So I'm running a game of D&D 4e for a bunch of new players...

Hobbies require sacrifices. Hobbies are a luxury. Just admit that you want to play 4e and it has nothing to do with "no money".

TG will give you a better system for free. Its like a needle exchange. If you're playing 4e we know you're going to hurt yourself, but we can at least minimize the damage. Id highly recommend checking a PDF thread for barbarians of Lemuria.

Who let 2008 in here?

Ignore the assholes OP. 4e is a good system with a focused design. If it does what you want it to, awesome, have fun with it.

As for home base stuff, 4e actually had rules for that. The Adventurers Vault 2 has a section on Lair Items, page 79 onwards. You can also find them in cbloader or on the funin.space compendium.

Look, 4e is not a good starting system. Its a decent game, but its in no way representative of ttrpgs as a whole and teaches several bad habits.

No more than any other edition of D&D.

In many ways, 4e is a perfect starting system. Everything you need is laid out on your character sheet, with very little need to look things up or quibble over the rules. The power structure makes it easy to understand your options both in and out of combat, while the simple and hard to screw up character creation means you're far, far less likely to run into trap options and seriously hurt your game experience just by picking something that seems fun.

While that is all true, what is effiencient/good play in 4e is metagaming in any other system, and thats probably the hardest habit to un-learn.

...What are you even talking about?

4e encourages things like encounter-counting and meta-resource management. It teaches players to pay attention to what dungeon layout is likely to be, not in an in-world sense but in an in-game sense so that healing surges and per-day powers can be used to their maximum potential. Other games have similar features, but 4e is the only fantasy roleplaying game Im aware of which justifies the rationing of resources in such an arbitrary way.

Maybe in high optimisation play? My groups have always played it like, y'know, D&D, and it's worked pretty much fine.

It's not like you can't do the exact same things in 3.PF/5e, they just obfuscate things more to make it more difficult.

Sure, but other editions of dont do as much to emphasize that sort of optimization and dont "break the 4th wall" as often with arbitrary power limitations.

Im not the crusader for 3/pf that you may think I am, but I do run a lot of open games at my FLGs and the majority of players with a metagaming problem come to me from a pure 4e background if they have any at all.

I'm still kinda confused by you using the term 'metagaming'.

Generally, that's used to refer to people using out of character knowledge to get an advantage in the game.

It's a completely different thing to using the mechanics of the game.

Then again, I guess it's the reason so many people dislike abstract narrative metacurrencies and such. 4e is, in many ways, a very narrative system- Per encounter powers are very much a narrative conceit. It's a design trend I like, and I don't think the behaviour it encourages is entirely negative, it's just a matter of playstyle. A player thinking of their characters role in the story and the overall flow of events as well as considering things from their characters perspective is something I often thinks add to the game, helping people realise when a bit of compromise or taking a certain action might help the game be more fun for everyone, justifying it IC of course but not being entirely motivated by that IC reason.

4e is a bad sytem, that' established in his threat by now.

My approach for this would be: First separate upgrades into a low/mid/high tier bases on the effect they have. After that, base each upgrade tier on the corresponding income you expect the heroes to get over the course of the tier.
We can't give you a guide on how to price what exactly, because it depens on how much gold/loot/magical items you hand out to your players. If you go 100% with random loot and calculate the average you'll have at least a guideline on how much ressources they'll have available.
Depending on how much shopping they do (or need to do, e.g. because their radom loo doesn'thelp them) you hould opt to modify their loot instead of trying to create a perfectly balanced pricing - imply becaue it won't be anyway.

Personally I would tend to lean to the "more expensive" side beforehand, and if necessary provide options for the party to get discounts if th RP well with the righ NPCs...

You could also look for homstead rule online, I guess someone created homebrew rules already, but I can't give you directions. Especially not for 4e.
If you can't find it for 4e, at least look into the rules of other systems, this could give you at least a rough how to o that in your game.

