/4eg/ - D&D 4e and 4e-like General: Sharpshooting Edition

>what is your favorite "Arcane Archer"-esque character in 4e
Wizard with the Moonbow Dedicate feat.
You give up the superior implement's +1 to hit for using a bow, but in return you can take the Duelist's Bow enchant and have fun ruining the lives of anything that wanted to be ranged.

I keep forgetting to take weapon properties into account.

I'm so used to random loot in other games.

Arcane Controller with weapon implement. Should take care to not step in the wizard's toes.
At-will would be Elemental Arrow, and the AA can apply a secondary effect based on the element he chooses for the EA.

That could be interesting, honestly, if a bit Essentials-like.

14/1/10/10

Everybody out doin' stuff, or something?

Honestly, change the Seeker from Primal to Arcane, reflavor its powers accordingly, and you've pretty much got it, in my eyes.

RIP Seeker.

4e threads are slow. I've been swingin' by semi-often, but it's mostly just empty or taking about one of the numerous 4e-inspired games.

The last thread was around for what, a week? It ended up just 404ing from inactivity rather than hitting post cap.

Pretty dead thread.
Maybe I can revive it by posting some statistics.

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Spaceguy here, 4e definitely isn't dead according to the views I'm getting.

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Fuck me. Meant to link to

Nah, the last one hit post cap.

I thought you'd post statistics about 4e: average damage per round per class per level, average hits until monster is dead per level, average total rounds per combat per level...

A juicy analysis of the spinning cogs of 4e since the cogs are clearly visible thank Halav for this clear approach in presentation

So, random questions to try and breathe some life in:

What was your favorite piece of 4e artwork, either in grounds of background, action scene, character art, or even sex appeal?

What was your favorite bit of 4e lore, and why?

Which races that were either new to 4e or reinvented by 4e did you like, and why?

I was thinking a rapid-fire sort of implement striker, basically being to the warlock what the ranger is to the rogue. With at-wills that gain action efficiency or multi-hits when enhanced

Look into Rapid Shot/at will ranged attack nonsense.

>being to the warlock what the ranger is to the rogue.

wut

I dont think I can do that, considering there's just too many feat/PP/ED choices

Was THF banned again?

Is Sword Fury playable yet? It's been years.

the ranger and rogue are both single-target high-damage strikers, but they differ in that rogues tend to do individual attacks with big damage and have a lot of control effects on their attacks, as opposed to rangers who tend to do lots of little attacks.

Amongst implement strikers, all tend to lean towards big individual atacks instead of lots of little attacks, which is why I'm suggesting the wilder should do lots of little attacks as an implement striker

>What was your favorite piece of 4e artwork, either in grounds of background, action scene, character art, or even sex appeal?
Too many different pieces for me to decide, honestly. Many of the monsters and non-human PCs were my favorite.

>What was your favorite bit of 4e lore, and why?
Again, I could break this down into different categories. I thought it was awesome that 4e not only gave succubi a neat origin as Angels of Love who damned themselves because they wanted to operate more freely, but actually came up with a way of handling incubi that made them different to succubi without just being flat-up rapists.

>Which races that were either new to 4e or reinvented by 4e did you like, and why?
Gotta cheat here again and say pretty much everything. My favorite 4e races of all have to a tie between Dragonborn, Deva and Shadar-Kai, though.

Nah, it's a pretty ok feat, but the cornerstone dual-wielder is the strongest Striker in raw numbers.

Rogues tend to be about mobility, a few attacks (only class with a Minor Action Ranged Attack, plus things like Low Slash and Tumbling Strike), and good controller effects that actually matter (Knockout being an example, but Sand In Their Eyes too). The Wilder should definitely be the sort of "loads of attacks" type of guy, especially because the Wilder PP makes critting easier. It's a nice call back.

>What was your favorite piece of 4e artwork, either in grounds of background, action scene, character art, or even sex appeal?
The Battlemind and Ardents are a big one for me, their art is just so good, but if I had to pick one in particular, Zephyr Blade or Talaric Strategist. I dunno, they're just so damn... attractive.

>What was your favorite bit of 4e lore, and why?
I loved the little stories spread out through the Paragon Paths. The Twiceborn story is great, personally. Actually, I really like how 4e spread out its fluff so you found those little nibblets of stories spread out, so you pieced out the world yourself. Besides that, the Wardens and their circles are just fantastic. Love them, they made a Primal Defender that actually felt different from the other Defenders, and that's kinda difficult to do, honestly. In fact, the Primal power source as a whole felt like that, it's nice that there was some actual separation between them and the others.

>Which races that were either new to 4e or reinvented by 4e did you like, and why?
I'm gonna cheat a bit, and the way the Dwarves were handled was pretty smart in and of itselfm, even though they weren't really reinvented. That said, the one "reworked" race - Gnomes. There was a feeling that, y'know, they actually mattered, they were different from Elves and Halflings and Dwarves.

I played 4e for a few sessions years ago and it did not really grab me. Seeing you guys talk about it makes me think we may not have played it the right way and I want to give it a second look.

Would 4e be a good fit for a more dynamic, Dynasty Warriors style group combat? Or is it closer to tactical crawling?

Gonna run a game (of Strike!) and I want to put in an ever-shifting hedge maze as a skill challenge.team-conflict. Any ideas how I should run it/spice it up?

The short answer to both is yes.

