Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Looks like we're the grognards, now.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Looks like we're the grognards, now.

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UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

glompix posted:

I started playing 4th edition a few months ago. It's crazy how few online tools there are for this game. What I have found for character sheets hasn't really been ideal. So, I thought I'd make my own. I'm calling Dragonputer for now. I'm looking for ideas, feedback, or even contributors if someone is up for it. I'm also a total D&D newbie.

It's designed for phone and tablets and saves everything directly on your browser. There's a cloud sync feature, but you'll have to send me your Facebook profile to get access. That feature is handy for character entry, since you can type/paste everything on your PC, then sync and have it available on your phone.

I'm actively working on it on weekends, so shoot me an email if you want to help test or even contribute code. 4e is on it's way out, so I'm hoping to take a second pass at it to generalize and make it work for other games eventually.

This looks pretty cool, but have you tried iplay4E? It seems pretty similar, although doesn't save on the browser so that's definitely a neat addition.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2014 03:39

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:42

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

My Lovely Horse posted:

Really I think I like healing surges best because they're always an available resource, but you have to pace yourself. It just might get tough replicating the effect that rituals have when you get higher in levels, when you have so much money the early ones are essentially free. But then again that was an aspect I never really liked when we did use components. "That oracle was bloody useless, let's summon another three."

Easy enough to imitate: rituals cost 2 healing surges to cast. Rituals 5 levels below you cost 1 the first time each day they're each cast, and 2 after that. Rituals 10 levels below are free the first time you cast each one each day, otherwise 1 surge.

You might want to allow characters to donate surges towards spell casting even if they're not the caster though. Also this doesn't replace the cost for item creation rituals, of course.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2014 13:28

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

quote:

Combined Speed: During a double move, first add the speeds of the two move actions together. The creature moves using the combined speed.
Because of this greater speed, the creature can sometimes move into a square that it would otherwise be unable to enter.
Example: A creature whose speed is 5 can enter only 2 squares of difficult terrain (see below) when it takes a single move action to walk. If it takes a double move by walking twice in a row, it can move a total of 10 squares, so it can enter 5 squares of difficult terrain instead of only 4.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2014 23:26

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Pesticide20 posted:

Yeah, I'm not really sure either. I've tried 7-zip and the default file explorer. I'm thinking I'm just having trouble downloading it, as Afghanistan isn't exactly known for a blazing fast internet connection. What's the file size supposed to be? Because I've "downloaded" it as anywhere from 2 MB to 2.9 MB

Around 5.5mb for each version I've downloaded.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 01:08

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

EvilElmo posted:

Is Amazon the best place to buy the required books?

I'm in Australia, so anywhere else will need international shipping.

Depending on where you are there might be a gaming store nearby, but either way Booko.com.au will give you the best prices from online book stores including shipping.

# ¿ May 4, 2014 01:04

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Torquemadras posted:

Okay fellas, here's a nasty little rules question for which I couldn't find ANY definite answer. It's about weapons as implements. In my 4ed game, the party's had two Defenders and two Leaders; it worked out, but one Defender (a Warden) didn't have as much fun as he thought he would, so he decided to go with a Striker instead, and one of the Leaders (a Cleric) followed suit. Now we're looking at a new Sorcerer and a new Warlock. The remaining Defender is a Swordmage. Naturally, they want to use daggers & swords as implements, but I discovered the rules are quite wonky on that subject...

- For starters: what properties of a magic weapon, which makes no mention of being used as an implement whatsoever, apply when used as an implement? The text only mentions that you use the enhancement bonus, but nothing regarding powers, properties and critical. I'm inclined to allow anything except powers, since it's all magic and could thus have a reasonable effect on implement powers channeled through it, whereas the powers are only meant for use in weapon powers. Thoughts?
- In the same vein: do weapon traits play any role? This is only important for the Swordmage, since he can use a large range of swords as implements. Some of those swords have traits like Brute oder High Crit or whatnot, and I'm not sure if those have any effect whatsoever when used as implement. So far, I said no because you don't get the proficiency bonus for implement use either: it's an inherent weapon trait which has no meaning for implements.
- And finally: my players were a little disappointed (the Sorcerer, at least) when they found out that "regular" implements seem vastly superior to any dagger or sword. Now, the Swordsage doesn't mind - he's got a couple of powers with the Weapon keyword -, but the Sorcerer is a little heartbroken he can't effectively play his kidney-stabbing backalley mugger sorcerer. I offered him to turn an existing implement into a dagger version; it wouldn't be that great as a proper weapon, but the same as an implement. Are there any better solutions? Or do you think some existing Magic weapons would be advisable with the ruling I've mentioned above (only enhancement, critical and properties apply for implement use)?

