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In honor of my group finally getting back into 4th edition I created a terrible meme in paint3d to remind them of my encounter design philosophy.
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Aug 18, 2021 22:12
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:11 |
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Orange Devil posted:Gotta go 3d and have monsters lob poo poo at the party from behind intervening high ground. I think generally minions should be identifiable. When I ran Encounters all the tokens it used had minion specific tokens so players could tell at a glance that something was a minion or not.
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Aug 23, 2021 11:00
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Furthest I ever got was running a 2 year campaign that went from 1-7, then 11-15 after a time jump. I can't imagine bringing a campaign into epic tier. If I ever did I would handle the epic destiny send-offs in an epilogue because what else are you going to do, whittle the party down one player at a time until the last person ascends? Or at least pick one person whose ascension coincides with the ending and everyone else gets a LotR style post-action writeup. In other news our Session 1 happened last week after like 2 years of pathfinder and 5e and starfinder and it's so good to be running 4e again. It's like coming home.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:20
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My rule is if it's pure flavor and isn't obnoxious, it's fine. If it's to try to flex some janky poo poo then no.
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Oct 2, 2021 20:57
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It's a cool concept but the thing to remember is that most fights don't last more than 3 rounds. Complicated fights with non-obvious mechanics are cool but they need to be HEAVILY telegraphed through description or players are just going to brute force everything. Depending on how many minions and how initiative shakes out, giving vulnerable 4 can just DROP a player before they get to interact with the mechanic at all. The boss draining the brutes for hp is actually a net benefit for the players. If it kills a brute, even if it regains the same amount of HP, you've just made the fight easier by taking out an opponent. Here's my hot take: Vine brutes are fine, but don't eat them as a minor action (see below). Remove the shared vitality from the minions, the boss is going to die in 3 turns anyway. 68 hp is like 5-6 good hits. Instead of the aura, the minions deal +4 damage to the person they are copying. Make their image-daddy get a -4 to hit them, or need to make a saving throw to hurt them, or if their image-daddy kills them they get an attack vs. will that dazes or weakens them. Something to force players to help each other and make it harder to kill their doppleganger. You could even give a +4 to hit someone ELSE's doppleganger because it's so focused on its image-daddy. No I will not apologize for using the term "image-daddy". Summon dopplegangers becomes a free action. Change the wording so that if there is one or fewer minion remaining it summons 3. Give it an initiative +10 action like a solo creature. I'm assuming this is a big boss fight but you can't use a solo because you have a smaller party. On Visage's init+10 give it an attack vs. reflex that immobilizes, so it loses this action if it's dazed and shrugs the daze (or deletes some other status like a damaging zone or conjuration). The Pre-initiative action is ESSENTIAL for allowing elites and solos to act against control heavy parties. If its DEAD and the vine brutes are alive, it uses consume ally and comes back to life. This would be an awesome cinematic moment where the players think they have the upper hand, but the boss comes back to life (and still gets its turn!). Oh! And Elites should always have some kind of immediate. Maybe when a player kills a doppleganger it does a shriek that does like, close burst 3 vs. will and just gives -2 attacks or grants CA for a turn. Granted, I DM for a group of VERY optimized players, so I tend to make things really brutal. This might also go differently if it's the 4th or 5th fight in a day, but action points and dailies tend to cut the legs out from under a really cool encounter.
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Oct 14, 2021 14:02
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Can you use a power that has no eligible targets to deliberately trigger effects that happen because hit failed to hit anything? You didn't not hit a target because you didn't have any targets to hit or not hit. But yes you can't use a power without choosing a valid target so you wouldn't be able to Sword burst nothing in order to be able to use Echoes. It's an interesting power but its kinda not great since it relies on you using at wills so you might not even be doing that until round 3 or 4 and then you still might not miss. Still probably better than a third standard action power but I've never built a swordmage.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:59
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm building an incredibly goofy Swordmage / Artificer hybrid as a fifth character in a game where all four primary roles are filled. I'm also helping out the actual GM with rules adjudication and encounter design since they've never played a TTRPG before, putting me in a hazy middle-ground between player and GMPC. As such, sub-optimal is perfectly fine, but "doesn't work" is not. That's a cool concept and one of very few hybrid combinations that feels like it will do well. Very splashy as a fifth party member where you're sort of filling all four roles a little bit.
