/4eg/ - D&D 4e and 4e-like General: Hot-Blooded Wuxia Action Edition

This thread is for discussing D&D 4e and the games it inspired, such as 13th Age, Strike!, Valor, and so forth.

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At the end of last thread we were talking about making minor power sources (Major Power: Arcane; Minor Power: Scholar/Blood/Pact. Major Power: Martial; Minor Power: Military, Tribal)

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Some clarity from the person who suggested it-

We're working on our own attempt at a rewrite, and toying with the idea of every class having at least two power sources, one defined by the class and one defined by the specific archetype/features chosen, with things like themes offering you a chance to swap one out. Sources would provide your out of combat utility powers, and maybe some options for in combat utility (Support) powers, although Classes would still have their own defined options on that front.

Minor sources wouldn't have classes to their name (at least initially), but would instead provide a specialised, smaller selection of interesting and fluffy powers that I think would be a cool thing to design, it's just a question of how to make them a valid choice, since the major sources will almost always have more breadth of options available.

One thing I really like about 4e's fluff was the handling of the Barbarian. He went from "dumber fighter who gets really mad" to this sort of tribal champion who communes with the spirits of the primal world to kick ass really hard. That was really nice, honestly.

So, this occured to me when I tried to explain why, but why is rolling for stats bad?

Is it just because of the possibility of rolling a bad or unplayable character, or that on average you'll come out with a character just below the standard array?

I still think giving minor sources additional benefits would go a long way to improving their viability without taking away the breadth of the larger sources.

The biggest drawback would be trying to not make them too powerful a choice for any one particular build.

For 4e in particular it's that the math is so very tight that point buy is really the only viable option since not having a high enough number in a particular stat or stats for your class can easily make your character quite subpar depending on how low the number ends up being rolled.

Couple this with the possibility that someone else might roll to be the perfect person and youve got quite a bit of disparity rendering one character useless and the other the center of all attention.

It can be quite frustrating for the players involved and point buy or array alleviates this by putting optimization in the players hands rather than leaving it up to the RNGods.

4e really expects you to have 2 stats at 18-16 before racials. Anything else is going to be awkward.

And yes, the chance for being OP is higher, especially because you can "dump" multiple stats anyway.

4e's math is so tight that unless you're going for really specific builds and you absolutely must, getting below +4 on your main attack stat (after mods, of course) is just gonna make you lag behind.

The general base is 16, 14, 14, 13, 10, 8, or 16, 16, 13/12, 11/12, 10, 8; depending on what you need. Supposing the typical 4d6, discard lowest, you end up with most people averaging below any of those. It's pretty rubbish.

4e has very tight combat math. Rolling for stats adds basically nothing to the experience of the game, and risks severely imbalancing the party if someone rolls low, making their character terminally incompetent and no fun to play.

This is all good to know. I'll try and explain this when we get together, but who knows if it'll stick or anything.

I'll confess though; I've played a 4e game where I rolled stats for a monk and it was one of the worst tabletop experiences I ever had. I merely wanted some fa/tg/uy back-up from people who played the game more than I to at least try and persuade my DM to at least let us use the standard array set-up.

The primal power source in general really got me. I love wardens as elemental champions, Barbs as spiritually fueled warriors etc. Really added a major mystical element that other editions only toyed with.

So if Shugenjanon is around. I'll post my take on the Class write up for the shugenja so far.

been working on the class features to really iron them out in my head before even attempting to write powers for the thing.

SHUGENJA

Role: Leader. You lean toward controller or defender as a secondary role.

Power Source: Ki

Key Abilities: Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution

Armor Proficiencies: Cloth

Weapon Proficiencies: Simple melee, simple ranged

Implement Proficiency: Ki Focus

Bonus to Defense: +1 Fortitude, +1 Will

Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score

Hit Points per Level Gained: 6

Healing Surges per Day: 7 + Constitution modifier

Class Skills:

Shugenja gain training in four skills from the shugenja class skill list: Arcana (Int), Diplomacy (Cha). Heal (Wis), History (Int), Insight (Wis), Nature (Wis)


Class Features:

Unarmored Defense: A shugenja gains a +2 bonus to AC while not using a shield and wearing cloth armor or no armor.

