costs me 50g to make the inferno oil, or 50g to just buy a bottle straight up, what's the point of taking alchemy and buying recipes in the first place? Being able to make them anywhere if you have the time, which is fairly niche but sometimes the GM does want to do some kind of Siege storyline where you don't usually have access to anything you'd want at a moment's notice.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 13:30
|
|
|
The very first PHB also had a line about magic item prices in shops being their given value + 10-40% (p.224), although I've never seen even the most diehard 4E grogs even acknowledge that. When you buy a recipe you also don't have to lock away your wealth in consumables you might never use, "just in case we meet something that's weak to it"; rather, it turns out you're going to the temple of ice, then you can make some alchemist's fire on the fly. But it's not really a very strong point of the system, all said.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 13:55
|
|
|
I'm going to be running a 4e campaign soon, for the first time in years, and I could use some advice on encounter design. The party's a Swordmage, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, a Psion, and an Invoker - will I need to design around the party's lack of melee capability or should I just throw close-up monsters in their faces and let them handle it?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 15:49
|
|
|
1st Stage Midboss posted:I'm going to be running a 4e campaign soon, for the first time in years, and I could use some advice on encounter design. The party's a Swordmage, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, a Psion, and an Invoker - will I need to design around the party's lack of melee capability or should I just throw close-up monsters in their faces and let them handle it?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 16:08
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:The very first PHB also had a line about magic item prices in shops being their given value + 10-40% (p.224), although I've never seen even the most diehard 4E grogs even acknowledge that.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 16:18
|
|
|
1st Stage Midboss posted:I'm going to be running a 4e campaign soon, for the first time in years, and I could use some advice on encounter design. The party's a Swordmage, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, a Psion, and an Invoker - will I need to design around the party's lack of melee capability or should I just throw close-up monsters in their faces and let them handle it? Sorcerer can be a pretty bad-rear end striker, the enc 3 Flame Spiral I believe its called does great damage. Beyond that Sorcerer's are optimally frontline strikers, getting in the thick of things with their burst attacks. Between that and possibly the Invoker (who''s about as damaging a controller you will get), you should be fine. Warlock is also a striker, and depending on build can be good. I don't know much about warlocks because I've never really liked them outside of Hybrid cheese but you aren't hurting for damage. All that being said, if it looks like things are taking to long, always feel free to call the fight, or find some other way to gracefully end it.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 16:43
|
|
|
Sorcs, Swordmages, Invokers and some Warlocks will all be getting up close and personal fairly frequently. The thing to be more concerned about running a game for that party is the lack of any leader classes.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 16:47
|
|
|
thespaceinvader posted:Sorcs, Swordmages, Invokers and some Warlocks will all be getting up close and personal fairly frequently. That is really true, you always want at least one leader, someone to buff/enable the rest of the party.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 16:50
|
|
|
Probably a good idea to be generous with potions and potion use, maybe even make a few custom potions that replicate common leader abilities.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 17:05
|
|
|
Also, because no one said it yet, free Melee training, versatile expertise and improved defences are all suggested.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 19:26
|
|
|
I'm looking at this again, and I'm just wondering, besides MP2, there aren't any dragon mags or other such sources that have dex-based (or at least are stat-neutral) ranger melee powers for me to poach, are there? As-is all I've really found are Scything Blow, Skirmishing Stance and Finishing Cut from MP2 along with Fox's Cunning from the PHB.
Unknown Quantity fucked around with this message at 20:27 on May 28, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 20:23
|
|
|
Madmarker posted:Sorcerer can be a pretty bad-rear end striker, the enc 3 Flame Spiral I believe its called does great damage. Flame Spiral does great damage if you have a DM that's wiling to let you cheese out the zone damage. If you don't have one of them, it's still strong cause it can doubletap but it's not a gamewinner. 1st Stage Midboss posted:I'm going to be running a 4e campaign soon, for the first time in years, and I could use some advice on encounter design. The party's a Swordmage, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, a Psion, and an Invoker - will I need to design around the party's lack of melee capability or should I just throw close-up monsters in their faces and let them handle it? This party is going to have a rough time of it because it has no leaders. Also, I think two controllers with that party is a little overkill, especially since warlock and swordmage aren't typically rolling max DPS. I fully expect most of their fights to be on the long(and boring) side because of this.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 20:41
|
|
|
Are there any roll20 games of this nature starting anytime soon?
