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Gort posted:I'd prefer it if the game's combat was balanced around the encounter rather than the adventuring day - so an adventure with a single combat in it is as easy to balance as a dungeon crawl with five combats. Consequences reaching beyond the combat you're in should be the exception, not the assumed default. This is kind of THE core mechanism that 4E's math is based around, so if attrition doesn't do it for you it may be worthwhile to look into a different system.
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Nov 28, 2019 23:23
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kaynorr posted:This is kind of THE core mechanism that 4E's math is based around, so if attrition doesn't do it for you it may be worthwhile to look into a different system. Gamma World took the same numbers but made everything encounter based. I've been experimenting meshing the two with GW heroes vs D&D monsters and at least at low levels they seem to play well together.
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Nov 29, 2019 01:37
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My Lovely Horse posted:You know what, that sounds very sensible. A party could go a long time on that and still have to make the decision of whether to e.g. use the dailies or not with an eye on resource management every time. Without the benefit of knowing they'll definitely get an extended rest after encounter 4 (or 5), even. We mostly transitioned to inherent bonuses by the end of my time playing 4th edition. You could try letting players recharge one daily item per milestone, maybe limiting it so each daily item can only be recharged once per adventure. It worked great through paragon for our purposes.
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Nov 29, 2019 01:47
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KPC_Mammon posted:Back when I ran 4th edition players regained one action point, one daily power, and 1/3rd of their healing surges (rounded up) every milestone. No long rests. They'd level at the end of every adventure, at which point they got all resources back.  Just add in as many milestone tattoos as you can and try to let the world burn in your wake.
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Nov 29, 2019 02:43
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NachtSieger posted:
I always wanted to try that sleepless revenant build from 1-30 to see how ridiculously those milestone bonuses could stack up, especially with the defense boosting gear once you hit Paragon.
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Nov 29, 2019 04:59
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:Gamma World took the same numbers but made everything encounter based. I've been experimenting meshing the two with GW heroes vs D&D monsters and at least at low levels they seem to play well together. Hm, wonder if there's a way to make a hack that's Gamma World with D&D's character generation...
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Nov 29, 2019 10:59
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https://www.geeknative.com/70078/wizards-of-the-coast-finally-kill-of-d-two-weeks-notice-given/ Well, this sucks.
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Dec 19, 2019 04:49
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Octavo posted:https://www.geeknative.com/70078/wizards-of-the-coast-finally-kill-of-d-two-weeks-notice-given/ Can't say I've used it in a long time since getting CBLoader and the offline compendium. Both are infinitely more usable for me
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Dec 19, 2019 06:07
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Gort posted:Hm, wonder if there's a way to make a hack that's Gamma World with D&D's character generation... More fun to do it the other way. I worked on a game doing that a few months back, it's sitting behind a patreon goal or something right now. The archetypes from Gamma World are replaced with D&D monsters. You play as horrible magical monster combinations made by a Mad Wizard. So like the players are a Beholder/Treant or a Kobold/Elemental.
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Dec 19, 2019 07:27
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Spiteski posted:Can't say I've used it in a long time since getting CBLoader and the offline compendium. Both are infinitely more usable for me
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Dec 20, 2019 00:25
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PMush Perfect posted:My CBLoader stopped working a while back and I've been stuck with the last official update only since. Did the server get put back up or is my install hosed for good now?
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Dec 20, 2019 02:51
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You're on my discord Pmush, jump in the 4e channel and read the pinned messages
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Dec 20, 2019 02:58
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Spiteski posted:You're on my discord Pmush, jump in the 4e channel and read the pinned messages
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Dec 20, 2019 03:02
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Did anyone figure out how yo make Beastmaster Ranger good, or at least functional at low level? Gonna run a one shot for some coworkers and I know having a pet wolf would gain a lot of buy in for one of them.
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Dec 20, 2019 22:17
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Moriatti posted:Did anyone figure out how yo make Beastmaster Ranger good, or at least functional at low level? I believe consensus was "Play something else with the Fey Beast Tamer(I think that's the name at least)". Alternately the essentials druid is a leader with a pet and they're balanced around it better.
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Dec 20, 2019 22:25
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Moriatti posted:Did anyone figure out how yo make Beastmaster Ranger good, or at least functional at low level? "Be another kind of Ranger with a pet theme" was the last advice I heard. I think Fey Beast Tamer was the best? There was a later class build--the Sentinel Druid--that also has an animal companion class feature.
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Dec 20, 2019 22:28
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Okie dokie
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Dec 21, 2019 00:54
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Is there somewhere you can get like a big Summary of the various D&D 4e classes and a sentence summary of their playstyles? Interested mostly for ideas for a lancer hack i'm loving around with.
