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Elmo Oxygen posted:Since it comes up so often and isn't likely to change any time soon - Recommended pre-made adventures It's important to note that The Slaying Stone and The Cairn of the Winter King can easily be short-circuited by players through no great cleverness on their parts. It is possible to "solve" each adventure abruptly with no great effort. Yes, the DM can fudge things to fill them out. I also liked Seekers of the Ashen Crown (which follows naturally from the adventure in the Eberron Campaign Guide) quite a bit, except one of the dungeons is (very evidently) long just for the sake of giving 10 encounters for a level up.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:28
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socialsecurity posted:Notecards, either write it down on a notecard and just hand it to them or use the character builder to print out sheets of items it's the easiest way. If you have DDI, you can also print cropped screenshots of Compendium entries, if you don't want to (or need to) print out new character sheets in whole or in part. I have opened all the coming adventures' items in new tabs (you can right-click compendium entries) and paste the cropped screen shots into one document, which I could then cut up and hand out. You could also add all the session's items to a dummy character, and print out & cut up the item pages so they have something to refer to until they add it to their own character sheets. I would hate writing the stuff out, but they really do need something to refer to during the session they get it.
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Jan 31, 2014 20:22
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fatherdog posted:The first time one of the characters in our group makes an attack against a given defense for a monster, the actual number for that defense goes up on our turn tracker. We're using a custom one, though; dunno if Masterplan has that functionality. ... this is a great idea. Our GM is using that Popcorn Initiative thing, so we could just as easily write it on the index cards for monster type.
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Jan 31, 2014 22:19
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InsomniacTurtle posted:With drawing dungeons, do I draw the entire thing out at once, or is it a room by room kind of things? If you have a large enough mat or a small enough dungeon, drawing the whole thing and then covering the parts they haven't been to yet saves a lot of time at the table.
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Feb 10, 2014 20:56
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Klungar posted:There is a reason why MM3 math replaced MM1 math. Creatures with lots of HP that do small amounts of damage do not make for interesting encounters, they make for boring slogs. Please do not use pre-MM3 monsters without converting their stats. I think this overstates the case. Many of them are fine right out of the box (solos and soldiers being the main problem children).
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Feb 11, 2014 18:25
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dwarf74 posted:So Holy poo poo, guys. I ran my players through the first part of the first Zeitgeist adventure last night. loving amazing. One of those sessions that makes me thrilled to be a DM. After all the nice things you've said about it, I went and looked at it and picked it up, since it was not that expensive. Could you say more about what you like so much? Because my ultra-cursory read of it is that it's really meant for players who will actually read the "players should read this" sections and enjoy getting newspaper clipping handouts and such. Those things are exciting to me, but it definitely requires a certain level of investment.
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Feb 13, 2014 21:15
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P.d0t posted:My groups give bonus noncombat feats (or limited to skill training) at either 5/9/15.. or 4/8/14.. I've used "odd feats at odd levels" for years now and really think it makes a difference. I also allow corner-case stuff that's technically combat-oriented, like mounted combat feats, because the knight can't usually take his pony into the dungeon.
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Feb 14, 2014 20:22
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Dr Cheeto posted:I haven't fleshed out the characters at all outside of giving them alignments and deities. I don't know if I'm making characters that are too complex, or if I should be using the Essentials versions of fighter/cleric/wizard/rouge instead. Should I retool the wizard and rogue to be more generalists rather than the specialists that they are (illusionist and super sneaky hand crossbow user, respectively)? Play once and talk to them after. They may want to switch characters or have them re-done as the other things you've mentioned, or not, but you won't know until they've taken them out for a spin.
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Mar 5, 2014 15:51
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P.d0t posted:Get a shittier d20. Or let the players use that one, too. Dangit, top of page. Feel free to retcon any fights that go disastrously wrong, either because you screwed up or the dice were horrible. In The Slaying Stone, you could always have them wake up inside the tower, having been rescued by the lady they were going to meet after the wolves. Once they're in the town, you could also have them wake up not dead, surrounded by the corpses of whatever was kicking their asses. Later, they may find out who saved them (maybe the dragon, maybe a friendly kobold, who knows). homullus fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 17:16
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Elmo Oxygen posted:Hybrids are usually traps for everything except the lazylord, which makes almost every hybrid combination better with minimal effort. Hybrids are indeed almost always traps -- I would hypothesize that 90% plus are weaker than either of their parent classes. They are not unplayably crippled, but they will be outshined by even normal-person-optimized pure classes, and will look pretty sad indeed compared to Cobrai Kai char-op.
