D&D 4e Lore Appreciation Thread

Poor, poor Codricuhn. Twisted beyond any hope of recovery.

Those are tiny moons more like little asteroids.

Speaking of 4th ed lore,
Here's an old meme for you
1d4chan.org/wiki/Bear_Lore

But one thing I will never forgive about 4th ed was the butchering of the forgotten reams. Look, I understand in FR gods come and go, events happen, people die, people get marry sue resurrections, life moves on. Its an interractive setting used by multiple authors, game companies etc I don't expect Kingdoms of Kalamar level immutability from it.

But 4th REALLY butched the realms, dozens of gods dead, an event so large that it not only fucked up the continent but generate a new one, abeir, many nations which were awesome and unique were either destroyed or transformed completely. Surely there were some nice ideas, the Netherse Shadovars taking an active role was my favorite, but negatives outweight the positives by a good amount.

So great was the fuck up that with the comming o 5e they literally reverted back the realms where it was at the 3rd edition, gods that were destroyed in 4e came back, most if not all 3rd ed nations came back, abeir is gone, the continent is very much the same (as far as we know, as there is no fullmap yet(. Now you can look at official 5e material and old 3rd e material and have relative unity. There are relatively few changes, and most of them are additions (old gods who were dead even before 3rd ed being resurrected etc) rather than omissions

Forgive my grognardness but I can't believe it is almost a decade since 4th ed had came and rape, I fucked the realms quite good. But I'm happy that 5th e is using realms as an official setting and many new players are introducted to realms, there are even two youtube channels talking about forgotten realms lore. I wouldnt think any o these 5 years ago.
Oh what a dark time 2008-2014 was.

Forgotten Realms isn't that good, my dude. You're being angry over an average setting. People who played 4e at least knew this.

I like Points of Light and the Cosmology much better than other editions. The cosmology just feels like it makes a bit more sense and is a bit more open ended than the rigid Wheel system.

Give me some leeway, i know fr is not liked by many, but everyone has their own favorites.

I was always kind of annoyed how 4e didn't feature all the inevitables

I homebrewed my own way back when, but I don't think I have them anymore.

On the other hand, the entire concept of primal spirits is awesome, and the way the had them as a power source that acknowledges, but isn't tied to, gods

I think the having a "lore" section for monsters, even if it has paltry information like Bear Lore, is helpful for letting players understand what they actually know about a monster. It's also better than having little to no writing for more mundane creatures, like pic related.

Oh, I so agree. I'll be honest; I never liked the Great Wheel. Partly it's because I never really bought the 9-Grid Alignment, but a lot of it has to do with how it feels, as you said, rigid and sterile.

I've read Planescape's guide to the Inner Planes. Just what, exactly, am I supposed to do with a conceptually infinite desert of radioactive dust, for which there is explicitly no protection nor cure from dying a horrible death by radiation poisoning?

Yes, that's actually a thing; the Glowing Dunes, the region where the Paraelemental Plane of Magma and the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance overlap.

The World Axis, in comparison, is simple, clean, easy to understand, and actually FEELS like a mythology that real people would come up with. You have the primordial chaos from which the world is fashioned, you have the realm of the gods, you have the land of faerie, you have the land of the dead, and you have the mortal world. Seriously, what more do you need?

Best part is, anything you think is cool from the old lore, you can slot right in and make it better by not having to make it artificially big and empty.

The Twin Peaks of Bytopia? Why, it's the homeland of the gnomes in the Feywild, a place veiled in powerful mystical illusions, somewhere beyond the reach of the Formorians. Or maybe it's a Dominion in the Astral Sea, created by gnomes and for gnomes.

The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus? It's an ancient engine-world lost in the Astral Sea, and nobody knows where it comes from; is it perhaps the key to rebuilding the Lattice of Heaven, or is it hopelessly broken and mad from the destruction of the order that was? Or maybe it's a sea of sanity (if you can call it sanity) at the heart of the Elemental Chaos, seeking to tame the raw elements of creation and harness them to logic - or maybe it's the creation engine that draws forth the raw madness that lies Beyond and purifies it to create the elements, making it the heart of creation itself.

>Dragonborn, Tieflings, Wilden, Goliaths are all fantastic additions
>Gnomes being fae refugees fleeing slavery instead of teehee tinkering magic cunts was great
>Primal power source is great
>interesting cosmology
>TOROG IS COOL AS FUCK

4e had great lore.

But Returned Abeir and the Spellplague were cool ideas, you just hate that it happened to your perfect inviolate shitty fantasy setting.

Agreed, Torog was great as both an explanation *for* the Underdark and as a rival to Lolth; you can just imagine the drow being torn between her spider-cults and his torture cults, and the best part is, you don't even have to change the whole "mad dominatrix black elf" motif.

You know, if that's part of what floats your boat about the drow in the first place.

Also, the Primal power source was *awesome*, and 4e gnomes had the best fluff that D&D has ever given them, hands down.

The 4e Underdark book is one of the gest supplements ever.

>How can you not love something like that?
I did back when I first saw it.
It's not a PoL original in any way I'm afraid.

As someone who is a very old player; 99% of people on here know FR from a meme and from 3e WotC days, which is sort of like saying you know about drinking liquids because you drank horse piss one time.

