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Halloween Jack posted:Is there any character builder available for Mac? I used to use the offline character builder, but I no longer have access to a PC. This a thousand times. Please god.
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Mar 15, 2018 23:53
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 gently caress this program 
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Mar 16, 2018 07:36
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Nalesh posted:
Mate I had the worst run last week on my goblin. Rolled about 17 rolls, all under 5s. Made up for it by the rest of the party getting 11 crits in a session though. I have a crit range of 18, and I haven't crit in 9 combats 
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Mar 16, 2018 08:41
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Spiteski posted:Mate I had the worst run last week on my goblin. Rolled about 17 rolls, all under 5s. You mean like me every single session on your campaigns?
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Mar 16, 2018 08:56
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Nalesh posted:You mean like me every single session on your campaigns? Yea just like that ha
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Mar 16, 2018 09:17
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Lurdiak posted:As an unshakeable 4e defender, I gotta say, multiclass feats were such a misguided idea. People want actual multi-classing you nerds. Putting out Hybrids later was good but they shouldn't have been called Hybrids, they should've been called multi-classing. Multiclass feats were unquestionably good, and Hybrids were a mistake. Level by level multiclassing (I also hate your use of "actual", because it sets anything opposing it as "illegitimate" from the outset, which is at the very least, disingenuous, and at most, uncritically cargo culting bad mechanics just because it cemented into your mind first) is a garbage bullshit newbie trap of a mechanic and I despise the obsession with it. I'm not sure how power swap feats could be made into an okay choice, though (excepting powers that are just obscenely good).
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Mar 16, 2018 09:50
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NachtSieger posted:Multiclass feats were unquestionably good, and Hybrids were a mistake. Level by level multiclassing (I also hate your use of "actual", because it sets anything opposing it as "illegitimate" from the outset, which is at the very least, disingenuous, and at most, uncritically cargo culting bad mechanics just because it cemented into your mind first) is a garbage bullshit newbie trap of a mechanic and I despise the obsession with it. I'm not sure how power swap feats could be made into an okay choice, though (excepting powers that are just obscenely good). Hybrids were at best extremely meh considering all the trouble involved, until you found a rules interaction the designers hadn't remembered to control, such as cleric with invisible shield bonus + anything. Multiclassing always attracts newer players who don't know what they're doing, and it is very easy to build a garbage hybrid.
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Mar 16, 2018 10:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:multiclassing has only ever made DnD worse, and the multiclass feats should have been where it stopped if they were going to do it at all AD&D demihuman style multiclassing theoretically works just fine. That's a specific statement and I'm sticking to it.
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Mar 16, 2018 10:42
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Yeah Hybrids are a cool idea in concept but it's really really really easy to gently caress up your character and make something much worse than a pure class.
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Mar 16, 2018 12:28
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Assuming you haven't built some sort of garbage-fire of a hybrid, the only other option is that you've got a beast of a character that pushes the top end of optimization which is probably out of line with what the rest of the party is, usually in the damage per round department. I really like the four roles foundation of the game, but hybrids make it so the optimal choice is that everyone plays a striker with just a hint of something else, maybe. Which make encounters really one dimensional in that it's just a race to burn down the opposition without having to meaningfully engage with any other mechanic. A large part of that is monster design - hybrids came out late in the game's lifetime and they never really iterated on opposition mechanics to keep pace.
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Mar 16, 2018 15:38
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I always feel like "traditional" level-by-level multiclassing and hybrids cater to the notion that classes equal in-game jobs/occupations/professions and discourage refluffing. "I want to be an archer who can cast some spells, I need to be a ranger/wizard." As opposed to refluffing the stronger ranger powers or the weaker wizard powers. Feat-based multiclassing with power exchanges actually does a good job mapping that concept to game mechanics.
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Mar 16, 2018 15:46
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Oh man, I remember hanging out on GitP in the 4e section, and literally every 3.x/PF player who posted that they were giving 4e a try ended up trying to assemble a Hybrid for their first character.
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Mar 16, 2018 15:57
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Look, I don't need to actually be a paladin, I just need my character sheet to have that word on it.
