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Turtlicious posted:I'm gonna run 4e Print out power cards for your players. Colour code them white for dailies, red for encounters, green for at wills. Makes power management so much easier when you can just flip a card and you know it's gone, and your options are always right in front of you.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:59
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Now this looks like the right kind of thread to throw me a bone. See, I'm contemplating to get into 4e for a change, but that seems to be strangely harder than I thought. For whatever reason, I can't find an online shop offering PDFs of the books you'd actually need to get started (like the first Players Handbook, or those two Essentials books I'd like to avoid anyways). What's up with that?
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Aug 19, 2015 20:08
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Doresh posted:Now this looks like the right kind of thread to throw me a bone. At this point I would just buy the Rules compendium PDF and get the offline character builder for the actual player options. Andrast fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 20:12
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The rules compendium is an excellent reference but --edit: correction. The compendium application isn't good for learning the game. The compendium book is fine. Sorry, I was confused there. You can get PDFs of all the older edition stuff here: http://www.dndclassics.com/ Here's everything they have for 4th: http://www.dndclassics.com/browse.php?keywords=%284e%29 Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 20:22
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Leperflesh posted:You can get PDFs of all the older edition stuff here: http://www.dndclassics.com/ Oh, I know those sites. They seem to have everything except for the first set of Players Handbook, GM Guide and Monster Manual. Andrast posted:At this point I would just buy the Rules compendium PDF and get the offline character builder for the actual player options. I'll probably get the compendium anyways, but I'd really like a book with the standard base classes in them.
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Aug 19, 2015 21:55
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E: strike that, figured it out myself, better question. When my players level up, do I have too reprint the sheet out each time? or is the sheet left blank enough to level up on their own?
Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 00:00
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You don't necessarily have to print out a new sheet, but there can be a lot of fiddly details to change. Particularly, on the even levels you get a new feat and an additional +1 from the half-level modifier, which is a lot of changing numbers.
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Aug 20, 2015 03:01
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Doresh posted:Oh, I know those sites. They seem to have everything except for the first set of Players Handbook, GM Guide and Monster Manual. Try your local gaming store. They will likely have any remaining 4e stuff on serious discount.
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Aug 20, 2015 04:20
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Doresh posted:Oh, I know those sites. They seem to have everything except for the first set of Players Handbook, GM Guide and Monster Manual. http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dra/201107wizard http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dra/201106rogue http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dra/201105templar http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dra/201104fighter http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dra/201103warlord
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Aug 20, 2015 05:06
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Generic Octopus posted:Check out 4e's charop forum (here's the fighter guide, and the guide collection thread). Lots of good general advice, power recommendations, and feat recommendations. Oh excellent, those links are handy thanks. Out of interest, what is the free character builder du jour? I'm not yet at the monthly subscription level of immersion to get Insider.
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Aug 20, 2015 08:30
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Noxin of Shame posted:Oh excellent, those links are handy thanks. It's technically  but you can find the discontinued official offline character builder by googling a bit. It has been kept 100% updated by the community.
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Aug 20, 2015 08:48
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Andrast posted:It's technically Ah right - say no more then.I guess that's why all the online ones I found circa 2009 either no longer work or support 4e. All good!
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Aug 20, 2015 11:43
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Pfox posted:Try your local gaming store. They will likely have any remaining 4e stuff on serious discount. Well, gaming stores aren't exactly all that local around here, and the funny thing about living in Germany is that WotC completely abandoned the German market after the first printing of the 4e core books. Oh well, I was looking for the English versions anyways as those actually have official support. Maybe the not-so-local store has some imported stuff. Andrast posted:It's technically Now that sounds nice. Gotta check that one out. dwarf74 posted:There were some articles with Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric and Warlord released on DDI. Complete with full errata, last I checked. I think there are also a wiki or two with more or less complete information about the classes. That's at least something.
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Aug 20, 2015 20:46
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Doresh posted:the funny thing about living in Germany My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 20:55
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My Lovely Horse posted:What area are you in, roughly, if you don't mind me asking? Why not? I'm currently in North-Rhine Westphalia for job reasons.
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Aug 20, 2015 22:12
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Doresh posted:Now that sounds nice. Gotta check that one out. I can help you out if you want, either via PMs (Says you've turned them off) or Steam (The God Emperor, King of Magi).
