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Does polearm gambit, some forced movement bonuses, and polearm momentum make unapproachable by non reach melee opponents (assuming you hit them)? Because I can see my dm throwing a book at me if I use this.
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Feb 12, 2018 04:52
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For the most part, yeah. The stat requirements are really restrictive though, and it doesn't come together until paragon where there are going to be some scary enemies running around with tricks to get around that, so I don't think it's really a busted combo.
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Feb 12, 2018 04:55
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There's a dumb play-around though. You can't make opportunity actions on your own turn. A GM who is throwing the book at you will have the enemies ready a charge that triggers on your turn somehow. Or use shifting or teleporting enemies. To be honest the combo isn't too busted. It requires quite a bit of investment, since it ends up with MAD on 3 stats. That means you end up with one weaker defense or offence. But it certainly shines in early paragon if you can pull it off.
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Feb 12, 2018 05:39
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My Lovely Horse posted:Throw out all feats that aren't race or class feats, or Expertise/Defenses. To be safe, throw out those from Dragon magazines that are, too.
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Feb 12, 2018 06:10
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PMush Perfect posted:Idea: Cull down a list of, say, 100ish legal feats, and put them all in one place. Do you mean 100 feats period? Or 100 feats per, say, a character. Because I've cut down just the Heroic Feats by using the CharOp guides, and the result is still a feat list about 600 odd feats long. To be clear, that's 600 total, not 600 qualifiable feats. I organised them by power source and each revised list is slightly less than 100 entries long, plus a general feat list. Honestly, I'm not even sure I did actually finish the revised list of feats for some of them. EDIT: I suppose you could sort them further in some way and take a feat 'package' of sorts. try for picking like 1 feat per every 4 levels, but each feat is really like 2 or 3 synergised feats. but at that point, it's basically themes again. which really just work better.Or I guess you build themes to have feat packages in them. Which would have been an interesting and probably better way to do Essentials, but you know, Mike Mearls. Torchlighter fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 06:50
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The thing is that there are some really cool and viable builds out there that go way off the beaten path of the char-op guides, and you'd lose that with packages unless the person building those feat packages knew the whole goddamed system in and out. Like, storm sorcerer into avatar of storm requires a bunch of esoteric hoops to jump through, but is a super cool build that shits out tons of aoe damage.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:17
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berenzen posted:The thing is that there are some really cool and viable builds out there that go way off the beaten path of the char-op guides, and you'd lose that with packages unless the person building those feat packages knew the whole goddamed system in and out. I mean, there's always going to be off-the wall stuff that messes things up. I meant more that you use the feat packages as Essentials-type things, your go-to 'Want to play this obvious thing', but have the option of swapping out feats in your package for advanced players. Like, polearm characters have a polearm pack that comes with polearm momentum and shove etc. standard, but you're not actually locked into them. Although I guess that's basically just guides then.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:25
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Torchlighter posted:EDIT: I suppose you could sort them further in some way and take a feat 'package' of sorts. try for picking like 1 feat per every 4 levels, but each feat is really like 2 or 3 synergised feats. but at that point, it's basically themes again. which really just work better.Or I guess you build themes to have feat packages in them. Which would have been an interesting and probably better way to do Essentials, but you know, Mike Mearls. Among the litany of sins committed by Essentials, a really bad one was locking-in all of the power selections (except for casters, because that's how 3e did it), and then still left feat-selection completely wide-open.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:42
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TheDemon posted:There's a dumb play-around though. You can't make opportunity actions on your own turn. A GM who is throwing the book at you will have the enemies ready a charge that triggers on your turn somehow. Or use shifting or teleporting enemies. Wouldn't readying your action and charging also circumvent combat challenge, and marking in general? Edit: The shift ruling makes the most sense, since it makes polearm gamble a way to punish charges or moving into reach quickly, which was probably the intention. Free Triangle fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 10:04
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People who play 4th online: do you use any specific tools or solutions for tracking conditions, until-end-of-turn effects etc? We play online over Roll20 and Discord and keep getting into situations where this or that status or bonus keeps getting glossed over because the amount of stuff to track is getting higher and higher (we're currently going on 5th level). It's not too shambolic yet, although as one of the cast of rotating GMs it gets to me when we suddenly realise that the Big Bad has not been making saves or suffering from conditions for the past two rounds and now the fight's in a situation that it mechanically it shouldn't have been in. What kind of trackers do you guys use, if any?
