If you are DMing, remember... 1. To strongly consider giving out at least one free "tax feat," like Expertise and pre-errata Melee Training. 2. To use Monster Manual 3/Monster Vault/Monster Vault: Nentir Vale/Dark Sun Creature Catalog math. Avoid or manually update anything with Monster Manual 1 or 2 math. 3. That skill challenges have always been scene-framing devices for the GM, that players should never be overtly told that they are in a skill challenge, and that the Rules Compendium has the most up-to-date skill DCs and skill challenge rules.
If you would like assistance with character optimization, remember to tell us what the what the rest of the players are playing, what books are allowed, your starting level, the highest level you expect to reach, what free feats you receive, if anything is banned, whether or not themes are allowed, your starting equipment, and how much you dislike item-dependent builds. If you wish to talk about settings, 4e's settings are Points of Light (the planes and the natural world's past empires are heavily detailed in various sourcebooks and magazines), 4e Forgotten Realms, 4e Eberron, 4e Dark Sun, and whatever setting you would like to bring into 4e.
It uses some pretty hefty house rules to make combat only 1-3 turns. As such, the players all love just demolishing things and most of them decided to go unarmed so it all seems extra brutal since it's hand-to-hand brawls. The Bard dominated an ogre and beat the Orc Chieftain to death with the brute. In the same encounter, the Fighter kept grabbing orcs climbing ladders and dropping them in the lava moat and they kept failing their saving throws to not die. It's all been pretty fun so far.
Samuel Flores
>As such, the players all love just demolishing things and most of them decided to go unarmed so it all seems extra brutal since it's hand-to-hand brawls.
Please tell me you have a wizard.
Landon Johnson
The barbarian's dying from a venomous spider bite, he's just too stubborn to admit it. The druid's panicking about getting everyone out alive. The rogue is currently tangled in webbing. The paladin thinks the druid might be his mother.
Chase Jenkins
They dont...theyve got a Sorcerer though. Party is Elementalist Sorcerer, Valor Bard (Unarmed), Whirling Slayer Barbarian (Unarmed), Brawling Fighter (Unarmed), and a Primal Guardian Druid. The math is worked out so magic items aren't necessary and so the Sorcerer and Druid both go about unarmed as well but obviously that doesn't matter much as they make very few melee attacks anyways.
Ryder Carter
Attacked by folk tales, handling the G-Man but a thousand times worse, dealing with Jesus, insane nobles, a former doppelganger, folk tales, the church's secret services, the rivers running red with wine and nationalist halflings.
Levi Martin
>the rivers running red with wine and nationalist halflings. Do we even want to know?
Cameron Perry
I'm fine with cold optimization in theory but I got tired of a) having to rack tons of little modifiers and b) having every party have a strange affinity for cold stuff.
Leo Martinez
Sounds like there are a lot of dead nationalist halflings...I could be okay with this.
There's also the trumpets of the apocalypse, the rapture's beginning, standos, eldritch beings, and the attack of the living clothes.
Anthony White
Not so many - they did fight alongside one in a train ride where they were ambushed by mutated giant slugs. He's a pretty good sniper. That said, train rides generally don't end well for them.
Justin Cruz
Well damn, this is why I advocate the oxford comma
Gavin Diaz
I'm working my way towards Gardmore Abbey starting at level 1. The party is currently Eladrin Paladin, Elf Ranger with bow, Kenku Bard and Human Bladesinger, but I'm waiting to know if a fifth player is joining or not. In a couple of sessions they're headed into Thunderspire Labyrinth, which I've been reworking extensively - I reduced greatly the number of encounters, turned the first exploration of the maze into a huge skill challenge with a few variables, and scrapped the duergar fortress for a cooler one I stole from Shackled City. All in all it's been good fun.
Cameron Morris
The party has fucking played itself better than I could possibly imagine. They murdered a pretender necromancer who was involved in intrigue within the town, then called the cops, and proceeded to talk themselves into getting arrested. The high priest of the town, believing the party to be the saviors of the townsfolk due to slaying the necromancer, led a pitchfork mob to bust them out, and now the party is playing the unwilling part of "heroes" as the priests leads the mob to the sacred crypt, long abandoned due to the "necromancer", to resanctify it. However, the mayor of the town appeared in the path, and invoking a rite of Righteous Vengeance, has now challenged the entire party to mortal combat in the name of the grandson the party murdered, and the priest had to officiate the battle. Gotta twist that knife. Then they will get to the crypt. Also, is there any DRmags that go into dwarven etiquette as it pertains to mealtime?
