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Mecha Gojira posted:It is Dark Sun, though, so Arcane and Divine are kind of out of the question, right? Reskin Reskin Reskin Reskin.
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Jun 7, 2016 19:40
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Kurieg posted:Reskin Reskin Reskin Reskin. Wasn't sure how Dark Sun worked in 4e, whether or not it was cool with just taking power sources not associated with it and reflavoring. Though, that is what they suggest doing in the Dark Sun Creature Catalog for monsters.
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Jun 7, 2016 19:42
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I am almost 100% certain that they suggest doing that in the character creation chapter re: Paladins and Avengers. They do talk about wizards needing to do bluff checks to pass off the poo poo they do as psionic but there's absolutely nothing stopping you from just making a divine character, having them use all the normal divine rules, and just say they're psionic.
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Jun 7, 2016 19:59
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Mecha Gojira posted:It is Dark Sun, though, so Arcane and Divine are kind of out of the question, right? Arcane is completely fine in Dark Sun, since you can opt into being a Preserver. Story-wise people may automatically distrust an arcane user due to most of them being Defilers but heroes can deffo play arcane no problem. Mechanically, the only power source banned outright in Dark Sun is divine. And even then you could probably make a case to your DM for some classes like runepriests and stuff. I played a blackguard in a PBP game here who was basically powered by the vengeful spirits of the dead gods (we never fully explored it, on purpose) kinda like a warlock. Was rad. Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jun 7, 2016 |
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Jun 7, 2016 20:12
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It's even arcane-friendlier still since you're automatically assumed to be preserving if you don't declare otherwise, defiling is what you opt into. If I'm honest, and feel free to call me old-fashioned, I think it's a little pointless to introduce a setting detail like "arcane magic killed the world" and not have there be some default mechanical consequences but whatevs people get to play their wizard without being hosed over for it, 's all good.
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Jun 7, 2016 20:17
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4e where the fluff's pointless and the setting doesn't matter.
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Jun 7, 2016 20:23
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My Lovely Horse posted:It's even arcane-friendlier still since you're automatically assumed to be preserving if you don't declare otherwise, defiling is what you opt into. That's the problem with designing tight system math 
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Jun 7, 2016 20:49
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slydingdoor posted:4e where the fluff's pointless and the setting doesn't matter. What you come up with and agree on at the table is extremely important. Arguably it's pretty much the entire reason you'd play an RPG instead of a board game.
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Jun 7, 2016 20:50
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slydingdoor posted:4e where the fluff's pointless and the setting doesn't matter. Well yeah it's D&D
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Jun 7, 2016 22:45
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My Dark Sun group unlocked Divine classes when they accidentally woke the gods up, after inadvertently letting Dregoth ascend. They killed off Raam's sorcerer-queen and left it undefended; Dregoth brought up his zombie and dragonborn legions, the streets were awash in blood, and he became a god. It was a pretty rad game.
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Jun 8, 2016 04:15
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dwarf74 posted:My Dark Sun group unlocked Divine classes when they accidentally woke the gods up, after inadvertently letting Dregoth ascend. They killed off Raam's sorcerer-queen and left it undefended; Dregoth brought up his zombie and dragonborn legions, the streets were awash in blood, and he became a god. Seems like a fair trade for Clerics. Holy poo poo, does that sound awesome. Was there a "well, at least you can create divine classes now" after the apocalypse was unleashed?
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Jun 8, 2016 04:19
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Drewjitsu posted:Seems like a fair trade for Clerics. Holy poo poo, does that sound awesome. Was there a "well, at least you can create divine classes now" after the apocalypse was unleashed? Sadly the game folded after that. 
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Jun 8, 2016 04:32
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My Lovely Horse posted:It's even arcane-friendlier still since you're automatically assumed to be preserving if you don't declare otherwise, defiling is what you opt into.
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Jun 8, 2016 09:04
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My favorite 4e character to play was a Shardmind Ardent. Demoralizing Strike was my bread and butter, being able to teleport into the center of a group of enemies, inflict -4 (or higher later on) to all defenses to everybody adjacent to me with a single attack, and then pray to god that I didn't get get pulverized by them before my next turn was a lot of fun. I ended up taking some racial feats so that my movement power upped my defenses so I wouldn't die so easily, but for the most part I had a really good time playing an Ardent. e: Has anyone gotten single-monster encounters to work as of yet (i.e. Solos)? I'm thinking about tooling creatures to be less HP spongey and have more actions (something like 5th's legendary action stuff) to be able to work but I want to know if someone has tried this stuff already or found a better solution. Arrrthritis fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jun 8, 2016 |
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Jun 8, 2016 09:06
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Have you ever tried MM3 solos? They get all those things.
