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Iunnrais posted:I am looking to build a difficult set-piece encounter that involves a combat skill challenge (obsidian system) on top of six defending creatures on the Astral Plane, each an exemplar of the six 4e "power sources" (martial, divine, shadow, psionic, primal, arcane). This is all at level 21. I would avoid dice tricks - the players won't see them, and it will slow down the encounter. Instead, I'd go with something simple that allows players to interact with it: Martial does physical damage, and has reactions (parry-riposte, counterstrike) Divine does radiant damage, and buffs its allies Shadow does necrotic damage, and teleports Psionic does psychic damage, and dazes Primal creates hindering terrains a la druid's nature growth, and charges like a barbarian Arcane does various elemental damage, and creates zones of such However, my campaign has been Heroic tier so far, so take this with a grain of salt.
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Sep 7, 2022 09:14
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:05 |
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A few random thoughts off the top of my head: Don't worry about skill challenges, just do normal skill checks. Don't let people play hybrids. They either: 1) don't know what they are doing; 2) they are trying to build an obscene character; or 3) arguably the worst case, they try to build an obscene character but don't know what they are doing. Optional: Don't let people take Improved Defenses line of feats, or Weapon Expertise variants, which are really math fixes. Either give them out manually at specific levels, or integrate it into the story - for example, if the heroes rescue an old weapons master, he may teach them a Weapons Expertise feat for free. Optional: Consider switching the rest mechanic so that the players can only rest (recover healing surges and daily powers) at home base. That way, they can head out, explore, have 3-5 fights, then head back. Maybe even make it be a prolonged rest in game time (say, several weeks), to get a feel of exploration? Later in the game, perhaps a new home base can be established, closer to the higher-level locations.
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Jan 24, 2023 18:18
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Jack B Nimble posted:Right, I was specifically going to tie short rests and long rests to "small sites of grace" and "big sites of grace" (working titles), and the 4th edition mechanic of healing dice (wasn't that a thing??) was going to explicitly exist as some item that diminishes, like maybe a flask, or maybe a prayer bead where the beads dim out one by one. The whole framing device of "you're in a dark souls" lets me get a lot more explicit with the gamey aspect. That's one reason I'm going with fourth, it gives you a very granular hack and slash. I would suggest not doing "small sites of grace" - these only allow you to spend healing surges and refresh encounter powers, and the game assumes you can do this between combats. It's not fun starting the next combat without encounter powers. As for "big sites of grace", where a full rest (replenish daily powers, restore all healing surges to maximum), this feels like a good idea. May I be cheeky and suggest "Points of Light" for the name?
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Jan 24, 2023 20:03
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So, having another reminder that in a way, D&D4 has an implied structure even more stricter than some of the storygames. In my campaign, I’ve been running adventures in a way that the PC’s would get no chance at a long rest during the adventure. Each adventure was around 4-5 combats on average, with similar amounts of high-risk skill challenges (an awful lot of those focused on running away from things blowing up in the background). It worked pretty great, though. One rule I instituted is that if a skill challenge effect causes you to lose a healing surge when you have none (typically, running away from a collapsing building or floating island at the end of the adventure), you get a “black mark” – some sort of visual reminder of something bad happening to you. The sorcerer ended up with a pock-marked face from one of these, whilst the barbarian proudly bears a collection of scars, each one of which tells a story (“this one came from a shark, this one from a ghoul”). The campaign just hit Paragon level, and for the current adventure I decided to go for a slice-of-life adventure, with several weeks’ in-game downtime between sessions, giving the players an opportunity to indicate what interests their characters are pursuing (they get three “activity tokens” at the end of the session, and a list of goals, both personal and party-wide, that they spend them on). The next session is then mostly dealing with outcome and key decision points from their background activities. So, that works great. Problem is, that’s where the game system buckles up against this style of play. There’s no resource management to consider, since enough in-game time passes between sessions that all dailies and healing surges should be back. I think I’m okay for now – the characters have just hit Paragon, so it’s a nice jump in power for them. But the next adventure is definitely going back to “oh poo poo, we have to go somewhere dangerous, and get there fast before everything blows up!” mode.