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Dec 21, 2021 02:47
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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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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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Iunnrais posted:I am looking to build a difficult set-piece encounter that involves a combat skill challenge (obsidian system) on top of six defending creatures on the Astral Plane, each an exemplar of the six 4e "power sources" (martial, divine, shadow, psionic, primal, arcane). This is all at level 21. Okay, brainstorming because i love making 4e monsters: Martial-bot should have a bunch of arms with all different weapons. Each turn have it bring a pair of weapons to be the focus and cycle to a new stance. Large defender aura, a charging stance (maybe hit those along the path of the charge), and a reach/multiattack stance. Give it an opportunity action when it gets hit by a weapon attack it can make an attack roll and use that in place of its AC. You either need to hit it with spells or get extra attacks to negate the defense of whirling steel. Divine-bot protects its allies. Give it a mark and the paladin punish, and a reaction that either shields damage or takes it for its allies. Its action can just be blessing martial-bot's weapons to give it extra dice of radiant damage. Shadow-bot can start the encounter off placing a half-dozen pools of shadow on the ground. It can teleport between these pools freely and make attacks out of them! Maybe slide one around as a minor action and put a debuff on a PC if the pool slides over them? Psionic-bot is a little trickier since the psionic classes are so varied. Best to focus on the psion and use telekenetic attacks and dazes. Do that Living Missile lvl 1 daily for psion where you can pick up a PC and just THROW it into another one. Psionics is really hard to be iconic because it's all invisible mind bullshit or just monks. Primal-bot should absolutely drop difficult/dangerous terrain, totems, spirit animals, etc. Just summon something every turn to make the battlefield more and more dangerous. Maybe when it's bloodied it shapeshifts into a big ol' beast and just turns into a brute. Arcane-bot is easy, just elements elements elements. Fire attack dealing ongoing, Ice attack that knocks prone and slows. Close blast of air that pushes and gives it a big shift. Wall/Line attacks are also cool and very wizardy! The biggest thing for a set-piece encounter is to control the pace of combat! Maybe give each bot something that happens as another one falls. The shadow-bot could get extra pools of shadow where his allies fall and make an immediate attack out of it, when shadow-bot falls, arcane-bot turns them into pillars of flame that just deal damage for the rest of the fight. Martial-bot just pulls out more and more weapons every turn and just gets tons of extra attacks (even if they just deal 1W just start going down the list and rolling a TON of dice). Keep the pressure on so the moment of relief only comes at the end instead of that inevitable tides-have-turned moment halfway through.
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Sep 7, 2022 12:55
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Oh yeah, I barely use lurkers but definitely have the shadow guy either disappear or go insubstantial every other turn. The great thing about lurkers is that it gives player defensive powers a huge boost in value. Blocking that mega damage lurker attack with shield or timely dodge is a great moment for players. There's a lot of room to play around with depending on your group composition. It's tough to balance longer fights if your group is light on heals or defenses so adjust damage accordingly. Definitely tone down damage and add more status effects if you have to keep the party alive longer.
