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I would just run Dungeon World instead, it's far less of a hassle. I mean, it's feasible. You don't need to halve or double anything unless they categorically refuse to have a Leader in the party, but your XP budget is going to be extremely limited and it's a headache to think up of cool/interesting encounters with that little latitude to play with.
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Jan 29, 2014 10:43
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RPZip posted:Asking for a friend: Are there any really good Eberron articles that were published in Dragon or Dungeon that are worth tracking down? Looking specifically for stuff that was published in 4th edition, and from a DM standpoint (read: Not 101 Warforged Feats). The previously-mentioned Graywall one is the only one that stands out in my memory, but the Eberron wiki has a list of the Eberron-specific content in Dragon/Dungeon: http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_magazine http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeon_magazine Also, the Eberron board on the WotC boards has this post: http://community.wizards.com/forum/eberron/threads/1597336
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Apr 18, 2015 22:16
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I just remove the feat requirement and let people take whatever rituals/practices they have skill training for, ditch all GP costs, give them daily charges rather than component/surge costs, and let people have a ritual for free every time they reach a level with a utility power.
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May 29, 2015 21:36
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The Belgian posted:We have no component cost for rituals in my group but treat them as daily powers. It works great. Why should Raise Dead have a cost? Enchanting items is basically just a way of remotely shopping for gear so yeah, the cost is just the cost of what you're buying.
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May 30, 2015 13:48
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It's supposed to be thirteen encounters with the game assuming you're going to do three per session, so basically a level every four sessions, IIRC. That's still off by quite a bit compared to the rate at which I hand out levels.
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Jun 21, 2015 09:38
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It's not really so much that it's explicitly designed to work better when PCs are from the same power source as it is the fact that every power source has some design elements in common, really.
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Aug 17, 2015 08:39
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AweStriker posted:What's an AEUD, again? I must have forgotten. At-Will, Encounter, Utility, Daily. The basic power format for 4E classes which Essentials decided to ignore.
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Aug 24, 2015 23:29
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dwarf74 posted:If you guys want any of the WotC 4e charop guides, better act fast. This perfectly encapsulates how poo poo post-4E WotC are. 
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Sep 16, 2015 17:45
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Moriatti posted:So I'm going to be running Vecna Lives! for a few friends IRL as part of a larger campaign, and I've got a few months to figure it out, but I want to replicate the urgency of divine power being ripped from the earth without being a complete dick to the paladin. Obviously starting with flavour text is good, but but I want to let them know that the cut-off of divine powers will be A Big Deal. No. Don't do this. Also, neither Paladins nor Clerics derive their powers directly from the gods, both will explicitly continue to have access to them even if no one's there to answer prayers or their god decides they don't like them. Just tell them that when they use their powers they can very distinctly feel that the connection with their deity that is normally there just isn't - it's like they're shouting down an empty corridor instead of talking in an occupied room. Outright tell them that they instinctively know this is a bad sign and needs to be fixed. Otherwise, just refluff some of his missed attacks as missing not because the Paladin character missed but because the divine power fizzled out. Don't randomly gently caress over one of your players, especially not for metaplot reasons outside of their control.
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Oct 18, 2015 23:56
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Turtlicious posted:"Swords are cool and my character wants simething in case her magic runs out." I just gave her a sword with that implement enchantment on it. That's a perfectly good way to handle it. 
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Oct 25, 2015 16:27
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Soonmot posted:omg, what the hell did they do to the character builder? That's completely different and ugly as gently caress! It's also got a fraction of the functionalities, but you can't just pirate this one and have access to all the 4E rules material for free.
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Oct 27, 2015 09:31
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Moriatti posted:I bring this up to ask you guys these questions: Well, for starters, don't ask us, ask your players. More generally: permadeath in a game where characters are as mechanically complex as 4E is a terrible idea because it takes a long time to make a character, plus some time to learn how the new one plays. If your players are into RPing, it's also means the character they've developed over however many sessions of slow gameplay (because 4E doesn't play very fast) is gone. The two solutions are: a) allow death, but make resurrections free and automatic (it knocks the player out of the game until the party goes back to town, which you should strongly encourage them to do ASAP because sitting out half a session while you wait to be resurrected is poo poo). b) don't allow death at all (if you drop to 0 you're unconscious and that's that, or if you would "die" you're knocked out until a long rest) except when it's dramatically appropriate and the player explicitly agrees to have their character die because they think it would make for a cool story. Also, just generally don't go out of your way to attack downed characters. Don't put encounters in the game that the players flat out can't win, either, because 4E is most fun when you have fun encounters. Make it an encounter with an objective the players need to pull off to make it winnable instead, and make it clear that they can't win if they don't do the objective first.