The willing level of ignorance in this hobby is actually what convinced me that nerds are no smarter and have no better judgement then anyone else; they're just retarded about different stuff and aren't in decent physical shape and aren't popular.
Sadly, the problem of media always making nerds smart is that nerds have convinced THEMSELVES they are smart when really on average they're just as stupid, knee-jerky, and as judgemental as regular people.

So, question, any anons here remember the Incunabula? Vecna's "personal" race (ala Orcs for Gruumsh or Dwarves for Moradin, etc) from the Underdark sourcebook?

If yes, what did you think of them?

Likewise, did you like the treatment the Shadar-kai got when they moved from 3e to 4e?

Incunabula were cool, but needed some more wordcount. I feel like Shadar-Kai had potential, but mostly exist as an excuse for wannabe goths to mope and do BDSM in game.

>tfw my first character ever was a 4e gnoll warlock who was CRAZY because the stars had touched her mind
>she fought with a whip, didn't wear shoes, and flirted wih everyone
>everyone at the Encounters group was nice and never called me out

The shame haunts me.

Gods, don't get me started about how much I HATE what 5e did to gnolls. 4e was the first edition to make them something more than just fuzzy orcs with a slave-taking fetish and 5e absolutely ruined everything they had going for them.

Have you ever read Eberron? It has the best gnolls ever.

They were slave-taking monsters who worshiped demons... until they rose up against that, killed their demonic kin, and now work as Neutral scouts and guides in the nation of "monsters."

Not that familiar with Eberron, actually, although "Playing Gnolls" did mention the Znir Pact.

Also gives free-range for Primal Spirit, Melora and Kord-worshipping gnolls in "vanilla" D&D, so that's pretty cool too.

So, who here liked the Eladrin/Elf split? I always found High Elves and Wild Elves to be pretty interchangeable - they were both basically "really magical AND really into nature", but in different proportions, so I never really grokked the difference between them and drow.

Eladrin and Elves at least finally split all of the elements off to one race, and it really worked.

The dwarves also got a lot more interesting in 4e - gods, I love the Forgeborn so much. I really want to bring them back to 5e, but I can't figure out how to pull them off in a relatively balanced state...

Not just having 'X Elf' was a nice name change.

>Continent where dragons rule several boring kingdoms
>There was like a war to fight against them, but the magic metal is all gone now because Christ forbid anything interesting be allowed
>These realms are sprawling, but we bother to tell you less about any one of them than we tell you about the Moonsea
>We literally put the Molten Fucking Core on the continent
If I've already got one shitty fantasy setting, why would I want another shitty fantasy setting that even less thought was put into?

Honestly, I did a 'deep dive' into FR lore last year, and I was amazed how every main book seemed to mirror the problems of its edition.
The 1e book is ridiculously scattershot - there's no rhyme or reason to why some things get more attention and detail than others, and the layout and index is terrible.
2e's book is pretty much drowning under the weight of the metaplot - we're constantly being reminded of all the things that happened in big adventures, and there's an ugly little sidebar where the writer gets all '#sorrynotsorry about detailing that country we promised never to detail so you could all make it your own, it was totes important to that not-Mongol invasion that got nowhere near the country lol'.
3e tries to talk about EVERYTHING. It's just too fucking bloated. Plus, this is the point where the NPCs - which are usually tolerable when they're talked about in the actual setting books, as opposed to novels or adventures - fully morph into the meme version of themselves, basically all being treated as insufferable mary-sues.
4e smashes everything apart under the vague idea that newer is always better; new races come riding in on skateboards, as everyone points and says 'he's sooooo coooool!'; every third nation is now secretly ruled by a vampire; and in a world where Genasi already existed, we still have to insist that most of *these* Genasi are from that cool alternate dimension!
5e...well, as much as I appreciate that Abeir just said 'I must go, my planet needs me' and levitated away one day, in the end, the 5e book spends a ridiculous amount of time apologizing for 4e (and even for 2e and 3e, to some extent) rather than talking about the setting.

I generally prefer to take things from an angle of using the Great Wheel as a base, then adding in elements from the World Axis, somewhat like 5e, but not entirely.

My usual configuration is something like this:

• The Region of Dreams, also known as the Veil of Sleep or the Phlogiston: This is a new plane that exists between the crystal spheres of the Prime Material Plane, which are in turn sandwiched between the Ethereal Plane and the Astral Plane. Whenever a sentient or sapient creature sleeps and dreams (in my cosmology, all sapient creatures require at least two hours of sleep each day, both of which are dreaming sleep), their mind/soul transfers to this plane and creates a dreamscape out of the protomatter drifting from the Ethereal Plane. Within that dreamscape, the creature's memories copy themselves, crystallize into memory cores, float into the Astral Plane, and gradually ferment into ectoplasm, which subsequently forms the Outer Planes.
The Outer Planes are made of ectoplasm, which is fermented from two primary sources: the memory cores that drift up from dreams, and the memory cores of the dead as they travel through conduits in the Astral Plane, onwards to their afterlives.

• The Ethereal Plane: The Deep Ethereal is also known as the Elemental Chaos, and is much like the 4e plane of the same name.

