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The Belgian posted:How do I 'give' players items? For example: they can get a pretty neat daggger. But they can't just write down the entere description on their character sheet, that seems like it would fill the sheet up pretty quick. Just writing dwn the name means they would have to look up the properties all the time. Should I write the description on a piece of paper and hand that to them or something?
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Jan 31, 2014 19:49
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I think the easier fix would either be to have narrative "days" where the DM controls the pacing or extend long rests to something like "a long weekend of downtime at a safe place".
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Apr 11, 2014 22:00
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Littlefinger posted:If they have some memorable fights, interesting regions to visit (underwater, Feywild, whatever) and a few minutes of exposition worth of good backstory I'm good, railroading be damned.
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Apr 29, 2014 20:48
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cbservo posted:Any help, or nudges in the right direction, would be greatly appreciated. Insider makes building the encounters super easy. Just reskin like a madman. First though, ask your DM how he's been tuning the encounters so far. Does he need to hit the high end of a Hard encounter with level +2-3 monsters just to make you guys break a sweat? Or are Normal encounters still a good challenge/warmup? For the first encounter, look through the Monster Vault, MV: Nentir Veil, and MM3 monsters for a few elites with "witch-y" powers in the 9-13 range. It looks like there are actually quite a few good ones in Nentir Veil. For some variety though, don't be afraid to pick out a melee monster for one of them as well. Maybe one of the witches really likes her obsidian sacrificial knives. If three elite monsters isn't looking hard enough based on what your regular DM says (it should come out to be roughly a Normal encouter for 6 players), don't be afraid to throw in a pet Manticore or something. Or even a 4th elite. A Charnel Otyugh would make sense in a swamp. For the boss encounter, for a really memorable fight, maybe have the witch transform halfway through into something really nasty. Maybe she starts off as a reskinned Beholder, hovering a few feet above the swamp and shooting beams everywhere. Then when she gets bloodied, she could transform into a Flamekiss Hydra or the dragon Vestapalk (don't forget to use the Bloodied Breath attack as part of the transformation sequence). Feel free to add a pet for her too if you think she might need it. Lastly, pick out a few minions to sprinkle in if things are looking too easy. Maybe one of the three has some dryad blood and some tree minions start popping in. Or the boss witch could call up the spirits of the dead witches (and anything else that had been killed in the area) to fight for her.
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May 5, 2014 17:01
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Or maybe Death has a task for them in the world of the living and is willing to cut a deal. 
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May 5, 2014 18:01
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ArkInBlack posted:In addition to OTM's suggestion, toss in a companion or two, I think DM2 details how to make them. Especially if the party has no leader with the fourth leaving, leaders are important to having healing worth a poo poo in combat.
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May 5, 2014 18:39
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sighnoceros posted:Regarding multiclassing, how do the hybrid class rules in 4e shake out? I have a bad taste in my mouth from "non-multiclass multiclassing" after 3e's Gestalt characters so I think I just discounted them completely in this version. Are they any good? Worth considering?
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May 5, 2014 22:44
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Happy to help! Hope it all works out for you.cbservo posted:One question- when Elesdri gets bloodied and becomes her dragon form, :should she keep her bloodied HP total from her first form, or does she get HP equal to a bloodied Vestapack? or is that something I should decide depending on how the encounter is going? Even then, there's a decent chance the first fight is actually going to end up being the more difficult of the two. Though if they're having a tougher fight and you do end up bringing the dragon in damaged, I'd probably bring it in at its own bloodied value, yeah, since he has a lot more HP than she does. ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 02:01 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 01:59
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Cerepol posted:What do you guys use for maps in your games? Currently using master plan to run my game using its awesome second screen function. However it makes me somewhat inflexible when they do random things that include battle yet I don't have a place ready. Basically looking for something that allows me to sketch something out quickly like graph paper or the old white on blue maps rather than something overly complicated or packed like maptools. Cerepol posted:Also in terms of availability for items in cities. What should I do or be expecting. Can they purchase whatever they want?
