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rotinaj posted:But I'm gonna keep reading the 4th Ed rulebooks, see if I like 'em. Don't "read" 4th Ed, just loving play it, once. This is the best advice I can give anyone who is on the fence, especially if you're a 3.X holdout. 4e manuals are not bathroom reading material, and I can assure you that you will get almost no feel for anything the game does just by reading about it.
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Apr 20, 2014 05:30
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My Lovely Horse posted:I mean, that's my ideal way to handle magic items, but my players really wanted them to play a bigger role. Players are evil and must be punished. But seriously, they never know what they want because chances are the amount of time they spend thinking about the campaign is approximately 0. Which can be pretty frustrating as a DM.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:56
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Blackguards are boring as gently caress tactically but I find their push-button hoop-jumping just interesting enough for a do-damage class. I had pretty good success giving a total newbie a charge-barian after I explained the strategy. Granted, this was in heroic.
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Apr 29, 2014 00:38
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My Lovely Horse posted:Well I've been playing Disgaea a bunch lately. I think if the genesis of the idea can be attributed to any one thing, it's that. Maybe steal advances from 13th Age?
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Apr 29, 2014 18:05
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thespaceinvader posted:Definitely not mine. Yeah, when I was new to the game I tried to play a game once as the tank+healer (PHB Paladin) and.. yeah. OneThousandMonkeys posted:It's the controller you don't need (the number of monsters you're facing will be small, too). Comes down to DMing/encounter building; basically, IMHO don't throw ranged+immobilized at the party if they can't do ranged attacks, and don't use a lot of minions without a controller.
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May 2, 2014 20:21
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AXE COP posted:Really if wizards didn't have such absurd dailies I don't think there'd be any argument for having more than one in a party. Agree. I pretty consistently have been in parties without a controller, and specifically without a Wizard; the only guy I've seen play one is a grog whose last character was a Cleric, so I'm not entirely convinced he knows that classes beyond the "4 core" are actually good/do exist. e: thespaceinvader posted:Talk to the players about one or more of them changing class, and/or add a leader companion character. Or just tack the basic leader mechanic onto an existing character. Minor Action, Close Burst 5, surge+1d6/5lvls+mod, 2-3-4/encounter ...or something along those lines. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 21:40 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 21:37
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Rexides posted:That usually happens when people are just interested in the name of the class and don't care about the fact that, for example, an avenger is more or less a striker paladin, fluff-wise. Just talk to them and see if they can switch to a class with the same power source, but different role. We had a new-to-4e guy once who was like "I wanna play a scummy/sneaky Cleric" and we were like "Do you care about healing? If no, you're an Avenger."
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May 2, 2014 22:26
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:OR he can play a blackguard. OR he can play paladin, which feature support for scummy gods and their scummy followers, and as far as I can tell are better than blackguards. Secret Option C) Paladin with Gray Guard paragon path  ...actually there are better options but I'm having fun with it in our particular campaign.
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May 2, 2014 22:50
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Yeah I am playing a gray guard who puts everything into damage instead of healing. He does... A lot of damage, but blows dailies left and right. We're running a "skills are important" campaign, so my Gray Guard is a STR|WIS Deva build for charge-spamming, but we've mostly been fighting solo dragons for the past like... 4 sessions, so YMMV. DP has some nice combos in there with marking/channel divinity/ardent vow, but I feel like you have to trade some of that down for bursts IMHO if you're ever expecting to fight minions. I crit 4 times last fight and everyone was like 
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May 2, 2014 23:19
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I can post him later if you want. Yeah, for sure. I'm a lazy poo poo when it comes to charop, so I went with a trusty olde greataxe. I might have added things wrong, but when I crit on my Inevitable Strike, (at level 16) it did like 106 damage. (This is probably pitiful but for my table it was utter insanity) The wizard crit for 32 and we had a good laugh about it.
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May 2, 2014 23:46
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fatherdog posted:You aren't wrong, but Blackguards are actually pretty effective strikers even with neither thanks to Power of Strife. Divine Power owns so hard. My gray guard is rolling with Power of Skill (we're in an evil campaign so I went with Bane for my deity, because he owns) Is there a particular one of these feats that benefits especially well from using a reach weapon?
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May 3, 2014 04:26
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Arivia posted:Skills are important campaign? What does that mean? It means the DM said "skills are important" at the start of the campaign. Suffice it to say, if past experience is any indication, there will be 6 GREAT TRIALS (skill challenges) that each one of the party members has to solo through to get magic MacGuffins needed to win the campaign. So, I started off with a Blackguard but we also had a Bard-MC-Everything as The Charisma Guy Who Does Thievery, so I made a Deva for my alt, who handles INT/WIS skills. Other party members are Fighter (alt: Elementalist), Druid (alt: Artificer), Wizard|Warlock (alt: Barbarian)
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May 3, 2014 05:28
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Kurieg posted:But don't you have to be a human blackguard to get Ardent Strike? If you're playing a non-human blackguard, you're doing it wrong.