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Sep 7, 2022 16:30
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Very cool monster concepts, here's some feedback! I would suggest the Martial Modron's parry and defensive abilities only apply to attacks with the weapon keyword, rather than basing them on the targeted defense. You don't really have to specify 1/turn or 1/round, as those concepts already have keywords as Immediate actions and Opportunity actions. Since the Martial Modron is a soldier, I would say his parry should be an immediate (1/round), and the dive to protect allies should be the punish on his mark (an opportunity action). No reason to limit the marks to one target, and make his standard action a close burst 1. Primal - Wall of thorns is a little confusing. Most effects last one turn so a 2 turn timer gets really hard to track. You can simplify it by making it a Sustain Standard, and when you sustain you repeat the attack on the wall squares AND all adjacent. Thornwhip pushing seems weird? Like there's already a Druid At-Will called Thorn Whip and it pulls, rather than push. Maybe just rename it? Psionic: Seems a little barebones? The Psionic blast is really vague. Is the minor action to gain power points just intended to be daze-bait for the players? Really should codify what status effects it can apply. My suggestion would be to let him build up power points multiple times, and give the psionic blast different levels of power based on total PP. Something like: 2: Adds 2d6 damage 4: Changes it to Area Burst 1 within 10 6: Adds Dazed (Save ends) to the hit line 8: Adds Knocked Prone to the hit line, increase burst to 2 10: Adds another 2d6 damage and changes the Daze to a Stun Let him charge multiple times per turn so if he doesn't have to move he can charge twice, or even 3 times and then action point. Also let Flurry of blows spend 1 PP to attack again on a second target, and give him an immediate reaction to push by spending 1 PP. (or let him spend 2 PP to shake off a status effect so it incentivizes aiming statuses at him to weaken his super saiyan power up animation) Shadow - Just let him go invisible, use the stealth roll and let players know on their turn where he is if their passive perception beats the stealth. If they ask then let them spend a minor to roll perception. Otherwise no notes, basic bitch lurker is fine when everyone else is super complex Divine - Ongoing is typically 5 per tier, make it 15! As for the healing... some notes afterwards. Arcane - Magic missile is incredibly weak, 15 damage at lvl 21 is nothing for a standard action. Just let him do it every turn to keep pressure up. Up the onoing to 15, Up the daze to a stun on hit, swap weaken for restrained. On the miss apply ongoing 5, daze, or slow to all targets, not just center. So healing. You said the real goal of the fight is the skill challenge and the modrons will cease fighting when it's completed, so here's what I'd suggest. When a modron is bloodied, it powers down. On the divine modron's turn any powered down modron, itself included, gains temporary hp equal to its bloodied value and vulnerable 15 all (no action required). At the start of the divine modron's next turn, these temporary hit points are converted into actual HP and the modrons re-activate. This means that wearing them down can ease the pressure and give the PCs room to do the skill challenge, and it offers an interesting choice: they can keep piling damage on a couple enemies to more efficiently disable them, or use the turn of breathing room to try to knock another enemy down or work on the skill challenge. You could also set the healing mechanic to only activate once 3 modrons are downed if it seems like too much to track having it go off multiple times.
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Sep 11, 2022 03:47
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Jack B Nimble posted:So, I like how well 4e handles it's set piece battles, but I also thinking tossing the odd monster lurking in the shadows is an important tool for tension and pacing, and 4e isn't really built for these kinds of low intensity combats - they'd be trivialized by encounter powers. So, I talked to my players and got some initial buy in on the idea of restricting the party to at will powers if it's just one or two minor monsters. I think the point of 4e is to totally avoid those low-intensity fights. If it's not a real threat to the party why play out the combat? It's the same reason you don't roll dice for actions that don't have a risk of failure. The biggest problem is that forcing at-wills only immediately identifies to the players that this is a low-stakes battle that only exists to tap their surges, so immediately there is a mindset of "just get past it and move on it's not a real combat". No one is going to enjoy having their main tactics stripped away and forced to trade blows until the monster who was fated to lose finally gives up. You can't openly announce that the next combat doesn't matter and then expect players to enjoy themselves. You can still have these low-intensity encounters, but play them out as a