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May 6, 2014 07:10
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cbservo posted:Any help is appreciated, thanks! To make it plausible, maybe she gets up in the middle of the night and wanders off (she can tell the person on watch it's to pee, but maybe she actually sensed the minions and thought it'd be a good chance to be captured).
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Jun 4, 2014 21:56
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Torquemadras posted:Some thoughts? Or, better yet: additional ideas on how to keep single wilderness encounters challenging despite constant possibilities for extended rest?
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Jun 27, 2014 15:51
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Torquemadras posted:- A floating kraken that camouflages among the tree tops and drags up unsuspecting prey; -Cave Fisher Angler, swap climb speed for fly speed -Adept of Orcus, maybe find something to replace the ranged attacks (or reskin them to zombie minion attacks) -Mind Flayer of some kind? They're pretty drat high level though, and have really nasty effects (stuns and dazes are mean) -Carrion Crawler Scuttler -Maybe an Adderbrood Dark Drake? Don't really know how to simulate the "must run" thing, but they don't take opportunity attacks from slowed people, so you could do that on your own without much issue. -Skinwing Behemoth -Stirge Suckerling Swarm, retype ongoing damage to fire (remember to fix Blood Frenzy too) -Cave Fisher Line Spiker? Angler would probably work here too -Cave Roper, set speed to 6
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Jul 7, 2014 16:51
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Gort posted:It's incredible the number of times I've reskinned a dragon to something else.  Gamma World owns.
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Jul 7, 2014 17:54
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crime fighting hog posted:Hey guys, could someone point me to something, official rules or not, for flying ship to ship combat? I can probably wing the rules myself but wanted to see if there was some precedence Otherwise, have you played or do you have access to the new Star Wars RPGs by Fantasy Flight? Ship combat in that is kind of neat, and you could probably steal a few ideas from that.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:15
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Friends don't let friends play Assassins. They make them play Avengers or Rogues instead.
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Sep 9, 2014 01:04
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homullus posted:Possibly better yet, make up cards for all the backgrounds, so you can just hand people their new set of cards when their characters inevitably die (Gamma World is definitely deadlier than 4e). Houserule that you need to reroll a background that somebody else currently has (because you only made one set of cards). 
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Sep 25, 2014 18:20
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homullus posted:Also holy cow, those cards. I Googled them because I thought I'd missed an official product -- no, they're just really, really well-done. I've got the origins in a pile to draw from and the powers in those little four-per-page card pages so they stay organized. It's pretty slick. I'd actually prefer if they were a little less visually busy, since I usually have players write their power math right on the card pages in dry erase markers, but there's usually space somewhere.
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Sep 25, 2014 18:53
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Nth-ing the "don't play a hybrid" advice. If your hybrid isn't built specifically to take advantage of class synergies, you're basically playing half a character. It doesn't work at all like 2e multiclassing because leveling doesn't work the same way. With 2e MCs, you level slower, but because of the geometric xp tables you'll only be a few levels behind. With 4e hybrids you'll always be the same level as the rest of the party, but you're two halves that don't really compliment each other. Building a character in 4e is generally about on par with building a spellcaster in 2e (for non-hybrids). If you put your high stats where your class recommends and pick a few powers that sound neat (and depending on your class, double check that they use your chosen main stat to hit), you'll generally be able to do your job. The main complicating factor is feats, but there's no escaping that. Just pay your taxes and after that you can generally pick whatever looks cool. And yeah, there's definitely a range of optimization. But that baseline competency is actually still pretty effective and fun.