• The Inner Planes in General: The Para-Elemental Planes and the Quasi-Elemental Planes no longer exist as true planes. They exist as border regions of the six Inner Planes; the Fire/Positive border, for example, is the Border of Radiance. Just like in 1e, the Inner Planes are reflections of the crystal spheres of the Prime Material Plane. Any given crystal sphere corresponds to a section in each of the Inner Planes.

• The Negative Energy Plane: This is also known as the Plane of Shadow or the Shadowfell, and shares many traits with those planes. Like any other Inner Plane, elemental pockets are in abundance here. It is inhabited not only by negative energy elementals (also known as "entropic" elementals or "nightshades"), but also by many other undead, many of which rally under the banner of the Union of Eclipses. Atropus dwells here as well. For mysterious reasons, this is the one plane that connects to other multiverses, and so alien creatures from other cosmologies and from the many Far Realms wind up here as well.

• The Positive Energy Plane: This is also known as the Plane of Faerie or the Feywild, and shares many traits with those planes. Like any other Inner Plane, elemental pockets are in abundance here. It is is inhabited not only by positive energy elementals (also known as "vivacious" elementals or "spiritovores"), but also by the multiverse's largest concentration of fey. Ragnorra lives here too. This plane is home to the soul fonts which provide the souls for all newborn sentient and sapient creatures in the multiverse. A mix of non-fey positive elementals and fey positive elementals inhabit the soul fonts. The two greatest and most influential soul fonts are the Bastion of Unborn Souls and the Garden of Unborn Immortals.

Why do I handle it this way, compared to using the World Axis as a basis?

The main reason is that 4e's cosmology downplays one of my top three favorite aspects of the Great Wheel: Saṃsāra.

One of my favorite aspects of the Great Wheel/Planescape is the idea that when people die, they reincarnate as petitioners in an appropriate Outer Plane, with much of their personality intact but very little of their memories. Many petitioners go on to evolve into various types of outsiders, like archons in Mount Celestia, baatezu in the Nine Hells, and tanar'ri in the Abyss.

I like the idea of a mortal finding new life as a celestial or a fiend and evolving through myriad dazzling forms. It is possible that they might become curious about their old lives and go to lengths to investigate what they were previously, just for the sake of closure. It is also possible that they might join one of the factions that study reincarnation in-depth, such as the Believers of the Source and the Dustmen, and possibly seek nirvana/moksha/kaivalya and ascension towards the Source/True Death.

I love the idea that, given the right RPG system, someone could actually play one of these reincarnated souls and explore many a roleplaying opportunity based on such a thing.

While Planescape: Torment did not actually address the standard petitioner reincarnation cycle, it did address reincarnation in a different yet equally interesting way, and that was fascinating too.

The World Axis has some of this with the exalted and the outsiders in the Astral Sea, the deva race, and the Keeper of the Everflow epic destiny, yet it is not quite such a central facet of the setting. After all, if most people wound up as exalted and outsiders in the World Axis, then the Shadowfell would lose much of its point.

The secondary reason why I handle things this way is because, out of personal preference, I run games mainly set in the Outer Planes. I need all the diversity and nitty-gritty subcategorization I can get. The seventeen Outer Planes each have their own layers, individual species, signature "dominant species" (e.g. archons in Mount Celestia and guardinals in Elysium), and city-state-like divine realms. The Outer Planes are effectively grand empires and nations unto themselves, each with their own subdivisions and independent polities.

I could, in theory, run something similar in the Plane Above: The Astral Sea, but it would not quite be the same. This is because the Astral Sea is Points-of-Light-esque: astral dominions are effectively city-states with a tiny few exceptions (e.g. Baator). I would prefer to have more areas clustered together into thematic "nations" with shared cultures and societies.

To me, the Wheel's Outer Planes are like seventeen star systems in a space opera setting, each with many inhabited planets that comprise their own self-sustaining society with thematic links to each other. In contrast, the World Axis's astral dominions are more like a space opera setting where there are no star systems and every planet is a "standalone world" with a cluster of asteroids around it, which is not quite what I am looking for.

I've only ever seen editions as a set of rules and rules alone and just used whatever flavor fits the campaign I want to do.

As an additional note, I do not quite buy this line:
>The World Axis ... FEELS like a mythology that real people would come up with.

I am a great fan of the cosmological absurdities of Indian religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The Great Wheel tickles such a fancy with its nitty-gritty subcategorization and Saṃsāra gimmick.

Hinduism alone, for example, has twenty-eight hells in one source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Hinduism)#Description_of_hells

And the Wheel's original concept of Mount Celestia is actually quite similar to Mount Meru: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru
The 2e Planes of Law book eclectically lists down a thinly-veiled Noble Eightfold Path as one of the six main roads up Mount Celestia.

