/4eg/ - 4th Edition D&D General

I will ask again, is there a way to use the offline compendium to make a module for Fantasy Grounds for 4e or do I need the DDI account and the parser?
Alternatively, someone that already has the module can share it?

"no"

What level/setting?

Not him but level 1 to max in Dark Sun would be cool if it's a thing.

Try combining it with eladrin swordmage

Multiclassing from swordmage into warlock, then grabbing acolyte power to also get the warlock at-will teleport and eladrin swordmage advance.

Personally though I prefer evermeet warlock, invisible defenders are extremely difficult for most monsters to deal with

Good.

Long Night Scion works wonders with a Eladrin Swordmage|Battlemind (which is a legit build that actually kind of works really well). Get the teleports up and running easily plus the punishment and you end up with some really hilarious stuff.

Self-Forged was always super cool imo

Probably Time Bender for me. Mostly because one of my favorite PCs used it.

>10 years later
>still playing an edition so bad it's the only one not to get a legacy spinoff

4rries are as bad as 3aboos.

...

I really like the flavor of the planeshifter and the usefulness of the malec-kwh janissary.

I don't usually look at the ed's but hordemaster seems interesting

4e hasn't got a legacy spinoff because making a 4e legacy spinoff is really, really hard

You need at least 8 classes, and each class needs at least 6 at-will options, and at least 4 options for each daily power, encounter power and utility power. That's at least 624 powers that you need to make and balance from classes alone. 4e is huge, and recreating it would be an equally huge undertaking

If you just go the Pathfinder route you can change practically nothing.

>Make 4.5
>It's just incorporating the "Feat taxes" with misc other minor things

We did it, boys.

Or they could restructure the power system to make it actually competent.

Interesting, how would you do that?

Not him, but for one thing the game actually suffers pretty hard under the sheer power and plentifulness of dailies.

If you made 4e entirely without them, it would be a much more enjoyable game.

You could also do with nerfing them and giving out fewer, of course, as that would be more in keeping with 4e itself.

Another thing is that many (not all) at-will powers are a bit too shitty to be interesting or helpful options, even in the perfect situation for them.
A lot of them really are only last-ditch effort stuff for when you're completely out of other powers.
But if at-wills were generally a little better (still not as good as encounter powers at all, of course) they would actually feel like a part of your character and less like an afterthought, and would see some occasional use by clever players. Perhaps then one could feel reasonably satisfied with having fewer other powers (such as, for example, if you had fewer daily powers) since you'd still have cool stuff to do in a lot of situations.

(A small handful of at-will powers are monstrous, of course. I'm speaking in general terms.)

Was making almost all the stars Evil a bad idea? Should there have been benign or even benevolent stars?

Is this another situation where we in part shill strike.

Making Dailies only "big deals" would be interesting. Like 10th/20th/30th level capstones to end a "path."
And then making other stuff better/more interesting to make up for it, if it was necessary.
I mean there's a lot of ways you could change everything and anything, who knows what's "best."

Making anything universally something is usually kind of a meh idea, if only because it makes working with it overly limited.
Especially something as weird and on the scale as stars.

I could've sworn there were some stars that, while not benevolent, were at least not malevolent. There was a e-zine article from one of the insider mags about them I think. Might've just been one of them in particular for the Warlock patron stuff though.

How well do TWF barbarians play? I know rangers do it better, but I want to play one regardless.

/4eg/, has anyone made an effort to compile any Chaos Scar stuff? I just started running it, and I'm pretty sure I've got everything, but I want to make sure that I'm not missing something.

Yeah, a bunch ripped off from previous editions back when the writers had actual talent and didn't just make kitchen sink bullshit settings. Same with 5e, it's just rehashing of material from D&D's better days.

>Want to make a 4e clone
>Don't want Hasbro lawyers kicking in my door and putting me even further into economic misery.

Wat do?

I kinda like these ideas. Obviously there's risk in overdoing it, like the essentials martial classes got, but limiting options to the players can make some more creative stuff.
Speaking on boosting the at-wills, the crazy stuff you could do with different martial feats got kind interesting. Made a riposte rogue once who got +1 AC/Ref when he hit, and if he hit with his riposte, the enemy would have a -5 to hit with the triggering attack. More of those kinds of At-Will effecting feats would make a low-daily (or even low-encounter) take on 4e a fun alternative.

That would require wizards to acknowledge that 4e even existed

Yeah, it kinda seems they have stopped giving a fuck. 3.5 and 5e SRDs are getting taken down left and right, while funin.space is just there.

Quite well, all things given. Just use the biggest fucking weapon you can with your main hand, then hold your true weapon in your off-hand and use that one for attacks.

>favorite Paragon Path

Sigil Carver, allows you to protect all of your friends flawlessly (if you're a warlock, or more strangely, an avenger, or otherwise have a sliding basic attack) -- all from the back of the party.

