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

Glad to have you here Alexandrian. Have a cookie.

I've read his blog, too, where he goes into a lot of reasoning for Eberron, and setting detail stuff. It just makes me love the setting more, honestly.

That was Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet.

I'm running a 4e game. I have a party of 6.

I'm using a custom setting, but it's not really developed yet. It's two sessions deep and I'm still not even sure what the players are going to do after they finish their next major quest. Currently I'm mulling over ideas of a greater conflict for the to get involved in or plant the seeds of an antagonist. I'm also working on giving the players some locations or characters to get invested in before anything gets threatened.

The players are chasing a macguffin, but I haven't planned out what its true purpose is yet. All the players (and I) know is that some looters stole a relic from ancient ruins in the forest, somehow most of the looters that ventured into the forest are dead, the relic has gone missing, and this is making enough monsters angry to threaten nearby civilization. Beyond that, I really don't know much. The players roamed their starting city and shook people down systematically like a bunch of goons and this lead them to a rumor that one of the surviving looters has traveled to another city.

The players are currently standing at the mouth of a cave network that will take them to the city where they are rumored to find this looter. The cave itself is going to be the party's first large dungeon, but after that I don't know what to do. The lamest way of doing this would be that once they exit the cave and go on to the next city, they find the guy, kill him, take the quest item, and bring it back. So I'm trying to weave some sort of a reason why it won't be that simple, but WITHOUT making the players path even more convoluted. The guy the party is following was at one time a member of the thieve's guild, but after he took the relic he's a wanted man by all parties because of the danger it's causing.

Based on what I have laid out, what's a way I can complicate the quest for a few more sessions without making it tedious? That way, I have time to develop the new city they are in.

The obvious solution is that he already passed the relic over to someone else. This someone else may not be hostile, but he doesn't want to part with the relic for reasons. Maybe he asks for a replacement for the relic before he parts from it; something equally powerful that he can use instead of the relic. If the players get it for him, he'll teleport the relic back to its place himself.

Thank you. Your input and the "rubber ducky" method are enough to push me in the right direction.

Aside: Is anybody else turned off by how published adventures and settings have important details buried under prose and flavor text? I'm not interested in having to reread a short novel worth of text if I forget one detail or fact that the players want to know. Published materials don't seem very "skimmable" if you aren't already an expert in the setting.

I bet if you pulled an old strategy guide from a PS1 RPG off the shelf and flipped through it for an hour, you would be able to more quickly understand what is important and describe more details than somebody who spent the same amount of time reading through a campaign setting book.

>There is some merit to it though
There really isn't.

>What we have is all that we're going to have. There is no more content coming.
So what? There are plenty of roleplaying games that are far older than 4e which are still perfectly fine to play. Unless you're the kind of unimaginative dolt who can only play pre-made adventure paths and already played all the published ones, why would that keep anyone from playing the game?

More content is more stuff to talk about.

Which matters if you're trying to keep up a regular discussion thread like this, but not when you're just trying to play a game.

And we're trying to keep up a regular discussion thread like this.

Maybe we should just let /4eg/ die if it has to? It doesn't have to be an eternal general like /pfg/.

There would be a lot more to discuss if people would actually run games instead of just hanging out in the general, which is what the discussion in the previous thread was about.

Honestly I think it's for the best. Perpetual threads aren't great anyway. Let it die, and things rest for a while, before a new thread can be made and do well. Better to have irregular good threads than attempting to maintain regular sparse or bad ones.

Since the 4e discussion appears to have unfortunately dried up, let's talk about games that are still putting out new content.

>such as 13th Age

Speaking of which, has anyone else picked up this thing? I'm loving it so far. Every monster entry has multiple ideas about origins, how they could fit into the world at large, etc. There are stats for both former Icons that have fallen from power, and for up-and-comers who could eventually take their place. Some of the monster entries are taken from the 13th Age Monthly mini-splatbooks they were putting out for a couple of years, which on one hand means redundant content but on the other means it's all compiled into one place and helps reduce system spread. Hoping to see a similar compendium for the more obscure racial options that got introduced the same manner.