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 02:33
|
|
|
So, Rituals. What's your opinion of them? The bits and bobs I've picked up from various TG threads is that they're good because they open up things like Knock and Alarm to potentially all classes, and also even significant physics/world-changing effects like Control Weather or True Portal. However, I've been reading about their RAW implementation and: 1. You need to be a specific (spellcaster) class to have the Ritual Caster feat for free, otherwise you need to spend a feat slot on it. This just gates these magical powers right back behind the caster classes. 2. Casting them has a gold cost which seems pretty stiff. Treasure accumulation in 4e is rather strict and procedural because it's tied closely with upgrading your gear, and spending the gold instead on ritual components would seem to mess with that, or is that the point? Before I go mucking about with this, I'd like to get some impressions on how well the system actually works from more experienced players.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 16:41
|
|
|
Both of those things are in serious need of changing to make rituals work well, or at least they would be if any group of players ever remembered about rituals (no group remembers)
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 17:55
|
|
|
You've hit on two of the huge issues with the system. The other being the lack of variety in skills that they're based on (which they tried to fix with the Martial Practice system, but never really supported it well enough). Two house rules people use to fix the problems you bring up are: 1) Some variation on "odd feats for odd levels", which are basically what they sound like. You have extra feat slots that are supposed to be used for skills, languages, or stuff like Ritual Caster. 2) Make rituals cost something else. There are a lot of options there, but the main ones I see are either healing surges or extra loot only for rituals (which wouldn't actually be worth the ritual GP if sold). Obviously you probably want to exempt item creation rituals from either one, since that's what regular gold is for. Then again, even with all those fixes a lot of groups still forget rituals exist most of the time.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 18:59
|
|
|
Rituals aren't a terrible idea, but it's an underdeveloped system that has too many gates that block off too much of it. Gate 1 is the feat. Many classes get Ritual Caster for free, but many classes also don't, even if their class concept would probably fit (Shaman, for instance is a magical primal leader with no ritual feat). Getting ritual access means not only do you need a feat slot, but you also need to have Religion or Arcana trained, even if you're a Wisdom-based class who has little use for those skills and would prefer to use Nature or Heal-based rituals. Gate 2 is making sure you have the ritual itself. I don't think this is a terrible thing, since it's a tool like bringing a crowbar or rope along with you- nice if you can get a use out of it, but not terrible if you can't provided you didn't spend the bulk of your worth on it. Ridiculously expensive rituals mean you don't see them that often though, and there's little incentive to bring them along just in case. Gate 3 is the time to use it. This may or may not be a bad thing, since it regulates most ritual use to out-of-combat, but it does prevent you from doing interesting things with rituals in the middle of combat. Gate 4 is the component cost. This is a big complaint of mine, because 4e is built on system that assumes a fixed amount of wealth at any given amount of time, so spending money on rituals (or consumables in general such as potions, special ammo and alchemical items) means that you're basically burning up your character's capabilities one tiny piece at a time. Admittedly, at higher levels the low-level options cost so little that the utility ones become some of the most cost-effective methods of handling problems compared to higher level options. This is also a problem that plagued 3e and Pathfinder. Some people let characters use healing surges in place of material costs, but I don't think that's always a great option when the system is as it is since the characters most likely to have ritual access are the characters who tend to have the lowest amount of surges, which puts another gate on their use. I'm not against surge use as an option, especially when you're allowed to spend one or more surges to bypass things such as time Gate 5 is the skill check required. If you're really bad at a particular skill, you're not going to be very good at most of the rituals that require it. I'm not against this option in general, just that I don't think you need both a skill check and a feat to determine access to rituals- honestly I'd rather grant ritual access as an option to anyone who's trained in any of the required skills. My personal idea would be to remove Ritual Caster as a requirement or just grant it for free to anyone who has one or more of the skills used in rituals and wants to actually deal with rituals, and to actually pay for rituals I'd give the party a pool of ritual component GP that replenishes either after an extended rest if you want a simple system or alternatively a larger pool that replenishes whenever you go back to your home base or find a gathering point in the field. I'd actually let it be used for item creation options like potions, consumables, ritual scrolls, magic ammo or even magic items in general with the caveat that whenever you make an item using the pool it depletes the maximum value of the pool until that item is either used up (in the case of consumables), disenchanted and returned to the pool or just bought by a member of the party who decides they really want to keep it around long-term. This gives them more freedom to experiment with rituals, consumables and novelty wondrous items, and gives people who don't want to deal with this poo poo an option to say "nah, let's just spend the extra loot on a couple of low-level items." I still don't know how much the pool would be worth- I'm thinking it's probably equivalent to a magic item of value equal to (Party Level - N), where N depends on how frequently you want it to be used/refilled. The other concern is that high-level characters can spam low-level options under this system, which may not be a problem for some people (since you can already do that in a normal game just by having a pile of real gp), or may require either a cap on the number of times you can use it in one period, number of things you can have on hand at one moment, or enforcing the cast time or something.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 19:45
