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Serperoth posted:Everyone at my FLGS seems to think that 4E is some sort of plague upon the world (ok maybe that's a bit exaggerated), and it's kind of turning me off from reading it in the first place. They act like that because it hurts their pure magic superiority complex.
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May 30, 2016 21:41
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CaPensiPraxis posted:When I have this problem, I both introduce environmental trigger items that they can use to make better work of a fight provided they move around AND start making up npc mechanics that force tactics. Excellent advice, thank you!
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May 30, 2016 21:54
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Serperoth posted:This is what's bugging me about wanting a 4E Ebberon game with some folks. Everyone at my FLGS seems to think that 4E is some sort of plague upon the world (ok maybe that's a bit exaggerated), and it's kind of turning me off from reading it in the first place. As someone preparing for a 4e Eberron game herself, you're really missing out. 4e isn't a plague upon the world, but if it was it would be one perfectly fitted for Eberron. Everything about 4e stylistically fits the setting, even going back to the advice in the 3e Eberron Campaign Setting. Just think of it as trying to make your Eberron game the most explosive, amazing, dramatic game it can be, and 4e will deliver on that in spades.
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May 30, 2016 22:29
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Arivia posted:As someone preparing for a 4e Eberron game herself, you're really missing out. 4e isn't a plague upon the world, but if it was it would be one perfectly fitted for Eberron. Everything about 4e stylistically fits the setting, even going back to the advice in the 3e Eberron Campaign Setting. Just think of it as trying to make your Eberron game the most explosive, amazing, dramatic game it can be, and 4e will deliver on that in spades. I've read that much, in this thread even, that's why I had the initial interest. But thanks for the encouragement. I'll see how it works out, since of the potential people, only one is from the store, and he seems open, but yeah.
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May 31, 2016 00:00
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Can anyone link me to, or pm me a succinct run down of 4e. What it does right and wrong compared to 5e abd perhaps good arguments for why to utilize it over something else like 3.5 or pf or 5e. Also, how martial are represented in it is hugely important.
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May 31, 2016 00:06
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Spiteski posted:Can anyone link me to, or pm me a succinct run down of 4e. What it does right and wrong compared to 5e abd perhaps good arguments for why to utilize it over something else like 3.5 or pf or 5e. Also, how martial are represented in it is hugely important. 4e: the math works, generally things are well-balanced and the entire system is actually well-written so it's very easy to run and play with clear keywording. It's basically the exact opposite of 5e's "ask your DM." It is much, much easier for the DM to run, with amazing easy monster creation and clear encounter balance. 4e is pretty combat focused, but it does combat perfectly and then just basically tries to get out of the way of everything else. Martial characters are on an equal playing field with everyone else. So wizards aren't always gods, and 4e uses the at-will/per encounter/per day powers everyone gets to give martial characters lots of new fun tricks. Like Come and Get Me, when the fighter yells at a bunch of enemies to come and hit him and see what happens and then he beats them all for even daring to attack him. It's the best D&D to play martial characters in, with Rules Cyclopedia D&D coming second.
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May 31, 2016 00:15
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It's more just me gushing rather than a succinct run down, but from the Gm's side of the table 4e felt like a well-padded set of boxing gloves. Because the system and monster math was so tight, I never felt like I was pulling my punches against the players, or deliberately skewing things not to kill them. I got to play as dastardly and cruelly as I wanted, and It really hit the sweet spot for the players where every battle they where sure that they where all gonna die before eventually turning things around and triumphing.