This is basically all that needs to happen. Run games, talk about the games. Alternatively, make content and talk about your homebrew.

>I bet if you pulled an old strategy guide from a PS1 RPG off the shelf and flipped through it for an hour, you would be able to more quickly understand what is important and describe more details than somebody who spent the same amount of time reading through a campaign setting book.

Absolutely, I wish they applied the same sort of design principles to adventures as they did to the core of the game... although, I'm pretty sure we are a minority here, and people would complain about 4e adventures being dry and stuff. I'm almost convinced some of the groggier players I know equate amount of Gygaxian prose with quality.

I'm in a game where the GM has appended rules from Stars Without End for "faction turns" while we putz around adventuring. Basically the great nation-states are scheming and plotting with their own goals, which are run by we players...and then our PCs are stuck in the middle of the results.

For example, currently, we're in a temple of Bahamut, waiting out a battle between two armies of nations aching for a fight; because of the battle's proximity to a town we've ushered the civilians inside the temple because, being Bahamut, it's pretty much a fortress.

One of the princelings wants to raze the temple so his men tried to kick us out. That was the most recent session. We won that little fight.

>although, I'm pretty sure we are a minority here, and people would complain about 4e adventures being dry and stuff. I'm almost convinced some of the groggier players I know equate amount of Gygaxian prose with quality.
4e adventures were a step in the right direction, but I would go further. I would have an appendix listing abridged facts about characters and locations, and write it as if you were explaining a movie to an old person who hasn't been paying attention 30 minutes into a movie.

Why? Because reading prose doesn't help the DM at all. The DM already has to orate their own imagination, and any subtlety at all in the text isn't going to be actually HEARD by the players unless the DM is reciting directly from the book.

The unfortunate reality of RPG design is that reviewers value things that superficially appeal to them, rather than what leads to a better player experience. They want campaign settings to read like short stories because it makes the reviewer feel better about their own tastes rather than what would actually work better.

Ultimately this boils down to how some people would rather feel smart than be smart. Doing things inefficiently to show how smart you are is like flushing money down the toilet to show how good you are at saving money.

Tell me about your characters, /4eg/, what makes them cool?

I'm in a game based on the Dominions 4 video game. The game is set near Eldregate, right in the transition from the Early Age setting to the Middle Age. Ermor went full skeleton at the start of the campaign, and so far we've been dealing mostly with the endless skeletons and other undead spookies that have poured forth after the Cataclysm as well as a variety of Pangaean (proto-Asphodelian) beastmen raiders and bandits. First a black centaur archer/necromancer who was just too damn fast to kill (until we finally managed to corner him) and now a satyr warrior who's just too damn stealthy to kill.

We were basically working for an Ermorian remnant (which due to meta-knowledge we recognized as proto-Sceleria) helping them establish a foothold near Eldregate while trying to prevent them from ripping open a gate to the netherworld and going full Lemuria as a result, earning us the ire of the Scelerian mages. Now we're on our way to a different Ermorian remnant (which we understand to be proto-Pythium) in order to see what we can mess up there.

So far we've lost two party members, one Vanheim elf and one Atlantian fishman, as well as a couple of characters we "lost" due to their players flaking out. I personally wouldn't mind if the DM ramped up the lethality a bit because I like high-lethality games and 4e just isn't that lethal by design to begin with, but it's been fun so far.

Dominions 5 soon get hype!

Being one of only two sane party members (and the other isn't the take-charge type) and being a Lawful Neutral kind of guy in a Chaotic Neutral kind of party makes things either fun or frustrating, depending on the situation.

I always gravitate to the Lawful side of the spectrum though, so that's all fine by me. Someone's gotta make sure shit actually gets done and the entire party doesn't run off in different directions pursuing private goals, or decide to just migrate into a different setting on a whim.

