D&D 4e General

>Raven Queen
>The Morrigan is new and interesting deity user, truly unique and never before used!
What are you, twelve?

>4e
You're still living?

Well, to be fair, if you only read what was in the PHB1, she seems pretty cool

The Raven Queen

Type: God
Alignment: Unaligned
Gender: Female
Domain: Death, Fate, Winter
The name of the god of death is long forgotten, but she is called the Raven Queen. She is the spinner of fate and the patron of winter. She marks the end of each mortal life, and mourners call upon her during funeral rites, in the hope that she will guard the departed from the curse of undeath. She expects her followers to:
* Hold no pity for those who suffer and die, for death is the natural end of life.
* Bring down the proud who try to cast off the chains of fate. As the instrument of the Raven Queen, you must punish hubris where you find it.
* Watch for the cults of Orcus and stamp them out whenever they arise. The Demon Prince of the Undead seeks to claim the Raven Queen’s throne.

If you ignore everything but that about her, she's probably the best god of death DnD has had.

Too bad literally every other bit of fluff related to her makes her the worst god of death DnD has had

Yes, absolutely no parallel to how Wee Jas is a goddess of law and magic as well, who is worshiped specifically for a gentle, peaceful release from life as well as her adherents providing legal services to her worshipers and how she was more than merely a death goddess. Also how she did allow lawful and correct procedures for creating only willing undead, rather than chaotic and uncontrolled use of undead. Or how she was actually involved in the restructuring of an entire pantheon because her original worshipers death god was destroyed and she took his place as a necessity, rather than being one from the start.

Surely no depth there, user.

Star-spawn are cool

Wait I'm confused

Isn't the Raven Queen literally just 4e Wee Jas? I thought it was just the same thing under a different name, were they supposed to be different?

Bane is great because he survived the plane-crash of Gruumsh ramming his astral dominion into Bane's.

Nope. 4e had Wee Jas relegated to literally being Bane's cocksleeve so that the NEW AND UNIQUE MORRIGA- er, Raven Queen could be put into the books.

Have you ever read about how Mystra 2.0 was killed? Shar danced, and distracted Boccob and Mystra 2.0 so badly Bane could steal Boccob's staff and kill Mystra with it by smashing it over her head.

That's how ham-handed the deities writing is in 4e.

4e never had Wee Jas.

As someone who doesn't give a fuck about the history and took the game at face value, none of that seems relevant or interesting.

Strange, they're virtually identical in terms of personality, appearance and domains, except for the Raven Queen having winter as a domain instead of arcana.

Also the only 4e deity stuff I've read is the little articles some of them had in some of the dungeon and dragon magazines, which is mostly just breakdowns of how their worshipers organize themselves and behave

Aren't Banites pretty trustworthy as long as 1.) you are on time on your payments, 2.) you are stronger than them?

>you are on time on your payments

What if there was no charge in the first place?

Probably looting and subjugating someone right now.

I tried to ask this question elsewhere, but it proved to be a total clusterfuck, but here might provide the proper context.

How would you improve the role of mundane armour in 4e? As is, it's pretty dull and provides no real choices. You go for the heaviest armour your class can wear unless a specific feature lets you do otherwise. While some people might argue realism and so on, if each class only ever wears one type of armour (with some slight variations depending on features), there's no reason for armour to exist externally anyway, and could be made an assumed part of your class progression without any real loss.

Is there any value in trying to make armour choice more interesting? Making it a meaningful variety of gameplay options instead of one clearly optimal choice every time?

How would you do it? Making all armour on each 'tier' roughly equivalent and balancing AC bonuses against other traits or potential downsides has been discussed, but is a bit fiddly and the actual balancing would be hard.

tl;dr how would you fix armour in 4e?

You are correct in that each character simply wears the heaviest armor they are proficient with, albeit restricting themselves to light armor should they have a good ability modifier to AC. There are *some* choices to be made with the Adventurer's Vault 1's masterwork armors, but the differences are minor at best.

I do not see any value in "zooming in" on armor and making it more fiddly. If anything, I think that armor should be simplified further into "unarmored, light armor, heavy armor" (how characters in fiction tend to be depicted anyway), with each class having further AC adjustments.

Why not just fold it into classes altogether?

Because that would make magic armor difficult to flavor, unless magic armor was replaced with magical brooches or pins that attached to whatever clothing or armor a character is wearing.

