|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm curious if it rolls back errata / nerfs when you do this or if it just has one entry for "Magic Missile" regardless of where it's from. I turned off Red Box and "Heroes of" books and got this:  So it looks like the roll back is good?
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 16:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 23:05 |
|
|
Aniodia posted:Not to pick on you in particular, but I've definitely seen this general idea of "fixing 4e" thrown around over the years. Hell, I think Strike grew out of that whole concept, for better or worse. However, I'm curious as to what people think are the major things that should be fixed in 4e above and beyond the very obvious stuff (like the monster math and feat taxes, DTAS would probably be in here too). The main issues I had with it were: 1. Combats take a long time and you have to have a lot of them for the game mechanics (EG: Dailies and healing surges running low AKA the "adventuring day") to work as intended. I don't love the idea that every adventure is based around attrition and resource depletion - sometimes you just want a single climactic combat, like if you solve a mystery and apprehend the culprit. Combats should be balanced by encounter, not by a dayful of fighting. 2. Magic gear is really "explicit" - many items exist for very niche occurrences and some are only good for particular builds of one class. They feel very mechanical rather than magical, if that makes sense. 3. The controller role is really weird. As people have recently been saying, if you've got a bad controller it feels like they're the worst member of the party, but if you have a good controller they trivialise everything and monsters can't meaningfully participate in combat any more. 4. Traps really didn't get fleshed out. There were some specific easily-fixed problems with the traps 4e does have, like the check difficulties being sky-high to disable them, and if you fail the check the trap gets more powerful. So not only did you lose an action, but you lost an action and made your party's situation worse. I'd also say they dropped the ball on "solo traps" - like the classic "room filling up with sand" or "crushing walls" traps that are intended to be an encounter on their own. 5. The adventures they published were really bad. They ignored their own difficulty guidelines (hello level 6 encounter for level 1 characters played by new players) and on the whole there is way too much combat and not enough exploration or plot. 6. Feats. I feel like they started in a good place at low level - characters have a couple of them, and they help give a little extra customisation to the character. By level 30 you've got sixteen of them each which is really too many for them to feel in any way unique, and you'll see the good ones showing up on multiple characters in the same party. I'd suggest maybe treating them like dailies - from level 1 to 10 you gain new feats, but from level 11 onwards you just get access to better feats which replace one of the ones you already have. 7. Skill challenges were really bad. Is it really any more interesting to roll fifteen dice to get through a hedge maze than it is to roll once? From a roleplaying point of view it just felt like "Come up with as many different ways to use your best skills as you can". 8. Too many tiny modifiers. I really liked characters like the barbarian who just did a shitload of damage and took a shitload of damage back. But gently caress that rogue who gave -2 penalties to everyone they hit, and the half-elf with their "+1 to diplomacy checks to allies within 5 squares" poo poo. Issues I've seen others have, but didn't necessarily experience myself: 1. Monsters ended up in a good place by the end (EG: Monster manual 3 and later), though they were weak HP-sacks early on. They generally got away from ideas like monsters that stun or dominate PCs a lot, as not letting your players play the game is not a good idea. 2. Players in this thread have mentioned that balance in general gets worse the higher the game level gets, with characters alpha-striking monsters out of existence before they get an action. I didn't see that in my own games, but my players aren't really the types to do a lot of reading about character build advice or even reading the rulebooks outside of "game time", so it makes sense that I wouldn't.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 16:43
|
|
|
Moriatti posted:So it looks like the roll back is good? No, magic missile used to have an attack roll like most powers. In addition to its release in HotFL, the PHB version was errata'd to reflect the new version.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 16:48
|
|
|
Generic Octopus posted:No, magic missile used to have an attack roll like most powers. In addition to its release in HotFL, the PHB version was errata'd to reflect the new version. Game over, that sucks.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 16:54
|
|
|
Aniodia posted:Not to pick on you in particular, but I've definitely seen this general idea of "fixing 4e" thrown around over the years. Hell, I think Strike grew out of that whole concept, for better or worse. However, I'm curious as to what people think are the major things that should be fixed in 4e above and beyond the very obvious stuff (like the monster math and feat taxes, DTAS would probably be in here too). The wonky maths (both PC and monster) is obvious but the main issue with 4E is there's just too much of it, which is why we needed a real 5th edition that built on top of it.  The stuff I'd want to see changed is:
Feats are definitely the biggest offender on the list for me, here. The way D&D does feats is terrible and also completely superfluous because stuff like PPs and EDs already exist to fill the niche of "the meaningful choice you make to specialise." Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 23, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 16:57
|
|
|
So, I’ve finally gotten a new group together to play with, and we’re in the process of rolling characters for everyone, but I’m slightly stumped with one player’s character concept. They want to focus on water-based powers and spells, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to do that. Aside from the water elementalist (ugh, essentials), the watershaper theme, and the water genasi, is there any other stuff that lets a character focus on water based powers? I can’t think of any classes that have a ton of water based powers. Wizard and just refluff stuff?