>Epic Destiny

Probably Arcane Sword epic destiny. One of the most powerful, can't really lose, and your character becomes a cool artifact that could show up in a campaign one day in a more playable fashion than, say, a deity.

So I'm running a Dark Sun campaign that's gonna emphasize the wilderness, only problem is the archetypal location for the wilderness in DS is a fucking big pile of sand. So I need ideas for jazzing up wilderness fights.

Stuff like ruins and temples and stuff are great, but livening up the wilderness is pretty tricky and giving reasons for people to fight, instead of longbow rangers on kanks being the currency of fights. Something to push people into closer range.

One idea I've thought of was that on most maps, the relative center might be the safe zone, and the outskirts of the map might be difficult and dangerous terrain. When not distracted, the PCs can navigate through it alright, but that in many regions, its too dangerous to move very far without paying close attention.

This would also be an explanation why enemy archers don't just split up and kite the PCs for all eternity.

Could work. I would also include things like large dunes that obstruct vision/movement and big rock fields where navigation can become tricky and the rocks are large enough to (again) obstruct vision at distance.

You might also check out the module at the back of the book. Its got a little bit with a ruin you might want to look at.

Wilderness encounters simply don't happen in empty fields. If you encounter something in the desert, it had been either laying in ambush (picking a spot that's good for ambush, so favorable terrain features for it) or is the home of something that made a living there (so expect holes and other sort of traps).

It's very unlikely you run into something that just happen to cross the same part of a fuckhuge featureless desert.

Although, if you did, you might make it into some sort of chase challenge which ends in a closer combat/escape. Might make such an encounter more interesting.

Hmm, spotting a halfling caravan on the horizon and realizing they spotted you would be a fun long-range chase scene where you try to get into a defensible position before they can shoot you to death from safety.

Interesting. I noted they neglected to update the Kruthik stats for MM3 standards, for shame.

Is there a way to become immune to weakness in 4e?

If I use this Daily, does it count as having the weapon keyword? Would it trigger Mark of the Storm -> Flail Expertise?

I can't tell if they thought it'd be redundant to list the keyword, or they didn't want it to be there.

No. It also doesn't roll an attack, so the daily doesn't have a hit condition. The at will damage change with any applicable melee attack would though.

... Strike?

And 13th Age at least.

Possibly Valor.

Not that guy, someone else entirely. What are Shrike and Valor?

Strike! got a thread here With a pitch in the second post that should cover most stuff.

Valor is a 4e-like that's class-less and takes cues from action series (shounen mostly).

What weapons work best for them?

Bastard Sword off-hand, and some kind of Axe or Hammer on the main hand.

It's really cheesy because those attacks that roll twice you're rolling with a +3 in both, but those that you roll once and deal damage with both you're attacking with a +3 and the biggest damage dice you've got.

I like to use a bastard sword in the off-hand with a gauntlet in the main hand

This way you can switch from dual-wielding to two-handing at-will, letting you use powers like howling strike, but it is a bit of an overall damage loss compared to using, say, two bastard swords

Keeping this up.

Do you have a link to any Valor stuff? I'm actually a huge sucker for shonen action series.

I'm building a barb mc monk for d10 fists which i can hurl at my enemy. There is also a warlord in the party to hand out basics like candy. I'm super excited

I always wanted to play a Saint ED if only because it was really thematic with a character I was playing in my longest running game. Sadly, we stopped at about level 18.

Reminder that they did old-school level multiclassing, if that would save a feat or two.

I'll start looking through my stuff and see what all I've got, and try to get a list you can compare to.

>d10 fists which i can hurl at my enemy.
huh

Actually, it looks like two of the pdf's had compiled lists of everything from Dungeon all the way up to 221. I'll just upload those two and you can take a look through. Looks like everything for Chaos Scar was listed in Dungeon 200.

And 221, which covers everything from 200 to 221.

Yea, Master of Fists + Improved Monk Unarmed Strike + Hurl Weapon. As human you can make it go at level 2.

Isn't that just Hadouken? Throwing away fists?

Lets say I want to run a fairly open-ish exploration/sandbox style campaign, what would be a good amount of battlemaps to expect to require for the first two tiers?

that's how I'm gonna run it

So if I want to make a dirty fighting pugilist, are my best bets rogue MC or HC monk with piercing palm or brawler fighter depending on preferred role?

Rogue MC Monk with Piercing Palm. If you really wanna get into that sort of shenanigans of dirty fighting, Wood Elf Cunning Sneak Rogue/Ghostwalker/Master of Moments. Hidden pugilistic fighting whose greatest, dirtiest tricks involve bending time itself to give himself an advantage.