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May 3, 2014 06:54
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Probably the advice you'll get around here is to sign up for D&D Insider; the online character builder gives you access to everything in the 4e universe for a lot cheaper than buying book-by-book. Probably check out the WotC Char-Op forums to give you the basics of how not to make a crappy character and end up hating the game. After that, yeah I'd say hit up meetup or kijiji to find some people to play with. Depending on your FLGS, the salesman might be some grognard who tells your that 4e is bad and what you really want is Pathfinder.
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May 5, 2014 00:22
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My Lovely Horse posted:but he also maxes CON because CON = HP, even though it's insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I can't come down too hard on this because 1) it's his character Wrong again, Flanders.  I'm sure this makes me some sort of fascist, but when I DM'd 4e, I expressly told my players "Thou shalt not have less than an 18 in thy primary attack stat." If you want to make another rule be "no for real, if CON isn't your primary attack stat, you can't bump it higher than like 15 after racials" go ahead and do that, too. IME there's not reason it should really be higher than that anyway. Like, 4e is very paint-by-numbers. If dude wants an off-leader + off-defender class, find a class that does that and build it properly. gently caress roleplaying your ability scores and fluff/power source and all that, the mechanics just have to work. I'd make like, a Skald with a Paladin multiclass, so you can DC one dude per encounter, and keep him marked all encounter. Pick up some armor/heavy shield proficiency for extra paladin "style points." I basically did this with a Dragonborn, and ran it as a Paladin of Kord and he was paladin-as-gently caress, let me tell you.
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May 13, 2014 09:21
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dwarf74 posted:I've done it before and we're only 3rd level, so I mostly am looking for ways to up fight difficulty without adding a lot more baddies... The simple answer seem like it would be "more damage"
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May 13, 2014 19:37
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starkebn posted:DTAS Death to d20. The only thing that makes them good is Advantage, so what I'm saying is D&D Next is good for something
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May 20, 2014 22:43
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:We're starting to veer into halfway intelligent, easy to read up-or-down dice systems, instead of modifier madness. I reckon you could so similar things with ranges on a d20 though. Pretty sure Some Heartbreaker does it. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 07:41 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 07:36
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Looking at the Master of Stories [Multiclass Bard] feat from HotFW, I noticed it lets you use the healing from skald's aura once per encounter. Is this errata'd/nerfed anywhere? Because most leader MC only grant you their healing power 1/day..
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Jun 17, 2014 10:58
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dwarf74 posted:FYI you still need to watch out for masterwork armor starting at 9th level. Just add the bonus in. Using the magic armor tables in the essentials books is handy for just cribbing this math, btw.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:57
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thespaceinvader posted:DSCS again. They're basically magic 'items' that represent training or blessings from a god or whatever, rather than a physical thing. One of the benefits being (I'm told) they're never a thing you can loot off a corpse, so you get to earn them with roleplaying.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:21
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Over in the 4e Retrocloning thread, I posted some links and info for the games I worked on. How it deals with surges is basically making them an encounter resource rather than a daily one. Everyone gets 2 or 3 per encounter. You can use them at any time BUT "encounter reserves" also function as your action points. So, you can play aggressively and alpha strike, or you can be more conservative and save them for regaining HP. If that turns anyone's crank, let me know. I am always seeking playtests and other feedback.
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Aug 14, 2014 18:56
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gtrmp posted:The actual best power in 4e is any power with a name that you can bellow as you use it. (Which is yet another reason why Fighter and Warlord are the best classes in the game.) Our Fighter player would literally say, "I ring the dinner bell."
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Sep 8, 2014 09:11
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RPZip posted:In my continuing quest to find interesting options or ideas, does anyone have an opinion on what the best 4e Adventures were (paths or single-shots) that aren't Neverwinter or Madness of Gardmore Abbey? I saved this standard response from (I think) forums-poster Elmo Oxygen 4e Published Adventures.txt posted:Can you guys recommend some pre-printed adventures to run? I'd like something low level to keep it simple.
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Sep 15, 2014 17:56
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So how much should I shell out for the Dungeon Master's Kit ($ ) ?For reference, I'm looking at a "never used, only opened once" kind of secondhand deal that I have a lead on.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:44
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I've often thought a cool use of class skill lists would be to say "you can replace your Attribute mod with +3 for any untrained class skills" but there ain't enough hours in the day to test poo poo like that.