Flow of Yin: Using the Flow of Yin power, Shugenja can grant their comrades additional resilience by altering the positive flow of the universe.

Surge of Yang: Using the Surge of Yang power, Shugenja can bring their foes to ruin by altering the negative flow of the universe.

Harmony: When your Yin points and Yang points are equal, you may add both Yin power effect and Yang power effect of one power you possess. Once you use this feature both pools are emptied and begin again at 0.

Nature of the Universe: Choose one, Yin is based on Dex and gives you a controller flavor, while Yang is based on Con and gives you a defender feel.

Powers: The powers for the class would also manipulate your Yin and Yang levels. Riders would be a >major part of most powers and depend on your Nature, while their strength might be determined based on >your Yin or Yang point level.

I'd give the Shugenja Endurance, Perception, Dungeoneering, and give the Dexterity version of it the ability to use Dexterity for Intelligence-based skills. I feel that might fit. The Constitution-based one ought to be able to use Constitution for its AC, too.

What effects are there in 4e for a character to change sizes? I have a pixie character who is annoyed about how much larger everyone is than her, as they treat her like a kid.

Purely fluffy I would allow her to increase size as part of Barbarian Rage

She's a monk in this case. Her Epic Destiny she's going for (Emergent Primordial) will, entertainingly jump her a staggering number of size categories (But won't let her do normal sizes. Tiny OR Huge are the options)

Star Wars Saga Edition is 4elike, right? Is it any good? I don't want to deal with those fucking FFG dice.

It's pretty good, though they made the very bad decision of making 'Use the Force' a single skill AND it's got a lot of stuff for 'Use Use the Force instead of X' so Jedi are crazy skill monkeys.

Just like Arcana in 4e...

Honestly, worse than 4e's arcana issue. Yes, that bad. At least Arcana was one of several 'Use magic' skills for rituals.

RPGs have always been iffy on how to balance jedi against non-jedi.

Personally I always think it's just something you have to play into. The non-jedi who stick around Jedi are going to be the goddamn best at what they do. The Jedi might just be an apprentice or an inexperienced knight, but his companions will be prodigies or veterans or just damn talented at what they do, meaning they're on the same level of capability and can keep up despite whatever force bullshit they can do. When you get to experienced Jedi, you're palling around with some of the most competent people in the damn galaxy.

See: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, the archetypal duo.

You mixed up Yin and Yang.
Yin is negative/passive/feminine/cold
Yang is positive/active/masculine/hot

Got working on that Bard|Rogue build I talked about in the last thread, would anyone want to have a more indepth look into it?

I'm keen to give it a gander

Right, I'll do a cohesive write-up later, but the idea generally relies on two things: the Bard and the Rogue generally only kind of hit when it comes to both being very Controller-like, but the Rogue has a very above average Leader-like Paragon Path (Guildmaster Thief), and the Bard doesn't need much to work as a Leader, given most of his work will either come off-turn or through the use of utilities.

On top of that, I'm looking into a Halfling to add in even more off-turn options (Deft Hurler Style is pretty much one of the best feats in the game for Halfling Rogues), and I definitely will dip into Warlord to give my allies damage bonuses when they AP (at the very least a +5, at the very best a +13).

It pretty much seems like it will run like an almost straight Rogue who can not only maximize his own potential but also that of his allies because he has the powers and features to do so; it's honestly a quite interesting idea.

>This thread is for discussing D&D 4e and the games it inspired, such as 13th Age, Strike!, Valor, and so forth.

I want to expand this list.

There's SW SAGA and Gamma WOrld 7th ed, what else?

Unity, but it's not out yet

Why do this instead of make more (and free) rituals?

Utilities are going to be measured against the combat useful ones; if they're pure fluff, they aren't getting taken without adding extra U slots. Subdividing the power sources adds either erroneous tags, extra work to make things function with those tags, or reshuffling things to fit the new tags. Also, how will you split Psychic into three distinct groups? Or Divine, for that matter?