Invisible teleporting swordmage via multiclassing into warlock and taking evermeet warlock as the PP

Is this worth the trouble? Or would unseen mage via wizard multiclass just work better?

You again? Some armor grants bonuses to NAD. This help fix the tax feat, and you have armor that grants bonus to either Fort, Will or Reflex. And a base armor without them but increased AC.

Yeah. As I said, I made the thread elsewhere and watched it devolve into a clusterfuck of people shouting about realism, one of the things I care about the least.

I do like the idea of armours with lower AC bonuses adding to NAD's to make up the difference, but I had it pointed out to me that it would potentially break the 'balance' of weapon attacks vs magic, where weapons got the proficiency bonus but generally targetted AC, while magic gets no proficiency bonus but generally target NAD's, being about as accurate because NAD's are assumed to be lower.

I'm not sure how much of a big deal it is, but it gave me pause. Anything that messes with the math like that is tricky.

You go for the heaviest armor your class can wear because the heaviest armor your class can wear is the armor your class is supposed to be wearing.

For more variability, there's armor proficiency and superior armor proficiency feats

The problem, IMO, is that heavy armor makes you get hit less, which feels backwards. My paladin is taking blows and laughing, not dodging them.

Now I know it supposedly represents your armor turning blows or reducing them to no.or scratches, but still. It's all about the feel, and it don't feel right.

Well, that's a problem for all of DnD, not just 4e, and it's way too big for us to try and fix here

>LITERAL. Not even slightly figuratively.
I've never heard this story user. Elaborate?

>The most interesting death goddess was removed to turn her into a fuckty for the god of murder
How do you remove a goddess from a new setting before it's printed?

what are the most important magic items for a lazylord?

Also, which other leader class goes best with lazylord?

What the hell are you talking about? Please elaborate on this Raven Queen history.

>FR
nobody fucking cares

Armor runes/glyphs would easily do it.

simply create armor of the "light" category that give less AC but a decent buff in other stuff.
save roll skill check ect...

make the ratio interesting like 1ac= +2 to a save roll or +4 to skill check or +2 to a group of skill

You want your paladin to dodge attacks? Isn't that not what paladins are made for? Wearing full plate with a huge shield means when someone or something swipes at you, your massive armor takes the hit. Hell, even massive strikes just toss you about, with your soft personbody inside being relatively unscathed.

Bard has a cha-based ranged at-will that gives an ally an MBA, lazylords should have solid cha for healing, so could be a solid option.

Not other user, but Wikipedia notes her as a goddess from the Greyhawk setting in 3.0
Seems she was more magic than death, acting more as a psychopomp for dead wizards than as an actual god of death.
GH had a larger pantheon with more deities presiding over multiple domains, so I don't really see the RQ and WJ as too similar, other than the cold, lady-death appearance.

any advice on virtual tabletops for playing 4e online? (pic unrelated)

What are some primary things to keep in mind if you want to homebrew classes or refluff to something very much out of type?

>You go for the heaviest armour your class can wear unless a specific feature lets you do otherwise
I like to play characters that perform lots of dynamic actions in combat--kicking over tables, jumping across ledges, climbing to a better vantage point, throwing teammates--enough that the armor check penalty was very much a factor in my choice of armor. I had proficiency with plate, but went with chain. This also meant I wasn't competing with the party's paladin for magic armor.

Anyone happen to have a scan of the Dungeon Tiles Master Set - The City set? Can't seem to be able to hunt one down...

Know what the fuck you actually want the class to do and consider if there's actually enough concept there to carry an entire class (as opposed to making alternative features for a pre-existing class, a PP, some feats, whatever)
As far as refluffing goes, remember that damage types are not interchangable.

Chain still has a check penalty. You mean scale?

Thats what he's talking about, dodging and tanking feel the same because both result in a miss. My suggestion time have armor give DR and and a max dex to ac

A Chieftain's Spear from Dragon Magazine #391 will improve your allies' attack rolls with granted attacks.

Tactician's Armor from the Adventurer's Vault will improve your Intelligence-based effects, although you will need to take Armor Proficiency (Ringmail) from Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium to actually wear it as light armor.

By the paragon tier, the Regalia of the Golden General from pages 122-123 of the Adventurer's Vault 2 contain some useful items for any warlord.

