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Don't stop at minions. Also point out any elites or, if necessary, solos. If that seems too gamey to you, just do it in an appropriately fluffy way: "these goblins look really weedy, like one hit would drop them; this goblin looks to be about twice the normal goblin, a highly skilled opponent."
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Jan 31, 2014 19:58
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Rexides posted:So yeah, I feel that the little hack I did didn't work out so great, it was way too swingy. I think I'll just introduce a couple companion characters with simple abilities, and retire them when I get more players in the group. Calling 4E FR post-apocalyptic is overselling it a great deal. A lot of stuff got messed up in the big edition change event, but the setting's core is still basically the same old fantasy grab bag. Most of the changes served just to expand the size of that grab bag. Neverwinter is fantastic. Even people who hate FR like it. It's very focused and largely stand-alone. It makes for a very solid heroic "defend/rebuild/conquer the isolated city" campaign with a lot of room for mystery, exploration and intrigue. The backgrounds tie PCs into the setting and give them immediate goals and motivations that can be at odds if that is the sort of campaing you'd like. I'm running it right now for a mixed group of beginners and veterans, and they are having a blast.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:45
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" when he saw the genasi. I think this set the tone for the rest of the campaign. I didn't really bother with Forgotten Realms in 4E because they were very boring in 3E, but I heard that it's a more or less post-apocalyptic setting right now? I heard that the Neverwinter book is a particularly good mini-campaign setting. Does anyone have any experiences with it?
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I have the whole thing drawn out on Tactiles and place them as the players explore. I will reuse a lot of maps, too. For example, I have one Neverwinter sewers map that I have used at least three times so far in our current campaign.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:04
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Captain Walker posted:You're no worse than Bethesda/Bioware, at least. Haha, that's actually where I got the idea. I figured if Bioware, with all their resources, could get away with using the same map over and over again for Baldur's Gate's extensive sewers, I could get away with doing the same for Neverwinter. I never start them in the same entrance/room and change little things here and there, but it really helps from a DMing perspective--if the players go into the sewers and have an encounter for any reason, I have a map ready for them. I also have stock "Blacklake District Alley" and "Protector's Enclave street" maps for any surface level encounters that pop up.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:36
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Lurdiak posted:I'm just curious why your players are constantly going into the sewers. Sewers are city based campaign's most obvious dungeon.  But seriously, their first adventure was clearing out a nest of kobolds led by a white dragon (I know, I know, the most cliched 4E adventure possible, but new players should get to beat up a dragon in their first adventure). Later, their hunt for the leader of a Cyricist cult led them on a chase through the sewers. And most recently, they tracked a group of wererats to their lair in, you guessed it, the sewers. A lot of hooks in the Neverwinter campaign book involve the city's sewers.
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Feb 13, 2014 00:35
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Maxwell Lord posted:And THIS is why every video game has a sewer level. It's all a rich tapestry. I grew up in NYC with all its attendant sewer-based urban legends, so the whole thing has always seemed quite natural to me. Of course the villains' lairs are accessed via the sewer. In Eberron, you may add abandoned lightning rail tunnels to the mix.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:57
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SeraphSlaughter posted:One of my players for a campaign I'm just starting expressed interest in bringing some lycanthropy traits into his character. I want to encourage it since he's building up a lot of backstory for it, but I don't want him to have more abilities right out of the gate than other players. Does anyone have any resources/homebrew stuff/advice for handling something like this? I was thinking of either reskinning a Shifter as a lycanthrope since it's almost the same thing, and letting his racial ability cover it, but it doesn't seem like quite enough to cover the effects of lycanthropy. I'll probably be categorizing this as a racial feature for him anyway, so if we come up with something homebrew, it'd be replacing whatever other racial abilities he would've had. There are werewolf and wererat backgrounds in Neverwinter.
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Feb 17, 2014 04:04
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I drop one or two PCs out of a party of five per fight that is usually level+1 or 2. That seems reasonable, and it makes for exciting encounters. E: the party has pretty much the default composition: 1 each of controller, defender and leader, and 2 strikers; essentials wizard, fighter, druid, warlock, and a PHB2 barbarian. The warlock goes down the most, with the barbarian and fighter jockeying for second place. PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 06:15
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P.d0t posted:Couple questions: I would prefer the Essentials books. I like the E-druid and prefer the builds for the other classes. I do, however, wish they had warlords, or at least bards.
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Mar 19, 2014 06:31
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P.d0t posted:Warlords + basic attack classes would own. That would own, but mainly I'd like that set to include a leader who wasn't a priest of some sort. As for Warlocks, I think they got the E-treatment because WotC was still interested in expanding the idea of what was "core" D&D. That's why dragonborn got included as well. Also, the E-Warlock is a surprisingly good fighter/mage style character, something that was "core" D&D until 3E.
