D&D 4e Compendium (for those who still have Insider subscriptions): wizards.com
Compendium: funin.space
Guide compilation: enworld.org
Offline compendium: mediafire.com
Offline character builder: mega.nz
Offline monster editor mega.nz
this pasta pastebin.com
How much do you pay attention to the different monster roles, do you like to use certain proportions or ratios or is it just on a whimsical or per encounter basis?
Are there any alternatives to dnd that doesn't have so much boring and time consuming combat?
Ded thred.
Are there any good video games that directly copy 4e like never winter knights does to 3e?
Nope. I blame interrupts.
Are wardens a particularly book-keeping heavy? I'm in a game right now with a player playing a dwarf warden and his turns take the longest since he can have 2 or 3 zones of slow or difficult terrain active at once. It doesn't help that the DM is newish as well.
The other party members include a Dragonborn Baladin with some marking powers and an Elf Ranger.
Never thought about that. What do you guys use, tabletop?
I asked it in the previous thread but can you use the offline compendium to import everything to Fantasy Grounds or should I get a one month subscription to DDI to get all of it? Alternatively, does someone have the full 4e module he can upload?
We use roll20 for maps and such while the CBLoader for character sheets. The zone thing might have been because he used two of his dailies that created zone, but there also the AoE mark that he used to mark 4+ enemies and the interrupts and opportunity attacks.
It just seems like a lot of effects going on at once when compared to the Paladin that marks one bad guy and occasionally marks several for a turn or the Ranger that picks one guy and shoots him a whole bunch.
Closest thing I can think of is maybe Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem, but even then there's a distinct lack of the tactical abilities that 4e had.
>DM is newish
Well that explains a lot.
Warden is probably the most obviously Controller-based Defender, what with a ton of zones and the fact his stickiness factor is mostly based on his forms and zones combined with rather dangerous UAs.
They're really just as book-keeping heavy as any Controller if a bit more. It's just that compared to the other Defenders - yeah, he's kind of heavy on that department.
How much optimization is expected by the normal numbers in the DMG and Monster Manual? I feel like my party is struggling to fight what should be standard encounters for a level 3, 4 person party, due to some kinda shitty build/power choices, and I'm not sure if I just need to let them have some time to figure out what works or actually nerf down the encounters.
...
Huh, I would assume making a 4e game would be the easiest of the set, given it is aggressively gamist. FFT and FE are obvious stand outs of the turn based fantasy squad level strategy genre, which 4e seems to be an outgrowth of.
Interrupts are hard and so is making marking work properly.
I can maybe see the new XCOM games as the closest thing.
Honestly it's mostly interrupts. 4e's interrupts work in such a weird way to implement in a computer game that it's kind of annoying.
Xcom is usually my go to reference for 4e these days.
But honestly, its funny how difficult it is to make a 4e video game compared to any other edition when one of the biggest meme complaints is how video gamey 4e is.
Someone just needs to make it turn based but it's not that popular in the west
"TB isn't popular" rings hollow when you have games like XCOM selling millions and straight up indie games like Divinity: Original Sin selling a good million and a half. Not hitting AAA numbers doesn't make you a failure.
True but WotC will not sell the D&D license to just anyone
Blame Atari. They sat on the license for years and did nothing with it.
You should be OK as long as you got a leader and a striker, and everyone has the relevant expertise feats and 18-20 in main stat at the start.
How do interupts work?
They're powers that you can choose to use if the conditions for triggering them are met.
The problem is that your immediate actions are a limited resource(1/round), so making it so that you can CHOOSE to do it makes it a pain in the fucking ass to implement without slowing the game down(prompt when conditions are met), creating a system where you can miss the effect(quicktime button prompt when conditions are met), which conflicts with the turn-based nature of the game, or creating a system where they automatically fire off, which ruins the game.
What's a compendium and what is the source of OP's image?
The compendium is a searchable index of all 4e content, no clue on the image, looks like a virtual tabletop screengrab.
The way I always thought would be best is to just have a timer of a few (2-3) seconds between actions. Then you hit your designated interrupt button which pauses the action for you to select an Interrupt - if one is applicable.
No need to be quick on the draw, since you'll usually know what your interrupts are, and it will only fire if something is valid anyway, so if you're not sure you just hit space or whatever and it stops to let you do stuff. Otherwise it just moves to the next action/initiative after or you can have another button to force skip if you don't want to wait out the 3 seconds or so.
Thinking about this always reminded me of the utter horror that was Yugioh video games. If you could counter it would prompt you on every action. For some cards they could basically be played whenever so you'd get the prompt and its followup "Are you sure?" prompt after they did almost anything.
thanks, still learning my ropes around here. Will go back to lurk now.
