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I remember the soldier monster role being unpopular with goons many threads ago, was it just because they have high defenses / low damage and are therefore the opposite of fun monster design? Did the MM3 balance tweaks do much to address it?
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Jan 30, 2014 01:08
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Has anyone come across a more elegant 4e character sheet that minimises repeated info and emphasises the essential stuff? In the past I've ripped off the awesome single sheet layout that Ettin made but they're pretty time-consuming to prepare. The advantage is you can be smart about what does and doesn't need to be on a sheet, including rolling similar powers into a single entry that ends with "choose this effect or that one".
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Feb 1, 2014 11:09
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I love the idea of a dwarf rogue wielding tiny crafting hammers and striking enemies' pressure points with them.
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Feb 9, 2014 11:10
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I was never 100% happy with either the MM1 or MM3 stat blocks. My encounters got a lot better when I started writing out the stat blocks in my own shorthand because I could usually figure out what would be easy to forget and put it right at the top of the sheet, in all caps with stars around it.
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Feb 15, 2014 13:55
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If you need it Kassoon's encounter builder is a great sanity check to make sure the encounter is appropriate for the party's size / level.
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Feb 15, 2014 23:58
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A friend of mine is going for a weird gimmick build in order to do a fun story thing. In short he's trying to make a level 5 character that: - is a pacifist - no direct damage - does not have to touch anything He's made an eladrin cleric that mostly satisfies these goals, although some of his powers do deal small amounts of damage. Ideally he's looking for something that just heals / buffs the party. Has anyone been able to put together a build that does this? Maybe a cleric / warlord hybrid?
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Feb 19, 2014 08:28
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It's a complete gimmick build that I think he's only going to run for a few sessions. The story stuff is that no-one but the party can see, hear or interact with the character (and yes the DM's signed off on this). The idea of having nothing but buffs / healing is to have a character that isn't suspicious on paper, but over time could make the party think he's a shared delusion. The player's left the "truth" of the character up to the DM. I'll pass the stuff about hitting hard on to the DM though - we're an 8-player group so he's already going for glass cannon enemies as much as possible.
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Feb 23, 2014 19:41
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We always explained it as the hierarchy of actions is: Standard Move Minor and you can always trade down.
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Feb 23, 2014 23:10
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I'm not sure I agree. The Rules Compendium gives an example where a double moving character can end the first move in an ally's space because the two moves are effectively a single action. Based on that I'd allow a double shift to move into difficult terrain. e: yeah that Party Boat fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 23:23
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It sounds similar to the Blood Bowl assist rules, where you can only get an assist on a block from a player that's not in another player's threatened area.
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Mar 2, 2014 09:23
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I like to go Zelda with it and have themed dungeons which key into the more gimmicky magic items. One dungeon was a haunted lighthouse and featured enemies that got stronger in darkness. The cleric had recently received an item which generated light and boosted one of her at-wills, but the rogue was using shadowdance armour - so there were some interesting tactical considerations for the team to get their teeth into.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:36
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Whatever you go for I'd strongly recommend making a custom character sheet / cheat sheet. Use it to list examples of when best to use certain powers, and simplify the descriptions / effects as much as possible. It's what I do for all my characters (bcos I'm dumb).
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Apr 28, 2014 21:04
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The rules say that a flying enemy that's knocked prone "falls", but that doesn't mean they instantly hit the ground - it has a specific meaning:quote:Falling Prone: If a creature falls prone while it is flying, it falls. This means a flying creature falls when it becomes unconscious or suffers any other effect that knocks it prone. The creature isn’t actually prone until it lands and takes falling damage. quote:Falling while Flying: If a creature falls while it is flying, it descends the full distance of the fall but is likely to take less damage than a creature that can’t fly. Subtract the creature’s fly speed (in feet) from the distance of the fall, then figure out falling damage. If the difference is 0 or less, the creature lands without taking damage from the fall. For example, if a red dragon falls when it is 40 feet in the air, subtract its fly speed of 8 (8 squares = 40 feet) from its altitude. The difference is 0, so the dragon lands safely and is not prone.  e: misread this a little, except in high altitude they do fall the full distance immediately but it's not necessarily instant death for a flyer. I like the idea of a flying solo taking some damage and then crawling out of the chasm seething Party Boat fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 21:33
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Have a scroll through these and see what you think: http://dungeonsmaster.com/pre-generated-character-library/ If you've got new players, a quick cheat sheet that describes good situations to use their abilities in goes a long way.