>Also, which other leader class goes best with lazylord?
So that you need not spend feats on any Expertise feat and need not purchase any magic weapons beyond a Chieftain's Weapon +1, I would look into the hybrid shaman. That would give you various attack-granters that require no attack rolls, most notably the excellent Spirit Infusion at-will.

This could certainly work, if people could swallow such a thing rather than whine about a lack of "real magic armor." Everyone could have an AC progression built into their class, and physical armor would be nothing more than a flavor prop.

You probably want a pixie or a draconian for their incredible jumping capacities and thus mobility, then.

This would be nearly impossible to balance in 4e, because almost all monsters have "riders" attached to their attacks, anything from a trivial "push 1" to a terrifying "dominated (save ends)."

Rimefire plate, specter plate, and tarrasque plate from page 7 of the Adventurer's Vault 1 are all masterwork armors that sacrifice some AC for resistance to all damage, yet nobody would take them for fear of suffering monsters' hard-hitting attacks and rider effects.

well a miss is a mechanical binary state. tanking and being missed are narrative descriptions.

try this, any attack that beats your base ac plus allowed dex mod, but does not beat your actual ac, is a hit that deals no damage, having been shed by your armor or deflected/blocked by your shield.
it "feels" the way it is described. taking a mechanical effect and inserting it directly into the narrative realm of the game will never feel right, because you want a narrative(description) that isn't binary.

>So that you need not spend feats on any Expertise feat and need not purchase any magic weapons beyond a Chieftain's Weapon +1, I would look into the hybrid shaman. That would give you various attack-granters that require no attack rolls, most notably the excellent Spirit Infusion at-will.

I didn't mean in terms of hybrids, I meant in terms of party composition

>try this, any attack that beats your base ac plus allowed dex mod, but does not beat your actual ac, is a hit that deals no damage, having been shed by your armor or deflected/blocked by your shield.
I must be missing something - doesn't AC just come down to armor plus dex anyways?

>remember that damage types are not interchangable.
Why not, as this goes far in the "refluffing for theme" idea?
There is a difference between changing damage types to fit a theme and making a unsubtle bid for optimized damage.

Essentials strikers who spam basic attacks are far and away the best partners for a warlord, especially a "lazy" warlord.

Look into a fighter (slayer), a rogue (thief), a sorcerer (elementalist), or an assassin (executioner)|warlock, all of which will have very strong basic attacks for a warlord to grant.

Different damage types receive different degrees of support. Acid, for example, is a woefully unsupported damage type. Cold and radiant are the kings of damage types, with fire and lightning/thunder as runners-up.

Ok, I meant in terms of which leader classes do well in a party alongside lazylords in a party with 5 PCs

Also, don't forget how some damage types have way more monsters that resist or are immune to them than others

I am looking to join or start a new online group.
Anyone interested?

A warlord could be supported well by an artificer who buffs the party's attacks with Magic Weapon, Punishing Eye, and Icebound Sigil, and uses off-turn attacks to supplement Magic Weapon spam.

Once the party's attacks are buffed, the warlord can then grant the party such attacks.

There is a reason why the artificer|warlord (a.k.a. "killswitch") was the single most heavily-pushed and outright shilled leader build in the entire history of the D&D 4e CharOp board. It is a very effective leader.

I would be interested in participating in this D&D 4e game provided that it does *not* take place over Roll20, a platform that I must minimize my usage of by necessity. (There is a chance that this situation might improve by the end of January, so I am holding out hope for that.)

The recently-released MapTool 1.4.1.7 in conjunction with either port forwarding or Hamachi should serve well as a Roll20 substitute.

I'd be interested, but only if you're using voice chat

Playing online rpgs with text only is really disconnecting

That's why I said there is a difference between a power grab and following a theme.

in that case, as long as you don't use radiant damage you should be fine

Radiant weapons may be level 15+ magic items, but they are easily the strongest of the damage-type magic weapons thanks to having an item bonus to damage baked in

I hold the opposite opinion; I prefer text.

Cold damage is easily optimizable via Lasting Frost and Wintertouched by paragon.

Fire damage has the Infernal Prince theme, the Hellfire Blood tiefling racial feat, and the Firewind Blade.

Lightning and thunder damage have the Mark of Storm and the Lyrandar Wind-Rider paragon path, and thunder also has Resounding Thunder.

It is really best to just never swap around damage types when reflavoring.