That's exactly what I was thinking of when pointing out that prompting you every time fucking sucks. It could eat up to a full minute of gameplay just canceling out of prompts.
And on the other hand, you have auto-AoOs in games like ToEE and KotC so you can't use them tactically.
well, 4e AoOs are actually free 1/turn so at least that would be fine.
Why people insist in taking 100x100 maps and expanding them over a 1000x1000 grid? It looks SO bad.
The problem is that you need to use them on the right targets even more in 4E.
Correct me if I'm just being retarded, but the AoO 1/turn limit is separate from the reaction 1/turn limit, right?
Yup, although reactions are 1/round. Makes it really important to not whiff it.
But user, AoOs are 1 per turn. Which mean on every combatants turn, everybody has the chance to make one attack. Which means that you could make an AoO on every enemy that moved out of your range, on each of their turns, and not miss out on the 'right' target.
Has anybody ever used this book to run a modern/scifi game with 4e rules? Just read through it and I have to admit I'm intrigued at the idea of using 4e's excellent combat mechanics outside of a fantasy setting.
link from the pdf thread: userscloud.com
Opponents can potentially trigger multiple AOs on their turn - say, by moving, and by making a ranged attack. If the AO has inconvenient riders (like, say, fighters stopping movement) you might bait them into using it against your ranged attack, so that you can then move freely as your next action.
If AOs were automatic, it would be impossible to not take that bait.
Huh, I guess I hadn't considered intentionally provoking more than one AoO. Realistically, how often does that come up? It's not something I've run into.
Question. How are stars and celestial bodies treated in 4e? Where could I go to find that info?
...what?
Stars, and how they're depicted? I guess this is more a question of the Points of Light setting and less a mechanical one.
Varies based on characters. We had one character that made it a thing pretty much every round, deliberately provoking OAs to trigger pain reactions (white lotus, mark punishments, hellish rebuke, etc), and then leveraging the fact that monsters were afraid to take OAs against him to maximize his mobility.
Other than those situations, it's pretty rare for us.
Manual of Planes says that the GM determines if the Mortal World is finite (confined only to one planet, stars and stuff are just decorations essentially) or infinite (stars and planets are real, physical bodies that you could in theory reach if you can get out there, just like in real life).
oops, meant to reply to
Went to look at roll20 and Myth-weavers, but the first has hardly any open games, let alone any that look worthwhile, and Myth-weavers has none currently. FLGS doesn't want to run 4e because they'd rather 5e or PF.
Where do you all find 4e games if no one you know wants to run any?
[citation needed]
Manual of the Planes, page 9. Guess it doesn't specifically say the GM determines it, but it leaves it vague.
No
They're my Dark Sun tokens I've added so far.
I've been interested in 4e. I hear a lot of complaints about out of combat being meaningless in the system, but I want to hear /4eg/'s take on it here. That's not true is it?
Out of combat works pretty much like most other edition of D&D. You say what you're doing and use your character's skills to resolve stuff. Most out-of-combat spells are now rituals, which have a component cost to prevent casters from dominating everything with their utility.
You might hear complaints about skill challenges, but just understand that they're basically just a tool for a GM to calculate the difficulty and corresponding reward for a non-combat encounter.
4e does have a much greater mechanical focus on combat, but that's just because you don't need that level of granularity for non-combat stuff.
The good and the bad is that magic types don't do much at all outside of combat. That's about it.
So if you wanna run a scenario involving survival elements like food and water, or investigation, or whatever, you don't have to go to sleep while the magic types handle it.
It's almost exactly like other games where the DM and players describe situations and how to resolve those situations. In more intense situations the DM may have the players roll skill checks. Rituals may be used sometimes as well but they cost goods and supplies.
So the one guy that focuses on a deal more minutia in terms for his character build than the rest of us picked the class that is very reliant on the minutia of his powers? And here I thought his blaster wizard's zones where starting to drag out his turns.
It's less that it's meaningless and more 'You want to use your skills'. There is very few silver bullets like previous editions had with spells that just flat solved a scenario. Rituals still use skills so they are rolled for.
Amongst various other dispensations I had given a low-heroic party to help survive against focused fire (even a fairly optimized Charisma paladin simply is not enough), I wound up giving the following power to each PC:
Tag In, Utility
Encounter Teleportation
No Action, Close burst 20
Trigger: You take damage that bloodies you, or you take damage while you are bloodied
Target: One willing ally in the burst who has not just taken damage from the same triggering source
Effect: Before the damage and any effects attached to the damage are resolved, you and the target must teleport, switching places. If you and the target do so, the target takes the damage and any effects attached to the damage instead of you, and until the start of the next turn, enemies cannot target you with attacks unless all of your allies within 20 squares are petrified, unconscious, or dead.
