|
I find what makes or breaks the warlock as interesting to play is whether you picked up the Invocation that gives you Silent Image at will. An at will illusionist (preferably with thaumaturgy for sfx to back it up) is more fun than most wizard illusionists. There's always something you can do on any given turn.
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2019 21:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 19:33 |
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:The actual easiest answer is to not try to be overly fancy about it, and just convert crossbows into guns. Hand crossbows are now pistols, non-hand crossbows are now arquebuses or muskets. The other one that works is reskin a warlock with a gun as a focus, Eldritch Blast as shooting, and careful spell selection. Possibly a few tweaks or a new pact to get the spell list nailed. Warlocks work for a lot of things people try to homebrew classes for.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2019 03:27
|
|
|
Tendales posted:The earliest explicit mention of a "class role" that I can remember ever seeing is the Complete Paladin's Handbook from D&D 2nd edition. It talked about kits to pick if you wanted your paladin to be a "tank". Meanwhile the 2e PHB broke the classes down into four groups (Warrior, Wizard, Priest, Rogue). The Rogue classes were Thief and Bard.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2019 21:28
|
|
|
Infinite Karma posted:Do people still have the PCs "meet" in a tavern by coincidence at the beginning of a campaign? That seemed like the starting point of every comedy murderhobo game I played in, but never one meant to have, like, a plot. The version I've used a couple of times is to start the PCs in a tavern, with most of them not actually knowing each other. Then the molotov cocktails come in through the window, followed by a group of raiders/slavers. Everyone who stands up to fight is a PC.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2019 20:49
|
|
|
Epi Lepi posted:Reposting this cause y’all have just been babbling about edition wars poo poo that nobody cares about. The first piece of advice is that this is a level 10 spellcaster for a one shot. The worst thing you can do isn't to have less than the optimal amount of healing. It's to have a character that's too complex for the amount of prep you put in and to spend most of your time faffing around with your character sheet and holding the game up. 1: Building your ability scores is never wrong and is generally absolutely right if you don't already have a 20 in your primary stat unless you are going for a very specific build. The only exception is that if your Wis is an odd number you might want the Observant feat and never get snuck up on again. But only take it if it bumps your Wis up to an even number. (It's difficult to overrate Perception) 2: Remember what I said about keeping it simple. Teleporting as a bonus action is also great - and that's your level 10 Druid of Dreams ability. It also prevents damage, which is always better than healing it. And teleporting is fun. Don't take the Cleric. 3: Cantrips: Guidance, Shileileagh, Create Bonfire (or Firebolt), Shape Water 1st: Entangle, a healing spell (Goodberry, Cure Wounds, or Healing Word - Dreams already has bonus action healing so Healing Word isn't essential and the other two are better out of combat), - and see if you need either detect magic or protection from elements 2: Darkvision and Pass Without Trace are amazing. Lesser Restoration is something someone needs in every party.. 3: Conjure Animals is superb - but a little antisocial unless you prepare properly. Speak to your GM. Call Lightning is a superb combat spell. Someone needs Dispel Magic in the parrty. 4: Polymorph (who wouldn't want to turn into a T-Rex? Or turn an ally into a T-Rex), Stone Shape, Wall of Fire 5: Scrying, Wall of Stone, Greater Restoration are all amazing. Conjure Elemental is great. You don't need to prep Reincarnate as there's the 10 day limit. Wildshape is obsolete for combat (if you must there's the giant toad to swallow people). You want to be able to fly, swim, and stealth with it. Eagles for speed, owls for darkvision, bats for blindsight - and their giant versions are sometimes both faster and more able to take a hit although they are less subtle. Swimming: Octopus, giant octopus, or some sort of fish. Stealth: riding horse, warhorse, rat, cat, dog - or whatever else in the place you are in will get ignored. You're not trying to not be seen, you're trying to have no one care if they do see you (just don't e.g. turn yourself into a rat when there are cats around)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2019 02:56
|
|
|
Glagha posted:I was just thinking about this since my last post actually. Warlock totally could be a subclass of Sorcerer pretty easily but I feel like Warlock does bring something different to the table mechanically even if not flavor wise. They're both casters that get special, natural magical talent through some means, but Warlocks do have a weird mechanical identity tied up in Eldritch Blast which has just been like, their "thing" since 3E for some reason. I dunno why Warlock got saddled with the "shoots magical lasers" thing but hey, there it is. But in game they tend to be a lot more like half-casters like Paladins where they attack like martials and cast fewer spells, which I think is an interesting niche for them, and something that a subclass rather than a full class probably wouldn't cover. It wouldn't have broke my heart if they just added a "dark pact" sorcerous origin instead of Warlock the class but such as it is, I'm glad it exists. The warlock's other mechanical identity is "Spellcaster that doesn't have to worry about tracking spell slots or spell levels". And I'm very glad they added that so people who don't want to track slots (and certainly don't want to metamagic on the fly) can still be casters (and thanks to the celestial warlock can even be healers). Then there's the warlock ability with at-will illusions.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2019 03:51
|
|
|
Guildencrantz posted:Based on my thoughts and some negative experience stories that I read online that made me think "huh, this would never happen in a different system": I couldn't agree more about these points. I'd also say that a good half of the 4e/5e edition war is between people who on the 4e side want D&D to focus on what you describe it doing well and on the 5e side who think that D&D should be a generic "default" RPG in which they want to run anything.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2019 04:24
|
|
|
DJ Dizzy posted:Really, Tome of Battle should be ported to 5th. Change my mind. It hasn't been? Seriously? It's been five years.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2019 20:41
|
|
|
Are there any good and widely accepted versions of either (a) the 4e Warlock or some other really simple blaster mage or (b) third party/homebrew Book of Nine Swords?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2019 01:35
|
|
|
Midig posted:Hey, I wondered if there is any way to make the players go along with something without having them do really meta stuff to completely avoid it. Such as refusing to sleep without armor and such. I ask this because at some point I was thinking of having my PCs join for a feast. They will slowly but surely realize that something is wrong. The problem is I think they will meta that stuff pretty hard I think and I don't entirely blame them. To be blunt, in addition to everything everyone else has said you'd get better results by not playing D&D. Fate for example would just let you throw fate points at them to accept disadvantages and, more importantly has ways of defeating the PCs where they won't die - so PCs do surrender in that situation. But to be honest the question at the feast isn't realising that something is wrong, but working out what is wrong. If there weren't something wrong at the feast you wouldn't be spending so much time on it. My suggestion is to e.g. hire the PCs to prevent an assassination on the guest of honour by an assassin. The PCs are keyed up, with e.g. the Paladin making sure to taste all the food first. The time they let their guard down is when the assassin's body lies at their feet, at which point the ghouls are let in to red wedding the entire banquet as a backup plan.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2019 05:24
|
|
|
Glagha posted:Edit: The point I'm getting at is that D&D mostly cares about the fighty bits because that's the part people care about having a bunch of rules and regulations on, and they keep in thinner everywhere else because putting a bunch of rules on that poo poo is just going to get in people's way most of the time. Story-telling time is the rules-light part, fighty bits is the rules-heavy part. Story wants freeform, fights want tactics and crunch. That depends how skillfully you do it. Dread, thanks to the looming of the dice tower really adds tot he feel of the intensity of the story at the table. Apocalypse World was designed so you'd make a roll when you'd naturally hand over to the other player in freeform RP so it causes minimal disruption while using the rules to enhance the possible outcomes. Further the rules about changing your playbook enhance the story because they encourage actual character growth and change. And Monster Hearts takes this and arguably refines it further. (It's also an example of a genre I wouldn't have much interest in if Monsterhearts weren't such a good game). Farg posted:is there a game system that doesn't have people ignore or gloss over rules they dislike as they run the game more and more? like, is there a ttrpg where the ideal, most fun way to play is following everything completely RAW every time? I don't normally need to hack any of the systems I mentioned above. They do what they do extremely well. But I don't like everything to be the same and have enough of my own Apocalypse World hacks - but those are different enough to be different games.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2019 22:44