I once played a princess-turned-dragon who had to reconcile her noble upbringing with the fact that she was now stuck as a big scaly powerhouse. She was utterly content being a pretty little socialite with zero ambition and no plans beyond getting married off to a rich noble at some point. After the change, she ran away from home, got a taste of the adventuring lifestyle, hooked up with a common-born paladin, and started really digging the power angle as more of her abilities emerged. She also developed an arrogant streak and might have gone a bit to the dark side by virtue of being a chromatic, but the campaign died.

Mechanically, she was a 13th Age sorcerer class with a couple of talents lifted from the Druid and a third-party sourcebook to give her a suitably larger size and some shapechanging abilities. Dragon gal was never the best at melee combat, but with all those options she was damn fun to play.

Phillipe, Half-Elf Paladin|Warlord. Taking a fair bit of inspiration from plenty of historical characters, including but not limited to:
>Saint Louis
>Turenne
>Bertrand du Guesclin
>pretty much all nobles in the Vendéan revolt, but particularly Henri de la Rochejaquelein
It's just so damn fun - I've had a lot of joy preparing speeches for him and he has yet to fail any Charisma-related rolls; given my party's status of a bunch of destitute nobles overthrown by civil war (specifically a succession war), he's been probably the biggest strategical asset to the group, organizing guerrila warfare against both sides, and winning the trust of the people. Very much on his way to becoming a king.

Applying the Plinkett Test:
>wide eyed idealist with an eye for strategy, the largest ham imaginable, but not a dumb brute and probably the party's most sensible member

The rest of the party is pretty varied, though they're all somewhat French in nature. Bad accents galore - though I did take the time to learn how to cook French food for our meetups.

Are we talking monmusu or was it straight up lizard?

I used to play a battlemind who had something like five sources of Resist All X damage, from the Dull Pain power to a couple of class powers to a couple of items. She was *insanely* difficult to put down; the DM got her to single-digit HP once before the game died, by burning through three characters' worth of HP.

Presently I'm playing an Ardent and trying to figure out best how it works. She has a crippling weakness to Ongoing Damage, sadly (because apparently I can't roll better than 8 on a d20 for saves).

>tfw forever DM

my players have some decent characters i guess

If your group can make use of it, Forward Thinking Cut is fucking amazing.

Ire Strike plus Forward Thinking Cut is an absurdly deadly combo if you can get it working.

Lizard, but with some cutification. Eventually she did get the ability to shapeshift back to human form for brief periods of time.

The players are playing both the nation-states and the PCs? That's an cool thing to hand to them. How were they assigned nation-states?

Tell us more about the characters, both 4e mechanically wise and their Doms4 inspiration/countepart, if there is one.
Are y'all banded together specifically to stem the skeleton horde, or did that just incidentally happen?
HYPE

We helped the DM prepare the world, diving the known kingdoms of man (read: "all the common/playable humanoids") across the known continent and outlying islands, and then when we used the SWN rules to begin the faction stuff, we pretty much picked our favorites, then did a round-robin "okay now pick another one until they're gone."

So for example, during the faction turns, I run the burgeoning not!Phoenician maritime "kingdom," fantasy!NYC, and not!Korea.

That was another thing--for ease, the DM sought us using real-world analogues, but not the usual/common ones...thus we have Korea, Phoenicia, Portugal, Scotland/Ireland (but not specifically England), and so on.

My PC in particular is from not!Phoenicia so her spoken idioms all deal with fish(ing), sailing, etc. Hell, I took the Sailor theme in spite of the game not coming in spitting distance of open water.

It only became a good setting with 4e.

Keith is a good writer, and a great GM, but I'm not confident in his design ability. If you look at actual rules he created - they are very flavourful, but have problems like balance, not playing like they are supposed to, annoying in actual play, etc.