Seriously, shit is hilarious. Move first, hide from everyone, kick a bastard in the shins real quick (you did pick Quicksilver Motion, right?) plus if you pick the second Monk MC feat you can Flurry of Blows the guy too. If you wanna be a jackass about it, Drunken Monkey.

Seriously, it's hilarious at Level 11, what with starting out Hidden, basically, moving into the enemy lines, knocking out a guy then hiding again. If the reading is that Dance of the Stinging Hornet is a Move Action attack, you have now the following sequence: roll Initiative, roll Stealth to become Hidden, Quicksilver Motion, Dance of the Stinging Hornet, Low Slash, Killer's Ambush, become Hidden again. It's great, knocks out a guy right out of the fight.

Shave it down a lot, like only one tier and try some other stuff like 13th Age, Last Stand and Strike did.

I am trying to install the character builder and I keep getting a 7Zip 105 error. wtf is this about?

Run as admin, make sure it's all going the same path. Might be going to (x86)

>6 or more less than Defense: Miss
>1-5 less than Defense: Graze
>Equal to Defense / 1-5 more than Defense: Hit
>6 or more above Defense: Critical Hit

How would you make this work for a retroclone using this for 4e without going bounded accuracy?

No idea how to answer this, but it makes me think of a different question. I "get" what bounded accuracy is, but can someone cement the definition, cause from how I understand it, 4e has bounded accuracy, yet I've seen people say that it doesn't.

It doesn't. Bounded accuracy has nothing to do with an upper limit to the bonuses you can get to any given roll. Bounded accuracy means that progression from Level 1 to whatever allows lower level challenges to remain usable with the PCs the higher their level becomes. Basically a certain limitation to the way numbers grow level by level, even with bonuses her and there, means enemies from eight levels ago are still good as trash mobs without being an auto hit when attacked. This, of course, is the theory, but the practice is implausible to do perfectly without some sort of strict binding of the accuracy system.

4e doesn't have this because enemies past a certain level can only dodge attacks if the table uses the natural 1 is always a miss rule. Accuracy catches up to monsters easily in 4e, especially with all the bonuses thrown about in it. This is why it doesn't have bounded accuracy.

After seeing the horror that is the 5e Firbolg art, I'm tempted to play a Firbolg in a 4e game (Counts as Goliath seems fitting).

Would a Goliath make a good Warden, Ranger or Shaman? I'm kinda new to 4e and something nature-y seems fitting for them.

Well, look at the stats

Obviously they make good wardens, the stats match up perfectly, on top of that their racial PP, Stoneblessed, is perfect for polearm wardens. They make pretty good rangers thanks to bonus strength and wisdom, but tend to be very frail due to not getting a dex bonus, and while they get a wis bonus for shamans, that's all they get, every other racial thing favors weapon-based classes

Thank you for the very detailed and coherent answer. Based on this, I do have another question about 4e.

In 4e, you get a bonus to everything equal to one half level. Now, since a party is rarely ever going to face enemies not at the same level, I only understand the one half level thing as a means to have big numbers (which many players, myself included, enjoy), but it seems to be a mere placebo effect, as you're really not getting any stronger relative to the monsters and other challenges you'll be facing. Hence, what is the point of the whole "one half level bonus" when it seems redundant (cause enemies' attacks and defenses increase at roughly the same rate as PCs) outside of giving a larger bonus every other level?

Right. So they'd be decent at any of them but Warden is where they'd shine?

>Now, since a party is rarely ever going to face enemies not at the same level,

Not true. In fact, one of the easier ways to stagnate combat is to use monsters only of level appropriate challenge. You have to mix and match between a four level scale of the PCs for best results, and tougher monsters might be five levels higher than the PCs.

enemies do not scale at the same rate as players, enemy defenses and attacks go up every level, not every half level, the difference for players is made up in the form of magic items, stat increases and annoying feat taxes

But yes, it is pretty much only there as a placebo effect, although it does mean that in the rare occasion of fighting things significantly above or below your level, the level difference has severe impact, which can be used to excellent effect by a good DM

Yeah, they are tough guys.

A good solution for this would be the way "The black hack" does it. You add bonuses based on level difference.

So a lvl2 monster vs a lvl 1 party has +1 to all defenses and attack rolls, while against a lvl 3 party, he'd have -1. You basically never have to change the numbers on your sheet just from leveling up, but it has the same effect.

You can also easily scale down the advancement rate, and have the bonuses apply every 2 or 3 or 4 etc. levels to match 5e scaling if you want, so it's modular.

Thanks for the replies. Y'all answered it perfectly. I haven't played 4e extensively enough to know about the level mixture with encounters. And thanks for the answers about the one half level thing.

From a design perspective, because now I'm idly wondering:

Why would that stagnate combat?
Shouldn't varying powers, roles, terrain, etc keep it all interesting?