|
|
|
Narsham posted:5E is unquestionably independent of setting. Taking it back to the beginning, far from being unquestionably independent of setting there are few systems more setting limited than non-4e D&D. Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP) and even The One Ring I consider more setting-independent than D&D 5e because of how both eclectic and pervasive the magic system is. (And yes, those systems were deliberately chosen because they are tied to specific settings) quote:Is it independent of genre? Not precisely. But you can do horror, high fantasy, low fantasy, and no magic without any actual changes to the system, only restrictions. This applies in exactly the same way you can cut down a large tree with kitchen knives. Sure you can but it's really using the wrong tool for the job and makes you work harder than you otherwise would, to worse effects than you otherwise would. One of the features that makes D&D D&D is how utterly inconsequential the violence is. In most RPGs being hurt actually gets in your way, applying wound penalties. In D&D you are fit as a fiddle on 1hp, taking no penalties to any skill. It's either that, dying, or dead. Meanwhile in most other systems you take progressive wound penalties and healing is a whole lot harder. Thus you need to be a lot more careful with the violence even if you won't get caught. You also have bags of hit points - in canon Geralt of Rivia came closest to dying from a peasant with a pitchfork; never happens even on a crit with a mid level fighter. As for "no magic" and D&D, if we ignore 4e roughly 40% of any PHB is spells, so tear that part out. Then we look at the classes. Fighters are fine - for two subclasses (but not the Eldritch Knight). Rogues are fine - for two subclasses (but not the Arcane Trickster). Barbarians are fine for the Berserker and most of the Totem Warrior. And Monks are fine up to level 12 for the Way of the Open Hand (but forget the other two). And literally every other class is a spellcaster. And then there's the classic question "What is a hit point?" and "where does this level of resilience become supernatural". Four classes, all limited doesn't leave you that much. Then we move on to low fantasy and it gets worse. This is because D&D magic is such an extraordinarily specific thing. Let's try using one of the classic D&D settings - Dark Sun. Here you're fighting tooth and nail against D&D's model of prepared, risk free magic because the writers who made it wanted magic to drain the land around you and be something that tempts the wielders (a temptation that gets bigger the riskier the situation). AD&D 2e handles this badly despite being a 2e setting (by creating extra wizard classes for defilers and preservers), whereas 4e is much more elegant. 5e has nothing. Or let's try Jack Vance's dying earth where elite mages have maybe half a dozen spells - and that's literally the system that the D&D magic system is named after. Or Tolkein's Middle Earth (Lord of the Rings) - in which Gandalf himself was only a fifth level magic user (or more accurately D&D is simply a bad fit). Or Terry Pratchett's witches with headology and wizards avoiding attracting the Dungeon Dimensions. Or the Warhammer Fantasy risk/reward magic system. And then there are cases where you want magic to be rituals rather than combat magic that can be thrown out in six seconds. Or in short spell slots and levels with risk-free predefined spells are detailed enough that for most fantasy, high and low, you have to not just throw out the 40% of the PHB that is spells, the eight out of twelve classes that are based round spellcasting, and the three or four remaining subclasses that are casters (the shadow monk is not no magic but works as a fantasy ninja so you can probably leave it) but re-write most of them heavily And then we come to horror. Remember that I mentioned inconsequential wounds earlier? This is a problem for horror. If wounds are consequential the monsters become a lot scarier than if there are basically two states: alive and dead. All you lose is this number and the GM probably doesn't want to kill you. Other than that there are few consequences (and nothing like level drain/energy drain in the system or Call of Cthulhu's sanity system). And the risk free magic again doesn't fit with horror. Also the D&D equipment system is ... unusual for a horror setting other than as a change of pace. There is no part of the D&D ruleset that actively supports horror and a number, as I've mentioned that get in the way. And when you have to tear out the magic system and either scrap seriously overhaul at least eight out of twelve classes, and then fight against the hit point and combat systems what's left? 5E D&D's amazing skill system? quote:You’d have to rework the class system to do anything else with it, but that is extremely easy compared to some systems (Exalted, Shadowrun) though not as easy as a built-in like BRPG or FATE. From my memories of Shadowrun I'd argue that. Although Exalted is one of the very few systems I'd agree with you for. But it's a pretty extremely locked system. quote:I am guessing that we also have sharply different definitions of “system.” Or possibly independent.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2020 03:44
|
|
|
The Mash posted:Can someone help me with the setup of a Sorcerer/Paladin multiclass character? I am thinking of rerolling as an excellent ingame avenue for it has opened up, and I am feeling a bit uninspired playing Barbarian. Here's the details: Stepping in here, the big thing that makes a sorcererdin with the war caster feat a viable tank multiclass is the shield spell. Between plate armour, a shield, and the shield spell you can hit AC 26 at a whim - or 27 if you used the defense fighting style (which you probably want to do). That's pretty tanky to start with. The second thing is if you are a tank build the hit points from the paladin are going to help. Seriously help. And there's a huge break point for paladins at level 5 - at level 5 all melee types get two attacks in an attack action, and this is huge (essentially equivalent to dropping a L1 spell on a divine smite every single attack). You also want to end up with an even number of levels for your paladin. L5 Paladin to be raised to 6 is therefore a solid option and 1 or 2 levels of sorcerer. The other choice is L2 Paladin (so you only drop one rather than three levels of spellcasting) but this is more of an off-tank build with a much lower baseline rather than being able to maul things in melee most rounds.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2020 14:52
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah. Going to disagree with you here. The best overall Monk subclass is the Shadow Monk because you're taking what monks are supposed to be good at - mobile striker and control - and making it extra mobile. If you're going for pure striker and fighting in the front line Open Hand does more damage - but nothing has more impact than a 60ft bonus action teleport (shadow step is awesome), stunning fisting the enemy wizard in the back of the head, and having them fail a constitution save because constitution is not their best save. And Pass Without Trace is one of the best spells in the game while darkvision, darkness, and silence are all useful. quote:Kensei the main advantage is you're doubling or tripling the potential pool of useful magic items you could find, just because there are relatively few useful Monk items period, and the list of magic swords with +0 bonuses but neat effects like flametongue or dancing or defender (technically, +0/+0 when its bonus is used for AC!) is actually fairly long. I'd probably put that AC boost as the primary bonus for about the first ten levels or so - +2AC in melee is pretty significant.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2020 23:37
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Why do so many dm's feel the need to crap on rests? I don't get why it seems to be a thing. Let folks spam their cool poo poo. There's a reason Deadfire moved away from "Rests" to just a per-encounter system. D&D 5e is officially balanced round 6-7 combats in a day. This just about works in a dungeon, but is utterly ridiculous for a hexcrawl where you are expected to spend about a day exploring a hex and not devastate the entire local ecosystem in the process. If you don't want the wizards to go into almost every fight fully loaded and alpha striking while making the martial characters nigh on useless by comparison the obvious way is to monkey around with the resting system.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2020 23:56
|
|
|
