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

What's the most fun you've had with 4e? Mine was when my players were signing an agreement with some duergar (who only asked for one signature for some reason) and they used the name of the villain in their previous adventure.

Not sure about the most fun (my 4e games always felt generally good, but never had something exceptional happen; although probably because the group only played pre-written modules), but definitely had the worst moment there, when a rogue decided to betray the party to the BBEG because "that's what my character would do".

Honestly, I am a very simple man, and don't really need much more than humans.

Most of my non-humans were "These stat mods are perfect for my class" or "This racial is super cool"

I kinda like Pixies too, but we actually got them.

Yes, 383 to be specific, I would of linked you the website that I found a while ago that had a ton of D&D books such as both the magazines, and the adventures they ran for organized play, but it seems to have 404ed. Now I feel stupid not downloading them earlier when I had the chance.

You know I actually enjoy the variety of races in 4E but I'm glad the party went rather vanilla and did 4 humans and a halfing. Makes interaction a lot more sensible than a crystal dude, a walking tree, a minotaur, an undead robot, and a pixie.

For what it's worth, the 4e books trove in the OP? If you look on the side, it should also allow you to access a D&D Magazines folder, which has the entire run of Dragon & Dungeon, including all of the 4e issues.

What the hell I had that bookmarked and it didn't work? Ty for pointing that out to me, but I already had all the Dragon&Dungeon mags for 4E. But I'm now going to grab the rest of the ones I don't have such as all of those adventures. Aww man this has BoVD?! Sweet been looking for that and a few niche others.

I want to know if there's a simple write-up somewhere explaining how the different classes play to hand out to new players.

Just copy/paste the class blurbs maybe?

Not sure if anything exists by default, but all the old class guides included a summary of why each class was cool. You could always find and compile those?

My worst moment was when the DM decided to preformulate a solution to a problem we faced, and that solution was a skill challenge run as a quick time event minigame.

oof

>playing paladin mission one shot
>party is made up of one pure paladin, a paladin|bard, a paladin|ranger and a paladin|warlock
>sent to free a city under siege by devils
>battle our way through monsters rampaging through the streets
>npc clerics/invokers etc are scattered about in the background aiding in the battle
>one cleric's summoned angel crashes through the roof of a building, locked in battle with a devil
>we make it to the church where the bbeg is holding up
>we break down the church doors and see a corrupt priest performing a sacrifice on the dais
>he transforms into a chain devil, seals the doors and transforms the whole church into a torture chamber
>we spend the battle trying to get at him while the terrain itself is trying to murder us
>things turn for the worse and pcs start falling one by one
>last conscious pc down to at-wills, near death, trapped in chains and slowly being crushed to death
>downed paladin rolls death saving throw
>20
>spends surge, gets back up, rushes to lay on hands on the paladin|bard getting crushed
>paladin|ranger rolls death saving throw
>20
>how is this even happening
>three pcs back in the fight, start ganging up on already bloodied bbeg
>paladin|warlock rolls death saving throw
>20
>GOD WILLS IT.jpg
>we wail on the chain devil, some fall again, but we manage to bring him down and save the day
I don't even care if no one believes it, I'll never forget how god's warriors were saved from a TPK by divine providence.

ded gaem, ded thred

no u

I'm trying to consolidate why I enjoyed 4e so I can explain it to others. I've tried explaining it as a balanced action focused game without any trap options, but wondering how other people do it.

Just explain why you like it, that's how I got my friends to convert from 3.5 to 4E. Although like me, it took them a few sessions to get used to how the game functioned but now they all love it.

Does anyone have the problem with the repository where after a few minutes just decides to stop working completely?

I haven't ran into that problem before. What exactly do you mean?

I think I managed to fix it. If I opened too many tabs to download a bunch of books at once, the website just wouldn't work for me anymore, like it just wouldn't load. Changed method to 1 at a time and seems to be working now.

Playing session 3 with my party later today, doing a little session 0 before we start. Drafting table rules, any suggestions?

How do you mean?

