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My Lovely Horse posted:I think you're thinking of Lair Assaults, huge superencounters with the XP budget of 3-4 regular encounters. Far as I recall they were intended for experienced players. Yeah, probably this. I started 4e with D&D Encounters, and those are definitely for newer players, usually just a brief bit of role play and a fight that wasn't all that hard. Back in the day, we definitely struggled more with those Lair Assaults than regular Encounters session.
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Jun 20, 2021 16:15
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Surprise T Rex posted:I think I'll run a published one-shot this time though - I saw the D&D Encounters stuff being recommended earlier, is that a good starting point? Bear in mind my total experience is of DM'ing one session of 4e. I started 4e with Encounters, and most of them were basically 10-20 minutes of RP followed by one encounter for the rest of the session. Decent for learning the system, but not something to build a campaign out of or anything. Though there is one exception: Season 11: The War of Everlasting Darkness. That one was actually designed to feel like a campaign on fast forward. You leveled up every new chapter, and rather than one big fight most sessions, it would instead spread out several smaller ones that basically amounted to one (for the sake of this working, you only got a short rest at the end of every session, and a long rest every 2). And it had interesting setpieces like a session where you have to convince the king of the orcs to side with you, and if you fail, one of you has to go into the arena alone and fight a monster, but the others can help cheat if they want. It also had the players level up after every session, so they actually got to experience higher end powers. It's the one Encounters season I was involved in that I might still recommend today. Could be used to explore the system a bit, or you could rework it a bit into a full campaign with regular fights and all that. As for other adventures I've run, I rather like Reavers of Harkenwold. It's a somewhat non-linear adventure where a bunch of lovely mercinaries have taken over a small valley and are ruling over them like a bunch of lovely fascists. The players' job is to solve local problems, get everyone together, and mount a rebellion. I'm currently running a modified version of it (doing a campaign in Droaam, the country of monsters in Eberron where the idea is that they're monsters mostly fighting lovely humans, so this fit right in), and everyone seems to be having a really good time with it. It starts with players at level 2 and brings them up to 4, so up to you if you want a separate intro adventure or just have them start at 2. The other I've run is Seekers of the Ashen Crown. Overall, I liked it, but it is a rather linear adventure that made a few odd choices at times. Like it just assumes that when the fantasy CIA asks the players to help them interfere with international politics, they'll be all on board. But it has good fights, fun setpieces, and there are parts of the plot I rather like. If you run this, ignore anything that's like "If your players aren't level x yet, then use some of these following encounters." Just use milestone leveling. Otherwise, it'll get a bit bogged down. This is another that starts at level 2, but if you want to start at 1, there's an adventure in the Eberron Campaign Guide for 4e that you can start with. And thinking about it, that level 1 adventure, while still a bit linear, is a pretty good intro to 4e and to the Eberron setting. However, it's very much designed around Eberron and might be hard to get to work with more traditional settings.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:31
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Can't help you about the schedule, but I honestly feel like the game plays better on a VTT than in person. Like I use this site to make power macros for roll20, and then I just have buttons on the bottom of my screen for all my powers. And of course it's much easier to keep track of all the marks/curses/etc. when you can just add a colored dot to any token. Edit: Also, there are organized play groups for 4e where they run games at all sorts of hours. The main one is The Guild, which you can read about here. I participated briefly when I was still looking for a real 4e group, and it was a decent time, and I'd probably still be doing it if I didn't have any other regular 4e game. Probably your best option to play 4e on a weird schedule if you're willing to learn how to use roll20. Gao fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Dec 5, 2021 |
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Dec 5, 2021 16:36
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So in the campaign I'm running, I decided to try to add in a resource mechanic to a skill challenge to see how that went. The set up was that they're all in the not-Byzantine Empire, and the empress, a pixie, was deposed in a palace coup. The next day, the PCs were contacted about a job. A high ranking court eunuch said he was afraid he was going to be executed and his property confiscated, so he wanted to sneak out some money to his family while he still could. The party agreed, and after they received four small packages, they went off to a cave outside the city to open them up and see what they were actually transporting. They found that one box was full of jewels, another full of land deeds, the third contained a reliquary with the knucklebone of a saint, and the fourth had one deposed empress. Turns out the actual plan was for her to take all of this to a group of Not-Bulgars just outside the borders to bribe them into marching on the empire to put the her back on the throne. The party decided to help her out, but when they got to the queen of the Not-Bulgars, she was immediately unfriendly, so I told them it was time for them to negotiate and presented the players with this:quote:Skill challenge: I feel like it worked out well. The players having to discuss whether they wanted to risk a given roll as is or spend a a resource they knew they couldn't get back seemed to add the right level of tension to the whole negotiation. I was also willing to lower difficulty of a check if they did something particularly clever or interesting (they already knew that about how I run skill challenges in general), such as when the party monk picked up the empress, put her back in the box, and handed her over to the queen, changing the negotiations to be about whether the Not-Bulgars would back the PCs' attempt to get on the throne. In the end, they spent about half their gem and land resources, mostly to cancel out failed rolls, and got themselves a small army.
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Mar 8, 2022 03:51
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In It For The Tank posted:I've convinced my players to give 4e a shot for our new campaign, and I'm looking for resources for breaking down some of idiosyncrasies of each class. They're familiar with 5e, so they have some basline knowledge, but they've asked for a bit more detail about what to expect from each class in play in 4e. The intro paragraphs to the charop guides here generally explain that sort of thing pretty well.
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May 1, 2022 21:49
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MonsieurChoc posted:Been thinking about Eberron lately. I got the two 4e books, how are the adventures? Any good Eberron 4e fanstuff or Dragon magazine articles/adventures? I feel like the level 1 adventure from the Eberron campaign book is a really solid intro to to 4e. I used that to lead into Seekers of the Ashen Crown, which is rather linear and I feel like makes a couple odd assumptions (primarily assuming that when the fantasy CIA asks the players to join, they'll just be like "yeah sure" and loyally go on the mission, though you could solve that by actually reading the book ahead of time before character creation and making sure people are all on the same page), but overall, I liked it. Some solid fights, an interesting plot, and generally flavorful. However, I would recommend just leveling them when the book wants them leveled rather than tracking XP and ignore any optional encounter. Otherwise, you're just adding in filler fights to make a number bigger in a system where fights take a while and work best as important setpieces. Also don't be afraid to drop other encounters if you personally don't find them interesting or they wouldn't fit your pacing. I don't think any of the actually planned out fights are bad, but some are definitely more interesting and important than others.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:26
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Jack B Nimble posted:What are any major mechanical issues that I might want to home rule? On my return to running 4e, one thing I found out very quickly is that it's easy for a player to make a given skill really high. Like to the point where I realized that the level 2 warlock in the party would succeed on at level hard bluff checks on a 1. I ended up house ruling that a nat 1 was always a failure so that there was at least technically a risk. I'd talk to your players about not going too nuts on maxing out skills if you want skill challenges to mean anything.
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Jan 24, 2023 18:01
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