D&D 4th Edition

It's largely a meme. The bonus feats + the slight adjustments should be enough. If your group is really underpowered, you may just consider lowering combat difficulty in some other way, such as using monsters that are 1 level lower.

I mean, mathematically, it will achieve that task. Lowering monster HP will definitely lower combat time, so if you want to make combat faster, it's an option. The old meme was "half their HP, double their damage", but that's really pretty unnecessary.

The problem came from the lack of player bonuses, that every monster ended up, in essence, with an effective HP of 5-15% higher than indicated, because of the lost percentage of hits. (and solos ended up with 25-25%
more) (technically, since the loss is on the attacker's side, it's much more complicated than that, but we'll use those numbers for simplicity.)

If you really feel combat is taking too long, I wouldn't go more than say, -25% HP, +25% damage.

Ok, so one of the main tips for 4e is - think of ways to make your encounter interesting. Don't think of monsters as just blocks of tofu that hit back. Think of how you can force interesting terrain or effects you can apply on your players.

Right on. I've just heard a lot of accusations of "padded sumo" for 4e.

So let me make sure my math is right. Let's assume I have a level 10 Ranger, who is a Striker and therefore supposed to do a lot of single target damage. He's got the Daily Power "Close Quarters Shot", which does 4[W] + Dex modifier damage to a single enemy. He's fighting a level 10 Soldier enemy with 109 HP.

So assuming he's using a +2 Longbow, has 20 Dex, and the Expertise feat that gives +1 to attack and damage per tier (which his current tier would be Heroic still, so +1), his damage would be 4d10+8 for this single attack. Let's say he rolls the average and does 30 damage, which is a little under 1/3rd of the enemy's HP.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting anyone to be capable of one-shotting an enemy like that, but this damage output is something the PC can put out once a day, and if a party is facing two or even three enemies like this it seems like it'd make combat drag unnecessarily.

Keep in mind as well, the faster you make combat the less things like crowd control, debuffs and ongoing damage matter. It's something you need to inform your players of so they can adapt their choices to it, since there's no point getting a lot of powers that inflict conditions on enemies who are just going to die the same turn.

Although then again, maybe I'm coming at this from the wrong angle. A level 10 monster is, theoretically, supposed to be a challenge for an entire party of adventurers of the same level, right?

At least that's how 5e does it.

A level 10 solo is a challenge for a party of four. A standard monster is an equal challenge in a group equal to the size of the party, with elites as a middle ground, one being a challenge for two PC's, more or less.

The thing you're missing is the various contextual bonuses to damage the hunter will be getting, from their Hunters Quarry bonus d6 to various feat, ally support or other bonuses that could pump that theoretical damage number significantly higher. A game I run at the moment, currently around level 6, has the Ranger often able to bloody enemies with a single round of attacks.

So a party of 4 level 10 characters could face 4 level 10 monsters, essentially, and it would be a challenging but not impossible encounter?

CQShot isn't that great, Rangers usually rely on their multi-hit powers. But besides that, there's a lot you aren't counting; other feats, Hunter's Quarry (buffed by feats), leader buffs, things like that.

4 level 10 characters against 4 level 10 monsters is a standard encounter. By default, the level range goes as high as level+4, and for a well optimised party it can be significantly higher than that. An equal encounter like above is going to take some time and drain some resources, but shouldn't be too hard to win.

That's the other thing, of course. 4e puts a lot of weight on the Surge economy. A lot of fights aren't weighted to kill players, they're weighted to cost them in terms of powers and surges, so that when you hit a really nasty boss fight there's less room to make mistakes or for things to go badly. Reaching the final room of a dungeon with your Defender only having three surges left and half the group having burned their dailies is tense.

It does still seem like an encounter of 4 level 10 PCs and 4 level 10 enemies would take a long time to go through, since level 10 enemies average about 100 HP each, but I'm also not intimately familiar with all the little situational bonuses that PCs get in 4e.

How many rounds should the average combat encounter even last in 4e?

3-5 is the general encounter length, though it increases by 1 level in paragon and 1 more in epic.

Combat going fast is very reliant on the group working together. The Defender locking down key targets, the Controller debuffing key enemies and keeping minions off, the Leader keeping people alive and handing out buffs to let the Striker really do damage.

As an example, a Warlord (Leader) I'm currently playing at the moment can, through a combination of buffs, give allies +5 damage to all their attacks, and cause a single enemy to take 5 extra damage from all attacks. If I time it right, using it on a turn where people are set up to use multihit combos or spend their action points for extra actions, that can turn into a hundred bonus damage or more with relative ease, tearing a huge chunk out of a boss on top of what they'd do by default.