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Mar 19, 2014 22:01
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Myriad Truths posted:Um, that depends if by 'E-Warlock' you mean Hexblade, which is awesome if totally nonfunctional under the rules, or Binder, which is unplayable garbage. I assume the former, but I just want to remind people that making a non-terrible E-Warlock still took them two tries. I mean hexblade. How is it totally nonfunctional under the rules? I have one in my group; he kicks all sorts of rear end, and we never have had a problem with any of his powers.
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Mar 19, 2014 22:18
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We've never faced any of those problems. Dude gets magic rods and they buff his pact blade that he summons as a minor action. I guess it falls apart when you try to exploit it, but that's hardly "nonfunctional under the rules."
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Mar 19, 2014 22:37
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We haven't faced the feat support problem. We're playing heroic tier Essentials only (well, except for the player who really really wanted to play a PHB2 barbarian), and the hexblade player has been nothing but excited about the kind of damage he does.Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Because nothing says Fun like popping a minion and Rod of Corruptioning a room, then action-pointing Cursegrind and just laaaughing. Also nothing says "crash MapTool" like having a macro for this. Yeah, the warlock in our old campaign that went up into epic levels was a monster with cursegrind and would often clear minions even faster than the wizard.
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Mar 19, 2014 22:48
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The glaring problem with WotC's D&D product line, especially with 4E, is a lack of really great and memorable adventures. I guess the splat book treadmill makes better business sense considering TSR's fate, but WotC's editions haven't left us with a whole lot of memorable collective stories like the TSR editions did.
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Mar 20, 2014 07:30
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thespaceinvader posted:Genuinely, this is what LFR is for. There are some absolute dogs of adventures in there, but there are some really great ones too, and you can reasonably easily make a 1 to 30 campaign with decent adventures using modern monsters. Plus, there's some great set-piece encounters you can steal wholesale for home games. Ahh, okay cool. I've never really looked into the organized play stuff because I have always had a good home group. They really should sell those adventures as modules then.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:22
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thespaceinvader posted:Sell them? That's cool. Thanks. By sell them, I mean in addition to providing them for organized play. I would have happily paid for decent 4E adventures, especially FR ones. Even if I didn't run them, they'd be a nice source of ideas and inspiration. I'm sure there are enough other people like me to have made that worth WotC's effort, and then people like me wouldn't criticize WotC's product line for its lack of decent adventures.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:55
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Gau posted:Either WotC has taken the LFR page down, or the links on that site are broken. It works fine for me.
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Mar 21, 2014 01:31
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Oh my bad. I clicked some of the zip file links and they worked, so I assumed they all worked.
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Mar 21, 2014 02:02
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Cassa posted:Robots sound so much cooler than the campaign I'm running... Speaking off, would love some ideas! I'd let the others get in a short rest. There has to be a period of time in which the orcs leave them alone long enough to catch their breath. Or you can fluff it as them rallying and being ready for their inevitable rescue. A long rest is probably out of the question, but you might allow the sorcerer and rogue have one before they launch the rescue. I think you should let those two regroup and launch the rescue together, mainly because it will make your DM job easier.
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Mar 23, 2014 20:58
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Rexides posted:Sometimes it's just narratively important to give them back their encounter resources as if they had a sort rest. I mean, otherwise it will be either nearly impossible to escape with depleted powers and HP, or you will just have to throw poo poo encounters at them that they can survive without their nice toys. Both options are bad if you ask me. Narratively and gamely important. It's easier to build encounters around parties that have had a short rest, and I think PCs should enter an encounter without a short rest only when they have actively chosen to push forward without any downtime. The DM can certainly provide them with situations where this is an option because of a ticking clock, but this sounds like a situation where there is downtime regardless of player decisions.
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Mar 23, 2014 21:10
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On top of that, one of the captured party members is a cleric, so the party would be denied important healing resources, possibly leading to them getting captured all over again.
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Mar 24, 2014 03:33
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I'm not keen on 4E modules, but Gammaworld is perfect for such a game and comes with some decent and humorous adventures.
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Mar 24, 2014 03:50
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Lurdiak posted:You know this is the 4e thread, right? Gamma World is stripped and refluffed 4E. My suggestion was completely appropriate. Do you have something else to recommend?
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Mar 25, 2014 22:51
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Lurdiak posted:My bad, I'm extremely dumb and got confused with Apocalypse World. Haha. No worries. If you don't yet have GW, get it while you can still find it at reasonable prices. It owns so hard.
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Mar 26, 2014 18:57
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I find it paces out nicely if you run a good variety of adventure types. Sometimes, the party will be fully rested for every fight and other times, they will have to stretch their resources through a tough slog. Dailies work fine in that context.
