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In this case I'm mostly just looking to get Cold and Lightning keywords onto everything I do so I can use Shocking Flame + Storm Step to teleport all over the battlefield like a maniac without losing my frost synergy. In a pinch I could just use a Frozen Whetstone or one of my own admixtures to make it happen though.
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Dec 22, 2021 11:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:Okay, that all rings true. But to bring it back to the Swordmage ability in question, I wouldn't agree that swinging your sword around at nothing would constitute "making an at-will attack" that you can "not hit" anything with.. It literally is! There's a difference between missing all targets and hitting no targets. For instance, if you were forced to guess blindly as to your hidden enemy's location, you could aim a blast to your left, hit nothing (because they weren't there to start with), and use that consolation blast on the squares to your right. The "legitimate targets" sidebar precisely fails to apply here because a total absence of targets will still trigger Echoes. Now, I understand and agree that there are certain game-mechanical effects which would rightly incentivize us to start deliberately misreading or ignoring the rules in order to disincentivize degenerate behavior. Like, if Echoes healed you, then we would absolutely have to houserule it to only work if you fail to hit a legitimate target because it would otherwise constitute the equivalent of infinite healing surges. But Echoes is just a generic attack spell. Nothing bad happens if you can trigger it on purpose by "wasting" your standard action, but something bad does happen if you can't: namely, one of your character's spells suddenly starts working on a vague ooc mother may I basis rather than just doing what it says. EDIT: If anything, the legitimate targets sidebar protects Echoes by specifying that your Sword Burst incidentally knocking some mosquitoes out of the air doesn't disqualify your using Echoes as a followup. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 21:30
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Ferrinus posted:But Echoes is just a generic attack spell. Nothing bad happens if you can trigger it on purpose by "wasting" your standard action, but something bad does happen if you can't: namely, one of your character's spells suddenly starts working on a vague ooc mother may I basis rather than just doing what it says.
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Dec 22, 2021 22:00
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My Lovely Horse posted:See, I feel like it's clear that the power itself is badly phrased (as Dragon powers often are) and I'd rather fix just that one power than let it force a precedent for the entire system. So I completely agree with this, but to me it's a reason to make Echoes specifically just work as a standard action, rather than to make a blanket statement that you can use attack powers when there are no targets, which, in my experience, is sure to have an undesired effect at some point in the system. (or let's say at-will attack powers, stuff like spending a Daily to make a big fiery explosion for story reasons is a perfectly fine resource/benefit exchange too.)
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Dec 22, 2021 22:18
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The divorce between the abstract combat minigame and the narrative, beyond only the faintest resemblance for the sake of clarity (e.g. a sword cuts things, a fire burns -- basically narrative as a mnemonic tool for learning and remembering the rules) is actually one of the things that most appeals to me about 4E.
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Dec 22, 2021 22:31
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The divorce between the abstract combat minigame and the narrative, beyond only the faintest resemblance for the sake of clarity (e.g. a sword cuts things, a fire burns -- basically narrative as a mnemonic tool for learning and remembering the rules) is actually one of the things that most appeals to me about 4E. I flatly deny that it exists (or at least that it exists any more than it did in prior editions), and there's actually a lot of storytelling implicit in the interactions of atomic powers with the wider narrative. For instance, consider the difference between Healing Word (cleric class feature, 2/encounter) and Cure Light Wounds (cleric utility 2, 1/day). Clerics can use prayers to get people to draw on their reserves of inner strength, just like warlords. But they can ALSO deliver miraculous, something-for-nothing healing. Yes, this has gamey strategic implications but it's a real fact of the setting, just like that some but not all wizards know how to create fiery explosions without special effort.
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Dec 22, 2021 22:44
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Running a group through Madness at Gardmore Abbey again, it still owns, but I have to say on closer inspection it's kind of weird, but also very D&D, that the module is full of beholders, orc chiefs, giants, demons, necromancers and dragons, and your final boss encounter is "some dude". I feel like if you've bested all these creatures and then your capstone is fighting Lord Padraig it's a minor letdown. I think I want to engineer it so Mekkalath is the final boss.
