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Moriatti posted:
Hit then where they'll really feel it. Every killing blow starts to hit their money stash. 
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Oct 29, 2015 19:34
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Moriatti posted:Oh! Just to be I had a detailed discussion with my players before selecting the modules and updating them about playstyles as to what kind of game they wanted to run. The answer was unanimously "a classic D&D feel, warts and all" , so they are satisfied with the situation currently. I was more asking because I wanted to start a discussion. I never tell my players I don't allow player death. In fact, since I am known as a power gamer in other areas, I play up that reputation to make them more afraid. It keeps the tension up, and they feel like they got one over on me when they barely survive.
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Oct 29, 2015 19:40
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Trasson posted:Hit then where they'll really feel it. Every killing blow starts to hit their money stash. That's what happens already though? Raise Dead is expensive...
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Oct 29, 2015 19:51
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thespaceinvader posted:That's what happens already though? Raise Dead is expensive... Nah, nothing like that. Every time you drop you lose 50% of your cash and then you just get back up. It works in Dragon Quest to make the player fear death so it'll work here! Honestly I was joking but now I kind of want to try it out.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:03
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Level 8+ warpriests have a daily resurrection ability, which is nice, especially if you're rolling an Oghma Warpriest for their increasingly solid abilities as you level (their worst feature is their level 27 encounter power, since it's their level 13 encounter power with one extra [w] of damage, which is a bit underwhelming. But hey, reserve maneuver into Valorous Charge and become the king you were always meant to be).
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Oct 29, 2015 20:06
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Moriatti posted:To those of you that don't allow death, what do you do to give players fear of some of the bigger forces? I find that simply knowing that their characters can die means that they rarely do, and usually try to come up with a plan that isn't just "BASH THE DOOR DOWN, KILL THE GOBLINS." In my experience, 4e has been good enough about keeping random deaths low enough that I haven't ever felt like I needed to ban character death as an official house rule. When characters have died, the groups I play in always offer to resurrect the character(s), but I've never actually seen anyone take up that offer. Both when its an offer of DM fiat "OK you all wake up in prison..." and when the party has the right rituals and cash to do it themselves. I think if you ban character death you both need to have some reason, like an especially narrative heavy campaign where character death would be so disruptive that it'd ruin the narrative flow, and you need to talk to the players first and make sure they are on board with whatever your doing. If you've got player buy in you either don't need to worry about the stick half of motivation or you can pick a clear campaign appropriate penalty. The Tenra Bansho Zero RPG has a cool solution to this issue. Players can basically set a flag on their characters for a scene and while this flag is up the character gets access to extra power but is also killable.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:36
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That flag rule seems cool, I'll have to look into Tenra Bansho Zero for my Skype group maybe. I should point out that I don't expect another death until we start dealing with Vecna, who, of course he'll drop fuckers. He's Vecna. This was just a case of the party getting overly cocky and ignoring the usual AD&D "this will kill you" signs. I am working with a friend on ideas for a Final Fantasy campaign in a few months, maybe I'll ask her about the half gold drop on death houserule.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:10
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wallawallawingwang posted:The Tenra Bansho Zero RPG has a cool solution to this issue. Players can basically set a flag on their characters for a scene and while this flag is up the character gets access to extra power but is also killable. Haha, this is awesome. You gain incredible Cutscene power, able to pull of stunts and feats you never normally could, but the risk is there that Sephiroth is gonna stab you in your torso.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:44
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I'm going to be running my first 4E game next week -what tips would you give me going in/focus on prep areas
I'm still boning up on the rules but I've run a couple of 1 v 1 fights to make sure I get the basics. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 00:03
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I'm pretty sure everything is balanced around characters taking the feat tax feats, actually.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:04
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Zereth posted:I'm pretty sure everything is balanced around characters taking the feat tax feats, actually. Sorry, to be clear, by that I meant 'do I just hand out improved defences and expertise for free, or do I make them spend a feat to take them?' - I was planning on going with forcing them to spend a feat, rather than giving people 2 free feats.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:09
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I'm going to be running my first 4E game next week -what tips would you give me going in/focus on prep areas Fair warning you'll do rolling dice in 1v1 but it'll be absolutely nothing like a party. Teamwork's important and influential in the game, so a 1v1 will have none of the complexity or strategy of 4v4.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:09
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:Sorry, to be clear, by that I meant 'do I just hand out improved defences and expertise for free, or do I make them spend a feat to take them?' - I was planning on going with forcing them to spend a feat, rather than giving people 2 free feats.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:13