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Mar 14, 2014 18:51
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rkajdi posted:Trying to start making a list of races between "normal" and "weird/sci-fi" for D&D 4. Some basic background: You probably thought of this, but you could also just use the more recent Gamma World mutations for your sci-fi world. It's roughly compatible with -- if a little deadly for -- 4e.
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Apr 8, 2014 22:03
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rkajdi posted:Don't have access to Gamma World, so I didn't even think of it. Also, that stuff seems pretty random-- do you think they'd fit as PC races in D&D mechanically? Right now, it's totally cool in that all the PCs are "Hollow World" races and have been playing on the inside, so I'm not stepping on anyone's toes saying all these random races they haven't encountered are actually not part of their local area. They do fit mechanically as combinations, but not individually as races. In Gamma World, your character is (usually) a combination of two of those mutations, inheriting at-will and encounter powers of each piece. There are no dailies, and the powers are a bit stronger to compensate. So you wouldn't choose "Swarm" as a race and then make NPCs from that, you'd choose "Swarm" and "Rat" to make an individual or a whole species of sentient rat swarms that walk around as a whole entity. The "Rat Swarm" individual/species then has mechanical characteristics that are compatible with 4e, and you would add whatever other flavor you desired. I am not secretly telling you that your idea is bad to make githzerai (for example) the spacemans, they are the spacemans of 4e anyway with all the Astral Sea stuff. Gamma World just has some of the conversion to sci-fi already done for you, with different damage keywords and a slightly different "feel" to the system. It could be interesting for the damage types alone, because suddenly people do damage types to which the other world has ZERO resistance.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:42
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My favorite 4e adventure is Seekers of the Ashen Crown. With the exception of its two actual dungeons overstaying their welcome a bit (each basically being the recommended 10 encounters for a level; skip a few boring ones and they're fine), it's a fun story with several points at which they can go do their own thing. You start at level 2, and it takes them halfway through level 5, if I recall. If you run the adventure at the back of the Eberron Campaign Guide as the intro, you can do 1-5.
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May 28, 2014 20:34
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crime fighting hog posted:I'm hoping to kick off a shiny new campaign in the next month or so, and am so excited! Our 3 year, level 1-30 Age of Worms 4e run was so much goddamn fun, I'm hyped to run another game, this time with blatant ripoffs! Popcorn Initiative, or WFRP3e/EotE initiative where there are just initiative "slots" (all the players roll and a player will go on each of the initiative counts they roll, but it might not be the roller who goes on that one each turn; do the same for the monsters). Dunno if you have much problem with people not thinking about their turns in advance, but knowing they might have another turn coming up sooner than they thought encourages planning ("I should go next, because..."),
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Jun 26, 2014 22:01
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AXE COP posted:The only trick I can think of for expanding reach permanently on any weapon is the Arena Fighter/Staff Expertise combo. But then you'd have to hybrid Fighter. On top of permanent ones, there are also powers in other classes that extend the reach of melee attacks. Fighters have Lunging Strike and Full Extension. The Misshapen theme has Altered Extremity. You get the idea.
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Jul 30, 2014 17:04
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We're doing Scales of War right now, and our DM is taking liberties with it (altering or outright cutting encounters he thinks are boring or stupid), and I haven't peeked at it, so I don't know whether this is in the original, but we just finished off fighting gnolls for a while, trying to summon/create an exarch of Yeenoghu. What I never noticed -- and I've been playing this game since AD&D -- is that "Yeenoghu" sounds like "You Know Who" when you say it out loud. I hope this story improves the encounters between your party and the devil-worshiping gnoll followers of You Know Who.