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Feb 1, 2022 13:12
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Running 4th edition for my players and I'm loving it. I'm running them through a modified version of Keep on the Shadowfell, modified after realizing a lot of the fights were mostly tedious and unnecessary, and the plot needed some more interest. It's so much fun right now. It feels very odd that I get to enjoy combat mechanically rather than vicariously through my players. I also really enjoy the character customization options, skill challenges and the general flow of the game compared to 5e. I'm using Foundry and while it helps with some of the automation it does leave a lot to be desired. We have a runesmith player and I wish we could better automate his auras, but it's just not doable in the current Foundry environment. Still, we're having a good time. I'm slowly making it less about combat and more about RP with fun combat encounters, and I'm mad at myself for not trying 4e sooner.
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Feb 24, 2022 19:23
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Oh good. I'm glad you were able to rescue Keep on the Shadowfell. Yeah the HPE series showcases why XP progression is bad, IMO.
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Feb 24, 2022 20:01
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dwarf74 posted:Oh good. I'm glad you were able to rescue Keep on the Shadowfell. I'm using a modification called the H1-H3 Orcus Conversion as well as some other suggestions and some homebrew stuff. My players are a bit tired of dealing with cults and stuff, so I didn't want to make a cult hidden in Winterhaven. Instead I'm making the bad poo poo that happens around the town get worse and worse as the players take time to return to town and rest for the evening. First it began to rain, the general mood of the town became worried and withdrawn. Now the Invoker is suffering bad dreams that will clue them towards ways to interact with the final encounter's skill challenge. I pushed back the Ninaran encounter and I'm going to change it with something else that puts the town into more of a jeopardized situation, with the goal of showing the players that time is running out. I'm definitely getting rid of a bunch of different encounters that don't add anything. They fought the slimes which were fine, but I removed the kruthiks since they're just animals in the dungeon and their rewards aren't that interesting anyway. Instead I put that treasure into a different room that they've since found, closed off the kruthik portion of the map and called it a tunnel that leads to a separate entrance/exit to the dungeon. I actually don't mind XP, but I can see why players would want to do milestone instead. I do like that my players get excited to level up, and since they know they're close they can take the time to look at their next level powers without me having to ruin the potential surprise of a milestone level.
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Feb 24, 2022 21:19
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Huh, that H1-E3 Orcus Conversion thing (here) looks pretty rad, looks like they've cut out a lot of pointless encounters in there. I remember my main problem with the original adventure paths being the enormous acres of combat encounters that separated each plot beat. It really made me think that the people writing the adventures hadn't played much actual 4th ed, and thought that a room with five orcs in it would just be like, "OK, we fireball them, what's in the barrels at the back?" instead of the quarter-hour tactical combat that is your average 4e encounter.
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Feb 25, 2022 00:17
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Verisimilidude posted:I'm using a modification called the H1-H3 Orcus Conversion Yeah those mods are pretty good, I ran them myself like 10 years ago and I have fond memories. The main strength of them is how well they tie together the flagship series of modules from 4e into a very thematic campaign all leading to a dramatic confrontation against Orcus himself in the Epic tier. I'd also recommend slightly tweaking the final dungeon map of KotS along the lines of the Alexandrian's Jaquaying the Dungeon article series. The articles themselves are long-winded explanations of why the changes are a good thing, and make for excellent reading, but if you just want to trust and TL;DR, the actual changes are in part 4 of the series, and it's 4 very small tweaks (add a second entrance, add a staircase, move a staircase, and add a secret passage) that change the dungeon from a very linear path with one optional side loop to an interconnected space with multiple loop-backs and at least a dozen potential routes from the entrances to the last boss fight. St0rmD fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 25, 2022 00:25
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Gort posted:Huh, that H1-E3 Orcus Conversion thing (here) looks pretty rad, looks like they've cut out a lot of pointless encounters in there. I remember my main problem with the original adventure paths being the enormous acres of combat encounters that separated each plot beat. It really made me think that the people writing the adventures hadn't played much actual 4th ed, and thought that a room with five orcs in it would just be like, "OK, we fireball them, what's in the barrels at the back?" instead of the quarter-hour tactical combat that is your average 4e encounter.