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Jun 8, 2016 11:31
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Really Pants posted:Have you ever tried MM3 solos? They get all those things. So you're saying I should release the kraken then
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Jun 8, 2016 12:09
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Also the Monster Vault dragons are pretty darn good for solos. I love springing the level 1 dragon on a new party.
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Jun 8, 2016 12:57
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Arrrthritis posted:My favorite 4e character to play was a Shardmind Ardent. quote:e: Has anyone gotten single-monster encounters to work as of yet (i.e. Solos)? I'm thinking about tooling creatures to be less HP spongey and have more actions (something like 5th's legendary action stuff) to be able to work but I want to know if someone has tried this stuff already or found a better solution. Also, don't really run things as Solos; give them backup. Mixing them with skill challenges, lesser threats, terrain effects, etc. make all the difference.
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Jun 8, 2016 13:22
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dwarf74 posted:Sadly, that's more or less precisely what I hate about Ardents and (to an even greater extent) Psions. Spamming crazy high attack penalties is about as good as an at-will Stun. Worse, in many cases, because most monsters in default 4e don't recognize attack penalties as 'conditions'. The power points system makes it even more egregious, because they can use all of their encounter powers, or use the same one as many times as they have points.  ofc if you do nothing but Demo Strike you're not being as good as you can be to your group, but I remember one session my DM had to send ridiculously high defense dudes at us in anticipation of that particular ability. dwarf74 posted:The Zeitgeist Adventure Path does a pretty good job. Condition mitigation and interesting phases that present different challenges to a party are key. Yeah that's kind of what I want to deal with. Sometimes I just want a big creature to be threatening and not have to rely on goons popping in for extra actions. I was thinking of taking legendary/lair actions from 5e and lowering HP so that the difficulty wasn't from the fight being prolonged but from trying to kill the thing as quickly as possible. I also think I read in one of these threads that someone reskinned five monsters to be different parts of one giant monster, and I'm kind of curious to hear how that worked out for them because that seemed like a good idea. Interesting environments I feel are pretty much a standard for 4e. There's no point in giving the players all those forced movement abilities if there isn't anywhere interesting to move (in) to.
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Jun 8, 2016 13:51
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Legendary actions are a legitimately great addition to a 4e solo. I'll try to post some of the better examples from the AP.
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Jun 8, 2016 14:27
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For solos, just give them one more standard action for every player in the group. If you don't want to group all the actions together because it might let you burst down a player, then have them go off their own separate initiative counts, or take the Legendary Action route and directly key off the extra standard actions to go off after a player ends a turn. If you want to curb yourself further, then again take a page from Legendary Actions and state that only certain Powers can be used with the extra Standard Actions, or even create completely different Powers that can only be used with these extra Standard Actions. That kind of framework already partially existed in late 4e to begin with: Solos would/could have Minor Actions that were good enough to be Standard Actions in the hands of anyone else, on top of the Action Points that they had, and on top of Triggered Actions.
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Jun 8, 2016 14:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:For solos, just give them one more standard action for every player in the group. hell go all out and make a solo have multiple turns.
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Jun 8, 2016 17:47
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Elfgames posted:hell go all out and make a solo have multiple turns. Some of the MM3+ Solos do have multiple turns. They have something absurd like a +30 to initiative and get additional turns at +20 initiative and +10 iniative.
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Jun 8, 2016 17:56
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Yeah, MM3 - onward solos are great since they have extra attacks, minors, action points, and even multiple initiatives. I STILL wouldn't use one by itself in an encounter, though. Not after I sent a level 4 Solo Black Dragon from the Monster Vault by itself against a level 2 party. Needed at least a couple minions or a regular monster or two so that it's not completely boned by focus-fire.