OP here, what about Skill Challenges? I've heard mixed things there as well.

I'll do a quick example of how a simple round of 4e usually goes. In this case, we have a Level 3 Dagger-wielding Half-Orc Brutal Scoundral Rogue (18 Dex, 18 Str) and a Level 3 Glaive-using Human Tactical Presence Warlord (18 Str, 16 Int). We're using just Magical Weapons for this. The Rogue took Light Blade Expertise, Backstabber and Vigilante Justice, while the Warlord took Heavy Blade Expertise, Weapon Proficiency, Improved Tactics, Lend Might, and Tactical Assault.

They are facing an enemy skirmisher of equal level, which means he has 48 HP. Both are flanking. The Rogue goes first, using Riposte Strike and Low Slash. His chance to hit is equal to +4 (Dexterity)+1 (Expertise)+4 (Dagger)+1 (Magical Weapon)+1 (1/2 level)+2 (Combat Advantage), adding up to +13 to hit. This versus an AC of 17 gives him a pretty good chance to hit. Assuming he rolls higher than a 3, he hits, dealing 1d4+2d8+10 damage on the first hit, followed by 1d4+10 damage, meaning total damage on the Rogue's turn was 2d4+2d8+20 damage. This is followed by the Warlord's Commander's Strike, which deals allows the Rogue to make a Melee Basic Attack at +3 to damage and +1 to hit. The Rogue's got +14 to hit, and deals 1d4+2d8+13 damage. Total damage taken by our skirmisher is +3d4+4d8+33, or an average of damage equal to 54,5 damage.

This isn't some super optimized pair of characters, by the way, this is just pretty standard and quite basic, and they were able to take down a anything except maybe a brute in one round without much trouble, and in any case, there's a good chance the brute would either die to a following attack by even a controller. And we only ended up spending one Encounter power for this.

As others have noted, the ranger will likely have bonus damage on those rolls. And further, let's not underestimate the power of teamwork.

At a minimum, let's add his hunter's quarry, and say he's gotten the d8 damage upgrade. That's another 4-5 damage. Which isn't too special.

Next turn, he uses an encounter power, that deals 2[W], for 2d10+8+d8, or another 23.5 damage on average. Now he's dealt 58 damage in two turns.

The Warlord, on his turn, uses Surprise attack, giving the ranger a bonus basic attack, dealing
1d10+8 or 13.5 damage. Total damage ouput solely by the ranger: 71.5

Within 2 turns, and with the use of two encounter powers and one daily, the ranger has taken the enemy down to 34% of its max HP.

If the Warlord actually TARGETED the enemy with his Surprise attack, it takes another ~19 points of damage, putting it at around 9 HP.

That's two party members, over a turn and a half, taking an enemy from full to under 10% health. The rest of the party can be focusing on another enemy, or covering any missed attacks from these guys.

Further, you note that "this damage output is something the PC can put out once a day", but a level 10 ranger has 3 Daily attacks, as does each of his party members.

In an average 10th level adventuring day, the party can afford to drop 2-3 dailies per encounter.

The dailies available to a level 10 Ranger are quite a bit better than that and an archer is almost certainly using a +2 greatbow at that point. Attacks on the Run would math out to 55 average base damage(3d12+8*2) before you even consider leader support, the Defender or other Striker in the party softening them up for you, other feats, crits, and whatnot. Hell, Two-Fanged Strike matches the 30 damage you have projected with the same gear and that's a level 1 encounter power.

Just use the numbers in the DMG2, or use the DMG1 numbers on page 42, but DON'T increase them by 5 like the table says.

That's the core of the issue, that, at launch, the DCs were skewed upward, making "score X successes before X/2 failures" rather unfair. A completely focused and devoted level 1 character (+5 from stat, +5 from training, +2 from feat/race/misc) had to roll a 13 or higher to hit the hard DC.

The DMG2 addresses this.

The real advice I would bring in is making sure you have a wide array of secondary skills for various bonuses. If the Fighter rolls perception (a skill he's likely good at because Wis is important for Fighters), and notes that the duke's paintings are all of his family, he can whisper/indicate that to the bard, allowing him to integrate the idea of how this will be good for the Duke's lineage/protect his loved ones/etc, giving him a bonus.

Is there a list of suggested bonus values to give out anywhere? "+3 if familiar with this particular thing" or such forth?

He probably just looked at the raw damage numbers and picked the highest one, not noticing that attack on the run gives 2 shots

Heck, I myself spaced on the idea of using Thunderboar Tusk Strike, since 1d10+8 x 2 (+1d8) is better raw damage than 2d10+8. (+1d8) (30 average damage vs 23.5)

Why is the warlord taking Weapon Proficiency but using a glaive?

