/4eg/ - D&D 4e and 4e-like General: Dwarven Work edition

Combat advantage.

You may also want some bonuses stack (having like a morale boost from a warlord and a precision boost from some self applied buff), though I guess you could do something like "Bull's strength: your STR attribute bonus increases by one", but that's exactly the kind you don't want I think.

A good point. I forgot Proficiency Bonus too, although that could potentially be removed/folded into something else..

Been thinking of using the black hack approach to levels; basically instead of getting bonuses to everything as you level, your bonuses (or bonuses to the enemy stats) are based on the level difference between you.

So if you are 2 levels above the enemy, he gets -2 to all attacks and defenses. If he is 2 levels higher than you, he gets +2 to all.

You could easily adjust that even, if you want bounded accuracy in the game you could just divide the level difference by 4.

The one issue that springs to mind is that it could get very fiddly to manage in fights involving multiple enemies of different levels relative to the players. It's not impossible to deal with, but it is a bit of extra mechanics to remember and potentially get wrong.

That's why you put the number on the enemies. Players are expected to stay constant in level, so the enemy stats stay constant.

If you'd mix in lower level henchmen it... hmm, you are probably best off modifying their stats by how much lower they are compared to the players, should work out mathematically the same.

I would actually love a source on that comic strip, anybody know where it's from?

It's the same, but instead of accounting the bonus beforehand, you'll math it "in site". Good on paper, but sounds cumbersome to me.

And players like to see the numbers growing, even if the hit % is the same. Writing +30 on your sheet is good when you once started with +6, even if the 16 AC enemies are now 40 AC enemies.

>It's the same, but instead of accounting the bonus beforehand, you'll math it "in site"

Eh, not more than using the "MM3 on a business card" thing, but yeah.

The number increasing thing is valid though. I'd probably just do that with HP and damage, but I understand why having all that on your side of the paper is appealing.

>I would actually love a source on that comic strip
Are you serious

Dont user its to good and to short. It will only leave you empty...

IIRC it's the Fells Five 4e comic, but I don't actually know off the top of my head where I'd go to find a copy.

I can post a link after work user.

What piece of 4e lore did you anons find most inspiring? What were the pieces that really blew you away, or which still give you really solid ideas for campaigns?

Speaking personally, I really like Codricuhn, especially his artwork; there's just such a sense of implied massiveness. I really want to run a Dark Sun-esque "death world neo-barbarian" campaign with The Reveal being that the players' entire world is actually the surface of this planet-sized demonic elemental.

Nusemnee has to be without a doubt the most interesting god I've seen in D&D in a long time. I want to have her priesthood be heavily active in my settings, with whole "redemption guilds" aimed at supporting monstrous adventurers and their quests to turn their people away from their evil paths.

I could go on, but these two are worth pushing forward the most, I think.

After seeing it mentioned a few threads back I went and read up on the fluff of the Catastrophic Dragons, and they are seriously fucking cool.

Modifier spam doesn't bother me - I played Legend with no problem - and I absolutely hate 5E's advantage system.

>bother
>hate
Could you please improve on that? Seriously want to know why - 5e Advantage was praised as a really nice mechanic with little flaws.

Actually, speaking of Nusemnee... if I wanted to play an Invoker of Nusemnee who wants to restore her goddess to life, or at least take up her mantle, what Malediction, PP and ED would you anons recommend taking to strengthen that theme?

Dead God Avatar seems like the most logical Epic Destiny, but the other two ones are giving me some issues...

Having a one-size-fits-all mechanic for something that has no business being one-size-fits-all is bullshit and for me, reading a new die is way slower than mentally adding to or subtracting a few bonuses.

Aren't they just? MM3 set some awesome background for them, but their Dragon articles really gave them the shining spotlight. I mean, dragons embracing their elemental power to the point they become living catastrophes; how is that not awesome?

I just love the artwork they got too - especially the more ephemeral dragons. The Avalanche Dragon is just so weird and yet terrifying - it's an enormous cloud of dust and flying boulders, thousands of tons of free-falling rock that defies gravity and hates you personally.

Tell me that's not cooler than Mr. "I'm Lawful Good leaning on Lawful Neutral" 2e Brass Dragon, or whatever the hell it was before 4e...

Nusemnee is a pretty bog-standard "redeemed monstergirl waifu goddess of redemption."

I know it's bait, but I'll bite anyway: who the hell have you been playing with that a deity like that can be called "bog-standard"?

The only other Goddesses of Redemption I can name off the top of my head are Elistaree - who, fair enough, *is* a monstergirl, but who only concerns herself with redeeming *drow* - and Saraenrae (or however it's spelt), and even then she's predominantly focused on being the Sun God and the Paladin God.