Does modifying hit rates & lethality by ~20% (against the player, or for, due to scaling NADs, AC, ATK, DMG) actually make it more interesting? Those aren't things the players can meaningfully interact with - they'll still hit the enemies with the same debuff powers and themselves with the same buff powers, no?

I suppose it offers a bit of variability in that you don't go "well I guess I hit most everything on 7-9s, because scaling keeps it all at about that" BUT, player powers, CA, etc should be doing that too. And then of course that players and monsters scale differently (1/level versus 0.5/level, where players jump up at intervals because of new +1s, etc) so it won't be overly consistent anyways.

This is ignoring "using huge level disparities as a narrative device" as that one feels odd to me, even though it really shouldn't, as I don't believe in some Oblivion-tier "the world scales" (even though normal encounter balance and whatnot could imply everything might).

>big numbers

The scaling is not as pointless as you might think. A level 8 brute for example can remain a valid foe throughout all of Heroic, for example.

4e definitely doesn't have bounded accuracy, but it has more level based flexibility than you might think. says a 4 level scale, but I prefer to instead look at the defenses of the monster instead -- for level 1, I prefer a max of AC 20.

So I'd say up to level +3 for soldiers, level +5 for controllers, lurkers, and skirmishers, level +7 for brutes and artillery,

A brute 8 is not too different from an elite soldier 4.

Different monsters have different stats in D&D. Not much sure what else to say. Its fun to use recurring monster types that the PCs gradually outgrow.

Part of the point of level scaling is that you can fine tune the power level of monsters that way.

For example, in 5e, extra monsters greatly impacts the power level -- you have to keep a close eye on how badly the PCs are outnumbered. AoE damage is HEAVILY rationed.

In 4e, being outnumbered by minions or weaker monsters is not as big of a deal necessarily.

I love how /5eg/ and /pfg/ are mostly discussion of the game, but /4eg/ is mostly retarded 4rries trying to defend why their game has turned fighters into casters and trying to pretend that being "balanced" makes 4e good by itself when it fails at pretty much every other aspect of game design.

>self fulfilling prophecy post

Nice try.

Oh hush, we let you have your containment thread, you should be able to handle some bantz in return for the favor.

That's not "top bantz", mate, that's just being wrong and actively trying to derail a thread.

>4rries can't handle the bantz

Typical

>What's your favorite Paragon Path?
Pit Fighter before Mearls got his greasy hands on it was nice.

Alright, here's your (You), thanks for bumping the thread.

>thanks for bumping the thread.

You sure need it. Check out the last few /4eg/ threads on 4plebs. They died at 148 posts, 187 posts, 271 posts, 3 posts (lol) and there's one that made it to 343, which is the only recent one I can find that hit bump limit. Whereas /pfg/ and /5eg/ *regularly* hit bump limit, in fact I don't think they ever fail to.

4e is a dead game. It's time to admit it.

I gave you a you, what more did you want?

The Stars were less evil and more horrifyingly amoral.
Caiphon, for example, is a being of pure knowledge. No, your mind can't handle it all without breaking, but that isn't Caiphon's concern. He just wants to teach you the secrets of all things.
Or Gibbeth who is just an almost mindless everchanging thing that exudes madness. It doesn't have enough awareness to be evil, but it is still horrifyingly dangerous.

I think I've had the most fun with Umbral Cabalist recently.

>Level 11, gain a +(CON mod) bonus to any NAD when bloodied, can change it each time you get bloodied
>Retrain an enemy that's cursed on AP> Useful, but pretty ho-hum.
>Level 16, when taking damage from any typed damage, gain Resist 10 to it for the encounter. Very handy

>Level 11 single target stun encounter
>Level 12 "No I;m not dominated, also get curse'd"

The daily is pretty great though. Meh damage with an Area Burst 1, but the Pact is where it gets great.

>Pact Boon: One creature within 5 squares or affected by your Curse makes a basic attack against a target of your choice as a free action

This is fucking bonkers. Especially if you have a solo with plenty of minions in reach. Pop one minion and just keep triggering that boon. This gets more hilarious when you pair it with Relentless Curse so you can keep re-cursing when they die and trap the solo into beating his minions to death until he runs out of minions.

Played him as a half-insane(in the lol I'm so wacky that usually gets hated) hobo with implied dementia as a result of making so many pacts with powerful beings(good ol vestige pact). Eventually learned to spread that insanity to his allies and enemies to get them to kill each other better(Sorcerer-King is a great Leader-y pact to twofold Pact into), then became a Lich because he didn't feel like dying quite yet.

Eventually the whole campaign ended in us beating up Vecna and Orcus, and then my Warlock ascended to become Vecna's replacement and started antagonizing the Raven Queen for no other reason than he thinks it's part of his job.

explain to a newbie what happened?

goddamn mearls