It is Medieval Avengers. Cinematic super hero adventures.

Eh, I think it's more accurate to call it part of an ongoing trend from the earliest stories. We've always had tales of larger than life heroes who can do impossible things. Superheroes are just the modern take on the old tales of gods and heroes, and 4e lies somewhere in between.

Session 0 like doing a meta session out of character to discuss what we want from tbe game, divy up some responsibilities like quartermaster (snacks and paper) and schedule master, etc. Table rules like, for example, no phones at the table or out-of-combat actions take turns going around the table to the left of the DM, stuff like that.

This, the only difference is that modern supers are not public domain.

bump

So I guess other systems/editions don't use a grid system for combat? Like, what? How? How do they calculate range and cover and stuff? Where is the crunch?

The geometric designs made me sad. It just seemed so generic.

Almost all of them do, except it's optional (or, in some cases, "optional"). If your group doesn't care about the intricacies, you just handwave it.

So far we're tentitavely appointing:

Scribe/Treasurer - Takes story notes, keeps track of gold/xp/loot
Quartermaster - Oversees snacks, books, dice paper, pencils, etc.
Schedule Master - Makes sure everyone is coming
Rules Expert - Final arbiter of rules (below DM,) helps new players play/level-up/etc
Party Leader - In-game leader, rallies players together, advances storytelling

We need one more, not sure what do tho. It's for the newest guy to the group who probably needs the most help getting integrated.

Also trying to get Discord running so we can all stay in touch

Did anyone use the feywild in any of their games? It seemed like an interesting setting but I was never able to use it.

I'm running the H1-E3 series with the Orcus Conversion guides and I know that King of the Trollhaunt Warrens has some segments where you're in the Feywild. Not there yet though, still going through Pyramid of Shadow.

I suggest making a discord server and not a group DM, it ends up looking a lot nicer.

>We need one more, not sure what do tho. It's for the newest guy to the group who probably needs the most help getting integrated.

The Insert.

He's there to ask about everything.

...

Probably not the best idea, but it's the only one I have. Maybe rotate him between roles?

This seems needlessly complicated and overly bureaucratic. You're there to have fun, not have a second job.

player roles had been a thing since Gygax.

It's mostly small easy shit that helps takes the load off the DM. And usually an unintended side effect is that it may cause your players to be more invested in the game.

and one more for the night

Have you thought about just grabbing the data and making a new site?

Not much into web dev, so dunno the difficulties in that.

Sure, I already got that (developing a site that's more like the offline compendium in function), I'd just rather update what already exists instead of making a new site.

>So I guess other systems/editions don't use a grid system for combat? Like, what? How? How do they calculate range and cover and stuff? Where is the crunch?
You just imagine what is going on. If some goblins are cowering behind some tables, the referee says they have cover from you. If you can get around the table, then they don’t. It takes practice, but it’s not that hard.

It depends on the expectations of the game, too. If you're doing a system without a grid or specific representation, you can't really do precise tactical movement as a mechanic.

You can do tactical movement, just not precise. You fight over specific features more, like doorways, hills, tables, etc. since those are easier to track than exactly 10 feet from a wall or whatever.

There's also precise relations of creatures to each other; the whole array of 4e's positioning powers lose a lot of their impact if you aren't playing with a grid and using precise AoO/flanking/cover/reach/range/movement rules, as well as a lot of small AoE's.

>Duergar were great
Not as good as derro doe.

Does 4e have derro?

Sure, but you can make up for some of that by having the features themselves matter more. If having the high-ground gives you +2 attack and defense, then those push powers still matter.

They exist as enemies, but not as a PC race if that's what you mean.

Yes. Corrupted remnants of a civilization that tried to tap into the Far Realm and control it for power, only to be consumed by its influence. Underdark-dwelling maniacs so insane, violent and evil that even drow are freaked out by them and consider it a moral calling to battle them wherever they pop up.

Right, but the push powers push a low amount of precise distances (most often 1-3), which are hard to adjudicate fairly without a map.