A link to an official statement on that would be nice, but I didn't find anything.

http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateCompiled.pdf should explain how weapons-as-implements work on page 90.

Using a Weapon as an Implement: If you�re able to use a weapon as an implement, the weapon works like a normal implement for you, but you use neither the weapon�s proficiency bonus nor its nonmagical weapon properties with your implement powers.
When you use a magic version of the weapon as an implement, you can use the magic weapon�s enhancement bonus, critical hit effects, properties, and powers. However, some magic weapons have properties and powers that are worded in such a way that they work only with weapon attacks. Also, a weapon�s range and damage die are usually irrelevant to implement powers, since such powers have their own ranges and damage expressions.

UrbanLabyrinth fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Aug 27, 2014

# ¿ Aug 27, 2014 10:03

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Quote =/= edit

# ¿ Aug 27, 2014 10:09

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Reavers of Harkenwold (the DM kit adventure).

The Eberron adventure Eyes of the Lich Queen.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 16:10

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

RPZip posted:

If your character kills himself first rather than trying to PvP in a game that's not at all designed for it, the Avenger can't do poo poo to you.

This. 4E doesn't support PVP well at all. If you're going to take a heel-turn. don't make it a combat thing.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 03:48

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Which (if any) of the 4E Encounters seasons were worth running?

# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 06:14

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

OneThousandMonkeys posted:

Everything before Murder in Baldur's Gate is an approximately ten-session-long railroad adventure where the GM's creative input is limited to "read this text aloud, provide this fight." That's the first fourteen seasons, which are designed to be babby's first coke hit for free. I doubt any of these will be satisfying to an experienced group, and on top of everything else some of the fights have balance problems.

Sorry, should have been clearer - needed something convenient to run for a one-shot RPG group with minimal 4E experience at a meetup, and with potential to play on if desired. Encounters seemed to fit the basics of that, although it certainly is a bit rigid.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2014 02:18

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

iplay4e was always my preference.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 22:19

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

wallawallawingwang posted:

I'm not really sure getting rid of armor needs to be a thing for a starwars 4e game. Most of the characters either already wear armor, or would be represented by a class that uses cloth or leather. So just call leather armor reinforced clothing. Hand crossbows are blaster pistols, longbows are blaster rifles. Han and Lando are both ranged build Scoundrel Rogues. Leah is maybe a Bard with a nobility based theme? Boba Fett is a ranger. The jedi are swordmages. It's a pretty good fit right out of the box, right down to getting a defense bonus when holding a sword, and being able to call it back into their hand when disarmed. Call their teleportation powers force powered back flips. Vader is a warforged revenant Swordmage with one of those warforged only attached armors.

I think Battlemind and Avenger (and maybe Monk) probably cover Jedi too.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 03:17

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

The Dungeon Delve book might scratch the same itch, although it was released in 2009, so is pre-MM3.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 00:14

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

fez_machine posted:

For those interested Chroma Squad is out and has a 4e style combat system. Probably the most 4e in feel computer game yet released.

I dunno, I reckon XCOM managed to be a pretty good 4E video game.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 11:21

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Has anyone had any experience running Masterplan from a Windows tablet?

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 00:18

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Running a one-shot game for 3 first timers and 2 people with a little experience in about a week's time. Any thoughts on a good adventure?

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 01:23

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

P.d0t posted:

The OP sez:

Sorry, should have been clearer: single session one-shot, so all of these are way too long for a quick taste of D&D for the newcomers.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 01:43

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Gort posted:

My only issue with Dungeon Delve was that all the monsters in it used MM1 maths, or it would've been perfect.

The modules in general focused too hard on the easy stuff in 4e - any idiot can chuck five monsters in a dining room and call it an encounter - and not enough on plot and things you'd actually want a professional adventure designer for. I also felt that they horribly misjudged the amount of time 4e combats take - in my own campaigns I like to have maybe three encounters between significant plot advancements. So you might have an encounter where you fight some bandits who are attacking a caravan, another when you assault their camp, and a third fighting the bandit king, then that plotline is resolved. The way D&D 4e modules are designed you'd get given the quest, have twenty-five similar bandit-fighting encounters, then fight the bandit king, which is way too high a combat:plot ratio for me.