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Feb 12, 2018 12:43
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Bushmeister posted:People who play 4th online: do you use any specific tools or solutions for tracking conditions, until-end-of-turn effects etc? We play online over Roll20 and Discord and keep getting into situations where this or that status or bonus keeps getting glossed over because the amount of stuff to track is getting higher and higher (we're currently going on 5th level). It's not too shambolic yet, although as one of the cast of rotating GMs it gets to me when we suddenly realise that the Big Bad has not been making saves or suffering from conditions for the past two rounds and now the fight's in a situation that it mechanically it shouldn't have been in. I use an initiative matrix: code:I'd alt-tab to a Google Spreadsheet to maintain this, and it's not a perfect solution, but it worked well enough for me. This is really one of those cases where it helps to have a person who's really into the game act as a co-chair, doing the administrative work for you. It also helps to implement a rule that you never go back and "correct" a mistake as soon as the action has been done.
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Feb 12, 2018 12:49
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Masterplan has all of that build in. I think it even automatically rolls for you.
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Feb 12, 2018 13:31
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It does, but I don't think it can do online. If you just need something to track on your end, it's great. Or if you're savvy enough to stream the output of its player view to the other players.
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Feb 12, 2018 13:50
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Torchlighter posted:Do you mean 100 feats period? Or 100 feats per, say, a character. Because I've cut down just the Heroic Feats by using the CharOp guides, and the result is still a feat list about 600 odd feats long. Do you have this list? Feats organized by viability would be super useful.
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Feb 12, 2018 15:23
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The Crotch posted:I assume Lurdiak was referring to this feat: Aren't there utility powers that use Thievery? Unless they're all crap too.
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Feb 12, 2018 18:56
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Moriatti posted:Do you have this list? Feats organized by viability would be super useful. I'd like this list too, my group just started and finding feats is definitely one of the more daunting tasks.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:54
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Moriatti posted:Do you have this list? Feats organized by viability would be super useful. Free Triangle posted:I'd like this list too, my group just started and finding feats is definitely one of the more daunting tasks. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzTUgMsaSB17MzNTdDBIYnpfRFU?usp=sharing So each feat list is organised by power source, plus multiclass, general and race. It's an excel spreadsheet that contains a list of all feats and then a revised list containing feats that were listed in the CHAROP guides as solid, plus a couple of different ones. I built it for a group I was DMing for who were new, and I'd use it to build personalised feat lists for each character. Time-consuming, but with the Character builder, not that bad.
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Feb 12, 2018 20:59
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You're doing the lord's work, thank you.
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Feb 12, 2018 21:08
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Holy poo poo. You're the best! Also had the first session on Saturday that went very well. Playing again this weekend after I arbitrarily level them up to 4 and give them [whatever is relevant] Expertise for free. Gonna make 'em fight a young black dragon solo who is also a pirate. Monster Vault has the fixed math right?
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Feb 12, 2018 21:25
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Fixed math and a better design philosophy in general. That said, solos can still be tricky, especially at higher levels, and you generally don't want to use them truly "solo".
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Feb 12, 2018 21:55
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Bushmeister posted:People who play 4th online: do you use any specific tools or solutions for tracking conditions, until-end-of-turn effects etc? We play online over Roll20 and Discord and keep getting into situations where this or that status or bonus keeps getting glossed over because the amount of stuff to track is getting higher and higher (we're currently going on 5th level). It's not too shambolic yet, although as one of the cast of rotating GMs it gets to me when we suddenly realise that the Big Bad has not been making saves or suffering from conditions for the past two rounds and now the fight's in a situation that it mechanically it shouldn't have been in. *insert fantasy grounds plug* Seriously though it makes tracking effects a non issue. I highly recommend it
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Feb 12, 2018 22:35
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The Crotch posted:Fixed math and a better design philosophy in general. That said, solos can still be tricky, especially at higher levels, and you generally don't want to use them truly "solo". Please feel free to give more information than this. I actually hate D&D and would rather play narrative games but it makes my players happy and I like being nice. Really I just want to bake and play Fiasco, but this is the world we live in.
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Feb 13, 2018 06:09
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Xiahou Dun posted:Please feel free to give more information than this. Either add respawning minions (this can be in the form of traps for an environmental flavor), or design the solo such that it is effectively 2-3 characters in a single body, ie, it acts on multiple initiative steps, makes multiple attacks/actions per turn, etc There are a number of monsters out there that use the latter if you need references
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Feb 13, 2018 06:16
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Xiahou Dun posted:Please feel free to give more information than this. It's just that even with all the experience they had making monsters at the point of the MVs, solos still often lag behind a full party in the action economy, especially as you go up in level. And if you have a wizard or psion in the party, forget about it. Try out that first solo, and if you find they lock it down hard or it can't keep up, pair the next one with some minions or a standard buddy.
