|
Kaza42 posted:3) I love the idea of inherent bonuses, since I don't like the magic item treadmill and prefer to have unique magic items not easily available. What do you do with gold in games with inherent bonuses applied?
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 19:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 22:21 |
|
|
How much does the game rely on mid-dungeon extended rests? Would it work to say that only safe in-town rests or similar count? I think that would let traveling encounters and travel challenges sap resources and impact dungeon performance.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 19:42
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:How much does the game rely on mid-dungeon extended rests? Would it work to say that only safe in-town rests or similar count? I think that would let traveling encounters and travel challenges sap resources and impact dungeon performance. And if you need to (say you flubbed the expected difficulty of an encounter) you can always still throw them a bone with a magical grove or whatever where they can rest and regain surges/powers/count as an extended rest mid-adventure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 19:50
|
|
|
Most people cut out the middle-man in that discussion and make it a hard rule/gentlemen's agreement with their group that extended rests only happen every 4/5 encounters, no matter how much in-game time passes. And then of course it's prudent to pace adventures in a way that there are good "downtime spots" in the story at those points. Cause frankly, if you attach the ability to rest to in-game conditions, a lot of players see that as an invitation to game the system. "We can only rest in town? Okay, we leave the dungeon and go back. We have to have a good meal and sleep? I brought sleeping powder and the Travellers' Feast ritual." That being said "only in-town rests count" does work - if the party does leave the dungeon mid-adventure to rest, especially before they need to, they should find the situation has developed strongly to their disadvantage once they return. The necromancer noticed his destroyed minions and summoned reinforcements and then some, the hobgoblins haven't heard from their outposts and pulled up the drawbridge in the main fort, or the bandits spotted them retreating and moved their camp and the kidnapped merchants somewhere entirely else.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 19:52
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:That being said "only in-town rests count" does work - if the party does leave the dungeon mid-adventure to rest, especially before they need to, they should find the situation has developed strongly to their disadvantage once they return. The necromancer noticed his destroyed minions and summoned reinforcements and then some, the hobgoblins haven't heard from their outposts and pulled up the drawbridge in the main fort, or the bandits spotted them retreating and moved their camp and the kidnapped merchants somewhere entirely else. One of the problems with the initial presentation of 4E is how big a deal this should have been yet it wasn't properly articlulated AFAIK. Adventures should be designed to have constant time pressure from pretty the moment the first initiative is rolled until you're ripping the valuable incisors out of the dragon's corpse - if you don't have time pressure then you're don't have pressure to keep adventuring, and it the use of healing surges & daily powers ceases to have any sort of mechanical bite. As far as I can recall, none of the initial adventures have a front-and-center clock, with elaborations on how the adventure gets harder and/or more complicated if they take extra extended rests.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 20:16
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:How much does the game rely on mid-dungeon extended rests? Would it work to say that only safe in-town rests or similar count? I think that would let traveling encounters and travel challenges sap resources and impact dungeon performance.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 21:10
|
|
|
You should just make extended rests happen every 4/5/6 encounters (by tier) rather than tie it to narrative, the latter of which will sooner or later feel more like a restriction than a feature.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 21:12
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:2) How well does 4e handle wandering monsters/random encounters? I've heard that it works best with carefully designed setpieces, so would it bog down horribly if there were also occasional less important fights? The reason it does best with setpieces is because combat is generally fairly slow and involved. Random fights and wandering monsters and stuff can easily burn up hours of playtime on filler fights that don't progress the story and aren't even interesting.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 21:15
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:You should just make extended rests happen every 4/5/6 encounters (by tier) rather than tie it to narrative, the latter of which will sooner or later feel more like a restriction than a feature. That seems to largely hinge on how much agency you want the players to have about when the fail state happens. If you can choose to rest, you're pushing the white-knuckle fight to wherever it falls in the narrative (probably either the climax fight or the one before it). If rests are automatic, you're staring down the gun more-or-less immediately without a lot of flexibility. It would seem to mitigate the issue in that the GM doesn't have adjust the plans at all....except for when you wipe, which I would argue is more of a monkey wrench than "the bad guys got 6 extra hours".