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:Sorry, to be clear, by that I meant 'do I just hand out improved defences and expertise for free, or do I make them spend a feat to take them?' - I was planning on going with forcing them to spend a feat, rather than giving people 2 free feats. Hand it out for free. By "balanced" we mean "the maths is designed in such a way that it assumes everyone has them," so there's no reason to make them actually pay precious feat slots on those.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:14
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Yep, thirding 'give them free feats'. CB can handle this. And give them '+1 feat bonus to hit across the board' rather than with specific gear. Just watch the scaling on non-implement/weapon powers, inclusive of any bonuses to hit they should wind up at (iirc) +3/6/9 vs NAD and +4/8/12 vs AC. CB(Loader) can also handle themes and I THINK someone made an add-on for the zeitgeist ones at some point. And note that there are some of the expertise feats people will still want to take because they're good even without the bonus to hit - especially Staff, 2HW, Light Blade, Crossbow.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:25
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Yep, thirding 'give them free feats'. CB can handle this. And give them '+1 feat bonus to hit across the board' rather than with specific gear. Just watch the scaling on non-implement/weapon powers, inclusive of any bonuses to hit they should wind up at (iirc) +3/6/9 vs NAD and +4/8/12 vs AC. To easy - the consensus seems to be something like you are proposing (which seems to be basically 'give everyone master at arms for free') or an expertise feat at level 1, and improved defences (or similar) at level 5 so I will go with that. Anything else? Edit: I've found CB loader and am currently trying to work out how to get it to go. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 00:35
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The other thing to note would be do not fuss about minor actions to draw and sheathe stuff. If they want to open the door or drink a potion, by RAW a Paladin has to basically spend a full round doing it - free to drop sword, minor to pull potion, minor to drink potion, minor to pick up sword. Which is dumb as poo poo, don't do it. In general, if something is an action of any sort to do, assume it's that action to do all the admin AND do it. So, drink a potion, minor action. Pour a potion down someone's throat, standard action, open a door, minor action, etc, whatever your gear loadout. In general, don't nitpick small details. Arrows, XP, gold, minor actions, none of these really need to be tracked most of the time - gold needs tracking on the macro scale, but past about 5th level, don't micromanage individual GPs.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:44
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Looks like the WotC forum shutdown has been delayed for one week.
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Oct 30, 2015 01:24
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wallawallawingwang posted:The Tenra Bansho Zero RPG has a cool solution to this issue. Players can basically set a flag on their characters for a scene and while this flag is up the character gets access to extra power but is also killable. TBZ is great players are immortal unless they tic their death box nothing can kill them they can fall from the highest mountain break all of their bones and rupture every organ and they only fall unconcious also there is a "death spiral" only instead of going down it goes up, the closer someone comes to death the more they show their true power getting bonuses to hit and damage and ofcourse the best buff of all comes when they tic the death box
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Oct 30, 2015 04:01
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thespaceinvader posted:In general, don't nitpick small details. Arrows, XP, gold, minor actions, none of these really need to be tracked most of the time - gold needs tracking on the macro scale, but past about 5th level, don't micromanage individual GPs. Yeah, I've never really bothered before (other than GP) and the setup for Zeitgeist (you are the police) offers a perfect opportunity to tip that out the back as well. Good tip about the actions though, that is pretty ridiculous.
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Oct 30, 2015 05:00
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LightWarden posted:Looks like the WotC forum shutdown has been delayed for one week. WotC is so bad at tech stuff they can't even close their forums down properly?
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Oct 30, 2015 05:21
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Looks like it. They already killed the bulk of the CharOp posts in the 4e section (the only one I really bothered with any more anyway) but the forums are still up and accepting new input. Lol.
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Oct 30, 2015 17:34
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Is there a reason they couldn't close the forums but leave what was there in an archived form?
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Oct 30, 2015 18:11
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wotc is bad at forums
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Oct 30, 2015 18:24
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Red Metal posted:wotc is bad
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Oct 30, 2015 18:42
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:To easy - the consensus seems to be something like you are proposing (which seems to be basically 'give everyone master at arms for free') or an expertise feat at level 1, and improved defences (or similar) at level 5 so I will go with that. And theoretically none of this math stuff actually starts to fall behind until midway through each tier, so if you wanted to keep from overloading your players you can save it until a story appropriate time down the road.
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Oct 30, 2015 19:01
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I've seen posts recommending giving expertise at lvl5 and defence at lvl7
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Oct 31, 2015 02:46
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I'd be inclined to chuck them both on at 5.
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Oct 31, 2015 09:50
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Level 5 feels Important, so it works well there. Especially if you work them in as a storyline reward, hides that it's just another part of the Red Queen's Race.
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Oct 31, 2015 20:49
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I thought that 5, 15, and 25 are the points in the monster math where the extra +1s are supposed to go, they just did it by tier because then you can't take a feat at level 1 that does literally nothing..