4e's PoL lore very much fit the nature of the rules and the tone the game was portraying.
The world has gone to shit, it's up to a courageous group of new heroes to set it right again. Honestly, 4e is up there as one of my favorite games because it does the heroic group like oil from a vessel; the group is the star, not individual members that happen to be working together like other editions. Fraternity, brotherhood, true comrades, those themes get my boner going, and it really reveals when you have shit players in the group who can't gel into a cooperative mindset.
I had players who struggled to adjust to the fact that you NEEDED others to truly be successful, were stymied by the mechanics and the inability to gleefully one shot every foe they encountered with minmaxed dpr builds, and that as a DM, it was easy to run and I could give the players nice things without worrying about the game snapping in half.
1 player will have a dragon companion, another has a draconic wolfhound as he battles under the direction of Kord, another has gained the attention of Erathis herself, another has the (unwanted) patronage of the Winter Court of Fey as he battles the Summer Court, another is well on her way to crafting a Grand Ward that will shield the Material Plane from all undead, evil outsiders and intrusion from the Far Realm.
I watched them all buck up and be the fucking hero, and I can freely reward them without worrying if the game will shatter because they are "too powerful" or some other such nonsense that would be the case in other editions.

>The World Axis has some of this with the exalted and the outsiders in the Astral Sea, the deva race, and the Keeper of the Everflow epic destiny, yet it is not quite such a central facet of the setting. After all, if most people wound up as exalted and outsiders in the World Axis, then the Shadowfell would lose much of its point.
Except that's wrong; the Shadowfell is where souls go *immediately after* death. They are sorted and processed there, and *then* move on to their fates.

In other words, the Shadowfell is where "souls" are transformed *into* Petitioners - that's where their memories are stripped out and they get sorted to what plane they belong to.

As to this, the Astral Dominions themselves not only expand to easily accomodate every aspect of their "old selves" you may want to include, but between the Border Islands and the sheer ability of the Astral Sea to accomodate whatever you want to throw in it, you can still replicate that "fantasy space-opera setting" feel.

The canon Astral Sea includes the Baator, Celestia, Arvandor, Hestavar, Pluton, and fiend & githyanki-besieged city made out of one of Moradin's drinking cups, and that's just off the top of my head.

>the inability to gleefully one shot every foe they encountered with minmaxed dpr builds

This is exactly what 4e's hyper-optimized metagame degenerates into by mid-paragon (thank the CharOp build for nova builds and vulnerability abuse), and sometimes even earlier than that (e.g. rebreather dragonborn draconians, chargespammers).

A lot of those builds require feats from other settings. I cut the knees out by telling players straight up that they could not use feats/gear from the Eberron/Dark Sun/FR books, and it basically resolved those issues. You can do the same in 3.5 and it has a similar, if muted effect. You need to use all the books from all lines to get the real wacky shit, and denying that is a great first step.
Even then, my players don't run to handbooks and charop builds as a matter of course. Shit, I'm the biggest optimizing faggot of them all, really.

>They are sorted and processed there, and *then* move on to their fates.

>In other words, the Shadowfell is where "souls" are transformed *into* Petitioners - that's where their memories are stripped out and they get sorted to what plane they belong to.

This is wrong.

Page 48 of the 4e Manual of the Planes stipulates that "[the Shadowfell] is the domain of the dead, the final stage of the soul’s journey before moving onto the unknown."

Page 34 of the Plane Above states, "Only a few of the mortals who are fervent worshipers of their deity become exalted. Many other mortal souls spiral out of the Shadowfell and past the dominions of the gods into unknown fates or are born again in new bodies with no memory of their previous incarnation. Other mortal souls might remain in the world among the primal spirits as ancestor spirits or guardians."
A soul definitely does not travel to the Shadowfell only to become an exalted or an outsider in the Astral Sea, oh, no. Nobody but the Raven Queen knows where that soul goes, and maybe not even her.

Out of personal preference, what I am looking for is a setting wherein, in 4e terms, the vast majority of souls go on to become exalted in the Astral Sea's various dominions. That is a significant departure from 4e's cosmology, however, at which point I would prefer to use another cosmology as a basis for my setting needs.

>Nobody but the Raven Queen knows where that soul goes, and maybe not even her.
I believe it is specifically stated that not even the gods know where souls go unto.

Same here, I use my own lore for the most part, but I do keep some monster similar.

>you can still replicate that "fantasy space-opera setting" feel.

>The canon Astral Sea includes the Baator, Celestia, Arvandor, Hestavar, Pluton, and fiend & githyanki-besieged city made out of one of Moradin's drinking cups, and that's just off the top of my head.

This still ultimately makes them independent city-states rather than anything grouped into thematic "nations."

As an example of what I mean, consider that in 2e's Great Wheel, Arborea is home to most of the Greek pantheon, most of the elven pantheon, many other gods (e.g. Nephthys and Sune), all the eladrin under the Court of Stars, and the headquarters of the Society of Sensation. It is one of the three usual home bases of the Seelie pantheon of the fairies.

Arborea has three layers each with different topographical themes, the second layer is the endpoint of the Oceanus, the third layer is a graveyard of titanic gods who held the secrets of the True Words/Language Primeval. It is a plane of freedom and compassion, but it is also a plane of incredibly intense emotions both positive and negative, so its locals often get into trouble because of heart-throbbing love or uncontrolled indignation.

That is just *one* plane, and the politics and plot hooks within it alone stand out immediately to me.

Now, I could recreate that in the World Axis's Astral Sea by pulling together various astral dominions together into a makeshift "astral dominion cluster" to recreate Arborea. Better yet, I could section off a region of the Feywild to do the same, particularly given the eladrin similarities. At that point, however, I should save myself the work and use the original Arborea altogether if it is going to be the same thing anyway.