>a one-size-fits-all mechanic for something that has no business being one-size-fits-all is bullshit
>bullshit
Could you clarify more, please? The advantage mechanic exists exactly to reduce the hunting for every modifier that could be added. The downside of this is exactly itself: If you only ever need one source of Adv for its benefit, a player will try to find the the more constant source possible to acquire the effect. Calling it bullshit does nothing to improve the discussion, even if myself recognize the mechanic have this flaw.

>reading a new die is way slower than mentally adding to or subtracting a few bonuses
This is a good explanation of why you don't like it. Thanks for this answer.

Not that guy, but there's also the issue of granularity. A bonus in 4e can be anywhere from +1 to +10, while advantage is always just advantage.

This isn't that bad a deal, since 4e already unified most situational stuff into combat advantage, but it's still pretty limited when you want to replace every single modifier with that one thing.

It's a common theme in Veeky Forums.

Maybe on Veeky Forums, but it's never been a part of official D&D before.

You know what? I was going to ask /4eg/ what its favorite races were from 4e, but since clearly has monstergirls on the brain, let's shake it up:

What, in your mind, were the hottest pieces of female character artwork in 4e?

Well, the Sha'ir from Heroes of the Elemental Chaos is the literal hotests. :p

More seriously, I have a preference for the Wandering Swordmage. Though I'll admit she isn't as "hot" as some of the other art people might post. I'm a sucker for the midriff.

I dig it, but mostly because I love panties or thongs are pulled high up on the leg.

The Battlemind from Zephyr Blade. She looks fucking great, it's not typical hotness but she attracts me so much.

My personal issue with advantage ous that it was a very common mechanic that interacted with a lot of the system.... but out didn't stack in any meaningful way.

>Maybe on Veeky Forums, but it's never been a part of official D&D before.

realmofadventure.wikia.com/wiki/Meriadar

To contribute to my own thread... it's been a shamefully long time since I looked at my own 4e books, and between bad connection and not having them on my comp, I can't share them, but the female dwarf from the Rampaging Brute PP in Martial Power 2 is really appealing. Alongside the "prototype" Dwarf Cleric from Wizards Presents: Races & Monsters, they really cement how much I liked the new art design for dwarves in 4e.

Of course, gnomes and halflings got hotter too, but I can't point to any specific artwork off the top of my head...

Actually... you know what? I still wanna know: what was your favorite race that was either new to 4e, or got itself a makeover with the 4e shift?

And what specifically did you like about it?

It's cliche, but I love the Dragonborn. My first ever 4e PC was a Dragonborn Warlord and they were so amazingly fun to play, and the Arkhosia fluff was always interesting to interact with and try to live up to.

Half-Elf have never really felt as comfy as 4e, honestly, and I don't know why. Love them.9

> replace every single modifier with that one thing.
The idea was never that, but to reduce drastically numerical modifiers for this. Although my idea was even replacing the attack roll to 3d6 since I prefer bell curve. But since this would stray too far from D&D, I thought of a middle ground: 3d20, pick middle if normal attack, highest if advantage, lowest with disadvantage.

These are the results for . Standard attack makes 10 being hit 57% of the chance. If player and monsters are made with the same bonus in mind (+5 attack against AC 15), it is a hit 57% of the time. The design idea of the original 4e developers is 66% if I'm not wrong, and we get 64,8% against target number (TN) 9.

But then, the whole advantage goes away if it is implemented that way, with TN 15 being hit 65% of the times, and disadvantage meaning almost never hitting.

So, drop the 3d20, drop the 5e mechanic, search mor other means? How away from the 4e core rules one can go before it is a spiritual sucessor and not a sequel/retroclone?

Personally, I really liked the way that the dwarves shed some of their traditional Tolkienisms like being a dying race or having fewer and/or bearded women - and I really dug the fluff about the War of Chains. The Forgeborn Dwarves are such an awesome idea, I really love them.

I can't really explain why the Eladrin/Elf split makes them feel "cleaner" than the old High/Wood Elf split, I'm afraid.

I love how 4e finally made the Gnomes more than just "Good-Humored Magical Dwarves".

Dragonborn? They were fucking *awesome*, finally giving us something that was new and yet broad enough to fill any role.

Half-Orcs losing their rape connotations was a good thing, although honestly I would rather just reskin them as full-blooded orcs, because the notion you can't play a humanoid race unless it's been "purified" with human ancestry is... no.

Tieflings, honestly, I really liked. I can get the appeal of the old planewalker's handbook variety table, but, seriously, the reskin made sense because A: it was just taking into account the fact that all official tiefling art to that point boiled down to humans with one or more or horns, hooves and tails, and B: it fit the presentation of the race as an actual unified race and not a motley collection of extraplanar bastards.

Genasi, full stop

Anons? In the last thread, as an idle comment, I brought up what folks thought would be the result of dropping a party of 30th level 4e adventurers into Westeros (TV version). General consensus was that, if we presume Westeros is a low-Heroic tier Martials Only setting, they'd be running the place.

Well, "Battle of the Bastards" was on the box this morning, and it made me wonder: how much impact would said band of adventurers have on a mass conflict like that?

For sake of argument, let's say said party is five strong and consists of:

Swordmage (Aegis of Assault) - Wandering Swordmage - Arcane Sword

Invoker (Covenant of Preservation) - Flame of Hope - Dead God Avatar

Warden (Stormheart) - Storm Sentinel - Emergent Primordial

Sorcerer (Wild Mage) - Primordial Channeler - Lord of Chaos

Ardent (Mantle of Elation) - Catalyst - Demiurge

Depends if you're taking a more thematic approach or trying to stay 'realistic', as it were.

In an actual battle, the most efficient thing to do with a small, powerful group like that is special forces actions. Break supply lines, attack the command tent, take out officers or disrupt important formations, which can be significant and fun, but doesn't feel particularly heroic fantasy to me.

In the context of Westeros it makes sense though, and through that and direct conflict, they would be a significant asset to any side they supported. I'm also reasonably certain that, even if the army they were with lost, basically no force in Westeros could really stop them. At best they'd retreat after expending their resources and just come back the next day at full strength.

Let's go with the thematic approach of five 30th level PCs charging into the fray alongside Jon Snow. Then what happens?

I figure it'd probably be a Bolton massacre, what with the fireballs, spheres of annihilation, turning into living storms and so forth, but hey, I don't actually know as much about D&D as I'd like.

Basically all of them. The art and formatting alone did wonders for giving character to races which were threadbare before. Making half-elves and half-orcs actual races instead of 'half human half something else' was one of the great changes.

At level 30 and with the low power nature of Westeros, they'd churn through everything like a knife through butter. Hundreds or thousands of casualties inflicted personally, with ease and without much cost.

This. It would basically look like a Musou.

That'd be fucking awesome

Yeah, honestly I don't think anyone in westeros statted out would be higher than level 10 or so in terms of power.

The wizard flies over the battlefield, turns it into an electrified volcano hurricane, and leaves.

Considering that a couple of Huge wyverns constitute a nearly-invincible military force in the context of Westeros, a squad of well-equipped, barely-optimized, mostly-rested level 30 4e characters shouldn't be threatened by the combined firepower of the entire planet.

It fucks up Charges because charging generally requires straight lines.

>Rampaging Brute
>yfw life is short and hard, like the bodybuilding shortstack waifu that will never come in fast and get what she came for

Doesn't charging just require that the attacker always moves closer to the target?

...

One might almost think that you have a picture of her to share.

There were some good dwarves in 4e.

cute, CUTE! I want her to break my neck between her thighs, killing me instantly!

Well, in fairness, 4e Wyverns don't breathe fire.

Indeed. I think 4e literally had the best female dwarf artwork of any edition, and the male dwarves benefited from it as well, although the male dwarves have always been relatively decent.

I actually do like that 4e dorfs just look like short, thicc humans. Right in the PHB, our introduction to dwarven women is ginger shortstack with giant tiddies.

Needs to be thicker

readcomiconline.to/Comic/Dungeons-Dragons-2010
Read their tale and mourn the loss of one of the best D&D comics of all time.

Out of all the official licensed D&D comics, movies, and animations, the Fell's Five comic was the only one that actually felt like it was written by someone who had ever actually played D&D.

How do people feel about Gamma World 7e's character creation system, where you mash together two separate origins with their own power progressions and flavors?
Kinda feel like it'd be fun to use for a fantasy-themed heartbreaker, with several race and class-based origins to cobble together, even unlikely ones like an Elf/Dwarf origin combination, or a Lycanthrope/Monk.

...

I absolutely love the general theme of the Points of Light setting, that there are huge blank spaces for groups to fill in and explore. The whole setting felt very frontier and exploration oriented, like you were the first to step out into the darkness instead of following in the footsteps of Elminster or Drizzt

Mmm, yeah. So much goodness to use, but also so much interesting stuff to pilfer from and explore. I know Ravenloft purists scoffed at them, but I genuinely liked the 4e Domains of Dread much better - Ravenloft has always been too full of itself and too focused on a narrow, Neo-Victoriana definition of itself to really embrace its full potential.