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Nov 1, 2015 16:09
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5/15/25 are the right points. The feats used to scale at those levels, then they published new ones in Essentials which scaled at 1/11/21, and errated the other ones to scale the same way eventually.
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Nov 1, 2015 16:30
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No lie, I don't see the problem in giving the feat taxes up front. We worry about the slog that 4e combat can become, so it's not like that extra 5% to hit won't move things along better. The real question I have is how does everyone deal with the expertise feats? I know some people give out Versatile Expertise or just the flat bonuses instead of the Essentials weapon or class-specific ones since those generally have extra benefits besides the scaling bonus, but considering how tight feat slots can get and how great a lot of them are, I feel like we're still looking at a kind of a tax, especially since 4e prefers it if you stick with one kind of weapon throughout your career.
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Nov 1, 2015 16:37
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I'm inclined to give the bonuses only, and if they want to use the side bennies of the Expertise feats, they take the feat for it. Several of them are VERY worth it.
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Nov 1, 2015 17:13
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thespaceinvader posted:I'm inclined to give the bonuses only, and if they want to use the side bennies of the Expertise feats, they take the feat for it. I suppose that's fair. One the one hand you've got things like Spear Expertise or Light Blade Expertise which give you a scaling bonus to specific attacks, which I can take or leave, but on the other hand you got poo poo like Flail Expertise which straight up turns slides into prones. Some I feel like you should let the player have, though, like the Artificer's crossbow expertise feat which while giving them the equivalent of the Free Load feat still requires a whole other feat (Crossbow Caster) to even pick it up.
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Nov 1, 2015 17:20
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Staff Expertise is the semi-broken one IMO. Just outright ignoring provokes is HUGE. But yeah, Flail is also pretty uber. Crossbow Artificers got super-hosed on Expertise IIRC.
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Nov 1, 2015 17:27
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Mecha Gojira posted:No lie, I don't see the problem in giving the feat taxes up front. We worry about the slog that 4e combat can become, so it's not like that extra 5% to hit won't move things along better.
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Nov 1, 2015 17:48
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Some of them are super lukewarm though, I can't remember off the top of my head but I think Holy Symbol Expertise was kind of terrible, which is why the Hybrid expertises were such a boon.
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Nov 1, 2015 17:50
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Sling Expertise also prevents provoking, but only rogues tend to have a use for slings and most ranged rogues might use daggers or hand crossbows instead. Heavy Blade Expertise is one of my least favorites, since it's a whopping +2 to defenses vs. OAs, which you shouldn't really be provoking as a heavy blade user unless you're charging, and there are items for that.
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Nov 1, 2015 18:13
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Mecha Gojira posted:The real question I have is how does everyone deal with the expertise feats? I know some people give out Versatile Expertise or just the flat bonuses instead of the Essentials weapon or class-specific ones since those generally have extra benefits besides the scaling bonus, but considering how tight feat slots can get and how great a lot of them are, I feel like we're still looking at a kind of a tax, especially since 4e prefers it if you stick with one kind of weapon throughout your career. I just let them add on whichever Expertise feat they want. Honestly, what I'm doing with one of my campaigns is giving the players five bonus feats at level 1 (obviously don't do this with a fully new group). Three of those are "noncombat" feats that they can use to fill out stuff like Ritual Caster or other random small flavorful but otherwise RP building feats. Two of those are "combat" feats that they can use to grab two free from whichever of Expertise, Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Focus, Improved Defenses, and Multiclass feats they want. The intent is to cut down on the "well, I need this pile of feat slots just to complete my basic character concept" at low levels. Seriously, a level 5 character has 3 feat slots. If you want a non-standard weapon (especially a +2 proficiency one), that's Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Group Expertise, and Improved Defenses just to bring yourself up to par. That leaves no room for anything actually interesting and different, which is a huge problem if your group's gone through a lot of intentionally or unintentionally one shot characters.
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Nov 1, 2015 18:23
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LightWarden posted:Sling Expertise also prevents provoking, but only rogues tend to have a use for slings and most ranged rogues might use daggers or hand crossbows instead. I feel the same way about Heavy Blade expertise as well, but fortunately there are others to pick up that are much better like Devout Protector Expertise for Paladins or just straight up Two-handed expertise for your Fullblade chargers. And yeah, our groups generally just gave any expertise feat for free as well as Improved Defenses; but I have noticed some tables do it differently and I don't necessarily disagree with it. Between plain expertise scaling and no dragon marks, though, some tables do make my favorite cheap broken build harder: Mark of Storm Flail Expertise Spiked Chain Training Cleric/Ranger Hybrid (Blade Dancer Paragon Path). That's okay, though, let's me focus on crit-fishing in Paragon (Hello, two-weapon opening and Jagged Weapon/Melegaunt's Dark Blade).
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Nov 1, 2015 19:37
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