Infinite Karma posted:Having actually played back D&D in 1E, BECMI and 2E, I truly cannot understand promoting those badly designed games as anything besides a retro-nostalgia curiosity. 3E, 4E, and 5E are all immensely better games even with their flaws. The mechanics are mostly garbage and are completely unintuitive (and have almost no guidelines or adjustments for difficulty, it's 100% based on your character sheet no matter what you're up against). Character creation is simple and linear, but actually playing the game is very complicated and balance is nonexistent (as in not even attempted by the designers). As far as I can tell almost no one ever played AD&D 1e - it was E. Gary Gygax' shameless cash grab to screw Dave Arneson out of royalties. What almost everyone who claims to still be playing 1e I've ever spoken to for a long time has admitted when pushed is that they actually play B/X using the 1e PHB and DMG as a source of house rules while ignoring 90% of it as not actually adding to the game. And B/X is a surprisingly balanced game along the axis it was meant to be played - Gygaxian D&D might (along the axes intended) be the most balanced games in roleplaying history. That's because the players of really old school D&D were hardcore wargamers trying to break that thing. Half the stuff that seems weird (like the weapon proficiency rules meaning clerics couldn't use swords or it actually being written into the rules that NPC wizards simply would not share spells) were balance tweaks, although Rob Kuntz/Robilar managed to be skilled enough at playing to skew the game so the fighter was a little weak. But if you aren't playing with things like 1XP for 1GP and hirelings for the first few levels (a low level mage is the radio operator in Fantasy loving Vietnam, normally organising people but occasionally able to call in airstrikes or the equivalent). Oh, and spells and magic items alike are almost entirely treasure either randomly generated or handed out by the DM. And if you're not doing that it's about as balanced as 4e is for a game of political intrigue. It's a bit of a mess because it grew but a lot of the things that look random have similar functions to flying buttresses. And of course very little of what was needed was written down rather than passed on through word of mouth. 2e I have no way to defend other than to say it wasn't much worse than a lot of popular 90s games, many of which were produced by a company that didn't even know the math in their system worked and outright called the GM the Storyteller, implying that the story was the GM's responsibility and the PCs were along for the ride. But I absolutely can't see a good reason to play 2e now other than that your entire group has been playing it for quarter of a century and it's familiar to everyone at the table.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2020 02:04
|
|
|
Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Yeah, 5E is popular for reasons completely independent of WotC/Mearls' design choices. However, WotC doen't understand this for the most part and will continue to ride 5E into the ground until the last second The key to understanding 5e is that they weren't trying to make it good - they were trying to make it not bad. It's not trying to be a Michelin starred meal equivalent - it's trying to be the happy meal of RPGs with as little as possible that anyone objects to strongly that's not as core to D&D as possible. It does a surprisingly good job of being mediocre.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2020 00:28
|
|
|
a fatguy baldspot posted:What was so much better about the 4e fighter? (I’m reading this thread backwards, lots of good info here) What wasn't? The 4e fighter has the identity "The guy so dangerous the enemy doesn't dare give even a fraction of an opportunity to or they're gonna get eviscerated." Possibly the barbarian hits harder. Possibly the ranger hits faster. Possibly the rogue hits with more precision. But the fighter is the playmaker, the one the enemy must spend their time responding to because if the fighter's target(s) take their eyes off the fighter for a fraction of a second the fighter is going to see the opportunity and ruthlessly take advantage. You can just about get a watered down version of the 4e fighter by taking the battlemaster option and the sentinel feat. But this reckons without the power system. In 4e your powers allowed you to construct a fighter's fighting style. You started off with two at will attack powers. For a wizard or cleric these wouldn't be that interesting - you'd probably take a combination that gave you a melee and a ranged attack (firebolt and shocking grasp or magic stone and shileigleigh would be the 5e equivalent combos). But for a martial character these foundational moves were part of your character. A PHB fighter might pick Tide of Iron, which would (if you were using sword and shield) allow you to push your foe and follow up, they might pick Reaping Strike which makes you forceful enough that even if your opponent blocks they take a little damage, they might pick Sure Strike which is a little more accurate but a little less damaging, or they might pick Cleave which means if they hit a target they also do a little damage to the neighbour. Two of those as your foundation tells you a lot about your character - and then there were far more outside the PHB. Then there were your signature moves - your encounter powers. These are what the Battlemaster dice is an equivalent to - but unlike the battlemaster they scale. A Battlemaster gets their best two maneuvers at level three, a 4e fighter keeps scaling with them, getting one each at levels 1, 3, and 7 each from a hopefully stronger list than the last - and then getting to upgrade them at higher level. But what they do that the battlemaster attacks really don't is that as well as simple strikes their ability to go above and beyond includes options both for movement, and for taking on multiple foes at once. You only get to pick one at each level (again you're creating a personal fighting style here) but rather than just doing extra damage or smashing someone to the ground there are options to attack all foes adjacent to you, or to hit one foe, slip past them, and attack a second. These do more total damage but spread it around so the focus fire isn't as good - or they enable you to move, possibly getting into the back line. Then there's the level 7 encounter power Come And Get It. Which is that awesome moment when our hero challenges all the enemies in 15 feet, they rush our hero and the hero attacks all of them who are coming in - and ends up surrounded with all of them mauled. No non-4e fighter can be that awesome. Then there are daily powers which are what you do when the chips are down but can only do once per long rest. It's just a whole lot more fleshed out and in character creation you create a fighting style complete with how your fighter moves. Oh, and has the equivalent of the Sentinel feat plus a few other things.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2020 20:58
|
|
|
change my name posted:They said it was boring and samey 4e had a number of issues at launch, mostly because it was released about six months early (they were given two years for development and ended up going right back to the drawing board about 10 months in). This mean that there were a number of genuine issues with it at launch, and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Essentially with 4e Wizards of the Coast shipped a buggy beta in 2008 - and many people who disliked it disliked it for those bugs that were patched out over the next two years; 4e fans really like the patched version but it isn't quite the same game. Also a lot of the biggest and loudest fans of 3.5 liked a toxic playstyle (the optimized 3.5 wizard, prepared for everything and that laughs at any notion of game balance) and because they couldn't do this and had to be on the same level as everyone else they found it didn't give them the boost they wanted and considered this samey.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2020 03:27
|
|
|
Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Thanks for the 4e chat. For some reason I have the impression that to play 4e you really need some online tool that doesn’t exist anymore? And the rule books as originally published got so errata’d that they aren’t really useful to play with? What books should I be looking for if I wanted to play the ‘final’ version of 4e? (Or is there a 4e thread where I should take this?) 4e pretty much requires an electronic character builder. In 2008 Wizards of the Coast produced an offline character builder which did its job. In 2010 they replaced it with an online character builder in Microsoft Silverlight (we guess developers were cheap) and that you lost access to when you cancelled your D&D Insider subscription. This is the online tool that has recently been cancelled. However the old offline tool was opened up and kept up to date and does everything the online tool did and more than a few it never did. The main downside of the character builder is that there are far too many feats; 4e by the end of its run (and it's all in the 4e character builder) literally had more official feats published for it than 3.5 did and they are all in the character builder. Of course the character builder probably counts as Files. As for which books, the Monster Vault is, athough relatively short and heroic tier focused, IME far the best basic monster manual to exist in any edition of D&D. What it does that monster manuals in no other edition really do is presents multiple types of monster of different types and with it implicit organisation. Your basic kobold isn't the kobold slinger - it's the kobold tunneler who ... probably shouldn't be in combat and will be killed by any PC in one hit. Kobold slingers, quickblades, and dragonshields are all veteran types and all show what the kobolds focus on. For an example of casters, for example, the Goblin Hex Hurler uses nasty spiteful spells like blinding hex, stinging hex, and vexing cloud that are entirely different from those of the orc storm shaman's lightning strike and vengeful whirlwind. This both makes the races presented much more interesting, and having a mix of NPC types makes the combats inherently much more interesting with both more variety and more tactics on the table. That it's almost effortless to use because they put the heavy lifting of encounter balancing and how hard to make monsters onto the XP track rather than onto any CR rating makes it a joy to use. There are three other late 4e monster manuals that are probably better than anything any other edition has: Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is a great sourcebook for a poorly explored post-apocalyptic either Mad Max or Keep on the Borderlands style setting, complete with both e.g. bandit organisations and local weirdness. The Dark Sun Creature Catalog is full of Dark Sun monsters, and the Monster Manual 3 is full of really interesting monsters that weren't important enough to go in the MM1 or MM2 (Monster Vault is a reboot of the MM1). The only downside is that the guidance is clear enough that a lot of 4e DMs, after learning good 4e monster design, use the Monster Manual 3 on a business card and create what they need on the fly. Because 4e characters (monster and PC alike) have a lot of forced movement, pushing each other around, it makes the backgrounds feel real and leaves large setpieces in other D&Ds feel as if they are acted against a green screen; if you have a fight on a bridge in 4e at the very least someone is going to be hanging on to the bridge by their fingertips. This means that a 4e DM can on the fly come up with a scenario that's more alive and interesting than the best setpieces in any other edition, which frequently end up looking as if the characters are fighting against a green screen. For other books, the players need a book to go with the character builder - I'd recommend Heroes of the Fallen Lands which contains almost fully errata'd rules and some classes (including the simple fighter that was missing from 4e at launch) - but in practice using the character builder. For DMs it's probably the Rules Compendium which isn't the most inspiring but has everything errata'd in one pocket sized volume. The harder part is published adventures; the other really big problem 4e had at launch is that Keep on the Shadowfell may just be the worst adventure ever written for any D&D. The opening couple of sessions are fine - but once you reach the keep itself it's 17 straight fights in more or less featureless rooms without much to do between them. 4e combat is slightly slow - but if you put it all in small almost featureless rooms it's going to be slow and boring.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2020 18:41
|
|
|
Azza Bamboo posted:I wasn't a huge fan of 4e. I still had a lot of fun but I felt like the combat may as well have been from a video game with how regimented everything was. Also I got in pretty early on 4e and the games we played, combat went on for hours becase (as others have mentioned) things were just big sacks of HP and often given ways to heal. The irony here is that 4e actually provides tools to be creative with the environment you are given in ways that other editions of D&D simply don't. If you are fighting at night with the camp fire then the optimal thing to do in damage terms is work out how to simultaneously beat the monsters down and push them into the camp fire. In just about any other edition you have exceptionally limited ways of doing this without giving up your attack in favour of something like a Bull Rush (in which case that camp fire had better do more damage than a direct hit or it really isn't worth it). Likewise if you're fighting the bad guys on the top floor of an inn then in 4e part of the fun is pushing them down the stairs if they start within 10ft of the stairs - and you can do this because you've abilities like Tide of Iron that don't force you to give up your attacks to knock them down the stairs. This means that whereas combat in every other edition the way of finding "I do the thing that's mathematically best to do" in other editions of D&D is using your main attack or picking the right spell for the enemies in 4e "the thing that's mathematically the best to do" is to look at the map, to look at the scenery, and to find how to exploit that - something which should be different almost every fight because your environment is different almost every fight. Veteran players will of course realise you don't always need damage or even throwing the enemy into something unpleasant (throwing a raider off the docks into the harbour won't actually do damage - but it's going to be a problem for the raider). With several PCs almost always throwing out AoEs teamwork means your best choice at some point might be just to force that NPC a square back and to the left because that will put them in a perfect position for the wizard's AoE - but again this is situational and depends on where exactly the NPCs and the terrain are. It's very clear that WotC did not realise what makes 4e combat varied and interesting at launch; Keep of the Shadowfell has a grand total of three out of about eighteen combats where the terrain is actively harmful (and that assumes you can throw the summoner into their own circle) and otherwise it's almost all either impassable or open. There's one other thing that makes 4e combat much more interesting than any other edition, and that's the risk/reward choices it invites. If, as a fighter, you have an attack that attacks all enemies around you how hard do you work to hit as many foes as possible if you expect many of them to survive; the more you hit the more damage you do but the more risk you take. This is a choice as far as I'm aware no 5e fighter or AD&D fighter can make. A 3.X fighter was given this choice after spending five feats (dodge, mobility, spring attack, expertise, whirlwind attack) so it becomes their big signature thing. Meanwhile in 4e it's a simple third level encounter power(Sweeping Blow) so a lot of fighter ask this sort of question. Also there's the "Provoke tactics" built into 4e; the basic idea is "if the fighter gets a free swing on their target if their target takes their eyes off them to attack someone else then if as a rogue is it a good idea to moon the fighter's target so he swings at me meaning the fighter gets a free swing on him?" Deliberately giving the enemy free extra attacks is always a risk that you have to judge based on the situation on the ground. Again this sort of risk/reward just didn't happen in earlier editions - and also wasn't something the 4e writers actively suggested. As for "I pull their trousers down so they trip", to quote some very old advice from GURPS "if sand in the eyes worked every time fighters would give up carrying swords and start carrying around bags of sand". Ferrinus posted:Objection! These were actually both in. (And if you say they weren't, the Slayer didn't count as one either, because it got encounter powers) For both the fighter and the wizard you could take generic "just deals XdY damage, maybe with miss: half or reliable" attacks at, as far as I can recall, every single new encounter power/new daily power level. You did have to decide whether you wanted to hit the enemy with your full strength or whether you wanted to hold back on a given turn, but that's not actually a decision anyone gets to opt out of, even in earlier editions of D&D once you got limited-use magic items or similar. That depends on whether you mean they were in conceptually (in which case yes they were) or whether they were in practically. You can't just say "I hit him" with pre-Slayer 4e martial characters - instead you start out with four different ways of hitting someone at first level (two at wills, an encounter, and a daily). If you just want to hit someone this is a high and annoying overhead that the slayer just doesn't have, especially as the way their options were split out meant that at any time they were only making a simple choice (leaving in stance, deciding who to hit, then deciding whether to do extra damage). I've seen switching over to a scout completely revolutionise how fluidly someone was playing and how much fun they were having - just because they could stay in a single stance and only have to decide who to attack.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2020 21:41
|
|
|