Yes, but note how for all of those, they require features not related to how you gain the damage type

With radiant weapons, the item that boosts your radiant damage also allows you to make all your attacks radiant, and is the only way to make all of your attacks radiant if you aren't using a heavy blade, which means that if you're explicitly not optimizing, radiant damage is the outlier

Are you saying, then, that if a character opts for damage type swaps, they should also be banned from selecting feats and items that support the new damage types?

So if a character was to swap all of their attacks' damage to thunder damage, they would then be ineligible for the Mark of Storm, Resounding Thunder, and the Lyrandar Wind-Rider?

In a low-optimization game?

Yeah

Anyone running a 4e game? I'd love to get in on one on Roll20.

Wut?

Have you checked Roll20 itself?

>You probably want a pixie
Go to bed Jess

This is entirely up to the purview of the DM, ie ME, the guy that asked the question in the first place.
I already know radiant and cold are easily abusable, but I wouldn't greenlight a damage type swap unless it was following a tight thematic ideal, and thematic ideals often do not allow or call for the kind of optimized approaches you are speaking of.
Sometimes they even call for flatly poor options, but guess what? If the player is having fun, and really wants it, I will facilitate them, because that is my job, y'know?
But I'm not going to let someone jump to a higher powered damage type because they "have an idea", or some other shit where players think they are pulling a fast one.

I actually have a player that was looking to do something like this. He is a RQ invoker focused on winter, and was dissapointed in the number of cold- based powers available. I'd initially denied changing powers for but I've been reconsidering for your reasons.
Some things can be seen as a sort of trade. When a player is making a character to be min/maxed in a specific way, they are utilizing the rules to the best of their ability, thus they should be limited to the rules as written.
But when a player takes powers or feats to just facilitate backstory or teeming, they have given up something, so it doesn't seem unfair to let them change one or two things to maximize aesthetic.
Of course, the safest thing is to tell your players that any concession is liable to change if it is found to be too potent. Reasonable people can either not abuse their gifts, or understand when things are ridiculous.

I only run with Voice chat so that is not an issue.

I'd likely want to use Roll20 or Tabletop Simulator.
I like Tabletop Simulator the most if that works for people.

I'm considering removing Daily Powers entirely from my 4E game and replacing them with Encounter Powers, plus giving the PC an additional Action Point each milestone for each Daily Power they'd have. I'm also considering removing all the Daily utility powers and sticking only to the at-will and encounter ones. That way the only things I'm tracking on a daily scale are healing surges and action points, which feels a lot more natural.

For Barbarians I'd just give them a passive that says they can enter a Rage and get its benefits when they spend an Action Point, or get the bonus damage if they spend an Action Point and they're already raging. Just let them choose between the passive benefits for level 1 daily rage powers, then higher ones when they get to higher levels.

For classes with Power Points I'd just give them an additional At-Will power when they'd learn a Daily power, plus a few power points.

I know people will probably hate this idea but I just want to focus on individual encounters and not the adventuring day grind as a whole. The only metric for needing to stop is running out of Healing Surges, and I'm even considering adjusting them as well. Basically, I want to try to orient combat more towards Gamma World 7E's rhythm and approach, wherein the focus is on exciting set-piece battles and less on the grind of daily resource management.

Why not just play 5th edition or another system the better fits your style at that point?

I thank that what is trying to do is getting rid of dailies. I had this problem too: My players all hold on theirs until the "boss battle". They would get nearly killed in common battles only to be able to "nova" the boss.

Player problem, not system problem.

Because 5E is even worse for what I want? All of the casters other than low-level Warlocks and even some of the martial classes use long rest (i.e. Daily) resources. Heck, 5E's idea of an 'encounter' resource requires a 1-hour rest to regain and the system actually expects that you only use it every OTHER encounter.

No, it's a system problem. I want to focus on individual battles and tactics, not attrition and long-term resource management. I also want to avoid Giant Robotic Crab Syndrome, i.e. the unwillingness for players to spend limited resources to defeat a powerful enemy (for example, a giant crab) because they're concerned that an even bigger enemy waits afterwards (for example, an even bigger robotic crab).

Sounds more like an issue with encounter design. You really need to keep piling on the punishing tactical encounters for the 4e combat system to work well. If players are able to hold onto their dailies without risking death then they need harder fights.
Try using Conditions more on PCs. Doing things like Blinding a good chunk of the party and setting something like wolves on them pile on a target and knock them prone. Puts the party at a huge disadvantage and leads them to having to blow their big powers to deal with it or play really smart with their smaller powers if they want to save them.