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Mar 16, 2018 16:03
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My Lovely Horse posted:I always feel like "traditional" level-by-level multiclassing and hybrids cater to the notion that classes equal in-game jobs/occupations/professions and discourage refluffing. I dunno, I never made a hybrid because I needed to have the right fluff on my sheet, I always did it because I wanted to optimize around a particular set of class features or keywords which is pretty concrete as a mechanical and not a fluff reason. My Ranger|Wizard is a hybrid because I want to spam Magic Missile using all the Ranger support for basic attacks, not because I want to shoot a bow. My Avenger|Invoker/Cleric is fishing for Dominate-on-Crit by rolling 2-8 times on every attack roll, etc.
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Mar 16, 2018 16:15
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in my first 4e campaign we had a player who was a paladin but he worshiped an evil god and we just reflavored all his radiant attacks as necrotic. simple and easy
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Mar 16, 2018 16:16
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Halloween Jack posted:Look, I don't need to actually be a paladin, I just need my character sheet to have that word on it. This comes up WAY more often with Clerics IME. I need to be a preist of the god of war, so my character sheet has to have Cleric and War on it somewhere. No, fucker, a priest of the god of war could be a Fighter, the best warmaker out there. Or a Paladin. Or a Bard. Or anything, priest of the god of war is a character's occupation, not a Character Class. But then, these are typically the same morons who see a major distinction between combat and roleplaying.
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Mar 16, 2018 16:17
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Well, you don't have to be a moron. I had a hard time rationalizing not having the Religion skill as a priestly character until I realized that a Shaolin monk or Ismaili Ḥashashin probably isn't a scholar of many religious traditions or an expert on what's bouncing around the Astral Realm, which is what that skill means. Someone please tell me how to make a 4e character on my Mac, I don't care if it's not free.
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Mar 16, 2018 16:22
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Halloween Jack posted:Well, you don't have to be a moron. I had a hard time rationalizing not having the Religion skill as a priestly character until I realized that a Shaolin monk or Ismaili Ḥashashin probably isn't a scholar of many religious traditions or an expert on what's bouncing around the Astral Realm, which is what that skill means. Bootcamp
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Mar 16, 2018 16:43
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I always looked at it as the Religion skill being expertise in ALL religions. A priest of one religion being ignorant of the rituals of another isn't exactly rocket surgery. Worshippers of a particular god should get massive bonuses to checks regarding that particular god, if they don't just know them automatically.
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Mar 16, 2018 16:48
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thespaceinvader posted:Worshippers of a particular god should get massive bonuses to checks regarding that particular god, if they don't just know them automatically. They should just know them automatically. You should never have to roll a check for this stuff.
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Mar 16, 2018 17:21
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So I was asking about solos earlier and I have more questions because fuckery. (This game has been delayed for a bit.) The plan for my group of 5 level 4 characters (cleric, druid, warden, rogue, warlock ; all reasonably optimized) was a couple of encounters culminating in a big boss-battle. Really bog standard stuff since they're all pretty new. I was going to do the level 4 young black dragon solo from the Monster Vault fluffed as a dragon pirate king (because gently caress yes) and to make it interesting and fun it was going to be on the dragon's pirate boat so that 1) I can spawn orc minions from the hold to add some spice and mess with the action economy in case the dragon gets stun-locked or something (as recommended) and 2) there's just a lot they can do with a pirate ship if they want to do cool things, e.g. swinging from the rigging, using the canons on the dragon, a bunch of poo poo that I'm not thinking of, etc. But then the warlock backed out at the last minute. I'm way too rusty to remember how to subtract a fifth of a dragon's fighting-ness. Help? I'd assume to just knock off some of its hit-points and maybe nerf the attacks a bit, but I've shifted to story games precisely to avoid this kind of math headache. (Don't get me wrong, back in like 2010 when I played 4e a bunch and knew the math cold this was easy and I loved it. I'm just being an old man about this cause I'm rusty and bitter.)
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Mar 16, 2018 18:17
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I know if I ever play a high level game again, I'm staying away from hybrids. It's not necessarily that it's too easy to make a strong character, just it's too easy to make a character with no real weaknesses.