So, I'm currently making the basis for a game, and since I really like the theme 4e is built around—big, powerful heroes against big, powerful enemies during pulpy adventures—I'm using 4e as a sort of basis. However, I'm currently stuck at how many levels to include. Since all the games I've joined have always ended before they even really began, I don't know exactly how long the average group tends to play for. Is it three months? Six months? A year? Additionally, how fast the players should typically level. I'm stuck between 15, 20, and 30.

15 is a nice number because I can easily divide it into the three tiers that I'm going for (Mortal, Heroic, and Mythic), but if leveling is too quick, players reach max level before any significant time has passed. If leveling is too slow, it'll feel like a slog just to get to the next level when there are only 15. 20 is a solid amount, but it's not perfectly divisible by three, and I really don't like that. Hard to split things up in any decent manner. I have the same feelings about 30 because it's a round number, divisible by three, but I don't want to bog down players with too many powers, and I don't want players to pretty much never see level 30 unless they're starting halfway there.

This all pretty much ties into how long typical campaigns last. I really like 15, cause it results in fewer powers for players to remember, but I question whether it's too few levels for the campaign itself, that max level will be reached before the campaign even gets going. How many levels does everything think is best, and how often should the players level?

Now a question about actual 4e. Playing a 4 hour session weekly, about how many weeks would it take a group to go from level 1 to 30?

72 weeks was the given metric

My game started in mid April of this year and I think we've missed about 8 weeks total just due to life reasons and whatnot but actual sessions played is definitely near 20, and they just hit 9.

Do 21. 7 levels could have a lot of symbolism, actually.

Do you have a source for that? I'm not trying to say you're wrong, I just want to believe fpbp (at least to my questions).

So it seems that for your group, it's about every other session they're leveling up. A lot of level-based games I've read always say that it's best to have the players level up after every two or three sessions. I like that ballpark—problem is that means with 15 levels, campaign only lasts for 30-45 sessions; and with 30, that's 60-90 sessions.

It's an uneven number, which really irks me on a personal level, but honestly, it has the perks of 15—there's an odd number of levels for each tier, so you enter a tier with some goodies and level with a capstone, gaining powers at say 1, 3, 5 and 7 leading to roughly 12 powers—yet with an extended life for each tier. It's not as insane as 30 in terms of time taken to level to max nor in number of powers, but not as short as 15, which has the opposite problem of 30.

I'm working on a 4e rewrite with 15 levels, although we're providing an alternate 30 level progression chart for people who prefer a slower game.

We're honestly okay with it taking longer to improve between levels, since we're also including a lot of more valuable elements like consumables and rituals, and managing those will be the customisation and such between level ups.

I made it up. It's a lie.

Hmm didn't think about it like that. Usually it's about every 2 1/2 sessions to level. Average session tends to be 3-5 encounters. Also generally at any given time if I think they've earned too much XP I just fudge the numbers, or typically at the end of an adventure I'll say you're all exactly this level with the exact amount of XP to get back on a clean slate.

I also tend to have more "intense" can't think of the right word for it right now encounters where most will have at least 1 elite, sometimes 2.

Yeah, 21 is one of those that mechanically it looks like a sweetspot but most people have something of an aversion for it. If you wanted to joke about it I think you could go with 20+1, though that'd be as stupid as Kingdom Hearts' numbering system.

For what it's worth, I've been running a 4e game for just shy of three years (14 November 2014 is the starting date in my log, for "who's interested, let's make characters"). The party is level 9.

I've had characters replaced, people leave and others join (and leave and still others join), and we've had substantial time off for IRL stuff one way or the other, so actual play time is about 2 years of 3-hour sessions.

They're at the cusp of 10, though, and about to finish off Heroic Tier with a satisfying bang. I'll gauge their interest at that point and see if they want to continue, but I'm feeling like that is the case.

I can see how that'd work. It'd basically be just providing extra guidelines for how to extend the levels. Unfortunately, I'd rather not go with power or hp bloat, and would rather each level mean something than having dead levels (though I doubt yours will), so I'd rather stick to a lower number of levels, hence why 30 is a bit off for me.