One I like for low level is Mud Lashers and Sporeback Frogs. The Mud Lashers toss mud balls to lock people down at range then the Frogs start dragging them into the water to drown them. If you focus the frogs then whoever is grabbed is going to get poisoned hammered on in melee by the Lashers, if you focus the Lashers people are going to get pulled into the water and fight at a disadvantage.

It is all about designing interesting and frustrating encounters that push the party to use their dailies when things start to go bad.

Then it is a system problem. You are playing the wrong system if you want individual battles focus.

DnD has always been about attrition and resource management.

Check out something like GURPS for what you are looking for.

How do you keep players from complaining that you are trying to kill them? 90% of people I play with complain if monsters don't die in one hit most the time.
Also how do you justify low Int monsters of differing races teaming up and fighting tactically?

1: I play with adults.
2: All my games are in the same multiverse and there is a Demon (read as dimension traveler) guild that designs and sells Monsters as guard services. They have more or less been the on going background BBG for 6 games now as they are war mongers that profit off selling to all sides. They have been dipping their hand in and fucking with the worlds of most of my games.

DnD in general have the same problem through the editions from Basic starting so it isn't only 4e.

If you actually interested to give armor a lot of varieties, have magical armors been common goods in your setting and let the options not be the type of armor but the type of extra enhancement that the character wanted after the pluses.
Lots of variety there.

I get around that issue by simply having four encounters a "day" (by disconnecting days as in the length of time, and mechanical "days", a-la 13th Age)

That way, players may be unwilling to spend resources early on, but since they know they will have four encounters, they won't waste them by not using them before they're refreshed, and I can still pull the contest of attrition on them by denying short rests for longer than they expect

I've got a question that's not related to 4th ed, but don't feel like making a new thread just for it, so I'm annoying you guys with it.

How do you come up with personal motivations for your characters and act on them in game? It's a problem of mine where after making a character, I have a really bad time of deciding where I want to take them without some defined quest to pursue or some authority figure to take the helm. This is magnified in my current DnD game since we're not actually a real adventuring party, our characters all mostly staying in the city and doing their own thing and only getting together when really bad things go down, and my character really doesn't have any direction so I receive a lot of the downtime during sessions. Meanwhile we've got one player running a gambling den as one of the heads of the major crime organization, one who's decided to run an orphanage so he can find a worthy apprentice to pass his assassin skills to, an artificer who runs their own shop while also solving problems for their guild, and lastly a mortician who uses their job to cover the fact that they're a necromancer trying to become a lich or something I think. I'm currently on my second character who's part of a failed rebellion from a far away land that came here to find a new life, aaaaand he's pretty much settled in making a good wage as a merc for the necromancer. The DM introduced an antagonist for my character to scheme with, but due to how the story went on there isn't much I can do for the time being.

What happens when the party avoids encounters or leaves/rests before four encounters are fought? Do they not regain spells or abilities until they fight a fourth encounter? What happens when the party fights five encounters and ends that leg of the adventure, perhaps the fifth encounter being a boss? Do they not regain their spells until after the third encounter of the next story arc or adventure? If a party knows that they regain all their resources at the end of the fourth encounter, what's to stop them from blowing all their remaining resources on the fourth encounter with no restraint?

I find your approach highly questionable and very 'gamist'.

Just add Microtransactions and let players pay you $4.99 to recharge their daily power.

But Cyric was the one who stole Mystra's staff and Boccob doesn't even exist in the shitheap that is FR.

If you're going to bitch about lore at least know it.

On that note
>Complaining about bad deity writing in FORGOTTEN REALMS as 4e's fault
>The setting with the Time of Troubles, the Wall of the Faithless, and literally hundreds of gods that die and come back to life more often than Marvel characters

Fuck off with that noise

If they leave or rest before four encounters have been fought, they get the benefits of a short rest, but not a long rest, and I come up with some excuse as to why their rest wasn't enough for them to fully recover. I always build story events to make sure they fit around the four encounter structure, and absolutely nothing is to stop them from blowing all of their remaining resources on the fourth encounter, except that in doing so, it means they didn't use those resources in the previous three encounters

It is very gamist, but it's lead to some enjoyable dungeon crawls, and since I can still deny short rests I can still use it to invoke stressful situations