Easton Russell
Also, the party as it stands are human bladesinger, eladrin avenger, human fighter, gnome runepriest, dwarf cleric, and dragonborn warden. Gonna key it up, the battles will be fun!
Kayden Howard
For a potential 4e rewrite, would people be annoyed if 'Wizard' wasn't a class in core?
The problem is that in a world with ubiquitous magic, a professional magic user is a bit overly broad and vague as a basis for a class, it lacks much in the way of focused identity and tends towards being a bit of a 'do everything' class. The scholarly element is something you could build around, but our current thoughts on focusing on that would make the class more complicated, possibly not something you want to offer as a core, default class.
Instead, we're thinking of offering a more focused arcane controller, a dedicated abjurer focusing on the themes of magic binding, controlling and sealing, which has a lot of mythological and fictional precedent. Would that annoy people? Should we offer the advanced version of the Wizard in the core book anyway, as an option for people looking for more complexity in the game, even if they occupy the same Source/Class slot?
Adam Young
Our DM is running CoS with some alterations, bretty gud so far. The party is fey as fuck at the moment. Elf swordmage, drow rogue, drow warlock, human battle cleric, human fighter (slayer, modified to work more like a 4e class), and our sixth party member joined last session, playing Ireena as a paladin (cavalier, I believe).
We've put some ghost kids to rest and defended a temple from the perfidious dead. The latter encounter was technically three encounters with short rests between, with a bunch of vampires raising the dead outside before finally attacking themselves, while we desperately try to hold until morning. Felt very much like Dog Soldiers, especially when two of us had to rush into the graveyard and back to find the grave of the master vampire, to grab some grave dirt that could bind him and the birchwood stake that was meant to keep him at rest. We put that shit through his heart and lashed him to his own gravestone to wait for the sunrise.
Current MVP is the slayer, mostly because he rolled like a god at character creation (we're level 3, and his statline is 18, 15, 18, 13, 18, 9).
>For a potential 4e rewrite, would people be annoyed if 'Wizard' wasn't a class in core?
I wouldn't mind.
I tend to disclude wizards from my games for the exact reasons you've provided.
Jaxon Jones
>disclude
the word you're looking for is "exclude"
Luis Davis
An arcane class more overtly themed around binding and sealing would be interesting, but I would not call it an "abjurer" for fear of that sounding too defense-oriented. Perhaps it could be called the "weaver," and themed around manipulating webs of fate, interpersonal connections, and cosmic energies?
Honestly I think wizard is too big a sacred cow, its reach goes well over just D&D. Maybe call it "wizard (abjurer)" so you keep the term and also have a possible avenue for future expansions. You could easily be more specific with the prerequisites of feats and powers to avoid cross-pollination.
Samuel Sanders
>and our sixth party member joined last session, playing Ireena as a paladin
While that's kinda interesting, do you not feel that it makes her outshine everyone a bit in terms of importance? She's not the DM's girlfriend, is she, because it kinda feels like that sort of situation.
Also two good aligned drow in one party would really rustle my jimmies.
Hudson Ramirez
That might work, along with one of the weirder ideas we're experimenting with.
Basically, 'Chain' powers, which link two creatures, whether enemies or allies. A Chain might prevent two creatures moving further away from each other, cast on a defender and an enemy to keep them locked down, or a Chain you cast on two enemies that causes any damage or conditions inflicted on one to also be inflicted on the other. We think there might be some interesting design space to explore there.
Do you think including the Wizard in core, as an explicitly marked out more complex option, would help ease that?
Tyler Stewart
Chain coul also be used to pull or do the good ole "trip them with your chain".
Could have a reaction triggered by a move that lets you affix a chain; if the chain is in the path of the target that triggered the move, he is tripped.
Anthony James
>Do you think including the Wizard in core, as an explicitly marked out more complex option, would help ease that?
I don't think you need to have a Wizard as an arcane class who can learn any kind of spells and do everything, I know how much of a problem that is. I'm just saying to keep the name in some fashion.
Sebastian Carter
>do you not feel that it makes her outshine everyone a bit in terms of importance?