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Oct 29, 2015 14:14
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Moriatti posted:How do you make your villains seem deadly? You don't need to. The players roleplay their characters being afraid of death, even though the players know that I'm not going to let their characters die from a random crit or trap.
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Oct 29, 2015 17:32
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:Sorry, to be clear, by that I meant 'do I just hand out improved defences and expertise for free, or do I make them spend a feat to take them?' - I was planning on going with forcing them to spend a feat, rather than giving people 2 free feats. Hand it out for free. By "balanced" we mean "the maths is designed in such a way that it assumes everyone has them," so there's no reason to make them actually pay precious feat slots on those.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:14
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Honestly, reprinting Mentzer would have resulted in a better game than 5e. 
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Nov 6, 2015 09:13
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You have no trees/bushes whatsoever, so put a few around in nice symmetrical patterns so it looks like the town centre has some planted. This will also break up the cobblestone texture. Also, put a buffet table down the middle (vertically, in front of the tent) and make it difficult terrain so the players can swashbuckle on top of the table among the greasy chickens and ale tankards.
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Nov 17, 2015 21:50
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That needs way more rows of seats.
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Nov 18, 2015 19:22
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That's a good post and dwarf74 should add it to the OP. Thanks for making it.
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Dec 19, 2015 18:45
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Every time I've run 4e mass battles, we just made a custom monster stat block for each unit led by a PC/named NPC, and otherwise had each unit represented as a monster. It worked great.
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Feb 7, 2016 22:06
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Jolyne Cujoh posted:If u wanna support your whole party be a petpetpet shaman/protector and have each of ur pets buddy up to people and make them attack more/better Disappointed you didn't also suggest to fluff the pets as stands.
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Feb 12, 2016 00:18
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Gort posted:Is "there's a door, it's locked, roll until you unlock it, no penalty for failing" actually a scenario anyone puts in their game, though? Unfortunately, yes, there are tons of bad DMs who do exactly this.
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Feb 26, 2016 13:37
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Eopia posted:Ugh. My GM is forcing us to switch to FFd6 vanilla specifically because they find our defender being able to constantly throw out prones 'Unheroic' and it's killing my enthusiasm for the game. You should tell him you won't play any more, then. No roleplaying is better than terrible roleplaying, and FFd6 is not good. e; I mean, you could probably also redo your character to not focus on proning if it bugs him that much, there are other things Defenders can do. If he's just looking for an excuse to switch to a poo poo system from a good one, though, just sever. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Mar 2, 2016 |
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Mar 2, 2016 09:50
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Noxin of Shame posted:Hey, not sure if there's a better thread to post this in, but figured some of you may be interested: Pretty much any thread that isn't this one would have been a better thread to post that in.
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Mar 3, 2016 |
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Mar 3, 2016 08:42
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Anonymous Robot posted:An elemental, or anything less-than-corporeal, would probably introduce some complications because the climax of the story involves a fighter character (unexpectedly) subduing the creature nonlethally and attempting to interrogate it, which is why an ambiguous intelligence is required. Why can't a fighter nonlethally subdue an elemental or noncorporeal enemy?
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Mar 15, 2016 21:35
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Fighters are unquestionably the best melee Controllers in the game, not even kidding. There's also quite a few ways to build the Fighter, and you pretty much can't have too many of them in a party once you have a Leader.
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Apr 5, 2016 20:57
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pookel posted:I have an irrational attachment to D&D, though. I've never really played anything else. I'm considering lobbying them to try 5th edition, which I haven't tried but have been reading about. 5e is a badly-designed game and you should not play it. 4E is designed to work in specific ways, and complex tactical combat which takes a long time is one of those ways. Unfortunately, this doesn't really significantly improve unless everyone at the table is very familiar with the system. Also unfortunately, it sounds like your DM isn't the most experienced DM - WotC's published adventures are notoriously pure poo poo with very few exceptions, and running skill challenges RAW is a common pitfall for new 4E DMs. From the sound of things though, your problem with the game isn't the long combat so much as it's people interacting with the mechanics of the game. You could raise some of your points with your group and attempt to get the GM to obfuscate the system more, but it sounds like everyone else in the group is perfectly happy playing a combat-heavy campaign with lots of exposed mechanics. It honestly just sounds like 4E isn't for you, and you should try to play something else. People recommend Dungeon World because it's a rules-light-er game focused on dungeon crawling. It will specifically cater to your desire to just fight monsters and get loot, assuming the DM is capable of dealing with the fact that the game has some different assumptions from 4E. You should also try Dungeon World because playing games that aren't D&D and broadening your RPG horizons is good for you. e; please don't inflict Pathfinder on yourself, either. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Apr 19, 2016 |
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Apr 19, 2016 17:47
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Really Pants posted:Basic? Or, yes, if you're going to stubbornly cling to D&D, at least run the one other good D&D edition. (Darker Dungeons is a good BECMI retroclone that is completely free.)
