D&D 4e General

Unrelated to the suggested thread topic, but is the seeker really as bad as everyone online says it is?
Is it playable but subpar, or just completely unplayable bad?
If they're truly unplayable, how do you fix them?
I just really like the idea of a weapon-based controller class.

Seeker is subpar, but not unplayable.

This actually makes them a pretty good choice for powergamers in groups without other powergamers assuming said powergamer doesn't want to play warlord. Because an optimised seeker isn't impressive enough to steal the spotlight from anyone else, but isn't pathetic enough to be left in the dust either

Any ideas on how to make em...less subpar? Or would that be a lot of effort?

I heard hybridizing them with rangers works pretty well. Can anybody confirm?

I'm not a fan of 4e, never was, but I grew to appreciate it more over the years as I played a 2 year campaign in it (not my choice, it's what my friends were playing).

I liked the 1/2 level to AC, I liked how the power system worked for spellcasters, I liked some other stuff about it.

Unfortunately WotC threw all that shit out with 5e, which is an okay game, but it could have used some lessons from 4e. Vancian casting sucks ass.

I dunno where I was going with this. Have a bump faggots.

Seeker's flaws are sort of in built into their mechanics. You could just pull a wizard and give them OP feats and powers. But since they're designed around the idea of "soft control" rather than "hard control" that might not fit with their theme

I'm in the exact same boat as you. I strongly opposed 4e on launch, but the more I looked at it (and the more I struggled to make pathfinder work), the more I liked it.
5e seems like a huge step backwards, as if WOTC caved to player complaints about 4e, and just built 3.75 without fixing all the problems inherent to 3.5.

I think my least favourite thing about 5e is that hit dice in 5e are exactly what 3.5 fans erraneously thought healing surges in 4e were. And no one seems to complain about that

Total newbie to 4e here:
Would it break the game if one were to use a form of 'Encounter Power Points' (EPPs) where you have an amount equal to the number of encounter powers you have, but these points can be expended to use any enc power at a 1:1 cost?
Like say you have 4 encounter powers, so you have 4 EPPs - you can use those EPPs to cast whichever encounter powers you want, including a single one 4 times (and use all 4 EPPs)?

The goal here is that I want a resource management similar to Psionic classes available to other classes - where you use points rather than slots, but other classes have more support and/or different ways of going about their roles than the Psionic ones do (eg AoE debuff/control versus single target debuffing), but I don't know enough to see how the balance would change. Slight worry they'd have too much versus Psionics.

That sort of doesn't work for most classes, because encounter powers come with levels, and each levels encounter powers are typically better than the level before.

Unless you're a rogue

Ah. Well, shit.
What's the rogue do that is special here? They get worse, or somethin'?

They don't reall get worse, they just get three obscenely good powers available to them at level 3. Low slash, darting strike and startling offensive. A pure melee rogue is likely to have all three from level 13 to 17, when startling offensive is likely to be dropped in favour of tumbling strike, and pretty much every rogue is likely to keep low slash forever, because low slash is just that good.

They also get snap shot at level 7 for ranged rogues, but ranged rogues can't really hold a candle compared to melee rogues

There's nothing wrong with not being optimal, it just makes the game more challenging. If the rest of your party isn't optimising you should keep up with them fine.

Also controllers are a fairly loose role description, alternatives could be melee warlock or bard, possibly swordmage, they've got a lot of controller in them.

By turning all classes, monsters, species and other NPCs into robots

Thus making a mon-genre game

Are there any 4e rules for Siege Weapons?

Due to the death of most of the forums, does anyone know what are considered 'Must have' feats for a crossbow artificer?

crossbow artificers need crossbow caster, eldritch fusillade expertise, and probably superior crossbow proficiency

There are no explicit rules for seige weaponry outside of a few construct monsters which have seige weaponry as attacks. But those attacks do give a fairly good idea of how seige weaponry should work, mostly using area bursts vs reflex which high damage and bonus damage against inanimate objects

>There are no explicit rules for seige weaponry outside of a few construct monsters which have seige weaponry as attacks. But those attacks do give a fairly good idea of how seige weaponry should work, mostly using area bursts vs reflex which high damage and bonus damage against inanimate objects

Right. Mostly wondering because players in the game I'm in are getting a fort put together so the chance of them needing the statline for a catapault or such is pretty high.

I imagine you'd treat them as a power in and of themselves, not just a weapon statline.

