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

I imagine most of us here haven't seen it, and I can't find it to download it.
Was it free? Could you share it?

Is it interesting to look at in a system-agnostic kind of way?

There doesn't seem to be a PDF release, though I'm assuming they'll put one up eventually like they did with the previous free RPG day adventure.

What skill would you guys use to prevent a crashing air ship in Eberron from going "too badly" (maybe by trying to steer it into a "softer" area, or salvage any possible lift for as long as possible), or to repair it to try to save it, or any stuff like this?

The closest I can think is Thievery and that's solely because it's used to disable traps, which implies some form of machinery-related ability, which itself is maybe vaguely that, but that's....clearly a large stretch.

I mean you can say "They can't, they're adventurers! That's NPC stuff, like crafting!" but frankly I don't think that's a very good answer at all. There's plenty of stuff with the idea of adventurers being on their own and having to do stuff like this to survive, or at least stave off imminent firey death.

Arcana, Athletics, Endurance, Nature, Perception, Thievery, a Dexterity/Strength/Constitution check...

You wanna rattle off dungeoneering or acrobatics too?

Acrobatics is fair, Dungeoneering is possible, Intelligence and Wisdom checks might just work. It's all about how you use it.

Arcana(To work with the Arcane machinery), Thievery(To work with the arcane Machinery), Perception (To find a good landing place), Intimidate/Diplomacy (If they speak primordial, to help work with the elemental spirits).

That would be my guess. It's all about the approach.

A'ight. Fair enough.

A lot looser than I'm used to, but hey whatever.

Yeah, 4e's skill system is a bit looser than 3e's. The skills are a lot more general, rather than 3e's much more specific skills. Sorta goes to the point , that larger skill lists end up more more specific and defined in what they do or do not.

As an aside: I've actually had a 4e character (Who spoke Primordial) interrogate the elemental spirits in a Lightning Rail before to tell us if smugglers used it recently. That was fun.

On recommendation of this general, and Veeky Forums as a whole, I'm currently reading through 4e's DMG, and my setting is now Points of Light because it's a super cool idea.

Thank you, /4eg/

I've always been interested in it but also never really found anyone to actually talk about it with.

It's a more fleshed out setting than people assume it it and the dawn war is a very cool creation story.

What are some uses for the Supernal language as a lower level PC?

I'm not sure what you are thinking about aside from "speak with creatures that speak supernal".

I think the in-combat balance is fairly good about "has power/doesn't have power"; if you want to replicate something that someone with a power can do, you can use an improvised action. It'll be less precise and have shittier damage, but it's not like "only rogue can throw sand in people's eyes" was ever a valid concern.

The out of combat utilities are however just not as well designed for this, especially the skill replacements. Those are all stuff that could/should be a creative use of the skill at baseline.

Then again, you could just do that and add a level of difficulty for those that don't have the replacement power, I guess.

Druids imo suffer the most from the combat vs non-combat utility powers disparity, the same is also true for feats. If I were to re-write them I'd give them some selection of attributes they could apply to their beast form per encounter; Swimming and water breathing, limited flight, burrow speed, wall climbing etc.

It just seems wrong that beast form has no utility outside of a free shift every so often without spending feats or using utility powers on it.

This seems reasonable, but the way I see Druids in 4e work more on the skinchanger rules than D&D druid rules. You transform into one kind of animal, not whichever animal you want, a bear, a panther, a wolf, etc.

I had a druid once who's wildshape form was a llama, I took a bunch of swarm druid powers which I fluffed as llama spit

>What are some uses for the Supernal language as a lower level PC?

I've got a PC with exactly that right now. She's a historican and scholar. A lot of old religious texts are written in Supernal so it's useful to her.

Holy fuck boneshard skeletons are a nightmare
>When bloodied or killed they explode doing neurotic damage against every creature in the burst
We nearly tpk'd in the second encounter I even had. I'm actually liking the West Marches type stuff

Whatever animal you pick, you still have no mechanical ability to represent it until you pick a feat or utility power that says you can. Your form could be a giant eagle, but you'd be grounded until the level 22 'Sky Talon' utility power, shows up, and even that comes with weird limitations.

They probably should have done the forms similar to barbarian ranges (except maybe encounter based?).

In general, just going "here, you can turn into ANYTHING!" is going to end up either stupid for the reasons it's stupid in 4e, ior for the reasons it's stupid in 5e/3.5.

Yeah. Flight is just damn hard to value.

Pixie style flight is the best I've seen but people got unhappy about being forced to fly within stabbing height.