Damn you.

I've started dozens upon dozens of different rpgs. Most of them have never gotten past the initial planning stage, only three have, but this one I want to build seriously, even if it takes me years to do. Plus, it's based on another system I have so I'm basically filling out the game with more numbers and rules to make it bit more complex and robust.
All of this experience, I guess, has made me well aware of my lack of knowledge as to how long games will last for, which is important to know when planning a level-based game. Too many levels, and people will never see the high stuff unless they spend years playing the characters. Too few, and campaigns are too short.

To be honest, 21 is sounding pretty good. Mechanically, it's hit that sweet spot that I've been looking for between 15 and 30, and really the only odd thing about it is the number itself. 21 just isn't a nice-to-look-at number, but math-wise, it's pretty good.

Do you guys play every week? Not to be rude, and not that I have as much hands-on experience with 4e as I'd like, but it seems like your group is leveling kinda slowly. Are these sessions just not full of xp-granting encounters?

Over our fifteen levels, the minimum number of choices a player has on any given level is 2, with some going as high as 4. We've also set that every level has at least 1 combat and 1 non-combat thing, to give progression in both. Given the amount, it's likely easier for us to split it over 30 levels than someone trimming it down, even if we've also reduced the total number of feats and powers to pick.

Weekly, yeah. Because of the fact that I run the game from work, sometimes I'll direct a session where the group will just suss things out among themselves for "What are we gonna do tomorrow night, Brain?"

The majority of the players like character interaction, so there's no resentment, but I *have* been trying to pick things up in the last few months.

Running fights gets painful when we have non-responsive players, though, so sometimes combats stretch over 2-3 sessions.

So it's just due to the slow rate of progress made during sessions. I'm sorry to hear that. I can understand your frustration. I hope things pick up soon!

That's one way to do it. For myself, however, I'm not going to do a new power every level. That becomes way too much in my opinion. What I'm planning is giving a utility power practically every other level, while combat powers are a bit more rare. My believe is that most people don't need 15 different ways to attack; they need a wider variety of utility or attacks. 5 attack powers are easier to choose from, and this means that each power will be able to be distinctly different from the next. (Remember, these numbers are examples, not the set amount). So instead of 15 attack powers, 5 are for offensive, with a few extra passives, and the player will instead have 15 utility.
Just explaining what I'm thinking. If you're the same group that's been really active on Veeky Forums lately, I'm excited to see what you guys got when you're ready to do open playtesting.

It's not actually a new power every level, although it starts out that way. Pic related is our current model for heroic progression.

The thing you don't see is that we're capping Encounters and Limits at 3, so every time you'd get one after that, you instead get a chance to upgrade one of your old powers, making sure they scale better as you level up.

Support and Utility powers, in-combat and out of combat respectively, cap at 5 each instead, being picked the same way until the end.

The other things to explain are the stats- Every character picks different stat increase rates for different stats. We're not yet sure if we're going 2 fast, 2 mid, 2 slow, or 1 fast, 2 mid, 3 slow. They create slightly different feels.

Feats are split into two columns, combat and non-combat feats, and 'Talents' are our solution to boring class feats, instead bundling all the dull, plus numbers/efficiency class feats into mutually exclusive choices at specific levels, letting you customise your features over time.

The last column, 'Feature', refers in general to things gained from Theme/PP/ED equivalents.

'Picks' is mostly there to remind us how many things a player has to select per level. We never wanted the number of picks to get too high, but automatic progression you don't need to choose doesn't really create complexity in the same way, so we drew a distinction between totals and picks, as well as splitting it up between stats, combat and non-combat (yellow, red and green) to make sure levels weren't overloaded with or barren of a particular one.

I really appreciate you sharing this. I never thought about capping number of powers known, although it definitely keeps the number of powers players have the track to a limited load. Have you thought about perhaps allowing players to learn multiple, but only having a limited number of "slots" they can fill, and any slotted powers are the only ones you can use until reslotting?

