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

Oh yah rituals, I've tossed quite a couple at them but the wizard just hasn't found a use for them besides the self folding bag when they needed to dispose of a corpse.

I played a Kitsune Monk, she was pretty fun. The amount of AoE nova she could output was insane, and that was after flying 13 spaces to get into battle. To mix it up from magical realm submissive waifu shit I basically gave her the personality of a delinquent, saying she was a former criminal attempting to reform with monk discipline.

So I'm rolling a paladin in 13th Age, and I'm not sure whether to choose constitution or charisma as my higher stat. Got 14+2 str, 14+2 cha/con, 13 cha/con, then 11/10/9. The 16 cha gives me 3 smite evil /day, but I didn't select anything else to benefit from Cha so would Con be better?
I also have Divine Domain: Leadership, Cleric Training: Bless and Implacable, and I'm a half-orc. Starting feat I was thinking just +4 to smite evil attacks.

>pfg thread up as- wait

Utility powers were a good idea. Some utilities being good in combat and some not being good in combat was not a good idea.

4e's rituals and utility items feel really lackluster to me, and I'm not sure how much of that is poor design and how much of that is necessary to avoid them being mandatory.

That said, having magic items and magic powers has nothing to do with being mother-may-I.

I'm not sure what the alternative is without narrative powers or 3e/5e-style spells though. Like you say, if rituals were more powerful they may become mandatory which you don't want because caster supremacy. Giving each class a few out-of-combat powers sounds like the best solution to me.

Honestly, I like the idea of making rituals universally available, and expanding their scope beyond just academic magic. Martial practices, woodsmans chants or cultural traditions, you can give everyone ways to interact with the idea of a slower, downtime utility system.

Yeah that could be possible. Shouldn't be too hard to implement either, give everyone ritual caster, remove fluff from rituals, tie it to power sources which affects fluff and which skill is used. Not sure if rituals would have a power source or if they are generic rituals and any character can learn them. Maybe just have separate ritual lists for each power source with a bunch of new tricks for martials and psionics.

I like the 3d6 idea because it means you can get dubs and trips and even satan trips and that appeals to me on a memetic level

I don't understand why players don't use rituals if it means they can gain an advantage in their situation.
Shit like Arcane Eye is fucking glorious if you know some shit is on the other side of a door or wall and you want to prep, different wards when you need to safeguard an area, custom rituals for all manner of cool shit.

I really think it's in the presentation. Them being a segregated system and costing a significant portion of gold just make them seem like they aren't part of the "main" experience, even if they would be really useful

Rituals requiring a feat, martial practices not introduced in main rulebooks, and prohibitive cost. I like the idea of component cost /10, gonna recommend it to my DM. Also 4e focus on combat means cool out-of-combat stuff like rituals is sometimes glossed over

For those making 4e successors, has anyone solved the "ritual problem"? Tieing temporary benefit to permanent resources always struck me as a design flaw.

One of the devs here. We're just removing permanent costs from temporary rituals. Healing Surges are the basic cost instead, converting long term endurance into a benefit of some other sort.

>How far would you be willing to go from the core?
Keep the straightforward math and resources
Keep or simplify distinct roles and power mechanics
Keep the simplified skills and backgrounds bit

Everything else is negotiable I believe.

Makeing a drow male lawful good paladin what would a good back sorry be

kys

Can't access the repository for some reason. Any other resources available? Looking specifically for more on Spelljammer..

One thing to do is give 4E Characters dedicated non-combat utility power slots. Because I agree, let's face it, the non-combat powers are cool, but nobody's going to take them over shifting a huge distance or gaining regeneration. So give them one or more new power slots that can only be used for utility powers designed to be used out of combat. I haven't tried this myself but I heard about it here on Veeky Forums and it seems like a good thing to try.

I like the idea of non-magic equivalents to rituals as well. What would be some cool benefits you could gain from these? Martials could gain some low-key buffs to certain combat stats by perfoming different warmups, Primals could invoke nature to alter their environment. What else?

Can we get a unified picture for the general and preferably not something that will have people confuse us with /PFG/

You're right. We should do tiefling girls instead.

I'd prefer something that actually uses the 4e artwork as a basis. Maybe the World Axis orrery or simplified map? Both can be found on 1d4chan.

>One thing to do is give 4E Characters dedicated non-combat utility power slots. Because I agree, let's face it, the non-combat powers are cool, but nobody's going to take them over shifting a huge distance or gaining regeneration. So give them one or more new power slots that can only be used for utility powers designed to be used out of combat. I haven't tried this myself but I heard about it here on Veeky Forums and it seems like a good thing to try.
Homebrew martial "rituals" are a more elegant and compatible way of implementing this. Reference martial power 2.