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Apr 11, 2014 23:02
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rotinaj posted:I am about to begin running a group of people who are really excited to play RPGs and hang out and make dick jokes and roll funny sided dice. I've been playing since 2000, and the group runs the gamut from "This is his first game" to "they started playing with me in 2000, but haven't been so active recently". I was all set to run a 3.5 game, because that's the system I know the best, and started reading the "Gamer Experiences" thread in TradGames here. The consensus seems to be that 3.5 blows goats and Pathfinder and 4th Edition are way better. As has been said, 4E has clearer and stronger rules for encounter and adventure building. It's a lot easier to build a good challenging fight in 4E. 4E also does a better job of balancing the classes across all levels. It really fixes the "linear fighters and quadratic wizards" problem and let's everyone feel like a total bad rear end. 4E's weaknesses can be its lack of non-combat development, the length of its combats, and analysis paralysis from the sheer volume options. Good old roleplaying can address the first. Later monster books (MM3 and beyond) adress the second. And the stripped down Essentials classes and/or experience playing address the third. It may take a little more work to develop a character concept in 4E, but that character is much less likely to be dead weight.
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Apr 19, 2014 23:52
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The Dark Sun monster book and even the Gamma World sets also use the later formulas if those three books aren't enough monsters for you.
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Apr 20, 2014 02:53
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Gort posted:Thing is, though, if players have novaed all their surges and power away in the first fight or two, it's logical that they'd want to rest and get them back. At that point you can either: Why do they have to die with 1? Why not let them run away and return to a repopulated dungeon or have them get captured and have to escape the repopulated dungeon? Either way, your campaign can continue, and your players will have learned the risks with blowing all their powers. There are tons of contexts you can create in which the players know beforehand that they won't be able to go one room at a time, nova-ing and resting. And you can always communicate with your players: "You sure you want to blow all your powers in the very first fight? There's a lot more dungeon to explore." It all comes down to adventure design. 4E is designed around 3-5 encounters, then a rest, so design the majority of your adventures with that in mind. Not every adventure needs follow that format. But when you break from it, consider how your players behave and create encounters accordingly. If you have an adventure where the players can rest after every fight, make the fights tougher. And don't worry too much if the players just blow through an encounter from time to time. They're the heroes. They're allowed to be frikking awesome.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:32
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Yeah, honestly the "five minute adventure day" problem is one of the oldest and most widely addressed adventure and encounter design challenge in D&D. Keep on the Borderlands addresses it for Pete's sakes. And 4E does a ton to mitigate it already with encounter powers and surges. You shouldn't rewrite the rules around it. You should just communicate with your players and write adventures address it in a variety of ways. Advise and warn your new players. Let them learn the risks of nova-ing the first room of a 5 encounter dungeon they can't just run away from. Let them learn the joys of nova-ing the horde of goblins attacking the town. Let them learn the joys of hording their dailies through a tough dungeon, so they can nova the boss. I've never understood the dislike for daily resources in 4E. They are tougher to design around than encounter resources, sure, forcing you to think more holistically about how your encounters link together, but that strikes me as just a natural part of designing adventures. They can be swingy because of the whole nova thing, but that's by player agency, not randomness, so I don't really see it as a problem. I think they add up to a dynamic resource management subgame that can be played by both the players and DM (through adventure design) to make different adventures play and "feel" different. E: Gort, the difference here is that 4E is actually a pretty solid game. But it might not be the game for you and your group. People have suggested a pair of really good games that do what you want to do with 4E. PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 21:12
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Gort posted:It is entirely the game for my group, we've played forty levels of it already. That's why I'm somewhat wise to its flaws and would like to address them with some house rules. Right on, man. Like I said, I don't see the daily resource management as a flaw, but to each their own. I totally agree about feats. I haven't ever been satisfied by house-ruling them out because so much of the little incidental character defining stuff like proficiencies and skills are tied up in them. The only satisfactory solution seems to be limiting them in some way, but I've never implemented any hard and fast house rules doing that. I've just nudged my players away from making some poor choices here and there.
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Jun 29, 2014 23:13
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Gort posted:I guess limiting the number of feats would require you to do a crapload of work writing out an entire new set of feats. My bad. I chose my words poorly. I didn't mean limiting the number of feats (though that's another option), I meant shortening the list of feats, getting rid of the poor choices and tightening up what is available. One option is to maybe decouple feats from class progression. Give everybody the math feats for free and then give out others as RP rewards.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:48
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Gort posted:I found that character creation was not short enough to encourage disposable characters. Base your expectations on players sticking with one character throughout, don't try to kill anyone. 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.
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Sep 25, 2014 18:25
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homullus posted:RIP The Black Pauldron, haunted sentient suit of armor. That's an awesome character. One of my buddies played a suit of armor animated by sentient mold.
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Sep 25, 2014 19:31
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Rexides posted:Even so, it kinda sucks to have to play a character that you didn't build yourself. I want to cast Fist, dammnit, I didn't build Muscle Wizard just so I can only play him every other turn This is why you make them like Baldur's Gate companions and provide a multitude of different ones for the PCs to bring along and kick to the curb as they desire. We did it that way in our 3 PC Dark Sun campaign and everyone loved it. They had 2 companion slots to fill and they got to choose who filled them, and new characters to fill those slots appeared with regularity. They played the companions in combat and otherwise, I ran them as NPC followers.
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Oct 8, 2014 20:19
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