We'll see. It's not necessarily a bad thing for one character to be very important for part of campaign. I've never done the adventure model but I know it only goes on until about 8th-10th level, and she won't be important once we're out of Barova.
>She's not the DM's girlfriend, is she
Only one person at the table is a dude, and it's not the DM.
>Also two good aligned drow in one party would really rustle my jimmies.
Yeah it rustled me at first, too, especially since they're the newest players. But it turned out they're both evil aligned at the moment and they have pretty cool backstories. They're twins who decided they'd not murder one another for Lolth's amusement, and fled to the surface. The warlock is an ex-cleric who, cast out of Lolth's grace, turned to eldritch powers to protect her. They both started the campaign as prisoners being transported to elvish lands to face trial before we got misted into Barovia. Ferrying them there was the party's original goal.
Julian Morgan
>Only one person at the table is a dude, and it's not the DM. That still doesn't end the option of her being the DM's girlfriend, I'm afraid. Or possibly boyfriend.
Cooper Moore
Well, the 'Chain' keyword would specifically be for powers that relied on targeting two enemies, and creating some sort of mechanical link between them. A chain that pulled two creatures closer together would work, though.
Like I said, we do have an idea for making a version of that Wizard work, but it'd be more mechanically complicated than most classes.
The tl;dr of our idea being a variant power structure, where Wizards get a lot of different At Will powers, while all their Encounter and Daily powers take the form of Metamagics, adding damage, area or properties to their at wills, letting them customise their spells on the fly. That emphasis on control, that a Wizard can take a basic bit of magic and warp and twist it to do a vast variety of things, feels like a good way of emphasising them as a scholarly, learned magic user, as opposed to a Sorcerers big, powerful preset spells.
Luis Flores
Ah, I was thinking it could target objects. It'd make sense, usually you can (or should be able to) do that with most attack spells.
Jason Collins
As far as I'm aware, none of us are lesbians.
The dude is the fighter. Apparently, even when set in magic gothic horror fantasy Romania, 4e always ends up as a shonen anime.
Jonathan Bailey
Two "chain" powers come to mind from the seeker, of all places:
Those look like good examples of the kind of design space we were seeking to explore with them, thanks!
Something we're trying to do is have a few more keywords for common things 4e did a lot, to make things easier or to suppress modifier bloat. Things like -2 to defences or -2 to attacks becoming conditions you can inflict and interact with makes it slightly easier to remember, as well as filling out options for lower level monsters since most status effects for 4e aren't really things you can have monsters spam.
Logan Moore
>Ah, I was thinking it could target objects. It'd make sense, usually you can (or should be able to) do that with most attack spells.
Honestly, with SOME chains that wouldn't be a bad idea. It's a vidya example but HOTS has the Butcher with his ability to chain a guy to a hitching post and make them unable to go too far from it.
Cameron Perry
One of the utility powers could be putting down a post like that.
Or possibly as a side-effect of an at-will
Adam Cook
Yeah or just making it part of the power. Binding people to a location having, fluffwise there being some connection.
Ryder Robinson
After conferring with my contacts on the matter of the house rules for my games I had posted earlier ( docs.google.com/document/d/1bWcZlNL0zbYx13YX8wz4KhY1GnSvB4S_d6G3YsTXdek/edit ), I ultimately decided that the following scheme for simulating frostcheese without actually using frostcheese would work best.
• Level 2: +2 bonus to weapon and implement damage rolls. This represents Silvery Glow's +1 over Weapon/Implement Focus, and the Siberys Shard of Merciless Cold. • Level 11: Improves to +5 bonus. This represents Lasting Frost, albeit in a lesser form. • Level 12: Improves to +8 bonus. This represents Gloves of Ice, albeit in a lesser form, and an upgraded Siberys Shard of Merciless Cold. • Level 22: Improves to +11 bonus. This represents upgraded Gloves of Ice, albeit in a lesser form, and an upgraded Siberys Shard of Merciless Cold. • Note: Subtract 1 from the above if you have a +2/+3/+4 feat bonus to damage rolls feat along the lines of Githzerai Blade Master.
This keeps everyone's damage bonuses in line with ever-increasing monster health, albeit in a mildly weaker form due to it being 100% free. Also, it does not actually require the usual cold package. Should I tone down these numbers? After all, compared to the genuine cold package, this costs nothing.