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Nov 13, 2014 15:51
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Torquemadras posted:Got a couple questions, too: what are some sensible feats to suggest? I don't want to overwhelm my players with insane minmax, but they definitely should have something servicable (besides the TAXES). For instance, the Warlord is a big fan of yelling at allies / using diplomacy in the middle of battle, and he's set his eyes on a long reach weapon. And of course, the Sorcerer is determined to be pretty much a magic melee mountain of beef. Also, I heard axes suck, but the Barbarian wants one. Any suggestions (for me to suggest)? Axes are fine. They're just not high-op. Give him an executioner axe and let him go to town. Or if you wanted slightly higher op, go gouge, tell him it's a giant axe with a spear on the tip and point him towards stuff like Surprising Charge. Spearlord is a pretty common build, but you might need to tweak his stats for it to work. You need a decent WIS score to fully utilize it, 15 IIRC. And I think great spears are pretty common for the build. In any case, check the warlord handbook. It should outline how to make the build work. I've not looked at sorcerers much, so hopefully someone else can help you there.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:13
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Super Waffle posted:I once made a hybrid Warlock|Paladin for a PbP game that didn't get very far; theres actually a couple feats from a Dragon article to support that build. Stuff like "When an enemy is both Marked and Cursed..." etc.
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Nov 13, 2014 17:33
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Drewjitsu posted:(I used this exact character, plus the monk multiclass. He was Georges St. Pierre, fresh off his knee surgery, waking up in a fantasy land. It was pretty great, and the character itself is a tremendous single target lockdown defender. You are also very, very, accurate.)
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Nov 19, 2014 20:54
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First off, be prepared for this guy to get creamed. As soon as a party smells the barest whiff of "recurring" they're going to drop dailies as fast as they can to murder him. Just letting him run away at 0 is going to feel really cheap unless that's the general tone of the game already, but you can soften the blow a bit if you hand them a major victory at the same time. Instead of -hit, maybe have the aura give them a couple points of radiant vulnerability. It's not quite as drastic, but it also doesn't slow the game to a crawl. It also doesn't look like he's an elite or solo. Was that intentional? What's the rest of the encounter look like?
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Nov 20, 2014 19:19
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axelsoar posted:I am considering making him an elite and dropping the 4th guy. It's been a while since I've played 4e, but my gut says you should probably switch the zone to EoNT instead of EoE if it's a recharge power. Plus you'd get to eliminate a bunch of wording. And yeah, I'd still recommend some kind of radiant vulnerability here, whether on the zone or the aura. Yeah, it's more to keep track of, but it adds a little more strategy and interaction between his powers. Bonus points if you the other enemies have some radiant powers as well to play off of it (he is a Leader after all).
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Nov 20, 2014 19:49
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Gort posted:"OK, three skirmishers and two artillery, roughly the right level, FIGHT!" But yeah axel, that looks like a solid encounter. My only concern is that it's really only doing 3 hits per round unless the AoE recharges. Unless I'm mathing wrong from what you've said it looks like this isn't even a Hard encounter. If that's about what's been challenging for your party you're set. But since it looks like you're trying to make this more of a (mid?)boss battle, if they've been blasting through similar fights you might want to sprinkle in a few minions (summoned radiant wisps?) or some kind of environmental challenge (paladin's fans in the stands use mirrors to reflect radiant damage at random squares every round?). Or hell, you could probably add that other standard back in.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:25
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My Lovely Horse posted:... next question: it's dangerous to simply forage for food in the Feywild, doubly so for outsiders. Things might be unpalatable, poisonous, hallucinogenic or magic. Are there any existing items or consumables that could be beneficial or detrimental randomly in small ways? I was hoping there'd be a Rod of Wonder or something I could crib some entries from but that didn't make the cut between editions. I already found the Vagabond's Die but one player put that on her item wish list. Otherwise, I think the main issue with fey food is often something along the lines of being more susceptible to fey mind magic. In most of the (admittedly few) stories I've seen, eating the food makes you want to stay in the fey realm, or forget who you are/what your quest is.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Apropros of nothing, how flexible is 4E character design? Can you make a Striker Cleric or a Defender Wizard or a Controller Paladin with enough splat/feats? I'm just curious. Long answer: Role is mostly baked into both class features and powers, so it's kind of tough to deviate with a few exceptions. That being said, most classes/builds have a major role focus (the one the class is categorized as) and one or more minor ones. Over the life of the edition, quite a few classes got enough support in their minor roles that they'll perform okay at the them in certain builds. They still generally won't outperform a focused primary class, but they can be useful and fun as a backup for the party's primary in either role. An example of this would be a STR paladin with a 2-hander and all the multi-[w] powers, which is a fun defender/striker hybrid.