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Sep 24, 2014 08:35
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Back when MS used the Surface name for their table-sized tablet, they actually did a D&D demo which detected the location of the player models on the map. It's conceptually pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n94E3IeBquY
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Oct 15, 2014 07:59
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I've been kicking around the idea of a simplified 4e character sheet that offloads complexity to power cards for a while now. It's by no means a finished product, but by amalgamating smart ideas from lots of homebrew character sheets I think I've managed to get everything relevant to my players onto a single side of A4. https://imgur.com/a/TZQSH The idea of this sheet is to avoid dense blocks of numbers, put key stats in big boxes for easy reference, and provide lots of scratch space for scribbling down reminders and doodling things. My group use power cards a lot and I wanted to avoid repeating any information that was on those (apart from the skill checks and basic info cards which they seem allergic to), instead giving them a space where they can note down what powers they should be using at what times. The inventory section is based on the anti-hammerspace item tracker because we hate encumbrance rules. It was originally going to go on the back of the sheet but at a certain point I pushed for a single sheet to keep everything visible at all times. This hasn't seen actual play yet so it might be a disaster, but I'd be keen to get any initial feedback on basic things I might have missed, sections that seem too big / small etc Edit: there's no specific place for gold as we're running a campaign where cash is largely irrelevant, but it can easily go under light items Party Boat fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 09:16
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Surge damage directly attacks a 4e player's most valuable resource. Do it.
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Feb 3, 2017 09:32
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Oh and if this is a campaign end boss you can probably afford to get weird with it. Maybe the boss has a "fountain of souls" or something that he drinks from to heal. The players can make use of it as well - but doing so will have a narrative consequence. Turn them undead / haunt them with voices of the damned etc
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Feb 3, 2017 09:47
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Blank Construct posted:Would there be merit in designing a clash of two armies like a dungeon? Like you have some objectives (destroy the catapults, protect the battering ram, and so on), probably on timers, you make choices on how to get to them and these choices lead to encounters A, B, C etc. which lead to the next stage of the battle, eventually culminating in a big fight with the enemy champion, or something similar. This would be my preferred option, run similar to a large scale skill challenge where the successes the players have rallying troops / sabotaging siege engines etc contribute to the overall flow of the battle. Ideally give them more things to do than there are people to address them so that they have to consider where to focus their attention. The only way I can see a duel even partially working is if you take initiative out of it and resolve the two sides' actions together (maybe the person going second is "defending" and their damage roll reduces that dealt by the other player?). Even then you've still got the difficulty that some classes / roles are simply not designed for fighting alone.
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Feb 28, 2017 09:02
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I've agreed to do something that's possibly very stupid. I'm DMing a 4e game for a bunch of good friends. However, there's been a lot of interest in the game and we now have nine (!!!) players. I'm not too worried about this generally as we're happy to play without everyone present and sessions where all nine can make it are going to be few and far between. However I'm not too sure how to handle the first session. The plot has already been laid out so I'm happy to throw them directly into the action, and I'm tempted to run a single huge combat that will take up the whole session and give everyone and opportunity to get back into the swing of things (they've all played before but it's been a couple of years for most of us). Any thoughts on how I should put something like this together? I've run 8 player sessions in the past so I'm comfortable with keeping the pace up and have a realistic view of what we can actually get done, it's mostly about producing something that will be an effective refresher for them all.
