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A jargogle posted:Hi all. I'm a fairly inexperienced GM with 4 fairly inexperienced players. I was looking to run a oneshot game with these guys online, can anyone recommend a good premade one? Slaying Stone gets good press.
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Sep 25, 2016 09:10
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Seconding Slaying Stone. I'd make sure to familiarize yourself with the module and make sure you're ready for them to go a few different directions with things, or improvise on the fly. To paraphrase an old DMing adage: Players will do anything except what you expected.
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Sep 25, 2016 09:42
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Hi all. I had my first D&D experience today with some friends. 4PCs, all their first time and a DM that played once before about 10 years ago. We're running the starter set. The first encounter was way too crazy. We have Cleric, Wizard, Fighter (ranged specialty) and Rogue. Our first encounter had the Wizard go down in a single hit and our cleric also went down before they got an action. We basically got TPK'd on the first fight but the DM was like "they take all your gold" and we survived because our wizard got a crit20 on a death roll and helped us stabilize the party. Like, is it normal that we all just instantly die? I mean, I'm not expecting some hand holding experience but I thought it'd be more like we exchange blows or something instead of pretty much everyone and everything dropping dead in a hit or two. After that misstep though, it went smoothly up until we reached some boss bugbear guy or something. We slept him and basically managed to avoid combat with him. That was the end of our session. Edit: Wow, I dun goofed! Sorry! Apparently it was 5e. BambooEarpick fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 10:37
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BambooEarpick posted:Hi all. This thread is actually for one D&D version ago. The starter set you're describing (and your issues with it) are for the current version of the game in this thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3647634&pagenumber=772#lastpost
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Sep 25, 2016 10:44
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BambooEarpick posted:Hi all. Hey, from what you posted it sounds like you guys were playing some edition of D&D, but that edition was almost certainly not 4th edition (which this thread is about). It would be pretty absurd for a character to be straight up oneshot by a monster in 4e, but there are definitely editions of D&D in which that can happen if the people playing are inexperienced (especially an inexperienced DM). Do you know which version you were playing? If you do, you might be able to get a more thorough explanation or analysis by posting in the respective thread, though you might be fine just posting here anyway, especially if you're not sure what the edition was. edit: severely beaten
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Sep 25, 2016 10:45
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I tried to come up with some really basic rules to smooth out all that wonky top-heaviness that comes from high-level 4e, and threw together something heavily inspired by Epic 6. The most basic version is just "game caps at level 4, with new feats every so often". Slightly less basic is what I'm gonna be testing out in this game, which is, summed up, "leveling only grants extra powers and/or feats". No bigger numbers, no math reworking, just a few extra options. I'm not totally sure how I feel about it, since it does remove the ability to have hordes of under-level monsters, but that's what minions are for, anyways.
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Sep 25, 2016 11:09
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Gort posted:My problem with "Don't have too many trash fights" has always been that you have to have a certain amount of fights in order for the attrition built into the system of healing surges and dailies to work. If the adventure is "Go to the dragon's lair, defeat the dragon, rest on your laurels" then you get a weirdly unbalanceable fight where the usual "Don't just blow all your dailies right away, you might need them later" doesn't apply.
