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gradenko_2000 posted:FWIW I didn't have any trouble recruiting people for my Slaying Stone game. I had to rely on PbPs back when I worked nights and running live games was pretty much impossible, but things change and I'd definitely run a 4e game regularly now that I'm confident I can keep combat moving quickly enough. There's certainly piles of people who want to play 4e  as evidenced by the folk crawling out of the woodwork every time a recruit goes up, DMs are another breed entirely and I can't fault a DM for not wanting to run a game here when they look at what has happened in the past. A real detriment on the sub-forum is an overall lack of scheduling, having a clear "next major update will be on X date have your posts in by Y" or "Combat updates every two days or earlier the deadline is Z" and actually sticking to those deadlines would help a lot of threads, it seems posters become blasé about keeping up with the games they're in and before you know it they haven't posted in your thread for two weeks. Actually punishing people who consistently fail to meet deadlines by replacing them wouldn't hurt either, we already know there's a surplus of players so it shouldn't be too hard . While it's hard as a DM to schedule around real life at least making an effort at it certainly helps keep a game moving.What primarily surprises me is that there seems to be even a larger delay on combat posts than there are with general role-playing ones, you're at the part where you only have to put in a modicum of creative writing to progress the scene, I certainly don't expect a player to write a novella about their elfman severing their opponent's head so  beautifully with every combat post they make, but if you're playing in a game as combat crunchy as 4e you should at the least be able to set aside 5 minutes a day to check to see if the thread has updated during a combat, open your dice roller of choice, and post a simple "I move to A10 and use my power Gigabeam on the target at A12 for 59 damage. End of turn." Fluffing it up certainly helps! But instead folks seem to delay days or even weeks until they have time to sit down and write out a wordy post which causes the DM to wait for everyone and stop paying attention to their own thread, then suddenly we're in a game death spiral as a combat that could have been done in 10 minutes of real time takes 3 months to complete.Really Pants posted:Doctor, I think we've found the problem. If you put 1,000,000 players-only in a room with 1,000,000 d20s would they be able to eventually DM Keep on the Shadowfell? (I would still totally post in a looking for DM thread haha, I'm just not comfortable enough with my fantasy writing to DM a game hah.)
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Nov 27, 2015 15:08
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A Darker Porpoise posted:Keep on the Shadowfell Some dark, masochistic part of me still really wants to give this piece of work a shot, just to see what it's like. Knock down Irontooth to 88 HP and it'll be fine, right?
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Nov 27, 2015 15:28
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It's certainly more doable now that people have a good deal of system mastery under their belt, it'd be a "fun" experiment though haha.
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Nov 27, 2015 15:33
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I know nothing, what's wrong with KotS? Also, isn't it the same module as Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Inc. started with? I'm not getting the sense that it was bad at all(though I haven't finished the first series).
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Nov 27, 2015 15:42
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KOTS was the very first adventure that was released, so it's using the rough MM1 math where monsters have too many hit points, but also don't deal enough damage to be particularly threatening either. Except when you do get to that Irontooth fight which sort of became infamous for causing TPKs. It also has combat-after-combat-after-combat, which can be terribly uninteresting. Since it was the first module ever, people also weren't nearly as good at the game, so they'd play unoptimized relative to today, so they'd end up with lower hit rates and damage rolls than would be otherwise possible, which further contributed to the draggy combat.
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Nov 27, 2015 15:55
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Chaotic Neutral posted:This terrible class list needs more Bladesinger. I had managed to forget about the Bladesinger. Why did you have to remind me?
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Nov 27, 2015 17:49
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I'd play 4e, but I struggle to make DMing fun for me with my live group, nevermind trying to do so at the glacial pace of pbp.
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Nov 27, 2015 17:57
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Generic Octopus posted:I'd play 4e, but I struggle to make DMing fun for me with my live group, nevermind trying to do so at the glacial pace of pbp. Yeah, 4e is not a game I'd want to do PbP. Far too many mechanics interacting in ways which don't fit asynchronously, far too little story generation mechanics.
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Nov 27, 2015 18:53
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I run 4e IRL and have no time to run a pbp game. Sorry all.
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Nov 27, 2015 19:48
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dwarf74 posted:I run 4e IRL and have no time to run a pbp game. Sorry all. I'm just going to assume by this you meant that your day job is being a gym trainer
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Nov 27, 2015 20:00
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Really Pants posted:Be the change you wish to see in the world. But maps 
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Nov 27, 2015 20:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:Some dark, masochistic part of me still really wants to give this piece of work a shot, just to see what it's like. Knock down Irontooth to 88 HP and it'll be fine, right? A Darker Porpoise posted:It's certainly more doable now that people have a good deal of system mastery under their belt, it'd be a "fun" experiment though haha. Legit, I died to Irontooth on my first ever 4e-playing, but then a couple years later I played the campaign again; having my feet under me, it was no big deal.