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 21:22
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:You should just make extended rests happen every 4/5/6 encounters (by tier) rather than tie it to narrative, the latter of which will sooner or later feel more like a restriction than a feature. There is no central narrative and the PCs control their own pace; both of those are essential parts of a hexcrawl.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 21:30
|
|
|
I wonder if it'd be any good to turn random encounters into straight up final fantasy gridless TOTM rapid fire back and forth slugfests in which the enemies just attack party members at random. I'm talking the "roll 1d100" "21-60: 2d4 orcs, 1d4-1 orc shamans" type fights. Just say any time anyone makes a melee attack against something they count as flankers for the purpose of following creatures' melee attacks, and the first melee attack you make against a new enemy can be a charge attack. If either side tries to flee the battle they take OAs from all flankers. AOE either hits all the melee creatures or all the ranged creatures. Then you bust out the grid for serious setpiece battles.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 21:49
|
|
|
The way to make long rests work is to simply extend what they mean. Take out "just go to sleep" and turn it into "have a lazy weekend." It's honestly long been one of the issues with sandbox/hexcrawling/whatever games. Every hex they start back up at full, if all they need is a good night's sleep to do so.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 22:01
|
|
|
slydingdoor posted:I wonder if it'd be any good to turn random encounters into straight up final fantasy gridless TOTM rapid fire back and forth slugfests in which the enemies just attack party members at random. I'm talking the "roll 1d100" "21-60: 2d4 orcs, 1d4-1 orc shamans" type fights. Just say any time anyone makes a melee attack against something they count as flankers for the purpose of following creatures' melee attacks, and the first melee attack you make against a new enemy can be a charge attack. If either side tries to flee the battle they take OAs from all flankers. AOE either hits all the melee creatures or all the ranged creatures.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 22:12
|
|
|
Thanks for the advice so far, I'm starting to see how this could work. Since I'm okay with small dungeons, I think a good pace would be to allow 1-2 wilderness encounters, whether random fights, wandering monsters or survival challenges etc. and then 2-3 significant fights in the destination, then 0-1 encounters on the way home. That gives a good 4-6 battles per "day" while keeping the hexcrawl feel I hope. And instead of regular hundred entry random encounter tables, I can put together 6-8 more significant challenges for each region, with the expectation that the PCs will see about half yo 2/3 of it depending on player choice and luck. Not quite as procedural as as more traditional hexcrawl, but I think its a good tradeoff
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 22:14
|
|
|
If you want to stress resource management, you could also make extended rests a resource in of themself. Say you have three monster repelling campfires to get through the whole dungeon with. At a certain point they start questioning whether or not to do one more battle or just rest now.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 22:49
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:Thanks for the advice so far, I'm starting to see how this could work. Since I'm okay with small dungeons, I think a good pace would be to allow 1-2 wilderness encounters, whether random fights, wandering monsters or survival challenges etc. and then 2-3 significant fights in the destination, then 0-1 encounters on the way home. That gives a good 4-6 battles per "day" while keeping the hexcrawl feel I hope. And instead of regular hundred entry random encounter tables, I can put together 6-8 more significant challenges for each region, with the expectation that the PCs will see about half yo 2/3 of it depending on player choice and luck. Not quite as procedural as as more traditional hexcrawl, but I think its a good tradeoff You'll still need something to generate forward pressure, otherwise there is no reason not to stop and rest before & after going through the dungeon.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2016 23:09
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:Hey, newbie to 4th edition here (I played it once back when it first came out, but never a full campaign) with a few questions: 1. The DMG1 has rules for survival and wilderness exploration. 4. Essentials has a problem where the PHBs released for it, Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms and Heroes of the Fallen Lands, have classes/builds that were made to resemble more like 3.5e characters. Fighters, Rogues and other martial classes don't really have Daily and Encounter powers anymore and instead revolve around At-Will attacks all the time again. That's bad design, and why people don't like it. The Essentials DM Kit, Monster Vault and Rules Compendium are good books, though - just don't use the player-facing stuff. 5. If you've ever run and taught other RPGs before, 4th Edition isn't too much different from anything else, because everything really is reduced to a d20 + a modifier
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 01:59
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:4. Essentials has a problem where the PHBs released for it, Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms and Heroes of the Fallen Lands, have classes/builds that were made to resemble more like 3.5e characters. Fighters, Rogues and other martial classes don't really have Daily and Encounter powers anymore and instead revolve around At-Will attacks all the time again. That's bad design, and why people don't like it. My 2 cents on Essentials is that, while the classes have limited options on a round-by-round basis, they remain effective members of the party, and some people are more comfortable with the limited toolbox. Using an Essentials Martial like the Scout, Thief, or Knight/Slayer doesn't result in the same awkward power gulf that exists in 3.5e or 5e. The primary complaint is that they become boring, but if you don't find them boring then it's not a big deal.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 02:10
|
|
|
While it's true that essentials characters are simpler, don't have dailies and all that (at least in the first 2 books), I think it's also relevant to mention that some people do enjoy the simplicity (or the potential for optimization) that comes when everything's built around basic attacks. It's also worth mentioning that later essentials books brought a ton of neat player-facing stuff to the table, from interesting (though sorta weird) martial classes in the Berserker and Skald to a bunch of cool themes to my favorite kinda bad class, the Bladesinger. There's also a ton of feats and magic items and stuff in the essentials books that are cool and fun and that I would not play in a 4e game without (mostly the better expertise feats).