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Mar 16, 2018 18:19
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Xiahou Dun posted:So I was asking about solos earlier and I have more questions because fuckery. (This game has been delayed for a bit.) Knock off a level from it. Basically reduce its defenses, accuracy and damage by 1 each. Instead of reducing HP by 20%, you should recalculate its HP based on its role to be one level lower. http://blogofholding.com/?p=512 This has the revised monster manual math on a business card, and is always a great baseline for adjusting or creating monsters. I would also recommend anyone making a 4e solo boss fight to read this. It covers some of the common problems with solos, and presents a system for doing staged boss fights that feel more epic and cut down on the issues
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Mar 16, 2018 18:49
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Thanks so much!
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Mar 16, 2018 18:51
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Lemon-Lime posted:They should just know them automatically. You should never have to roll a check for this stuff. Priests certainly should. Random parishioners less so.
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Mar 16, 2018 21:58
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I mean, what level of detail are we talking about? Does every rando in the religion know intense theological history? Probably not. But I’m a super lapsed Catholic and I still know what Mass looks like and know the gist of a bunch of random stuff. I’d assume every follower of a religion knows its basic tenants and the form of common rituals/observances/holidays/symbols etc. A religion check is supposed to be like, distinguishing Marian Christianity from others or knowing about the Merovian heresy or whatever. Not recognizing your own holy book.
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Mar 16, 2018 22:19
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In D&D terms, I'd probably suggest that, roughly, a worshipper of a god should automatically succeed at at level easy DC checks related to that god/religion, and get roughly an at level easy DC bonus to all other checks. Maybe more I don't recall the maths right now offhand. Priests should pass at-level hard checks automatically &c. But honestly, if I was actually running a game and someone was playing a devout worshipper or priest of a particular god, I'd be mostly inclined to let them tell me whatever the religious details of that religion were. And most of them would be correct. But maybe one or two might not be QUITE what they thought...
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Mar 16, 2018 23:37
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I like multiclass feats well enough as a solution but I prefer systems where by default your character is built from a combination of multiple careers instead of it being a weird, obscure option that's only worth it in cases of high synergy.
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Mar 17, 2018 01:32
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If you have a priest at your table, not only could you say they auto pass checks about their religion, you could ask them a few questions about the religion.
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Mar 17, 2018 02:02
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Yeah, I figure if someone's playing a religious character, step one is asking them what they believe in and know.
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Mar 17, 2018 03:44
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I bought a bunch of 4e books on eBay and DTRPG because honestly I'm getting sick of playing 5e and I can probably convince my group to play a 4e Dark Sun Campaign if I sell them on the combat being way less boring. I've got PH1, the Essentials books (sans Monster Vault, that thing is expensive), and the Dark Sun setting and monster books. Should I get anything else? Also, I am basically new to DMing anything but BECMI/BX so any advice re creating adventures/encounters? It seems like more prep than I am used/willing to do. Do the Dark Sun published adventures (Marauders of the Dune Sea? what else is there?) really suck? Is there a way to run a sandboxey game in 4e?
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Mar 17, 2018 04:00
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The DMG should be telling you how to create encounters. The baseline assumption is that an average fight for a party composed x number of players of character level y, will be x number of monsters of character level y. Add more monsters to make it harder. Use higher-level monsters to make it harder, but don't go over +3 levels Increase their damage to make it harder - a good baseline is to look at their level, and add that number to all damage rolls. Use lower-level monsters to make it easier
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Mar 17, 2018 04:25
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ross the boss posted:I bought a bunch of 4e books on eBay and DTRPG because honestly I'm getting sick of playing 5e and I can probably convince my group to play a 4e Dark Sun Campaign if I sell them on the combat being way less boring. Hoo boy, you'll want to  up basically the rest of the 4e books and ditch Essentials, or finagle your way into the character builder or something. Essentials is hot garbage (lol non-casters do nothing but attack and wizards have three hundred options per level) and the Monster Vault is an excellent book for how it's the crystallization of the monster math fix and design sensibilities that happened across its lifetime. The math is replaceable, but the concepts contained within are something you may not think of, so.As for creating adventures, it depends on how tightly scripted you'll want to make it. But strong advice for anything is to have an especially strong start and end, with a malleable middle that you can change to suit your needs/the players' needs. As for encounters, 4e is pretty forgiving in that it's generally so tightly balanced you're free to, as long as you don't deliberately do something overly fucky like chain stunning or using blatantly way too much damage, wing fights as long as you keep the numbers within the same range area. A sandbox 4e is incredibly doable, but you might find it difficult considering 4e's expected, measured and planned pace. You can obviously be a lot more free with knowledge of the system, but it's not going to be easy. A simple solution to 4e's Encounter/Daily timings on powers is to move it away from a chronological time based limit to a more narrative time limit, gating restoration behind more narrative units of time so you don't have players constantly running into fights freshly rested, as 4e assumes a steady progression of resources being chipped away at. EDIT: That's all the advice I can think up of unless more questions are asked/more concrete questions are asked. I hope this helps! NachtSieger fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Mar 17, 2018 |
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Mar 17, 2018 04:32
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You can absolutely do a sandbox game in 4e, but I would advise you not to pull random encounters out of a hat during overland travel. Combat is 4e is, by design, intensely tactical and takes longer. The upshot of this is that fighting a few goblins is meaningful, and not just a bump in the road...and it's also tactically different from fighting a few goblins or a few orcs.