For what it's worth, I think I remember high ground being one of those things that a DM may give CA for, if it makes sense (only higher GROUND though, pixies and draconians don't just get it for existing).

What book are they in?

Monster Manual 3 but they aren't a playable race.

yknow what's not a playable race either?

this thred

Good one user, but this thread appeared as a playable race in Dragon Magazine #354.

since there's no 1e or 2e thread and nobody'd look at one if there was, quick question: in the IUDC (rogermwilcox.com/ADnD/IUDC1.html), the story frequently references artifact powers by letters, but rarely ever says what the powers actually are; anyone have a pdf of the table they come from?

I wanna know, what were people's best/worst designed classes out of 4e?

Fighter is very good at it's job, seeker is very not, though it did get some last minute support to make it acceptable. The general mechanic for psionic classes was well done imo. Vampire would've been a brilliant controller or unkillable defender if they weren't trying so hard to make it a striker like everything else. I really love wardens and their power mechanics despite them only being so-so defenders.

How are runepriests?

I know Warlord gets a lot of love here, but I personally like Defenders more.
Playing them is interesting because you have to evaluate who's the most threatening enemy, and who's the most threatened ally.
Building them is a satisfying challenge because you have to balance out pumping your defs with improving your punishment/attack deflection tricks.
So I love the Fighter for the sheer amount of options it has, Warden/Swordmage/Pally just behind it as flavorful options.

Weakest for me are the ones that don't take much thought to build/play, like the Slayer/Vampire, but that's obviously a personal preference.

You know what? 4e had some awesome artwork; since we got the PDFs in the OP to rip from, can we start sharing out 4e art? It really needs more credit than it gets.

Conceptually cool and functional as they are, but I believe they have the least support out of any class. They got like one dragon article giving them a new archetype (which was good) but that was it.

I was just about to say seeker, it's one of those classes that immediately come to mind. A lot of the essentials classes rub me the wrong way for some reason, only ones I like are Hunter and Slayer

I love defenders. imo they do the best job of representing 4e's emphasis on tactical play, with all the battlefield control, punishments and catch-22s built into the class designs. You're the basic tank you see in every game but 4e does so much to make that an active role rather than just making it the guy that stands around and hopes enemies just hit him.

Ranger and Warlord were excellent at clearly articulating what they did and then doing it well while leaving significant room for variance.

Seeker just sucked.
Most of the psionic classes (as opposed to feats) were not well thought out either... sweet irony there.
The Monk being the exception.

>Warlord
I always wanted to make an Eladrin warlord that used a spiked chain, because apparently that was a traditional dueling weapon in the feywild. Would it be at all viable?

Well all you're doing is just popping 1 feat for a weapon proficiency. Frankly you have to fuck up real hard to make a character unviable, just roll with it if it sounds cool to you.

Thanks, now to find a group.

There's a warlord pp based on the rending chains fighting style feat you may want to look into. Made a fighter|warlord hybrid focused on battlefield control using that.

Wish you luck. My game had some weird starting circumstances but is surprisingly going really strong since April.

Tell me about your game. What's your party like? What's their goal? What interesting encounters have you had?

I never really liked the ranger much.

It didn't really have much to go off of other than twin strike making it the best striker.

It sort of overshadowed other interesting options like beast master.

whose bright idea was it to release a bunch of shit in some magazine most people have never seen and will never see?

I dunno, considering that the magazines have been around for ages, I used to be frustrated at their existence just due to the lack being able to find good sources of books. I found that remuz repository back in may and have slowly been reading all the Dragon and Dungeon mags for 4E since then.

My game had some weird starting circumstances. It started in mid April when 2 of my irl friends and I were just talking in discord when one of them briefly mentions wanting to play D&D again as it had been a year or so since they last played, other follows up on that talking about the my first time ever dming with KotS, and they both get excited remembering it even though it was only 1 session.