Treat it as a monster controlled by someone. So it has it's own physical stats, HP, AC and NADs, as well as it's own attacks, but needs an operator in order to do anything

In a 4e-smashed-into-mecha game (or more accurately Gamma World 7) I decided to use the minion mechanics and exceptional defenses for the components of a helicarrier-like superbomber as they raced against the clock to disable it while also fighting other mech units.

It was pretty goddamn fun.

So how do I break it gently to my players that by not covering at least each of the four roles they're going to gimp themselves tactically in a lot of encounters in the long run and that they're just general fucktards for not even wanting to talk about roles when they chose classes?

Further, how do I as GM try to mitigate this so they don't wipe in the first half dozen encounters of the campaign? DMG just says they'll need lots of potions and controllers/leaders on my side of the screen get a lot stronger. Is that accurate?

Specifically, they chose to triple-up on strikers, lucked out with a defender and controller just from people wanting the class and not the role, with no leader for support/healing.

How viable is it to run Mines of Madness in a campaign?

I don't nessecary want players to die but they double crossed a big evil npc and now is forcing them on a sucide mission.

I'm in two minds, I don't want my players to lose attached PCs but then again I want to see them struggle a lot.

You're fucked

In a group of 5, the only truly necessary role is leader. No defender leaves the group a bit more fragile, but plenty of other classes can take defender-like bulk and defenses, no striker makes combat take a while, but you can still win in the end, no controller is the most easily countered out of them all, because controller-secondary is the most common secondary.

But no leader is no healing, and no off-turn attacks. Limiting offense and defense terribly.

Try to convince them that they need a leader, any leader, even a fucking sentinel druid would do

Sort of like a vehicle?

Err, yeah, I forgot about vehicles

I think even the developers did. Adventurer's Vault style vehicles were mostly left behind, and the mounts just got more useless as the rules were updated.

Gear ideas for low paragon warlock, rogue and cavalier? Their players are slackers and DM asked for my input.

Let them die

I'd say let them come close to dying instead of TPKing.

They should be OK, as long as they keep their weapons, armor and neck pieces current. Giving them a short rest after every encounter and keeping their days down to three or four fights at most will ensure their survival, unless they get sloppy or your die get hot.

Or you throw a bunch of minions at the and let them get swamped

There was material that boosted them release in later dragon magazines. New powers that weren't shit and the pp moonrise stalker.

I always viewed tumbling strike as an upgraded low slash and kept startling offense cause it was an off-turn attack

Houserule in minor action healing potions that aren't shit, but can only be used once per encounter/character.

That's about all you need.

Has anybody here used vehicles? I only ever used a wagon and a couple of horses, but it didn't come up much in game play since the GM arbitrarily decided we couldn't take it with us. "The roads are too rough" he said.

Yeah but they're called "hit dice," therefore they don't threaten immersionational verisimilitude. Totally different.

I dunno, I played in a party of all strikers and we got by decently. Secret is to kill everything by round 3, and if it isn't dead run

pro strats

They kinda are fucked, aren't they? I'm leaning away from lots of houserules, and instead resigned to toning things down on the fly so they feel how hard stuff is without it being a party wipe right away and turning them off the game. I'm preparing for when the complaints that the system is bad, because fights are too hard, they can't outlast any monsters, and they have to let bad guys get away because they're limited in encounters per day, the calm and polite explanation that they've been intentionally playing not as intended.

Thanks for the responses guys, it's given me more to think about with my little conundrum.

What classes are they precisely? Some have a good enough secondary to fill a couple other roles

Defender: Warden
Controller: Druid
Striker: Monk
Striker: Sorcerer
Striker: Ranger

The Druid I've hinted at that the group could use some more support if he would consider the sentinel, as the group has some controller off-spec with the Warden and Monk, but before we reach that point the system gets blamed and it's totally no fault of the players for not talking about roles beforehand. The Sorcerer and Ranger are the least locked-in at this point so I could be surprised at what shows up on game night.

This is after I've asked everyone to collaborate on party creation, communicate with each other and keep an eye out for the roles and cohesion.

A life warden could patch up the lack of a leader a bit. All warden builds are kinda controllery.

A bard makes an excellent leader, depending on why the sorcerer is playing a sorcerer, you may be able to convince him to go bard

...

Which is better for a strength rogue? Daggermaster or shock trooper?

I have the character builder program, but patches only through 2009. I know I'm missing a bunch of content, as there's absolutely nothing from Essentials that I remember having in it years ago.