Note that dragonshards would be banned in the above scheme.
Noted on the changes. Will look at it and put up a revised version later on. Thanks!
Isaac Price
Party is currently dealing with some political intrigue as a side plot considering that the plot NPC just got kidnapped and they're trying to figure out how to get them back, we left off in a cliffhanger of them in a warehouse in some scummy district getting ambushed by quicklings and a blade spider.
Gabriel Ramirez
I ran Thunderspire as well but I'm using the whole H1-E3 series with the Orcus conversion modules so there was still the Duergar fortress.
Owen Diaz
I've seen the conversion but it wasn't exactly what I wanted, also because I plan on doing only thunderspire because it fit my vision. There's a ton of good stuff about redoing the H series floating around though. No, I literally just scrapped the map and stole the one from Paizo because I like the layout better and I could have it last just 4 or 5 encounters instead of 10. I'm trying to compress things a bit, I love the game but the published modules are a slog.
Carson Walker
I agree, some of them have been a slog, some have been really fun.
Kevin Barnes
I keep forgetting about that, damnit.
Alexander Lopez
How functional would this game be if one attempted to remove feats and adjust the encounters mathematically to compensate?
>Enough numbers! We all know how the game works by now! Actually, I like 2hu's standard copypasta-OP-4eg-reminders. They're good suggestions, and maybe someone is coming into the general who doesn't know them.
Angel Hughes
I too have wonder this. Can some wise wizard give is this knowledge?
>Tell me about your current party or campaign They're smack-dab in the middle of epic-tier ATM, and they've recently snuck into the belly of a sapient universe that's trying to "fix" the shattered sapience of their universe, where the souls it's already taken are waiting to be absorbed/digested. It manifests itself to them as a giant dungeon-sized restaurant, where the patrons are all waiting for their food, and each room is a slightly different era of restaurant. They just spiked the food with a poison that will get... most... of the "patrons" out unscathed, and will also attract the direct attention of the sapient universe. So far they've just been fighting its non-sapient "antibodies."
Fey-as-fuck druid of plants and kitties... and kitty-plants.... and plant-kitties. Most of her attacks are fluffed as throwing various seeds at enemies and accelerating their growth mid-flight.
The chosen-son child-soldier of a race of fey, the first to be turned mortal (their chief is trying to re-ensoul their tribe.) . Mechanically a bard, but fluffwise, more of a weaponized telepath.
A 7-foot tall half-fey rogue, who actively rejects the authority his lineage gives him as a liege. He stabs the ever loving shit out of things. Also he's Australian, and his knife is one die-size bigger than everyone else's knives (mechanical bugbear) and it's lead to a number of obligatory jokes.
An ex-farmer who just wants his fucking wife back, but fate keeps throwing him into the role of the protag: he's currently sharing a body with.... three?... cosmic beings, and he's not too happy about it.
Bug-man warrior, out to fulfill a deal with a fey lord to hunt a truly worthy prey, thus granting the hive safety for another hundred years. His hive MAY have already been eaten by the sapient universe, and he MIIIIGHT be the last of his kind, but if he can still fulfill the fey-pact in time, that might be undone.
Noah Butler
I got rid of the overwhelming majority of the "more math" feats, in exchange for a modified inherent bonuses table that folds in magic armor, magic neck items, magic weapons, and the tax-feat feat bonuses to all of the relevant values.
Theoretically, with that chart, you COULD eliminate most feats, though you would need to tone down the monster-threats a bit... not actually in the math department, but more in the "bullshit they can do that breaks the rules" department
The viability of feats are massively disparate and many of them are fittingly referred to as a tax, and I feel like the game supplies enough character diversity and optimization challenge without having to wade through nearly Pathfinder levels of trap options.
Wyatt Hall
>The paladin thinks the druid might be his mother. What?
Daniel Martin
One the one hand, sorting through thousands of feats isn't very fun. On the other hand, some of the more situational feats can be fun for fleshing out character concepts that aren't necessarily covered by class features or powers. On the other-other hand, removing everything but the situational feats will just create a new hierarchy of optimal feats that will still have to be sorted through; it might even make feat selection even more binary.