For example, at level 1, the players have one encounter slot, and their number of slots don't increase to 2 until level 5. At level 1, they learn one encounter power, and another one at level 2. So at level 2, they have to choose which encounter power to slot. The slotted encounter power is the only one they can use of the two they know until they reslot, which could only be done during a long rest.

I just thought of this method because of your post, and while it leads to a bit of a power bloat, it allows a player to "prepare" for possible dangers they might face. If someone plays a mage and they have a choice between learning a limited fly power and an invisibility power that only lasts for 1 turn, the one they don't choose is forever lost to them (unless that's not what you're doing). That can suck for some people, but if they have the option to learn both but in order to make use of them at the same time, they have to momentarily "give up" another power, that might be a bit more open in terms of customization, especially mid-session.

Just a thought I had.

I can see that certainly having a use, although I'm not sure it would be a general mechanic. It might make more sense as a specific feature of Wizard utility powers, that they have a larger 'spellbook' that they can change up at the start of the day. We have considered a few things like that, unique mechanics for a class or power source that slightly shift their interactions with the powers system.

We had the idea that Primal classes, for example, might have a specific slot for Granted powers, boons gained from spirits of nature. Providing a lot of options, scaled through the tiers, for possible boons, as well as a direct statement to GM's to allow Primal characters the time to commune, since this was a core class feature, but also advice on how to weave such encounters into a story as natural parts of the progression rather than 'Damnit we keep needing to derail because of the Primal character(s)'.

Boons would be slightly unusual, as while boons can function as passive, feat-like bonuses, at wills or encounter powers, they'll all have an 'expend' effect, a Daily tier use that removes the power from them completely. Boons like these would fade in a certain amount of narrative time anyway, so expending one is an inevitable moment where you can do something awesome, especially if you're near the end of a story arc and know there's not much left before you'll have some downtime to commune, getting a shiny new boon of some sort.

Oh god are you my Eladrin player?

Inigo El Cid. Human Assault Swordmage, "The World's Greatest Swordsman and Most Generous Lover." Speaks in a shitty faux spanish/italian accent, depending on what I can pull off at the time.

Trained in the art of the blade at the School of Flowers, he views it as his personal responsibility to try to bed any female he meets, regardless of what they look like. Currently beefing with my party's Tiefling Druid, who he thinks is a smelly hobo.

They actually got into a fight last session, but it wasn't to the death - they both gained some mutual respect for each other.

Yeah, I can see what you mean. It makes more sense for utility, and only for certain classes that are known to have wide utility. I guess the only thing I can say is to make sure that other classes have access to the same "level" of utility as that class so nobody is further ahead of others, but it sounds like you have a good group to work with. Wish I had access to a group like that sometimes. The primal thing is a very nifty idea. I like the idea of them having scaleable boons representing their connection with nature.

Did someone kill his father?

Ouch that long for combat. I thought my group was bad about taking on average 30 mins per combat, upwards to 45-1 hour if it was a boss fight or something really difficult.

Well, his dad was a pirate, and disappeared with a grand treasure. He's probably dead.

I've thought about writing in that his sword instructor / love interest has six fingers on one hand, though - I keep trying to get my GM to bring her in as a rival adventurer.

Not the guy you're responding to but throwing in my 2cp: I bust my balls way more in 4e over other RPGs to Lee each round of combat entertaining. I've accepted it WILL take 30mins, so I keep the excitement happening and the tension high; people dont care about the time if they're entertained during it.

That's generally how it is, what I've determined the party enjoys in encounters is difficulty, when they feel actually threatened then they get real serious, or when the encounter has some real annoying mechanics that throws them out of the loop they're used to. Also what's Leeing?

Phoneposting at work, should be 'keep', sorry my dude

Ic, thanks for clarifying.

Whats a good epic destiny for a guardian/summoner druid? I've been thinking about world tree guardian, but with the way my DM's world works I don't even know if the tree exists.

Yeah, because I run from work and we play on roll20/IRC there's always more lag time because of how typing is so inefficient. That being said, roll20 and IRC is the only way to collect all my players from the US, UK, EU, and Australia.

I play on roll20, I find that 4E works extremely well in that setting. Saves me the effort of minis and maps.

Why not become the World Tree, or something similar?

How do you deal with epic level destinies? It sort of feels like levels 27 - 30 are just victory laps.

I am playing a wilden, so it would be thematic. Thanks, I hadn't thought of that.

Usually killing the BBEG of the entire campaign procs your destiny fulfillment as you ascend or whatever

Hey guys got an AC question for you. Specifically how to raise it. Wizard in the party just went on a crafting binge making elven chain shirts for the unarmored folk and so now the party's AC looks like this and the Paladin is a little upset about it considering he's main tank and all.

Ardent: 25 (7 armor, 4 1/2 level, 2 enhance, 1 feat, 1 shield)
Avenger: 28 (4 1/2 level, 4 int mod, 4 (got the feat to bump it up 1) class bonus, 2 enhance, 2 feat, 1 shield, 1 item)
Paladin: 27 (9 armor, 4 1/2 level, 2 enhance, 2 shield)
Rogue: 24 (5 dex mod, 4 1/2 level, 2 armor, 1 enhance, 1 shield, 1 item)
Wizard: 26 (5 int mod, 4 1/2 level, 2 enhance, 2 feat, 1 class (staff of defense), 1 shield, 1 item,)

Everyone has shield bonuses because Paladin has Devout Protector Expertise, which gives allies a +1 shield bonus to AC. They're all level 9, and by paragon, Paladin plans on picking up Armor Specialization (Plate) which will give him a total of 29 AC, which is the same as the Avenger. Just would like any advice for the Paladin specifically, it'd be nice.

Avengers are a high AC class. to make up for being a bit lower on mobility for a very melee focused striker, IIRC.

Also, don't forget to have special materials for your plate stuff. Weirdly, they put the scaling there instead of it being inherent.

Oh my, first level is awful. Remember that new players will start at first level. Having to choose over seven different things before even start can be overwhelming.
Split this in the first two levels or add a level 0, some sort of prequel with mostly the social things, to ease introduction to newbies.

The rest is great, not much away from what I would do.

Abso-fuckin-lutely. Roll20 is *great* for 4e.

First level is overloaded, but really no more so than 4e.

Race, Class, Feature, At Wills, Encounter, Daily, Utility and Feat are the choices presented in core 4e, with Themes and Backgrounds as an optional thing. We're adding Themes as a core component, and splitting up Feats and Utilities into combat and non-combat stuff. It does create more choices, but not significantly more than 4e already had.

Then again, some sort of simplified/distributed chargen might be worth looking into.

>Tell us more about the characters, both 4e mechanically wise and their Doms4 inspiration/countepart, if there is one.

There are two players left who've been there from the start:
>An Ermorian Decanus (Human Warlord) who saw everyone he knew killed by skeletons and is now unreasonably devoted to winning Eldregate back from the undead and restoring Ermor to its former glory (which is clearly impossible).
>A Pale One Scout (Goliath Warden) who was a slave to some Ermorian bigwig and is now more or less along for the ride because he's too far from home to know what to do otherwise.

The rest joined fairly recently after we lost a couple of players to real life stuff:
>An Ermorian Augur (Shade Sorcerer) who died and turned into a ghost, but somehow kept enough of his mind intact to be on our side. Also the min-maxer of the group.
>A Satyr Sneak (Satyr Ranger) whose main character trait so far is being a big coward.
>An Ulmish slave (Human Fighter) who made a name for himself as a Gladiator, though he's not exactly happy about that whole affair. Has a tendency to charge ahead and never stays in formation.
>An Ulmish Priest Smith (Human Runepriest) who appears to be the most "good" member of the party but also has a bit of a survival of the fittest thing going on.
>A Sauromatian Androphag (another Human Warlord) who seems to be quite a bit more civilized than what you'd expect from a man-eating savage riding a carnivorous lizard around.

