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P.d0t posted:I think the actual problem is that most of them don't come with a mark punishment. Even in Monster Vault, not all of them have one. Just make sure your soldiers have this, rip-off/homebrew from other monsters if need be. So THAT'S why all the soldiers I've used have been useless speed bumps! Fairly sure, if you have DDI and use the Adventure Builder, all the stats are MM3 math compliant.
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Jan 30, 2014 03:11
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I think Fey Pact is the easiest to justify actually. It's perfectly in theme for Fey to ask for things that have great import to them but seem innocuous to us mortals. Incredible magic power in exchance for the colour of your eyes? Your memory of your first love's face? Your shadow? Practically a steal, for all involved! I don't know too much about the Elemental pact Walock, but to be honest I'm surprised the Primordials weren't one of the first options for powerful beings you bargain with for power. Lurdiak posted:In some fictional works, making complicated compacts with extra-planar entities of immense power is the ONLY way magic works. Dr. Strange from Marvel comics for example channels the power of various entities who have agreed to lend this small fraction of their might to whatever use he sees fit in exchange for various oaths the line of Sorceror Supremes have sworn that benefits them in some way. He basically plays mediator between cosmic giants by manifesting what those entities would consider parlor tricks. A warlock is just someone who doesn't have quite as good a contract as that. It says a lot that given all this Dr Strange is still one of the most powerful people around.
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Jan 31, 2014 06:43
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wallawallawingwang posted:Yeah. Letting your players spend their daily to take out a minion (and do nothing else) really sets a tone for the game. The tone is gently caress you! I tell my players when monsters are minions. One of them still wants to roll damage. After much loving around and experimenting to no avail when it comes to changing up the battlefield so players actually, like, move around and poo poo I've had a success! Last time I tried having the players standing on stone platforms that randomly changed height every round, but I think I made the platforms too large and the enemies weren't mobile enough or ranged so everyone just got on one platform and rode it out. This time I had everyone stand on stone rocks that were falling out of the sky. Using a Warhammer scatter die and a d6, I can have the platforms (ripped up paper) randomly move around, and the players can move them on their turn. Add in a bunch of respawning artillery monsters protecting the flying boss and good times are had by all.
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Feb 1, 2014 03:37
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I wonder how viable a Gunslinger class (like in pathfinder - except not loving awful), that focused entirely on crafting and using guns effectively, would be. I know a few people who would love to play Roland of Gilead and a Gunslinger could be a neat Martial Controller idea.
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Feb 2, 2014 03:22
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wallawallawingwang posted:It's less of a rules thing than a gaming philosophy thing. Out of combat, 4e works best with on a "anything not forbidden is allowed" approach to problem solving, exploration, and social interactions. Pathfinder skills, abilities, feats, spells and items tend to be more cut and dry and more specific in terms of what they can or cannot do. For example, in 4e if a player wants to wall run the resolution is purely up to the DM and group to figure out. In pathfinder there are a hand full of dedicated wall running powers, so some players think they can only wall run if they have an ability that specifically lets them. The rules listed for jumping vertically in 4e piss me off enough as is. If my players want to jump 50 feet in the air and axe kick a giant robot, I'm not gonna tell them no! tzirean posted:Yes. My players started enjoying my games a lot more when I took down the screen and started rolling in the open. It's probably my gaming history but the very idea of the GM hiding his rolls from the players is baffling to me.
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Feb 7, 2014 02:55
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Prism posted:I like the other idea better though. Now I do too.
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Feb 7, 2014 03:54
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Elmo Oxygen posted:4ed is one of those games where a seamless transition between fight-mode and explore/roleplay-mode isn't all that important. Most 4ed players get pumped up when they know it's time to roll initiative and get down to business. I literally have said "okay so the screen shatters, everything goes all swirly and you guys are in a fight now."
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Feb 10, 2014 19:22
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Echophonic posted:My groups been using a rituals per day system. It's 3/4/5 by tier for no cost, with any free ones you get from ritual mastery feats being added on. Works pretty well, haven't really needed more. Probably gonna start doing this, and any past that takes healing surges. Might get my players to start actually using riruals.  Some classes get Ritual Casting for free. Anyone forsee any issues with letting all classes the option of taking Ritual Caster, Practiced Study or the Alchemy one for free?
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Feb 13, 2014 23:46
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My players may have inadvertently gained the rulership of a large, abandoned floating city, populated only by a few Warforged, by taking a set-peice dungeony location and just deciding to claim ownership and set up shop. I'm gonna try and use some Realm building stuff from Reign and see if the game going off at a complete right angle will end in fun hilarity or disaster.
