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Mecha Gojira posted: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. Best post in this thread, ever.
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Jun 10, 2016 06:35
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Any reason you need 5.500 XP to go from level 10 to 11 and a level 10 monster is worth only 500 XP when usually one same-level monster is worth exactly 10% of XP-to-next-level? I know, don't track XP, just curious. e: I guess it's actually kinda pertinent in that you're either supposed to have an additional encounter on the road to 11 or they're supposed to be a tiny bit more difficult. And 20-to-21 has a similar irregularity. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 14:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:Any reason you need 5.500 XP to go from level 10 to 11 and a level 10 monster is worth only 500 XP when usually one same-level monster is worth exactly 10% of XP-to-next-level? Yeah, it's tier breaks. Just how it is I guess.
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Jun 11, 2016 14:13
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It kinda makes sense that going up a tier costs slightly more XP than just going up a level. Not that tracking XP is all that fun, but I'd definitely understand a 5-encounter work day or two if it's to go up to paragon or epic.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:20
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Tracking XP is very easy and pretty fun. It's nice to see a concrete number representing what you've worked for, and to watch that number grow as you do different things.
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Jun 11, 2016 16:22
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Arivia posted:Tracking XP is very easy and pretty fun. It's nice to see a concrete number representing what you've worked for, and to watch that number grow as you do different things. There's nothing really wrong with tracking XP, obviously it has worked for a lot of people for a long time. I just don't see much need to do it. Maybe if it was used more directly in some sort of system and wasn't just a number that then translates into another number I'd bother with it.
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Jun 11, 2016 23:33
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Nobody fondly recalls the time they made a number go up. e: come to think of it, way too many people fondly recall times they rolled a 20 or a 1 so I guess it's not impossible Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jun 12, 2016 |
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Jun 12, 2016 00:45
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The problem with tracked XP in modern D&D is that it's a mechanic with no "game" behind it. Or at least not one that anyone seriously plays. I think it made more sense when gold added to XP. In that way, the mechanic drives the players towards particular game behaviors: The goal is to get money. Nowadays, you get XP for basically whatever the DM throws at you, so it doesn't drive any behaviors. Or if it does, generally not in a good way. Whether XP is tracked or not, it's often kind of a running joke at a lot of tables that the PC group should just attack whatever NPC group they encounter just to get more XP, which runs counter to what most people would want out of the game. e: And if the DM doesn't actually give out XP for "defeating" an encounter non-violently, then the mechanic actually does reinforce those undesirable behaviors. ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jun 12, 2016 |
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Jun 12, 2016 16:31
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Normal XP leveling in 4E is way too slow, and it's far too slow for a game of its nature. If you run two combats per game night, it takes approximately five weeks to level. Extending that out to level 30, that's nearly three years. And it isn't a game where the powers you have at a given level are going to stay that interesting for over a month of game sessions, especially if you're running one of the Essentials classes. It's a tactics-focused game, it needs to stay fresh and evolve frequently to stay interesting... And most importantly, D&D has always been centered on leveling as a goal and major part of the experience. Personally I've grown bored of characters even at epic level when the leveling isn't fast enough. In my experience, multi-year D&D campaigns exist almost exclusively in theory, and in practice, any given game in 4E runs about 5-10 levels. Even the old 4E Encounters pack had you leveling twice in ten weeks. I honestly think the Dungeon World pace of being able to hit 10 (max level) in roughly 15 weeks or so is a lot more realistic. Now if only normal Dungeon World stayed interesting outside of one-off games. Even if you disagree with all that, math controlling the narrative and pace of the game rather than you is ridiculous. There is a better way.
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Jun 12, 2016 18:25
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If you're worried about tracking XP in any edition past second, you really only need one guy to track it, because everybody levels at the same time. If Joe the Sperg wants to tally XP then you can just completely ignore XP values and level up when he announces he hits a new level, assuming the DM don't give handfuls of bonus XP to single players for "good roleplaying." It mattered in 1E because gold=XP, as ImpactVector said. It mattered in 2E because classes leveled at different XP values. In 3E, 4E, and 5E they made XP values flat across all classes and gold!=XP so there's no real interesting mechanics behind it anymore.