Splicer posted:It's extremely easy to build a PHB1 only Fighter that's just "Run up to a guy and hit them until they fall down". Grab a two handed weapon and take all the powers with high damage and no effects. Run up to a guy, hit him until he dies, then pick a new guy. The only complexity would be saying "I hit this guy extra hard" and then ticking off an encounter power, and if the guy tries to run away then you get to hit him for wincing. You can also play a PHB1 no-brainer Ranger, take Two Weapon Fighting and all the "Hit a guy twice" powers, run up to a guy and hit them twice until they die. Remember to say "He's my Quarry" beforehand. Again (we cross-posted) you can play the thing conceptually - but mechanically there is a significant difference in the complexity of the elementalist sorcerer and the war wizard. Mechanically the elementalist has a grand total of two attack spells, both cantrips (and gets their third at ninth level). The first we're going to call Super-Firebolt. It's basically a firebolt if firebolt did as much damage as a raging barbarian with a greataxe. Simple and effective. The second we're going to call mini-fireball. Targets everyone in a 15 foot diameter (so nine squares) and does only slightly less damage than the super-firebolt. (If these numbers seem high remember we're dealing with a pure glass cannon here - the elementalist can take a hit about as well as a wizard). Super-firebolt and mini-fireball are the only attack spells the elementalist gets. We also can enhance them (1/short rest at L1, 2 at L3, and 3 at L7). An enhanced version does an extra 1d10 damage and hits an extra target; for a mini-fireball it has to be a target next to the mini-fireball while a super-firebolt gets an extra target within 25 feet of the main one. That is all the attack spells a level 8 elementalist gets. They also get two utility spells and fire resistance. In my experience just about everyone can remember "Firebolt or fireball" and "Boost?" It really is simple. Even when you add a third spell at level 9 (the other fire option tries to burninate everyone around you for getting too close) it's easy. Meanwhile by comparison a level 8 war wizard focussed on burnination is likely to have two combat cantrips (one being a weaker mini-fireball, and the other probably being thunderwave), as short rest attacks Burning Hands at L1, Fire Shroud (a 15 foot radius enemies only attack centered on the wizard) at L3, and Fire Burst (an almost-fireball) at L7 - and as 1/day combat spells Flaming Sphere and the full sized Fireball. This is, I agree, not a complex loadout - but it's not an especially simple one that most people can use while barely thinking about things either.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2020 23:07
|
|
|
Azza Bamboo posted:There's nothing specific you can do in 5th that you couldn't do in 4th, but 4th nails more things to the floor and that makes it harder to move them. So of course you're going to say "name something specific you can do in 5th that you can't do in 4th" instead of understanding that I'm talking about creating incentives for nonspecific novel actions. You could do something novel in 4th, but there's no incentive to, and 5th came close to doing that with the ways it envisioned advantage/disadvantage and skill checks in its early days before it came out with class abilities. 4e is literally the only edition of D&D that gives incentives for novel actions. It does it by having guidance for improvised actions (DMG p42) and it does it by providing XP rewards for PC plans (via the skill challenge mechanics). And advantage/disadvantage is no different from the DM's best friend being +/-2 as outlined in the 4e DMG other than that 4e lets you stack bonuses. As someone who's DM'd both 4e and 5e extensively those round things in the floor you're looking at? They aren't nails - they are lego studs that enable you to attach things much more easily. What you are looking for is a game that doesn't start the players off with a 320 page player-facing manual, and the GM off with another separate DM facing manual that's about the same size. Instead you're looking for something more like Fate, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, or possibly even classic Fudge (just to name a few relatively major indie games).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 02:08
|
|
|
Azza Bamboo posted:What I've found from Pathfinder onward is that the play style I'm describing is generally how people start out on DnD until a bad GM has crushed their dreams by saying various disguised forms of "no" until they eventually just hold dogmatically to the actions they have specific rules for. Playing in that game is so boring. Having a chandelier that's designed to be swung from is a plaster over the issue Imo. When we played the DnD Next playtest we handed out Advantage/Disadvantage like candy and it got nuts what people were thinking of to try and turn the tides in their favour. We had people divebombing off balconies and putting low obstacles down to create difficult terrain and where it exceeded previous editions is that this incarnation of the advantage rules made it a useful thing to do. Admittedly this was also around the time where Pirates of the Carribean was hot in everyone's minds so that may have had an influence. The trouble with this is that swinging from the chandelier is a genre trope. In the real world it is the sort of thing that would get you stabbed for moving in a straight line for a second with one of your arms over your head. This doesn't make introducing genre tropes into your game a bad thing. At all. But the question about putting them in the core rules is whether they fit the genre of the game you're introducing it to. When some of your main characters are supposed to be wearing heavy armour and carrying swords and shields they don't have the free hands to grab the chandeliers. So either you can tell the sword and board fighters and clerics in the core rules "no, you suck" or you don't put chandelier swinging in the default core rules. Divebombing is again a genre trope especially when the other guys are carrying spears. Of course I've done divebombing in 4e. Repeatedly in multiple games. And got advantages out of it. But this was because I'd designed my rogue (in one game) and my monk (in the other) with that sort of play in mind. Divebombing with a sword and board fighter or cleric in plate armour is something you only do from ambush. I've never either done or seen divebombing in 5e although might if I play another monk. On the other hand what you want to do is perfectly in line with Feng Shui 2. This would appear to be a problem of you not wanting the same thing D&D offers. Azza Bamboo posted:Which are never as useful as just keeping to your action cards, unless there's an acid vat that is specifically designed to be. For some value of "never" that involves either your DM not following the rules or you not trying hard. Your basic attacks are normally better than the standard repeatable damage expressions - it's normally better to stab someone than to come up with something creative. But if you come up with something actively creative there's the limited damage expressions - which are (barring DMG damage scaling badly) intended to do more damage than at will attacks. Also there are plenty of times when a minor action can help - and if that would help then you can do it on top of actively using something designed to do damage that you train with to do damage. So no. Your problem isn't with the rules of 4e. It's with a DM not using the 4e rules, and with you expecting improv actions to be tuned more strongly than they are. I've seen plenty of improvised actions in 4e and made more than my fair share - and treated them rules as written. The advantage of 4e having such good guidance for damage is that as a DM you can just put things down without having them specifically designed with player actions in mind; the rules will catch you when the players come up with something. quote:We milestone. The guys never liked keeping track of another arbitrary number. In short 4e literally incentivises what you want. You just don't like it because your house rules get in the way. Which is fair enough at one level but at another doesn't mean the game doesn't do exactly what you want. quote:We've been doing this since 3.5, and the GM has always been encouraged to set DCs according to a difficulty chart, but 5e's balance seems to make advantage much more significant. Advantage is worth about +4 not +2 and doesn't stack. Fair enough. But it's also a very simple fix. quote:Which brings us onto the other reason why advantage owns. You don't have to bring an abacus for each attack. 5e doesn't remove that problem entirely, and 3.5 was by far the worst offender for this, but I hate the conversations of "where's that +2 coming from ?" and "wait don't you get +1 to that because I activated my aura of dfapduojhzsdlkjvasdeaaaargh And this is the big advantage of advantage.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 03:08
|
|
|
Azza Bamboo posted:Creating some kind of codified rule specifically for swinging from the ceiling would suck, yes. I've been banging that drum since I started saying "chandeliers specifically designed to swing from" but what was being discussed is some way of rewarding unusual novel plays agnostic of what that play specifically is. I'm not frightened of the fact that you're going to have to make a judgment call on whether everyone can do what someone has done before, or whether you just try to say "let's be reasonable here" and then seek out opportunities for the cleric in heavy armor to do something the rogue couldn't do. Like, say, crush someone's foot or barge through a plaster wall. There are three different types of play here - and they need different types of rule.