Anyway, how do the essentials class variants compare to core classes in effectiveness? Can any of them increase the effectiveness of a player that has a slightly lazy or unoptimized style?

You are supposed to recoup any "losses" between levels that are from using non-permanent rituals (like item creation). The book really should hammer this home.

Did WotC ever update the monster creation damage tables? It was really not hard to reverse-engineer the updated monster math, but I would rather not have to reduplicate the effort of turning damage averages into a table of damage dice if it's not necessary.

For those that are curious, the difference between DMG/MM math and MM3 math is the at-will damage of a MM3 monster is higher by about 1 + 1/2 level.

>Anyway, how do the essentials class variants compare to core classes in effectiveness?

Mage is on par with core Wizard, except more focused. The rest are overall worse the longer the game goes; usually strong start but they just don't make up for the power and utility lost in not getting new encounters/dailies (the ones that do get them are the ones that can keep up). Also don't have the massive feat support old classes' features. Knight is probably top of the heap in usefulness of the "simplified" classes.

>Can any of them increase the effectiveness of a player that has a slightly lazy or unoptimized style?

Absolutely, even a retard can play a Thief or a Slayer, and he won't be _that_ much worse.

I mean, you're not wrong, that's a very viable solution, Tieflings being 4e's pet race.

I wish the completed the PHB Races line

The dragonborn and tiefling stuff is really nice, leaves me wishing we got stuff for halflings and dwarves

...

It's not permanent resources, however, look at how even 3.5 says that loot that is designed to be burnt does NOT count against WBL, and should be approximately replaced over the course of the campaign as they are used.
If you are not giving out consumables, and replacing their cost with more consumables or regular loot, you are the problem, fuccboi.

Bump .. though I'm realizing that this may be more of a 2E request..

How would people recommend designing a druid boss encounter at around level 5? There are druid stats in one of the supplement books but they don't really capture what I want.

I considered starting off with a giant wolf (CR9) then once it goes to 0 turning it into a druid (CR7), but how do you calculate the CR for a multistage fight?

Do you want the emphasis of your character to be on Smite, and how much do you want to play a high charisma character? How much of either do you want over being meatshield? Are you only interested in optimization? It's all about your priorities.

Use the XP chart for encounters?
It DOES work, user.
If the druid has full hp, it counts as another creature in terms of xp allotment.
Also, advice: Have minions, or something else there. Single enemies as "boss fights" that aren't dragons, liches or vampires is fairly weaksauce.

My rule of thumb, entirely from playing and figuring things out, is weighting each encounter at about 75%, since if they're sequential rather than simultaneous they're less dangerous. More dangerous than multiple separate fights, so keep that in mind. Doing too much will potentially overwhelm the players.

This should work out about right.

Alternatively, double their actions and consider them 150% of a fight... hmm, maybe give the wolf two actions and the druid one, and you got yourself a normal fight, if they are equally strong... mathematically speaking.

But Solos don't really work in 4e.

Those aren’t dice expressions you retard.

Solos can work in 4e, in my experience, they just take clever design.

Multiple actions, area attacks and reaction/defensive powers are necessary to make them an interesting and challenging fight, but it is possible.

I had a boss who, every turn, would do a wide area low damage AoE, a single target attack, and put down a 3x3 area which, next turn, would take a huge amount of damage. Nobody was safe, but you could control who the boss was focusing on, and also had to consider positioning and movement in order to not get caught in next turns AoE.

I'm not sure I'm reading the rules right, because this encounter seems impossible

This is an arc ending boss fight, so I want it to be a hard encounter (Level 9 encounter for a level 5 party, which is what the DMG recommends)

Standard XP for a level 9 mob is 400, so with a party of 6 I have 2400 experience to spend

Worg: 400 (300 at 75%)
Harken's Heart Druid: 300 (225 at 75%)
8/9 Dire Wolfs (1600/1800) < Depending if I take the 75%
Harken's Heart Acolyte - 75

I'd recommend using more lower level enemies instead of a few higher level ones. You can still keep up the danger, but keeping the mechanical gulf between the boss and the PC's smaller is a good idea.

I'd start with the two big bads as level 6-7 elites or solos and flesh out the fight with level 5 normal monsters or minions.

Just curious since I'm not sure how the game plays out if I'm undervaluing hp or overvaluing daily smites. Probably depends on my gm and campaign though. Without the challenge talent I think I value offense more than personal defense, and we have a tanky fighter too for frontlining.