Also the party mascot:
>Cavey the Cave Drake. Will eat literally. He likes the Pale One because they have the same personality.

Dead/lost party members:
>An Ulmish Warrior (Human Barbarian).
>An Ermorian noble (Human Sorcerer).
>A Vanheim Vanhere (Shadar-Kai Avenger).
>A Marverni Druid turned pyromaniac zealot (Human Elementalist).
>An Ulmish Priest Smith (Human Runepriest).
>An Atlantean Deep Mage (Sorcerer, no idea what race he used).
>A C'tis Reborn (Wizard using a homebrew race).

>Are y'all banded together specifically to stem the skeleton horde, or did that just incidentally happen?
It mostly just happened. We started out in Eldregate just moments before the Cataclysm, so we had to fight our way out through the ekeleton hordes together. Most of the PCs at that time were in some way affiliated with the Ermorian noble as slaves/servants/bodyguards/whatever, so our main concern was getting the guy to safety. After he died, we more or less just stuck together because we didn't have much else to fall back on.

I thought special crafting materials for armor were gone in Essentials?

>Every monster entry has multiple ideas about origins, how they could fit into the world at large
I didn't know that, that's really neat. I always hated how the 5e entries were completely vague, sometimes not even stating an origin, and not very flexible with plenty of details nailed down still.

I just wish they'd finish their damn glorantha book.

Sell me on Glorantha.

I've played KoDP and it was great, but I don't really see the appeal as a roleplaying game over the popular alternatives. Sure it has a more developed and coherent mythology than bog standard D&D, but how many typical roleplaying games spend that much time on mythology anyway...

I do, if you notice it's why the Paladin's armor bonus is 9 instead of 8 for plate.

Yah I've noticed that Avenger powers and PPs being very melee focused, the player was doing that but preferred the ranged abilities instead and so rarely enters melee.

I like it mostly just for the difference in tone it has from some of your bog standard fantasy settings. I'll admit that I get hooked into it from King of Dragon Pass and the Veeky Forums Runic Men playthrough. I'd say that it hits a sweet spot for me of being different enough that it seems exotic and new, but not so far out there that I just have my head full of fuck and I can't comprehend anything.

I haven't tried Runequest or anything like that, but readily available settings in other systems of it I've been interested in.

What do you guys think of the card game influence on 4e? It's a very subdued thing, I feel, but present nonetheless. And speaking of that - has any of you ever played card hunter?

So in the last thread people suggested running Roll20 games. What are the odds anything like that is actually going to happen?

I think it's a case of people need to stop talking about it and just start doing something like making a discord and inviting like minded fellows then start scheduling and planning. I'm currently running an ongoing campaign that takes a lot of prep time so I can't run another game of the same vein, I'd be willing to join though if someone actually started.

I disagree and will counter claim that there is next to no card game influence on 4e.

The entire power structure is assembled piece-by-piece from design tools pioneered in earlier editions. Power cards and flipping them to designate usage is a result of 4e's development history as an edition designed to accompany a new virtual tabletop product.

Question, 4e general.

Is something like Combat Agility an opportunity attack?

It's an opportunity action but not an opportunity attack. Opportunity attack is a specific sort of opportunity action that everyone can do by default.

Shame. I thought I'd stumbled on some cheeky bullshit.

Combat Superiority: Good for the Fighter that wants to be sticky, only worthwhile remembering when making an Opportunity Attack but you should force enemies into such a position of stay or flee which provokes an OA and cancels their movement. While Combat Agility comes up under the same circumstance that Combat Superiority does but instead of hitting them right away, you wait for them to finish then move up and hit them.

Power cards had been a thing since at least AD&D. All 4e did was put everything into discrete blocks instead of letting it go into paragraphs.

3.5 actually had a class that basically relied on cards to work smoothly. The Crusader and it's randomly generated manuvers.