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Jan 27, 2023 11:56
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I have to wonder, if we ever got D&D 4.5 with a focus on balance, what would be done about balancing weapon types? Like, if we assume that longsword is +3 1d8 martial weapon as a baseline (not sure if versatile is worth anything). What should a battleaxe be as a +2 weapon? Gut feel says that 1d10 is not enough, should it be 1d12? Feels like a +2 damage per W is a better trade for a +1 to hit. Light blades are intentionally weaker than heavy blades - keep rapier as a superior weapon, but make it +3 / 1d10 damage? That way, it should be a reasonable weapon feat to take for brutal scoundrels, who will upgrade from +3 / 1d6 shortsword. Hammers seem to be more of a Con-user weapon in the system. Maybe play around with making them brutal, so a hammer could be +2 / 1d10 brutal 1 as default, but have some interesting feats doing extra Con damage to another target as an effect?
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Jan 30, 2023 09:42
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So, I wonder. If one of the issues with game balance at higher levels is the higher importance of multi-attacks versus everything else, then would introducing monsters with fixed damage resistance address this issue? For example, let’s say we have a ranger that does two attacks at 15 damage per attack, versus a barbarian that does 25 damage with a single attack. Sure, the ranger is more effective. But if we introduce a monster with DR 5, then the ranger does 10 damage twice, and the barbarian does 20 - same amount - with a single attack. And if we have an iron golem / stoneskinned alchemist with DR 10, then the ranger would be even less effective, doing ten (5*2) damage on average, with the barbarian still doing a respectable fifteen. As long as the GM mixes and matches enemies in an encounter, so only some of them have such DR, and gives sufficient information to the players as to which enemies have such DR, this could let them be more tactical, I suppose. Or is the math still going to be off?
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Feb 15, 2023 16:30
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SynthesisAlpha posted:Dragon sorc would hit 2-3 targets for 20 damage, scout ranger would do 40 to one target, hexblade warlock would do 18 to one target and then hurt adjacent allies. It was bad. No one wants to feel outperformed and there isn't a great solution besides handing that PC better items and boons, which comes with a new set of problems. I agree with the previous orator here - if a hexblade does 18 damage, when a scout does 40, then the GM should sit with the hexblade and figure out what is going wrong. If a scout does 20 with each weapon, then the hexblade should be doing at least 27 - a fey hexblade can optimise for Light Blades same way as scout can, and they get 2+Dex static damage bonuses. On top of that, the scout's second attack is not always guaranteed (it's a separate to-hit roll), the fey hexblade would have higher defenses from their power riders, and they should be going invisible every now and then, either further increasing their defenses, or getting opportunity attacks if the monsters decide to attack someone else. Jimbozig posted:But in context, it seems like it could be pretty good: imagine a ranger who has multi-attacks but no big attacks and a barbarian who has the opposite. The ranger and the barbarian want to take out these two priority enemies before moving onto the others. If they split up and each focus on their strength, they finish faster. But if they focus fire, they take the first enemy down quicker at the expense of taking longer to deal with both together. Is that tradeoff worth it? That's a good tactical question! Well, then the strategic trade-off comes at leveling time - the ranger will consider taking something other than "two attack spam" powers, so it's still a win in my books. I don't have a ranger in my party right now, but the barbarian did take a close burst encounter power to deal with situations of being surrounded by enemies, rather than going single-target high damage all the time.
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Feb 16, 2023 15:20
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SynthesisAlpha posted:There's not a lot you can do when a player stubbornly refuses optimization assistance and then complains that he's not optimal. My original point was that as a GM you have such full control over the monsters and behind the screen activity that you can put a pretty heavy hand on bending the rules/math to make combats more exciting. The flip side is that you can lead a player to optimal choices but you can't actually make the player take those choices. It really sucks to have someone reject advice, complain they're ineffective, and then reject further advice to fix that problem. You can't really give a player more power without it being obvious to that player and the group and that can lead to a whole different set of problems. Oof! My condolences. I'm not sure if this problem is system-specific, though. I suppose the equivalent would be building a 3E fighter with low Strength, or a Wizard with low Intelligence, so they are prevented from casting higher-level spells. Or not taking any combat skills in a skills-based system, maybe. I suppose you could give some help by giving them better magic items (what would be the rod equivalent of Staff of Ruin?), but's a band-aid at best. But I'm also not sure that cheating on dice is really the way to solve this. For me as a 4th edition GM, it's really enjoyable to treat combat as a tactical mini-game where I use the encounter budget to create fights, then don't try to cheat or hide dice rolls during the session. I have had bad experiences in 2nd and 3rd editions, when I can accidentally TPK'ed the whole party with a bunch of orcs, whereas the 4e game I've been running the last few years feels a lot more robust. Yes, we lost a bard early on, the PC's came close to a TPK on a couple occasions, and the orc barbarian rolled a few too many death saving throws over the years, but overall, it's been a much smoother experience than what I had with other systems.