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Jan 2, 2015 15:52
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My Lovely Horse posted:Well, the reason he brought it up was Hallowed Circle (Paladin daily 5). The effect lets him put up a zone in a close burst 3 that gives allies +1 to all defenses, lasts until the end of the encounter. That's not something I'm particularly worried about on its own because +1 isn't a very significant bonus, but I can't rule out that there's a power somewhere where the effect would worry me. (In fairness, I can't even think what that could be, but in a system written by WotC, better safe than sorry.) As for a rules reference, I think there's some advice squirreled away in the DMG somewhere about letting players use their powers creatively (like lighting things on fire with Fire keyworded powers and the like). And most of those will have a "Target: One creature in range". So I think the spirit of the game rules is to allow this kind of thing.
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Jan 2, 2015 17:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:Thanks for the all the responses! I knew about the roles and the encouragement of refluffing, but I wasn't aware of how power sources tied into that and how power source+role is a better way of looking at it (or just taking the role flat and refluffing everything)
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Jan 2, 2015 17:33
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Personally, I'd probably just run the whole thing as a skill challenge, with the results impacting the ensuing boarding fight. So maybe they've got two passes around the table. Each round one player can make a hard roll to pilot the ship (aided by athletics checks from others manning the rigging). For each miss, there's a 3x3 zone of fire on their ship at the start of the fight as they take cannon fire. Existing fires can be put out with an athletics check. For each cannon they have, someone can make a moderate ranged attack roll. Each success reduces the number of minions in the fight by 2. A critical hit removes a standard instead. Once the fight starts each fire has a chance to spread along one edge, and if 50% of the deck is on fire their ship starts sinking or the rigging starts on fire or whatever. Stuff like that. If you don't want to force a fight you can also keep track of ship damage and let them try to use their piloting roll to avoid the boarding action instead of avoiding fire. In that case a successful piloting check gives them another round to do stuff.
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Jan 9, 2015 17:54
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Moriatti posted:Generally this stuff seems helpful, but why would anyone pick 4e if not to force fights often, since that's really the only strengths the game has?  Though depending on how often they get into ship battles, it might not always be worth it to play it all the way out. On the other hand, at that point it might not even be worth doing the SC.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:05
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If you're going full DTAS, then using DDI is pretty much out the window anyway. The main thing DDI does is save you and your players a crapload of busy work copying power descriptions. So if you and your players are okay with some bookkeeping it'll be fine. Personally I can't stand it, which is why I never went full DTAS. MM3 and the Monster Vaults are actually the ones you want to use, so I'm not quite sure what you're asking there. If you're planning on running 4e out of the books you should pick up the MV at least. What classes are you talking about? In general though, the main issue with e-classes is that they get kind of boring as you level up since you're mostly doing the same thing forever. If you're just planning on doing a heroic tier game most of them are just fine. Though if your aim in running 4e is to showcase/try out the depth of the tactical combat system, they're kind of working against you in that regard. Honestly, if you're just getting into 4e today and testing the waters, I'd still recommend a month or two of DDI plus a Rules Compendium all the way. 4e isn't really a game for every group, and if it turns out it's not for yours you've got a lot less invested. Plus you cut out a ton of busy work.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:07
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Also, I'd actually be a little cautious with house rule overload. Obviously you know your group best, but I've personally found that trying to pitch a new game with "And theses are all the house rules THE INTERNET told me I needed to make this game fun!" can bias people against a game before you even start. Definitely keep Inherent Bonuses (if you're using DDI it's just a checkbox, otherwise you can wait until level 2 to bring it up since that's when it kicks in), but these days with new groups I even save things like free expertise for a level 5ish story reward (which is when they technically need it to keep up with the monster math anyway).
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Jan 20, 2015 19:31
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thespaceinvader posted:even breaking your mundane weapon means that some to all of your character just... fails to work any more. Expertise, weapon focus, a whole bunch of path and class features and other feats... It's a bad idea. The experience completely soured the Hunter player on the entire system forever, because most of his character sheet just straight up wouldn't work without a ranged weapon. On the other hand my brawler fighter was just fine. 