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Feb 25, 2022 01:41
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St0rmD posted:Yeah those mods are pretty good, I ran them myself like 10 years ago and I have fond memories. The main strength of them is how well they tie together the flagship series of modules from 4e into a very thematic campaign all leading to a dramatic confrontation against Orcus himself in the Epic tier. Great advice!! I've switched my map up to support this extra staircase. I'm glad to see we're on the same page about the kruthik lair too! I made that into another nature entrance for our last session once I realized I didn't want to run the kruthik fight, it would've been a bit too exhausting!
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Feb 25, 2022 01:45
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Yeah this Orcus Conversion looks cool as hell and I'd definitely like to run it next time I get to DM 4e. Pyramid of Shadows still sucks rear end though, so I'd like to figure out a way to slot Gardmore Abbey into the plot for those levels instead. I got the box set but never actually got to run it since my campaign group fell apart just before they'd have started the adventure. 
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Mar 3, 2022 21:01
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How do you all run skill challenges? I've been letting my players know that they're in a skill challenge and ask them to contribute in their own unique ways with their chosen skills, giving unrelated skills a higher DC than normal. So far this has proven to be successful, but I'm curious how other people run them. Do you obfuscate a lot of information from the players? Are you upfront about a lot of information? An example of a skill challenge would be very useful as well! I know the book has a couple examples, but I'd like to hear about real world uses.
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Mar 7, 2022 16:25
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Honestly skill challenges as written are pretty much unusable, and I tend to go around the table and ask everyone how they specifically contribute, much like you do, but I let the challenge come to an end when our collective descriptions suggest the issue at hand is pretty much resolved. Usually it takes going around twice at most.
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Mar 7, 2022 17:02
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Star Wars Saga Edition skill challenges work like a dream in 4E - the tech improved a lot.
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Mar 7, 2022 17:07
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Verisimilidude posted:How do you all run skill challenges? I've been letting my players know that they're in a skill challenge and ask them to contribute in their own unique ways with their chosen skills, giving unrelated skills a higher DC than normal. So far this has proven to be successful, but I'm curious how other people run them. Do you obfuscate a lot of information from the players? Are you upfront about a lot of information? I always liked the Obsidian Skill Challenge System; even just removing Failures helped change my philosophy towards skill challenges a lot. https://www.enworld.org/threads/stalker0s-obsidian-skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2.241440/
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Mar 7, 2022 17:09
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Verisimilidude posted:How do you all run skill challenges? I pretty much don't. I've not really seen a skill challenge that was actually worth running. Instead I just think of a few obstacles, some potential repercussions if the players screw up defeating them, and go from there. So getting into the throne room of the castle might be an athletics check to get over the moat and set up a rope for the rest of the party, with a fight against the Moat Thing if they fail. Then a sneak check to get by the guards, then a hard bluff check if you get caught, fight the guards if that fails. I find that skill challenges feel "too mechanical" for me - it feels like you're inventing fiction to go with a too-rigid rule framework (IE: You have to have this many checks because it's a level 13 hard skill challenge) rather than the fiction suggesting the rules (IE: You're rolling athletics and then sneak since your plan is to jump a moat, climb a wall, and sneak through some bushes).
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Mar 7, 2022 17:10
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Anyone paying attention is going to realize that they're in a skill challenge the moment the DM is asking every party member to start making rolls instead of just whoever has the highest modifier, so trying to hide it seems pointless. A well designed skill challenge should function even when the players are aware they're in one anyways. One style I've always liked is tying unique bonuses to different skills, so players have a reason to roll something that isn't their biggest number. Like a hypothetical 'defend the village from bandits' scenario could have an Athletics check to set up cover or difficult terrain for the upcoming fight and that'd be easy for the Barbarian, but maybe they'd rather try helping the apothecary brew extra healing potions instead.
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Mar 7, 2022 17:15
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Verisimilidude posted:How do you all run skill challenges? I've been letting my players know that they're in a skill challenge and ask them to contribute in their own unique ways with their chosen skills, giving unrelated skills a higher DC than normal. So far this has proven to be successful, but I'm curious how other people run them. Do you obfuscate a lot of information from the players? Are you upfront about a lot of information? I mostly use it as a framework for how many obstacles/skill checks the players should face when going to their destination (broken up between dialog/encounters/puzzles/etc), but I try not to run skill challenges RAW because they are very tedious to go through as a player.