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May 31, 2016 00:51
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Spiteski posted:Can anyone link me to, or pm me a succinct run down of 4e. What it does right and wrong compared to 5e abd perhaps good arguments for why to utilize it over something else like 3.5 or pf or 5e. Also, how martial are represented in it is hugely important. Out of all the editions of D&D, 4e requires the least amount of houserules to make a fully functional system that can contribute something to your elf pretend sessions. The tactical combat minigame is actually interesting, and what's more, it's interesting for everybody--nobody's useless, and nobody gets only one thing to do. Mike Mearls did his best to gently caress that up with "I-attack" classes late in 4e's production life but even those have access to a wide range of options. According to most of the 3.5/PF/5e fanbase, there are two things that D&D 4e did "wrong:" --The game books actually read like game books. No other D&D does this, and it gave rise to a whole lot of dumbass memes about 4e being a videogamey MMO cash grab for today's entitled millennial console kiddies. --There are no huge piles of random tables to roll on for inconsequential poo poo, which clearly means 4e must be nothing but a tactical miniatures game where nobody gets to do any roleplaying ever. Actual problems with 4e include: --Combats can take a very long time. If you run 4e, make every fight significant, and if the story permits, don't be afraid to have enemies retreat or surrender when the outcome is clear. --There are a ridiculous amount of feats and magic items, and lots of them are lame. This one doesn't really have a simple fix, but once you have a feel for the game you can steer your PCs toward good feats and easily make up interesting items. Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 01:27 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 00:59
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Really Pants posted:Out of all the editions of D&D, 4e requires the least amount of houserules to make a fully functional system that can contribute something to your elf pretend sessions. The tactical combat minigame is actually interesting, and what's more, it's interesting for everybody--Mike Mearls did his best to gently caress it up with "I-attack" classes late in 4e's production life but even those have access to a wide range of options. The last two things are what turned me away from 4e initially, combined with reports of wonky monster math pre-MM3. As a 3rd Ed player, it seemed like more of the same things I was getting tired of in my preferred game. Ironically this led me down the path of the OSR for a while, as I found the ideal of a rules-lite D&D appealing.
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May 31, 2016 01:22
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There's also some problems with stat scaling of enemies. I know the 3rd monster manual fixes it or some free feat, idk. Don't go too far into edition war stuff with actual people. It's good to not wallow in frustration but you can't force fun.
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May 31, 2016 01:30
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To me, the biggest downside of getting into 4e as a new player is knowing how to get ahold of the actual good stuff, especially since Insider isn't really an option anymore. If you can find an experienced 4e owner willing to give you a nicely curated bundle of material it goes a long way.
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May 31, 2016 01:40
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Spiteski posted:Can anyone link me to, or pm me a succinct run down of 4e. What it does right and wrong compared to 5e abd perhaps good arguments for why to utilize it over something else like 3.5 or pf or 5e. Also, how martial are represented in it is hugely important. I did a review of Wizards Presents, a design preview document for 4e that documents why they did what they did as far as lessons learned from 3.5e EDIT: To compare to 3rd/5th edition, you would play 4th edition if: * You want the martial classes to be able to have consistent, innovative and powerful abilities that allow them to shine as bright as caster classes * You want to be able to DM on-the-fly, with skill check DCs that are standardized and monster stats that you can pull out of your rear end at a moment's notice, without having to spend lots of time on statblocks * You want detailed, meaningful character customization on the level of 3.5e/PF, but without having to slog through massive spell lists or lots of cherry-picked prestige classes * You want clearly written rules that fit together tightly and don't leave a lot of room for vagueness, as in 5e The main issues with 4th Edition are: * Feat bloat and item bloat, but that can be solved by limiting the number of books that players are allowed to use, and by implementing the Inherent Bonuses rule so that players will always be able to function well at a baseline level even if they gently caress-up their feat selection, and even if the DM is lazy at assigning loot. * Combat length due to initially badly-tuned monster math, but in the year of our Lord 2016 much ink has been spilled to solve that problem gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:22 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 02:24
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The angry DM wrote his thoughts on 4e recently. http://theangrygm.com/reflecting-on-dd-4e/ . It turned me into a fan of the system and the setting.
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May 31, 2016 02:25
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Thanks for the feedback everyone. I have got a huge amount of content bought for 5e, and lots and lots of homebrew, and a regular online game of that which I will likely keep going, but this is something I might suggest to my in person group to try out, they're a bit more keen on the crunchy side of things so should be an easy sale. I don't mind learning and running multiple different systems either, I've been playing DnD, CoC, PF and have recently tried Strike! to some good feedback from the whole group, so 4e should be fun to give a try.
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May 31, 2016 05:17
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Spiteski posted:have recently tried Strike! to some good feedback from the whole group, so 4e should be fun to give a try. You might also look at Gamma World 7e, which uses 4e's combat model but is built more around moving from encounter to encounter rather than pacing an adventuring day.