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Jun 12, 2016 18:52
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Dick Burglar posted:If you're worried about tracking XP in any edition past second, you really only need one guy to track it, because everybody levels at the same time. If Joe the Sperg wants to tally XP then you can just completely ignore XP values and level up when he announces he hits a new level, assuming the DM don't give handfuls of bonus XP to single players for "good roleplaying." And let's be fair, the 2E set did not have interesting XP mechanics.
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Jun 12, 2016 19:07
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Normal XP leveling in 4E is way too slow, and it's far too slow for a game of its nature. If you run two combats per game night, it takes approximately five weeks to level. Extending that out to level 30, that's nearly three years. And it isn't a game where the powers you have at a given level are going to stay that interesting for over a month of game sessions, especially if you're running one of the Essentials classes. It's a tactics-focused game, it needs to stay fresh and evolve frequently to stay interesting... And most importantly, D&D has always been centered on leveling as a goal and major part of the experience. Personally I've grown bored of characters even at epic level when the leveling isn't fast enough. The Zeitgeist AP has you levelling every 2-3 sessions which feels like a good pace.
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Jun 13, 2016 01:52
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:The Zeitgeist AP has you levelling every 2-3 sessions which feels like a good pace. This is what I usually do in most systems/campaigns I run anyway.
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Jun 13, 2016 03:14
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Dick Burglar posted:If you're worried about tracking XP in any edition past second, you really only need one guy to track it, because everybody levels at the same time. If Joe the Sperg wants to tally XP then you can just completely ignore XP values and level up when he announces he hits a new level, assuming the DM don't give handfuls of bonus XP to single players for "good roleplaying." Unfortunately if you're playing 3.5 more or less as written that doesn't work. Not only does crafting take XP, some spells do as well and you can lose levels from many monsters, as well as from dying.
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Jun 13, 2016 05:00
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The best/funniest thing about gold as XP was my ludicrously defensive cleric in an OSR game being the sole survivor of two all but one TPKS, cashing in huge dollar and being 2-3 levels higher than everyone else and totally unkillable for the rest of the campaign
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Jun 16, 2016 14:00
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senrath posted:Unfortunately if you're playing 3.5 more or less as written that doesn't work. Not only does crafting take XP, some spells do as well and you can lose levels from many monsters, as well as from dying. Also the multi classing rules as written can lead to bizarre exp scaling poo poo, though at least for that one I don't think I've ever seen it used/enforced.
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Jun 17, 2016 01:50
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Do you guys have any advice to offer to people running this system play-by-post.
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Jun 17, 2016 02:19
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Arrrthritis posted:Do you guys have any advice to offer to people running this system play-by-post. So, many years ago I was involved in a couple 4e play by post games, though none of them got particularly far. If you're going to do it it's important to have good maps (updated frequently) and to really make sure that everybody is able to take their turns in combat at a reasonable pace, but I would say if at all possible try to play 4e in real time/close to real time. Play by post is just so far from an optimal way to play, and things like roll20 are so much better as options that I'd only turn to play by post as an absolute last resort, and even then I personally probably wouldn't do it. edit: I mean "Don't" probably wasn't the advice you were looking for, but I really would recommend against it.
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Jun 17, 2016 02:40
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4e isn't very well suited to PbP because of how rigid the turn order and action economy is. When I ran it I just let the players always go first, and then alternated between all players turns and then all monsters turns so that you would never have to wait for specific individuals because proceeding, but that technically distorts the turn rules (alpha striking becomes even more powerful) and can still get hung up easily because of how many times you have to engage in a back-and-forth. If I were to do it all again I would toy with the idea of having the players lay out an "AI" for their character so that I can strictly enforce a 24/48-hour turn cycle where I will make their moves for them based on the parameters they set if they don't give precise orders, but I don't know if that would work well as far as player agency is concerned.
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Jun 17, 2016 02:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:4e isn't very well suited to PbP because of how rigid the turn order and action economy is. When I ran it I just let the players always go first, and then alternated between all players turns and then all monsters turns so that you would never have to wait for specific individuals because proceeding, but that technically distorts the turn rules (alpha striking becomes even more powerful) and can still get hung up easily because of how many times you have to engage in a back-and-forth. Reactions and other out of turn actions are a loving nightmare too unless you have players prestate all of their potential out of turn actions, or you just assume they do whatever makes the most sense, or one of several other less than ideal options.