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Aug 6, 2014 15:47
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Majuju posted:Can anyone make a good case against just using inherent bonuses and turning the magic item allotment into a strict wondrous item allotment instead? I feel like this will help me on my continuing quest to curb 4E PC power levels. If any of your PCs are running Essentials classes, they will get bored with them faster if they never get items with fun encounter or daily powers. Aside from that, there is no case against inherent bonuses.
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Aug 6, 2014 18:10
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Majuju posted:Yeah I guess my counter against this is that wondrous items and rituals and problem-solving are more fun, but since 4E is a fundamentally combat-centric system it also feels like removing a key aspect of the game by not allowing weird item/feat synergies. I don't think you even need to let them have synergies, so much as things out of the ordinary -- Essentials classes don't have a lot of in-combat variety. Basically, inherent bonuses + wondrous items + a few daily combat tricks. And really, that's only if they're Essentials.
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Aug 6, 2014 18:20
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AXE COP posted:Also related question: Does anyone know how inherent bonuses interact with items that scale off their enhancement bonus or level? Some weapons have things like, say, the Quicksilver Blade's "gain an item bonus to initiative checks equal to the blade's enhancement bonus". Does that scale off the IB? I don't think it does by default. We ruled that weapons became the next higher level of themselves when the player reached that level, though, to get around both this and the crit dice.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:57
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Gort posted:Yeah it is. I don't need a game to fit all my preferences to enjoy running it. I feel D&D 4e did this tension one better by allowing you to feel it multiple times within a single combat. Even though I have lots of experience DMing and lots of experience seeing PCs recover, it still feels pretty tense to me when I'm down to single-digit HP, even when a leader still has a * Word left. When the leader doesn't, then I'm looking at Second Wind and omg my turn can't come fast enough, please let that monster not recharge its blast . . .
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Aug 14, 2014 16:30
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:Reavers of Harkenwold (the DM kit adventure). Eyes of the Lich Queen was 3.5; Seekers of the Ashen Crown was the 4e one (which I do like and recommend, just keep an eye on the length of the dungeons that aren't Ashurta's Tomb).
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Sep 15, 2014 16:45
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Madmarker posted:Yeah, Shroud Assassin's are underpowered as poo poo unless you either: Honestly, I think that even if the authors of feats and powers and classes didn't always fully appreciate/comprehend this kind of legalistic interpretation when they wrote the powers, it's one of 4e's strengths that it CAN be parsed so precisely, and I would also support that interpretation of shrouds.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:07
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Cerepol posted:Anyone run Zeitgeist in this thread? Was thinking about running it for my group and was wondering if there is anything I should know off the bat about it. Been reading through the players guide and about to start the Campaign guide. I do also realize it's not done and they are taking their sweet time to finish it I subscribed to the whole thing, and get an update every couple months, which . . . seems about right, for the level of quality they're producing.
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Sep 18, 2014 18:00
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Cerepol posted:Cool I'll probably try the intro see if my group like it then grab a sub. Forums superstar dwarf74 is the only one I know of actually playing through it right now.
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Sep 18, 2014 18:06
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Gort posted:The pre-written campaigns are the usual "Here are ten fights in a row, GO!" poo poo, so write your own. Have your players roll up characters ahead of the game and make cards for their basic powers. Possibly better yet, make up cards for all the backgrounds, so you can just hand people their new set of cards when their characters inevitably die (Gamma World is definitely deadlier than 4e). Houserule that you need to reroll a background that somebody else currently has (because you only made one set of cards).
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Sep 25, 2014 18:03
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PeterWeller posted:I don't think that's because character creation isn't quick enough, but instead because people quickly get attached to their zany character concepts. RIP The Black Pauldron, haunted sentient suit of armor.  Also holy cow, those cards. I Googled them because I thought I'd missed an official product -- no, they're just really, really well-done.
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Sep 25, 2014 18:38
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Mendrian posted:I ran a 3 player castlevania game for years that was quite successful. It featured a Paladin (Defender/Leader), an Avenger (pure Striker) and a Druid (mostly built for Striker, light Control). What I did to ensure I didn't get too many TPKs was: Also, consider making Second Wind a minor for non-dwarves, and a free action for dwarves.