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 18:01
|
|
|
Aniodia posted:Not to pick on you in particular, but I've definitely seen this general idea of "fixing 4e" thrown around over the years. Hell, I think Strike grew out of that whole concept, for better or worse. However, I'm curious as to what people think are the major things that should be fixed in 4e above and beyond the very obvious stuff (like the monster math and feat taxes, DTAS would probably be in here too). DTAS Maths fixes (i.e. baking in the feat bonus to hit and the enhancement bonus to hit into basic character progression) junking a bunch of lovely feats Repairing a bunch of lovely classes Fixing skills to be more fail-forward-y Vandar posted:So, I’ve finally gotten a new group together to play with, and we’re in the process of rolling characters for everyone, but I’m slightly stumped with one player’s character concept. I think the Seeker has a couple, and probably the Druid does, but this is prime 'refluff that poo poo bro' territory.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 18:03
|
|
|
Anything and just refluff stuff, but also look into the rituals to flesh out the concept if nothing else (create holy water, purify water, brew potion (?)) "Water" as an elemental keyword or a theme isn't really traditionally a thing in D&D. Mostly you get cold and ice.Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm curious if it rolls back errata / nerfs when you do this or if it just has one entry for "Magic Missile" regardless of where it's from. Oh and when you turn off magic items they all still show up in the item lists, just with the houserule symbol, which is a staggering level of defeating the purpose.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 18:09
|
|
|
Vandar posted:Wizard and just refluff stuff? Just pick any class and refluff, that's straight up the best way to handle this. Don't even bother changing keywords. The most important thing is to just ask them whether they see their character's powers as more of a DPS/controller, single-target/AoE, and melee/ranged powerset, then pick the class based on that. "Water powers" can just as easily mean "makes a sword and shield out of water" as it can mean "shoots water at people" or "summons big waves of water to crash on the battlefield." Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jul 23, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 18:10
|
|
|
Lemon-Lime posted:The wonky maths (both PC and monster) is obvious but the main issue with 4E is there's just too much of it, which is why we needed a real 5th edition that built on top of it. Wouldn’t cutting the game down to 15 levels inadvertently fix a bunch of the maths anyway?
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 18:41
|
|
|
I don't particularly want much - mostly just a cleanup of feats to get rid of trash and/or broken ones. The math fixes would be fine, but I am also okay with the workaround since it's so easy to implement in the CB.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 19:14
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:Wouldn’t cutting the game down to 15 levels inadvertently fix a bunch of the maths anyway? The +1 to-hit bumps are needed around 5 and 15, and the old monster maths was a problem at every level, so not really.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 19:52
|
|
|
The 4e wizard is a great class and not at all hard or unrewarding to play as a versatile, spell-swapping generalist. Hyperspecialized “enchanters” or whatever should certainly exist but should in no way be mandatory.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 20:34
|
|
|
If I were going to change around the roles in 4E it wouldn't be to remove controllers, it would be to rip out the entire healer/tank/dps model by the roots and replace it with a completely different division of labor.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 21:04
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:If I were going to change around the roles in 4E it wouldn't be to remove controllers, it would be to rip out the entire healer/tank/dps model by the roots and replace it with a completely different division of labor. How would you divide labour instead?
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 21:06
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:How would you divide labour instead? That's a big question, but I'll make a post about some of the possibilities and their pros and cons when I get home, if you like.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 21:19
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:That's a big question, but I'll make a post about some of the possibilities and their pros and cons when I get home, if you like. I would like that! Maybe in TG Chat?
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 21:20
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:I would like that! Maybe in TG Chat? Yeah, that might make more sense than here.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2018 21:20
|
|
|
Vandar posted:So, I’ve finally gotten a new group together to play with, and we’re in the process of rolling characters for everyone, but I’m slightly stumped with one player’s character concept. FWIW, Elementalist is a good choice for AP prone players since they can just spam their good attack. As people have said, reflavouring is good, I'd suggest the Battlemind as a cool, water Samurai. Since they slip people around and also teleport themselves, they can always be riding the waves or even part water. Give them the actual Samurai theme too. Also, like, Monk as Bruce Lee?
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 04:14
|
|
|
Yeah, the elementalist is essentials but it's actually not that bad, particularly if your group has a way of granting RBAs. There's an elemental monk in the essentials book too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 04:17
|
|
|
Elementalist is a very, very boring class but does lots of damage.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 04:34
|
|
|
Sodomy Hussein posted:Elementalist is a very, very boring class but does lots of damage. Yeah, it's for the player that doesn't get tactics and wants to contribute. It's for the player that just wants to say "I attack".
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 05:20
|
|
|
Moriatti posted:Yeah, it's for the player that doesn't get tactics and wants to contribute. Just in case your little brother wants to be a Sorcerer instead of a Fighter.  Honestly, though, I’ve had fun optimizing Elementalists in the character builder. I never figured out how they’d get around immunities, though. IIRC, the ability that lets Mages bypass damage immunities is a class-feature and there aren’t any feats that replicate it. They also come close to DTAS like the Skald does.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 18:33
|
|
|
BetterWeirdthanDead posted:Honestly, though, I’ve had fun optimizing Elementalists in the character builder. I never figured out how they’d get around immunities, though. IIRC, the ability that lets Mages bypass damage immunities is a class-feature and there aren’t any feats that replicate it. A Tiefling could MC Wizard and take the Wizard's Wrath feat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 18:39
|
|
|
I think that's why Elementalists end up diversifying your elements. There's also the Energy Admixture feat. Smack Force onto that ice bolt, baby.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 18:57
|
|
|
What were we saying about too many Feats to track?