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Apr 19, 2016 18:07
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pookel posted:No, everyone else is unhappy and frustrated too, but mostly they're at a loss as to how to fix it. Okay, then definitely suggest the group change to Dungeon World to try it out, then. The unfortunate downside of 4E's mechanical complexity is fights take ages unless everyone is already an expert at 4E combat, and no amount of tips and tricks will really address that issue.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:43
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I don't think anyone really plays vanilla RC these days, because you can just play retroclones that do stuff like flip to-hit maths from ThAC0 to BAB and normalise class hit points so you're not rolling 1d4 for MU HP at level 1 (e.g. DerD gives them 4+Con HP at level 1, and 3+Con every subsequent level), but yes, BECMI-derived games are still played by a few people, since it's the only other edition of D&D that isn't garbage.
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Apr 20, 2016 01:33
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dwarf74 posted:I mean, I could go into why I think 5e is pretty awful, but it's certainly true that much of the internet finds it to their liking, overall. Much of the Internet also found 3.x to their liking, or any number of other shittily-designed games, because ~my tummyfeels~.
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Apr 20, 2016 16:39
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For the record, no one's saying you can't have fun with 5e, because there's nothing stopping people from enjoying bad games. People are just pointing out that it has atrocious design.
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Apr 20, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 17:43
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Dick Burglar posted:You could take an existing monster and modify/reflavor it to be the 'shadow version' of another player though. It's generally going to be a lot simpler to just build them from scratch using the MM3 formula - you can still reuse PC powers as monster powers with very little work, so you can give them one of the PCs' at-wills, an Encounter as a recharge and a Daily that triggers when Bloodied, for example.
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Jun 2, 2016 18:48
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UrbanLabyrinth posted: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). I start people at 4, and give them 5 after the first big fight (or end of the first session) - they have one Daily, one Utility and two Encounters, so a good amount of mechanical complexity to customise their character with, you immediately hand them a second Daily (which is cool, and also gives them more tactical decisions to make), and then 6 and 7 also come with extra powers.
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Jun 3, 2016 14:28
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It definitely feels like 5-15 is the level range where things are most interesting and don't get bogged down, yeah. Also, congrats on the 8 year campaign.
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Jun 3, 2016 14:45
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Jul 3, 2016 02:17
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Klungar posted:If I know 4e well, how easy is it to pick up Gamma World 4e? It's pretty much straight 4E, just with different "classes" (and less balance as a result, and also it's weirdly lethal).
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Jul 8, 2016 12:24
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The Essentials feats have the minor benefit so that they're not just a feat tax, which doesn't matter because you're giving them out for free. The only thing that matters is the +1 to hit, which fixes the maths. I wouldn't even bother giving them a feat, just give them a flat +1 to hit with everything.
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Jul 18, 2016 08:40
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Just Give Them A Flat +1 To Hit. e; per tier, yes.
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 15:13
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ImpactVector posted:The only issue with this is you don't really want it to stack with any Expertise feats they do end up picking up. Oh, for sure - just ban Expertise feats entirely if you're going to do that, but it saves everyone the trouble of having to worry about which Expertise feat to take and not getting the +1 whenever they're not using something that's covered by the one they did take.
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Jul 18, 2016 16:42
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Blank Construct posted:What's the story behind this? Remember how the Spellplague was the bullshit in-setting reason for the rules changes between 3.x and 4E? The Time of Troubles was that for the change between AD&D and AD&D2. Assassin got removed from the PHB so FR writers decided that Bhaal died and all assassin PCs and NPCs spontaneously exploded. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Aug 27, 2016 |
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Aug 27, 2016 19:04
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