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May 31, 2016 05:20
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I'll second that. I'm not much of a 4e player, but Gamma world helped me understand what it was going for and how it works. It's also a fun game in it's own right, and can be had on the cheap. Comes with lots of content and feelies, great value.
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May 31, 2016 05:24
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Gamma World 7E is legit good and you should definitely give it a look if you like the thought of 4E but want something with less curation required.
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May 31, 2016 05:40
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Thanks again everyone. I might go keep asking some more questions in the 4e thread (I am assuming there is one?) to keep this thread on it's normal track. who am I kidding, this thread is the "recommend another system" thread 
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May 31, 2016 05:42
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Spiteski posted:Thanks again everyone. I might go keep asking some more questions in the 4e thread (I am assuming there is one?) to keep this thread on it's normal track. who am I kidding, this thread is the "recommend another system" thread lifg posted:The angry DM wrote his thoughts on 4e recently. http://theangrygm.com/reflecting-on-dd-4e/ . It turned me into a fan of the system and the setting. 1) They increase player agency and spotlight. When someone uses a Daily the whole table sits up and takes notice because you know poo poo is getting real. 2) They increase your design space. If everything has to be at-will then you can't vary the power level or utility of your abilities. People are going to figure out which ones are the best in the most situations and just take those. Or they'll build characters that engineer the situation so that what they've chosen is always the best. Granted, you still get some of that. There are a lot of comparatively lame powers. The 4e class guides are full of advice on them. But there's only a limited amount of optimization you can do around an ability you can only use once per day/encounter. And probably a bunch of other things I'm forgetting.
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May 31, 2016 06:03
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EDIT: On the topic of 4e combat length; this is of course anecdotal, but using modern monster math, I've gotten a 4e campaign up to level 7 so far and I've still been able to keep combats to just about an hour per, and that's without a "they're done, we surrender" shorthand. The only houserule I've had to implement so far is the Escalation Die.ImpactVector posted:2) They increase your design space. If everything has to be at-will then you can't vary the power level or utility of your abilities. People are going to figure out which ones are the best in the most situations and just take those. Or they'll build characters that engineer the situation so that what they've chosen is always the best. Granted, you still get some of that. There are a lot of comparatively lame powers. The 4e class guides are full of advice on them. But there's only a limited amount of optimization you can do around an ability you can only use once per day/encounter. The 5e Battle Master is really guilty of this. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 06:35 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 06:19
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Really Pants posted:--Combats can take a very long time. If you run 4e, make every fight significant, and if the story permits, don't be afraid to have enemies retreat or surrender when the outcome is clear. Conversely don't make combats that last a round and a half before everyone surrenders. Some classes and strikers depend on having a few rounds to set up before they can really start going off and if the combat ends just as they start pulling out the fistfulls of D6s it can be extremely frustrating for them.
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May 31, 2016 06:31
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This was my favorite part of running 4e That and Healing Surges. The way they were presented was a lot more cohesive than Hit Dice. They're treated as an actual resource. It was a lot of fun to give players superpowered Magic Items that required burning a Healing Surge to activate. The players get a collection of Oh poo poo Buttons while you get a way to low key drain their health.
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May 31, 2016 06:45
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ImpactVector posted:2) They increase your design space. If everything has to be at-will then you can't vary the power level or utility of your abilities. People are going to figure out which ones are the best in the most situations and just take those. Or they'll build characters that engineer the situation so that what they've chosen is always the best. Granted, you still get some of that. There are a lot of comparatively lame powers. The 4e class guides are full of advice on them. But there's only a limited amount of optimization you can do around an ability you can only use once per day/encounter. gradenko_2000 posted:The 5e Battle Master is really guilty of this. This happens with any game that gives you powers and/or abilities you can "spam," inevitably someone will find the best ones and, surprise surprise, use those ones over and over again. This is one reason (among several) that the 4E psionic power point classes wind up falling into a trap that other 4E classes don't, because for some dumb reason the power point classes are allowed to break the 4E "cooldown" design and so consequently it turns out the best strategies for those classes often revolves around cherry-picking the best available powers at your tier and using them as often as you have points to spend on them. And the inverse of this is, as gradenko points out, the Battlemaster Dilemma where once you've cherry-picked those best abilities you have nothing left to look forward to and so every new ability and power you receive is less and less exciting as you draw from a pool of increasingly unwanted options.