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 19:09
|
|
|
BetterWeirdthanDead posted:What were we saying about too many Feats to track? Regardless, as far as feats go, Energy Admixture is a solid one that'd make the cut for any but the most bare-bones condensed list.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 19:26
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:...were we not supposed to mention feats... Sorry it didn’t come through in the text — I was making fun of myself for not knowing that feat existed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2018 20:53
|
|
|
Hey all, it's been a while! I just wanted to check - is it alright to derail the discussion slightly, to ask about 5E? [snip] EDIT: Kurieg posted:This is the 5e thread. Thanks - not sure how I missed that, or why it didn't show up in my search! Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Jul 25, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 01:16
|
|
|
This is the 5e thread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3647634
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 01:21
|
|
|
BetterWeirdthanDead posted:Sorry it didn’t come through in the text — I was making fun of myself for not knowing that feat existed.  I remembered wrong - you can't add Force. You can however add Thunder which basically nothing resists, anyway, and which lets you do crazy burst-expanding tricks with Rolling Thunder.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 05:28
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I don't particularly want much - mostly just a cleanup of feats to get rid of trash and/or broken ones. Wasn't someone working on trimming the feat list in CB? Also how are you implementing the math-fix workaround, just the typical "give these math fix feats for free" as house rules in CB? For my last group I didn't like seeing the "house rule" tag for some reason, so I just baked the +hit and +defense PC fixes into the monsters instead. That way the players didn't even know the math fix was implemented and I could use the "house rule" tag on their sheet to tell if they screwed up and picked up an extra feat or retrained too many heroic feats to paragon feats or something..
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 13:46
|
|
|
BetterWeirdthanDead posted:Just in case your little brother wants to be a Sorcerer instead of a Fighter. I mean, I've had players who were playing a Wizard and ended up casting magic missile every round and didn't enjoy having a bunch of options. It's like, 2 people overall, but I am glad I have options for them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 14:06
|
|
|
Dremcon posted:Wasn't someone working on trimming the feat list in CB? Also how are you implementing the math-fix workaround, just the typical "give these math fix feats for free" as house rules in CB? For my last group I didn't like seeing the "house rule" tag for some reason, so I just baked the +hit and +defense PC fixes into the monsters instead. That way the players didn't even know the math fix was implemented and I could use the "house rule" tag on their sheet to tell if they screwed up and picked up an extra feat or retrained too many heroic feats to paragon feats or something.. No, I literally just added the houserule feats because it was easy to implement.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 14:18
|
|
|
Moriatti posted:I mean, I've had players who were playing a Wizard and ended up casting magic missile every round and didn't enjoy having a bunch of options. I had someone play an Artificer like this once. I didn't know that the class was a Leader until years later. It was a huge party and we a had a Cleric too, though, so it all worked out.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 14:24
|
|
|
Artificers are really good leaders too. Our Artificer impressed the team with Magic Weapon for instance, and kept the Psion on his feet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 18:49
|
|
|
For an Imposer Wizard, is it worth going (INT/WIS/CHA) 20/15/12 instead of 20/16/11 in order to get Spell Focus in Paragon tier rather than Epic?
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2018 15:54
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:I sort of think it's a little like six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other situation as far as "fixing" 4e goes, because if you have the Character Builder, then you can implement a "soft" houserule of giving the feat taxes for free and hitting the inherent bonus button and working with that. Hey, been following your blog post on "How to get started with D&D 4th Edition without DDI", because I haven't played this since 2009 and the feat tax did bother me. Something about that post really confused me, though. After comparing and contrasting, the rule in the DSCS, p. 209 is called Fixed Enhancement Bonus and includes a +Xd6 damage bonus, where the X is the Fixed Enhancement Bonus to the attack roll. Your blog post calls it Inherent Bonus and puts it as "When characters score a critical hit, they deal an extra 1d6 damage per +1 bonus to their attack rolls" which suggests that the bonus crit damage should be based on the total attack bonus. Someone let me know to check out the builder anyway, because it's an option there. But even though the implementation in the builder is called Inherent Bonus, this is a third version of this tweak, from the DMG2, p. 138 (where it's called AC, Defense, Attack, and Damage Bonuses) that does not include the crit bonus at all. Which of the three versions of this rule would be preferable, DSCS, blog post or DMG2?
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2018 21:22
|
|
|
Whatever one includes the bonus crit damage, as long as you note that it is overwritten by weapon and implement properties..
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2018 21:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 23:05 |
|
|
Gradenko's rule is the same as the DSCS one, he just hasn't written it very clearly. You should use the DSCS rule I'd you're not planning on handing out tons of magic weapons and if you are use either one.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2018 22:27
|
|
