Jarvisi posted:

As someone who's never played 4e before I really want a guide to what to do to run a simple one shot. As far as what math to use and what one shots aren't garbage

theironjef posted:

Also Monster Vault, and I believe Dark Sun Creature Catalog. Monster Vault in particular will help you find the basic D&D monsters everyone craves, but now in new "Not a big fuckin' harmless bag of hit points" format.

theironjef posted:

Also Monster Vault, and I believe Dark Sun Creature Catalog. Monster Vault in particular will help you find the basic D&D monsters everyone craves, but now in new "Not a big fuckin' harmless bag of hit points" format.

Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:

To clarify why the above is recommended, 4e at launch had combats that took ages. At one point they realized that wasnt fun so they cut health down a lot and just made them mildly more dangerous to compensate

Warthur posted:

How much scope is there to just drop minions from encounters?

When we played we came to the conclusion that whilst the idea of having mooks filling out the enemy ranks who instadie when you hit them was in principle a good idea, in practice they add sufficiently little to the combat that it wasn't really worth the time and effort fishing out tokens for them and setting them up on the map to begin with.

dwarf74 posted:

This is a persistent myth, but HP were not cut down at all for the vast majority of monsters.

Mostly, brutes' low attack bonuses were removed and damage was increased across the board. The "low" damage category that Soldiers used to use vanished. Elites and Solos lost their extra defense bonuses, so combat with them was less of a whiff-fest. The biggest design change was making sure Elite and Solo monsters had better tool-sets to deal with a party of 4 characters. (Previously, it really was just "more hit points" and maybe a reaction of some sort. I refer you to the 4e MM1 Purple Worm.)

The only hit points that were modified at all was with solos, and that was knocking some down from 5x to 4x. Characters just had more tools to deal with those HP as, like, expertise bonuses and the like rolled out.

Early monster math was real bad, particularly with Brutes and Soldiers, but monster design needed just as much refinement.

Admiral Joeslop posted:

The shark is so hungry or viscous that it launches itself at the Fighter, realizing too late that it's now beached.

If you're fighting a regular fish, then fish are stupid and would probably beach themselves later anyway.

"This power leads to goofy situations" is probably only an issue if you rigidly follow the description of a power instead of changing things to match the situation, or just not getting in a silly situation like fighting fish from the water's edge.

theironjef posted:

The fish immediately pops up and starts flying around while you pull Water spells out of it for 45 minutes.

Admiral Joeslop posted:

Incidentally, I always wanted a Blue Mage class back in the 3.5/4e days. Would be a nightmare, I imagine.

thetoughestbean posted:

I just want a Final Fantasy ttrpg. FF1 is at least half stolen ideas from D&D, it’d be fun to see it go full circle.

I know there is at least one fan made FF ttrpg, I should check it out sometime

theironjef posted:

True to the genre Returners is like 1400 pages long and ridiculous.

Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:

Thank you for this clarification! I know from playing that the effect was 'game more fun' that's been hand waved as hp alone. Them realizing that hitting instead of missing is fun, and enemies that do things are more fun probably play a big part of that

theironjef posted:

It's funny how the nerf to that power made it make less sense. Originally instead of a pull effect it forced enemies to shift towards you, and a shark wouldn't have a non-swim move speed so it wouldn't be able to.

My Lovely Horse posted:

"come hither" a fish onto shore

Plutonis posted:

I played and GMed FFD6 and it's pretty serviceable. It has a lot of clunk and balancing mistakes but I liked the monster creation rules.

e: Here's a link if you want to try it. http://www.mediafire.com/file/yibrve1l1x65e3i/FFd6_v1.3.pdf/file

Admiral Joeslop posted:

I need to know more.

My Lovely Horse posted:

Come And Get It has always been a straight pull. Initially as an Effect with an attack after the pull, post-errata as a close burst attack vs. Will that pulled enemies on a hit, if I remember correctly.

dwarf74 posted:

The 4e PHB version had an Effect, which automatically worked. And the wording was, indeed, clumsy in that enemies had to "shift 2" but only if they could end adjacent to you; there may have been earlier errata to turn this into a pull, before the final errata. After they got next to you, you made a 1[w]+Str attack against all enemies who ended up adjacent to you.

Post-final-errata, it became a Close Burst 3 attack vs. Will; if you hit, you pulled them 2, but only if they could end up adjacent to you. You then automatically did 1[w] damage to them if they do end up next to you.

You can see how much more verisimilitudinous this is by how you can't automatically pull super-genius liches, and this errata single-handedly ended the verisimilitude front of the edition wars.

(I blame Mearls.)

dwarf74 posted:

The 4e PHB version had an Effect, which automatically worked. And the wording was, indeed, clumsy in that enemies had to "shift 2" but only if they could end adjacent to you; there may have been earlier errata to turn this into a pull, before the final errata. After they got next to you, you made a 1[w]+Str attack against all enemies who ended up adjacent to you.

e: To be clear, for a Fighter, this final version is arguably a buff rather than a nerf, or at worst a side-grade. The new version lets you Mark a whole room, basically, even if you can't pull them. And attacks vs. Will are much better than attacks vs. AC on like 95% of monsters, usually by +2 or better. The final damage is lower, but it's pretty negligible by mid-levels.

Tekopo posted:

you are missing out, the board wargames thread is great, where else can you read ASL psychos talk about their game in a mixture of boring legalese and something that you would hear from a numbers station?

My Lovely Horse posted:

Old-rear end book found, gently caress me, that's some sloppy editing/playtesting. Someone let the shift version go through when there were forced movement mechanics? Small miracle this edition ever took off.

ross the boss posted:

i bought gamma world 7e on ebay because i have a sickness. famine at far-go is weirdly expensive (someone sell me their copy?) but legion of gold is weirdly cheap. do i need the former to play with with the latter? also i should probably buy the drivethru booster cards, right? or is it ok without them?

also, despite having a bunch of 4e books i have never run it. can i just lift some monsters from the dark sun creature catalog or the monster vault if i want to write my own adventures?

i think gamma world might convince my group to try 4e. 5e is seriously boring me.

potatocubed posted:

As a side note, because I've spent hours over the past few days trying to back-solve PF2e's monster maths, I'm pretty certain that Con does not contribute to hit points there. It does contribute to Fort saves and skill checks though.

PF2e's monster maths is frustrating me a lot, because I can see that there's a formula behind some of those numbers (AC and hp, mainly) but there's enough hand-tuning on the bestiary monsters that I can't quite work out what it is.

Plutonis posted: