Anyone know how tall the ceilings are in the Mandibles of Fate? The King has Prismatic Wall, but is he actually able to use it on the bridge?
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Are the discovery DCs for Sihar missing from page 19? Anyone know where I can find them?
That's what I do, too. A while back, we had a thread about encounter design where someone suggested that every 4e combat should have a "twist" - reinforcements show up from other rooms, terrain changes during the fight, or some other challenge appears. I've really tried to take this to heart, and I've found that it's made my encounters much more interesting. I really like the way that Matthew broke this encounter down a few posts back. That's a great 4e encounter right there!
To track initiative, I use a GameMastery Combat Pad setup in a picture frame holder so everyone can see. We've used the Combat Pad for a while, too. It's a very nice product. We typically designate one party member to be the "initiative guy" and it's his job to let people know when it's their turn, who is "on deck" etc.
That's absolutely great, Stedd. I'm gonna try that method when I write the encounters for my next session.
We run 3-4 combats in a 5ish hour session. Run more easy encounters. They're fun for the players, they're quick, and they get you through milestones. I try to keep a 1:2:1 ratio for easy:medium:hard encounters. Often, I find that interesting terrain and effects are more fun than adding more monsters to a fight. They're also a lot quicker at the table. Also, I see you're at paragon tier. From my experience, I find that combat does slow a bit as you move up in levels. People have more options, and it's quite a bit harder to damage the enemies.
I believe that Duergar has a lot of power behind it... And I think that's exactly what he's trying to avoid. You say to your players, "That's the Duergar kingdom", and they have a pre-formed idea of what that place should look like. Bur if you say, "that's the realm of the Iron Dwarves", then I think you spark some curiosity, and also get the players to come into the situation with fresh minds.
why not just change the Duergar back to what they were and replace Giants with Duergar? Maybe he doesn't want all the baggage that comes along with the Duergar? From the looks of things, he's trying to break away from Canonical ideas.
I like the concept a lot. I like how you've written out all the steps in your creative process, too. I love Hard Boiled Cultures - it's a great supplement. One Bad Egg had some of the best 4e products available, I was very sad to see that they had folded. I thought that's what the Duergar were already? 4e's taken the Duergar in a bit of a different direction, they're all about summoning demons (or devils, I can't remember) and making infernal pacts. I like them, although I'm not fond of the spiky hair they've given them. I'd want to know what happened to the Aboleths. What is the 'gotcha' for their long term plans... Me too! I wanna write this campaign.
The only mention of minotaurs in Ebberon that I remember was in Droam where that are mainly used as foot soildiers and the cogs below Sharn as bodyguards to gang leaders. That sounds about right to me. Droaam is their native land, so you might also expect to find them in the Shadow Marches, the Eldeen Reaches, and Western Breland. You're unlikely to find them further than that unless they're adventurers or House Deneith mercenaries.
Not trying to start anything, but shouldn't there be some kind of consequences? By removing a fairly large chunk of the system, and everything still running smooth, doesn't this add to the "everything plays the same" argument? That's a valid question, and the answer is: maybe? The system is designed in a "modular" fashion, so removing a power source (or adding one) doesn't cripple the game. It does change the feel of the game substantially. Most of the Divine characters, regardless of their role (striker, defender, leader, controller) are good at healing and buffs/debuffs. The drawback is, as you have mentioned, that because of the modular nature of the game, there's some repetition between classes. For example, look at the leader classes (cleric, warlord, bard, shaman). each of them has a healing ability that works basically the same way: minor action, target guy gets back healing surge + 1d6 hp. However, they each perform that action in their own special way: the cleric gets some bonus healing, the warlord gets to shift the target around, the bard give the target some temporary hp in addition to the healing, and the shaman (I can't remember). So, some redundancy, but with minor adjustments that make a big difference in the way a class feels on the table.
Characters who use the Arcane power source will have an at will ability called Arcane Defiling. It's an at-will, free action power which allows you to re-roll attack or damage rolls when you use a daily power. However, when you use it, all allies within 20 squares take damage equal to half their surge value. As a visual effect, plants in the area wither and die.
Weren't those just the preview versions? I didn't think the full content for each class is there yet.
the "new options" include Psionics rules that don't work like any other power source, all the rest of which work the same. Psionics has always had a 'different' system, usually abuseable/broken, and it was one of the few things that 4E's 'Power Source' system could actually fix....and they changed it for Psionics...to what seems to me to be a more "flexible" (i.e. abuse prone) version of a Power Source. We've had a bit of limited experience with 4e's psionics system, and it didn't seem broken or abusive to me. I'm sure someone will find exploits with the system, however, it seems to me that such exploits will generally fall into the typical problem of poorly written powers, rather than an overall broken system. One nice thing about 4e is that the entire system is very "modular." You don't like the psionics? Just drop the psionic power source. It's already been rumored (confirmed?) that 4e Dark Sun is going to drop the divine power source. No Clerics, Paladins, Avengers, Invokers, etc. You'd probably have a hard time doing that in 3rd edition without making massive changes to the rules (especially regarding healing) In 4e? No problem.
I'm not sure if it's in there yet. The updates usually run about a month behind the releases of the books.
I can't help but wonder if there's a good set of guidelines floating a round for this sort of thing. A "Managing the Rails" series of articles would make a good addition to Dungeon magazine, I think. 1. Acknowledge that there are going to be rails. Tell your group up front, "This campaign is going to be about..." and inform them that you expect them to make appropriate characters. You can be more polite about it, too. Asking, "Hey, how do you guys feel about playing a military themed campaign about fighting off a goblinoid invasion?" will probably get people's creative juices running. It'll also help people design their characters - now a player can come back with: "Yeah, and I joined the army after my dad was killed by a one-eyed hobgoblin shaman." Now you've got a great enemy to use for the game. 2. Group Character Creation. Design your characters as a group, before you begin the campaign. I like to take a whole evening for this, or run a half-session of character design and then let people go home and work out the details. The idea is, the group sits around and brainstorms their character ideas, they work out the general aspects of their backgrounds. They write shared backgrounds for their characters (we're from the same town, we're cousins, we served in the same unit during the War). Every character should be connected to at least one or two other characters right from the start. As the DM, you can take an active role in this by asking questions and giving advice. "Was is a one-eyed hobgoblin shaman that killed your father? OK, and so maybe your father is also this other character's mentor. Wow, that fits together really well." Some players will fight you on group character creation, saying that it's not worth it to show up if they aren't actually going to play D&D. I typically insist, because it's so important for the rest of the campaign. 3. Really brief questionnaires. Some DMs use questionnaires, others don't. I prefer to use really brief ones, like so:
Anyone want to add to this list?
what do you do when a player says they don't want to go into the dungeon? "See you next week." If it happens again, he's gone. Seriously. I've got a 5 other players at the table and a waiting list of people who want to get into my campaign, I don't need to cater to some guy who wants to hijack the game to stroke his ego.In all honesty, this almost never happens, though. Players learn pretty quick that the dungeon is where the fun happens. It's only the really juvenile ones who want to go off on their own all the time. Also, my usual group puts a lot effort into creating a good, cohesive group right from the outset. They invest themselves into the plot, rather than wait for the plot to invest itself in them. Those are the players you want. Anyone else, you can boot. There are always players looking for a DM, very seldom do you find a DM looking for players.
I think the books say that the most recent incarnation of Sharn goes back to the beginning of the kingdom of Galifar. Prior to that, there were goblinoid ruins on the site, and before that there has been a trading post there as long as human or goblin history can recall.
From a rping perspective, I hate it, since it seems one of the characters you play always ends up disappearing into the background Yeah, I'd suggest having the companions be henchmen or lesser followers. They can hold their own in combat, but they're clearly not the heroes of the story.
How difficult is it to have a game with only two players in 4th ed? The game works best with 4-5 characters. I suggest you let each player control two characters. This might not work if you've got players who are still learning the rules. DMG2 has rules for creating "Companion characters" which are perfect for the situation you describe. Basically, the companions are followers, henchmen, animal companions, etc. They use similar rules to creating player characters, but are tweaked a bit to make them more streamlined. However, using those rules, you could easily add a couple more guys to the party.
The other issue that I had was that my large and huge miniatures didn't fit as well into hexes as I wished. How did you handle this? I'm guessing: Large creatures = 4 hexes in a box shape, Huge creatures = 7 hexes? Or was it large creatures = 7 hexes and huge creatures = more.
