How NOT to play 4th Edition (D&D Game Day)

[Duncan & Dragons]

I am a volunteer DM for D&D Game Day. I will read the quick start rules for Shadowfell and I presume they will give us something for the event.
I want to know some hard and fast rules to 'forget' when teaching 4.0. Sort of a reverse primer. I am mostly a fence sitter but am leaning towards PRPG. Since I have been spending more time looking at 3.P rather than 4.0, I am afraid I may have missed something.

For example:
No re-iterative attacks - - Understand the At Will, Encounter and Daily powers.
No spell slots - Understand the At Will, Encounter and Daily powers.
No Savings throws - Everything has an 'Armor Class'
No free 5 foot step - It costs a Move
No 1-2-1-2 Diagonal movement

[JSL]

Duncan & Dragons wrote:

I am a volunteer DM for D&D Game Day. I will read the quick start rules for Shadowfell and I presume they will give us something for the event.

I want to know some hard and fast rules to 'forget' when teaching 4.0. Sort of a reverse primer. I am mostly a fence sitter but am leaning towards PRPG. Since I have been spending more time looking at 3.P rather than 4.0, I am afraid I may have missed something.

For example:
No re-iterative attacks - - Understand the At Will, Encounter and Daily powers.
No spell slots - Understand the At Will, Encounter and Daily powers.
No Savings throws - Everything has an 'Armor Class'
No free 5 foot step - It costs a Move
No 1-2-1-2 Diagonal movement

I think charge is the biggest tactical change as the new rules are far more permissive. Combined with the new rules for diagonal movement, a speed 6 guy has a huge threat range with a charge.

Charge is a standard action. You can move into position and then charge. You can charge through friends, difficult terrain, and around corners. The only restrictions are that you must have LOS to the target when you initiate the charge, you have to travel at least 2 squares (10 feet), and you must end in the closest square adjacent to the target from where you began the charge. Also, you can only make a basic attack at the end of a charge and the attack bonus is only +1.

There are still saving throws. It is just that they are in response to ongoing conditions, not to the initial attack (which targets a defense).

Also, you have to be pretty attentive to keywords when reading ability descriptions since the language has become more nuanced.

[Logos]

What little I've run with it, I think the biggest thing is not to expect it to play like 3.x.

in 3.x you fight something afterwords you have the cleric go arround and heal everything (perferably with a wand) and continue

in 4th you fight something, half way threw you take a second breath, after the fight stop for a few minutes to catch your breath and then continue on your day. It really gives the impression that the fight did little or nothing to challenge the party, but the truth is that the non reneweble resource on the daily scale is no longer cleric spells but rather healing surges. (and considering some level 1's start with 11 of the suckers , even level 1 characters have a lot of pick up and go). Don't get discouraged/annoyed/attempt to stop your pc's because they are not "playing right" but roll with it and go into the next encounter (in specific don't combine encounters because you'll probably kill someone just cause you can)

That's my 2 cents

[Traken]

Here's one that archers will love:

No -4 from shooting into melee AND your friends don't give your enemies cover.

[Big Jake]

Duncan & Dragons wrote:

I am a volunteer DM for D&D Game Day. I will read the quick start rules for Shadowfell and I presume they will give us something for the event.

The quick-start rules from Keep on the Shadowfell are more in-depth than what was provided for D&D Game Day.

I am a Game Day coordinator, and I am signed up to run two groups through the adventure. I'm going to bring my copy of Keep on the Shadowfell with me to be able to run the event more smoothly, and to let the players look through the quick-start rules themselves.

This is what you should get for your Game Day event:

A short adventure.
A separate one-bad guy encounter scenario.
A two-sided map with the encounter areas for both of the above.
A set of dice.
D&D minis of all the creatures in the adventure and bonus encounter.

For the Players:
A pre-generated character sheet.
A D&D mini for their character.
A d20.

The adventure isn't too big, but can definately be run to suit any DM style. It seems to be created to highlight the mechanics of 4e, like having combat and non-combat encounters (skill challenges).

It looks like fun.

I encourage you to go to the person sponsoring the event and ask to get the adventure early, so you can look over it and be prepared. It's not too long, and it doesn't really stray from what you'll be familiar with as a DM, but still, better to be prepared.

[Grimcleaver]

Yeah, I just got my copy of the adventure and am currently in the process of giving it love. Some of the iconic 4e changes I want to highlight--for example using minions to make some of the battles feel bigger (a couple of badguys just isn't as cool as a half dozen and one of the big selling points of 4e is that you can do battles like that!)

Likewise there's some really fun characters in the module that I think would be a lot more fun if they had bigger parts to play--more dialogue and opportunity to interact with the party. Also I want to sort of iron out a few dead spots where there's big swaths of a relatively small dungeon that just don't got nothing in them. I've bought a few 4e boosters just for Game Day and hopefully they will come in handy to flesh out some of the lighter encounters.

I'm really pretty excited. 4e is looking like it's going to be a lot of fun.

[ManPig]

I'll be at Pulp Fiction in Lee's Summit, MO. Anybody else going to be in the Kansas City area on Saturday?