Gavin Cruz
There's a lot of ways to get extra damage/defense out of feats beyond what you've got there mate, thought I taught you that by now
Jeremiah Harris
Except they aren't? Feat taxes are a thing but there's no need to hand them out for free, monster math is not as bad as he says, and not telling players that a skill challenge is on is just bad advice.
Benjamin Lewis
>Feat taxes are a thing but there's no need to hand them out for free
You're technically correct, you do not need to hand them out for free, but it's still a good idea to do so. It allows your players more creative control over their character
Henry Price
>and not telling players that a skill challenge is on is just bad advice. I dont play 4e, but that seems like it would lead to more organic gameplay. How does it break down?
Adrian Peterson
>Except they aren't? Feat taxes are a thing but there's no need to hand them out for free, monster math is not as bad as he says, and not I've been giving Expertise an Melee Training (Sans Mearls' retarded errata) since they came out in 2009, and it's worked out well so far.
This is true, if you are who I'm 99% certain you are, you milk a lot of extra damage out of those feats without the label "feat bonus," ... but you're also the second most insufferable optimizer in the thread right now (not that the party minds.)
However was asking if removing/slowing-the-prograssion-of feats could be done, and I think that Modified Inherents 3.0 plus a general backscaling of monster-riders would work.... personally I'd find it less fun and would never want to do it, but it would work. Judging from a couple other threads around here, it looks like one thing that a lot of people liked was how 5e did feats (I don't get it either) and some people want to find a way to apply that to 4e... for some reason...
>I dont play 4e, but that seems like it would lead to more organic gameplay. How does it break down?
We've had a lengthy discussion about this a few threads ago, but basically my point is that making clear that a skill challenge has started signals to the players that there is a clear objective to the scene they're in, that they can expend resources to reach that objective, and that everybody at the table is expected to find a way to contribute. Plus, in general I find that clear communication between GM and players is desirable. The gameplay can still be organic, because telling players they're in a challenge doesn't mean you don't add narrative between the rolls or interaction, the same way you would do in combat.
Jonathan Sanchez
Why does the scene need a clear objective?
Hudson Carter
Because it's a skill challenge? Not all scenes need to be skill challenges, but all skill Challenges need a goal.
Jack Cruz
>the second most insufferable optimizer in the thread right now
That's what I get for having a job. Gonna have to bump him down to third later.
Jaxon Miller
I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!
Alexander Ross
5e feats work well for 5e, mostly because they're the antithesis of 4e feats. 5e feats get to be pretty powerful because you don't get them very often and they come at the cost of ability score increases. Because a character will get so few of them, you don't have to worry about tracking a ton of small bonuses or remembering a large number of situational benefits. Because they are so powerful, it feels like a big boost when you get one and you don't run into situations where you're only taking a feat because it is a prerequisite for a later feat or because it's part of some combo that won't turn on for another 3 levels.
Of course, these types of feats would not work in 4e. You get feats far too often for them to be all that strong, this problem would only get worse if you removed the opportunity cost of the math feats by using the modified inherent bonuses. Also, 4e characters are far more customizable than 5e characters; having 5e-like feats in 4e would probably decrease build diversity rather than increase it.
Christian Jenkins
Honestly though, I'm not that guy and far from an optimizer, but I too would revamp the feat system in an ideal 4e retroclone. You could consolidate a lot of the feats into the base math, and leave only the most flavorful ones for picking. Under this paradigm you don't need to give out a feat every two levels; 3 per tier (if they're meaty enough) would suffice. It's limiting if you look at it from where the game is now, but who is ever going to take the guild training, blowgun mulitclass, or any of those minor ones?
Jason Long
Well, you can just tell them there's a clear goal (or better yet, have them establish that goal) without telling them there's a skill challenge.
Brayden Moore
What do you gain from not telling them? Also, keep in mind that a skill challenge is a scene designed by the DM the same way combat is a scene designed by the DM. It's supposed to be used only when it makes sense to be used, and with some thought put into it. This does not limit the characters from having their own goals or the GM to having to frame everything as a skill challenge.
Adam Bell
Improvising a SC is much easier than improvising a combat, and more useful imo. What do you gain by announcing it? There are a few powers/mechanics that the players need to know they are in a skill challenge to use, I guess, but otherwise it seems like the only thing you gain is the players fretting over failures.
Julian Bell
>What do you gain by announcing it?