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Feb 16, 2023 16:17
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The way I started handling possible TPK's lately, is that for every fight, I ask myself the question – “what happens if the PC’s lose?”. Occasionally, I even tell the players ahead of combat what will happen if they lose. For example, at the end of our last adventure, the party was sneaking around the City of Brass, trying to find a working portal to get back home. They found a malfunctioning portal hanging mid-air above a lake of fire, and set out to re-enable it as they were beset upon by two rival gangs. I straight up told the players at that point “If you lose here, these guys will steal all your magic items, and sell you as slaves to some Efreet lord”. In the Shadowfell adventure, it was a “You die… and come back. You are now stuck in Shadowfell, trying to either move on to proper afterlife, or get resurrected”. One encounter that might pop up soon is the party fighting a Fae lordling. If they lose – "Congratulations, you are now saddled with a geas! Have fun trying to complete it whilst still pursuing your original long-term goals". Haven't had a TPK so far, though. I suppose it would be OK once, but doing this twice or more might end up feeling more slapstick than anything.
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Feb 17, 2023 15:04
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Tarnop posted:I'm thinking about how chess and go are played on square featureless terrain that would make for an extremely boring fight location in 4E Not a chess expert by any means, but perhaps the chess equivalent of this would be that characters have a lot weirdly defined immediate reactions and interrupts (so straight lines and diagonal lines instead of close bursts), so that they threaten different parts of the map, which builds up the "terrain" as the combat goes on. Tarnop posted:Go sort of creates terrain in play by leaving behind all the remnants of your past battles so now I want to try a 4E fight in a big empty room but it's the classic videogame collapsing floor where the square disappears after you step off it. I did something like this last session. The PC's were on a boat that got destroyed by the river-dwelling dragon and his pet monsters. The characters started out standing on various planks and assorted flotsam in the middle of the river. As the fight went on, these got destroyed every time the swimming monsters went charging into them. The barbarian ended up charging from one side of the river to another, by jumping onto a dead monster's body floating halfway across, then jumping to the other side.
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Feb 20, 2023 09:32
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Jack B Nimble posted:So far in the first dungeon I've got: These are some awesome and very evocative ideas! The way I would use them is to have the dungeon as a series of descriptive encounters with skill checks (avoiding the term "skill challenge" for being too loaded), and a single final boss battle - go for quality, not quantity. So, let's start with collapsed hallway. Athletics checks mostly, but creative use of ten-foot poles. Perhaps someone jumps or wades across and secures a chest rope at chest level so the rest of the party can cross above the cesspit. If anyone has movement or teleportation powers, use them as stunts to get a re-roll or bonuses to your skill checks. Move into the dark suffocating room. Dungeoneering checks and Perception checks to figure out what's going on, Endurance checks to keep your breath. Or send your warforged in, if you have one. This gets us to the earth mound. Start climbing, then the earth becomes looser towards the top, hard to keep your balance. Athletics, Endurance, Dungeoneering, Perception, Acrobatics skill checks all around. The grasping hands could be doing some automatic damage in the meantime - Religion checks to shout appropriate prayers for the dead hands to calm down. Some sort of mechanical contraption at the top which opens a door, and needs Thievery checks. Perhaps the contraption can't be operated on alone - someone else needs to hold some part of it open. Finally, we are ready for the final boss room. After all these skill checks, the party is ready to kick some butt. The room is darkened - you can see maybe 5 squares ahead of you, and everything else is covered in supernatural darkness, so both the melee and the ranged combatants need to move closer to the source of arrows flying from the other side (naturally, the enemy is not affected). The going is difficult (we are covering difficult terrain here - still loose earth), but the melee guys charge and start laying waste to enemy artillery (make archers minions, give them a melee skirmisher or two, as a leader). A couple rounds of battle, and the PC's are trouncing the enemies handily. The controller (or anyone with multi-target attacks) is taking out minions by the bucketload, the high-damage single-target PC's are taking out the enemy skirmishers. Then the loose earth in the middle begins to shake, as a horrifying bone golem emerges from underneath the centre of the room, where the ranged party members stand. He grabs the ranged PC's, sends the melee ones flying back with powerful swings, and as a reaction, causes earth to tremble, sinking everyone affected halfway down (slowed or even immobilized for a turn), turning the whole battleground into a giant sinkhole. ... Yeah, I'm stealing this for my Vecna cultists delve.