But why would you pick giant eagle if you can't do that?

The default options are bear, panther and bees for a reason

Why would you pick a wolf if you don't get blindsense, why would you pick an ape or bear if you're not good at climbing, why pick a panther if you don't get low light vision?

I'm just pointing out the inadequacy in the system

I think the problem here is that you want mechanics that reflect fluff, and I want fluff that reflects mechanics

So I can see why this would be a problem to you, but please understand why it has never been a problem to me

My problem is that you have to pick between powers such as the 2nd level utilities skittering sneak, which is a cool out of combat power that has an array of applications, and verdant bounty, which is a powerful combat ability that can save your allies from a round of enemy attacks.

As discussed above, dedicated utility powers limit what a character might have been able to do had that utility not existed. They could have been druid specific rituals or innate abilities like wizard cantrips.

Oh, well if we're looking at that, I feel like the solution would be a separation of utility powers into combat and non-combat utility powers

Yeah, that's one of the main things we're pondering with a 4e heartbreaker we are working on.

Your class gives you Support Power (Combat utility) and your Power Source gives you Utility Powers (Non-Combat Support). So a Rogue is Martial, so he has Utility powers about being inhumanly but not magically good at stuff. A Paladin is Divine so he has prayers and blessings.

The idea is that non-combat utility stuff either improves a skill (Making it faster, for example) or does stuff a skill can't do (A small portal between two places for Arcane). Rather than just being number bonuses or 'Use X skill for Y'.

Sounds cool, I like the power source thing, I'm happy to see it expanded upon

That and it helps us keep the Utilities to reasonable levels. There is 4(Ish) classes for each power source, separating how a Cleric and Invoker do non-combat stuff is going to give us headaches.

Good to hear you're keeping non-combat utility within in the same powers source feel distinct between classes, that was my immediate concern.

I'd say clerics are more combat oriented in general, so would have utility for battlefield triage, curing poison and disease, maybe short term buffs to athletics, endurance and heal.

Invokers as the more mystic of the divine classes so could have divination utility, predicting the future and scrying, as well as minor miracles like walking on water and creating food.

That would be my suggestion.

Yeah but by the same token, an Invoker of Bane is all about them fightin' and a Cleric of Ioun would do divination and such. The one thing all 4 dudes have in common is the power being about prayer and divinely granted.

Which is sort of why we are going with it per-power source rather than per-class. It will mean that power sources, yeah, will mean more out of combat than your class.

On the other hand: We like to think it will also open up a bit more versatility in non-combat stuff. A Warden and a Fighter are both defenders who are tough sons of bitches but different power source means they will have different approaches to non-combat stuff.

Mind you, we are still in 'Throw stuff at the wall' right now so feedback is very appreciated.

Maybe tie utility to the deity in that case, have some baseline utility they all have access too, then specific powers based on the deity's domains.

We were thinking of theming them that way, though not restricting them. So a Pelor guy CAN learn 'Prayer of Night' (And making an area drop to low visibility) but there would be some obvious theme overlaps.

If you want one that doesn't immediately line up with your god, find a way to justify it and give it a new name (Since refluffing is always allowed). So the Pelor guy could call it 'Pelor turns away' and it's about the god revoking light rather than making it darker.

Martial: Themed around skills/qualities a person has.
Divine: Themed around prayers and various metaphysical domains.
Primal: Themed around which spirit of nature you are invoking the aid of.

So a Warden could ask the spirit of the river for help and turn water into solid ground for a time. A wizard calls up a disc of levitation. A cleric parts the waves. The fighter gets confused why everyone else is being fancy and just jumps over it.

At least, that's the thematic/general idea.

But they're both divine?

Yeah, that was my point. That making 'Divine' a source of non-combat powers is much less headache inducing than trying to pare down exactly how two divine people or two arcane differ in how they do it.

>others are also working on 4e-like homebrews

the race is on, motherfuckers

It's not. It's a well-made RPG for vidya-style fantasy combat. People who act like that's a bad thing, are faggots. People who deny 4e's vidya-like nature, are retards. 4e has good combat, and that's all it needs to have. Most RPGs with heavy non-combat mechanics are shit. We want the rules to stay out of our roleplay, and only come into play during combat. It's annoying when the roleplay has a good flow to suddenly have to stop and do some social combat ruleshit. Whereas a combat? No one even cares that much if it's contrived. Who gives a fuck? I hate the daily powers in 4e, I hate the resource management bullshit for fighters, I hate minions (even though they are a good idea design-wise), and I don't even like the combat style that 4e sets up. Feats just seem like bloat, most of the powers seem like bloat. That said, the game does what it does, and does it well.