So, I've been thinking a lot lately about using a hex map for 4e instead of a grid. I think it would work really well. Bursts and blasts would appear round, instead of squares. All the silly 'banana charges' would make more sense. Plus, hex maps are way better for figuring out ranges than grid maps. The only drawback I can see right now is that I like to make my maps in excel. Does anyone know of a good, free program which will draw dungeon maps in hexes? Also, can anyone else think of any major drawbacks to playing with hexes rather than grids? I suppose if worse came to worse, I could draw them maps freehand, scan them in, then overlay the hexes over them. That seems like a lot of work.
it's AWESOME. Turns KotS into its own fully-fleshed mini-campaign. Wow! That is really cool! I wish I had seen that site before running my KotS game. It's a decent starter module, but it's a dungeon crawl. The DM really needs to put some work into fleshing out the area a bit if you want to get the players really involved.
How many players are in the gaming group? 5 is the "default" number for a 4e game. 4-6 seems to work just fine. We've run games with 3 without too much difficulty, but 7 is very crowded. Even 6 feels like one too many in my opinion.
Well, the Mark of Death trilogy plays fairly fast and loose with canon (not that there was as much back then). There still isn't, right? One of the core concepts of Eberron was that everything published outside of the campaign setting guide was just a suggestion, and that the DM had plenty of space to create.
Not neccessarily. while elementals are alive, harnessing one to drive your ship or train may not be anything more eggregious than harnessing a team of very willful horses to drive a carriage. Many, if not most elementals might not have more than an animal level of intelligence. If you go by the 3rd edition rules, even the elder elementals had only intelligence 6-10, with the lesser elementals having intelligence scores as low as 4. So, none of them are quite as stupid as horses, but most of them aren't as smart as normal people, either. I always got the impression there were different ways to bind the elemental, for example, bribes, threats, or just doing it with outright force, however, most people just went for the force method because it was the most effective.
That's interesting. I'm still going to pick it up with the Amazon discount, but maybe some of my players will have it by this week's game.
I have the Monster Builder and Character Builder loaded on my PC. They can't just take that away from me. More to the point: I don't think there's going to be a next edition for a long time. I think they've moved to a model of incremental adjustments, made through errata, which are automatically updated in the computer system. We're already playing 4.5 - it's been loaded onto our computers a little bit every month. Finally, I'd just like to suggest that you can't live your life in fear of the Next Edition. I still have hard copies of all my second edition books, even though I stopped playing that edition years ago. According to you, I have the "choice" to go back to them. But really, I don't. There isn't a person who would play with me, and I don't even like that edition much.
If they are going more digital and less print, then they need to do something about pdf's for the books. I think the idea is that at a certain point "books", whether print or pdf, will become unnecessary for D&D. You'll have a DDi Subscription, and it will handle all the character generation, give you access to all the rules, provide you with all your supplements, and give the DM everything he needs to create adventures, whether he's doing so for the tabletop group or using some kind of online gaming table. I'd say we're about 75% of the way there right now: - You don't need a book to write a character. The character builder takes care of all of that. - You don't need a book at the table. As a player, just about everything you need is available on your character sheet. You might need the rules for rituals, and every so often, you might want to reference the exact wording of a rule. In my experience, people's PHB's generally stay in their backpacks for the entire duration of a game session. As a DM, you need the books a little more, although I often don't bring mine to game night, and instead just bring the printout of the adventure. The encounters are typically self-contained enough that you don't need to reference anything, and if a rules issue comes up, there are typically a few players with PHB's in their backpacks, who can look it up for you. If you have a PC and DDi, you can take care of things that way, too. - You almost never need a book when doing encounter and adventure design. Only, sometimes, you do. This is the bit that's missing right now. While the monster builder is really good, there isn't a good way to write encounters yet. The computer tools aren't there for writing traps. I still have to refer to the DMG when writing up treasure parcels or applying templates or making NPCs. - There's still no online game table. And personally, I don't think there ever will be. However, assuming WotC gets their stuff together and finishes the last few sets of tools, you won't need to buy books anymore. Everything you need to play D&D will be provided by computerized tools.