>telling players straight up that they could not use feats/gear from the Eberron/Dark Sun/FR books, and it basically resolved those issues

By doing this, you have eliminated swordmages and artificers from the game for no good reason. You have managed to catch the Morninglord and Mark of Storm cheese in your bans, but otherwise, myriads of disgustingly effective builds still survive.

Under your bans, there are still chargespammers, Frostcheesers, dragonborn rebreathers, and many more.

Even something as basic as Battle Cleric's Lore cheese in both hybrid form and multiclass feat form still survives your bans.

Which is why I said fortunately my players don't run to charop boards to make builds, versus characters.
They see no issue making choices that are the "best" so long as it makes sense for their pcs. The barbarian didn't need to nearly die running back into a time dilating elven village that was literally crumbling to save his dog. The cleric didn't need to devote his resources to saving a tainted dragon egg that even other dragons told him is beyond saving. The fighter didn't need to die holding off a daemonic spider army for the rest of the party to escape.
I reward them as DM for doing things that cleave to the character and their mindset, and they do not disappoint. Your inability to comprehend why someone would not do the best thing in all circumstances is well known, so honestly, I disregard your posts out of hand knowing the conversation would go nowhere. My players aren't you, and I need not approach them in such a fashion.

The actions of your players in your campaigns are all well and dandy, but they do not suddenly make:
>the inability to gleefully one shot every foe they encountered with minmaxed dpr builds
This a reality instead of wishful and naïvete thinking.

It is accurate to say that 4e is more balanced than, say, 3.X and Pathfinder. 4e is less balanced than 5e, but 5e has its own slew of issues. It is also accurate to say that 4e has significantly greater tactical depth than 3.X, Pathfinder, and 5e.

But let us not kid ourselves and think that 4e players with even a small amount of time on their hands cannot assemble machines that spew out obnoxious amounts of damage.

It is accurate to say that players can restrain themselves and create entertaining builds that do not strain game balance, but really, that is true of many systems aside from 4e. Where 4e shines is the tactical depth as opposed to character balance alone.

That's just a subset of gnolls, the majority of their race is STILL demon worshipping.

And there's a Gnoll singer using the voice mimicry gift in Sharn, in a bar called Glitterdust. I just like to assume a minotaur plays the horns.

I liked it a lot. It was the first time I had interest in playing either.

I always saw elves as being "too good", being super-archers, super-wizards and super-swordsmen, oh super-bards too I guess! All at once! It felt shitty, mary sue kind of crap.

The Elf/Eladrin/Drow split was explained well, made sense and gave a proper identity to each. Add that to the excellent Feywild and it's ecology... well, I was going to say it was a highlight of 4e but there were so many really and they were often all connected it's hard to point to any one thing.

>One of my favorite aspects of the Great Wheel/Planescape is the idea that when people die, they reincarnate as petitioners in an appropriate Outer Plane, with much of their personality intact but very little of their memories.

See, I disliked this. It was too hard fact and too good. There is no reason to fear death until you were evil (which seems stupid) or very ignorant.

I don't see how anyone could travel to the planes and not be terribly changed by learning how it works and preaching it back home.

"Be a decent bloke for a few decades of life and you'll be reborn in idyllic paradises! No I've seen it!"

Death needs to be something scary and unknown or it undermines and changes culture I think, rendering the world harder to relate to.

The 4e Shadowfell and such opened up that again and made death kinda scary again. I was far more likely to take that Rez when I died in 4e than in previous editions.

Now, keep in mind I like the idea of the reincarnation cycle in many ways, but the 4e system doesn't remove it, only makes it less of a clear cut fact.

>"Be a decent bloke for a few decades of life and you'll be reborn in idyllic paradises! No I've seen it!"

But it won't be "you". It'll be your personality, but it won't be your memories. Your existence as it is will still terminate. There'll be just a new existence that is influenced by your previous one (possibly you could go into the meta-physics and implications of reincarnation, but this doesn't change the fact that the connection between the incarnations is very weak and the incarnate himself doesn1t know until after he dies again at best, usually).

>"Be a decent bloke for a few decades of life and you'll be reborn in idyllic paradises! No I've seen it!"

The usual counterpoint here is, "No, I know how this works; it is ego death. You lose all but the tiniest scraps of your memories. Is it really you up there when you die?"

That, to me, is one of the main conflicts of the setting. In fact, hours ago, I had GMed a session in which that was a plot point.

I guess that seems like a fine trade off and the few times it came up IC always made my PC question coming back.

I feel it's better left to faith I guess.

What exactly is a Solitaire? I've only heard the word in relation to the card game, and searching I found rings (which, as they're presented as a wondrous item, seemed inaccurate to the intent of the item.
Is this a thing from a different setting or something?

A solitaire is a term in jeweling used to refer to an item of jewellery with a single gem

This can be a brooch, a necklace, a hairpiece, a ring, anything where you can decorate the item with just one gemstone. I think that's the intent of the solitaire wondrous items, they're gems that can be inlaid to produce magical effects, but only one works at a time and only if it's inlaid alone

Thanks, that makes sense
I'm trying to find items for a dark sun game, and wanted to make sure it could fit the setting.