So anyone know of any more up-to-date resources for the builder?

rogue-elements.obsidianportal.com/wikis/offline-character-builder

I appreciate it man, but the content on that page isn't available anymore. I already tried it with my own google-fu :(

I guess this really has become impossible to find. Give me an hour, I'll upload what I have saved.

bump

For the people that actually like 4e here, what issues do you have with the system?

That all the times I get to be a player the game falls apart.

That the game was built with a large digital component in mind, that was poorly supported and killed off because the replacement devs like Mike Mearls personally don't like digital support. The game can look so intimidating without the ease of a character builder, and after the murder-suicide set back development it never recovered.

It's my only gripe with the system per-say.

Most issues I have are purely the larger community more than anything in the system, laughing about it being an MMO and then going back to Pathfinder or 5e and then spending weeks working on homebrew content to rebalance issues without trying an alternative that doesn't have those problems. The only friends of mine that like 4e are the same friends that tried 4e, and can't go to other editions now because they feel tactically shallow, rules-vague and crazy imbalanced.

mega.nz/#F!Z5V12TAC!4agCR0niwAiECeriIYo2WA
Here's everything I got. Not sure if I'm missing anything. Sorry it took so long.

I never liked having to swap out powers as you level. I would've liked lower level ones to scale, like how they did with some dark sun theme powers.

Feat taxes were dumb and should've been built into character leveling.

Psionics needed more love, and I think monks would've been more uniform with the rest of the psionic classes. movement techniques as agmentable at-wills might've been cool.

They toyed around with at-will stances a lot in essentials, and I think that would've been a good idea to integrate into the larger game. Essentials in general was too divorced from the rest of the game and ended up a jumble of bad ideas with a few gems.

I wish we had gotten a cleaned up 4.5 instead of 5e

>I think monks should've* been more uniform with the rest of the psionic classes.

I hate how there's no fix for how bloody awful every build that puts your main and secondary stats behind the same NAD is. Meaning that no character ever will be both strong and tough, or nimble and clever, or observant and convincing.

Also, improved defenses and the expertise feats are maths fixes, which is awful. Because it means that absolutely everyone needs to spend two feats on them, and not on things for your build or for fluff. What essentials did to the melee training feats was also rather bullshit.

Another thing that bothers me is utility powers, they're kind of supposed to be there as out of combat stuff, things your character can do for fluff reasons, but most have in-combat utility, which means a bunch of the fluffier ones just suck.

My other problems are problems 4e shares with 3.5. Like things that should be always possible being made impossible by default via the creation of a feat that makes them possible

I always thought the +1/2 level to lots of different roles kind of eclipsed individual strengths characters had. I know that stats and stuff are still important, but I didn't like how it felt like your "strengths" weren't really as emphasized as I would have liked.

I think rather than monks being more uniform, that they should have just made wilder a full class instead of a theme, and make it a power-point using ranged psionic striker

You're a gentlemen and a scholar, sir.

>>I wish we had gotten a cleaned up 4.5 instead of 5e
Me too, user. Me too.

Fluffier everything sucked by comparison. The tribal feats, guild feats, RP utilities, etc were all eclipsed by options that made you better at killing things.

I think it would've served them well to expand of the role of backgrounds and reserve all those fluffier out of combat bonuses to strictly background feature bonuses.

>Like things that should be always possible being made impossible by default via the creation of a feat that makes them possible
Personally how I treated that is if a player wanted to mimic something an actual feature would've let them do, I ask for skill checks in addition to rolls to hit or whatever.

...

Exactly my problem

Because I like 4e monks as they are

Although i would rather like them to have some feats for fighting unarmed on par with the weapon style feats like crashing tempest, shielding whirlwind and starblade flurry. Because as it stands, the unarmed class is one of the worst melee classes at actually fighting unarmed. Fighters, Barbarians, Rangers and even Rogues all do it better

A player in my campaign is playing a warlock and it feels like his damage isn't really that good considering his role is a striker. The group fighter seems to do roughly the same kind of damage (when he actually hits). Is he playing warlock wrong somehow or have I somewhat misunderstood what striker actually means?

Warlocks are not actually strikers, they're controllers in disguise

You can build them as strikers, but they'll never be as good at it as a sorcerer, let alone something like a ranger

Warlock was one of the lower tier strikers and fighter was a high damage defender. The secret was that Warlock was actually a single target controller in disguise

Ah, that explains things.