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Jun 17, 2016 03:02
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Yeah, from the games I played I remembered it being a bit of a bummer when in a group of 4-6 people everyone is waiting on one person to update with a reaction/turn. I was mostly wondering if that issue had been dealt with  I was thinking of having the combats be resolved in real time (where we schedule a time that's good for everyone) while the actual game be a bi-weekly post thing, although I don't know if that's better or worse than just doing the whole thing in real time. I guess I like everyone being able to formulate their IC responses and think it's easier to meet up for shorter sessions, but i'm sure there are some obvious cons that aren't apparent to me yet.
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Jun 17, 2016 03:14
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Arrrthritis posted:Yeah, from the games I played I remembered it being a bit of a bummer when in a group of 4-6 people everyone is waiting on one person to update with a reaction/turn. I was mostly wondering if that issue had been dealt with Play by post with real time combat is definitely much better than just play by post, but I've also found that in my experience, once you start doing part of the game in real time you quickly end up just doing most of it in real time.
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Jun 17, 2016 03:35
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Arrrthritis posted:I was thinking of having the combats be resolved in real time (where we schedule a time that's good for everyone) while the actual game be a bi-weekly post thing, although I don't know if that's better or worse than just doing the whole thing in real time. I guess I like everyone being able to formulate their IC responses and think it's easier to meet up for shorter sessions, but i'm sure there are some obvious cons that aren't apparent to me yet. I've played some PbP games of 4e (but mostly 5e), and in addition to the above posters' advice, I would say the way to get the best results out of both 4e and the PbP format together, is to have combat basically all handled in Roll20. You can do rolling in orokos if you want, and do quick posts about movements and attacks (including links to rolls) and some if-then's for Immediate and Opportunity actions. It does not have to be real-time combat, all the time, but having people who post/check threads at least once a day is the biggest thing. Having a group of players that are all active at the same time and are in IRC/Roll20/Discord/whatever, as a group -- together, often -- makes all the difference in the world, IME. E; short version: get players who post, use the same chat, and are close to the same time zone. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 17, 2016 05:05
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The way I always meant to handle reactions and such was to make them a group resource. Say Bob has an Encounter interrupt power that lets him give others an attack bonus. It's Alice's turn, she attacks and misses, but she can choose to trigger Bob's power and get the bonus. Or if it's a defensive power I as the DM would trigger it at the earliest moment it would help the group. I'd also post monsters' MBA stats for the players in case someone forced a monster to make an attack or drew an opportunity attack. The idea is to set things up so that everything that happens during one person's turn can be immediately resolved by that person. But it's a huge hassle and my current idea is to just take immediate actions out of the equation entirely, save for what you get as part of your class. Monsters don't get them either, soldiers will have to think of something else. It's not much of a fix but at least it should cut down on the number of posts you have to wait for. gradenko_2000 posted:If I were to do it all again I would toy with the idea of having the players lay out an "AI" for their character so that I can strictly enforce a 24/48-hour turn cycle where I will make their moves for them based on the parameters they set if they don't give precise orders, but I don't know if that would work well as far as player agency is concerned.
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Jun 17, 2016 06:40
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My Lovely Horse posted:Someone's recruiting for a 5e game where combat is handled entirely by the DM. Players just set which of a few "AI" options they want to take - conserve resources, go all out, balanced, that sort of thing, and who to generally target. I like that idea and if I ran a game I'd probably do one round per day so players can change their "AI" according to the situation, but I'm not so sure it wouldn't defeat the purpose of building a 4E character, and anyway having long stretches where only the DM is supposed to post seems counterproductive. Yeah I picked up the idea from that - but I wasn't thinking of "once we enter combat I will process your turns according to what you've told me", but more like "I will advance the turn every 24 hours absolutely, so please tell me what you want to happen in case you don't make it. If you do, you can still be as precise about your turn as you want" None of that is really going to change the calculus a lot though, PbP with 4e is going to need dedicated players and some corner-cutting no matter what.
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Jun 17, 2016 06:49
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Mind you that is a good rule to have, but I don't think you need an explicit AI option for it, you can say you'll move things ahead after 24 hours and then just take good turns for the PCs.
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Jun 17, 2016 06:57
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I like the idea of an AI as a backup, but I feel like having AI be the default is kind of taking away the system's greatest strength (fun, dramatic, & tactical encounters). I might as well run a more rules-light system to keep the whole thing fluid if I'm going to go that route. That being said, I think I might reserve combat for only the really climactic moments in the campaign. It would kind of suck if the group lost momentum fighting some throwaway goblins for extra XP or something.