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Mar 7, 2022 17:17
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I really only use them when it's necessary mid-battle. It's great to give players a thing to skill-check at while also fighting. Like 'take down magical wards in a few places so you can actually beat up on that sorcerer'
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Mar 7, 2022 17:40
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Combined combat and skill challenge is actually a really good idea I've never had somehow
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Mar 7, 2022 17:56
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dwarf74 posted:I really only use them when it's necessary mid-battle. It's great to give players a thing to skill-check at while also fighting. I'm gonna have to get a feel for this, since the final boss fight in Keep on the Shadowfell is essentially a big combat + a skill challenge. Thanks for the different perspectives everyone! I'm gonna read into the Obsidian skill challenges and see how things go. So far my players like skill challenges, but they've been for very immediate, time-sensitive situations. One of them was for forging a magic hammer (basically I let my runepriest player transform a cleric implement no one could use into a weapon for himself) and talking down a powerful NPC who was about to fight them.
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Mar 7, 2022 19:45
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So in the campaign I'm running, I decided to try to add in a resource mechanic to a skill challenge to see how that went. The set up was that they're all in the not-Byzantine Empire, and the empress, a pixie, was deposed in a palace coup. The next day, the PCs were contacted about a job. A high ranking court eunuch said he was afraid he was going to be executed and his property confiscated, so he wanted to sneak out some money to his family while he still could. The party agreed, and after they received four small packages, they went off to a cave outside the city to open them up and see what they were actually transporting. They found that one box was full of jewels, another full of land deeds, the third contained a reliquary with the knucklebone of a saint, and the fourth had one deposed empress. Turns out the actual plan was for her to take all of this to a group of Not-Bulgars just outside the borders to bribe them into marching on the empire to put the her back on the throne. The party decided to help her out, but when they got to the queen of the Not-Bulgars, she was immediately unfriendly, so I told them it was time for them to negotiate and presented the players with this:quote:Skill challenge: I feel like it worked out well. The players having to discuss whether they wanted to risk a given roll as is or spend a a resource they knew they couldn't get back seemed to add the right level of tension to the whole negotiation. I was also willing to lower difficulty of a check if they did something particularly clever or interesting (they already knew that about how I run skill challenges in general), such as when the party monk picked up the empress, put her back in the box, and handed her over to the queen, changing the negotiations to be about whether the Not-Bulgars would back the PCs' attempt to get on the throne. In the end, they spent about half their gem and land resources, mostly to cancel out failed rolls, and got themselves a small army.
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Mar 8, 2022 03:51
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Skill challenges are incredibly boring without being driven by the narrative. If you're just rolling dice against a DC and counting successes vs. failures it's just a lame. I agree the right way to do it is to present the challenge in the narrative, ask the players what they do (not what skill they are rolling), and decide the skill and DC from there. Don't just pass/fail them u less it's an extremely binary action. Fail forward by costing resources or healing surge or dailies or other story consequences. I also like allowing creative interpretations of powers in addition to skill checks as long as it makes some sense.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:15
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Verisimilidude posted:How do you all run skill challenges? Pure DM side tool for handling absurd PC plans. Three strikes and you're out and the skill challenge handles pacing and difficulty. The players might know they are in one but I never mention it - just using the skill challenge for DCs and a couple of tally charts.
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Mar 9, 2022 18:59
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Goddamn it. I had a beholder fight coming up and since they're so fiddly to run and you have to do a whole attack routine every turn, I prerolled like 100 eye ray attacks and wrote them on little slips of paper to draw from a bag. I even made sure to have equal amounts of each type of ray in there, as well as give each type an even spread of rolls, because I had visions of rolling something like 8 petrification rays with high attack rolls in the first two rounds and wanted to have as diverse a pool to draw from as I could manage. Guess what I did draw in the first two rounds
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Mar 21, 2022 16:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:Goddamn it. I had a beholder fight coming up and since they're so fiddly to run and you have to do a whole attack routine every turn, I prerolled like 100 eye ray attacks and wrote them on little slips of paper to draw from a bag. I even made sure to have equal amounts of each type of ray in there, as well as give each type an even spread of rolls, because I had visions of rolling something like 8 petrification rays with high attack rolls in the first two rounds and wanted to have as diverse a pool to draw from as I could manage.