That sort of really deep theater of the minds is not something new players are very good at. The majority of new players do not see an arbitrary ability and think of a way to mesh it into their concept of the world: they see an arbitrary ability and assume that everything that goes on in the world is arbitrary, and therefore secondary to mechanical considerations. In reality, there's no reason a trick should work once per encounter, regardless of that encounter's makeup, but 4e requires that you think of the world as being arbitrarily subservient to the rules. Ive heard many people say that 4e does narrative well by leaving it alone and letting players engage the roleplay aspects of the game at their own comfort level, but I find that newer players do not know how to roleplay, and as such 4e only teaches them how to use rules well, but not how to help tell a story.

Don't listen to the "hurr durr 4e is le meme xDDD im too funny" crowd, OP. The system doesn't matter too much.

Anyway I was a player in a campaign where the DM had us rebuild a village that fuctionned as our base and gave bonuses.
The thing is, since you're base is gonna be static, it looses a ton of interest, because players are always going to want to travel and shit.
What worked for us was having ultra OP merchands that would sell high level magic stuff. But it worked because our DM was a greedy fuck that would never let us get high level stuff in our loots.

I've always expressed it in terms of a fight scene in a movie or a TV show.

Most of the time, people stick to simple seeming attacks, not achieving too much but keeping pressure on the opponent.

A few times in the scene, they'll pull off something significant, taking out a lesser foe or putting serious hurt or disadvantage on a greater one.

And, once every few scenes, someone will pull off something amazingly fucking awesome.

It's even more direct if you consider stuff like anime or toku stuff. Even if someone has a super strong signature attack, they don't just spam it all the time. They take the time to beat the enemy up first, softening them up until they notice a key moment in the fight to make best use of it.

This is what Encounters and Dailies are, and I've never met a new player who found the principle hard to grasp as part of the storytelling of combat.

Thats a great explanation, but a new group of new players with a new DM may not necessarily have that understanding. You're right, its not a hard principle to grasp, but its not an understanding that the system inherently builds, as opposed to something like mouseguard for example which explains why it segregates narratives into vignettes (as well as pretty much every other design decision).

If you're going to be throwing that much money at the players, Id just divide all their reward into "loot piles" with the approximate value of 1k gold.

Thanks, that helps quite a bit. I didn't know there was already stuff written about that.

I was actually rolling random loot with the tables they provide, but after level two they had basically nothing due to bad rolls.
I think I'll be handing out more loot due to it being a high-fantasy tale of heroes, with magic items being dropped regularly enough they should feel encouraged to spend it on the base.

Something that doesn't hurt is having each player give you a list of items that they think are cool.

You don't need to always give them all of them, but if someone has been getting fucked by random rolls for a while, handing them an item they really like isn't a bad thing.

There's nothing meta about tracking your available resources in 4e, or any other RPG. Characters in the world can be expected to know when they're getting tired, even if they don't express it in the terms the rules use.

>4e is a bad sytem, that' established in his threat by now.
Fucking where?

yes, but characters usually are more concerned with how many creatures are in a dungeon, not how many encounters it will be spread out into.

D&D characters need to get fairly frequent gear upgrades to keep up with monsters of their level - if someone isn't getting the weapon, armour and cloak/amulet with the highest bonus that they can use within a couple levels of it being available then give them a chance to find or buy it.

Or else replace these fundamental magic items with versions that level up with the character, or divine boons that grant the enhancement bonus by itself so you can just plant whatever magic items you think would be fun.

Both are a major concern. It's one thing to know there's thirty salamanders in this fortress, and another to realise you'll have to fight them all at once.

Introduce an actual competent rival party.
Can stir nice RP, make the players more engaged in order to not be surpassed and can help in a decisive big battle.

>And, once every few scenes, someone will pull off something amazingly fucking awesome.

That’s nice and all user, but that is exactly the opposite of what 4e encourages. 4e encourages you to blow all your encounter powers in the first round of combat then try to mop up with at-wills. If the fight is a little bit harder, then maybe use a daily. The fights have the opposite of a climax - everyone blows their cool stuff in the first rounds (especially if they have action points) and then are stuck spamming at-wills until the combat grinds to a end.

Sure, but in any other game the difference between 8 and 10 encounters matters much less.

To be fair, you can easily end up with multiple at-wills and positional synergies, which is one of 4e's strengths: it manages to take long slugfests and make them at least a little bit interesting.