Still interested in making another Defender, even if not a Ki one specifically. What sort of gaps are there in the defender lineup?

Fighters have amazing marking and punishment but no range

Paladins can mark large numbers at range but their punishment is weak and they're not sticky

Wardens are sticky as fuck but low range and punishment

Swordmages can mark at range and that's about it, the shielding SM is generally regarded as the best and he can reduce damage but not really kill enemies or stop them from getting to allies in the first place

Battlemind chases enemy around and does good damage but isn't sticky

Man I can't wait for Unity to be released. I saw it back when it was KS'd and I really want to get my hands on it.

Actually. I didn't mix up anything. We really haven't decided exactly how both are going to interact with one another, only that the Shugenja uses both.

They actually are supposed to have two pools one for Yin and one for Yang which starts at zero and builds by using powers. Yin activated powers build Yang and visa versa. At least that's what we were discussing the last time Shugenjanon posted in here. He's busy working on a defender (Sohei) and a controller role atm I believe.

But as far as the class features are concerned their not even in alpha and we're still trying to decide how the two builds work and influence the class as a whole.

Though I do think it would be interesting to see the whole Yin/Yang thing as two seperate builds. One for buffing and healing and possibly working with cold and lightning damage (Air+Water element) and a Yang build for working with Debuffing and Control dealing fire and acid (Fire+Earth elements)

I am running my first 4E game, but I've been told that all the monsters outside of the 3rd Monster Manual have way too much HP. Is this true? Are the rest of the stats okay if I just halve the HP?

The HP isn't the problem, too high defenses are.

MM3 and the monster vaults are too good, only MM1-2 had the bad math.

Also, there's MM3 on a businesscard you can recalculate stats with if you really want to use MM1-2 stuff.

As long as you get a 16+ in one stat you can make it work, clerics wizards and rogues get by with no riders, essentials classes usually only use one stat, there's even hybrid routes you can go. Under 16 though gets pretty dire, lazy warlord can do it, possibly fighter with their free +1, at that point though I'd make a charge optimised pixie just to spite the GM.

I'm not talking about builds

>Flow of Yin: Using the Flow of Yin power, Shugenja can grant their comrades additional resilience by altering the positive flow of the universe.
>Flow of Yin ... altering the positive flow

>Surge of Yang: Using the Surge of Yang power, Shugenja can bring their foes to ruin by altering the negative flow of the universe.
>Surge of Yang ... altering the negative flow

See? They're backwards

If memory serves, it wasn't high health or defences per say, it was level appropriate monsters not challenging players once they'd learned the game and started using their powers well, doing combos, etc, so DM's would just use higher level monsters, which could challenge the players in terms of damage but had inflated health and defences due to being a few levels higher than the game was built for. There's a blog post floating around from one of the MM3 writers who explains the whole thing, and how their change was actually to increase monster damage, by about 30% on average if memory serves me correctly.

For the most part, there are no issues for the first 10 levels or so, so it's no big problem to use monsters from any of the books, but the business card of math that the other guy posted is perfect for checking things or tweaking things on the fly.

Defenses was definitely part of it for elites and solos.

But yes, monster damage is the other thing.

I checked the trailer but it said just about nothing about mechanics. What's it like?

The Swordmage has about the best punishment.

I've found that a large chunk of it was that the old 3.5 method of just sending a block of numbers at groups doesn't work well in 4e.
As a GM, you NEED to send encounters with varies enemies that play off each other.

For example, when I had an encounter that could have just been "three undead things and a bunch of little bugs" I found it dull, so replaced the huge bug swarms with things that would spawn minion bugs and tell them to explode if left alone.
My players seemed to appreciate how it took them by surprise and forced them to adapt to it.

The core game mechanic is 2d10+MODs versus DC.
Your stats are likely to be +0 to +3. There are 4 stats: Might, Agility, Mind, Presence. You then have a 3 "Core Paths" rated 1-3 that are basically 13th age Backgrounds for your skills. You have 5 points to spread here.