The synergy between this and marks is intentional. As well, the power actually fits the flavor of the campaign.
Is there any way I can refine this to be more useful in its job of helping PCs survive focused fire, while preventing abusive uses?
Christ, dude. When you require homerules to compensate for your own metagaming, you know you've fucked up.
Why can't you just have there be monsters who attack whoever comes closest to them, monsters who are racist against a certain race and go for them preferentially (or classist, ie. religious person haters, hippy haters or mage haters), or what not?
XCOM:EU and XCOM2 scratch the itch for me, but obviously it's not the same.
Why are you always focus firing?
Maybe do encounters with fewer monsters, but more elites?
It is hardly "metagaming" for savvy, tactically intelligent monsters to know to focus their fire on high-value, undefended targets. Player characters know to do much the same.
Marks can change this up, and indeed, defenders are important for breaking up focused fire. Short of marks, however, tactically guileful enemies will focus their fire.
My adventures tend to strongly emphasize intelligent, humanoid enemies as opposed to more savage folk or unintelligent beasts.
Elites probably would not solve the problem. If anything, elites are even better for alpha striking, because they can open up with an action point and unload large amounts of damage.
I had to hard-code a house rule wherein monsters cannot use encounter, recharge, or daily powers or action points until after the first non-surprise round. Even with such a house rule, however, elites can still open up with strong double attacks against a single party member.
I also decided to always roll initiative for monsters individually, save for minions.
Line of sight, marking, cover... there's a lot of ways to cut this.
And if they're this smart, they shall surrender or retreat instead of fighting to the death.
Maybe switch action points from 4e style to strike! style, or allow second wind while downed.
Both of those are anti-burst features.
4e combat is not designed to have the PC's focus fired, you would have to specifically build a party around action denial to deal with it, something like a flail fighter, warlord and two rangers, or ranger and illusionist wizard, and you'd only take fights in hallways and corridors. A Charisma paladin is the last defender I would pick for them.
Then don't use savvy, tactically intelligent monsters.
Use monsters from the MM (Monster Vault, etc.). Simple. All of of your problems are wholly of your own devising.
Instead of houseruling, why not... stop metagaming?
>How much do you pay attention to the different monster roles, do you like to use certain proportions or ratios or is it just on a whimsical or per encounter basis?
I just throw stuff together. One encounter might have a bunch of lurkers and a couple of brutes, another might be soldiers and controllers, another is a solo and some minions...
I'll dispute that -- defenders strike me as ONLY necessary to protect against focus firing.
That being said, Adslahnit wants more of an extreme high op game and these PCs aren't so.
Some of them are alive and intelligent. Usually also malevolent
Anybody else use History checks in place of Nature checks for intelligent humanoid monsters? History is the only knowledge skill that isn't used to identify monsters and using Nature to learn the powers of a human bandit or an orc tribesmen or what have you always seemed really weird to me.
Hey fellow /4/tards, I need some help here. I'm trying to convert everything in the 4th ed Dark Sun books to 5th but I can't seem to find a copy of the Dark Sun campaign guide for 4th. Can any of yall hook a neckbeard up? Thanks in advance
Have you had a look at the existing 4e->5e conversion thing for Dark Sun? Most of its already in there.
I have, and it's fine. But what I am looking for is a bunch of fluff and lore from the campaign guide which I can copy and paste into Roll20 handouts so players get a real sense of "place" from wandering around. I can't get that from the levelling tables in the conversion doc.
>conversion doc
I meant the fan thing that has most of the 4e things converted into 5e and fluff and pics etc., you know the one?
Nah all I've been able to find is the custom races and classes conversion. I'm looking for the original fluff from the 4e dark sun handbook. I want to put it into roll20 so I can just pull the info whenever players enter a new area and start asking about history, background etc. It just makes things feel more real for me also it makes me seem like I have everything prepared, even though I can't possibly have a dungeon for every square mile of land.
I am also looking for the old 4e dark sun adventure with the elemental cult caverns if anyone has it. The maps would be super helpful for me. I'm trying to build a fully fleshed out world here.
I have "marauders of the dune sea" which according to wikipedia is 1 of 2 adventures for 4e, the other being Bloodsand Arena.
I've played neither, so I dunno if it's what you want.
Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for.
>It's a 7zip
Okay, not ideal, but I can download the unzipper.
Do you have Bloodsand too? I have never even heard of that but now I'm super curious.
lmgtfy.com
Here ya go
Thanks bro, you the best. Have a pape
>4e combat is not designed to have the PC's focus fired
Do you have a source on this?
>A Charisma paladin is the last defender I would pick for them.