The help/hinder play is the one you're thinking of - where 5e offers advantage as a more visceral outcome than the +/-2 of the previous editions. Possibly 5e does do that best. (When it comes to the target range 4e has a similar one to 5e because everything scales in 4e and nothing does in 5e) But almost all forms of D&D do this. When it comes to the damage play 4e is the only one to do this. You might want it to be higher - but IME from both sides of the table as long as you're triggering and using the limited damage expressions it's more than fine. If you aren't ... what are you doing? 4e wins. If you're using something unlimited ... what's this thing that's not limited but is somehow better than using actual combat weapons? (Crushing someone's foot isn't it). As for the positional play 5e is the worst. This is the play where your object isn't specifically to hurt someone but to get in among their back line and punk either the spellcasters or the archers. In 3.5 and 4e casting non-close combat spells provoked attacks of opportunity; spellcasters hated being mugged. 5e spellcasters don't care because their penalty is disadvantage on attack rolls ... so they just break out the spells that require saving throws. Meanwhile archers in 3.5 switch from bows (where they make attack rolls with Dex) to something like a shortsword where they make attack rolls with Str (and so lose the ability to hit) while archers in 4e tend to lose their high damage expression (+25% baseline damage) for a low one (-25% damage), losing 40% of their normal damage. 5e archers? Draw their shortswords which (like their bows) use Dex to hit and damage. Dropping from a longbow to a shortsword keeps your to hit roll the same (Dex + proficiency) and drops your damage from 1d8+dex to 1d6+dex. W00t! (Does this make it completely pointless? No - the back line normally has a lower AC. But it makes it the least pointful). So if we use the chandelier example the reason to swing on a chandelier is likely to be not to attack someone with a sword ready and waiting, but to get at the archers that are trying to shoot you. It's least valuable in 5e.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 04:21
|
|
|
Azza Bamboo posted:Why is your immediate reaction to a general rule to try and split it into different parts and granularise each part? Not only that, but parts that pertain only to the specifics of an abstraction of combat as opposed to making an attempt at viewing the scenery as a person, or better, a writer of fiction, would? It seems like you're struggling to think outside of this being some kind of wargame, and are then arguing that 4e is better because it provides the wargame goods. You're splitting it apart into "is it a buff, is it a damage boost or does it do interesting things with the battle lines?" Instead of thinking "does it actually encourage people to think of something novel to do?" I'm asking for the game mechanics to encourage people to break out of the "I did it because it's the specific thing written on my character sheet" type thinking and your response is "but 5e doesn't create the roles I expect in my wargames" Why is your immediate response to being fact checked to immediately go on an irrelevant offensive? And why on earth do you think working out "What is this person trying to do with their improvisation?" is somehow the mark of someone who's not understanding the scenery as a person would or a writer would? It is in fact the reverse. "It's an improvised action therefore it should get a set identical generic bonus" is in fact the mark of a lovely author who doesn't give a drat about continuity. Finally why in the name of the little black pig do you think that novelty for novelty's sake is a good thing? Do you have a not so secret desire to play a fishmalk? You claim to have taken part in real life wargames - did you ever try "improvising" by dressing yourself in a bunny suit and waving a sign saying "please shoot me"? Because that would be a novel improvisation - novel in part because it would just get the wearer shot. Or do you not actually believe that? Instead what you want is a game to be just a little more cinematic than it actually is. As for mechanics to encourage people to break out of what is written on their character sheets as has been repeatedly pointed out to you D&D is not the game you want. And as I have pointed out 4e actually has the rules you want - unlike any other edition. D&D is a game which, in any edition, has literally hundreds of defined actions that are defined, all of which take resources. These actions are called spells - and they automatically work. And they also have finicky requirements and fiddly rules. It is also a fiddly enough game that the difference between hitting someone with a sword and an axe actually matters. Do I think it matters or even should matter? No. I think 13th Age and Dungeon World alike did the right thing by making damage dice dependent more on your class than on your weapon. Azza Bamboo posted:Even if the numbers and the pages somehow tick every technical box, 4e failed to make itself feel less regimented in your options. But you're not going to address that because 4e is your lord and saviour and that's fair enough. You can read John chapter 5 page 42 as much as you want, it doesn't change the lived experience, and in the end that's what brings people to church. If you choose to believe it's the GM's fault and that your bride system can't possibly go wrong then go for it. There's a funny thing about that word "feel". Feelings are personal. There's a second thing about that word "feel" - a lot of feelings are based on familiarity. In my personal lived experience 4e is far the best form of D&D to encourage improvising. That yours differs doesn't change the lived experience. The thing is I can point out why. I can also point out why 4e frequently didn't achieve what it should in your experience. The published adventure design was terrible, and I am not exaggerating when I say that Keep on the Shadowfell may have been the worst D&D adventure ever made (at least The Forest Oracle was entertaining). It was also released as a buggy beta. And that you are as ever coming up with strawmen like "the system can't possibly go wrong" then that's your issue. Literally no one has said that. What has been said is that among D&Ds 4e is the best at doing what you claim to want. But there are other games that are better than D&D - D&D after all started out as a hacked tabletop wargame. To repeat. D&D is not the game you claim to want. Of the D&Ds 4e provides the best tools to do what you claim to want. And IME the best way to introduce e.g. Fiasco or a couple of other games to the table (I recommend Crash Pandas; playing racoons trying to win a street car race and Critical Role has a playthrough) is to wait until one player is ill then use them as fill-in one shots.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 15:59
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:A real Fighter and an Essentials Fighter both have two at-wills and a per-encounter to start, but the former also has a Daily. Each is equally capable of mindless "I hit him" play, where they just use their most generically useful at-will over and over again (iirc this would be Reaving Strike for the battlemaster, while the Slayer has to make the opaque choice between +2 hit and +2 damage for some reason). On the other hand, each starts with four ways to hit someone, because the Slayer has to choose between two Stances and then choose whether to Power Strike. You're making a textbook mistake of assuming that someone wanting to say "I hit it" is ever going to switch stances. IME they don't. So no they don't have to make that choice - they make it in character creation. Normally the +1 to hit. They certainly don't have to pick at the moment of the attack. Power Strike is triggered on a hit so you don't decide until you've hit. You make one decision at the moment of attacking - who to attack. quote:I appreciate that the "flowchart" mode works better for some people than the "hand of cards" mode of taking your turn, but A) that's not universally true But it's true for a group of people - which strongly overlaps with those that just want to decide who to hit. This group had in previous editions just played a fighter which worked for AD&D and at low levels worked in 3.X. I don't know how many there were or are but there was one in my main D&D 4e group. quote:and B) you could probably give someone a battlemaster flowchart to follow if they wanted. This didn't work - largely because they would have to look at the flowchart which would take them out of what they were doing. "Who do I hit" is fine. As I say this is not theory, it is based on experience including one of the members of my main D&D 4e group (a group that had been running since 1990 although I was a late joiner). quote:"simple" Essentials classes often made them fiddlier to play than characters who could just pick a single power, fire it off, and follow its instructions top to bottom. That word "often" covers a whole lot of ground. In particular it covers the ground of "characters the players don't want to play". It also is a lot easier to remember something when you are doing it all the time than when you only occasionally do it. "Intricate" isn't the same as "Analysis Paralysis"