Minons and swarms can make it great for the "mighty heroes wading through armies of enemies" feel, but it's also pretty good at dungeon crawling, and tactics are basically inseparable from the game, unless everyone makes really, really simple characters (including the enemies)..

Well, I did want to aim for swarms of nuisances, tougher lieutenants, and wreck-your-shit bosses.

Would the mighty heroes options play slow with rolling for buckets of fodder?

Not really, the point of minions is that they die easy (and swarms basically "die" in drowes so that works too), and have little/no bookkeeping going on. If you run such a game, most classes have some sort of AoE damage options to deal with the riff-raff, and positioning those is pretty fun usually.

Got it. I'll give it some more read and check out the 3rd Monster Manual since that seems to be the fixed stuff.
Thanks.

No prob.

One thing I'd add that Dynasty Warriors sorta ignores (as far as I know) is terrain. Especially for fantasy (and DW stuff is often pretty fantastical) you can do all sorts of crazy terrain effects to play around with. Cursed battlefield where mounds of bones grasp at your ankles, or a castle ravaged by elemental forces in a state of constant flux is a lot more fun than just plain ole mud.

I'm get you. I may hold off on that until I have a grasp of things but I'll check it out.

Honestly just differently shaped areas force the players to choose certain things. Fighting in a forest doesn't need to be dull as there definitely will be things like streams, rocks and logs forcing you to maneuver around.

As for bosses, having a single powerful enemy doesn't really work in 4e. They get screwed by the action economy, locked down, then nova'd. Even if you give them multiple turns and a shit load of hp it will devolve into everyone standing in one spot and spending their turn hitting the boss and passing which is boring. Every fight is better with multiple enemies. Ignore any monster you find with the Solo tag.

Yeah, I learned that lesson in other games. I usually have bosses accompanied by CC or harassers and have the room do things, like the Lair actions in 5E.

This isn't true at all. It just means to make solo monsters work you need to vary up your encounter design.

Minions and support creatures help, but there's plenty of room within 4e to create entirely satisfying solo boss encounters.

Didn't Touhoufag say that solo monsters were super easy to fight against?

Probably, but Touhoufag also consistently operates at a substantially higher level of optimisation than you'll generally see in games. It's not an entirely bad thing, but you need to be aware of his biases when interpreting statements like that.

Solo encounters can be made interesting and challenging. AoE attacks, multiple actions per turn, triggered actions or interesting traits and environment effects can all help close the gap.

I actually really enjoy solos because they let you really explore the design space offered by the system when it comes to encounter and monster design. After getting the mini for pic related in the Conan board game kickstarter, I'm planning on using it as a boss fight in a 4e game I'm running, the various tentacles acting as an extension of the head, letting it attack through them or drag enemies closer to try to devour them with its maw.

Is seafood soup on the menu?

TF is sword fury?

One thing XCOM 2 Alien Hunters did was using boss units that acted as reactions. So he didn't have a turn, but after a PC turn he would act.

In game it became seriously overpower because he wasn't alone and hey, it's XCOM, baby. But may work in 4e. Thoughts?

I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread, but are there any sites where I can get premade maps that I can just upload and use during a campaign? Any level of detail or setting is fine.

Man, Alien Hunters was great. Those fuckers were so hard to take down, but doing so was so worth it.

I can see that kind of thing working to an extent in 4e, although you'd need to adapt it a bit.

Strike just makes Solos ("Champions") act on initiative counts 7, 5, 3 (In a game where initiative is just a flat d6 and you start at 7 and go down) each of them counting as full turns for the solo - which means he might shake off "until the end of your next turn" quite fast.

It works decently well there, and the systems are "fairly similar."

They also auto-pass saving throws, but, whatever.

I would say they at least need to target whatever acted against them. If someone hitting it just lets it focus fire someone else 4 times a round, it would be extremely painful.

> 4 times a round, it would be extremely painful.
you can't just bait people like this, user.
It's rude.

It was the right thing to do.

>average hits until monster is dead per level
fucking like 35
>average total rounds per combat per level...
Like ten. D&D 4e powers are good for killing anything you want dead tomorrow.

Unless you're talking like Ranger-level "35 hits", you're not playing 4e post-math fixes.

The Monster Vault dragons are generally considered an excellent example of how to make a solo boss in 4e. Notably, in addition to taking extra turns they also shrug off status effects and get huge saving throw bonuses. You might still end up with the boss locked in place, but probably because that's sort of what half the Defenders try to do, Fighters especially.

As a general rule though I think the ideal combat should always be more than 'kill everything'. You want some kind of external pressure to try and encourage players to take risks and spend resources, so make the killing secondary to another goal - minimize damage to the caravan, a NPC has been kidnapped and every round of combat is more time for them to get away, the minion villagers are being mind controlled and you want as many as possible still conscious to be witnesses when the Watch arrives in a minute, etc. Basically, can you count player performance in the fight towards an upcoming skill challenge as extra successes or failures?

Or pre-MM3. "35 hit ranger" is an orcuslayer.

>Gonna run a game (of Strike!) and I want to put in an ever-shifting hedge maze as a skill challenge.team-conflict. Any ideas how I should run it/spice it up?

Still looking for ideas on this.

Floor is Lava

bump

slow day today

bumping for an answer to this.

Also want to know

I honestly have no idea. Dunno what the fuck that guy is talking about, and he seems to have left.