Do you mean greatspear?

In general, 4e recommends using the "DM's best friend", a static +2/-2 depending on if you think things are favorable or against the players.

Using a secondary skill (which normally uses an easier DC in exchange for not counting to the total successes), is stated to do one of the following things:

-Give a following primary skill +2
-Allow a re-rolled of a primary skill check.
-Erase a failure. (For instance, if the bard rolled badly trying to bring up the duke's family, and the duke revealed his wife had recently died, the Cleric could speak some words of comfort about the afterlife to undo that fuck-up.)
-Allow the use of another skill in the challenge. (Maybe the fighter realizes the pictures include several of the duke in fencing garb, allowing him to challenge the duke to a bout to put him in a better mood/display the party's abilities)

etc.

If you have the DMG2 (or acquire it from the PDF share thread) I'm just repeating the list of suggestions (though I am adding examples) from page 85.

Yeah, actually. Greatspear and Spear Expertise. Initially it was a Drow Long Knife.

Also, I'd say use funin.space. It's gonna be very, very useful for you, and grab the rules compendium. 4e's PHB1 is basically 50% errata at this point.

Am I crazy or was there a 4e homebrew where they used the level 0 supplement to create a classless version?

Shit game with shit narrative mechanics meant to force "tactics" to make martialcucks feel like they were more "interesting" when in reality they were just more complicated. 4fags also have the delusion that the shitty AEDU system "fixed" caster supremacy when in reality it was because the game removed 90% of the spells that made wizards overpowered in 3.5. The AEDU system makes no logical sense and only serves to reinforce the shitty 15 minutes adventuring day and make smug nerds think that they are tactical gods.

Thanks for bumping the thread! I'd learn something about the game before posting next time though, you just made yourself look like kind of an idiot spewing blatant falsehoods like that.

Motherfucker, we literally quit shitposting in /5eg/ and /pfg/ for hours for this thread and you don't have the decency to be excellent and make good, thoughtful posts.

Exactly what blatant falsehoods did I spew? I played the game for 2 years and GMed a short campaign of it before I got absolutely sick of how godawful the system was.

You were stupid enough to play a system you hated for two years? Man, no wonder you have no idea how 4e works.

>one person in a group of seven
>enjoy hanging out with friends
>campaign had good RP so I just suffered through the combats
We eventually switched to 3.5 which they had never even heard of, once I showed it to them they hopped on that like red on rice. Still haven't sold the old 4e books, but havent played it either in nearly four years.

>Playing in such a large group
Are you insane?

>People playing 4e who had never heard of 3.5

Your story is getting less believable by the second.

...What do you even mean, meant to force tactics? Why is the system actually being built around teamwork and cooperation bad? And your second statement is just nonsense. Martial combat in 4e is provably deeper than the equivalent in other editions of D&D, providing real tactical choice and options. You might have grounds for not liking it, but trying to make an objective statement is just silly.

They also didn't remove 90% of spells, unless you're including all the bullshit third party stuff that ended up in 3.5. They just made the non-combat ones rituals, and most of the really powerful stuff was still in there, just more appropriately costed and broadly available. They also gave every single caster a unique spell list for combat, giving each casting class a more unique identity, role and playstyle than anything in 3.5.

The AEDU only doesn't 'make sense' if you go into the system with false assumptions about how things work, and if you think it reinforces the 15 minute adventuring day more than 3.5's daily spells did it's not only laughable, it's blatantly fucking untrue. The very existence of encounter powers means that a party can still go into a fight with a reasonable chance of success after burning all their dailies, with every character still having interesting options they can make use of. Surges are the real limit, and they just force you to pace yourself, not stop every fifteen minutes.

They picked up the game knowing it was D&D and that they wanted to play D&D. Pretty sure they thought edition was what it meant for other things: a slighty changed reprint, rather than a completely different game. Sorry youre deluded enough to think that everyone gets into RPGs through Veeky Forums and the internet and spends months reading d&d memes before getting into an actual game.

>The very existence of encounter powers means that a party can still go into a fight with a reasonable chance of success after burning all their dailies, with every character still having interesting options they can make use of.
This is true of 3.5 as well. Try reading the splatbooks.

Has anyone used any of the published dungeon delves or know where to find PDFs?

>Martial combat in 4e is provably deeper than the equivalent in other editions of D&D, providing real tactical choice and options
>probable
Lol okay prove it. And please start with the false assertion that shit like power attack isn't a "real" tactical choice just because it's based on actual information rather than "le ebin intuition" and "le ebin risktaking"

Usable squad level tactica and positioning that all members of the party have built in access to without the use of magic or feats at base, and only can goes up.
Aight, it's your game and group. It's about fun, at the end of the day.