Too bad they completely fucked up the canonical class/stat combo for Fell

Everyone else makes sense, dex/cha rogue, str/wis paladin, dex/wis ranger, cha/int warlock. Then Fell is apparently a str/con fighter, despite obviously being a resourceful warlord

Well, they were trying to push Essentials at the time and they wanted to pretend fun martials didn't deserve to exist during that time. Thanks Mearls.

combining multiple paths is so great. Legend and Strike! both do a version of it and I think it's the way to go to cover the breadth of 4e without the huge amount of splats.

I disagree, somewhat, the way Gamma World does it is cool, but the way Strike! does it is extremely limiting in terms of game design

I played 4e again and by Ioun how fun it was to come up with group tactics, even for monsters. I can't really do that in 5e, else everyone dies. 5e is just far too low powered for that.

Could you explain more? I never read Gamma 7e. You mean something like making races contribute 1/3 to the powers and classes the other 2/3?

That's been the experience I've had with the game too, I've tried to give 5e a fair shake even with my personal feelings on Mearls, but I've just found it lacks depth and balance. My players have been largely expressed that it just feels boring compared to the tactical nature of 4e and they miss the game they didn't think they liked until it was gone.

You get powers from your two races and the random mutation/artifact cards. There are no classes.

So a possible translation to 4e would be just that? A kind of hybrid race|class? I find it quite interesting.

4e and 5e are different games.
4e is Fantasy Avengers. 5e is more sword & sorcery. 4e is tactical, 5e is more loose. They're different kinds of game from the philosophy approach of each other and power level. WotC did this "right" because it wouldn't compete with itself, but tried to recover the lost shitfinder audience.

So I would really love to run a 4th ed game for my group. I know about the MM3+ math, but is there any other good general advice for someone who never got to play a ton of 4th?

Get a copy of the offline character builder, it makes chargen way easier by collating content in one place. Funin.space is also a great resource, an online rip of the compendium with all the content in a searchable index.

On houserules, give every PC an Expertise feat and Improved Defences for free, it's necessary to make the math work.

I'd also advice your players to look up the various 4e handbooks/guides for the classes they want to play. Not to follow them, the game works fine at low optimisation, but because they generally do a good job of describing how things work, your classes strengths and weaknesses, and can help you avoid some of the badly designed options present. There aren't too many, but there are a few.

>Tieflings, honestly, I really liked. I can get the appeal of the old planewalker's handbook variety table, but, seriously, the reskin made sense because A: it was just taking into account the fact that all official tiefling art to that point boiled down to humans with one or more or horns, hooves and tails, and B: it fit the presentation of the race as an actual unified race and not a motley collection of extraplanar bastards.
According to Classes and Races, early drafts of Tieflings had customizable Race traits (and races were more complex in general) but they dropped it later

>customizable Race traits (and races were more complex in general) but they dropped it later
And returned with it with the shifter and the secondary ability score being a variable

Kinda, yes. But if I'm not mistaken, their early approach had races with their own progression

Is possible for a heartbreaker 4e. Would help making less powers per class ir some would be adapted to race.

Wouldn't that restrict the races too much?

Not if they had many choices.

As said, would allow for better archetypical design, so an Eladrin can use some sword techniques even if Wizard or use some arcane magic even if Fighter, instead of taking up space for this in classes or taking too long to show (like a Eladrin PP) or taking up feats.

It's not just a translation, it is 4e, just with simpler mechanics. It seems to be wholly compatible with 4e monsters, you can simply drop them into a Gamma World game and they'd work fine.

She is so cute for me and I never really got why. I think I need help.

Reminder to self to add gamma world 7 to the list of 4e-likes.

Anons? During 4e's time in the sun, I mostly didn't bother picking up adventures, because I figured that there'd be very little if anything new in them. After exposure to Pathfinder and 5e revealed the tendency to adventures to feature new monsters, magical items and lore, I have to ask:

What new stuff, if anything, can be found in the various 4e adventures? Anyone remember?

Dragonborn fuck me, how I never saw that? Do you have the pdf, please?

Honestly it's not so much about the new but 4e's adventures were some high quality ones. Very well written and with fun combat.

I didn't actually read many. Which are the best ones?

I think that's a thing more unique to Paizo, I'm pretty sure most of the magic items and monsters made it to the compendium.

What compendium? I was unaware of any such thing.

Is that character builder fully up to date?

Because dang I've never seen an offline version with everything.