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Jun 8, 2016 18:06
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DM questions when you run minions do you tell the players that they are minions? I always enjoy just describing the monsters, five pig nosed orcs bust into the room. One is wearing chain holding a shield and sword, three are wearing hide wielding axes, and the last is barely wearing any cloths, covered in tattoos, and wielding a mace made from a ogre or troll's skull. Ok, one can figure that tattoo orc might be a shaman and the one with the chain and shield is probably stronger than the ones in hide. But the ones in hide could be anything. I don't want to just say, "an orc commander, an storm shaman, and 3 minions attack you, roll initiative." Even though I have done that. I just don't want the players using up daily powers on monsters with 1 hp. How do you handled charge attacks as monsters? Charge allows a move and attack but only a melee basic. All the monster stats have at-will powers, do monsters just not charge? For my orgillians that deal 2d10+5 on a slam, I have had them deal 1d10+5 on a charge. Is this a correct method for dealing with melee basic attacks on monsters? Healing Surges & Monsters -- one of my favorite things of 4e is how all PCs have a way to heal themselves during a short rest and the Second Wind option. One easy way to make a fight harder is to give a way for an enemy to heal themselves or to get healed. At first I thought that like an Orc Chieftain or Troll Mercenary would be smart enough to use Second Wind without it being listed but for monsters on Elite or Solo level with 2x and 4x HP even one healing surge would be a pretty hefty heal. Do you guys ever have monsters heal themselves? The PCs looked at the Healing Potion from the PHB1 and thought it was weak. I think now I might toss out some of those healing potions and see if that makes fights more of a challenge. old 2e spells I miss in 4e -- detect magic & know alignment -- I think detect magic is kinda covered by the skill Arcana but is their a simple way for PCs to figure out alignments of NPCs?
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Jun 9, 2016 01:53
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Ideally your players should be rolling skill checks for monster knowledge at the start of fights. You can lead off with the flavorful descriptions, and then tell them about minions and etc. if/when they succeed on their checks. Monster stat blocks will usually have the first at-will melee attack highlighted with a little circled sword icon. That's their melee basic attack for charges and opportunity attacks. One big problem with monster healing is that it makes the combat longer, which is already kind of a big weakness of 4e. I wouldn't use healing on elites or solos, but maybe on a group of regular monsters with lower than normal HP. That way the PCs can work around it if their tactics are effective. I don't know of any RAW 4e equivalent to Know Alignment. Insight is the skill for sensing motives, which are usually a more pressing concern for PCs.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:02
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Elfgames posted:hell go all out and make a solo have multiple turns. The solo in the first Zeitgeist AP adventure has 2 turns, precisely on this basis, but it effectively only gets a standard action on its extra turn (it effectively has a charge attack backed in). This works really well and makes it a tough fight. edit: The encounter balance in Zeitgeist is pretty good, but not perfect. I started out having to add ~5 minions or ~1 standard enemy to each encounter, but in module 3 the PCs are really struggling. An elite controller who can push opponents back, damaging and immobilizing them until EoNT with 2 standard actions almost completely dunked the party. quote:when you run minions do you tell the players that they are minions? I always enjoy just describing the monsters, five pig nosed orcs bust into the room. One is wearing chain holding a shield and sword, three are wearing hide wielding axes, and the last is barely wearing any cloths, covered in tattoos, and wielding a mace made from a ogre or troll's skull. Ok, one can figure that tattoo orc might be a shaman and the one with the chain and shield is probably stronger than the ones in hide. But the ones in hide could be anything. I don't want to just say, "an orc commander, an storm shaman, and 3 minions attack you, roll initiative." Even though I have done that. I just don't want the players using up daily powers on monsters with 1 hp. I tend to up encounter difficulty by adding more minions so my players can metagame guess: OK so there is an obvious mage, some sort of golem and 15 thugs at this black market operation? Those thugs are clearly going to be minions. Similarly I tend to use more significant figures for the big guys on the battlemaps, but may only use coins or goblin figures I have a zillion of for the minions Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jun 9, 2016 |
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Jun 9, 2016 02:10
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Really Pants posted:Ideally your players should be rolling skill checks for monster knowledge at the start of fights. You can lead off with the flavorful descriptions, and then tell them about minions and etc. if/when they succeed on their checks. And yeah, they cut monster HP in the combat math revision for a reason. Adding healing back in to Team Monster is just a reversal of that. Alignment has been meaningless in every edition of D&D except where it's also been a dumb mechanic. There's very little a player can do with the knowledge of an NPC's alignment because the different alignments are so open to interpretation.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:36
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My players figure out who's a minion really drat quick when they are represented by little plastic Cthulhus or glass beads.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:39
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ImpactVector posted:Alignment has been meaningless in every edition of D&D except where it's also been a dumb mechanic. There's very little a player can do with the knowledge of an NPC's alignment because the different alignments are so open to interpretation.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:46
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dwarf74 posted:My players figure out who's a minion really drat quick when they are represented by little plastic Cthulhus or glass beads. Yeah, I give it away in that sense. Also physically use bigger models for elites/solos and smaller stuff for minions if olaying with someone elses gear.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:54
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We always use variously shaped chocolates for minions.