I really fucking regret introducing my group to 3.5 because even though I prefer 3.5, they decided to convert the campaign to the 3.5, and the DM said he was okay with it but really wasn't once he started getting into the rules, the players completely outpaced him learning all the rules and he's been on the backfoot ever since, I'm pretty sure that is 50% of what killed our campaign, the other 50% being him getting married. I hated my build in 4e but I would have happily stuck with it if it meant we'd gotten to actually play that campaign more. Fucking kill me.

Building a fighter/barbarian warforged hybrid

Which hybrid talent feat should I take? Tossing up between barbarian agility, fighter two-handed talent and rageblood vigor

Make him TWF and take tempest style.

If I was building a thri-kreen or half-orc, I would, but I want to build a charger, because charging is super fun

Besides, I already have a fighter/ranger hybrid with tempest technique

I think the bonus to-hit is more valuable than the bonus AC. If you want, you can just invest in heavier armor later, but it's a bit harder to get attack bonuses.

Barbarian agility ties you to needing a good dex bonus for a worthwhile AC, take fighter weapon talent if you want the feats it unlocks, which are pretty decent if you haven't looked at them, otherwise take rageblood vigor as it's the most bang for buck option.

Why wouldn't a charger want good dex? You need it for surprising charge and spear feats

It means you need to keep bumping up dex with every ability score increase to keep pace with scale armour instead of increasing something else to boost your riders.

Yes, and?

What's the alternative? Constitution? I'd rather have a good secondary NAD, and access to surprising charge and spear mastery

Unless you start with an 18 in dex, which will be difficult as a warforged, you'll be behind in AC until paragon, and be 1 ahead in epic. Alternatively you can do anything else with that feat, start with 15 dex and a gouge, take surprising charge at 8th and increase con to 17 to take axe mastery at epic.

but why?

What benefit is there in investing in constitution instead? Axe and Spear mastery do the same thing

The question was, is barbarian agility better than fighter weapon talent for a warforged hybrid? Unless you value +1 AC at epic and a dependency on dex over +1 to hit and feat access to things like hewing charge and brutal tactics, the answer is no, it isn't. Unless there is some specific hide armour only enchantment you want.

Arena Fighting with multiattacks. So you can be using a Fullblade, have it count as a Light Blade and be able to do things like Rain of Blows+Thundering Howl.

>What are your favorite Utility Powers that actually seem to be made for out of combat purposes and/or "normal" utility (interpreted as reasonably as you feel)?

Memory to Mist is the Jedi hand wave. "These are not the warforged you're looking for."

I keep forgetting that arena fighting works like that

How do you deal with different optimization levels in a 4e game? My group, myself included, are mostly low to mid optimization sorts of people, we just do shit that's cool, but another player's big into charop; and it's not like she's a bad guy or anything, she just gets a kick out of being the best at her job, and doesn't really realize when that means she's making some of us obsolete. We've talked to her about the problem and she's tried to cut back some but she's still making really optimal characters, and she's tried to pick niches that aren't someone else's, but I worry that it'll keep being a problem; we don't want to kick her out because she's a great roleplayer and a good friend, but it has negatively impacted some of the other player's enjoyments of the games. She's apologized for that and tried to fix it, but...

Let her make a leader.

A leader works best when he enables others, so an optimized leader should make everyone else feel amazing.

>Playing with autistic girls

desu senpai you deserve what you get m8. I bet she's not white, too.

Don't bully autistic girls, I've only had good experiences with them. Then again it may be my own autism resonating with them.

Also, yeah, ask her to make a Leader. They can decide the whole combat on the first turn and make it seem like it's the work of others.

Pixie flight is pretty nice, basically means you're immune to trip forever, even if you never go on top of building to rain death upon the wingless mooks.

Is there any way to make sure all your attacks are Fire And Radiant? I'm playing a wrathvoker looking to go into Sublime Flame, and I'd liek to make use of the level 30 to get +4d6 to all my damage.

funin.space/compendium/item/Crusaders-Weapon.html

This'll turn half your damage Radiant, so if you're using Fire powers it'll be both.
Not sure if there's a more generally useful option.

Hmm, hammer or mace only, and I've been using staves, unfortunately; and I didn't take the right multiclass to pick up holy symbols as implements. Damn.

Just remembered this paragon path exists, if you can afford the opportunity cost:
funin.space/compendium/paragonpath/Malec-Keth-Janissary.html

The 16th level feature lets you splice extra damage onto everything you do, which carries the keyword for picking up bonuses.