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 02:13
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:Yo, Kaza42! One of the later Zeitgeist adventures actually has an epic level hex crawl in it (though I'm just about to start adventure 5) Generic Octopus posted:My 2 cents on Essentials is that, while the classes have limited options on a round-by-round basis, they remain effective members of the party, and some people are more comfortable with the limited toolbox. Using an Essentials Martial like the Scout, Thief, or Knight/Slayer doesn't result in the same awkward power gulf that exists in 3.5e or 5e. The primary complaint is that they become boring, but if you don't find them boring then it's not a big deal. Yeah, I'm running two games and have a knight in one and a (sloppily) Elementalist in another running around with original classes. They stay in touch with the other classes. The knight's biggest problem is that it has absolutely nothing to deal with forced movement in heroic, I can only imagine how bad it is if you are a dwarf. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 02:18
|
|
|
Which one? I'm not starting at epic level, but it could be useful to take inspiration from
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 02:47
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:Which one? I'm not starting at epic level, but it could be useful to take inspiration from Adventure 12.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 03:47
|
|
|
It's worth noting that the DM-oriented Essentials books are some of the best 4e has to offer. Rules Compendium and the two Monster Vaults are all extremely useful.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 04:01
|
|
|
For adventures like this I like giving the players a limited number of extended rests (there's a million ways you can do this, just being given a number of items and there's no other way to extended rest for whatever the hell story reason, a time limit before X happens they can do before accomplishing whatever the ultimate goal is and resting is the only thing that takes significant time, etc.). I think it works alright. Using this method the players pretty much always try to save the last extended rest as close to being before the big final encounter as they can, but I feel like that generally works ok anyway.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 04:46
|
|
|
What I'm doing in my current game is having the monsters become more powerful with every Extended Rest they take (and the players know that). Alternatively, yes, having a "schedule" or progression for the bad guys such that taking rests allows parts of their plans to proceed unimpeded also works.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 05:16
|
|
|
The Crotch posted:It's worth noting that the DM-oriented Essentials books are some of the best 4e has to offer. Rules Compendium and the two Monster Vaults are all extremely useful. I reckon the Rules Compendium is the best rulebook for at the table use of any game I've played. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Aug 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 05:27
|
|
|
Just wanted to say thanks again for all the advice this thread has given me so far. I've been reading more on the mechanics and DMing advice, and have set up a few example encounters to get into the swing of things (thanks for pointing out Dungeon Delve, that's a great resource!). Regarding the house rule of making "Extended Rest" mean a weekend in town or some other non-trivial time expenditure, do you think there'd be some sort of middle ground "Moderate Rest" deal? Like, each foray into the wilderness still counts as a single adventuring "Day", but the players also have a limited ability to take moderate rests where they set up a secure camp for the night or whatever and regain (Tier) daily powers and healing surges, but not everything? This would give them the ability to control their pacing a bit more while still making delves into the wilderness or dungeons a steady depletion of resources. I haven't read through all the books yet, so I'm not sure if this is A Thing in one of them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 17:55
|
|
|
The way I would run that is to give the players the option of camping out near the adventuring site, but the Extended Rest is not guaranteed. It's a skill challenge: how do the players make a secure campsite? If they fail, then they only get a partial recharge on abilities/surges, or they don't get to rest at all, or they even get attacked on top of not being able to rest, depending on how badly they messed up. Alternatively, a principle I try to abide by as a GM is to give people successes as long as it costs them something: you can't fail to make a campsite, if you blow the gold on supplies and mercenaries to keep you secure while you sleep (putting a price on it steep enough for the players to think twice about can be tricky, though). Alternatively, maybe if one player forgoes the rest so that the others can sleep (again, it can be tricky to structure this in a way that actually presents a significant cost to the players, adjust to taste for your group).