skill or RP challenge. Get some skill rolls, ask for creative solutions, roll to see if they work, tax a surge if the dice say it wasn't a great idea. Ask how they wipe out the low risk monsters and move on to the real combats. A monster lurking in the shadows could be a check against passive perception, then roll an opening attack and see if it hits. Make the tension narrative since an actual combat wouldn't be scary. Make them sweat a bit while they roll perception and ask if arcana or nature or religion would help. Get them to crack a sunrod and toss it out or have someone stealthy try to counter-sneak. Then they find the monster and just fuckin' murder it, no combat necessary. The party has taken a couple hits, felt some tension, and defeated a monster in a non-trivial way. Now find other ways to make the rest of the non-combat combats interesting (swamp creature grabs someone and it's athletics to pull them away, backalley thugs are taking pot-shots from the rooftops and it's a streetwise check to find a way up to catch them (or acrobatics to go straight up the walls), a ghost in a tomb keeps popping up and hitting people, but a history check reveals its name so it can be banished. Goblin bandits pop out and make a volley of attacks but immediately regret picking a fight and beg for their lives. lightrook posted:I personally would not run a 2-turn trash fight, although I can't speak for your group's preferences. But if you string three or so of them together in a row, I think you'd have a pretty interesting and dynamic skirmish that also has a very different feel from a conventional knockdown brawl. A series of smaller fights with an external pressure that prevents short resting is a good way to get this feeling without restricting power usage and openly telling the players they're fighting on easy mode. If you remove the option to short rest (temporarily), you can really gently caress with combat dynamics. I did this a couple times in one of my campaigns and the look the players share when they all agree to move to the second fight without resting is so good, especially if they were too free with encounter powers in round 1 and go into the second fight a little more tapped.
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Feb 6, 2023 06:46
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For balancing monsters just cheat. If they're dying too soon just give them more hp. If the pcs aren't threatened just make something extra happen when the monster is bloodied. It's easy to fix that stuff on the fly or in prep. The hard thing to balance is player contribution. I ran a game for 6 players, 5 of which were well optimized and performed incredibly in their roles (ever see an entire party on the brink heal for surge + 25 each? Pacifist clerics, man). The last guy was just building out of the books without optimizing and felt like he was half a player. Dragon sorc would hit 2-3 targets for 20 damage, scout ranger would do 40 to one target, hexblade warlock would do 18 to one target and then hurt adjacent allies. It was bad. No one wants to feel outperformed and there isn't a great solution besides handing that PC better items and boons, which comes with a new set of problems.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:20
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Oh the entire group tried to help the player optimize, but he specifically shot down all the suggestions for optimal choices. He made the decisions he wanted to and performed worse, rather than doing what everyone else did (numerically optimize, and then flavor the abilities how they wanted.) I'm a very easy going fun-first DM. I told the group that any sort of reskinning on powers was absolutely okay (the hexblade player 100% refused and only described his powers based on the book descriptions). I allowed players to retrain any time, including complete class changes and statistical race changes (you can look like a dragonborn but take the stats of basically any race). The hexblade player started as a swordmage and changed to a warden. I offered to work with him to re-skin the warden powers to work with his previous arcane abilities and instead the player decided no, he just learned nature magic instead (also refused to change racial stats). After our time skip into paragon (we jumped from level 8 to 11 with a 10 year time passage), he respecced again to the elemental hexblade. There's not a lot you can do when a player stubbornly refuses optimization assistance and then complains that he's not optimal. My original point was that as a GM you have such full control over the monsters and behind the screen activity that you can put a pretty heavy hand on bending the rules/math to make combats more exciting. The flip side is that you can lead a player to optimal choices but you can't actually make the player take those choices. It really sucks to have someone reject advice, complain they're ineffective, and then reject further advice to fix that problem. You can't really give a player more power without it being obvious to that player and the group and that can lead to a whole different set of problems.