More HP is always useful, and there are some concerns that Smite damage progression suffers at higher levels. That said, I've been GMing and playing 13th Age for a while now and from what I've seen, either approach works fine. The biggest complaint I've gotten about the paladin is that he's so basic, and I agree that it's hard to make a complex paladin outside of multiclassing. But maybe a simple class is what you're looking for? If not, there are some good cleric class abilities you can dip into for increasing your offensive capabilities.

Yeah I'm a bit worried about not getting any substantial new features as I level while certain other classes do, but I'll see what I can make of it. Switching classes is supposed to be a possibility though it'd be hard to justify in fluff something that also fits my stats, so I'll probably just retire my character if I really want a different class.

Aren't 13th Age paladins dogshit past level 1 because smite scales like ass even with feats?

The paladin isn't just "basic."

It's pretty much shit past level 1 because smite scales like complete balls.

It's pretty easy if you're willing to rearrange your stat rolls (assuming the GM lets you reassign the values). For example, my latest group had a Druid who multiclassed into Chaos Mage due to magical fuckery, then later converted completely over to Psion (3rd party class) when a psionic artefact more or less blew his mind open by force-feeding it info.

I agree that as a raw damage hammer, Smite progression seems pretty questionable. I'd rather it not need feats to scale damage up. Half of its attraction comes in how it always deals damage when you use it, hit or miss. I assume that's supposed to play into the paladin's image of steady reliability. My group's paladin has had good experiences with the ability so far, but he's pretty okay with Smite being window dressing now that he's multiclassed into Commander. So with that in mind, I'll ammend my prior recommendation: if you want an offensive paladin, don't spec to rely purely on Smite. Treat it as a boost for your regular attacks or as an ace up your sleeve for when you really need to hit something.

I'd say Hunter is another very solid Essentials class. While it specializes in single-target control, the type of control it has and the flexibility it has over it, along with the insane accuracy that comes from being able to comfortably start with a preracial 18 in DEX, can make it very useful.

Their utility powers are surprisingly good, and being able to slide/prone/slow at-will and daze/immobilize/blind (at paragon) up to 4 times an encounter can enable some real fun plays.

Overall, Hunter's niche is shutting down Elites or other troublesome targets, and considering most encounters have at least one enemy whose purpose is to make the party miserable, being able to lock them down for a while and/or make them easier to demolish is a very welcome asset to the game.

I'll keep it in mind, got some features and powers that spice up things so it should be fun for a while at least.

Yeah that would probably be fine with him, the fluff is the hard part though, kinda set him up as a demigod and without something drastic happening to change that the only class I could see work is cleric. I did take a spell and domain though, so that wouldn't be too far fetched.

The easiest way to justify a huge class change would likely be either by a divine betrayal by his god or getting hijacked/"corrupted" by a rival deity. A quest could be made from the attempt to restore yourself either way.

Not him , the way I would do a good Druid Boss:

>1st phase
The druid uses trees to attack. They're immobile, minion, and plenty. He himself is transformed into a tree, bashing with branches or throwing razor leaves.

>2nd phase
He transforms into a Big Bad Wolf and howl to call common (minion) wolves for help.

>3rd phase
He fights as himself, getting to act twice per turn, with powers much like the PHB2 Druid, but altered to deal more interesting status effects. He also uses the whole room with grabbing vines and difficult terrain.

But the World Axis is shit, I throw that shit in the garbage and use the Wheel instead whenever I run 4e.

Proof that liking 4e doesn't mean you actually have good taste.

How is it shit? It's all the same stuff but in a way that's actually appropriate for adventuring instead of being annoyingly obtuse.

...

I thought the MM2 math was still bad?

I think the main thing I'd do is keep the actual way ability scores are counted (each 2 above 10 amounting to a bonus) but significantly alter what those bonuses affect. Initiative would be based on class, attack bonus would be based on level, and classes could benefit from multiple ability bonuses at once, allowing either depth or breadth to be beneficial.

One of the devs here. Currently we're using just the modifier, so you'd have Strength +4 instead of Strength 18.

On uses, we're considering having each class nominate an attack stat to use for everything, with some flexibility if classes have multiple possible ones.

On stat uses, we're rejigging that a lot. We're currently trying to balance skills, but in addition to each pair of stats contributing to one of your defences, we're also having different pairs of stats contribute to secondary defensive stats.

This might change, but currently we have Str and Dex adding HP, Wis and Con adding Surges, and Int and Cha creating your 'Wind', a tertiary defensive thing we're adding. Wind is a small pool of THP that you recover at the start of every fight, currently equal to highest of Int or Cha plus Level.