Really? It never seems to go like this when I play.

Not using an encounter power is a waste, but at the same time it's often worth figuring out the best time to use them, since a lot of them are better in some situations.

Then again, as I've mentioned elsewhere I play almost entirely in low optimisation games. There might be a lot of stuff you 'need' to do to play the game at 100% efficiency, but we don't do that and it all still works fine.

Frankly, I'm not sure that's true, most games have hard limits on how far your characters can push themselves.

The difference between 8 and 10 encounters in a 4e adventuring day is hard to judge until you've actually fought the first eight and can see how many surges and daily powers you have left. Unless you seriously outclass the opposition then 8 or 10 fights between a long rest is likely more than you can handle.

Slugfests have tension though
Some of my fondest memories are in BECMI with a faceoff where me and my party, already injured and most of our spells used for the day, take dozens of turns to finish off a fight because both sides have high AC. Fights that end in victory or defeat within a few rounds, or where the battle is determined in the opening due to powerful moves, are very boring.

Fine, then even 3 as compared to 4 is a major difference in difficulty, thanks entirely to the way that 4e structures powers and encounters. Just as a reminder, I dont think thats necessarily a huge problem, but it does force players to make considerations that have no bearing on the game as a narrative. And, again, its not that no other game does that, its that its at the forefront of efficient play in 4e.

Id say thats situational at best. Regardless of what system I play, Id rather have choices on how to deal with things rather than just rolling until somebody wins. There is tension in an all out slugfest, but thats only if the GM has things well balanced.

I've been trying, but I just can't get my head around your argument at all.

4e characters suffer attrition as they get into fights by depleting their health pool and limited-use powers. In the narrative this is described as the protagonists becoming progressively more bloodied, beaten and exhausted. Both the players and characters should be able to make judgements about how much more they can handle. What's the conflict here? Where are the "considerations that have no bearing on the game as a narrative"? Powers with daily limits have been in D&D for a long time, and not just spells that the characters would be expected to discuss in mechanical terms.

It's no weirder or more meta than if I was playing a game of Vampire and decided not to pick a fight because my character's Willpower pool was running low. It might not be a measurable resource to him in the same way as his points of Magic Vampire Blood Energy, but the numbers on the sheet still represent something he's aware of.

If you really want to cement the experience, make sure to put them through lots and lots of skill challenges. Always let them know when they stumble into one. Never hide it under the narrative. Also, be completely inflexible when it comes to the details of their powers. If the power descriptor doesn't say the lightning bolt can be conducted by water or metal, by the gods it cannot be. Don't forget to be super autistic about ritual costs so that pesky magic can never be used to solve anything. After all, you've got skill challenges!

Other editions don't have per encounter powers

In many ways, 4e is a perfect starting system.

Kek. 4e starter here, just wanted to let you know that's a load of shit. If you get an inflexible GM it quickly becomes hell. Also having to rely on a character sheet generator with a gorrillian options wasn't fun, it was overwhelming.

...So having a bad GM and having a character builder program somehow makes it a bad system for new players? What?

New GMs are seldom good, and he's saying that having a character builder for new players in a game with so many discrete options is counterproductive.

As opposed to having to navigate those same options without easy organisation or the ability to cross reference?

Guy I replied to said 4e was a perfect starter system. I pointed out that was wrong when its fun capacity could be so easily inverted.

Having a fuckton of minimally different options isn't beginner-friendly, it virtually demands handholding and assures confusion.

No, as opposed to a system with less options. Having too many options will overwhelm new players. It's why, while I love 1e and 2e, I would never get a group of newbies to play beyond what's in the PHB unless they had other experience. 3.5, PF, and 4e just have way too many bells and whistles right out of the gate. It's a kiss of death for a game of all noobs, especially if they're feeling "creative" on how they want to build and play their characters.

>Having a fuckton of minimally different options

So you're speaking out of your ass, got it

Except 4e is generally fine even if you're building characters based on what looks cool? There are some inferior options, but basically nothing on the same scale as 3.PF.

>fun capacity could be so easily inverted.