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Sep 25, 2016 14:05
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dwarf74 posted:Daily balance is an issue in all D&D's, yes. Personally, though, I'd rather tweak what a rest means - maybe change it to a "refresh" or whatever - than do away with them entirely. Yeah, attrition is an interesting challenge when used right and can really ratchet up the tension, but tying it to any sort of actual time unit just causes the whole thing to fall apart and cause a lot of shoehorning into the story to make it fit.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:24
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dwarf74 posted:Daily balance is an issue in all D&D's, yes. Personally, though, I'd rather tweak what a rest means - maybe change it to a "refresh" or whatever - than do away with them entirely. Yeah I'm a fan of 13th Age's system where it is purely based on encounters rather than tied to time or resting or anything, though the game still infuriatingly refers to it as a "day". I think, though, yeah, I also just kind of find the idea of "daily" abilities something of a worthless thing in general, and would rather balance the game around the encounter. For all it's many, many, many flaws, one thing I liked about FF13 was that every fight was, for the most part, completely balanced around your party always being at 100% going in. But then, the whole attrition factor in games has never really appealed to me, I far prefer it being like a movie where the hero can always work through unless they take some kind of narrative "injury" or the like.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:36
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Rohan Kishibe posted:Yeah I'm a fan of 13th Age's system where it is purely based on encounters rather than tied to time or resting or anything, though the game still infuriatingly refers to it as a "day". The trouble (I'd assume, haven't played much 13th Age) is that some parties are good and some are bad. If there's nothing you can do to go "We're beat, we can't go on, we camp here" even if you haven't completed enough fights yet, the bad parties are just going to spend their time face-down in the dirt. quote:I think, though, yeah, I also just kind of find the idea of "daily" abilities something of a worthless thing in general, and would rather balance the game around the encounter. For all it's many, many, many flaws, one thing I liked about FF13 was that every fight was, for the most part, completely balanced around your party always being at 100% going in. But then, the whole attrition factor in games has never really appealed to me, I far prefer it being like a movie where the hero can always work through unless they take some kind of narrative "injury" or the like. Fully agreed.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:57
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You can absolutely take an early reast in 13th Age, but you'll be taking what's called a campaign loss: some sort of setback that changes up the situation for the worse; nothing that makes a victory in the big picture impossible, but something that could have been avoided if only you'd pressed on. Now, if you find that happens every heal-up, you should probably be lenient as a DM, but party capabilities change over time (every session, in fact, if you're going with the incremental advance rule where you get feats or spells from your next level early) so it's probably only going to get better. And you can always introduce some outside help, or some convenient partial recovery opportunities.quote:For all it's many, many, many flaws, one thing I liked about FF13 was that every fight was, for the most part, completely balanced around your party always being at 100% going in.
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Sep 25, 2016 18:13
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Basing your game's combat on solving the entirely self-contained encounter (with also perhaps a sop to efficiency across multiple encounters) would work as a design concept, but that's starting to drift away from what even D&D 4e does well, and part of it only works in the context of video games: you can die and respawn to a boss in order to "learn" its gimmicks, but you generally can't do that in an RPG, which means you have to make the combats long enough to make the gimmick learnable within and inside the same encounter that the boss is first encountered and first fought (unless you also pull some narrative tricks about "demonstrating" the boss and hope your players get clued-in).
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Sep 25, 2016 22:21
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Is Devoted Orator worth taking even if you're not Int focused, but are building for thunder skills and have the close attacks to utilize Thundering Prayer? Built the cleric|invoker as a half-elf and picked lightning/thunder powers mostly.
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Sep 25, 2016 23:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:Basing your game's combat on solving the entirely self-contained encounter (with also perhaps a sop to efficiency across multiple encounters) would work as a design concept, but that's starting to drift away from what even D&D 4e does well, and part of it only works in the context of video games: you can die and respawn to a boss in order to "learn" its gimmicks, but you generally can't do that in an RPG, which means you have to make the combats long enough to make the gimmick learnable within and inside the same encounter that the boss is first encountered and first fought (unless you also pull some narrative tricks about "demonstrating" the boss and hope your players get clued-in).
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Sep 26, 2016 00:31
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dwarf74 posted:Daily balance is an issue in all D&D's, yes. Personally, though, I'd rather tweak what a rest means - maybe change it to a "refresh" or whatever - than do away with them entirely.
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Sep 26, 2016 13:29
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I've always been really fond of the way surges work on the Rogue|Vampire when you forget the "stealing surges from other party members stuff". You've got two base surges. Martial Vampire gives you one for hitting with a martial encounter power and another for getting bloodied, and blood drinker gives you a third. If you end a fight with more than 2 surges, you drop down to 2 surges and heal to full. I really like this kind of thing because I feel like it really adds a tactical element to surge management and rewards good play. If you can manage to gain 3 surges per fight and only burn 2 of them, you can run surge-neutral for a long period of time. At 25% health with 3 surges left? Maybe you should risk not taking the heal. Maybe you choose more defensive powers. A well-played Vampire|Rogue can still be going strong when the rest of the party is tapped out, and I really like how that feels. The only problem with it is that it really doesn't matter how long the V|R can go when the rest of the party can't keep up.