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Jun 17, 2016 07:19
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Yeah the AI is just a way to take care of when people can't/won't post their turns without judging them and bottlenecking the game. There's at least a 24 hour pause after every round or decision fork type thing where I take what happened and dress it up in the fiction. Zooming out like gives me more to work with: the play by play gets old pretty fast when there's not many choices to make or moves to take. I at least like something more colorful, and having the tides turn round by round instead of turn by turn I think fosters more interest and enthusiasm. Also players can always pull the stop request line if they need more than 24 hours to figure whatever out. I expect that might happen in more lethal and tricky encounters. If everyone takes this option it'd be no different from other PbPs which I think is a good thing. It's opt out basically.
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Jun 17, 2016 07:45
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I think 4e is a terrible game system for PbP unless you intend to do real-time fight nights. The strength of 4e is the combat minigame and that isn't helped at all by dragging the fights out to a PbP scale.
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Jun 17, 2016 09:01
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Ask Really Pants how to do 4e PBP because I'm in their Zeitgeist game and it's still going after a year and a half and it still owns bones
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Jun 17, 2016 09:01
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slydingdoor posted:Yeah the AI is just a way to take care of when people can't/won't post their turns without judging them and bottlenecking the game. Would you be willing to post a grogsbane post-mortem in here when the thread ends? I'll probably end up starting my game before then but I'm still interested to know how much of a success it is vs what kinks still need to be ironed out. The way you just described it sounds a lot better than what I thought it was. ProfessorCirno posted:Ask Really Pants how to do 4e PBP because I'm in their Zeitgeist game and it's still going after a year and a half and it still owns bones I'll take a look and (possibly) send them a PM. Thanks! Arrrthritis fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 17, 2016 10:06
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All this talk of AI is making me remember how we never actually got a 4E tactics game and it's making me sad and mad. I'm half tempted to just... try making one myself. I can program and I have a good idea of how I'd approach it, but I'm laaazy.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:40
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Obligatum VII posted:All this talk of AI is making me remember how we never actually got a 4E tactics game and it's making me sad and mad. I'm half tempted to just... try making one myself. I can program and I have a good idea of how I'd approach it, but I'm laaazy. If you've spent enough time to learn how to program, you can't be that lazy.
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Jun 17, 2016 14:10
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P.d0t posted:If you've spent enough time to learn how to program, you can't be that lazy.
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Jun 17, 2016 14:12
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Obligatum VII posted:All this talk of AI is making me remember how we never actually got a 4E tactics game and it's making me sad and mad. I'm half tempted to just... try making one myself. I can program and I have a good idea of how I'd approach it, but I'm laaazy. I seem to recall Conclave being kinda 4E
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Jun 17, 2016 14:47
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Gort posted:I seem to recall Conclave being kinda 4E Was playing that during the height of my Crit Juice podcast listening and can confirm its 4e-ness.
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Jun 17, 2016 14:50
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There was also a pretty decent Facebook game that got shut down a while ago*. I was kinda hoping they'd release an offline version of it, but sadly not. * This was right around the time of 5E's release, and there was a new D&D game being advertised as its successor--that never materialized. Because 5E.
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Jun 17, 2016 17:28
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Obligatum VII posted:All this talk of AI is making me remember how we never actually got a 4E tactics game and it's making me sad and mad. I'm half tempted to just... try making one myself. I can program and I have a good idea of how I'd approach it, but I'm laaazy. I keep wanting to do this as well, problem is I spend all day at work programming and don't feel like programming up a game when I get home from work, and so here we are.
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Jun 18, 2016 01:58
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goldjas posted:I keep wanting to do this as well, problem is I spend all day at work programming and don't feel like programming up a game when I get home from work, and so here we are. That about sums it up, yeah. I mean, I certainly like programming but there is such a thing as burnout.
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Jun 18, 2016 08:31
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I have a working prototype of a 4e game that I haven't worked on in like a year. It has the basic combat rules, some powers, and really basic enemies. I'll upload it when I get home from work in case anybody wants to take a look at it. edit: Here it is: link Ergonomix fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 19, 2016 20:59
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