What the fuck does this even mean?

Yeah, at least then you can just take an approach where you grab the first ones that jump out at you rather than having a wall of power names to cross-reference

>my feefees!

Feats, bud. Right off the bat, fucking 4e feats. What a shitshow.

What?

>pick a feat, user! You eaned it!
>oh cool let me just dig through this huge fucking pile for one that I might actually want
>surely every new player will love this complete lack of focus and definitely not pick something stupid just to get it over with

I find this confusing. Especially when the character builder puts your race and class feats at the top of the list, giving you a quick and easy selection of things which are basically all fun, flavourful and useful. Digging through the main feat list can be a pain, sure, and some of them are pretty dull, but those top two sections are generally all you need.

My best guess is he thinks this is a3.PF thread.

Something new players probably won't get unless you tell them specifically. So it seems we already have a 4e analogue to trap options (in this case less harmful than generally useless and ho-hum), which isn't looking terribly great in terms of the supposed perfect starter system.

Dude if your not going to be helpful get the fuck out.

Also op I'm prepping for a similar seting where my players are going to aquire a castle and some land to build a town later on. I'm using PF so it's a little easier for be cuz the SRD already had some stuff like alchemist workbenches priced. But I would make the basics like a stable and simple furnishings a few hundred, while alchemy labs or the teleportation pads several thousand. Also look at how much worth a player should have at a given level and price the items that you want to be able to get at that level based on their total worth. I'll give an example.

Say you have 4 players at lvl5. A lvl 5 character should have 10k Worth (in PF anyway)and around then is when I want them to get a forge and someone to run it who can make armor or weapons for them. The party has a net worth of about 40k so I would probably price it between 15%-25% of their total worth or about 6k - 10k.

You might find that's to much or too little but either way I think it's a pretty good rule of thumb to base your pricing on the party net worth at a certain level.

Given that as a new 4e player myself, seeing things at the top of the list felt extremely obvious and intuitive?

You might be right in some cases, but given the opposite experiences the best you can say is that the character builder is a net neutral. And the simple clarity of the rest of the system still makes it excellent for new players.

t. Only plays 3.PF

As someone who does play in relatively high op 4e games, I've barely ever seen this either.

Only time I have seen this is from people who played 3.PF most of their lives. They're usually thankful after I undo the brain damage that system is infamous for.

And narrative meta currencies do not? What are you smoking?

So? Encounter powers don't figure into players' or characters' strategic planning.

Also a guy who got started on 4e and who had a hard time with the character builder. The assertion was that 4e was a perfect entry rpg for newbies. I've already pointed to the obvious problems with that statement. It may be decent if you have a good GM, but the idea that it's somehow wonderful in that area is absolutely laughable. Now, we can go around and around about this if you want, but that won't change how absolutely aweful I've seen 4e be. In the wrong hands, it nearly killed my fledgeling desire for tabletop altogether.

The character builder is a major positive, the amount of useless crunch that makes a character builder necessary is a huuuge negative.

It's not an issue D&D didn't have before, but it's an issue no other games have to the same degree.

You can give us an accurate comparison when you start ttrpgs again for the first time with a different system.

Then errata that statement to 'It can be a perfect entry RPG for newbies'.

But nothing you've said has seemed like a system trait, more just a bad experience that's colouring your perceptions. A bad GM can make even the best system fucking suck.

I already pointed out it has far too many options that require sifting through, which frankly is part of the system. Requiring a character builder to make all that work is not a system positive.

Judging by your unrelenting smugness, I'm pretty sure no one has ever thank you for anything

so what system do you play?

Christ you're so hard headed
What he and others are saying is that, while a good GM can make 4e decent, the statement "it's a great/perfect/good system for newbies" is demonstrably false without adding a LOT of qualifiers on. It is just simply not that good for newbies as it creates a lot of bad habits and is unintuitive for those who try to switch out of 4e.

I assume you're op: fine, give them 4e. Just know that there are better options out there. Defending 4e and saying things that are untrue has no purpose.

Why wouldn't the powers that a character had figured into their strategy?