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Sep 26, 2016 21:17
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Gort posted:My problem with "Don't have too many trash fights" has always been that you have to have a certain amount of fights in order for the attrition built into the system of healing surges and dailies to work. If the adventure is "Go to the dragon's lair, defeat the dragon, rest on your laurels" then you get a weirdly unbalanceable fight where the usual "Don't just blow all your dailies right away, you might need them later" doesn't apply. IIRC he also later added either an item or a ritual - I forget which - so a campsite could count as an inn as well.
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Sep 27, 2016 03:40
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I was talking about this with one of my players - could you just move to a pure milestone based recovery system? I'm just not totally sure what assumptions 4E is making about number of extended rests per encounter. Another option is as the game basically wants 6-8 encounters per level, you could give people 1 'long rest' token per level they can cash in at any thematic time.
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Sep 27, 2016 04:16
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The general idea I've seen and would subscribe to is automatically handing out a long rest at the end of the fourth/fifth/sixth encounter (by tier).
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Sep 27, 2016 04:19
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Goons I am working on an Artificer for a possible game. What are some of the powers/feats that are good for that class that I may overlook? The only 'restriction' I have is this character wouldn't do summons, but otherwise everything is basically fair game. Right now I'm doing a Firesoul Gensai Battlesmith, and it seems like the best way to play it is to take feats that boost Magic Weapon and use that or Greater Magic Weapons every turn? basically Magic Weapons seems crazy good.
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Sep 27, 2016 15:31
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I'm still working on that "party vs. evil mirror images" fight I mentioned a while ago. My idea back then was that the combat arena is bisected by the mirror, and any PCs position in one half would always correspond to their counterpart's on the other side. You move, they move. You get pushed, they get pushed. You teleport, they teleport. You can't cross into the mirror as long as your counterpart exists, as they'll be getting in the way; you can teleport in though, and your counterpart will teleport out. I couldn't quite get this together with conditions that hinder movement, though. Easiest way would be to say whenever one character is slowed or immobilized, their counterpart is too for the same length of time, but I'm not sure if that's an engaging tactical aspect or if it makes things boring. Keeping conditions confined to the creatures they're actually placed on opens up the possibility to, say, slow a frontline enemy, and as that enemy's counterpart PC, use your now superior movement to go into the mirror, but I can't think of how to handle positioning once the slow wears off. Thoughts?
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Sep 27, 2016 15:54
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Could they have an unlimited use teleport to get back into the proper position if available and not slowed/immobilized, so a slow/immobilize allows you to desync the copy and the original user, but once it wears off, the copy will rematerialize in the proper place if it still exists?
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Sep 28, 2016 17:06
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I guess that would work. Or I could do it so that if one creature is slowed/immobilized, its counterpart isn't, but when a creature moves its counterpart is automatically slid to the mirror position. So, the Mirror Fighter gets slowed, and the Fighter moves 6, then the Mirror Fighter is slid 6; then on the Mirror Fighter's turn he can only move 2, so the Fighter is slid 2. Actually that is the more obvious way altogether, now that I think about it. But I'm still not sure if it offers any exciting tactical opportunities or if it makes the fight too predictable or makes it too easy to exploit positioning. e: okay, how that's gonna go if the party is smart is the frontliners will move as far back as possible, which moves the enemy's frontliners back, and the ranged PCs will blast the enemy frontliners until they drop, leaving the party frontliners free to move in, and the enemy frontliners won't be able to do anything but move back into melee range every turn. Somehow I don't think it makes for an exciting battle. Particularly because the party has a controller who slows at will. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Sep 29, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 17:36
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Is there anywhere where Masterplan was mirrored? Is maptools the next best option for easy battle mats for PBP?
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Oct 2, 2016 23:15
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For PBP maps I'd use Roll20, myself. That way you don't have to keep a maptools server running and your players don't have to download anything.