Vaguely like 4e combat but most every power draws from a resource pool (its name and a few pieces of it, like the recharge rate, depend on the class) that recharges a bit when you rest and when you roll doubles. Resting can be dangerous because it generates Ruin which the GM uses to do bad stuff like fuel monster abilities, open up portals/tears-in-reality ("Breaches"), bump up the TN by a bit, whatever.

You have Race and Class, with levels and feats ("Perks").

Biggest change to combat might be the game doesn't use a grid but instead range bands of Adjacent (2.5m), Nearby (2.5m-8m) Far, (8m-16m), Very Far (16-24m). It has rules for converting, but I haven't tried them. They're just "Nearby is 2-5 squares away".


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If you wanna DL the v1 early access. They've had 2 updates since then, I think? I personally gave them a bunch of feedback but I dunno if they used any of it because I'm not actually part of the kickstarter and can't see the updated versions, heh.

Attached is the Fell Hunter class as provided in the early access (the classes are not complete - there is at least a Tier 2, but they all only go through Tier 1)

It looks like it can be pretty cool, really.

I think that the math in the 4e back-end is much neater and easier to work with than other editions, and whilst that speeds up encounter and adventure design amazingly if you stop there you'll end up with boring encounters. I feel that good 4e encounter design requires you to know what your party can and can't do, and how each monster you throw at the group will interact with that.

The day I started tailoring encounters for the party composition, was the day everyone seemed to start enjoying combat a lot more.

Thanks!

I'm sorta turned off by the lack of the tactical map, I expect it'll make positioning and movement way less tactical, which was important in 4e.

That said, there are workarounds so I'll check it out.

I also think curves are a meme,
so 2d10 is kinda meh, but w/e, I'll check it before I judge

You can still use a map, in fact all of the actual battle reports (they're somewhere, at least one is) are using little pictures on a map, moving them around.
Its ranges are just a bit "looser" but...not really when you look into it too much.

The Grid Conversion rules have:

GRID DISTANCE CONVERSION
ADJACENT 1 SQUARE AWAY
NEARBY BETWEEN 2-5 SQUARES AWAY
FAR BETWEEN 6-10 SQUARES AWAY
VERY FAR BETWEEN 11-15 SQUARES AWAY
A Movement action will carry you up to 5 squares from where you are.

This just means a "Nearby" power is Range 5, a Far one is Range 10, and a Very Far one is Range 15.
Other stuff is similarly simple to convert, if it exists.

you're a meme

Right, but I expect if they really want to to go with making the ToM approach viable, they'll have to adapt the system to not having a map, by not having precise movement and positioning. See: 5e.

No, you are! Teehee

well it's not really a punishment, per se

The Swordmage is considerably sticky and its punishment is either a boatload of damage (Assault) or negation of damage (Shielding) at a range. The Swordmage's thing is being sticky and being able to punish enemies from afar.

We're also reworking the Rituals subsystem, and we're explicitly splitting Utilities into Support (combat) and Utility (out of combat) powers.

The idea of minor sources is less subdivisions of existing sources and more focused and specialised descriptors that could be shared by multiple sources. An Int based warlord and a Wizard might both end up with a 'Scholar' tag, for example, representing their depth of learning, even if their classes work with it in very different ways.

Guy whose group rolled for stats here. While the rest of the players disregarded my warnings, the DM was at least aware of the problem, and consequently forced us to reroll if we got two stats at 15 or lower.

Amusingly, we rolled for stats before anything else, and I'm one of the two in the group were got solid rolls, the other is sort-of a twit and ended up getting the best stats out of us all at the cost of having no con basically.

Five people in all, the only one who got 'screwed' was the guy who ended up being our leader. And going off that, I managed to get a functioning conlock. Con/Dex/Int are such odd stats to work with for a non-defender class.

Were you allowed to place rolls where you wanted, or was it down-the-line?

Down the line. For the most part, only one of us got somewhat screwed by the dice rolls, but not so that they're non-functional. One is somewhat screwing themselves, but they might survive or get by until later when they can bring themselves up to par.

Wardens definitely managed to fit this idea that had never quite existed in previous editions really, really well. The Shaman was a nice touch, one of my favorite things to do with it was to have the Spirit actually talk often and being somewhat grumpy, that was quite fun.