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Feb 21, 2023 10:13
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Gort posted:The official 4E adventure paths were pretty criminal in general, just room after room of boring poo poo like three orcs and a hole in the floor (in a system that thrives on interesting monsters and a few big set-piece battles with dynamic terrain), and occasional basic encounter design gently caress ups like a level 6 encounter for a level 1 party. Nothing grinds my gears quite like a book full of good encounter design advice that the official adventure designers clearly ignored. In an alternative timeline that never was, what they should have done is grab Greg Stolze and Robin Laws. Tell them to write a Feng Shui-style adventure, big and bombastic. Make every fight memorable, with moving terrain and stunt opportunities. Write non-combat action scenes. Build them as a series of skill checks with non-trivial ways to use skills: have PC's do things like rescue people in a sudden flood, or inspire people to stand together and fight instead of running away to be picked off one by one. In combat, have objectives other than just killing the enemies. For example, the PC’s may need to open prisoners’ cages (minor action when adjacent to the cage), and let them out before the terrible dark ritual saps their vital fluids and awakens a nameless horror. Make it a big budget action movie in terms of visuals, draw exciting maps in the adventure. Let people grok that terrain matters, that movement powers matter, that pushing and sliding enemies matters. Then make a pass over it to get the math right. You can do it as a level one campaign starter. The cultists set up a “once a century“ ritual to summon the Big Bad, kidnapping the villagers to sacrifice them. The PC’s track the cultists down, get there in the nick of time, and have the big fight where they try to rescue the villagers. Depending on the outcome, either we have just the minor threats escape, or the Big Bad itself taking over the mind of the local king / chieftain, to set up further adventures. Boom!
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Feb 21, 2023 11:22
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One thing to consider is that if you've already given out the "+1 to hit, no other benefit" as a free feat, and nobody will pick up the appropriate feats on top of it (since the remainder of the bonus is not that strong), then you can reflavor this as an alternative reward for a dungeon - perhaps specialised training that the characters get as a reward for rescuing an aged weapons master, or perhaps they find a treatise on combat styles, . This is how I flavored the "Expertise" feats and "Improved Defenses" feats in my game. The PC's got Expertise for free around level 4 by aligning themselves with an organisation that provided them with appropriate training. They missed a couple opportunities in game to get "Improved Defenses" though, but looks like they are finally going to get it, as they have recovered Tablets of Zerthimon for a githzerai community who don't have much of a material reward to give, but as one says - "In knowing the teachings of Zerthimon I have become stronger".
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Feb 27, 2023 13:39
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:05 |
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Khizan posted:Personally, I dislike this house rule because I feel like encouraging players to hold encounters/dailies for higher escalation bonuses just drags fights out longer while they plink out with at-wills to set it up. IMO the fight tempo works much better when players are encouraged to go in hot and and blow things up early. Fights in this system already have a tendency to drag out due to mechanical complexity, and adding incentive to sandbag the first few rounds just makes it worse. I wonder if the escalation die works better at lower levels, say, early Heroic (1-4). So, level 1 boss battle, you have an encounter power, a daily power and two at-wills. Let's say the DM is creative, and you also have a terrain encounter power you get to use. You may end up doing: Turn 1: Use daily power for an alpha strike Turn 2: Use at-will power Turn 3: Use encounter power Turn 4: Use terrain encounter power Turn 5+: Use at-will powers only At this point, it feels like the combat is dragging on, so an escalation die is welcome to burn through monster HP. Whereas from upper Heroic onwards, you have multiple encounter powers, item powers, and a couple dailies to burn through, then you can go through 7-8 rounds using different powers without feeling stale. Though I suppose this changes if most of your extra powers are minor actions and reactions - those you can still burn through in 4-5 rounds, and be left with your at-wills only. Anecdotally, my campaign ran through Heroic tier in around 40-50 sessions, with one combat per session. The combats which lasted 4-5 rounds felt fast and furious, but sometimes lacked challenge, whereas the 7-8 round combats could feel like dragging, and worked best if an alternative objective was in play (e.g. flee the dungeon while enemy reinforcements keep arriving every round).
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Mar 1, 2023 12:07
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