I already multiclassed wizard, unfortunatley, which fits the character more than swordmage; also the paragon path is... overall not that useful for a multi swordmage as is, only for straight swordmages.

I can only think of Radiant One where you deal Fire and Radiant damage equal to your Intelligence modifier if you hit an enemy granting combat advantage, but that's an Epic Destiny. You can use Hellfire Staff if you're using Close and Melee powers; or if you'd rather go with Radiant powers, there's always the Radiant Staff.

Also, you should've gone with hybrid Cleric.

Hybrid cleric was unnecessary, I felt like, given we had two full leaders already at the time I joined.Hellfire Staff and Radiant Staff both replace, not augment, so it wouldn't trigger the Sublime Flame's 30 twice, as I understand it.

Hybrid Cleric is honestly more of a Controller thing with some Leader tacked on, and the proper hybrid for a Dizzying Mace build.

So is Hybrid Invoker|Cleric 100% a better build than straight invoker?

Honestly, it's not 100% better as you might have a build that would rather do something else entirely, it's different with plenty of advantages and it's hard to fuck up, you don't lose much with it, you tend to only really gain.

Well, my current plan is for an Eberron game; a house medani half-elf invokver of the silver flame. Current plan is Wrath Covenant invoker (mutliclass wizard with that feat that gives you that future sight daily you use on long restss), and the Inquisitive theme, since I wnated to play a house medani investigator. From there I was going into either Medani Trueseer or Exorcist of the Flame for PP; probably Exorcist, since currently her faith is more important for her than her family after a race-change incident has put her on thin ice with the rest of the Medani. EDs I was looking at were either going to be Sublime Flame or Heir of Siberys; depending on a few things. General plan was to be a general area nuker like wrathvokers are good at, with a side order of 'all the insight, all the perception'.

Well, you can be a bit more of a debuffer with the Cleric, plus getting better AC anyway. Exorcist of the Flame makes you lean slightly towards Leader, and for EDs Heir of Siberys is pretty great.

Well, debuffer was never my plan with the character; wrathvokers are secondary striker, after all. covenant of wrath is all about pointing in the direction of the enemy and unloading buckets of HOT HOLY WRATH all over their innocent, waiting faces.

How is it 'vidya style' at all?

Tactical war game style combat lent to a lot of modern day video game design, for better or worse. Trouble is, lots of folk of my generation don't remember there was a time that games did things before computers, so rather than attributing the design qualities of 4e to Chainmail and other war games like someone who's played back further than 3.pf might, the easiest comparison to draw as an example is to video games, which drew from those sources as inspiration many a time.

So in that, yes, there is a distinct 'vidya style' to 4e, even though said vidya style is largely thanks to table top war gaming in many aspects.

Even then, the WoW attack isn't even the closest analogy - it's more akin to Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics.

With no facing rules, no ala carte multiclassing and no dead zones on ranged, the one trpg that is remotely close to 4e in mechanics and style and character is the Arc the Lad series, although Trails is very similar now that I've played it.

Final Fantasy Tactics is literally third edition, right down to the prestige class system

The closest thing to Fire Emblem is ironically fifth edition because all of the classes line up perfectly. Champions == Lords right down to the new combat style change halfway through the game. Barbarians == the entire Warrior line, Pegasus Knights == Cavaliers that dump constitution, Shaman == Warlocks etc. Cut Rangers and Paladins and it is practically a one to one relationship.

Eh, 4th does have a 1-hex zone where you provoke an OA if you make a ranged attack. Although it's stupidly easy for PC's to avoid.

No obfuscation.

Clean, precise, mechanical description is something that was relatively unheard of in TRPGs.

Well you could make unique combat powers and have a power source have a grand list of support and utility powers that all the classes could access.

Building a heartbreaker, but hit a wall. How would you guys make each weapon/implement type distinct in the way it is used. While we're at it, when making Armor damage reduction, how would you make lighter armor worth considering when measured against heavier armor?

I'm working on this as well. I give each caster class an at-will implement RBA, and then the implements they use give bonuses (sometimes related to it, sometimes not).

Arcane gets:

>Wand
The normal/utility choice. Leaves the other hand empty, so you could use two with different enchants, or use an off-hand for shielding.

>Staff
Can use the RBA in melee

>Orb
Double range on the RBA

Primal gets a totem. The totem lets him transform in some way, depending on type. When used this way, it fuses into you, leaving your hands free.

>Beast totem
Grow claws and thick skin as if wearing medium armor. If both hands are free, can do a maul attack (as two strength handed weapon).