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Feb 13, 2018 06:18
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Solos also work well with elaborate terrain, both because having only one monster to deal with makes it easier to remember more involved terrain features, and because you can very tightly match it to the solo’s strengths.
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Feb 13, 2018 06:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:Please feel free to give more information than this. The thing about Solo monsters is that while you can create a monster with four times the Hit Points, it's still not equivalent to four separate monsters because: 1. It only acts once per round. If it rolls low on initiative, players can take all their turns before it and neutralize it as a threat before the fight even really starts. 2. Because it only acts once per round, it might only be able to attack once. This presents a conundrum: if you concentrate all of its potential damage into a single attack that it takes on its one turn, that makes it way too lethal, but if you reduce its damage to be "reasonable" compared to a single non-boss monster, then you're only really doing a quarter of the damage that you should be. 3. At the same time, if the boss misses its one strong attack, then it does nothing while it gets beat on for another whole round before getting to try again. 4. Since you’re only dealing with a single target, it’s easier to “crowd-control” the situation. If a player stuns one orc out of a four-orc encounter, that’s 25% of the DM’s available firepower. If a Monk stuns an Orc Boss, that’s the entire encounter right there. To fix these issues, we need to, simply put: give boss monsters as many standard actions as the players, and they need to be able to use those additional actions on different initiative counts, and they need some way to be able to shrug off debilitating effects. 4th Edition does it by giving Action Points to Solo monsters, giving them Minor Actions that are as powerful as Standard At-Will powers, giving them high initiative bonuses, and giving them Triggered Actions. For the crowd-control issue, it basically boiled down to having a completely different philosophy (relative to other editions) when it came to what sort of status effects you could throw at the enemy. You couldn’t exactly teleport the boss into another demiplane and call it good. And most bosses still have ways to straight-up shrug-off or ignore what effects do exist in 4e.
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Feb 13, 2018 07:01
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What are the books with fixed monster math? I've been using MM3, but I'm starting to reach the point where I'd like a little more variety.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:25
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Monster Vault and Threats to the Nentir Vale are the (other) good ones.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:29
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TheCog posted:What are the books with fixed monster math? I've been using MM3, but I'm starting to reach the point where I'd like a little more variety. MM3, Monster Vault, and Threats to Nentir Vale. MV is the more traditional and well-rounded one
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Feb 16, 2018 05:30
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Dark Sun Creature Catalog also has updated math, if I remember correctly.
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Feb 16, 2018 09:09
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Didn't anyone fix the monsters from the first 2 manuals? There's uh, a lot of iconic monsters in there. 3's the one where they were running out of good ones.
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Feb 16, 2018 14:24
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Monster Vault is mostly MM1 monsters. A few notable omissions, though, like aboleths and nagas. Only a few MM2 creatures got redone in MV. The math changes are easy enough to do yourself if you want to patch up some of the early monsters, but a lot of the MM1/2 creatures have deeper design issues than just wrong numbers, unfortunately.
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Feb 16, 2018 14:34
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Well as long as red dragons and orcs aren't irreversibly borked.
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Feb 16, 2018 14:38
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Lurdiak posted:Didn't anyone fix the monsters from the first 2 manuals? There's uh, a lot of iconic monsters in there. 3's the one where they were running out of good ones. Monster Vault redoes all the "classic" monsters from MM1
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Feb 16, 2018 14:54
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Lurdiak posted:Well as long as red dragons and orcs aren't irreversibly borked.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:11
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Mecha Gojira posted:Dark Sun Creature Catalog also has updated math, if I remember correctly. It's kinda halfway. It has the fixed math (AC, to-hit, damage), but the other mechanics aren't fully realized yet. So solos and other big bads probably need some tweaks.
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Feb 16, 2018 23:04
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I'm playing/DMing my first game of D&D ever tomorrow. None of my other players have ever played before either. I've got my monster stat blocks, a ton of dice, character sheets, some sweet figures for my PCs, and the Slaying Stone book. I can't wait 
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Feb 16, 2018 23:47
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Dick Burglar posted:It's kinda halfway. It has the fixed math (AC, to-hit, damage), but the other mechanics aren't fully realized yet. So solos and other big bads probably need some tweaks.
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Feb 17, 2018 00:06
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Firos posted:I'm playing/DMing my first game of D&D ever tomorrow. None of my other players have ever played before either. I've got my monster stat blocks, a ton of dice, character sheets, some sweet figures for my PCs, and the Slaying Stone book. I can't wait Good luck gamer.
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Feb 17, 2018 00:07
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Goddamn, it would loving rule if someone just released a recoded character builder for 4E that trimmed out all of the poo poo feats/bad classes.
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Feb 17, 2018 01:08
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