As I said, you make the objective clear, make clear that everybody is supposed to find something useful to do instead of just waiting in the sidelines, and make it so that some tactical decisions can be taken. I don't know, it might be the way I'm used to running my games, but I really never had an issue with being clear. I've seen people here coming to narrative scenes with the mindset of optimizing skill results and successes over failures, but that's not the way I play.
Luke Carter
>As I said, you make the objective clear
You can do that without announcing the skill challenge. I can see some value in making it more explicit I guess.
> make clear that everybody is supposed to find something useful to do instead of just waiting in the sidelines
The classic problem with running skill challenges RAW means that the guy who feels he can't contribute with his good skills is absolutely best off sitting it out for fear of accruing failures.
I'm not saying every group/player will act like this, but this is only a benefit if your group _otherwise_ doesn't try to use its skills, which is not baseline by any stretch.
I honestly haven't ran into any big problems running it either way, I just don't see the point of the announcement, and it feels smoother without announcing.
Julian Mitchell
The largest issue I notice with a supposedly seamless transition between "regular" noncombat scenes and skill challenges is that characters cannot take 10 during skill challenges. Mechanically, it makes perfect sense to ban taking 10 during skill challenges, and yet it creates an artificial divide between such scenes and other noncombat scenes.
It is also a dead giveaway to a player. If they are investigating something and they are suddenly and arbitrarily barred from taking 10, that is a good sign that they are in a skill challenge.
What I do in my own games is ban taking 10 altogether, though this has caused its own issues.
I didn't even realize take 10 is a rule in 4e. Never seen it used.
Jason Jackson
Guild Training/Tribal Feats are like super niche, just need a whole reason for the entire party to grab them then they become useful.
Xavier Thomas
I agree with getting rid of math feats, but I still like the idea of feats being small tweaks and so I wouldn't like to see the number of feats a character gets going down too much. Maybe something like 5/4/3. I would also like to see better organization for the feats- I think the Essentials books were on to something with their feat categories.
Julian Clark
You can take 20 as well, it just never comes up.
Hunter Watson
Tried to fix up the homebrew, cleaned some stuff up, changed the formatting, and rejiggered shit around to fit the usual way Themes are, as well as changed some powers. Tell me what you think!
I'm also ruminating on the idea of crafting a Heroic Tier adventure for my setting. Would anyone be interested in those?
Instead of giving everyone a free extra feat at first level, can simply give everyone a Tier bonus to Saves and Attack?
Jaxson Robinson
life-tribe prana is poorly written, it implies that you can spend temporary hit points rather than gaining them
John Bell
I think I preferred the old version of the Datu compared to this.
Ruler's Boon is extremely weak, especially by the standards of the Guardian, the Ironwrought, and the Sohei. A standard action theme power is already very sketchy. If it was a minor action close burst 10 that granted allies a +2 power bonus to attack rolls until the end of your next turn, then that would be worth considering.
The level 5 feature could perhaps drop the +2 Intimidate against spirits, in favor of +2 Insight against spirits.
The level 10 feature could be more flavorful as a +1 untyped bonus to initiative for you and your allies within 10 squares, ala Combat Leader.
I've Got Your Back should specify a d20 roll.
Life-Tribe Prana should say "and gains temporary hit points."
What Being a Datu Means should probably be an encounter power, and should drop the (mysteriously unspecified) power bonus.
That is possible, but it would mean fewer ways to differentiate characters via Expertise feats and defense feats.
Staff Expertise is arguably overpowered among Expertise feats, however, since it removes the one major weakness of ranged characters.
Noted. Time for Revised 2. The level 5 feature applies to all rolls however, and not limited to spirits.
I really wanted to emphasize the whole "head of the party" feel of a Datu and give him powers that would enable or buff his teammates. Really wanted to make it an all out Leader Theme.
The level 5 feature is something that could use a bit more flavor to it. Perhaps something like "You gain a +2 power bonus to Diplomacy. Choose one skill out of Bluff, Insight, and Intimidate, and then choose a second and different skill from those three. You gain a +2 power bonus to the first skill when dealing with non-spirits, and a +2 power bonus to the second skill when dealing with spirits."
Ruler's Boon is currently a smidge too strong, even by Guardian and Ironwrought standards. Here is how I would revise the Effect line: ""The target gains a +2 power bonus to attack rolls until the end of your next turn. Once before the end of your next turn, a single target can reroll an attack roll that misses, but must use the second result."