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 18:10
|
|
|
Question for the thread: With a mind towards hacking/homebrewing, what are the best/funnest/most interesting mechanics that 4e hung on the Bloodied condition?
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 18:48
|
|
|
Exploding blood. A whole bunch of monsters gain various sorts of damage aura when you make them bleed... E: and it's not hilarious but it is flavourful, the hydra. Which would be better if you also gave it troll regen.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:04
|
|
|
What are the good Level 1 Adventures? Rising Stones?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2016 06:27
|
|
|
Klungar posted:What are the good Level 1 Adventures? Rising Stones? The Slaying Stone is great also, read the OP
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2016 06:32
|
|
|
Did anyone archive the online rules compendium before it was taken offline?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2016 10:00
|
|
|
PJOmega posted:Did anyone archive the online rules compendium before it was taken offline? They didn't take it offline.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2016 10:56
|
|
|
PJOmega posted:Did anyone archive the online rules compendium before it was taken offline? I used it 2 days ago. Is it offline?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2016 15:42
|
|
|
Are they allowing people to make accounts again? I know that was a problem.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2016 16:22
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Are they allowing people to make accounts again? I know that was a problem. Spiteski posted:Just to follow up my own question, found out how to get a new subscription to DDI, so I did that and now have parsed everything for VTT using a parse tool. If anyone doesn't know (if its been in thread already I apologise) but here is a link to get a new sub to DDI There ya go, if you want/need to make a new account.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2016 00:09
|
|
|
Double post but I've managed to convince my 5e group to try 4e. Were going to go with essentials for now, but I have access to ddi so as I understand it I have access to everything except the artwork?. My main question is what's the best one shot or short campaign to introduce them to some cool encounters that isn't too hard to run over 5-6 hours? Partial adventures are fine if they are really good. Also what traps should I look to avoid that might break the game from my end or the players end?
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2016 07:20
|
|
|
So I got the chance to run my group through Coppernight Hold earlier (the level 1 Dungeon Delve encounter series) with some pregens I put together - wizard, fighter, cleric, ranger. It wasn't part of any campaign or whatnot, just a way for everyone to either learn or re familiarize themselves with the game. It actually went really well, the Wizard dominated the first and third missions where she cleared waves of minions with Burning Hands, the Ranger was able to pick out high value enemies like the wyrmpriest and wear them down. The Fighter would tie up the brutes with marking and Opportunity attacks. The Cleric was constantly bouncing people back from the brink of defeat, saving the party at least twice and using a daily power to shut down a swarm of enemies. All in all, it was a lot of fun, and I think I learned a lot about the game. I'm finishing up the opening sections of the hexcrawl and we should start in a few weeks. Thanks again for all your advice! Oh, and I'd really recommend the Coppernight Hold delve for people wanting to demo or learn the game. It covers a lot of the basics and took us about 2 hours. EDIT: Wow, great timing for the poster above me. Coppernight Hold if they're starting at level 1, it's a series of 3 encounters against kobolds that includes minions, traps, special abilities and an elite boss. Worked great for my group!
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2016 07:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 22:21 |
|
|
I ran The Slaying Stone as a 6-hour one-shot with a goon group late last year. I thought it was a good intro to the game. It doesn't railroad you, there's a light investigation aspect and a penultimate encounter that's a roleplaying/skill check scene.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2016 08:40
|
|