|
|
|
LightWarden posted:I'd actually let it be used for item creation options like potions, consumables, ritual scrolls, magic ammo or even magic items in general with the caveat that whenever you make an item using the pool it depletes the maximum value of the pool until that item is either used up (in the case of consumables), disenchanted and returned to the pool or just bought by a member of the party who decides they really want to keep it around long-term. This I like this idea a lot. After reading through zeitgeist, and how in that magic items are requisitions from head office or whatever that you need to return, I was kicking around a Stock/Procure system like from Double Cross where you have a Stock of items you just always have available (tying that to the wealth by level guidelines and equipment), and then a renewable slush fund of Procurement that you can use to get a hold of anything in a pinch, but it's only temporary and tends to be more expensive, tying rituals into that has potential. Money and such in games has never really interested me, in DnD especially, and I always abstract it away when DMing anyway, if I ever go back to playing 4e I'll need to see if this is feasible.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 19:58
|
|
|
I do surges instead of components, and I make it so any ritual participant can contribute surges, so as a low-surge wizard you can draft the fighter to do the taxing bits. However, if the ritual requires a skill check, every participant must make a check to aid the ritual caster. In practice this rarely changes the outcome at all. It's 2 surges per ritual (item creation excepted); rituals of 5 levels lower cost 1 the first time you cast them each day and 2 after, rituals of 10 levels lower free the first time, 1 after. Couldn't tell you how well it works though because we've been playing for over a year now and diligently stuck to the Invoker's free Hand of Fate. I like the idea of rituals, but I tend to not like the actual rituals the game has to offer. I actually tried to list them by effect a few months ago, hoping to find some common design concepts that would allow me to make my own build-your-ritual system. They're a complete mess with type designations and effect levels all over the place; I gave up after noticing there was something like a level 4 ritual that could feed 5 people for a day and a level 2 one that could feed them for a week. Even without that... you get players who ask if they can do cool stuff and you want to say yes, except the cool stuff is written in a ritual so you have to say "no you need the ritual" and that's bollocks. Not least because what is or isn't written down in a ritual is completely arbitrary. My actual approach is, stick with the very basics (item creation, cure disease, raise dead), plus the rituals PCs get for free as part of their class (fair is fair) and those the players explicitly want to have, and anything else players want to do is a skill check or a side quest or costs some sort of resource, depending on order of magnitude of the intended effect.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 20:10
|
|
|
I made a librarian wizard that had a ton of rituals. They solved a LOT of problems (like Seek Rumor in a town where you're being publically hunted, so you need to know what's going on but can't stick your neck out). I really, really like rituals, but yeah, there's a lot of really odd things about them. Being a fighter or a rogue or whatever that could reliably cast rituals would be super cool. I like the idea of rituals on any character. But, generally speaking, you want them on a high int/wis character who gets ritual casting automatically, and gains rituals automatically, which narrows it down to... pretty much the Wizard, right?
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 20:59
|
|
|
The only ritual I feel is really important is Comrade's Succor, to redistribute surges amongst the group, so I'd just make that ritual into a standard thing that people can do during any short rest. If you want to use rituals other than that, I'd just say that during every extended rest the ritual casters can gather N gold worth of miscellaneous ritual components for free, with the caveat that they can't store them past the next extended rest. Choose N so that it is low enough that they can use rituals somewhat sparingly. They still have to pay surge costs.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:10
|
|
|
Gharbad the Weak posted:I made a librarian wizard that had a ton of rituals. They solved a LOT of problems (like Seek Rumor in a town where you're being publically hunted, so you need to know what's going on but can't stick your neck out). I really, really like rituals, but yeah, there's a lot of really odd things about them. Funny thing is, they actually did produce a bunch of Martial Practices which were rituals for martial characters and used surges as component costs...but then locked those behind a feat as well. One step forward and two steps back!