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 16:34
|
|
|
FFT posted:I think the 3.X sorcerer had the balance right. Fewer spells known, more slots. That was the pitch - but it really didn't work that way. At every odd numbered level a smart wizard who specialised would blow a sorcerer out of the water simply because they had three spells (one plus one for specialisation plus one for stat) of a higher level than the sorcerer could cast at all and only one spell fewer at the highest level slot the sorcerer could cast (with the sorcerer only knowing two spells at that level). The sorcerer only really got one extra slot extra of each low level slot. Meanwhile at even numbered levels the sorcerer caught up a bit - but only knew one top level spell and two second tier spells while being able to cast just as many top tier spells and only one fewer second tier spell. So the sorcerer alternated between being crushingly far behind and simply behind.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2020 00:09
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:Approaching the end of one of my 5e campaigns. So far, I've played a paladin, a rogue, a GOO warlock, and a barbarian with this system. Which other classes would you recommend as particularly fun? If you want something different and fun (and given that a GOO warlock works you should get the short rests you need) a Way of Shadow Monk has amazing mobility and frustration potential.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2020 23:17
|
|
|
Madmarker posted:If you think the spell slot thing is an issue, just make short rests 10minutes instead of an hour. If the warlock gets to rest before every encounter then warlock OP - two top tier spells per encounter is too much. If they never do then they're underpowered. This is a problem with multiple recharge rates.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2020 01:54
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:Is there like a batter version of a monk that melds together ki points with like, Battle Master Manneuvers? I feel like ki points are kind of a too limited resource, the best move tends to be stunning strike, and I'd like to have other interactions and feel like Monk isn't enough of a martial artist Depends - I think that Flurry is normally better with an Open Hand monk as you get to throw people around or knock them down with your flurries. The Shadow monk is much more controlled of course - but it's a ninja more than a martial artist. The Drunken Master, getting a free disengage and movement with their flurry and getting to redirect attacks with ki points is also a pretty good martial artist. (We don't talk about Four Elements) Seriously, there's a lot in the various Monk subclasses. And I think what you're trying to make sounds like a decent new Monk subclass. Edit: And who cares about climbing or jumping when you can simply teleport? A lot of the monk's power, as mentioned, is in their subclasses. neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Aug 6, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2020 02:57
|
|
|
nelson posted:For the record, a hunter ranger is like 20x better than a 4 elements monk. For the record the monk part is fine. The 4 elements part is a complete design fail and should never be used.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2020 22:00
|
|
|
pork never goes bad posted:I don't have a horse in this race, and I don't really want to engage with the metadiscussion except to say this reads to me like damning criticism of long lists of moves (ie, the wizard is the problem) rather than the other way round, but that's probably just reflecting my strong preference for rules light systems. The wizard isn't a problem. The fighter isn't a problem. Putting the wizard alongside the fighter and declaring them to be even alternatives to each other is the problem. And when it comes to an attack having a lot of narrative room, the Battlemaster Fighter and the Way Of The Open Hand Monk are about a thousand times better than the champion fighter because, having the mechanical heft to back up at least some of their flashier attacks means that the narrative room amounts to more than a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The only thing with real consequences on the game that using that "narrative room" changes is how long your turn takes.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2020 00:54
|
|
|
Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Not to rehash edition wars, but why was there such a large kickback against 4e? From what I gather, combat was changed up significantly but that can't be the only reason? People have mentioned Paizo but they are missing the core issue of just how terrible the 4e launch was. Essentially they were given two years to make 4e. 10 months in they realised what they had on their hands was a turkey and went back to the drawing board. They still shipped on time, but this meant that what thy shipped was a buggy beta; 4e is popular round here because most of us have played the post-patches version but what was shipped was definitely a buggy beta with monster math that didn't scale properly. And books that were written with all the charm of a technical manual; they are great in play but not good to read on the loo. The second thing that no one has mentioned is the online tools. A lot was promised - but either just before launch or just after launch (I forget which) the lead developer of the IT tools killed his ex-wife and himself in a murder/suicide. The virtual tabletop never appeared and they released a replacement character builder. The third thing is that the initial adventure was dire. Contrary to popular misconception what 4e does well is not dungeon crawling. Dungeon crawls require lots of minor incidental combat that isn't really threatening, and 4e (and 5e) has combat that takes too long for that. What 4e combat is awesome at is high budget set-pieces, or even low level challenges. A key thing about 4e is that most characters and many monsters have a lot of "forced movement" abilities that don't have major opportunity costs the way Bull Rush forces you to give up your attack. With most PCs able to push monsters (and sometimes vise-versa) it means that if there's something useful on the map like a campfire, a harbour-side, or even a summoning circle the players are going to try and have the PCs push the monsters into/off/through them. And because a lot of 4e tactics revolve around the terrain and pushing monsters into their own pit traps rather than simply not stepping into pit traps 4e combat makes combat in other RPGs look like acting against a green screen as opposed to the shooting on location of 4e. How is this relevant to Keep on the Shadowfell? The adventure is fine until you reach the keep. The keep itself is from memory 17 combat encounters in a row with no significant exploration or room for RP - and I think there are only three encounters in the entire keep where there is any terrain you can push monsters onto, off, or through (and I don't think it's ever stated what exactly happens if you push the summoner straight through his own portal and in to hell). In short the keep sucks for dungeon crawling and sucks twice as hard in 4e because combat takes twice as long thanks in part to having enemies it's worth pushing into campfires. It's as if someone created Sonic the Hedgehog, made the first three stages pretty good - then after the first zone was done all the levels in all three remaining zones were water levels. As for how profitable 4e was, the PHB outsold previous PHBs - a pattern that is fairly standard. But what 4e did for profitability (as opposed to gross total revenue) was that they managed to turn players into subscribers to the online service at $10 a month for the entire 4e Dragon Magazine archive, the character builder with access to all the material, the monster builder, and a few other things - with no printing or distribution costs and the other costs already being sunk. We know roughly how many people had a subscription in 2014 (after the launch of 5e) because each subscriber was given access to a specific forum on the WotC boards for subscribers to D&D Insider - and those numbers mean that 4e was raking in from memory $6 million/year in almost pure profit, years after the last book was printed.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2020 03:15