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Mar 17, 2018 04:35
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ross the boss posted:I've got PH1, the Essentials books (sans Monster Vault, that thing is expensive), and the Dark Sun setting and monster books. Should I get anything else? NachtSieger posted:Hoo boy, you'll want to An offline compendium to go with the offline CB also helps a lot. Just going to say that even if people find the Essentials versions of the martial classes boring, most are still mechanically effective and aren't outright trap options. If you have players who are averse to a lot of round-to-round decision making (analysis paralysis), they'll probably like them. While you won't want to do BECMI-style random encounters, there are plenty of encounter generators around you can use to set-up a battle quickly. I ran a sandbox-y hexcrawl that way and it worked well, plus prep was minimal.
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Mar 17, 2018 04:51
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I've kinda come away from the idea of letting players roll for knowledge period. If it's something basic and/or super relevant to the plot, I'll make sure to seed that knowledge in advance (ideally at some point before the moment they find the Book of Holy Rites and I have to say "oh yes that's the Book of Holy Rites, everyone knows about that, this is just the first time we mention it."). If it's not relevant to the plot I let the players make up the details, if they're interesting enough they may become relevant. If what they come up with happens to contradict official descriptions, it looks like that PC is part of a different religious denomination or occult order or military unit. And if the PCs come across something they don't know even though the players feel they should be able to with a Religion or Arcana check? Looks like you guys stumbled over the plot. Now go on an adventure to find out what you're dealing with and why it's different from what you thought you knew.
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Mar 17, 2018 09:23
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Yeah, players shouldn't ever be making a "Do we continue with the plot?" roll -- a better solution is to roll to see what benefit or harm their knowledge -- or lack of it -- causes. So for example, if the plot is that the players learn the Book of Holy Rites has been stolen, and then go to stop the thieves using it to summon a demon, then even on a failed roll the players know the three possible locations where it could be used -- however because they have to check out all three, the thieves will have time to prepare for their coming, and they won't even know what the thieves are planning to do with it -- just where they've taken it. On a successful roll, the players know where it's been taken, what they're going to do with it, and what kind of demons are going to get summoned.