The one thing I wish Dark Sun went in on more, especially because it had the tools, is what power source made magic items.

A elemental cleric or druid or similar, would be loathe to use an item made from Arcane means, due to the chance of it being made from Defiling.

I felt this should have been more of a big deal than it was.

Just set your campaign before the fuckery started and use the old material. FFS.

I never liked Forgotten Realms, so I was fine with it. I think it is the bottom of all D&D settings available for me.

I feel like that's a decision that should be made on a case-by-case basis by the DM

And an item created using defiling should have a detectable aura about it reflecting that

I think that an item should reflect it's creation in any setting (arcane runes, divine script, primal feathers and teeth and shit, etc), it's just in Dark Sun it would matter to people involved.

One page could have explained this and given a 1d10 roll chart to randomly determine the source if you don't feel it's narritively important.

Power Sources were one of the more interesting yet under-explored ideas of 4e.

>It is also accurate to say that 4e has significantly greater tactical depth than 3.X, Pathfinder
well that's just wrong.

I would be interested to hear what lead you to that conclusion.

Because streamlined and unified resource mechanics, modularized effects and overall lower availability of one-hit-kills don't add depth, they reduce it.

Do you think Chess is notably deeper than Go?

I liked it and started playing with the ideas. It was what started this idea I had for a campaign setting where the three sylvan species had this problem where their nature wouldn't lock in. If an Eladrin spent too long in the forested areas home to the Elves or an Elf too long in the Underdark they would shift into the local race. Somehow the less mystical blood of humans denied this, so half elven diplomats were the only option that could last more than a few years without their homeland suddenly distrusting them for being a different species altogether. Because of this the human country that lived roughly central to their nations had many arranged marriages with the sylvans. Houses would become noble through these alliances, gaining political leverage through their newfound connections. Some lords used it to foist off unwanted heirs and still keep them useful. The sylvan individual generally kept their new spouse very pampered for their service in the name of diplomacy and were expected to be unquestioningly loyal for the duration of the human's life. If they had found a connection with a member of their own species it was expected that they would keep this to themselves for the brief, to their point of view, stretch while their human spouse was alive.

Sorry this isn't proper cannon 4e lore.

I guess I never played with the same kind of powergaming asses you do, as these were almost never an issue.

Our group found the teamwork power combinations terribly interesting and increased our enjoyment of the game. The only times we devastated encounters were due to teamwork combos rather than individual achievement.

Not that individuals didn't have times to shine, they absolutely did, but it often came with a helping hand. Maybe we focused more on "how to make a cool group" than "how can I be awesome" like in 3.PF

From what little I know of Go, it's probably the more complex game.

>Because streamlined and unified resource mechanics, modularized effects and overall lower availability of one-hit-kills don't add depth, they reduce it.

Lets go step by step.

>Because streamlined and unified resource mechanics

I think the thing that adds strategy is not the differences between the resource mechanics, but their existence. 4e added resource mechanics to classes that traditionally didn't have them. Would you in good faith argue that this lessened their tactical depth?

By the same token, it removed resources from previously resource rich characters. Removing resources when there are an abundance of them also has the chance to increase tactical depth, since you have to apply your now sparser resources with more deliberation.

It also added other resources on top of AEDU, like healing surges and action points, and even the daily item limit.

So while it is true that it is streamlined/unified mechanics, that alone does not remove or add to the tactical depth of a game inherently; however the way 4e did it definitely did.

>modularized effects

I need elaboration on this, because I also don't see how this limits tactics, as it's 99% a layout thing. The changes to spell effects weren't in the name of modularization (usually) but because the underlying assumptions of the game system are different

>lower availability of one-hit-kills

Abundance of one-hit kills usually lead to degenerate alpha-strike strategies, which removes the importance of tactics.

I get the feeling you are also confusing the tactics layer with the strategy layer. Things that let you 'stack the deck' (long term resource management, a book full of explosive runes, setting up an ambush, or an explosive cave in trap, etc.) before the fight are all parts of strategy, not tactics.

The implication here (in case it needs to be spelled out) is that the simplicity of pieces and rules does not determine the tactical depth of the game.

>I guess I never played with the same kind of powergaming asses you do, as these were almost never an issue.
It seems to me you judged 3.PF after never using it to its full potential. If you played your first game of soccer ever but everybody exclusively used their weak foot and your ball was flat, the game wouldn't be terribly interesting as well.

>Our group found the teamwork power combinations terribly interesting and increased our enjoyment of the game. The only times we devastated encounters were due to teamwork combos rather than individual achievement.
I always felt the teamwork powers were pretty cheap. Like you get handed them ready out the box. If single characters devastate encounters in 3.5 that's a DM problem exclusively. Challenging your whole group is pretty easy once you stop trying to build epic MMO boss fights where people wail on each other for 10 rounds and instead follow ingame logic, which is what makes 3.5 so great as well. Because it's internally consistent.

>Not that individuals didn't have times to shine, they absolutely did, but it often came with a helping hand. Maybe we focused more on "how to make a cool group" than "how can I be awesome" like in 3.PF
Who says a cool group can't be made out of cool individuals? In fact it's the other way around because 4E makes split-off solo adventures hard to do without rigging because it has quite strong niche protection, and there's literally no reason for that. Meanwhile setting up teamwork requires more work in 3.5 but ultimately is more open-ended for it and leads to crazier stuff.