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Jan 26, 2015 19:06
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Echophonic posted:I thought there was an unarmed ranged attack? So I suppose you're right that his character would have functioned RAW, but it's still a pretty brutal way to have to fight an encounter. Especially in the context of "natural 1 weapon breaks".
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Jan 26, 2015 20:53
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm also supposed to solicit suggestions or a wishlist from players to get an idea of what they want the level 4 magic item to be (or derive what it should be based on their characters and their interests/build), and then the idea is that the rest of the party will use the 720 gp to buy the other magic items that they want. But the real answer is that it depends a lot on the kind of campaign you're running. In their original context, inherent bonuses were intended as a fix for low magic settings, which is why they remove a bunch of magic items by default. If that's not what you're running, feel free to add those back in. Most of us just use IB to make sure none of the player's numbers fall through the cracks. Or to go off the parcel rails completely.
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Mar 2, 2015 16:37
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IIRC, the RC treasure rules are a return to randomly rolled treasure, in line with the general trend of Essentials trying to make 4e look more like earlier editions. So they basically took the tables above and added some variance. And I'm pretty sure the only places IBs show up are DMG2 and Dark Sun. It's probably too "gamey" to have been included in anything post-Essentials. But like Poison Mushroom said, once you turn on IB, the need to balance treasure pretty much goes out the window. If you and your players are happy with the number of toys they're getting then you're doing just fine. There are really only two issues you can run into once IBs are on: a) On the high end, players could potentially get access to things a half-tier early. Which isn't a huge deal, normally it's just an extra +1. b) On the low end, there are some builds that rely on having a few key magic items. An extreme example would be one of the charged based builds. If you think you've got some people that will hit the char-op boards for ideas, it might not be a bad plan to be up front with your players if you're doing a low-magic game (including the modified IB parcels).
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Mar 2, 2015 18:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:Thanks for the answers - a campaign I had in mind isn't specifically supposed to be low-magic, but I thought of using IB just to make sure the players are less susceptible to loot gaffes on my part. gradenko_2000 posted:Next question: the 4e games I've seen so far give players free feats, which I assume are supposed to be spent on the 'math fix' feats. Which are those, specifically? I've seen Melee Training, but I don't know the exact names of the others, especially since Essentials has its own versions of the math fix feats. If you want a specific feat I usually just tell players they can take as many instances of Versatile Expertise as they want. That covers all the bases. Plus, the +hit math doesn't actually start to fall behind until level 5, so if you don't want to overload your players with house rules off the bat, it's easy enough to grant as a story reward around then. Same thing with Improved Defenses.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:57
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The reason I've always thought 4e declined so hard is that the people that like(d) it are the people who value well-designed games. And while 4e is pretty drat good on that front, there are enough flaws that eventually they just start to wear on you once you've seen them. Plus it really is a very niche game, even among RPGs. If the entire group doesn't dig the tactical combat enough to really nerd out about it, you're playing the wrong game. Most modern D&D has been largely about tactical combat, but the other two editions obfuscate it better (I'd argue TSR-era D&D is probably more about thinking outside the box and avoiding combat, even if most of the rules in the books are combat-related).
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Mar 25, 2015 23:58
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Effectronica posted:I don't think your second premise is true. Three of the broad tendencies of gamers have a game almost completely suited for them, one other tendency is indifferent to actual play, so we have to ask ourselves if the remainder are so underserved that 4e fails them completely. In any case, maybe I'm just projecting based on anecdotal experience. The last two groups I've had, about half the group just tuned out during tactical combat. It just didn't hold any interest to them. Or they felt restricted by the rules on the power cards, even though I let them flip tables and squish goblins and such. In those groups, Dungeon World was a much better fit. On the other hand, the guys from my old college group (who were veterans of everything from oWoD to 3.x to MtG) took to 4e like fish to water.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:28
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P.d0t posted:IME, you're not playing your Role with a STR/WIS paladin.
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Apr 1, 2015 23:44
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