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Mar 21, 2022 16:11
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Just finished running Keep on the Shadowfell and had a blast. The individual sessions were fairly well-paced, with 2-3 encounters per session including roleplaying and skill challenge sections. My players went into the final fight with very few resources, having used most of their daily powers during the encounter with the hobgoblins on the third to last floor. They crushed the skill challenge to close the portal though, with 8 successes and only 1 failure (I threw in another failure caused by a creature to increase the tension, so they were on their last failure and last success). I'm looking forward to running the next leg of the campaign (Thunderspire Labyrinth) with the Orcus conversion, it really opens up and becomes more world spanning which I think my players will appreciate. Verisimilidude fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 24, 2022 |
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Mar 24, 2022 20:29
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Did you modify KotS? Running it as-is is a slog.
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Mar 25, 2022 08:26
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Dremcon posted:Did you modify KotS? Running it as-is is a slog.
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Mar 25, 2022 08:35
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Alternatively, the group liked it as written, in which case: keep them don't let them escape you've struck gold
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Mar 25, 2022 14:23
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I def removed a couple unnecessary fights only to realize the H1 conversion was suggesting to do the same. Stuff like the kruthiks in shadowfell keep seemed tedious and unnecessary, so I removed that section of map entirely and made it a second exit to the surface. I should’ve also removed the gelatinous cube, which was another tedious fight. For H2 I’m planning to remove all not story related fights, or doubles of fights, and award that experience elsewhere along with whatever treasure they may contain.
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Mar 25, 2022 14:29
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Rosalie_A posted:Alternatively, the group liked it as written, in which case: Eh, I think running combat after samey combat would get monotonous to GM pretty drat quick, even if the party is having fun. Those modules really needed a higher ratio of plot to fighting. Also the OP posted a month back about how they weren't running it as-written, but were using a modified version called the Orcus Conversion
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Mar 25, 2022 14:41
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If I ever run Madness at Gardmore Abbey again I'll probably heavily modify it too. Some stuff needs fleshing out, some stuff could use paring down, some elements don't really work well with each other. Mainly I'm thinking about what it would play like if instead of having 5-6 key encounters with bosses that each hold 3-4 cards, there would be ~18 big setpiece encounters, each mechanically influenced by a single card, and only like 3-4 wandering monster type additional encounters.
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Mar 25, 2022 14:49
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Does anyone have any tips for making in-person play a little easier for new players? The current incarnation of the character builder can be a little annoying to get working properly, and it presents the player with every single feat alphabetically which can be pretty overwhelming, plus I’d like to spend an in person session making characters together instead of just sending everyone home to do it on their pc. But then calculating stuff quickly and keeping track of what stuff you’ve used can be kind of a pain; I was thinking maybe making cards for everyone’s powers and items to make it easier. I’m also a little concerned about overwhelming people with options with feats, but I think if I just give everyone the big fest taxes for free (expertise, mba primary stat stuff, improved defenses) and tell them to pick what seems cool we should be okay.
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Apr 11, 2022 17:47
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curated lists of powers, feats, items, etc. is a great mid-point between just cutting someone loose in the entirety of 4E chargen and building their character for them, both in terms of singling out the strongest stuff but also, or alternatively, picking options/bonuses that are either largely passive or that can be listed on the power cards they're most likely to modify instead of having to be tracked and remembered separately
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 18:02
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DoubleDonut posted:Does anyone have any tips for making in-person play a little easier for new players? The current incarnation of the character builder can be a little annoying to get working properly, and it presents the player with every single feat alphabetically which can be pretty overwhelming, plus I’d like to spend an in person session making characters together instead of just sending everyone home to do it on their pc. But then calculating stuff quickly and keeping track of what stuff you’ve used can be kind of a pain; I was thinking maybe making cards for everyone’s powers and items to make it easier. Absolutely make power cards. We sleeve ours with green/red/black sleeves for attack powers, blue for utility and yellow for items. I organize my playspace with a spot for duration powers and put expended stuff face down. Status cards and any other physical reminder tools (like burst/blast zones) are also great. For newer players it's often better to ask what they want to do and find powers and feats that match rather than asking them to sift through the feats. Likewise if a veteran player learns the newbie's character they can be helpful with the math and remembering bonuses or immediates.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:14
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