I'm coming up empty on characters who shoot arrows and cause giant mushrooms to sprout from the ground where they land. (Which isn't to say it's a bad class; it's just one of the more outlandish concepts I've seen.) There was a character class in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance who did almost exactly the same thing as the Seeker, I believe they were called Elementalists. I think they should be a lot of fun to play. On the topic of "iconic" characters, I've noticed that WotC seems to be creating their own iconic style for 4e, rather than copying the icons of the past. Surely the new races and classes speak to a distinctly "4e" world, rather than something that came out of a previous edition - Dragonborn & Tieflings are the most obvious examples. Even the updated versions of the older races and classes have a clear "4e" feel to them.
Do you already have a multiclass feat from another class? Unless you're a bard, you can only multiclass once.
...there is no divine power source in 4e Dark Sun, and divine classes are not available in the setting as written... Yes. That is exactly what I wanted to hear! I cannot wait for 4e Dark Sun to come out. It is going to be great.
What I ended up doing is adding a whole additional Sub-challenge. Each time the party passes a Perception check, they spot a landmark, thus opening the Sub-challenge related to that landmark. There are four landmarks that I wrote, each with one or two usable skills. This should allow me to keep the narrative flowing a bit, and also expands the skill usage. Thanks again for the suggestions. This challenge is going to be the opening scene of tonight's session, so we'll see how it goes.
Hey guys, thanks for the suggestions! I'll definitely add some of those to the skill challenge. Success on this challenge will result in the party getting an advantage (perhaps a surprise round) in a battle that occurs directly after the challenge. I wasn't going to make failure terribly bad, because if the party fails, it probably means that they will be short on healing surges and dailies.
DMG2 is my favorite of the 4e books, too. However, it is very short, and has a "setting" section tacked on to the end, which makes me think that the comments about "not even being able to fill one book" have a certain validity. As far as future products run:
That sounds really good. I don't usually buy these sort of books (instead I wait for DDi to be updated), but I like a lot of the stuff you're describing. That one-handed fighter build sounds awesome! The archer-rogue is also one that I've been waiting for.
Hey everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on this skill challenge I wrote. I think it's OK, but it's looking a little flat to me. I'd like some suggestions on how to spice it up a bit, and possibly expand the skill list. Safe Path to Xandrar The party is trapped behind enemy lines, and must move through territory patrolled by enemy units to reach a friendly city. Complexity: 6 successes before 3 failures
Perception: (DC: hard)
Nature: (DC: hard (if the party has the map of the area from the enemy hideout*, reduce DC to normal))
Stealth: (DC: normal)
Enemy Patrol Sub-Challenge
Success: The party avoids the enemy unit without bloodshed, and does not suffer a failure towards the skill challenge
*This is an item the party may find previously in the campaign.
Was the above example from a published adventure, or from an RPGA adventure? That sounds a lot like a scene from Keep on the Shadowfell. When you first get to the second level, there are a few hobgoblin guards who won't let you pass without the right password. I agree with the other posters who have mentioned that WotC's adventures leave a lot to be desired. I think this is primarily a function of the adventure-writing team and not the system. Paizo's adventures continue to be first-class, and many of them are very easy to convert to 4e
Dwarves seem to be the exception to the awesome racial ability trend. Are you kidding? Minor action for second wind is the BEST racial ability going. Our last campaign was 3 dwarves, a halfling and a deva, and the current campaign is 2 dwarves, a shifter, a human and a changeling. To the original point, I think humans do pretty well in the mix. Their benefits are certainly a bit more subtle than those of the other races - a third at-will is not always terribly useful, and the extra skill often seems to vanish in the mix. The bonus feat is always nice, though, and humans have several racial feats available that are really good, so I think it balances out quite well.
As a player, I don't have an issue playing in either system. I'm involved in two PbP games that use the 3.5/PF ruleset, and I DM a PbP and a tabletop game using the 4e rules. As a DM, however, I find 3.5/PF requires far too much prep work to create fun adventures, and I'm constantly annoyed by the balance issues present in the system. Even published adventures are not immune to the power creep of new books, or ultimate combo syndrome. As a player, those things don't bother me, but as a DM, it drives me crazy. On top of that, the software tools that WotC has put out for 4e are top-notch, which makes adventure prep that much easier. In the last week, I devoted about 4 hours to writing an adventure for my campaign. I created or modified nearly 20 monsters and NPCs, wrote 9 encounters, with maps and terrain rules, and put it all into a nice, 17-page document. There's no way I could have completed the same task in the same amount of time in 3.5/PF. I can't see myself ever going back to 3.5/PF as a DM.