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Feb 23, 2014 19:54
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For various plot reasons in my game, a character is probably come into possession of an artefact pretty soon (it was his evil father's). Fluff wise, I've got it worked out as a magic evil elemental ice gauntlet that makes any weapon the hero wields into the "artefact weapon". Are there any major pitfalls I should avoid in designing this thing towards making it too powerful? I've already established it can manipulate and create ice and teleport Nightcrawler style by cutting a hole in the air. The player it's going to is a Fighter, any advice for cool powers that would be useful for him to have?
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Mar 16, 2014 13:30
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Speaking of third party stuff, is War of the Burning Sky any good? I think the name is cool, which is 50% of the way there for me.
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Mar 20, 2014 00:34
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So I've been reading some of the Stormlight Archives lately. If I'm reading Zeitgeist's mecha suit Paragon Path correctly, it straight up allows someone to make Shardplate (magical powered armour). I think I have my player hook.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:11
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Yeah, I agree that my instinct here, if you want a difference in preparedness, is to give those captured a short rest, and those who are prepped and coming in for the rescue an extended rest. If you deny your players a short rest between two encounters, mathematically that has to really count as one big encounter.
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Mar 24, 2014 01:52
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Seamonster posted:My warforged is literally this guy: You know that Warforged are robot men, right? I have a hard time imagining Mechazawa as anything but human.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:07
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Is it re-fluffed character concepts time? The best robots I've got are a friend and I playing two Warforged bard DJs, and playing in a christmas themed game as Frosty the snowman. A Pixie Warlord just being Navi is a classic. I seem to recall I was in a game once where we were a Japanaese superhero team. We had a Cavallier in a insect helm, a ninja and a Magical Girl. My character was a Hengeyokai cat Cleric, who was the one who gave the girl her powers. I think we fought off Godzilla, and an invasion of crab men from the Far Realm. In 3.5 playing a magical intelligent sword that has all the PC stats and just uses random schlubs to cart him around was fun, it made PCs dying a lot more entertaining. i gotta dust off that old chestnut.
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Apr 1, 2014 00:23
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P.d0t posted:Dumb question: when you crit with a High Crit weapon, are the extra [W]s maxed or rolled? I'm 90% they are meant to be rolled, but my DM let's us maximise them, and I'm fine with that, since it makes my Fullblade weilding Paladin samurai a crit monster.
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Apr 6, 2014 22:21
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You could also have them just wake up in the Shadowfell and have to fight their way out the afterlife.  There's a million options.
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May 5, 2014 17:57
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I use Reign rules in my 4e game, though granted I haven't had much opportunity to implement them recently. The basic story is I introduced an old abandoned floating city populated by near-drone like worker Warforged and my players basically just took over the place. The basic gist of it is that there are rules for "companies", which can be any organisation from a business venture, to a cult to a city or kingdom. A company has a number of stats, governing the loyalty of the people in the company, wealth, territory, influence and so on, and in order to perform certain actions you roll d10s equal to the two stats. So if your company was a mercenary band and you wanted to attack another you'd roll Might+Treasure. What you want is matching dice, so a roll of 1, 1, 1, 1 is better than 9, 8, 7, 6. There are rules for absorbing other companies, espionage and getting your name out there. in Reign itself Treasure can translate into Wealth (PC scale money), so with a little tweaking you can adjust that for 4e money. It's fun and I enjoy it. There's apparently a Fatal and Friends article on it I'd link but archives ain't working for me. 