What Datu Mean's final sentence is vastly overpowered. I would change this to an encounter power and have it work as follows: >Daily, Martial >Immediate Interrupt, Close burst 10 >Trigger: An enemy hits an ally in the burst >Effect: The attack hits you instead, even if you are out of reach or range of the attack. You or the triggering ally can then spend a healing surge, and then the triggering ally gains a power bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls equal to your highest ability modifier until the end of the triggering enemy's next turn.
It cannot be much worse than level 10 warlord powers.
>has anyone run any pre-published adventures? How did it go? Which one was your favorite?
I did a couple. - twisting halls (red box) is pretty much a lvl 1 tutorial: fight room, trap room, puzzle room, skill challenge room, boss room. It's fine for what it is and offers a couple of books to expand it, but that's all. - reavers of Harkenwold is bretty good. Non-linear, varied, and detailed on the story side. It's not perfect, and has a couple of gimmicky points (like the elf part) but it's better than the average. - keep on the Shadowfell and thunderspire labyrinth are all over the place. The structures are decent, the plots too thin, and there's too many pointless encounters. I used both by cutting and pasting sections in my adventures but I wouldn't run them straight.
Carson Ortiz
I did Khyber's Harvest, which was... something. Kind of wish I hadn't used the symbiotes because my players (a) refuse to use them and (b) refuse to give them up. Also I forgot my players are complete sociopaths and have no empathy for any NPC, so they just shot the important hostage at the end.
Jacob Peterson
Oh, I also ran a couple of the Chaos Scar ones from Dungeon mag, but those trouble me. The two I did were fun little side treks of a few encounters with nicely weird stuff, but there's like 10 of them for level 1, so it's clear that they're not made to be run all together. I think they were trying to do a sandbox but it ended up just being a funnel for neat ideas that didn't deserve a whole adventure.
Chase Smith
I guess that looks good now?
Jackson Howard
It was mentioned alongside the Wizard class earlier, but a discussion of our potential 4e rewrite has moved on to something potentially even more divergent.
We're rooting our game heavily in mythic fantasy, more so than modern fantasy literature. We expect it to be able to do both, but the former felt like an interesting and less explored basis for things, and lets us play with aesthetics and eras to create something a bit more distinctive- For example, a world with a near total lack of Plate armour.
However, that has lead us to a conundrum. 'Arcane' magic is basically an invention of D&D and modern fantasy. In terms of mythology and cultural traditions, all forms of magic is what 4e would call Primal, Divine or arguably Shadow. The idea of magic as something completely disconnected from the gods or natural world, as this intensely inward looking scholarly pursuit, isn't really something with much precedence.
We're figuring out how to do Arcane magic, and we think we have an idea for making it work, but like the Wizard it would involve the classes using it having quite distinct and unusual mechanics to their powers, which might mean Arcane wouldn't make sense as a power source for the core book. How would people feel about a core book that was Martial, Divine, Primal and Shadow instead? Adding that we're broadening the definition of Shadow a bit, making it a general source for subtlety and misdirection based classes, soft power and secret, insidious arts as opposed to the direct physical power of Martial. Rogue, for example, would be a Shadow class with our reworking of it.
Luis Rodriguez
Are you cocksuckers just aping Exalted now.
Evan Bennett
Have you considered that 'arcane' could actually be 'eldritch' or 'infernal'?
Brandon Howard
...No? Exalted is based on certain aspects of mythology and the heroes of those stories, but that's always been a foundation of modern fantasy literature as well. We're not casting off modern fantasy trappings entirely, but instead we're going back to that earliest source material for inspiration.
Asher James
None of the names are final, we're likely to retheme everything just to avoid any accusations of plagiarism, along with completely rewriting all the rules from the bottom up. Infernal is more something that Shadow would cover though, our current thoughts is that our Warlock is also going to be a Shadow class.
Jacob Robinson
What I mean is, magic of the kinds wizards practice, either in mythology or more modern fiction, usually comes from a powerful and often evil or incomprehensible outside force. Basically, run your arcane magic as either coming from demons or coming from azathoth.
Aaron Butler
Isn't Exalted like the exact opposite of that?
Evan Sullivan
Currently running the H1-E3 Orcus series with the conversion modules, just hit Trollhaunt Warrens, been fun so far.