But yeah, get Dungeon Delve and the Monster Vault, take the dungeon from Dungeon Delve and swap the monsters for similar ones from Monster Vault. Done. Hell, a campaign where all you do is go to each Dungeon Delve and level up when you beat it with a bit of plot in between would be pretty drat good.

PS: Make sure you print power cards for your players.

I find the Delve encounters a bit too combat-only, but I did just find the old PREV2 and PREV3 LFR modules, which have a half-decent balance of combat/plot-fillable-space and are easy enough to tweak up to MM3 (courtesy of Masterplan).

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 13:23

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Rules query time!

Background: I'm trying to see if I can make a two-weapon berserker work. They'll have to stay away from Whirling Rend (and it won't get bonus damage unless they activate their daily) until they're ready to drop their aura, but it does give them some multi-target ability. The question I have is whether using a Spiked Shield (or a Fighting Shield once thy get the gold, and can retrain the Spiked Shield feat) would get the benefit from the Temperate Heartland.

"While you are wielding a one-handed weapon and using a shield, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage rolls of any weapon attack you make with that weapon."

Obviously the primary weapon gets the +2 to damage rolls, but would the shield also get them? (rationale: it is a one-handed weapon, and they are using a shield)

# ¿ Sep 20, 2015 09:18

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Another rules question, since I haven't run 4e consistently for a while:
Maw of the Guardian has a property of

quote:

This weapon deals extra damage equal to your Constitution modifier while you�re in a guardian form.

Form of Mountain's Thunder Attack has an effect:

quote:

Each enemy marked by you takes lightning damage equal to your Strength modifier.

Since the Maw doesn't specify damage rolls, does the bonus damage apply to the effect (since the power has the Weapon keyword)?

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 11:13

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Noxin of Shame posted:

Again with an entry level question: Does this mean Encounter/Daily? Edition? Elemental Dong?

Epic Destiny

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 23:26

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

chaos rhames posted:

I had butter grognards for desert last night. Ironically they were too sweet.

That's a lie, I saw you eating dumplings. We did order the groggiest ones we could for you though.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 07:44

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

chaos rhames posted:

Who knows whats in a melbourne dumpling really.

I think we established that it's latte art and laneway graffiti.

On-topic, what do people think is the best level window for 4E? 1st is a bit boring (not enough options/things to do), and epic always seems too far in the other direction to me (although if you've played the first 20 levels it's less of an issue, since everyone knows how their characters work already).

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 07:58

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Really Pants posted:

Essentials-only means no Warlords though

Eh, this is pretty much the Essentials Warlord: http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/CC_Warlord.pdf

It's just the normal warlord formatted in the essentials style

# ¿ Dec 8, 2016 02:38

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Serperoth posted:

My group looks to be set to go by mid-February (exams should go jump in a fire, 0/10, would not recommend), and I was thinking of fixing them up with some Power Cards. My store only has 5-6 sets, and I know for sure that it doesn't include the Shaman (which one has already made), so I figured I'd make them in Magic Set Editor.

Does anyone happen to have any good MSE templates for 4e Powers? I've seen something on Google, but I wanted to check here before trying to find the exact result I'd stumbled upon ~2 months ago.

Worst case I can just make them based on the old Magic frame, but where's the fun in that?

I used the Thindariel ones for clear and readable cards like this, and made more graphical ones like this using the MTG "Modern" style.

I also made simplified character sheets on a per-character basis in OpenOffice Draw like this. Sometimes I expanded them with a box like in the bottom-right of this, to give new players a list of all of their action options.

UrbanLabyrinth fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Jan 31, 2017

# ¿ Jan 31, 2017 10:07

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Serperoth posted:

The character sheets look pretty good, nice way to have everything relevant in one bit, I'll see if my crew would like something like that.

And yeah something like the Thindariel ones is what I'm looking for, just vertical. I guess i can throw a buck or two over to Tintagel for this, or copy/adapt your Magic card formatting.

Any reason you went with Modern and not Classic?

There was a vertical and a horizontal option, but I found the vertical made the text wrap into too tight a column if I used the number display boxes on the side.

I think modern was just the default option for the normal magic cards, so I just ended up there when I tried using that format.

If your group like the character sheets, I can send you some of my odt files and you can edit from there.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2017 13:39

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

PMush Perfect posted:

Holy crap, those are some nice sheets. How'd you do them? Do you have templates you'd be willing to throw up?