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Aug 20, 2015 23:41
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Doresh posted:Why not? I'm currently in North-Rhine Westphalia for job reasons.
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Aug 21, 2015 14:33
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My Lovely Horse posted:Ah okay. Just always looking for folks in my neck of the woods (of Thuringia (also job reasons)). Yeah, I know how that feels... Lord Justice posted:I can help you out if you want, either via PMs (Says you've turned them off) or Steam (The God Emperor, King of Magi). Now they're turned on. I must've turned them off accidentally as part of my typical registration routine of disabling anything that sounds like an automatic email notification. That stuff usually clutters my inbox when I leave it on.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:48
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How does cover work with Large and larger creatures? Do you have to be able to draw unbroken lines to the creature's entire space, or just one of the squares it takes up?
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Aug 22, 2015 01:56
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Really Pants posted:How does cover work with Large and larger creatures? Do you have to be able to draw unbroken lines to the creature's entire space, or just one of the squares it takes up? I think it is two corners of any square the creature occupies.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:39
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I managed to dig up the Rules Compendium I thought I'd lost and it agrees with you: clear lines to any single square is enough for no cover penalties.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:23
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So I had an interesting conversation with some friends today about why they really didn't like 4th. It mostly boiled down to them not liking the feel of the AED for non-casters, and that the mechanics side is more exposed. Also, we sort of haven't run into caster supremacy, because the only person who basically ever plays a full caster is terrible at choosing spells and playing tactically, along with tending to stop around level 12-ish. It was really weird how we all basically agreed that it was a better system mechanically, but they still preferred other d&d systems because of the feel and the fact that our casters sucking caused them to not be that effective (also some great arguments about them not min-maxing, but they do a lot more of that than any casters we've had). Wasn't really sure how to move the discussion to get them more on board.
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Aug 22, 2015 06:07
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Well if that's not enough for them it just sounds like they're going to be opposed no matter what. The big difference is that every class has things they can do during combat rather than being stuck with "I attack" and theatre of the mind.
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Aug 22, 2015 06:44
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ZypherIM posted:So I had an interesting conversation with some friends today about why they really didn't like 4th. It mostly boiled down to them not liking the feel of the AED for non-casters, and that the mechanics side is more exposed. Also, we sort of haven't run into caster supremacy, because the only person who basically ever plays a full caster is terrible at choosing spells and playing tactically, along with tending to stop around level 12-ish. It was really weird how we all basically agreed that it was a better system mechanically, but they still preferred other d&d systems because of the feel and the fact that our casters sucking caused them to not be that effective (also some great arguments about them not min-maxing, but they do a lot more of that than any casters we've had). Wasn't really sure how to move the discussion to get them more on board. This is one of the things Essentials gets right. Not always, but for some people. The Thief can just do stuff. Like climb anything or hide where no one else can. Everything's at will except the set-up opening attack. It's a gem of a class (and I think the high point of Mearls' design). The Scout is a roving ball of two weapon death that does everything you would want a ball of two weapon death to do. The Knight works. "This is my space!" And with Defend the Line/World Serpent's Grasp thing knocking everyone down they feel mighty. It's more limited than it should be and has problems with forced movement. But in heroic it really works. (Slayers are for casual players who don't care about mechanics and the Hunter would be great if it scaled a bit better). And it's also something I was very much looking at for the classes for my retro-clone.
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Aug 22, 2015 15:10
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They're technically not wrong that other editions of D&D don't get so bad if you never hit high levels (i.e. 3.5 under e6) or if the players playing the full casters are, to put it bluntly, bad, but they're basically banking on the idea that both of those points are always going to be true. What I mean to say is that instead of "well 3rd Ed won't break because our campaigns don't last that long", then enter a gentleman's agreement that you literally will not ever, even if the circumstances line up. And what if the caster players do get good? Are you supposed to come up with a list of banned spells to keep them where they used to be?
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Aug 22, 2015 18:48
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That's basically what many crpgs did, banned/restricted a lot of the problem spells and made people play blaster wizards. I think they may have influenced many players' thinking.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:57
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Littlefinger posted:That's basically what many crpgs did, banned/restricted a lot of the problem spells and made people play blaster wizards. Well yeah, I'm just saying that playing 4e already does most of that work for you.