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Dec 21, 2019 05:19
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Impermanent posted:Is there somewhere you can get like a big Summary of the various D&D 4e classes and a sentence summary of their playstyles? Interested mostly for ideas for a lancer hack i'm loving around with.
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Dec 21, 2019 05:22
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Here are mine for the PHB1 classes: Fighter: Get enemies stuck to you so they spend all their time hitting you and not someone vulnerable. Paladin: Zap enemies with holy might if they try to hurt your vulnerable friends; laugh from behind a wall of solid metal when they try to hurt you instead. Ranger: Dance around the battlefield finding whichever enemy needs to die the most and smacking them down. Rogue: Hit enemies for huge damage while they're distracted by one of your friends, and drop status effects on them when they're not. Warlock: As above but with magic, and also you power up when enemies get dropped. Cleric: Heal and buff your friends as you shoot holy magic at your enemies. Warlord: Heal and buff your friends, and move them around like pieces on a chessboard so they're in the right position to beat your enemies. Wizard: You don't hit hard but you can lock down lots of enemies at once so that your friends can pick them off at their leisure.
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Dec 21, 2019 13:55
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Moriatti posted:Did anyone figure out how yo make Beastmaster Ranger good, or at least functional at low level? The basic Beastmaster build is 'archer but not quite as good' using the beast and a CA source, essentially. I don't recall the exact components, but in short, you build it like a ranged ranger, take none of the beast powers, and have a small number of ablative HP that you can proc for CA somehow. There's always the amusing party-op version of 'everyone plays a Beastmaster MC Shaman, with the Shaman MC that gives you at-will Spirit animal and an encounter heal. It's a surprisingly strong combat party.
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Dec 21, 2019 15:21
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Impermanent posted:Is there somewhere you can get like a big Summary of the various D&D 4e classes and a sentence summary of their playstyles? Interested mostly for ideas for a lancer hack i'm loving around with. I put something like this together a while back, although many of the short descriptions are more focused on theme than mechanics since I was aiming to provide a one-pager suitable for introducing completely new players to the classes. I believe it has all of the classes, but doesn't go down to the subclass level — which can sometimes produce noticeable differences in playstyle. I can also upload a Word document or plaintext version on request, if that would be more helpful than the PDF.
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Dec 21, 2019 18:32
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Moriatti posted:Did anyone figure out how yo make Beastmaster Ranger good, or at least functional at low level? Unless your group has a really high level of character optimization, you can make any ranger-type viable just by taking Twin Strike and stacking static damage sources. The problem here is that if he actually wants to use the wolf, it's going to be pretty bad, because the wolf uses the player's actions. Moving the wolf uses your move phase. Attacking with the wolf uses your attack. Etc. If it's just wolf-themed flavor you're after, you could pretty easily do a regular ranger who shapeshifts into a wolf. Hengeyokai is Dex/Wis, so they're perfect for archer rangers, and they get an at-will ability to shift into an animal form. Just fluff their dog form into a wolf and there you go.
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Dec 21, 2019 20:40
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Couldn’t you just make a companion npc and give it to whoever wants the pet? It can help you fill out defender/striker roles if you’re short. Reflavor dailies to be a dual-attack or something with the pet.
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Dec 22, 2019 05:24
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Be a warlord, order your pets to attack, also the other pcs are now your pets
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Dec 22, 2019 19:04
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Maybe play a shaman?
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Dec 22, 2019 19:30
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What's so bad about the Beastmaster ranger? Would it be easier just to give them 5 extra damage on each hit or something?
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Dec 22, 2019 22:13
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Gort posted:What's so bad about the Beastmaster ranger? Would it be easier just to give them 5 extra damage on each hit or something? They have to use their actions to command their pet, and that doesn't really work with 4e's very tight action economy.
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Dec 22, 2019 22:22
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"You have to use your standard action to make the pet attack" could work fine, but the powers themselves suck and none of it really builds on how the ranger functions.
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Dec 23, 2019 00:40
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Kurieg posted:They have to use their actions to command their pet, and that doesn't really work with 4e's very tight action economy. That's not a problem at all, because you're still getting one character's worth of actions for your one character. The issue is the beast powers aren't worth spending your actions on, generally because their damage doesn't scale past heroic and isn't that good to begin with. Honestly, it's not that hard to fix it, but you'd have to go and houserule every single beast power which is a chore. That said, the entire build runs contrary to 4E design and it should have used a system similar to the Shaman, with the animal companion sharing most of your stats and a fraction of your HP, a rule that says that powers with the Beast tag are cast from the animal companion's square, the same movement rules as the Shaman spirit companion, and obviously, powers designed to work with this. 