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Oct 2, 2016 23:29
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senrath posted:For PBP maps I'd use Roll20, myself. That way you don't have to keep a maptools server running and your players don't have to download anything. I was thinking that myself, and maybe I'm missing it, but is there a good way to automatically number the grid for roll20?
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Oct 2, 2016 23:40
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Mince Pieface posted:I was thinking that myself, and maybe I'm missing it, but is there a good way to automatically number the grid for roll20? Nope. What I did was I put grid numbers on the GM only layer and then just erased the other two layers and reused the same roll20 map over and over when I was running 4e PBP.
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Oct 2, 2016 23:43
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Yeah, for some reason Roll20 only has automatic numbering available for hex maps.
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Oct 2, 2016 23:45
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Mince Pieface posted:Is there anywhere where Masterplan was mirrored?
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Oct 3, 2016 00:51
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I recently joined my first 4th ed game (my first D&D game, period, really), and it's pretty fun! I only have one problem - I picked what I thought would be a pretty simple class to play (barbarian) since I was joining an experienced group (currently level 6). Unfortunately, about a half dozen sessions later, I'm finding it a little too simple - mostly I seem to just have a bunch of different ways to hit things really hard - so I'm looking to roll up a new character, and I was hoping I could get some help figuring out which class to play. We currently play using just the PHB and PHB2 (we've got access to a DDI subscription, but the rest of the group decided to limit it to that for I think reasons of simplicity). Anything outside of that is case-by-case: I can probably swing an extra class, but (magic) items, feats and powers are most likely out. Our current party is: - Wizard - Rogue - Cleric - Warlock - Ranger (might be switched to a Paladin) - Barbarian (me) I know at least one of the players would react pretty badly if I wanted to double up on their class, so I don't want to do that. I'd like a character which gets an interesting variety of options in combat, but I'm ambivalent towards role. Ideally, I'd also like something with decent skills - I've been spending most of my time as a barbarian sitting on the sidelines outside of combat. I've checked out some of the other classes, and invoker and druid both look fun, but I don't know how effective they'll be without splatbooks (in particular, I really like the idea of playing a non-beastform druid, but it's hardly well supported with just the PHB2). So given all of that, is there a class that's tactically interesting and useful out of combat that fits into that group?
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Oct 10, 2016 18:16
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Ineffable posted:I recently joined my first 4th ed game (my first D&D game, period, really), and it's pretty fun! I only have one problem - I picked what I thought would be a pretty simple class to play (barbarian) since I was joining an experienced group (currently level 6). Unfortunately, about a half dozen sessions later, I'm finding it a little too simple - mostly I seem to just have a bunch of different ways to hit things really hard - so I'm looking to roll up a new character, and I was hoping I could get some help figuring out which class to play. Your party is really heavy on the Strikers, so its little wonder that a Barbarian isn't really adding much here. You don't appear to have any Defenders, unless the ranger switches, and only one Leader. Since you want to be proactive in combat and out of combat, a Leader is probably the role for you. They have a lot of options to strengthen and enable their allies, and they tend to have skills or rituals for out of combat. My personal favorite is the Bard, but the Warlord is also a very powerful option here.