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May 6, 2014 23:26
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I've always rolled straight in the open. The only real fudging I've done is to say "yeah you killed the dude" when they have like a third of their HP left because we all know which way the wind is blowin'. HP really needs to be luckmeat. Aside from one or two minor, superficial cuts or whatever almost every fight in every kung fu movie or action scene ever, if boiled down to dice rolls, would go "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, hit: dead." If considering an alternative I'd like some system where rather than HP you have a kind of "flow of battle" system, whereby you have moves that will just kill a dude that barely ever work, and other moves that maneuver and feint and such, and building success with those makes you more likely to land killing/incapacitating blows. But I don't have the technical nous or an active group to develop it.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:51
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dwarf74 posted:I would strongly advise you not to use these. You will end up with terrible monsters. I made a level 3 cleric to back up a dragon against some players at level one and the rogue immediately one-shot her Roctavian posted:Narratively, at least, it's right there with 4e, though -- a lot of my battles I say poo poo like "You swing at the bandit lord and closely miss him, dealing 5 damage" and such, until whatever it is hits bloodied status and they get a "you slash a wicked gash in the bandit's side" or whatever. If it's appropriate. Some monsters are just big meatbags that gotta get cut up for the whole fight. I agree but it's always rubbed a few people I know the wrong way a little that you can be hit by an attack roll and that means your character doesn't actually get hit but they do lose health and such. Part of the reason I'd like a character to accrue "advantage" rather than something like losing stamina in my theoretical system is that I think it wouldn't matter how many dudes you fight. In true heroic epic or Kung full style your Ninja Doctor can just inverse law his way through a squad of useless tools and then kill the boss man. Rohan Kishibe fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 21:30
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Getting buy in from the players is probably the best bet, I had a main villain that had continual immortality by being bound to an unending thunderstorm and the understanding was that if killed he'd just come back stronger in a week or two. Because the players knew this, they knew that any conflict with him was just about loving up his plans until they could finally take him out (being dead for a week is still super inconvenient). I was thinking about that campaign since we haven't played in months. I only noticed when we played dungeon world that our two newbies were the ones who really got invested in the whole collaborative world building thing I tried to do. In Dungeon World especially, while everyone else had "I'm an elf from the woods" stuff, the new guys were the ones who definied the entire Elf civilization and the nation the players started in. I tried to get everyone to do it in D&D but I think all the other players just expecting the DM to forge the entire setting meant that it was a bit of an uphill struggle.
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Jul 13, 2014 15:02
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frankenfreak posted:1 Controller (Leader) cult leader, 1 (elite?) brute half-devil-half-gnoll abomination (reskinned from whatever), add henchmen to taste, garnish with a destructible ritual focus (destroying it makes the abomination weaker) Totally irrelevant, but Gnolls are Demon flavour, not Devil. 
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Aug 6, 2014 02:58
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frankenfreak posted:Besides, a demon-flavored half-gnoll-half-devil abomination is even more terrifying! Once again, sensei I have failed.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:47
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Also if you want you could probably repurpose like bash door % / carry weight and stuff from the old ability score tables and charts. Which could get hilarious at epic tier when a fighter is riding on high-20s Strength. In fact: please do this. I'll be honest, the jump distance /breaking poo poo /lifting stuff tables in the book are way too tame for my taste so I just ignored/changed them. I want a high level Monk to be able to sense where someone is with his monk-ness and literally punch through a wall to hit him, I want a Fighter to be able to parry a sword the size of a building, and I want a Warden to be able to hit the dragon while wielding an aurochs as a weapon and if you don't I don't want to play my fantasy superheroes game with you. 
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Aug 10, 2014 01:39
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There's tons of cool stuff you can do with time effects. The obvious ones like "the area you are standing in is back during before/during the planet's formation/ice age, take x vacuum/ fire/toxic/frost damage." I'm a fan of "your body has regressed to that of a previous precursor race, you get x benefit /condition" or "your future self shows up to help, missing an eye and wearing tattered versions of your own clothes ". Positive terrain effects are fun too. I'm imagining a kenku PC temporarily becoming a T Rex.
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Aug 27, 2014 00:20
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If you, mechanically, had to sum up what a class is good at in a few sentences (stuff like "sorcerers are good at area blast damage" and "fighters are good at keeping your opponents in one place" and "vampires are bad and such (hoho)), what would you write? I'm thinking of just using 4e as a tactical combat engine, stripping out all flavor and such before houseruling a bunch of stuff.
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Sep 18, 2014 23:34
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Majuju posted:YEAH BOO TO THAT These kind of seem like things that aren't really problems? Escaping grappling, for example, could just be "background + str/dex +level" and you just shift the dcs a bit. It could be a bit of work I guess, my main concern with implementing the 13A style skills was things like prerequisites but I was planning on completely severing combat mechanics from the rest of the game and just having people still pick up DnD skills that are only relevant to the combat stuff. Might be a bit too compartmentalised, I guess.
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Sep 25, 2014 19:12
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Swarm them with bullywugs, who by the way I still wish were not a terrible PC race One day I will be able to make Frog from Chrono Trigger a viable PC... but it is not this day.