Hey user, just curious why you're in the thread if you're just gonna be pissy about the thread topic? Surely you read it before you clicked it, right?

So you already know I'm right and you're trying to dismiss the most obvious proof of it? Okay.

A Martial in D&D, by default, has two options. Move and attack, or full attack. That's it. Combat maneuvers are worthless unless you build for them and most of them are of niche use in any case. 'Choosing' to power attack can count, I suppose, which brings your total number of discrete choices to three- Move and attack or full attack, and by how much to power attack. Both of which will be blatantly obvious choices in the vast majority of contexts. You might very occasionally think about using a combat maneuver, and then suffer an attack of opportunity and lose the action because they're a total trap. Tome of Battle Martials did improve this, but the ToB is basically proto-4e anyway, the origin of a good idea.

Meanwhile, in 4e, a starting Martial has two At Will's, an Encounter power and a Daily power, at absolute minimum, along with extra features from their class like a Fighters Marks that give extra weight to those choices. Even without getting into the largest part of 4e, the teamwork and synergy aspect, you still have more worthwhile options and meaningful choices, and it only gets better as you gain levels and get more fun things to use.

Huh, you had basically the opposite experience with D&D to me

I spent several years playing 3.5, getting to know the ins and outs of the system, but it's only when we moved to 4e that I felt like Dungeons and Dragons the game represented what all the D&D novels were talking about.

The thing is the pop culture representation of D&D is some weird hybrid of AD&D, 3e, and memes of shit that doesn't really exist (NAT 20 HURR).
If you don't explain what the game is, and what it expects, then yeah, you have a clash, and people get butthurt. It's why a responsible DM takes a minute to tell the players what the game is about, what it expects from the players, and how it works in practice.
I had a new player, for example, who thought that when they rolled dice for diplomacy and such, they got to dictate what the npc was doing, and not the DM.

Well, in some more narrativist games with shared agency, that's actually how it works. Which only makes it important to make it clear how the system you're actually running functions.

Ah, how easily a good thread is derailed into very, very weak 4e defense by a single low-quality shitposter.

Great job using the hide post option guys.

Exactly.
Once again, actual communication is how you have a good game.

>Enemies 30 ft away from a level 10 human Fighter in 3.5
>His only workable option is to charge and attack once or trip instead of attacking because everything else is fucking worthless and weapons have very little impact on this beyond maybe giving him reach or better tripping. Maybe he might be able to walk 10 feet forward and throw a net instead, but that's not any better.
>Enemies 6 squares away from a human Fighter in 4E
>Not only are his options completely different depending on what his weapon(s) are, he has several different abilities with different effects: he could attempt to burst down the biggest threat out of those enemies while letting the others pass, he could attempt to pull all of them together and mark them all with Come and Get It to make sure they can't ignore him, he could attempt to temp HP his way through it via Invigorating powers if he thinks they'll target him or he could be trying to get them to ignore him(and get punished through Combat Superiority).

Hey, hey now, user.
Pounce exists, and was a desired goal for any pc that would regularly charge into melee.
Let's not undersell it, here.

That's not really adding an extra option, though, that's just improving an existing one.

>when we moved to 4e that I felt like Dungeons and Dragons the game represented what all the D&D novels were talking about.
A game where the fighter can only disarm someone once per day cause he's too tired to do it anymore?

Are you really stupid enough to believe that's actually how it works?

A zero for creativity.

A 0 for white void theory crafting.

A 10 for completely false hyperbole about options in an RPG, especially of a level 10 character.

A 10 out of 10 for superhero, nonsense power fantasy that completely clashes with the narrative and makes no damn sense.

Then we're not talking about Fighters, we're talking about Fighter/Barbarian 1 with an ACF. And if Pounce is on the table there is no point in attempting anything other than pouncing, so they're still tactically shallow.

It was kind of annoying how a dip into either barbarian or cloistered cleric was absolutely essential for any melee character in 3.5
Pounce should have been how charge worked by default

It does, see

No, a game where a fighter only disarms one guy in a fight because typically that's how fights went in the novels.

>completely clashes with the narrative
How does it clash with the narrative when the narrative was presented exactly as such?
4e was heroic fantasy, and made no bones about presenting itself as such.
There were items that gave pounce or pseudo pounce capacity.

The only argument I see here is that the action economy in 3.5 is terrible. Good. You're right. Guess what, 5e fixed that too and it did it without terrible metagaming mechanics. And a fighters options in 4e are "move and blow my daily load" or "move and just use an atwill". The extra complication is just that. Sure strike is nothing but power attack in reverse and the 5 foot step shit is just pointless shuffling. And, mm3 math or not, the hp bloat is real.