I tell them we could probably start that up again and I could possibly scale down all the encounters in KotS for 2 people, but it'd be really disappointing. One of them says "Well we could play 2 characters." I tell them "Oh, so like 1 talkative character and the other is a silent beatstick?" They both went silent for a moment and said that they were too stubborn to admit that they could not play 2 characters at once and decided to that they'll roll 2 characters but have them bounce off each other so it's easier to RP.

Party ends up being rather vanilla, 4 humans with Klaus and Raymond the Avenger and Paladin (this player loves Xenoblade and based his characters off of Shulk and Reyn), Avenger specifically because of it's reroll mechanic as he believes he has fallen victim to the curse of bad rolls due to making copycat characters (his first ever character was Kluhs the 3.5 human greatsword wielding rogue) but still frequently rolls 1s a lot at his expense, but only on the Shulk clone.

The other player wanted to be a little subversive and played an Ardent and Wizard but did some role reversal where the Ardent was the quiet, reserved type and the Wizard is the loud, boisterous type. The Wizard is Ryan Wilhelm and grabs all his inspiration of a picture called Wizardhardt, specializes in Ryan's Fucking Magic Missile and Force damage in general. The Ardent is a rather complicated subject, her name is Cecilia, she went through quite a bit of character development (that I cannot fit in the rest of this post) changing her personality and motives rather dramatically.

The party met in the town of Fallcrest, having randomly stumbled upon each other and Raymond just straight up asked the other pair if they would like to join him and his friend Klaus in undertaking a bounty to clear out Kobold Hall. Cecilia and Ryan go along for the ride, after a near death experience with a young white dragon the party becomes fast friends in which a cleric of Bahamut in the town named Sister Marla gives them the story hook to go to Winterhaven (and thus start the KotS module).

After finishing everything with KotS (including teleporting the BBEG into his own portal instantly killing him), they come back to Winterhaven and they become small town heroes, the Lord of the town (can't remember his name, I remember of the one from Fallcrest and I don't wanna open up books right now) gives them advice about how they are starting to build up a reputation and other useful PR advice, including which a good name. Raymond (forgot to mention earlier that Klaus&Raymond are both devout worshippers of Pelor because the player is also a big Dark Souls fan) immediately gives his idea of a name being the Jolly Cooperators, Ryan shoots it down saying it sounds a little too childish and modifies it to be Jolly Crusaders, rest of the party likes the name change and they travel back to Fallcrest just in time for the Summer Solstice celebration.

The Jolly Crusaders main motive is mainly being heroes, they want fame and to be recognized for their deeds, they are currently on the trail of this Orcus fellow that they have seen his name dropped a bunch of times throughout the campaign.

After the festival they travel to Thunderspire Mountain to investigate 2 things: The Bloodreavers, a goblinoid slaver organization that a goblin underboss name dropped back in KotS and they have strong suspicions that they are responsible for the kidnapping of Old Lady Sara, an old woman who has been gone for about a month from Winterhaven.

The other reason being that a sage named Valthrun the Prescient they made friends with in Winterhaven sent a magic message asking them to investigate Thunderspire Labyrinth for the forgotten Minotaur civilization that lies inside and to bring back a relic for him that he'd gladly pay for.

JCs travel out to Thunderspire, when they enter, they overhear some loud noises and find out it's a group of hobgoblins and goblins beating a halfing for information, they kill all but the caster (the one that was giving out orders) and spare him in exchange for information. The halfing introduces himself as Rendil Halfmoon and offers them a free round of drinks at the Halfmoon Inn where they are approached by another halfing, a rogue by the name of Roscoe Greenbottle who overheard of the phat loot the party had received from KotS (the wizard had paid Valthrun like 2000 silver for some cheapo rituals, he wanted to get rid of it before using gold), Roscoe being played by the cousin of the player of Klaus and Raymond who invited him because the party ran into various traps that they spotted but couldn't disable.

Roscoe gets invited to join the JCs but isn't considered a full member for a while, there was a specific moment with an encounter with some foul duergar that he impressed them and now they have included him in their band of friendship.