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Mar 17, 2018 10:15
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ross the boss posted:Also, I am basically new Unlike a lot of these guys, all my experience is from the player side. Keep an eye on character builds. If there's something you don't understand, ask about it. There are some things that are more powerful than they might initially appear, and like any D&D game, if the PCs are too out of balance it can cause issues. It's not really a problem at lower levels, and not as big a problem as other D&Ds, but it's still there. If there's a single move that seems extremely powerful, there's a reasonable chance that the move doesn't work how they think it does. Keep an eye out for anyone who plays a hybrid character: they either know what they're doing, using a specific build, or have a very good chance at making a pretty poor character. The following feats should kinda just be given to PCs: Improved defenses, an expertise feat, and melee training at least for classes that are melee. They're math fixes that keep things from getting boring. I would pretty strongly recommend against essentials classes except, as mentioned above, the player has extreme problems with choice paralysis. And I mean extreme; if you've got someone with a moderate case of choice paralysis, give them a ranger with a bow, and let them take any move that lets them shoot more often. Fire your bow as many times as possible. Bam, perfectly serviceable character with practically no real decision making. Even the Mage has issues, I'd recommend just kinda avoiding all of those. For the record, pixies are the chargingest race in the game. If someone wants to play a vampire, tell them "Ok, you're a vampire." You don't need the vampire class, it sucks. They can take some feats to multiclass, or be a vampireish race, or whatever, but if they're a rogue with a dagger, you can easily say "Ok you're not actually using sly flourish, you're biting the hell out of people, because you're a vampire." Actually, basically anything can be completely reflavored, so kinda just don't worry about it. The PCs need to have at least 1 defender, at least 1 striker, and at least 1 leader. You actually don't need a controller. Controllers also have the potential to make fights a little boring, by completely neutralizing significant threats. People seem to enjoy a leader letting someone go ham on a big scary monster (warlords are great, bring 3), but a controller going "Actually the monster is going to just sit there" can slow down fights and make it a little boring. Controllers definitely can be in the game, but if no one really wants to play one, doubling up on other roles is just fine. If there are no controllers, the PCs need some way to attack multiple targets (like the Dragonborn's breath attack, sorcerers or monks), or hold off on having too many minion type enemies. Don't bother keeping track of experience unless you and the players are extremely attached to experience points. Usually the best way to go about it is to go "Ok, you did something really cool, everyone gets a level." When it comes to encounter building, you'll start getting a general idea for what the PCs can handle pretty soon. 4e combats have to be meaningful, because they're usually pretty complex. Throw in things like interesting terrain (cliffs, spikes, lakes, lava, weird plants that make enemies insubstantial, chained up attack dogs that bite anyone who gets too close). Sometimes just limiting movement a bit can make an encounter much more interesting; make them figure out how to chase down the guy who keeps climbing up walls. The encounter building rules work pretty well with monsters with newer math, like Monster Manual 3 and the Vault. Gradenko's post up there is pretty solid for tweaking difficulty; monsters that are too high or low level just make the fight uninteresting. It's much better to use minions than it is to use enemies that are 4 levels lower than the PCs. Generally following the rules, you will create encounters that are challenging, interesting, reasonably fair, and definitely winnable. If things seem to just not be doing enough damage to be a serious threat, this has some pretty neat things to say about damage; it does get pretty mathy, but you're playing 4e so you're probably going to have to get used to it: http://dmg42.blogspot.com/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html Be comfortable that you have created an encounter that the PCs will not only survive, but conquer. And immediately and ruthlessly go for the throat. They have the tools to survive, so murder the bastards. Gharbad the Weak fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Mar 17, 2018 |
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Mar 17, 2018 15:43
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Whybird posted:Yeah, players shouldn't ever be making a "Do we continue with the plot?" roll -- a better solution is to roll to see what benefit or harm their knowledge -- or lack of it -- causes. - oh, just the usual procession for the god of Spring - yes, you do know - tell me - actually you don't, it's an unfamiliar custom to you, you gonna ask around? It pretty much boils down to "don't roll if failure isn't interesting." Like, you could have that player roll and tell them it's the Spring festival on a success, but then on a failure all you can reasonably say is "you don't know" and then they start asking around which just leads to more rolls. Come to think of it, I'm pretty much just thinking of one particular player of mine with all this.
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Mar 17, 2018 16:02
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Piggybacking off of this, PHB 1, Monster Vault and the DMG are all you really need to run basic D&D like they know it. Used non-sealed copies of Monster Vault should be cheaper IIRC because it has a billion tokens and that poo poo gets lost. If you want more gangs of dudes and less monsters, Threats to Neintir Veil is a serviceable replacement for Monster Vault. Dark Sun Creature Catalog and Monster Manual 3 also use that good good math, but Solo design is still wonky so boss fights are gonna be a problem. The Dark Sun setting has themes and you'll see some of those in Essentials books, Heroes of the Feywild has some really fun themes and races for instance. PHB2 has the Barbarian and Bard, so that may be a must-have pending your group, PHB3 has psionics and the Monk as well as hybriding, so usually it can wait. As far as adventures go, if you can hunt down The Slaying Stone, it's agood first level adventure and serviceable introduction.
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Mar 17, 2018 16:05
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