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Nov 27, 2015 20:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm just going to assume by this you meant that your day job is being a gym trainer 
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Nov 27, 2015 20:15
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thespaceinvader posted:I had managed to forget about the Bladesinger. Why did you have to remind me? The reason I asked about bad classes in the first place is because I am sweetening the pot in my current home game for anyone who wants to play one, to the tune of a free item and two feats. I've found that adding bonus feats for bad races and classes actually rounds them out pretty well.
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Nov 27, 2015 20:25
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It will take more than that to fix the bad classes in 4e. Besides, why do you want people to play them? Every drat one of them has a better way to match its flavour than using the piece of lovely design.
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Nov 27, 2015 20:29
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thespaceinvader posted:It will take more than that to fix the bad classes in 4e. Yea, the only one that kinda benefits from bonus feats is O-sassin, and there are still better classes for that niche.
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Nov 27, 2015 20:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:Some dark, masochistic part of me still really wants to give this piece of work a shot, just to see what it's like. Knock down Irontooth to 88 HP and it'll be fine, right? Personal story time, the first game of 4e I ever ran was KotS. Even then, having played 4e all of once, I realized how much Irontooth would kill the party. I just removed him and I'm pretty sure the encounter would have worked fine. I don't know however, because the PCs disguised themselves as treasure inspectors, stole the pile of gold (which is on the map and is not actually in the adventure) until I informed the "inspectors" that it was actually fake gold, and the only real gold was in the chest. Then they proceeded to get the kobolds to worship one of the PCs.
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Nov 27, 2015 20:35
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:The reason I asked about bad classes in the first place is because I am sweetening the pot in my current home game for anyone who wants to play one, to the tune of a free item and two feats. I've found that adding bonus feats for bad races and classes actually rounds them out pretty well. thespaceinvader posted:It will take more than that to fix the bad classes in 4e. You can go a long way to fixing Blackguard by just keying all of their attacks off of CHA instead of STR (probably doesn't hurt Cavaliers either, tbh) e: or just let their other class features key off STR, but that's kinda boring Letting them pick their at-wills from any of the Paladin stuff probably is a good idea, too. If you really wanna mix it up, let their Weapon attacks be usable with melee or ranged; I find the Domination spec is sorta asinine because you're meant to burn THP for damage, but you're also supposed to be frontline off-tanking, so that resource is going to get burnt up on enemy turns. Being able to put some distance between you and the monsters helps a bit. A free feat to consider for that is Disciple of Stone; you basically can start every fight with THP if you surged up after the last one, and it helps if your party Leader doesn't already grant THP when they hand out surge uses. It always stuck in my craw that Skalds got to use CHA for their MBA, but not Blackguards/Cavaliers 
P.d0t fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Nov 27, 2015 |
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Nov 27, 2015 20:46
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You can make Blackguards at least competent by building them with Human, Tiefling or Half-Elf, but they lack critical elements to be really *good* as strikers, and however you build them you more or less have to use a Frost Weapon.
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Nov 27, 2015 21:12
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P.d0t posted:It always stuck in my craw that Skalds got to use CHA for their MBA, but not Blackguards/Cavaliers Human Blackguard with Virtuous Strike, or Tiefling Blackguard with Wrath of the Crimson Legion. Dump Strength, ignore your blackguard at-wills, make Charisma your top stat. Virtue lets you start every fight with temps. Beshaba's Boon gives you temps every time somebody fails a save against your encounter power.
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Nov 27, 2015 21:13
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The only sorta cool thing the Cavalier has is the mount, and even then the cool ones aren't available til Paragon and Epic.
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Nov 27, 2015 21:15
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Really Pants posted:Human Blackguard with Virtuous Strike, or Tiefling Blackguard with Wrath of the Crimson Legion. Dump Strength, ignore your blackguard at-wills, make Charisma your top stat. I mean, I've played the Human Blackguard version of this, but it's all a lot of hoops to jump through and barely worth the payoff. Like, the fixes I've suggested for OneThousandMonkeys can't be implemented in ~the precious character builder~ but they're a lot better than all this noise.
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Nov 27, 2015 21:39
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How many people watching the recruiting threads would be willing to do a Skype game?
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Nov 27, 2015 21:39
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Moriatti posted:How many people watching the recruiting threads would be willing to do a Skype game?
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Nov 27, 2015 21:51
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P.d0t posted:I mean, I've played the Human Blackguard version of this, but it's all a lot of hoops to jump through and barely worth the payoff. Can this fixes be found anywhere? I always liked the Blackguard for reasons unclear even to me (it was probably the illustration in the 3.5 manual) and I'd like it if it did not suck.