I don't have templates, I generally just edited from the last one I did but there were some significant changes I made from campaign to campaign. I've put all the .odg (OpenOffice Draw) files I could find here if you want to fiddle around and make your own.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2017 09:51

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

13th Age has a good guideline for using powers outside of combat, that are fairly adaptable to 4E:

quote:

Rituals
Rituals are spells cast outside of combat for various free-form magical effects. Clerics and wizards learn ritual magic by default; other spellcasters can learn it by taking the Ritual Casting feat.

Casting a Ritual
To cast a spell as a ritual:

Choose the spell that will be used and expended by the ritual.
Tell the GM what you are trying to accomplish and gather necessary ingredients for the ritual.
Spend 1d4 minutes/quarter-hours/hours (as determined by the GM) preparing and casting the ritual. You can�t cast other spells during this period. A PC taking damage won�t necessarily end the ritual, but it will be ruined if a character falls unconscious or launches an attack of their own.
Make a skill check using one of your magical backgrounds and the ability score the GM deems appropriate. Use the standard DC targets (or a special DC set by the GM), depending on your tier and the results you�re hoping for. The higher the level of the spell consumed by the ritual, the greater the effect.
No matter the outcome, the spell is expended until your next full heal-up.

Determining Results
Choose outcomes that are outgrowths of the spell�s normal effects. The effects don�t have to play within the usual constraints of the magic system, and they don�t have to be taken as a precedent for future rituals.

Failure should fail forward.

The High Arcana talent of the wizard allows you to cast a ritual in a matter of rounds instead of minutes, but it still needs the required components.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2017 02:57

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Need names for new 4E powers? A neural network has you covered.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2017 06:47

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Could an infernal hexblade not do a fiery fighter pretty well (if boringly)? Retheme it to be alchemical, give him the temp hp as a result of getting high on high own supply of jet fuel, etc etc.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2017 08:47

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

And/or multiclass vampire feats

UrbanLabyrinth fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jan 15, 2018

# ¿ Jan 15, 2018 08:18

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Subjunctive posted:

I like the 13th Age system too, but I’m not sure you can credibly claim that it doesn’t have a lot of feats, when every class feature or spell has three.

Which means there's only a dozen or two feats available to any given character, rather than the hundreds plus in 3.5 or 4e.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 23:50

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Subjunctive posted:

Realistically, how many feats does a given character qualify for in 3.5 or 4? Won’t they be missing the prerequisites for most?

Anyone wanna boot up the builder and count how many, say, a 1st level human wizard can choose from?

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 02:59

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Ash Rose posted:

477 for a pretty basic human wizard, fairly inflated due to there being a feat for proficiency with all the martial weapons you are not trained with, but still, a whole loving lot.

Holy poo poo, that is so many more than I even expected.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 03:18

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

dont even fink about it posted:

This is bullshit.

1) One of the fighter's jobs/basic build options is to not take a lot of hits

2) There have been several suggestions on how to handle this, all of which are good and not difficult

3) I can't imagine how loving lame it would be to tell a guy to rebuild because you're too lovely of a DM to handle "guy with high AC"

The problem is that a fighter's job is to be a less unattractive target than their allies. They want to be hard to hurt, but still seem better than taking a free attack (and an attack penalty). If they can't be hurt at all but hit back with the force of a feather, there's not much disincentive to attacking the allies (who are actually doing damage) instead.

Edit: Oops, missed this page.

# ¿ May 26, 2018 03:28

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

Lemon-Lime posted:

Unfortunately, there are no good WotC adventures for 4E that I'm aware of. As far as non-WotC adventures go, War of the Burning Sky is generally considered to be very good, though I've never played it; it's an adventure path, so designed to take you through several adventures from levels 1 to 30.

The Slaying Stone and Reavers of Harkenwold were both positively regarded, IIRC.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2020 23:30

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

I've actually just discovered that Masterplan has a whole map and battle grid system built in. If only it could also be programmed with pc powers! I suppose I could build them as neutral monsters?

# ¿ May 21, 2020 14:15

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

I'm thinking of running the D&D Encounters season 3 (Keep on the Borderlands: Season of Serpents) as an intro to D&D/4e for my new housemate's siblings and my partner. Anyone remember it? Anything to adjust/avoid/remake?

# ¿ Nov 15, 2020 23:34

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:42

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

I think it's actually about the windows account name, but might be both that and the computer name.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2021 00:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Looks like we're the grognards, now.

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