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Oct 7, 2014 14:52
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My Lovely Horse posted:The second best combat tracker I've used was 4E Turn Tracker. Maybe give that a shot, but yeah it does depend on what your issues were. (Also, when I say second best, I only ever used two, so, y'know, grain of salt.) You would need two computers to run MapTool at the table, unless you were either 1) keeping track of all sorts of things the players weren't supposed to know separately on paper, or 2) didn't care if players could see the GM version of the map.
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Oct 14, 2014 20:23
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RGCrab posted:This is incorrect. You can simply run two instances of map tools on a single laptop since it is just a Java program; you have one act as the DM/server and the other connect to your own IP as the player. With two monitors this is easy and it is how I do all my map testing when building encounters in Maptool and testing macros for the MacroPolicebox framework. I forgot that some people have non-sucky laptops. This answer is the correct answer.
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Oct 14, 2014 22:22
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Gort posted:Doesn't charging every round mean you spread your damage out a lot, which isn't really desirable? You eat OAs to just charge a different guy, have things to mitigate OAs, and/or have controlling PCs move you and your targets around.
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Nov 6, 2014 19:42
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axelsoar posted:
1. As has been suggested already, end fights early in surrender or fleeing. 2. Consider upping monster damage and lowering monster HP. 3. Avoid using monsters the party can't hit. 4. Use Stun and Dominate sparingly, unless you want the fight to move more quickly toward a TPK 5. Pre-roll a bunch of d20s so the first N rolls are already done. In more houseruley-territory, there is: 6. Consider using an Escalation Die a la 13th Age. 7. Consider using static damage for more things. 8. Consider making Second Wind a minor for non-dwarves and free for dwarves.
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Nov 19, 2014 21:05
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axelsoar posted:Here is another whack at this guy, removing the healing from his moves and replacing crowd favorite entirely. His radiant powers will be scarier if you go with the radiant vulnerability aura, though.
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Nov 20, 2014 19:41
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Gort posted:I'd sooner just give him nastier damage if that's the intention. Harder to forget that way. If the goal is only doing more damage, totally. If the goal is doing more damage with a tactical feature the players can try to mitigate with forced movement and/or their own mobility powers, the aura's better.
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Nov 20, 2014 19:49
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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. I like Strike!'s two-hit monsters, which are a bit different from P.Dot's. If the first hit is enough to kill them, it obviously does, but if not, the second one does (regardless of the totals). In terms of damage output, I'd still put them in static-damage Minionland.
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Dec 23, 2014 22:02
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah, I use 2-hit minions, too, and this is a step up... You could also halve their damage when bloodied (or go the other way, doubling it when bloodied).
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Dec 23, 2014 22:47
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Mordiceius posted:How common is it to have a character with a high as gently caress passive perception? In my last game, we had a couple characters that were about level 5 with a passive perception of 20 or so. All the characters will have some skills that are super-high. It's normal. As long as you aren't hiding any content that's fun or needed to advance the plot behind a Perception check, you may not have them roll for much other than detecting really stealthy enemies.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:46
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A houserule to consider when your campaign is more established is Drama Cards, as long as you're comfortable ceding some narrative control to your players.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:24
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I wish they'd just forked development instead of doing Essentials -- do a D&D 4.5 that built on what they'd learned called "D&D Encounters" (since encounters are the building block of 4e anyway) and release what became 5e as "D&D Realms" or "D&D Classic" or something. Release adventure paths with stats for both lines, so nobody buys "the wrong product." If you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.
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Jan 23, 2015 21:04
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Poison Mushroom posted:I really, really shouldn't do this... Once people are desperate, you could mandate that participation in the group requires rotating DMing.
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Jan 24, 2015 19:57
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My Lovely Horse posted:The group I DM for doesn't want to switch from 4E at all. Partly it's because it's the only system we can sort-of agree on, partly it's because a good portion of them lead busy lives and are absolutely dead set against learning a new system. "If you want me to keep running this for you, I get to run short-run games every now and again, and I get to pick the system. Learn and play in good faith, and I will happily keep coming back to the game you most want me to run." (or something similar) People who never GM don't realize how much work it is. Even if you enjoy what comes with the role, it's more effort than a player puts in, and I think that merits special consideration from the group.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:19
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