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Feb 16, 2023 15:57
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Lemon-Lime posted:The system really just does not support this, it simply doesn't actually step up to explicitly say this anywhere. Absolutely! The problem arose from one guy who just chose powers and items and made a middle of the road, functional character. The other 5 players were incredibly optimized and constantly making power plays (enlarged blood pulse on 5 targets, heal the entire party with healer's mercy, drop a brute in a round with an action point turn, etc) and when that happens the regular guy feels left out. He didn't make a BAD character, the hexblade would be totally fine in a group of normally built characters. It's why in later campaigns I was a lot tighter with magic items and instituted a "no dragon magazine" rule. 12Apr1961 posted:But I'm also not sure that cheating on dice is really the way to solve this. For me as a 4th edition GM, it's really enjoyable to treat combat as a tactical mini-game where I use the encounter budget to create fights, then don't try to cheat or hide dice rolls during the session. So I'm not one to cheat on dice rolls. My "cheating" is just, letting the monster survive an extra turn, or modifying the static damage mod depending on the situation, or coming up with a new ability after the monster is bloodied to keep up the pressure. On the fly adjustments to the flow of combat, but I'm never ever going to miss or hit when the dice didn't say that (I don't like using an actual screen so they figure out the accuracy math pretty quickly). This is mostly when a combat is just not exciting and not challenging the players. I don't think I've ever had to pull punches in 4e except MAYBE at very low levels when player options are more limited. I cheat to make it harder not easier. As a note about how OP this 6 person party was I put them up against 3 dragons (at level solos) and they won.
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Feb 16, 2023 17:25
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As a side note, don't deal damage outside of combat, use lost healing by surges. That way you don't force a short rest or the use of a healing word type power but it has roughly the same effect. I also absolutely agree with 1-2 big super challenging setpiece fights is better than 3 at level slogs and a middling boss fight. Every fight needs tactical consideration whether that is met by terrain effects, dangerous telegraphed enemy powers, alternate objectives, etc. Never tax a standard action to do something, always make it a minor or free action to interact with whatever weird bullshit you've added. Always encourage weird clever thinking (if you do make something cost a standard action the outcome has to be at least as good as an encounter power around the party level, and give it an effect or miss line)
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Feb 21, 2023 18:02
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Accurate wand is a superior implement and is the equivalent of using a +3 proficiency weapon (monsters average NADs are 2 bow AC). They require superior implement training rather than expertise (like using an execution axe over a greataxe). Is inherent bonuses referring to giving players the feat tax of expertise for free or the mechanism of naturally accounting for the + component of magic item progression over leveling so people don't throw 5 or 6 swords away over their career. Accurate wand needs a feat either way!
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Feb 22, 2023 20:25
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The only issue with that is that without that +1 the expertise feats are mostly not worth a feat slot. Really they should just be default bonuses for weapon groups but the ship had already sailed by the time the weapon group expertise feats came out.
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Feb 23, 2023 15:04
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:11 |
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Jack B Nimble posted:Does anyone have any links to interesting potions or scrolls I could start putting in my 4e game? The examples in the PHB are weak, I want something more interesting. I don't care if it's "too good", I'll just make fights harder. I want some interesting consumables to spice up my treasure parcels. Absolutely just give out consumables that replicate powers, but don't tax their encounter powers. It's a consumable for a reason, and especially if it's still a standard action to use, you're not really unbalancing an encounter by someone getting to use an encounter power instead of an at-will. An extra target or extra die of damage doesn't break a fight. Alternately, look at a bunch of powers and create consumables that do the effects of those powers without the damage and make it a minor action. A scroll of wind blast that's a minor action blast 3 push 2, a scroll of fire field that creates a zone that deals 5 damage to anyone who starts/enters. Walls are cool effects you don't see often. make an item that creates a positive energy wall that you spend a healing surge and anyone who passes through the wall recovers HP equal to your surge value (and make it damage undead! players will feel super smart if they use it for a double dip!) I try to avoid the kind of consumable that requires forethought. A sharpening stone or flaming oil sounds cool but at least for me, I hate using start-of-fight-buffs because what if you need them for the next fight? Also make sure that any consumables that replicate attacks have SOME kind of effect or miss line. It sucks to whiff an encounter power, it REALLY sucks to burn an item and have it do nothing.
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Apr 30, 2023 14:13
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