>It is just simply not that good for newbies as it creates a lot of bad habits and is unintuitive for those who try to switch out of 4e.
t. random neckbeard who has never actually played a ttrpg and thinks his opinion is fact

Different guy, but as I mentioned earlier I run a ton of games at my local game store with a lot of new players, and I find that those who have a starting background in 4th edition tend to not do very well in other games comma especially if they have no other experience

But none of that have been substantiated.

The systems positive traits that make it good for new players- Very clear and easily understood rules, good GM side support, a lot of easily available content- haven't been countered with anything beyond anecdotal evidence or arguments that it doesn't work with a bad GM, which applies to any system that ever existed.

Do you have an argument, or are you just going to call into question the basic idea that he plays tabletop games?

Ultimately? I went with 13th Age. I will not claim it is for everyone, nor that it's a perfect system for new players, and you absolutely must have a competent DM to run it. Character options are spread out all over the place and frankly do need to be compiled in one place. But I do like how it handles classes, feats, rituals, skills, movement, and just about everything else more than 4e did. For me, that's enough. For others, that isn't. That's fine.

>nor that it's a perfect system for new players
is it not a perfect system, or is it a bad one? because, you know, everything you listed is the exact same as what you claimed was wrong with 4e

To what degree can we substantiate any of these claims other than an anecdotal ways you can simply say no to

>Do you have an argument
nobody does, least of all you or the idiot claiming 4e creates bad habits
there's obviously no actual facts or statistics on this so its just idiots slinging anecdotes at each other

I claimed it made 4e not a perfect game for new players, and that is all. Now, if you're looking to start some sort of edition war then I'll go fuck right off and do something more useful, because I have no horse in that race.

Because, likewise, liking 4e in general is fine. It's just, again, imperfect and it's really hard to take people seriously when they say it somehow isn't.

I don't think there's any factual statistics about any of this stuff, no one's ever done a study on gaming habits of people based on, well, anything. If you can do a discussion about the subjective merits of role-playing game systems and expected data I'm not sure what to tell you

>It's just, again, imperfect and it's really hard to take people seriously when they say it somehow isn't

No one claimed it was perfect, just a good game for people starting out with TTRPGs.....which it is.

Honestly, the biggest problem with people arguing against 4e is that most of the complaints against it are completely fictional.

Which is strange when there's actual problems with 4e, like multi classing being meh, skill challenges being dumb as written, and monster math being wonky at the start.

Multiclassing is a mixed bag. Hybrid and paragon multiclassing sucks, but I actually prefer multiclass feats to the 3.PF style level by level multiclassing. It lets you add some flavour and variety without it needing to be a super mechanically intensive thing. It's better for building real characters, even if it's less good for optimisation.

It was specifically claimed to be nearly perfect for new players. At best, it's absolutely better than 3.X or perhaps even 13th Age just because there's less GM-May-I. There are far better first timer games out there.

>No one claimed it was perfect

>In many ways, 4e is a perfect starting system.

>in many ways

But...it's not
That's what we were arguing about.

>How much gold should I charge these guys to fix up their building?
None, make them earn it through favors. They save the carpenter's daughter? He fixes the walls and floors for free. Saved the lumberjacks from owlbears? There's the wood they needed. By the time they have a magnificent building they should also have a strong connection to the local community.

This also promotes actual in character interaction with the NPCs.

>nearly perfect, but there are many that are far better.

That doesnt sound nearly perfect, that sounds passable, which I would agree with.

Can you point them out? Actual system traits, not things reliant on the GM.

You're just trying to talk in circles
The claim:
>In many ways, 4e is a perfect starting system.
The counter claim:
>It's not

The arguments:

Your stupid post:
> Actual system traits, not things reliant on the GM.

People who play 4e and pathfinder are so fucking defensive about their system. Other than one or two autists, no one in this thread is saying that 4e is 100% bad. It just has problems, especially when it comes to new players.

No no no no no no no FUCK no I would take rocket tag over that without fail. Every single time anything like that has ever happened in any kind of game, it has immediately made me disengage with the game and stop caring about what's going on.

>if the battle doesn't end quickly without any tension, I disengage with the game
>D&D should be like an 80s action movie!