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:16
|
|
|
I don't mind the feat cost - 4e characters generally aren't starved for feat choices. But I cut all the component costs and times in half. Eagle's Flight, Remove Affliction, Linked and Reverse Portal have all seen a lot of use in my Zeitgeist game.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:27
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I don't mind the feat cost - 4e characters generally aren't starved for feat choices. But I cut all the component costs and times in half. Typically when I DM, I give whoever has the highest Int the ritual caster feat for free, if they don't have it already.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:29
|
|
|
Unknown Quantity posted:Funny thing is, they actually did produce a bunch of Martial Practices which were rituals for martial characters and used surges as component costs...but then locked those behind a feat as well. One step forward and two steps back! Ritual Caster is a feat too, it's not a big change.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:35
|
|
|
I just remove the feat requirement and let people take whatever rituals/practices they have skill training for, ditch all GP costs, give them daily charges rather than component/surge costs, and let people have a ritual for free every time they reach a level with a utility power.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:36
|
|
|
The easiest houserule to make is to just let the PCs buy scrolls for the cost of the ritual components. Not the components plus formula cost like it says RAW, if memory serves, but just the component cost. It makes the bookkeeping easier, and most of the really key rituals are skill check agnostic anyway (Raise Dead and the like). Yeah, if you've got a party full of characters who can't use Arcana then that's a whole bunch of rituals they can't use effectively, but then that goes for any skill that the entire party dumps. I mean, if everyone drops Nature then you can't do monster ID checks on like dragons and crap, so this really isn't any different.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 21:49
|
|
|
ImpactVector posted:You've hit on two of the huge issues with the system. The other being the lack of variety in skills that they're based on (which they tried to fix with the Martial Practice system, but never really supported it well enough). We have no component cost for rituals in my group but treat them as daily powers. It works great. (Of course thing like enchanting items or raise dead would still have some sort of cost)
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 13:26
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:We have no component cost for rituals in my group but treat them as daily powers. It works great. Why should Raise Dead have a cost? Enchanting items is basically just a way of remotely shopping for gear so yeah, the cost is just the cost of what you're buying.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 13:48
|
|
|
Lemon Curdistan posted:Why should Raise Dead have a cost? To avoid player death being trivialized? Although we haven't actually used it yet, we won't be able to until next level. We've just agreed that there should be 'a cost', not specifically a monetary cost. I personally think it would be neat is the cost were something more interesting than money but we'll see what happens.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 14:14
|
|
|
Lemon Curdistan posted:Why should Raise Dead have a cost? I think the inconvenience of dragging the body around and being shorthanded is enough of a cost to the party, but if it literally has no cost, then you are playing in a setting where everyone can Raise Dead, and that changes a lot of other things about your world.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 15:18
|
|
|
homullus posted:I think the inconvenience of dragging the body around and being shorthanded is enough of a cost to the party, but if it literally has no cost, then you are playing in a setting where everyone can Raise Dead, and that changes a lot of other things about your world. Where everyone who can cast the ritual can Raise Dead. Raise Dead is a level 8 ritual and your local village priest, if he's especially badass, is maaaybe L3. Outside of adventuring parties, L8+ ritual casters are pretty rare and they're probably not going to work for free.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 22:27
|
|
|
However, given that adventurers are important people with levels, and anyone who they kill will be an important person with levels, raise dead has pretty massive implications for what they do. (EG: Killing the king is meaningless because he'll just get raised the next day) I think that it shouldn't be a ritual, it should be a plot element the DM and players are made clear on before the game starts. In my last game I banned the ritual and the party had to battle through hell to rescue their friend.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2015 10:30
|
|
|