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Oct 10, 2016 18:20
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Kaza42 posted:Your party is really heavy on the Strikers, so its little wonder that a Barbarian isn't really adding much here. You don't appear to have any Defenders, unless the ranger switches, and only one Leader. Since you want to be proactive in combat and out of combat, a Leader is probably the role for you. They have a lot of options to strengthen and enable their allies, and they tend to have skills or rituals for out of combat. My personal favorite is the Bard, but the Warlord is also a very powerful option here. I have to admit I've been shying away from Leaders a little (when I joined the group, I was basically told "we have a pacifist cleric and his healing is fantastic so don't bother"). Are there any leaders which fit particularly well with mostly ranged parties? Apart from my barbarian, it's only really the ranger who spends much time in melee (and to be honest, not that much, even then) and I'm under the impression that Warlords (in particular) thrive on their allies' melee basic attacks. Ineffable fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 18:56
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Ineffable posted:I have to admit I've been shying away from Leaders a little (when I joined the group, I was basically told "we have a pacifist cleric and his healing is fantastic so don't bother"). Are there any leaders which fit particularly well with mostly ranged parties? Apart from my barbarian, it's only really the ranger who spends much time in melee (and to be honest, not that much, even then) and I'm under the impression that Warlords (in particular) thrive on their allies' melee basic attacks. Warlords thrive on basic attacks, period, melee or ranged. Pacifist clerics heal and not much else; good Leaders end the encounter faster and thus mitigate much more damage that way. They accomplish this with good enabling powers; Warlord is pmuch the gold standard, Bard is also great.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:30
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Ineffable posted:I have to admit I've been shying away from Leaders a little (when I joined the group, I was basically told "we have a pacifist cleric and his healing is fantastic so don't bother"). Are there any leaders which fit particularly well with mostly ranged parties? Apart from my barbarian, it's only really the ranger who spends much time in melee (and to be honest, not that much, even then) and I'm under the impression that Warlords (in particular) thrive on their allies' melee basic attacks. Bards are fun as heck though. Can't really go wrong either way, and Bards also have the best spell to flavor in the game (Vicious Mockery).
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Oct 10, 2016 19:30
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Goons, I have a question: supposedly there is a lot that can be done to charop warlock's eldritch blast, but I'm... not seeing much of anything. What can be done to beef it up, beyond like eagle eye goggles and I guess arcane admixture stuff that can be done to any arcane at-will?
Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 19:59
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Dick Burglar posted:Goons, I have a question: supposedly there is a lot that can be done to charop warlock's eldritch blast, but I'm... not seeing much of anything. What can be done to beef it up, beyond like eagle eye goggles and I guess arcane admixture stuff that can be done to any arcane at-will? Yeah, it gets all the RBA enhancements, and all the arcane enhancements.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:02
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If all you're in it for is charopping an RBA then you want to look at a fire elemental sorcerer.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:05
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I mean, apparently it was good enough stuff that hexblades got an entirely different RBA, eldritch bolt, which is otherwise mechanically identical. If all eldritch blast benefits from is typical RBA and arcane at-will stuff, why would hexblades need a different RBA power?
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Oct 10, 2016 20:06
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IIRC, the biggest difference is that it is obnoxiously easy to charop Fire damage.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:09
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Two key things: having a strong healer in the party can make a lot of Leader builds MORE attractive rather than less. Healing is the Leader's thing, yes, but even more so is buffing or enabling party members, and the less of the healing load you have to shoulder, the more you can load up on those powers. The other is that honestly most Leaders don't really care about the range vs melee divide, at least in terms of picking a class. It matters a lot for power selection and build, but I can't think of a Leader that doesn't have a build that would synergize well with a ranged-heavy party. What I would look for is other aspects. Does the party spread out a lot in combat? Who most often needs to be healed? Do a lot of party members have low defenses and rely on not getting hit? Are there party members who have trouble hitting but are very effective when they do? Those questions are going to make a bigger difference in class choice than ranged vs melee. You also need to balance them against each other. You'd think that a party that spreads out a lot would always want a more mobile leader, but sometimes the opposite is true. In some groups, the rovers have the defenses, HP, and powers to survive a turn and then get back to the Leader, as long as the tank is holding down the middle of the field. In that case, a Leader that stays in the tank's pocket and either compliments the tank's strengths or hides the tank's weaknesses might be the best choice (a Warlord, Battle Cleric, or Ardent, for example). A party that gets a lot of benefit from positioning loves Bards and Warlords. Ardents are good for parties that need help hitting opponents, or rely on not getting hit to survive. Clerics do the most healing, so work great in a party with lots of low-defense high-HP characters. As for Warlords and MBAs, Lazylord style builds are really popular and they do need good party MBAs to enable. But there are plenty of other Warlord builds that don't care about melee vs ranged, focus on working with a single melee partner, or focus on buffing ranged party members.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:16
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