The idea is that every class/character will have two of the three options, Wind, HP and Surges, as good, and one as bad, creating different durability dynamics. We also have ideas for power interactions with being 'Winded' (having lost your wind) or powers that let you spend it for an extra effect. The idea is that Wind is easy to gain, easy to lose, as opposed to the larger ablative pool of HP, or the long term endurance reserves of Surges.

Also, the most significant change I'd make to character building is the decoupling of class and character identity and combining Themes and Backgrounds into a single feature, like a "non-combat class" that similarly grants skills, powers, and features.

Idea time: Use hybrid classes as a template and actually decouple class/role entirely. For example, a characters class could be martial/striker. That way, you don't have to go through the thematic hoop of "You want to be an offensive fighter? Oh, that's actually a ranger or rogue. You want to be a healing wizard? Oh, that's actually a bard."

Strike did this and I honestly really disliked it. Decoupling the two weakens the identity of class mechanics a lot.

No need to be a pissy little bitch, user. Half of the average damage should be the flat bonus, and the other half should be the average for the damage dice. For example, average damage 8 = 1d8 (4.5) + 4. I recommend paying attention to that .5, but ignoring it will, at worst, result in an extra point or two of average damage, which is almost meaningless in all but the most desperate of circumstances. If you can't get a perfect average with half of it being dice and half of it being static, go with the closest divide you can. For example, average damage 13 = 2d6 (7) + 6, or 1d12 (6.5) + 7.

I'd honestly err on the side of consistency over randomness. Multiple smaller dice or a larger modifier makes it easier for the GM to handle and less annoying for the players. In my time as a GM I've basically taken to almost never giving monsters d10 or d12 damage dice unless there is a very specific reason to do so.

I like the Wind mechanic. Reminds me of Pillars of Eternity Stamina/Health, but only vaguely.

Classes have their own strengths and weaknesses, on the game side they're easier to balance and work around, and their identity and stereotypical nature makes them easy to pin down and gives structure. It's easy to say "that guy's a sorcerer" instead of "that guy got powers from attuning to the elemental plane of fire, shoots a lot of fireballs and uses Charisma for it". Coupling it all together into a package is convenient even if class-less has more customizability and freedom.

That's certainly a reasonable approach. The d12 + 7 was given as an example of the multiple ways to resolve the issue. I usually go for the larger number of smaller dice as well, but if an attack is made with a weapon, I always use the dice for that weapon.

If I wanted to do something like that I'd give a class a role by default but also have other options. A warlord is an obvious example of a martial leader, but you could switch a set of features out to be a controller or a defender.

Strike is a pretty extreme example. Classes should still have some flavor, just not to the point where rogue = thief, bard = musician, cleric = priest, etc.

A single class in Strike! has about half of the unique mechanics of a full class in 4e. The Necromancer has the Warlock's "trigger on death" mechanics, but gets to choose a role instead of being locked into the "curse" being a damage boost. The warlord get's something like aura, but instead of Inspiring Word, he gets to choose a role.

I also feel some of the unique mechanics have more impact than in 4e, like the Warlords' types.

There's also some synergy between classes and roles that aren't immediately apparent which makes each class path play slightly different.

What _should_ have been done, imo, is go ahead and design some "synergy feats" (and be a bit more direct about how you are supposed to homebrew feats) to show how you could mesh roles and classes in unique ways, and also probably have 2 versions/paths of each Role.

I'm not saying Strike! matches 4e's breadth diverse classes and playstyles but it's 1 book and 1 playtest thing that some aussie made in his garage in his free time from a box of scraps vs WotC's magnum opus. It's a really damn good start.

I tried to make a homebrew that consisted one combat class and one "social" class.
So a thief (social) could be either a striker (rogue) or defender (thug), and you could play a soldier (social) like a defender (fighter), striker (skirmisher) or leader (warlord).

Ditched the idea because of Strike showing that classes need meat on their bones than just being archetypes or "half classes" the same way races are more than just stats, having all sort of lore behind it (compare 4e Gnome to every other D&D Gnome, or how they did Gnolls, or Forgeborn Dwarves).

Aussies can cobble up anything given enough time, scraps and pints of beer. For crying out loud, they pratically invented power armor during the Victorian age.

I wouldn't call "guy cut holes in a rubbish bin" power armor, mate.

Aussie mechs design.

Hey, it worked well enough to the point it was able to be literally bulletproof with nothing but what amounts to a rubbish bin.

>Ditched the idea because of Strike showing that classes need meat on their bones than just being archetypes or "half classes" the same way races are more than just stats, having all sort of lore behind it (compare 4e Gnome to every other D&D Gnome, or how they did Gnolls, or Forgeborn Dwarves).