Hey guys, I'm in the process of convincing my group to give another D&D a shot (we play 3.5, PF and Next). As you can see 4th is suspiciously absent. Now when researching 5th I read a lot about how 5th was a terrible idea and 4th is the best thing since sliced bread. I told my players as much, but they are suspicious and would like to hear some arguments. I'm nearly sure I read somewhere what 3.5 and 5th did terrible, that 4th on the other hand did pretty well, but i can't find it. So could you give me a short primer (or a link) to why 4th actually IS the goon-favorite D&D? It would be much appreciated. Also, say I'd have every book available to read, with what would I start? Rules Compendium? Is the D&D Insider subscription still a thing? When I went to their homepage everything looked very 5th-edition-esque. Do I still get access to the 4th edition tools and info? Thank you for your help. Edit: More questions  Are there any "modern" concepts like "failing it forward" already built into the rules? Can you make a minionmancer character? Preferably necromancer? cybertier fucked around with this message at 18:36 on May 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2015 18:11
|
|
|
cybertier posted:Why 4th actually IS the goon-favorite D&D? It would be much appreciated. This is done primarily by tossing out the "fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard" foursome, and instead building off of a four-roles base. Defenders, who take the hits, Strikers, who give the hits, Controllers, who hinder the enemy, and Leaders, who help their allies. Essentially, the MMO roles of Tank, DPS (ranged or melee), hexer/disabler/etc, and healer/buffs-giver. In the old paradigm, a fighter is a Defender, a rogue is a melee Striker, a cleric is a Leader, and a wizard is a Controller. If you're not interested in that part of D&D, however, then... honestly, what you're looking for probably isn't D&D any more. It's a much different game from the old 1e and 2e. I'd recommend either one of the retroclones (for the genuine experience) or Dungeon World (if you just want to have cool adventures in a fantasy setting). Now, if you are interested, if you want a base of solid combat that you can build off of and roleplay around with relative impunity, there are still a few drawbacks. 1. Learn to love reskinning. If there's a concept you want to play, but don't like the fluff, or you want to use a monster in your fight but can't think of a reason for a squad of duergar to show up in the middle of a forest, reskin. Change the fluff. 2. You can't really just bounce the numbers around. The math is tuned a specific way, and if you start deviating from it too far in either direction, combat kind of just falls apart. This includes loot, which is why the Inherent Bonuses rules are so useful. 3. Kind of a fusion of the first two: Players are expected to build a competent character in one or more of the combat Roles. Your class' primary stat should always be at least an 18. 20, if possible. If you want to play, for example, a Fighter with low STR, you're going to have a miserable time and just drag yourself and your friends down. Instead, find (for example), a melee Striker whose powers are based of DEX instead, and reskin. 4. If you're missing one or more of the roles, encounter design gets a bit trickier. For example, a party with no Defender is going to have trouble keeping their squishies from taking the heat, and one with no Controller is going to have a hard time dealing with mobs or enemies with a lot of maneuvering and momentum. 5. The out of combat rules are a little... malnourished, and the skill list has been pared down dramatically as well. You might have to get creative with a few things now and again. 6. As you get up into the higher levels (especially Epic Tier, levels 21-30), players and DMs start to get a little weighed down with options and the balance of the combat kind of comes apart. 4e isn't perfect, I'll admit. It's a little front-loaded, and makes assumptions that a new player might not immediately catch on to (like the aforementioned 'make your primary stat your best, no exceptions'), and the out-of-combat rules feel rather secondary at times. But it's still the most solid and sound combat with the most legitimate building options in a roleplaying game that I've played or seen. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 18:37 on May 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2015 18:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 23:17 |
|
|
Thanks for your excellent reply. About disadvantage number 4. Is the game playable by two players with one supporting GM PC? Are there any good options for a GM PC that can fill a support role without too many options, so I can have the character help the players without getting bogged down in a combat, by thinking what this support character should do? Reskinning and optimized building shouldn't be a problem. My players are used to reading guides for their 3.5 and PF characters, so expect some solid character from them. How quick is preparation? Can I think about some rough adventure plans and build up encounters when they show up in game (With heavy reskinning of course) or do I *have* to have them prepared in advance? "Inherent Bonuses" - Where can I find more of this besides whats written in the OP? I assume that you get less loot but more mechanical meaningful loot? Like instead of regulary getting your +1,+2,+3-swords you at some point get your flaming sword, that scales because of Inherent Bonuses? Also I'd like to point back to my questions in my post before: quote:Are there any "modern" concepts like "failing it forward" already built into the rules?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2015 19:06
|
|