>I hate how there's no fix for how bloody awful every build that puts your main and secondary stats behind the same NAD is. Meaning that no character ever will be both strong and tough, or nimble and clever, or observant and convincing.
Anybody have ideas to fix this?

On another note, how should the monsters prioritise targets when in combat? So far I've had them try to get past the fighter to gank on the warlock and cleric, but whenever they get marked by the warrior they stick to just hitting him most of the time.

But HOLY SHIT they are good controllers.

They get a save ends dominate in heroic tier. and a paragon path that makes their save ends effects nigh impossible to actually end if the warlock is within 5 squares of his target. They also get a boatload of dazes and stuns, an attack that explicitly makes the target "make a melee basic attack against the empty air" as their next standard action (thus triggering defender marks, as they made an attack against something that wasn't the defender), and even weirder shit

Is there any class that is really good at acid?
And isn't shit?

I use a lot of humanoids, and play them like they know what they're doing. They'll target high damage or support pieces and generally tarpit or slow down defending players. That said, players should feel good when using abilities like marking and whatnot, so as long as they're going out the monsters are going to answer those challenges.

When I use less intelligent stuff like undead or animals, it's standard first come first attacked service.

Over-all, I'll go more tactically heavy on my end if I want a combat to be harder too, and I'll just auto-pilot movement and attack to be whatever if fights are meant to be easy too.

You never have to honor a defender's mark, but a good defender will make you regret not doing so. Half the time when I play defender I want monsters to violate the mark so I can show off my fancy punishments and kill them faster.

I've been working on a homebrew thing that gives a class feature to every class that has a primary/secondary-under-the-same defense option to use their secondary stat to apply to a different NAD instead of the usual stats for that NAD.

Rageblood barbarians, battlerager fighters and earthstrength wardens get con to will. Stormheart wardens get con to reflex, clerics can use charisma instead of con or strength for fort defense, enlightened ardents to wisdom to reflex, chaladins got wisdom to fort, cunning sneak rogues to intelligence to will and prescient bards got a unique at-will power to add their wisdom to all NADs against one attack per round (which might be overpowered, haven't tested it, I just thought it looked fun)

Depends on the monster

zombies and skeletons and other mindless things just attack whatever's closest unless marked by a paladin or swordmage. Predators and similar beasts attack whatever looks the most frail, while intelligent creatures aim for high-value targets and are fully aware of what marks do and respond accordingly

Refluffed fire wizards

Skirmishers try to gank the most dangerous person on the field, Brutes/soldiers want to keep tough guys and heavy hitters focused on them, artillery pins down whoever needs mobility to be effective. Leaders are entirely dependent on the monster. Some wanna hang back and orchestrate, others want to fight in the meat of things with their units

Black Dragon dragonborn sorcerer with nusemnee's atonement and ancient soul

works for all damage types that dragonborn dragon sorcerers can specialize in

>masochistic black dragonborn purposefully targeting allies and redirecting the damage at himself
>"This hurts me more than it hurts you and I love it"
Could be an amusing character

I absolutely despise feat taxes and the absurd cost of rituals. First thing I houserule is ritual costs and giving people the necessary feats for free.

>All those specific case houserules
That just makes me think there's something wrong with the core system that needs to be overhauled

Thank you kindly for the link!

Plus, there's Armor of Agathys at first level. That's a freaking amazing minion killer.

That was my point back here I don't really want to overhaul because I fucking love how it works most of the time. But most of the time isn't all the time.

That said, i think the best way to make a 4e-influenced game that isn't 4e would be to use make each stat apply to one defense and limit the total number of stats to three or four

Was in my twice monthly 4e game last night.

We ran with a Cavalier, a PHB/DP Pally and 2 PHB rogues. Got through about 4 trolls and a couple Oni in a lvl+2 fight.

Will now take an extended rest to level our characters before taking a dimensional portal from the Feywild to maybe the Far Realm (?!) Spoke to him about using the downtime to update my companions' gear. His response:

> much of what the party has missed in previous sessions would've require investigation more specifically than a general ransacking.

As if there's a better way to search than a four-six hour ransacking.

Rogue player called out to the "Nocturne Circle" which he claimed was from 2e. Never heard of it myself did any of you?

>Nocturne Circle
Isn't that an Elder Scrolls thing?

>"Nocturne Circle"

maybe from the realms. i've never heard of it though.

What's your favorite 4e race?

What's your favorite 4e monster?

Half-orcs. STR/DEX 4 lyfe