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May 31, 2016 07:10
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The thing is though, they already kinda sorta recognized that that was a weakness of 3.5e's martial design: if you're a Fighter, and you only ever Basic Attack, but then you can take feats that let you modify your basic attack to have riders, such as Trip or whatever, then A. you're going to look for whichever Basic Attack rider (or replacement) is better than all the rest, then B. you're just going to spam Trip Attack (or whatever other rider) over and over until the DM throws a monster at you that you can't trip.
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May 31, 2016 07:14
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Kai Tave posted:This happens with any game that gives you powers and/or abilities you can "spam," inevitably someone will find the best ones and, surprise surprise, use those ones over and over again. This is one reason (among several) that the 4E psionic power point classes wind up falling into a trap that other 4E classes don't, because for some dumb reason the power point classes are allowed to break the 4E "cooldown" design and so consequently it turns out the best strategies for those classes often revolves around cherry-picking the best available powers at your tier and using them as often as you have points to spend on them. And the inverse of this is, as gradenko points out, the Battlemaster Dilemma where once you've cherry-picked those best abilities you have nothing left to look forward to and so every new ability and power you receive is less and less exciting as you draw from a pool of increasingly unwanted options. I think within 4e, and especially coming out just past the edition's midpoint, this wasn't as bad as it seems, at least not from a bid's eye view of the edition. 4e already had tons of classes and sub-classes using the standard skeleton, with multiple classes in every role and sub role and combination of major and minor role. The psionics were coming into an environment that was lousy with options. In that kind of environment, something that does boil down to repetitive spamming isn't the worst thing, since that's exactly what someone out there is looking for in a class.
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May 31, 2016 08:12
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LFK posted:I think within 4e, and especially coming out just past the edition's midpoint, this wasn't as bad as it seems, at least not from a bid's eye view of the edition. 4e already had tons of classes and sub-classes using the standard skeleton, with multiple classes in every role and sub role and combination of major and minor role. The psionics were coming into an environment that was lousy with options. In that kind of environment, something that does boil down to repetitive spamming isn't the worst thing, since that's exactly what someone out there is looking for in a class. It's bad design in the sense that they weren't really meant to be "pick one good power, spam it" is the issue. The fact that you could do that, and that it was frequently the most effective option, was an unintended effect of the way they were made I am 100% certain and not like some secretly brilliant thing because otherwise they would have been built more like the Essentials classes many of which were much more straightforwardly about spamming one or two things all day with minor tweaks, but the power point classes had all sorts of options in their catalog which made them appear to be like any other pre-Essentials class, it was only because they broke one of the standard pillars of 4E class design...that all classes get, at most, one use of their Encounter+ powers per fight (barring rare exceptions here and there, of course)...that suddenly it became possible to do things like just using one power as many times as you could pay for it.
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May 31, 2016 10:00
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With the mention of setups, I remembered a bit from my last session that I'd like some opinions on. Initiative order went like this: 1. Summoned Spiders (mine) 2. Bad dude (Cloud giant stats, with a bit of a DEX buff) 3. Rogue 4. Ranger 5. Druid (me) 6. Barbarian Bad dude had used a Fog Cloud spell, and so the Ranger was like "Ok, not gonna go for it now, but I'll ready action to attack him when he shows up". Does his action go off, despite the bad dude's next turn being in the 'next' turn in the overall order? We decided that yes, but there was some confusion around, with our DM initially being against it (since the 'overall turn' had ended). I checked just now and in the Errata on my PHB PDF it says "You have until the start of your next turn to use a readied action", which points it in my favour (I was arguing that it should go off), but is it as clear as that? My thinking was that if it's only until the end of the overall round (and in fact the PHB says "so that you can act later in the round using your reaction), then there wouldn't be a point in readying something against someone with a higher initiative than you.
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May 31, 2016 10:19
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Serperoth posted:With the mention of setups, I remembered a bit from my last session that I'd like some opinions on. The term "round" is sometimes similar to the term "year". Next year could be Januari 1 2017, or it could be May 31 2017. (Given that I write this on May 31 2016.) But with the errata in place it becomes very cut and dry: you have until your next turn to take the action. Done.