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Sep 25, 2014 05:08
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I seem to recall some goon (Fuego Fish?) coming up with a DTAS conversion thinger for 4e; does anyone have any experience actually playing out a campaign using it?
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Oct 25, 2014 07:19
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If you were to throw in a houserule that any Weapon power used with a light blade can use DEX in place of the default ability mod, would it break the game in some way?
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Oct 27, 2014 07:31
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What levels do the different Inherent Bonuses kick in? And can someone jog my memory as to the differences between the DMG2/Dark Sun/CB rules for them?
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Nov 10, 2014 09:39
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dwarf74 posted:So the Zeitgeist path has introduced a new kind of monster - the Goon. It rests on the spectrum between Minion and Standard. It's basically a normal monster, but with half the hit points (or not, adjust to taste). I've always been a fan of 2-hit monsters for that; have them die outright when hit by an Encounter or Daily power, and miss-damage takes off 1 hit. Oh, and extra damage dice like Sneak Attack and Quarry count as an extra hit, too. This doesn't work for all Strikers (notably Avengers, Slayers, Blackguards) so, maybe just say Strikers kill them outright on any hit, including at-wills..? But you're right, figuring out where they sit in terms of damage output is a challenge.
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Dec 23, 2014 21:56
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Tactically and narratively speaking, minions are total garbage, but if you want to make players care about fighting minions you need to have a way to put even more of them out there, not less. Thus you introduce things like the Mook, who when slain grants his killer an extra attack against another Mook. The Mook is worth half the XP of a minion and thus worth considering putting in your encounter. This is a big gripe I have with 4e; monsters aren't really there to make combat interesting (despite having their own entire book), you're actually supposed to just gently caress with the terrain/traps/hazards because they totally dedicated a comparable page-count to those concepts. :iamafag:
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Dec 29, 2014 06:44
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Speaking of Blackguards, I had an idea for a "remix" where
The consensus seemed to be "it's a good start."
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Jan 8, 2015 00:30
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Mordiceius posted:What 4e houserules do you use in your groups? Mostly pertaining to skills:
More  here
P.d0t fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 06:45
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Mordiceius posted:When using inherent bonuses, how do you handle magical items? Do you just not dole them out as often or do you rarely use them at all? I think the basic, general advice is to give the player stuff that is cool; with Inherent Bonuses, you don't have to change out Weapon/Armor/Neck, but you might want to make them auto-upgrade to higher level versions if/when you do give them a thing that does something cool. Basically, just pay more attention to Properties and Powers on items.
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Jan 10, 2015 06:57
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Mordiceius posted:How do you handle healing spells that use a surge? Just math it out as 25% + extra rolls? Mordiceius posted:Wouldn't inherent bonuses take care of this? P.d0t fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 07:27
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Mordiceius posted:I remember when 4e came out and everyone was pissed about it and would say stuff like "It's basically like they made a World of Warcraft version of D&D." (Meaning as an insult) yeah i remember doing a fight where some generic Wizard boss got blowed up at half HP and turned into a Flameskull. I got no complaints and it sort of owned, so do it.
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Jan 17, 2015 09:46
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I think it was forums-poster Fuego Fish who did some rules for that; maybe pm him?
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Jan 17, 2015 18:59
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thespaceinvader posted:But then, AC and Reflex have long been accused of occupying way too similar a set of design space, so just axing AC entirely and killing proficiency bonuses to compensate would probably do the trick. It seems to me like (conceptually) "Reflex" should be something closer to Touch AC and "AC" should be like Flat-footed AC; having DEX add to AC is "Makes Sense"™-design and effectively makes AC into "Reflex +prof"
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Jan 18, 2015 22:26
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LightWarden posted:Knight can be pretty good as well once other books are added in, since Overwhelming Impact at epic means that all your MBAs now daze, which is pretty amazing, and since the knight is MBA focused your standard action isn't quite as important as your opportunity actions if you don't use Martial Cross-Training to pick up a fighter encounter power, so you really have no problem grabbing the Battle Standard of the Hungry Blade and just going to town in your black hole box of pain (especially if you're a half-elf with Eldritch Strike)... This paragraph right here is good example of what burned me out on 4e; your character is either overly-complicated and fiddly, or it doesn't rate.
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Jan 24, 2015 03:10
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Mordiceius posted:I don't know, I was trying to think of a way to make natural 1s more fun. My players are newbies, so I figured I wouldn't add this mechanic until later, but I was trying to figure out a way to salvage a natural 1. Give 'em a free reroll for later or some poo poo.
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Jan 26, 2015 09:05
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