That's all in the presentation. For my 4e homebrew (seemes like everyone has one, so why not?) for the core game I'd 5-6 preset job+class+role as a complete package and THEN have "multiclassing rules" like Legend's paths (with the other classes as single tracks).

>Open up Veeky Forums
>See kitsunes as the header image of a thread bumped to the top.
>Try to ignore it, thinking it's /pfg/
>Something catches my eye.
>'D&D 4e'
>mfw
So in about a week can I come to /4eg/ to talk about my female(male) kitsune bard of seduction?

4e already had Kitsune. They are a subtype of the hengeyokai race and actually have animal form rather than just 'Furry person' and 'Human'

Honestly? I think D&D's traditional approach to hengeyokai as a race is crap. Whilst I really don't like a lot of things about Pathfinder, actually giving kitsune PCs more to define them than "I turn into a fox" was actually a good idea.

I mean, didn't Pathfinder? I clearly remember PF kitsune having the ability to shift into a fox.

It takes a feat to learn how to do so and didn't turn up for quite a long time, support-wise.

In 4e they are actually fey and tied into that sort of stuff.

The /osrg/ Trove has all the 2e stuff.
pastebin.com/raw/QWyBuJxd
Trove -> 08 -> 05 -> Spelljammer

Strike!'s author is a Canadian math teacher and he wrote it while married.

I'd rather see foxes and other "mundane" animals as categories of monster than use kitsune specifically.

>Strike is mentioned
>to be shat on
this is a cool place with cool people. That book is a mess and could have been reduced to a fourth the size, apparently.

>That book is a mess and could have been reduced to a fourth the size, apparently.
Next time you're trying to avoid something unavoidable, you could learn LaTeX, if you haven't, and boil it down to keep your mind off whatever it is you don't want to think about.

I thought he was aussie.

It's a shitty first edition. A second, boiled down edition would be coming out already if his daughter didn't have leukemia.

>4eg
Oh wow, that's lucky I'm starting up a game soon and I'd love to see other people's thoughts on the game.
>it's nothing but shitting on a different game and fucking anime monster girl talk.
Well this general was fucking stillborns.

Not terrible but maybe a second line for each for protips?

Like

>"Use a timer for combat encounters, and possibly power cards."

>"Don't forget to NOT tell the characters they are in a skill challenge, and use it as a framing device; also if they circumvent it using their tools, tough luck, let them have it".

I'd also think it should be MM3 and later stuff.

>Oh wow, that's lucky I'm starting up a game soon and I'd love to see other people's thoughts on the game.

We like it?

Honestly? I really like it. Leaving out the setting lore for a moment, although I do think that the "Points of Light/Nentir Vale" verse has some of the best fluff of any edition of D&D, here's what I think are the game's strengths:

The Roles system ensures that classes are strongly designed; Essentials fouls things up in the name of "simplicity", but all pre-Essentials classes are designed to achieve their intended purpose, be it tanking, damage dealing, control or support.

Martials don't suck, instead exploiting the power system to give them very action movie/shonen anime style cool tricks and stunts they can pull off during a fight.

Leaders aren't dull, instead combining their healing/buffing role with the ability to actually get into the fray and do exciting stuff.

Power Sources help every class feel connected and yet unique. You can see the similarities between classes of the same Source, but they play very differently to other classes - even those that share the same Role are still very different in how they actually play.

The mechanical layout for how the powers function is smooth to read and easy to grasp. There is no obfuscation like there was in 3e's spells.

The solid crunch/light fluff approach makes reskinning and reflavoring your class a breeze. Shamans easily become non-evil necromancers, elementalists, or psychics commanding dream-spirits, for example.

The Swordmage has to be the best gish I've seen in D&D since the original AD&D multiclassed Fighter-Wizard. Hands down, no arguments.

I've found the opposite.

Thanks to skill challenges by RAW in 4E any challenge can be completed via a series of successful dice rolls in order. Doesn't matter what it is and roleplay etc is irrelevant, just beat DC X times and win.

Other systems encourage you to freeform roleplay rather than rely on dice rolls, which is more mother may I but more in spirit of the game.

>Doesn't matter what it is and roleplay etc is irrelevant
Even with a bad GM this shouldn't happen. And as long as you don't know you're in a skill challenge you won't be able to try metagaming and just use your best skills.

That's... that's not how skill challenges work at all?

For starters, the DM has to set up what the skill challenge is about, or if there's even a skill challenge to begin with. Roleplaying is important, because using a skill in different ways, with different approaches, can net you bonuses. No DM should allow the player to just say "I roll diplomacy!", or whatever. That absolutely goes against all the RAI and RAW of skill challenges beyond their core concept.

Have you ever actually had that happen in a game?