We've had a fair share of interesting encounters but the most recent one that comes to mind is when they entered the floating pyramid of shadow hovering over the skies of Fallcrest, in which Roscoe and Ryan had nearly died! It was a 4x10 hallway with a statue at either end and Klaus had spotted something fishy about some abrasions against 1 part of the wall. The party got paranoid and tied rope around the statue, tied the other end around Roscoe, and they all held it just in case. Roscoe sneaks along the hallway when the floor suddenly retracts under his feet and sends him sliding down a shaft while it closes rapidly.

It's ridiculously cool. funin.space/compendium/paragonpath/Chainbinder.html

bump

Might as well ask here, since there's 4e playing folks about.

One of the folks attempting a 4e spiritual successor. As part of our thoughts for the system, we're attaching Utility powers (Divided into Support, combat utility, and Utility, non-combat utility) to Sources rather than Classes. However, as part of this, we've been playing with the idea of every Class having access to two Sources, giving you a variety of powers to choose from.

There's more than a few issues with implementing this, but a big one is how many is too much. Two pools of powers to choose from is nice variety, but what if someone takes a Multiclass feat associated with a third source? Would that be overwhelming in terms of option paralysis?

My first thought would have been "just let him multiclass brah", but thing is, that makes "out of source" multiclasses really good, if they just give you access to a new pool of powers.

So how about something like... you can have 1(/tier?) utility power from outside of your source +multiclass for another one.

Maybe tie it to race? Or call it a "cultural" utility?

We're thinking of racial powers as a separate thing, for now anyway.

What we might do is just say 'You can have two sources', and give options from class, theme and multiclass that let you select what your second one is. But it does feel annoying, that if you started with, say, a Martial/Primal ranger, and Multiclassed Paladin, you'd need to give up one of the former two to get your Divine class tag. It's tricky.

The other thing, of course, is how it affects our class design. I really like the idea of feature choices having access to different tags, but it was pointed out that doing so fucks over people who'd want to play a class straight, so we're trying to figure out a place we can put secondary source choices which open up options, rather than closing them off.

How are you going to handle skill utilities? Maybe have them tied to trained skills over power sources? Or both ("Martial or trained in stealth and Athletics")?

>but it was pointed out that doing so fucks over people who'd want to play a class straight
Does it really? Assuming MCing just increases the pool to choose from, they're not getting fucked over; the end result will still have the same amount of powers as anyone else. It just sounds like power swapping and that wasn't a big deal in 4e. They may not be as versatile as their MC'ed equivalents, but they should theoretically be more specialized.

To expand on the argument as it was presented-

Say we include an Arcane Rogue feature choice in the core book. Choosing the feature gets you Arcane as a second class tag, a mystical rogue blending subtle spellcraft with their other tricks. While I think the concept is very cool, anyone who wants to play Rogue straight will likely be turned off by it. Given the limited amount of space in a core book, it's argued that we can't really afford to lock off entire options for people who'd just want to play the class as presented, rather than a twist on it.

We honestly haven't considered skill powers yet. Possibly because we're currently still reworking the skill system. Once we know what we're doing there, we'll probably have a better idea of what we're going to do with skill powers.

Go sloooow.

Have the second tag come at 5th level or such.

So at level 1 you start as a rogue, but at level 5 you can advance think advanced classes from d20 Modern to:
Arcane Trickster, with Arcane tag;
Tomb Raider, with Primal tag;
Hassassin, with Divine tag;
Or go Adventurer, having access to another Martial pool.

Then at level 11 go PP as usual. Think Adv Classes as a branching out, a sidegrade, and PP as evolving, an upgrade.

And to add: giving this option at level 5 means true newbies starting at first level won't freeze from so many options.

Started a 4e game because I'm a sucker for fantasy games, and 4e is the only well-designed d&d so far.

Setting: A bit of a kitchen-sink, but the main action is set to take play in and around a desert kingdom which has sealed itself off from the outside due to hella civil war and the Gods just up and leaving. originally going for a bit swords'n'sorcery, though after everyone built their characters I switched it up for a bit lighter, looser, and more 'desertpunk'. Think Samurai Champloo but with khopeshes.