The whole "you can't do solo characters because nieche protection!" thing just falls flat in 4e, when you consider that solo character in 3.5 is basically just being a striker/controller (leader and defender doesn't really mean anything when you are solo anyway) who has some out of combat options, and 4e has loads of classes that can fill that niche, even before you get into more in-depth stuff like Hybrids.

From this perspective, growing up and forgetting things continuously ends your existence. Pretty much everyone beyond the age of four "stops existing" and becomes someone else, and you constantly flake off more bits of this new person as you age. Your 80 year old self is gonna have like 5 of the same memories as your 20 year old self, and they'll probably be severely warped in comparison.

>It seems to me you judged 3.PF after never using it to its full potential.
What is "it's full potential?" I admit I didn't play a lot of PF (because I was playing 4e) but I played 3.X once or twice a week for several years since it's release. I'm quite familiar with it.

Do you suggest we didn't break the game enough through min/maxing or something?

>I always felt the teamwork powers were pretty cheap. Like you get handed them ready out the box.
I don't see how as they aren't handed to you in any way I could see. You have to look at Power A and Power B and find the synergy on your own.

>Challenging your whole group is pretty easy once you stop trying to build epic MMO boss fights where people wail on each other for 10 rounds and instead follow ingame logic, which is what makes 3.5 so great as well. Because it's internally consistent.
No idea what this even means.

>n fact it's the other way around because 4E makes split-off solo adventures hard to do without rigging because it has quite strong niche protection,
This is just rubbish as healing surges and the way skill works makes characters much more solo-capable than most 3.PF characters unless they're set up to cheese Cure Light Wounds wands or chug potions.

You accuse me of not playing 3.PF to "it's full potential" (whatever that means) but it feels more like that means "abusing it's flaws" and your own experience with 4e is quite limited to not see how these things work.

>I get the feeling you are also confusing the tactics layer with the strategy layer
That assumptions stems from a philosophy that combat and 'the other stuff' are separate, which to me seems to completely miss the point of an RPG in the first place.

In that case your analogy isn't fitting at all because every single Go piece is incredibly more powerful and flexible than any chess piece in the context of the game. A Go piece is a 3.5 Wizard, a chess piece is a 4E Fighter in their respective games.

>4e has loads of classes that can fill that niche
true, but it's its own niche. If you build your average 4E party, they won't be built like that and a party of self sufficient characters will not be an 'optimal' 4E party. If you now want to split your average-party defender off because plot but still have him encounter enemies at the same power as the group, 4E just looks at you sadly like a father that has to tell his paraplegic daughter that her dream of becoming a ballerina will never be reality.

>If you now want to split your average-party defender off because plot but still have him encounter enemies at the same power as the group, 4E just looks at you sadly like a father that has to tell his paraplegic daughter that her dream of becoming a ballerina will never be reality.

Not really? I'd lean towards the minion/artillery side of enemies (To get the most bang for his buck with his powers even without other allies) but he'd do fine.

The exception to that, I will admit, is a Cha-Paladin. As the secondary for a Cha-Paladin is Leader. Still, even then solo-paladin has a shit tonne of endurance and won't be harmless. I've had a paladin have a solo duel with a big villain and Lay on Hands really made him feel great during it.

>What is "it's full potential?"
What you referred to as 'asshole powergaming'. If your whole table is at the same level of system mastery, there's nothing asshole about it and once everyone played a god wizard once, people will start realizing unusual character builds instead which leads to really fun groups.

>Do you suggest we didn't break the game enough through min/maxing or something?
>You accuse me of not playing 3.PF to "it's full potential" (whatever that means) but it feels more like that means "abusing it's flaws"
Why are you so negatively biased against character optimization?

>This is just rubbish as healing surges and the way skill works makes characters much more solo-capable than most 3.PF characters unless they're set up to cheese Cure Light Wounds wands or chug potions.
Mate, hitpoints aren't the limiting factor on a 3.5 character. Just how bad was your understanding of the system?

>If you now want to split your average-party defender off because plot but still have him encounter enemies at the same power as the group, 4E just looks at you sadly like a father that has to tell his paraplegic daughter that her dream of becoming a ballerina will never be reality.
Has this ever been the case though? A 3.5 or 5e fighter isn't going to be able to take on the same group of enemies as a full party. The encounter must be downsized just due the nature of team vs solo combat

>The encounter must be downsized just due the nature of team vs solo combat
True, but you can still essentially throw the same kind of things at him without resorting to Minions or the fight resorting to a boring slugfest of at-wills.

>true, but it's its own niche. If you build your average 4E party, they won't be built like that and a party of self sufficient characters will not be an 'optimal' 4E party. If you now want to split your average-party defender off because plot but still have him encounter enemies at the same power as the group, 4E just looks at you sadly like a father that has to tell his paraplegic daughter that her dream of becoming a ballerina will never be reality.
What?

You want your single PC's being able to take on group encounters?

> If you build your average 4E party, they won't be built like that and a party of self sufficient characters will not be an 'optimal' 4E party.
Rubbish. You can build your party however you want. If everyone is designed to be super-solo, the group is stronger for that. But you're taking the idea that a PC having synergy with his other PC's makes him somehow individually weaker, which isn't always true.