I'm curious if anyone would be interested in reviewing a 4e adventure I wrote up for my current campaign. It consists of 9 encounters, and is written for a party of level 5 characters. It's about 17 pages right now, probably it'll be more like 18 or 19 pages by the time I'm done with it. I'm looking for some critical feedback on this, as I'm trying to polish up my writing skills right now. I'd really appreciate it if people could give me specific pointers on how to improve my adventure design and writing.
I play PF for my online PbPs (mainly because they are here) and 4e in RL sessions. I have found that 4e is not great for PbP games. There's too many interrupt powers and other stuff that takes place outside of the initiative order. Around a table, it's very easy to handle that kind of stuff, but in an play-by-post, it really bogs down the game. 3.5/PF is still my game of choice for online play.
Paragon characters will rip 1st level guards to shreds, equipment or not. A prison such as the one he's describing should have some special guards. He said it's in a volcano, and that immediately makes me think of Azer. Turns out they're a bit too tough for 12th level. You could modify them down a bit in the monster builder, that's really easy. Other monsters that I think make nice prison guards are Duergar, and there's a few of them right in that level range. There's also a lvl 12 Fire Archon, which would be a great guy to have in a volcano themed adventure. You figure: 4 encounters before an extended rest, so: 1. You start with a skill challenge that involves breaking out of the cells and getting some basic equipment. This skill challenge can include a few minor combats, too. 2. An easy level fight to overpower the guards at the prison's armory. Maybe you make this a bit tougher if they've alerted the guards by failing the skill challenge. After this encounter, they raid the armory and get level-equivalent gear. At this point, maybe you let them get a map of the prison or have them find out that the front gate is too heavily guarded to escape. 3. By this point, the prison guards know that something is up, they send a group of enforcers to lock down the party - normal fight. Alternately, you could have the party try to set up some kind of distraction, and use the prison guards to try and stop them. 4. Party tries to escape into the underdark area - the prison warden and his elite guards try to stop them. Hard/Boss Fight. After that, the party escapes into the underdark section, where they can rest (the warden is dead, prison is in chaos, so noone is going to follow them.) After the rest, they begin exploring the underdark area.
Also, seriously consider upping his NADs - probably at least 3 points each. Yeah, I just noticed this, too. The "default" defenses for a level 3 soldier are AC19/F16/R15/W15, so you should probably considering bringing yours up a bit.
Any prison that's built to hold paragon characters had better be pretty solid! I'm talking magical wards, floating castle, extraplanar stuff. This is a really good opportunity to throw something really memorable at the players! Still, there should be the opportunity for heroes to arm themselves and escape, and I think this is a great opportunity to use a skill challenge. A simple shank in the hands of a paragon rogue is a pretty nasty weapon if you let them treat it like a dagger, and after you take out the first guard, the warlord should be well set on equipment. Have them work their way up, through successive skill challenges and combats, taking out higher level guards who carry magical equipment, until they're back to where they should be in terms of magic items.
I typically reserve 're-builds' for those instances where a new build comes out that's more in line with the player's original vision of the character. For example, the ranger in our group really wanted to be a beastmaster, but those rules weren't available until Martial Power 1. So, when that book came out, he was allowed to rebuild his character. Otherwise, I allow the retraining rules as described in the core rulebooks. I'm a bit more lenient with them in the first few sessions of the campaign, as people fiddle around and find out what "fits" their character.
Our group purchased a bunch of colored magnets for tracking conditions. Paladin's marks are white, ongoing fire damage is red, weakened is yellow, etc. Works pretty well. I've seen some other groups who hang plastic rings on the minis for tracking conditions.
I'm not big into buying 3PP, I mostly design my own stuff. However, I did pick up some One Bad Egg products - Hard Boiled Armies and Hard Boiled Cultures. Both of them were very good for the price.
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