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Dec 23, 2019 01:02
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Or the summoner wizard, where dropping a summon onto the table is a daily action, and then each turn you either use your standard action to control the summon or let it act according to its instinct (so it takes a pre-defined standard action like 'charge the nearest enemy') and eat a debuff.
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Dec 23, 2019 13:55
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Recently I've been trying out a modification to the 4e rules where the GM very rarely rolls dice. Here's how it works: 1. Add 21 to all monster attack rolls, so a goblin with +6 to hit has a 27 attack. 2. Instead of rolling to attack, the players roll a d20 to defend their character, adding the relevant defense, against the monster's attack number. If they roll a 1 they get critically hit. 3. Instead of rolling damage for monsters, just work out the average damage for their powers ahead of time and use that. It seems to work pretty well, and I've already got so much crap on the table in front of me when I GM (notes, handouts, tokens for recording various statuses, minis) that getting the dice off the table is great. I also like how it involves the players in their own defense more, as well. I'm trying to think of a way to do initiative, though. If monsters were just assumed to roll 10, you might end up with the monsters all going one after another in the middle of the order. Maybe just give the fastest set of monsters a 15 roll and the slower ones a 5? Gort fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 15:57
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If your only goal is to reduce the amount of rolling the GM does at the table, just preroll all initiative values for each group of monsters in every encounter you've got planned. I don't think there's any easy way to fairly average it unless everyone averages it; at which point you're basically skipping the dice roll altogether and ordering directly by initiative modifier values. (Might not be a bad idea if you want a +1 to initiative or a higher modifier to suddenly become very valuable.)
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Dec 23, 2019 16:37
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Gort posted:I'm trying to think of a way to do initiative, though. If monsters were just assumed to roll 10, you might end up with the monsters all going one after another in the middle of the order. Maybe just give the fastest set of monsters a 15 roll and the slower ones a 5? For most of my 4e campaign I had NPCs take 10 on initiative and it worked out fine. I also averaged damage for a while, but I'd suggest you consider how you handle critical hits. my first instinct was to double it, but that makes NPC crits way more deadly.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:56
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Zeerust posted:For most of my 4e campaign I had NPCs take 10 on initiative and it worked out fine.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:58
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Yeah why wouldn't you still max it, you still have the dice expressions in everything. I did it with average damage for a while, worked great. I allowed my players to average theirs, too.
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Dec 23, 2019 20:19
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Spiteski posted:You're on my discord Pmush, jump in the 4e channel and read the pinned messages There's a 4e channel? I'd be interested in joining the discourse! Also the news that wizards is finally taking down the various 4e stuff is a huge bummer; I've been super reliant on the monster vault there for monster stats for my games. Is there any way to get the content there downloaded besides downloading each monster file by hand? I know masterplan had an add-on to import monster compendium content directly, but for some reason it isn't working for me any longer. Is it broken?
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Dec 23, 2019 20:43
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Zeerust posted:I also averaged damage for a while, but I'd suggest you consider how you handle critical hits. my first instinct was to double it, but that makes NPC crits way more deadly. Nah, in 4e you don't double damage on criticals for anyone. Players get the maximum damage you could've rolled (so 5d8+17 becomes 57 for example) plus some dice for having a magic weapon, monsters just get the maximum possible rolled damage. For my mod I just went with maximum damage for monsters as well, didn't see a reason to change it. Zeerust posted:For most of my 4e campaign I had NPCs take 10 on initiative and it worked out fine. You didn't find that lead to all the monsters having similar initiatives and going one after another? Generally you want to avoid a situation where the monsters are clumped up together and alpha-strike someone without the party being able to do anything about it, which random initiative rolling usually avoids. My Lovely Horse posted:If your only goal is to reduce the amount of rolling the GM does at the table, just preroll all initiative values for each group of monsters in every encounter you've got planned. Not my only goal, but yeah, I'll probably just do a bunch of pre-rolling. Gort fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 21:04
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Gort posted:You didn't find that lead to all the monsters having similar initiatives and going one after another? Generally you want to avoid a situation where the monsters are clumped up together and alpha-strike someone without the party being able to do anything about it, which random initiative rolling usually avoids.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:31
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ObMeiste posted:There's a 4e channel? I'd be interested in joining the discourse! You're welcome to join. discord.gg/GQRz7pT It's not a big huge server, but there is sometimes discussion about a few different systems. 4e is definitely the biggest played system, and the 4e channel has a bunch of resources particularly useful if you use Fantasy Grounds (all of 4e is in module form, including the first act of Zeitgeist)
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Dec 24, 2019 00:28
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