|
|
|
Sodomy Hussein posted:Yeah 4E moves away from ticky-tack encounters you can resolve in 5 minutes and do on the fly. Regardless of what us 4E people say, 4E is not a great game on the fly. What it does do is ask you the DM to have involved, at least fairly well-planned encounters that are balanced to be challenging and not "the table says 2d6 goblins appear." 4E is also terrible without significant terrain details; if you play it lazily on a flat plane it just doesn't work, that will actually break certain characters' builds. I'm going to disagree hard about 4e as a game on the fly - or more accurately I'm going to say that 4e is the best version of D&D to improvise with even if it's no Apocalypse World or Blades in the Dark. This is because an improvised fight using three monster types with different roles just plucked out of Monster Vault on the spur of the moment and the excellent 4e Challenge Rating system or even literally created on the fly using the MM3 on a business card math plus some cover and two pieces of interactive terrain like stairs to push the enemies down and a fireplace is going to be mechanically as much fun as that big epic setpiece you spent hours getting ready in any other edition - and that if that setpiece even works rather than fails (as they sometimes do). It normally won't have the emotional weight behind it of a good capstone - after all you haven't spent the last half dozen sessions trying to run that scumbag to the ground. But mechanically it will probably be better. Also the 4e skill challenge rules as an improv tool need talking about - they are extremely badly explained and the math did not work at launch. On the other hand the basic principle of "Three strikes and you're out" and some numerical benchmarks for number of successes needed and the XP reward is one of the best systems for handling Off The Wall Improvised PC Plans I'm aware of in literally any RPG. Which is absolutely the hardest thing for a new GM to handle. As for 4e adventures, the two people normally liked were The Slaying Stone and Madness at Gardmore Abbey, with some respect for Thunderspire Labrynth. Also ENWorld's Zeitgeist: the Gears of Revolution. But honestly if you wanted something pre-written it was quicker and easier to prep and run Pathfinder adventure paths in 4e than Pathfinder - and they tended to run better there as well.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2020 18:33
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Suit yourself but he asked and that is a loving lot of writing on the wall. I mean how much obvious bullshit you wanna wade through to play a game just because a friend is running it? If I get invited to Monopoly night but the host has rewritten the game to be about libertarianism and bitcoin I'm ... I'm gonna say no to that friend. Houseruled Monopoly about libertarianism and bitcoin might own (or at least be less bad than monopoly) ... if the writer remembered that The Landlord's Game was a critique of monopolies and capitalism in general. You can do most things well, but you need to know what you're doing. And all the secrecy unless in a game where secrecy is a key mechanic (because PvP) is a huge red flag - communication good and it actively gets in the way. Also there are games with injury rules and they are good - but the D&D rules aren't. What injury rules are good at is not getting rolled but making you want to avoid combat and want to fight from ambush if you have to fight at all. They work really badly with 5e's Bullet Sponge enemy design that inherently nerfs ambushes. Even Fate has more long term consequences from combat than any edition of D&D Or to sum up huge red flags.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2020 15:59
|
|
|
KingKalamari posted:As someone who has accumulated a bunch of random house rules I tend to use when I run 5e to make the game more fun, it never ceases to amaze me how many of the common house rules I see thrown around for the game are to make things MORE punishing for the players. Like, I'm amazed at how many people think making short rests take 8 hours is a good idea. As someone who uses this house rule, the point isn't to punish the players, it's so I don't have to. It's 8 hours for a short rest, a long lazy weekend for a long one and I only have to throw half a dozen encounters in a normal week rather than in a day. For dungeon crawling I tend to put some sort of temple at the start of the dungeon which lets the players rest at a default timescale. And my other major house rule is anti-hammerspace encumbrance if I bother with any encumbrance tracking at all.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2020 01:55
|
|
|
Saxophone posted:Here's a weird question I haven't been able to google up an answer to: Eberron beat out two other campaigns in a contest to become an official D&D setting. What were those other campaigns and are they out there somewhere? I'm having a devil of a time finding it and I'm curious. Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick from memory wrote one. It's under an NDA so can't be published and apparently most of the ideas in it went into fleshing out Eberron
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2020 03:59
|
|
|
Kaysette posted:yeah this was my experience in AL. stunning strike and flurry of blows are great when you get them but i can't remember anything similarly powerful after level 5. Diamond Soul at level 14 is pretty impressive. And it depends what your subclass is (the shadow monk L6 minor action teleport is great) - but they definitely sag after level 5. The other martial classes of course basically get nothing after L11 that they didn't get before.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2020 20:13
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 19:33 |
|
|
Baku posted:Though I must admit, "D&D doesn't allow you to be better or worse at something, only succeed or fail more often" is a helluva sentence; this thread is a very strange place It's an awkward way of phrasing something fairly important. As people get more skilled they can do more as well as do things better. 5e starts to allow things like this, so I'll use a 5e example to illustrate. Picking pockets can be done by a lot of people, and is a simple skill check. Someone with Expertise is slightly better than someone without - but fundamentally they are picking the same pockets in the same way and the difference is occasional points on a dice. Meanwhile an expert thief should be able to do a brush pass and pick someone's pocket without breaking their step while walking through a crowd. In 3.5 that's -20 to the check, which is silly. In 5e the Thief archetype at level 3 gets to do it as a bonus action - meaning that because they are a thief they can cut through a crowd picking pockets without slowing. This was the sort of thing feats should have done but they were too much of a mess to actually do. 4e powers were a vast improvement. And 5e does a little. But games like Fate and Apocalypse World do this sort of thing much much better. There's far more to skill than numbers going up - especially when the numbers are on a d20.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2020 18:57
|
|