>Raptor totem
Double range RBAs, low light vision

>Treant totem
Grows thick bark skin (as if wearing heavy armor), grows long vines it can attack with from range (as if with a spear).

Not sure what to do about divine symbols yet. Probably just have it make your attacks a certain element, but take no slots aside from that.

Light-medium-heavy armor as in 5e, but heavy always gives you a movement penalty, but also reduces forced movement by 1. I'm trying to think of what would be a good bonus to differentiate light and medium in some way, but I don't want to get into stupid shit like damage types.

The way you use your powers, with cooldowns and all, is quite like an MOBA. There are little one-shot minions to kill just like in Dota, there are "bosses" (solos) and the powers have loads of ongoing damage type effects. It's very MOBA like. Nothing really wrong with that either.

But it isn't. But... I guess it loops back to what said

People compare it to vidya because that's what they know, even though board games and wargames are a much more direct precedent for 4e's design principles.

Even comparing it to vidya, comparing it to a MOBA is really weird.

At least WoW actually has "solos" and is actually mostly about PvE. The best you get in a MOBA is jungle creeps and Roshan/Nashor.

I'm thinking I'd like to run a Monster Hunter inspired campaign using 4e.

The trickiest part is to make solo encounters interesting. I'm thinking the best way is to split monsters into "parts" and stat those parts individually, but still give the monster an overall health pool. Players can target individual parts to break them (these parts normally have higher AC), or can simply attack the monster (usually a lower AC) but no chance to break parts. Many of the monsters attacks are tied to these parts and a broken part means the attack deals much less damage or is more likely to miss.

In addition, a solo monster can attack with up to two different parts per turn, when enraged attack with three different parts per turn, and when tired just one part. This will probably need to be tweaked but it's just a base idea for now. Maybe to make a solo monster actually frightening I should just allow, once per fight, to have them use all of their attacks at once, but can't attack next round, instead of my other idea.

Finally solo monsters need to have mobility options so they don't simply get surrounded and beat down. This shouldn't be too hard to create but might be tricky to balance without having melee classes spending all of their turns running around just trying to keep up with it.

As for magic items, instead of weapons being magical, they'd actually be crafted from monsters, same with armor. What I'd essentially do is say that slaying a monster gives enough material for a weapon or armor to be crafted with some of the monster's attributes, so it's analogous to getting magical item upgrades from treasure parcels, without them being strictly magical. I really want the world to feel more primal and ancient, so the setting would be more Monster Hunter style with small, interspersed settlements, instead of advanced civilizations spreading to create kingdoms and empires.

I think it could be cool. Designing good, interesting to fight solo boss monsters is always tricky, but there's a lot of room for exploration. I've always wanted to try to nail down the Shadow of the Colossus style of thing, where the monster is also terrain you can climb on, with different locations having different advantages or disadvantages.

>But it isn't.

But it is.

>People compare it to vidya because that's what they know, even though board games and wargames are a much more direct precedent for 4e's design principles.

LOL yeah no, that's not where the daily powers came from.

I'm a two blade ranger, and while I feel like when it comes to damage our party is fine, but we're lacking in other roles. We have

>Swordmage, defender
>Sentinel, Leader
>Myself, Striker
>Warlock, Striker
>Rogue, Striker

And I want to try and fill in as a secondary defender or have some controller aspects to my character. I already have some stuff that helps with it, mercenary theme giving me the ability to knock things prone, parting strike let's me slow enemies and reposition myself without any danger, and I have armor that lets me make an area around me count for difficult terrain.

I'm just hitting level 6 now, is there anything I can work towards (multiclassing, picking up certain feats/powers, paragon path options, etc) that I can grab to make myself a bit better at controller or defender? Preferably controller

That class list says nothing about party comp, so we can't really offer good advice. What options are your Swordmage, Warlock and Rogue taking? How well has your Sentinel doing with leadering, and what is their Cycle of choice? Based on what your party is doing, you should either let them cover those bases and go full damage, or pick up some of the slack on the area lacking.

Multiclassing Cleric then going into tactical warpriest makes you into a pseudo defender (pseudo fighter, really) at 16. It also has a pretty great leader encounter power and class ability at 11.

>LOL yeah no, that's not where the daily powers came from.

Yeah, those come from cleric casting, where you regain your spells 1/day when you pray.

We all know dnd 4e literally copied Heroes of the Storm, and I even suspect they copied from Overwatch.

It's embarrassing, really.

Yeah, but it did it badly. It took slightly homebrewed Strike! to perfect it.