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Oct 24, 2014 22:28
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It's still worth giving your solo monster a bunch of friends, such as respawning minions, for example, to spread the hurt around. Even MV solos aren't at their best if fought alone.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:12
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If I were DMing and you were willing to put the work in, I think it's a neat concept, though playing an intelligent weapon is one of my favourites. I've went for the "the weapon is the character and the stats reflect that, the weilder is just some schlub kid/prince/hireling" I'd be hesitant to give you a whole suite of powers like that since if it just replaced your class, then whats the point? I'd make the racial just be the bonus and let you use your class powers as normal. (Essentialy granting the wielder extra attacks magic shockwaves etc if you aren't a leader type, for example.)
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Nov 30, 2014 19:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:e2: my party has a strange relationship to insight Sounds like the players know it's a trap but are going in anyway because, well, that's clearly where the fun adventure is. If they were the kind of people who didn't spring traps then they'd use their incredible magical, social and martial skills to get proper jobs instead of trying to murder flying alligators.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:55
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I'd really really love to start a zeitgeist campaign, but my only really proactive player left, and it's all I can do to encourage my players not to just sit around twiddling their thumbs unless they are in active physical danger, or I put up a "Plot is Over Here" sign, let alone getting them all to read an actual roleplaying book or invest in any setting whatsoever.
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Jan 26, 2015 02:10
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Is D&D encounters still fourth edition based or have they moved to... fifth edition, a game shop nearby is doing them, I have discovered, and work stuff means I might have Wednesday nights free in a month or so.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:56
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ProfessorCirno posted:Two fisted crossbow rogue works pretty well, just make sure you go drow (or let him take a specific drow racial feat, Ruthless Hunter). I just played this very character concept in a quick 4e game we did tonight when our 13th Age group half fell apart. It was a blast flipping around and shooting fools in their dumb loving faces. It may have helped that in the single combat we had, we had more crits than I've seen in a single encounter in my life. The DM hcrit like 3 times, I crit twice and the other two players must've crit at least 4 times each. We also got two nat 20s on skill checks. Dice gods were feeling frisky tonight.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:52
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Countblanc posted:The line of books died, sure, but like no one I know IRL plays 4e anymore while 3.5 is alive and well. The game of 4e is pretty dead in a way that many other no longer supported RPGs aren't. I think that's maybe a little subjective. The only people I know who still play DnD play 4e. Hell, I'm the only guy I know who owns the Pathfinder sourcebook, though I've never got to use it.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:45
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dwarf74 posted:Design stuff aside, my players have hit paragon tier in our 4e game. poo poo is about to get real. I remember liking most of the Zeitgeist Paragon POaths when I read it, and it's one of the things that made me sad I couldn't get my buddies to try more than one session of it. I think I like the one that gives you powered armour or the one that lets you argue with the universe so hard that it conforms to your desires the best.
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Mar 26, 2015 19:25
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LightWarden posted:Polyhistor is pretty potent from stacking basic attack bonuses, making it really good for fighters and some essentials classes. Monument of War is probably the most "eh" of the Paragon Paths, and Urban Empaths lose a bunch if they're out of urban environments. I haven't read much of Zeitgeist, only the intro book, but since the Paragon Path was created for a specific published adventure path, I just assumed that the writers would have taken that into account and gave a good mix of urban/wilderness environments, so that the Urban Empath has time to shine. They certainly seem to have really built up the main city as an important place.
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Mar 26, 2015 21:52
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Kurieg posted:Sehanine had some fun powers too, including one that lets you attack at range by hurling a moon shaped crescent of energy by slashing your sword. I remember there being a normal paladin move like that, I think, because my Raven Queen Samurai Paladin was incredibly anime, so I HAD to have that power.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:50
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thespaceinvader posted:That's a REALLY bad power by RAW, because RAW, you can't use it with a melee weapon. Ranged keyword + Weapon keyword = needs a ranged weapon to function. Shame, because it would be fine as 'one target in CB5'. So they've wrote a power who, as part of the special effects, lets you shoot a magic energy beam further with your crossbow, so long as you're holding a longsword in your other hand?
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Apr 8, 2015 19:37
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Kurieg posted:Minor-action healing meant the healer could heal and do something else. Bonus action healing is just barely better than spending a spell slot with no tangible benefit. Yeah I felt the problems with minors in 4e were more the dumb legacy parts of the system like swapping weapons around and taking 17 time units to arm a grenade and stuff like that. Being able to quickly throw off a heal or breathe fire or whatever before mashing someone's face in with your buster sword was fine.
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Apr 9, 2015 19:47
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