The party ended up being:

Eladrin Wizard
Eladrin Warlord
Warforged Warden
Halfling Rogue
Shifter Fighter/Ranger
(absent for session 1) Tiefling Swordmage

The shifter is a ditzy country girl who is naive as fuck, the halfling is a 3-ft-fuckboi with a list of titles taller than he is, the two eladrin are a smug-ass wizard and a practical ex-merc. Both entered the world out of nowhere some years ago with no memory of their past lives, as is common for their kind. The warforged is a walking pokedex made by several shamans binding their souls into a golem. God help me, they're beautiful.

I had the players build their characters with a reason for trying to slip the border and enter the kingdom. They weren't prepared for starting on the shoreline of said kingdom, sopping wet and still clinging to the remnants of their prison sackcloths, as said prison was burning down in the ocean five miles out to sea.

The warlord establishes himself - true to form - as the One Sane Man. The wizard: I love his player because he always brings something cool, and unlike most stuff I run, he's familiar with 4e. His wizard is a smug, standoffish knowitall who would rather keep reading and absent-mindedly magehand the party than shake their hands. He has a book imp familiar that looks like a little origami man. It's secret familiar language sounds like rustling pages. I love this guy.

Pic related: the first encounter. Some wolves n shit. Everyone's first 4e encounter ever.

Sadly we had zero players take the bait on playing human. Funnily enough the warlord is pure Lazylord, because he's long established his history of cursing dice. He's generally not allowed to touch the rest of our dice.

Following being ambushed by wolves, the nerds of the group establish they were acting uncharacteristically... berserk; fighting without fear or reserve. They shrug and move on, coming to a set of ruins carved out of the mountain stone.

Entering the cavern they have a fight with some goblins; they kill most and wound two, who run off into opposite exits. They hear one die, so they investigate that room. It appears to be a crypt for an ancient warrior order native to the kingdom, with a large talking stone head. The goblin's blood trail ends at its mouth. Challenging the head, it commands them to prove themselves worthy to pass; they must go deep into the caverns below and 'light the beacons in the correct order' to recite the narrative of the order's history. As it asks the party spokesman if they know the history, the wizard calls out "yes!" from behind cover. What an asshole.

They investigate the other room. The other goblin is still there, cowering by a stairwell, but as they approach it is quickly attacked and eaten by a giant slug that retreats into the depths. My players are ballsy and can see a plot when it happens, so they brave the dark.

I ran a bit of a skill challenge in the background to abstract their cavern searching. They fucked up a bit so they ended up swarmed by a horde of berserk rats.

SIDENOTE: The two eladrin have been in my campaign before. I put the fear of Gibberling Swarms into them then. They nearly walked from the table when they first heard me announce that damn prone-causing attack. reskinned Gibberlingrats. Thanks to the warlord directing some sound teamwork and the wizard blasting everything in sight, they overcame the rats right as they reached the first beacon: a crumbling mosaic.

So yeah that was first session for my guys, most of whom are experienced with 5e but completely were new to 4e. We didn't get a HUGE amount of plot uncovered, but in their defence they managed three encounters in a single session, and they've got some great chemistry from a past campaign or two so they get a lot of inter-party character development going. I've never seen the wizard player play an asshole before, and in all honesty he didn't come to the table expecting it; it just sort of grew organically from the concept of a smartass into this holier-than-thou nerd. He probably put his hand up for EVERY QUESTION in wizard school.

They stumbled a little over combat here and there; having a page or two of combat powers from the getgo is a BIG adjustment, especially since some of them already have a couple of fiddly modifiers (such as a tempest fighter and a brawny rogue). They haven't fully learned to coordinate their 2 (soon to be 3) defenders yet either, which may become a bit of a sink-or-swim point for them in battle.

Anyways its bullshit o'clock here in Aus, if this thread is still up and around by tomorrow I'll happily stay and chat about the group. In the likely event my players are reading, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, feel free to keep the thread fires stoked.