I would think it a sensible choice at low heroic; if the problem is a pack of monsters ganging up on one character, having the lot of them divert their attention and focus their fire on a more durable target will probably be a good idea.
>Then don't use savvy, tactically intelligent monsters.
>Use monsters from the MM (Monster Vault, etc.).
I fail to see how this solves the problem. The Monster Vault, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, Monster Manual 3, and so on and so forth all have a strong share of savvy, tactically intelligent enemies.
>Instead of houseruling, why not... stop metagaming?
How is it "metagaming" for savvy, tactically intelligent monsters to know to focus their fire on high-value, undefended targets?
>I would think it a sensible choice at low heroic; if the problem is a pack of monsters ganging up on one character, having the lot of them divert their attention and focus their fire on a more durable target will probably be a good idea.
I think that poster has a point in that Paladin marking isn't as strong at peeling off enemies.
Unless you play them respecting the mark I guess.
bump
It is not as good at peeling off one enemy, but it is decidedly more capable at keeping multiple enemies in check. Even if an enemy happens to daze the paladin, their challenges and sanctions will still be in place.
Don't go full focus fire. Keep in mind, if the enemies focus fire, some should be there to keep the others in check (so for example one guy might try to hold back the Paladin so that the others can pass onto enemy lines). Plus, RP the monster's plans. "Grog - come with me, we two are taking down the sorcerer, leave the paladin to Tred!" - the players now know what to expect in a way, but not exactly what you'll do.
I mean, I have never done comparative analysis on this shit, but let's say:
Situation: 3 guys are ganging up on the wizard
Paladin: marks all 3. They get -2 to their attack and take about 10 damage, but are still otherwise free to attack the wiz
Fighter: Marks 1. He either slides him away, grapples him, trips him or does something other controll-y The marked guy may as well not even try attacking the wizard, though the other 2 still may.
In the second situation, the wizard is guaranteed to not get hit by one of them, in the first he maybe doesn't get atatcked/gets missed by one of them.
Or the Fighter uses come and get it.
Wizards do not have that much worse AC than paladins, and indeed, that -2 penalty (-3 with a Mark of Warding) and the radiant damage might just be enough to deter the enemies from aiming for the wizard.
This is not to say that the fighter's defender method is worse; just different, and more single-target focused.
By the time the fighter has Come and Get It, the paladin has Astral Thunder, which is arguably a vastly more punishing power.
I'm not saying it's outright better or worse, it's just that if 3 enemies are focus firing one guy, peeling off one guaranteed (if that saves his life) is a lit better than softer forms of control, cause you go from x% (x
>Paladin: marks all 3.
Wait what? They can do that?
they have a fuckload of divine sanctioning powers.
Does anyone have the PDFs for Zeitgeist for 4e? I heard it was good but buying the full thing is pretty expensive.
I'm thinking on working on a 4e heartbreaker. My idea is to not go Strike! route, but almost a midway of sorts.
The concepts for now can be summarized as:
> Roles
Striker, Leader and Controller. A martial (power source) melee controller is a defender.
>Classes
Fighter, Rogue, Spellcaster. Each would play with a primary role in mind, with secondary played with Theme.
>Theme
Woodsman (so a Woodsman Rogue is a Ranger, a Woodsman Spellcaster is a Druid...), Religious (Paladin, Cleric, Witch Hunter - Inquisitor?), Occult (Warlock, Sorcerer, Wizard...). Don't know if I should go the Theme way of just go the Power Source for this.
The idea is to allow some classes to not be so niche, and more broad. I thought of making Ranger, Paladin, Druid and such some sort of Advanced Classes (Prestige Classes? Paragon Paths?) but scrapped that because the current player base would whine too much.
Make Controller more than just martial-melee, just a melee Controller is a Defender.
So do you intend to have player's select a Role, Class, and Theme, or does each Class have a bend towards one Role already (like 4e), or what?
What are you, drunk? Fuckin' hell.
Kind of. Definitely tipsy.
>A martial (power source) melee controller is a defender.
That sounded kind of weird, because you'd need to do the difference between close combat controllers and ranged controllers (ie: Swordmage versus Wizard) somehow - the defining feature of a Defender is that they are capable of punishing enemies for attacking their allies and thus control the battlefield and have powers that allow them to do that.
If you just reduce it to Striker, Leader and Controller it's kind of missing the meatshield's main thing which is to punish people that try to ignore it.
Anybody have any ideas for monsters?
How about the Covenant? Lots of soldier ranks for a wide level range.
Defender is kind of a weak role and I can see them being left out of a lite 4e version.
I feel like "controller" covers too much shit already, and the "big strong buff guy who takes hits instead of others" should be its own thing imo, unless you roll that into martial.
I mean, you can probably leave the defender out.