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Mar 8, 2017 00:14
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If you're talking about 4e specifically then the quick start rules and Keep on the Shadowfell are available for free online http://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/110212 Also thanks all for the big table suggestions. I'm running a really simple skill challenge / boss fight session tomorrow to get everyone back into D&D and if the sessions stay over subscribed I'll look into the split / competing parties ideas Party Boat fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Mar 12, 2017 |
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Mar 11, 2017 22:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:http://dmg42.blogspot.com.ar/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html I've been using Level 1 Damage Forever in my 9 player dungeon crawly campaign and even with all the healing / damage mitigation a party that size can put out they still end up on the floor regularly. Lots of wincing when I roll damage dice although I've not come close to actually killing anyone yet. Also I asked for advice on running a big table a while back and I think a lot of responses were (sensibly) "don't". I didn't go that way. In fairness so far we've only had one session with all nine players, but it went extremely well, with two combats and a bit of exploration over around 3 hours. I've been letting the players handle things like the initiative order and basic rules queries among themselves (I only step in when a ruling's needed), though it does help that we have another DM and players who know the rules forwards and backwards among the group. I'd say that the weakness of big parties is that everyone needs to be okay with their time in the spotlight being very short as it'll whip to someone else almost immediately. This means that things like creative descriptions of what characters are doing suffer a bit, especially in combat. I've also kept puzzle solving as limited as possible, although a combat puzzle where they had to assemble a bell, book and candle to complete a ritual and lay to rest an otherwise unstoppable undead warrior went down pretty well. Also to allow for open-ended exploration without my prep time ballooning, I've been putting a vote on our facebook group about what section of the dungeon they want to explore next. This means that for any individual session they're slightly rail-roaded, but they can change direction between sessions. So far the choices have been fairly limited but it's working okay for the moment. We'll see how it goes once they open up more areas.
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Apr 29, 2017 11:28
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Players in my campaign - don't read this! Are there any existing monsters that are set up to take different damage depending on where they're targeted? I'm setting up a boss encounter with a monstrous plant and wanted to have damage reduction applied to it apart from if it's hit in an exposed weak spot. It'll be immobile so the plant itself and the weak spot will be drawn directly on the board. I'm thinking of having wall effects that it can reposition to block line of sight to the weak spot as well as various powers that push the players around the battlefield. I'm aware that this is completely different to how monsters are normally modelled in D&D, but if it's been done before I'd like to get some insight into how best to do it.
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Jun 29, 2017 07:51
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That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks! The party have already encountered orcs that have been parasitised and used to spread the plant's reach, so having a variety that are covered in bark and provide cover would work well with that. Already planning on lots of ongoing effects and ways to isolate people, it'll definitely have something similar to the wall of thorns power. Party Boat fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 09:34
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Try launching it with -e in the command line?
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Jul 3, 2017 22:48
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It's worth bearing in mind how the roles employ 4e's basic tactical moves - pushes, pulls and slides, various interactions with difficult terrain and so on. If whatever system you're using has similar moves it's definitely worth thinking about what kind of creature would use which moves and in what circumstances. Brutes shove people around, lurkers shift through defenses to exploit weak points, etc Ultimately you want to ask how the encounter should make your players feel, and use the rules available to accomplish that. The other thing that makes 4e really fun tactically is setting out a good battle arena. Use multiple levels, use difficult terrain, have things the players can interact with to change the battle. Whatever little buffs or status modifiers you have available to you, give the party lots of situational opportunities to use them.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:41
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Plutonis posted:I have better things to do with my life than read comment sections *rolls insight check*
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Jul 24, 2021 19:19
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My Lovely Horse posted:If you don't have eligible targets for a power within reach, you can't use that power, no. Note that if your power targets enemies, any enemy you target must be "a meaningful threat" to be eligible, you can't just arbitrarily designate a harmless rat or a fly as "your target" either. IIRC this stipulation was put in place to counter things like the bag of rats / great cleave / whirlwind strike exploit from 3.5 I agree with SynthesisAlpha that if there's no targets to hit you can't be meaningfully said to have "not hit any" of them because there's no them to not hit. I wouldn't stop a player using a power if there was nothing to attack (especially a burst or blast one given they effect everything in a particular area) though. edit: here's the bit in Rules Compendium about legitimate targets, I forgot that it actually calls out the bag of rats lol 
Party Boat fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 08:46
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Klungar posted:It’s an interesting concept, you could do something like a Mega Man boss system where they unlock a hammer that’s related to the dungeon boss and it could be used to give them an elemental advantage in future dungeons. It's been a long time since I DMd but I tried to do this as often as I could get away with it - if a dungeon had a gimmick, it should contain an item or items that alter how the party interacts with that gimmick. Usually not to the extent that a Zelda dungeon would, but enough that the flooding / fire / etc goes from being a hindrance to a slight advantage.
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Sep 10, 2022 14:18
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