That's not AEDU, dude. It's more of a narrative device than anything.

...You link something completely irrelevant to your post?

Yep the action economy in 3.5 is bad. Know how to fix it? One houserule. "Guys actions at gonna work kinda like in 5e, where full attack is a standard action." "Okay." Bam. Fixed. Whereas 4e combat is shit through and through.

People who bitch about it not making sense in 'rules as physics' terms are basically incapable of understanding the idea of a narrative abstraction.

>move and blow my daily load
Dude, I think everything he mentioned there is either at-will or encounter stuff.

No, the post I linked was 100% relevant. Fighters can only do exactly what the rules allow and nothing further. This is a board game.

This is the assumption you used, so if you're knocking it, apologize.

You can just say 'I don't like complex combat systems' user. We're not going to judge you for not getting it.

Then explain why a fighter can only disarm once per day. Ive heard every 4rry justification for dailies, I just went with the one that makes the most sense.

>using houserules as an excuse for the core rules being shit

DMG page 42 improvised action rules. You are explicitly proven wrong by the core rules of the game, and have proven yourself to be an ill informed idiot.

Complicated, not complex*

>most charges are shown as one mighty swing
>user wants charge to be "lol super sayan" autistic frenzy mode complete with chink eye gestures.

Because they're a narrative abstraction. It's not that you can only disarm someone once per day. It's that Dailies represent those big, awesome, once in a while moments in a fight scene when you pull off something really cool. You might not like narrative mechanics, but that doesn't stop make it making perfect sense in its own context.

You mean a rule that fixes literally nothing aside from ungimping full attacks because martials are still going to be moving and full attacking all the time because combat maneuvers suck shit?

2/10, try harder

Oh yes, so wrong.

Like I said, it's a board game. You're telling me I'm right, apologize?

>overly contrived plots by shitty writers should be reflected in an RPG
Actually getting disarm happens relatively rarely in fights and usually happens in books when the guy is supposed to be taken prisoner for narrative convenience. You want your game to reflect the decisions made by hacky writers?

That actually is exactly how AEDU works. You just don't like that I'm applying it to the narrative, when in fact it is a narrative mechanic that makes your game look like a hacky novel without the finesse. Lol.

...But that's wrong? I mean, the improvised damage table is a little low, but improvised attacks are still well worth using, especially if you're using the limited damage expressions.

Even then, that's not actually a criticism of the idea, just the implementation. Sure, it could have been better, but it was still a good idea.

I do like complex combat systems. Just not ones that have complexity for the sake of complexity. Or "options" just for the sake of having them. If I wanted the most complicated RPG ever I'd play fatal but I'm not gonna do that cause fatal sucks. Does that make me a brainlet? By your logic I guess it does.

Yes

I want my game to reflect a high fantasy adventure story. That means not using your most effective techniques all the time because it's more dramatic when they're only used rarely

>You are explicitly proven wrong because the DMG has a page for improvised action rules
>But this only counts for 4e, not for every other RPG

What did he mean by this?

Do you want to rely on the 3.5 attribute and skill systems for anything out of the ordinary? Fighters are not going to have a good time relying on any of those.

>But this only counts for 4e, not for every other RPG

That was never said.

Can you point me to 3.5's guidelines for improvised actions in combat? Or Pathfinders?

No I just want to do BIG DAMAGE without having to sacrifice one level to barbarian on every single melee combatant build regardless of intent

Why is it that every single thing was implemented badly and yet people defend it? Did you not see how much we posted earlier in this thread just to make it playable for OP?

At some point you have to admit that the whole thing was a great idea done so poorly it's shameful.

So you don't actually have an argument, you just don't like the system. You could have saved a lot of trouble by just expressing an opinion instead of indulging in faux-objective bullshit.

>that doesn't stop make it making perfect sense in its own context.
I can make 3.5s mechanics make sense in their own context too if I wanted but that doesn't make them good mechanics. Also why not have PCs have to be actually creative for those "big moments" and have a system that supports those, if you care so much about gay rule of cool bullshit.

Actually follow the reply chain before shitposting.
See:

But a lot of it wasn't implemented badly, and most of the big flaws were fixed. On launch 4e had a lot of problems, but by the end of its lifespan basically all of them had easy official or fanbase fixes. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

>a lot of it
>but no examples
ok

Because 4e has both, and the two sides make one another stronger? Discrete options you can rely on, along with a framework for pulling things off on the fly. If you actually use it, it works great.