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May 31, 2016 10:37
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Sage Genesis posted:But with the errata in place it becomes very cut and dry: you have until your next turn to take the action. Done. Alright, cool, I'll pop him a message about the Errata then, so that it doesn't come up again, thanks a lot.
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May 31, 2016 10:47
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This might be a bit of a  , but great weapon fighting interactions for an Oath of Vengeance Paladin in 5E. How do people treat re-rolling 1s and 2s for various dice? Based on some searches it looks like divine smite technically works within the RAW, but is not RAI. Is there a general consensus for dice from hunter's mark, or a Valor Bard's bardic inspiration? I'm just trying to get a feel for how things like that get treated. Are they adding to the weapon damage, or are they from their own source?
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May 31, 2016 19:34
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Really Pants posted:Actual problems with 4e include:
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May 31, 2016 20:03
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dwarf74 posted:For what it's worth, my preferred solution to the magic item issue is to use Inherent Bonuses. Then I can get all oldschool and groggy about magic items, and focus on placing really neat/cool/powerful things instead of just going down a Charge Kit wishlist.
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May 31, 2016 20:05
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ImpactVector posted:Though like anything, you should probably talk to your players about this kind of thing ahead of time so they don't attempt to set up an item based build. Personally, I'm never running 4e again without inherent bonuses and story-based leveling. I'm running the 4e Zeitgeist adventure path, and my most optimization-oriented player doesn't even have a magic weapon yet. I've asked him about it a few times, but so long as he always has the Shoes of Style he got early on, he's perfectly happy. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 20:36 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 20:34
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DarkRider09 posted:This might be a bit of a http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SA-Compendium.pdf If you use Great Weapon Fighting with a feature like Divine Smite or a spell like hex, do you get to reroll any 1 or 2 you roll for the extra damage? The Great Weapon Fighting feature—which is shared by fighters and paladins—is meant to benefit only the damage roll of the weapon used with the feature. For example, if you use a greatsword with the feature, you can reroll any 1 or 2 you roll on the weapon’s 2d6. If you’re a paladin and use Divine Smite with the greatsword, Great Weapon Fighting doesn’t let you reroll a 1 or 2 that you roll for the damage of Divine Smite. The main purpose of this limitation is to prevent the tedium of excessive rerolls. Many of the limits in the game are aimed at inhibiting slowdowns. Having no limit would also leave the door open for Great Weapon Fighting to grant more of a damage boost than we intended, although the potential for that is minimal compared to the likelihood that numerous rerolls would bog the game down.
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May 31, 2016 21:32
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They're announcing new stuff via Twitch at meltdown comics tomorrow. http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/watch-dd-live-meltdown-comics
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May 31, 2016 21:38
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odinson posted:http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SA-Compendium.pdf Meanwhile warlocks can attack 5 times as a standard action requiring 5 attack rolls and 5 separate damage rolls and this is different because ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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May 31, 2016 21:42
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Kurieg posted:Meanwhile warlocks can attack 5 times as a standard action requiring 5 attack rolls and 5 separate damage rolls and this is different because ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Rerolls don't give as good tummyfeels, duh.
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May 31, 2016 21:43
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It's maybe the most hilarious thing from 5e, because it was really obviously done because GWF paladins were destroying all other "martial" classes with burst capability, so they nerfed it, but they know they can never claim to change anything for balance reasons, so they made up the really obviously bullshit excuse of "Uh, it's to prevent tedium!" 5e is fundamentally built around lying to your players and your customers because you know how much they literally cannot handle the truth.
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May 31, 2016 21:48
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It doesn't change the fact that you choose to smite after you've hit so you can choose to only smite on critical strikes. So Paladins are still the undisputed rulers of martial burst, just not as much as they used to be.
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May 31, 2016 21:55
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odinson posted:http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SA-Compendium.pdf This all makes sense for smite, but do extra dice like hunters mark count for the reroll? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm pretty new to D&D and the way certain abilities are worded leave things open to a pretty wide interpretation.
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May 31, 2016 22:17
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