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Nov 27, 2015 21:51
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paradoxGentleman posted:Can this fixes be found anywhere? I always liked the Blackguard for reasons unclear even to me (it was probably the illustration in the 3.5 manual) and I'd like it if it did not suck. This post? I just wrote it, stream-of-consciousness, so it's not really scientific or anything. But I've played the class at heroic and paragon in a tabletop setting, as well as forum PBP with an unconventional build, so it's based on my "feedback."
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Nov 27, 2015 21:57
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Oh, I thought you were referring to some other fix somewhere else, sorry about that.
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Nov 27, 2015 22:37
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thespaceinvader posted:It will take more than that to fix the bad classes in 4e. Hmm, well, there's a guy who is rolling a Bullywug Seeker with: -Customizable race attributes (not just +Dex and +Con, which is hard to build most things around) -Two free feats for being a bullywug -Two free feats for being a Seeker -Expertise and Improved Defenses (which everybody gets) -One bonus magic item in a system that is trying to limit the amount of magic people get early on but has Inherent Bonuses I have one other person rolling a hamadryad sentinel druid and I was a little surprised because without even knowing the class well, when I tried to build one once it looked like balls.
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Nov 27, 2015 22:40
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That would probably work for a Seeker, but as noted, the Seeker is a lot less awful than it used to be.
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Nov 27, 2015 22:52
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Vampire, bladesinger, et all aren't bad because they're feat starved. There's only so much you can do with feats, especially if you have to meet their requirements. The real problem is that they just don't work. And honestly feats don't really make it funner to play a poo poo class either.
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Nov 27, 2015 23:22
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Indeed, to some extent they're lovely in large part because they're NOT feat starved - they never got the same design love that other classes did, and class feats are a HUGE part of optimisation.
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Nov 27, 2015 23:40
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Just a s point of bitching and complaining, "class feats" shouldn't really be A Thing, from a design perspective; if it's class-specific it should be a class mechanic. If it's a general, potentially useful thing for any class, then keep it as a feat, sure.
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Nov 28, 2015 00:04
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Well yes, I concur. But they are, and those classes universally have gently caress-all of them. I mean, it's far from the only reason they're bad, but it's certainly a contributing factor.
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Nov 28, 2015 00:22
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thespaceinvader posted:Indeed, to some extent they're lovely in large part because they're NOT feat starved - they never got the same design love that other classes did, and class feats are a HUGE part of optimisation. Yeah absolutely true. I mean as a way to specialize the minutia of class features I get it. Some of the things feats do to a fighters mark are cool but not signicant enough to warrant the cerebral overhead of packing those choices into core class design. They're bad though because they were used to shore up weak class features and put players into a bad dilemma. Spend a feat doing something neat, or building down a very specialized path that maybe makes one class feature competitive with the baseline?
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Nov 28, 2015 02:36
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P.d0t posted:Just a s point of bitching and complaining, "class feats" shouldn't really be A Thing, from a design perspective; if it's class-specific it should be a class mechanic. If it's a general, potentially useful thing for any class, then keep it as a feat, sure. actually i disagree feats should be completely class specific, this gives classes ways to branch out a bit. Mendrian posted:I mean as a way to specialize the minutia of class features I get it. Some of the things feats do to a fighters mark are cool but not signicant enough to warrant the cerebral overhead of packing those choices into core class design. They're bad though because they were used to shore up weak class features and put players into a bad dilemma. Spend a feat doing something neat, or building down a very specialized path that maybe makes one class feature competitive with the baseline?
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Nov 28, 2015 03:23
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Elfgames posted:actually i disagree feats should be completely class specific, this gives classes ways to branch out a bit. Or this, yeah. 
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Nov 28, 2015 03:26
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Werewhale posted:I know nothing, what's wrong with KotS? Also, isn't it the same module as Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Inc. started with? I'm not getting the sense that it was bad at all(though I haven't finished the first series). Half of the reason is that parts of 4e were more rushed then others and the devs took a long time to really come to grips with how their own game worked (similar to how it took WotC a real long time to figure out how 3.x worked). Also, it was made in part by Mike Mearls, who a) hates Keep on the Borderlands, and b) literally never understood how 4e work even to this day. thespaceinvader posted:It will take more than that to fix the bad classes in 4e. This is sort of another key point. There's more or less nothing the poo poo classes do that you can't also do through another class, usually without even changing the fluff - in fact, usually without even changing the base class for e-classes, even when changing the class type - in fact, ESPECIALLY then, because Mearls never figured out how to make non-strikers, and didn't really understand how to make strikers, either.
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Nov 28, 2015 04:31
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Edit: nvm
Kinu Nishimura fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Nov 28, 2015 |
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Nov 28, 2015 04:58
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Nov 28, 2015 05:01
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Here's a question that actually applies to reality: what are the weaknesses of the Psion class?
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Nov 28, 2015 05:09
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