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Jun 9, 2016 03:04
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fatherdog posted:We always use variously shaped chocolates for minions. That is a god drat genius idea.
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Jun 9, 2016 03:09
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I've got the original Monster Vault, so my players usually know when enemies are minions because they say MINION on the tiny one inch cardboard pog. They're great for two hit minions since they can be flipped for "bloodied."
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Jun 9, 2016 03:29
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No Luck Needed posted:DM questions The vast majority of monsters have an MBA. It's the one with the sword in a circle. RBAs are a bow in a circle. So for example, the Common Bandit from the Monster Vault has three attacks: the mace (an MBA), the dagger (and RBA), and the dazing strike (which is a melee attack - hence the sword icon - but not an MBA, as it lacks the circle). A number of creatures, like the Babau, even have multiple M/RBAs. I've never given my monsters much healing - there was even a trend over the course of 4e's life to decrease the amount of healing that monsters do in general, in particular with orcs - and yeah, healing potions are pretty balls. You don't really want to hand them out past second level at the latest. The Crotch fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Jun 9, 2016 |
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Jun 9, 2016 06:26
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No Luck Needed posted:when you run minions do you tell the players that they are minions? quote:How do you handled charge attacks as monsters? quote:Healing Surges & Monsters Healing potions are good as long as your surge value is below 10, and strictly an emergency option after. They can be slightly better if you have any powers that trigger off spending a surge to regain HP. quote:old 2e spells I miss in 4e -- detect magic & know alignment -- I think detect magic is kinda covered by the skill Arcana but is their a simple way for PCs to figure out alignments of NPCs?
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Jun 9, 2016 06:47
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My Lovely Horse posted:Two things are important about healing surges: first, how many you have. Monsters have very few surges - one per tier, i.e. level 1-10 monsters have one surge, 11-20 two, 21-30 three. Second, you need ways to spend them, and monsters generally don't have those at all. Not even Second Wind. The reason is that their HP are balanced to make for the "correct" length of combat and healing them just drags things out. So no, if it's not already in their stat block, I generally don't let monsters heal, no matter how smart they are. If I make them from scratch, I don't give them healing powers. My favorite fight was against an enemy Warlord who busted out Stand the Fallen when a bunch of his soldiers were down. I wouldn't want it in every fight, but it was an awesome "what the gently caress?!" moment.
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Jun 9, 2016 07:12
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Yeah a qualifier: I do give them healing powers when it's a plot-important fight that's supposed to have a special gimmick and I try and account for that when I'm setting things up.  And I do mean special gimmick, like once-every-few-levels special.I think most monster healing you'll find in existing stat blocks is regeneration or regaining flat amounts from a power rather than spending surges. Stuff like a vampire's bite: 3d10+10 damage, and regain 15 HP (about 15% of its total HP).
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Jun 9, 2016 07:20
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I generally say both the diegetic "this is what you literally see in-universe" description of a combat as it is about to happen, but then I also explicitly say whether or not a target is literally a Minion, because that will affect the tactical decisions made by the players.
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Jun 9, 2016 07:23
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I just stopped using minions as a major part of my encounter design and replaced them with a 'lesser' tier between minions and standards that still does fixed damage but have real HP and more design room to play in. It's partly a consequence of my group's style, which tends to run semi-optimized but controller light, partly because my fights tend to be high budget and monster-dense, and mostly because I've just never liked the contortions you have to go through to make minions more than a distraction to eat up someone's first turn with AOE.
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Jun 9, 2016 09:05
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