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Aug 22, 2015 19:10
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If your players started with 3.5, and then houseruled and adapted it to the point where they have a balanced game (for their adventures), I don't see any particularly strong reason to move to 4th edition. From the player's perspective. One thing they might be discounting, though, is the degree to which 4th is so much easier on the DM. From encounter design to creating custom monsters to setting up campaigns, 3.5 just requires massively more work. It's one of the places where players might just be unaware of 4th edition's advantages. It can be tough to convince a player group to go along with the DM when it's the DM reaping a big benefit, but once they do, they might find they're enjoying interacting with a less stressed-out DM, who has more time to focus on the actually interesting parts of the game (description, plot, characterization) rather than the tedious details.
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Aug 22, 2015 19:15
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Littlefinger posted:That's basically what many crpgs did, banned/restricted a lot of the problem spells and made people play blaster wizards. This is what we did for pencil+paper games, too. Otherwise you ended up with the problem of "The game is only fun for casters" and you got groups where your party lineup was something like '1 Wizard, 2 Clerics, 1 Druid" because people have learned that playing a fighter or a paladin or a thief is a good way to spend most of the game using basic attack actions while the casters get things like "choices in combat" and "spells that can handle your out of combat niche without a need for you to be present" .
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Aug 22, 2015 20:29
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Doresh posted:Well, gaming stores aren't exactly all that local around here, and the funny thing about living in Germany is that WotC completely abandoned the German market after the first printing of the 4e core books. Oh well, I was looking for the English versions anyways as those actually have official support. Maybe the not-so-local store has some imported stuff. Too bad. I have just stumbled upon thriftbooks.com, which is a resource everyone should be familiar with. I just nabbed a like-new copy of the dm guide for $10.99 plus super-cheap shipping. Maybe it'll work for you?
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Aug 23, 2015 05:39
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Is there a cheap knock-off of Heroscape terrain tiles? Something that comes in hex grids of varying shapes so I can make quick and massive scenery?
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Aug 23, 2015 07:58
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Pfox posted:Too bad. I have just stumbled upon thriftbooks.com, which is a resource everyone should be familiar with. I just nabbed a like-new copy of the dm guide for $10.99 plus super-cheap shipping. Maybe it'll work for you? Even international shipping doesn't seem to be too expensive. Interesting. *Notices that the Players Handbook is out of print* Dammit <_< Oh well, I just remembered a German side that has a good selection of imported stuff, though the PHB costs like 32 eurobucks. Oh well, the offline character builder plus Rules Compendium will do for now. Then again, I'm moving into a new apartment around the end of the year. Now with an actual kitchen, but I'm not sure how much space I'll be having for hardcovers.
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Aug 23, 2015 13:11
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Honestly if you have the Compendium and offline builder, there's no real need to own the PHB anymore. They have all the stuff you could need from the book with all the errata baked in. for better or worse
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Aug 23, 2015 13:18
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My Lovely Horse posted:Honestly if you have the Compendium and offline builder, there's no real need to own the PHB anymore. They have all the stuff you could need from the book with all the errata baked in. for better or worse So now I'm ready to roll 
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Aug 23, 2015 20:41
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neonchameleon posted:(Slayers are for casual players who don't care about mechanics and the Hunter would be great if it scaled a bit better). Slayers are beasts if you build them correctly, but mediocre using only essentials materials. But then, everything other than Wizards pretty much fits that particular description.
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Aug 23, 2015 22:47
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thespaceinvader posted:Slayers are beasts if you build them correctly, but mediocre using only essentials materials. But then, everything other than Wizards pretty much fits that particular description.
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Aug 23, 2015 22:57
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Yeah that's pretty much the Essentials story. OR, the Essentials content feeds the older classes a bunch of cool poo poo. You don't really notice this problem as long as you're building with the character builder, which I would recommend to anyone anyway.
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Aug 24, 2015 10:06
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thespaceinvader posted:But then, everything other than Wizards pretty much fits that particular description. CASTER SUPREMACY 
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Aug 24, 2015 16:40
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And like everyone else, wizards get even better when they have access to other books.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:08
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LightWarden posted:And like everyone else, wizards get even better when they have access to other books. Lesser classes only get new feats. Wizards get feats and spells. Werewhale posted:CASTER SUPREMACY They're just taking what's rightfully theirs - or something.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:39
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