Ok, you are pushing some of the worst aspects of the game as positive points.

No, I never played with everyone with "the same level of system mastery" because one or two horrible people decide to take stuff for flavor or min-maxing and end up being worthless next to the powergamers in 3.PF groups. Those dirty fuckers.

Anyway, we clearly have no common ground and not going to agree on anything. Have fun with 3.PF

Resorting to minions? Minions are a core part of the gameplay all the time.

A fighter also has just as many encounters and dailies as anyone else. They often do pretty good work in a solo battle.

>That assumptions stems from a philosophy that combat and 'the other stuff' are separate, which to me seems to completely miss the point of an RPG in the first place.

No, that's the definition of those words. And I'd still posit that 4e improved both.

>In that case your analogy isn't fitting at all because every single Go piece is incredibly more powerful and flexible than any chess piece in the context of the game. A Go piece is a 3.5 Wizard, a chess piece is a 4E Fighter in their respective games.

"In the context of the game" is the key word. You can1t call the Go piece really powerful because there's nothing, in the same game, to compare it against. Saying that a 4e fighter isn't as strong as a 3.5 god-wizard makes no sense, because their power only matters _in the context of their respective games_.

>true, but it's its own niche. If you build your average 4E party, they won't be built like that and a party of self sufficient characters will not be an 'optimal' 4E party.

This is literally only true for leaders, and even then, there's a good chance they'll be able to handle themselves pretty well, which, considering their job description is "team player" really is saying something.

Most defenders can handle encounters solo pretty well, provided the encounter is built for a solo character

Sure they can't really use their marking abilities, but defenders aren't just useful for that. They have high HP and defenses, utility powers to negate debilitating effects placed upon them, multiple powers that place those debilitating effects on their enemies.

The only defender that is truly boned when alone is the counterattack Battlemind, where even your at-will powers depend on having allies, and that's sort of a specialist build anyway

I'd not do a leader solo but Leader + NPC works fine. Heck, Leader + NPC can be a very fun and weird shakeup of the gameplay if you make that NPC something more on the monster end. Shaman + Chimera she pulled the thorn out of the paw of would make for a very fun battle where you have an ally that plays so differently to your usual allies.

Battlemind has some very sick DPR builds actually, although they only kick in in Paragon, due to requiring Brutal Barrage.

>No, I never played with everyone with "the same level of system mastery" because one or two horrible people decide to take stuff for flavor or min-maxing and end up being worthless next to the powergamers in 3.PF groups. Those dirty fuckers.
So you need to play a system that treats its players like retards because your friends are shitty people, and then have the gall to blame 3.PF for that? Enjoy 4E, or probably not considering your playgroup.

And if all else fails, you can just build your leader with a built in companion with Feytamer or some other methods (familiar, or just buy a damn griffin or something)

Wanting to play with friends you enjoy playing with that don't want to spend hours learning to min/max is bad!

3.PF really is a terrible disease.

There are several leaders that can operate very well alone

Strength Clerics are the obvious option, but Bards are surprisingly capable of high damage output, which covers the main weakness of solo leaders easily (since healing and save-granting abilities are almost all capable of healing/granting saves to the leader using them, offering high survivability)

>True, but you can still essentially throw the same kind of things at him without resorting to Minions or the fight resorting to a boring slugfest of at-wills.
But 3.5/5e fighters are all at-wills. Anything they do would result in full attacking until it or the fighter dies. And I don't understand your first point about the same kind of things. 3.5/5e monsters don't really have categories. I mean they do, but the game doesn't quite tell you and there's no easy conversion process. And regradless, you still couldn't throw the same foes at a single character as you would a full party. Big boss shit are usually designed to eat hits forever and deal crippling blows, which isn't so bad when there's multiple pcs to help each other but is devastating when you're alone. Whos' gonna help the fighter save when he's hit with a condition? What happens to the archer/caster when there's no meatshield keeping him and the enemy apart? Who's gonna help the rogue set up a sneak attack?

>They're so shitty people they just start minmaxing the assholes
>They're my bestest friends and I don't want to change my group
do you have stockholm syndrome or are you part of one of those groups full of social rejects that have nowhere else to go?

I want a system that doesn't have such a power level discrepancy based on system mastery.

All will have some, but some are far worse than others.

That too, though I think telling a warlord/shaman 'Here is your ally, he has close blast 3 basic ranged attacks in his fire breath and close burst 1 claw swipes' might result in cackling like a madman for several minutes and make for a very fun change up.

>But 3.5/5e fighters are all at-wills. Anything they do would result in full attacking until it or the fighter dies.

And a 4e fighter would still have all his encounter and daily attacks.

>And regradless, you still couldn't throw the same foes at a single character as you would a full party.

...and you couldn't do that in 3.5 either.

That's exactly the point, if you operate a higher level of optimization your Fighter (or more realistically Barbarian/Warblade/some prestigeclass or other) is still fully capable of nuking most things, he just has to be smarter about it because there's no one to bail him out. Similarly, a rogue who can't set up his own sneak attacks isn't optimized.

>...and you couldn't do that in 3.5 either.
I...know? I'm talking about 3.5