Right, so I've been toying around with a few ideas for the Shugenja - given we've pretty much decided he's works by fucking with the action economy, how do we make sure that people remember that they've got an extra move action, or that they can trade their minor action for a move action this turn? It's kind of integral to his style.

If you use power cards, it could be set up so that the extra move/minor/etc action is a specific action, and you can just hand the card over.

bump

That's a pretty good idea, actually. Bit complex, but certainly doable.

Could use the Monk setup, with double cards to save space maybe? It wouldn't be more different than the monk imo.

That could work, that could definitely work; the issue is just really reminding the other players and the DM of what you just did. If the BBEG loses a Standard action, that's a big deal, and since it's not an usual effect like "dazed" or something, it's easy to miss.

Tokens? A striked out S for Standard, M for Move, A for Attack...

Yeah, that does make a lot of sense, now that I think of it.

Why not grant an action out of turn? So you give your ally a move, he moves, you continue your turn

i'm super autistic so i just drew a to scale of my dnd room im redoing complete, tearing subflooring out, new flooring, new drywall, paint, new table, felt, padding, new chairs, the works...

this will work, right? i've actually never played before but will be hosting for the first time and playing for the first time coming up next month...

I'm assuming those protrusions from the table are going to be cupholders, and your gonna have another table to put food n shit, because most game nights involve food and drink and dice and other materials which takes up a good portion of a table.

food will be eaten in my kitchen and family room. as far as room for stuff on table the 4x4" dice trays can be moved leaving 2x 10"x12" areas

and theres 2x 8"x15" areas inbetween players in the middle as well

do i really need more room? i was under the impression my table would be a bit larger than most that people use. most tables i've seen are 30" wide and 5 feet long, this ones 6'x36"

oh also the cupholders will be mounted under the table so they wont be taking up any actual real estate on the table

So as I tinker away in what free time I have, I've been trying to figure out what to do about the Shugenja (and Sohei et al) where, if we go with the two sides trying to achieve Harmony, how can we make it so that reaching harmony is doable but not too easy, while at the same time not having all fights be over before you can manage it? Cause right now the few mock-ups I've made have either resulted in you always having Harmony, making it pointless, or never getting it, same.

Make it based on events you can mostly control but the gm can also fuck with, adjacent enemies, getting hit, disobeying monster marks, spending surges etc.

Harmony is based on the number of adjacent creatures, odd or even?

haha fuck no

You gotta balance that shit out, my man. Yin and Yang. Ally and Enemy. Give and Receive. Harmony.

Folks, I was wondering: if we had never received the scourge of Essentials, what do you think that the Heroes of the Shadowfell, Feywild and Elemental Chaos splatbooks might have contained?

Eseentials wasn't that bad bruh

Feywild and Elemental was pretty much fine as I recall. HoS was pretty terrible but it probably would have still come out, just less terrible.

The problem wasn't Essentials as a line. The problem was Mike Mearls as the producer. The guy never had any idea how the game was supposed to work, as Keep on the Shadowfell readily demonstrates

Maybe have it be easily achievable but also influenced by external events.

Say, you have a power or a class feature that increases your AC but while it's active, attacks on your change your balance, raising Yin if you're hit or Yang when missed. Or something of the sort

KotC and an original campaign around MP1's release pretty much killed my interest in 4E until there was incontrovertible proof that everything that ruined the game got fixed and by that point it was too late.

*KotS

Essentials on its own wasn't truly horrible, it experimented with a lot of the classes, gave us an amazing monster manual and tried to take baby steps in the direction of 5e. The problem for me is that it wasn't on its own, it was effectively a new edition, inside another edition and claiming to be part of that one. Standing the essentials and core 4e content side by side, one of those would consistently fall apart and to this day we don't use essentials stuff outside of a few specific builds.

I think a big problem has been, and continues to be, Mike Mearls. Mike is a DM, he's apparently great at it, I dunno because I've never been at his table and find him to be too preachy and political. He builds worlds and campaigns, he did adventures through most of 4e for a reason.

His personal views on rules, are that they don't matter because he will make them up on the spot during his games, and so he likes the absolute minimum of them. This is an amazing attitude for a DM, but for the guy in charge of writing all the rules? That is the furthest from the right mindset you could possibly be. For him to be handed control over the most rules-heavy and math-neat edition of the game was Wizards throwing in the towel.

It also didn't help that every single Essentials release resulted in a core 4e book not going in that release slot, or being pushed back, and it split the player base significantly.

I loved the previous Players Options books, Heroes of Elemental Chaos, Feywild and Into the Unknown. Heroes of Shadow, to this day, I still don't know if it was meant to be an Essentials book or a 'core' 4e book. When it was announced, they slated it as a 320 page digest sized book akin to Heroes of Fallen Lands and Forgotten Kingdoms, but the next step. Then they said in interviews that it was intended for 'core' players and not Essentials fans. Whilst we were waiting for it, we had Gazetteer: The Nentir Vale and Players Handbook: Champions of the Heroic Tier disappear from release schedules with no announcement. Then they cut Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell, Mordenkainens Magnificent Emporium and Hero Builders Handbook, whilst changing Heroes of Shadow from digest to hardcover. Then we just got cards and a DM screen and it was the longest period without a book, during an edition, since the late 90's. Until they released 5e of course, where their business plan seems to be 'don't give people too many books in case they need 6 months to save for each one'

Most of what was introduced in Essentials was actually good stuff

The monster design, the magic items, the feats, it even had some pretty cool PPs and EDs, even if it did bring in Destined Scion, the most boringly designed character option in 4e

The only shitshow from Essentials was the class design, and even then, Mage and Hexblade were actually pretty darn cool

In general, I'd say it was nice to experiment with mechanics, even though some of the experiments fell through and Slayer and Thief interacted poorly with Warlord

>and Slayer and Thief interacted poorly with Warlord

You mean way too well, right?

Essentials classes would have likely built much better on the back of the Psionics system (If Martial and Arcane can use the same basic system, why not psionics and others?).

I was going to write "failed to interact properly with Warlord" at first. But yes, that's what I meant.

I'm looking at migrating my current campaign from Dnd5E to strike! Or 4E. I am leaning towards Strike! But I am not sure if they have any options for a character with an animal companion that is any good (one of my players loves her pet). Can some kind user let me know the options before I splash out on the rule book?

4e has the shaman class, which doesn't technically have an animal companion, but refluffing the spirit companion as an animal companion is easy

There's also beast master rangers, but they are a bit shit, especially when compared to other rangers

It has a class called "buddies" that is entirely about having an animal companion.

Thanks user. I'd heard Beastmasters were basically the worst ranger, and right now she's using the revised ranger in 5E which is very strong. I'll definitely have a look at Shaman should I go the 4E route.

I'm not sure if Strike has any animal companion options at all.

For 4e your best option would be the feytamer theme (just gives you an animal companion) or hybriding the Sentinel Druid.

I spoke way too soon. Thanks a lot! I will have a look at both systems :).

There's also Arcane Familiar if you want a pet that isn't meant to directly participate in combat, but probably not a great fit for a converted Ranger.

Feel free to ask any questions you have in this thread. The Strike! rulebook can be a bit offputting, and 4e has a LOT of material to comb through when compared to 5e.

I read through the Strike PDF - just a quick question. Does the variant of two distinct characters mean they get a round each in combat ? (It says they act as a "unit" whatever that means) Or do you have to choose who acts?

It means they act as one (one initiative, one action), that's what it means by "unit". It's just a variant for outside of combat character building, it does not affect the combat mechanics (aside from having a larger pool of skills).

Gotcha. So the buddy class Powers are the way they work together. Thanks.

Yup. Just like the illustration implies, that variant is for when your player wants to play two characters as a team in combat, but have their own separate skills instead of a ranger with a dog where the ranger is the "main" character and the dog is a supporter.

There's a different class for two full characters with separate players wanting to work together in a more unified manner called The Ogre in the playtest doc.

On this note actually, is anyone familiar with how animal companions work in 13th Age. I admit I haven't given it the best look.