D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Paragon Tier

SparqMan · Mar 6, 2011

Sagiro said:
Logan now has a multitude of little conditional damage bonuses:
- +8 damage to an Oath target who has moved away
- +1d6 to a bloodied enemy granting combat advantage
- +1d6 to an enemy he’s hidden from
- +2 when he hits his Oath target with a charge attack
- +5 necrotic/radiant damage the first time he hits his Oath target each turn.
- +3d6 1/encounter with combat advantage (sneak attack)

So nervous for my players hitting Paragon and being responsible for tracking all of that.

Riastlin · Mar 6, 2011

SparqMan said:
So nervous for my players hitting Paragon and being responsible for tracking all of that.

Aye, my players forget half their conditional modifiers and that was before they hit paragon! We'll see how they do today on their first paragon run today.

Piratecat · Mar 6, 2011

As part of my "4e is harder for players than it is for DMs" rant, my single least favorite aspect of the game - even more than tracking conditions - is the wide array of fiddly conditional modifiers that a player is obligated to remember and track. I think it helps when they're laid out in a row like this, though. If I was Logan's player I'd cut-n-paste that paragraph right to my character sheet!

And Sagiro, thank you for this analysis. I love these.

the Jester · Mar 6, 2011

D'oh, I just realized that during our games on Friday and Saturday, the newly-paragon rogue was only rolling 2d8 for sneak attack.

I'm with PC on the "too many fiddly things for players" comment.

AbdulAlhazred · Mar 6, 2011

Piratecat said:
As part of my "4e is harder for players than it is for DMs" rant, my single least favorite aspect of the game - even more than tracking conditions - is the wide array of fiddly conditional modifiers that a player is obligated to remember and track. I think it helps when they're laid out in a row like this, though. If I was Logan's player I'd cut-n-paste that paragraph right to my character sheet!

And Sagiro, thank you for this analysis. I love these.

Yeah, it does get pretty fiddly. The players in my current game are level 12 now and it is tricky for them to keep track of all this stuff. What I notice is that they definitely tend to go for the more constant benefit type feats and whatnot when they can. That helps but it doesn't fix it.

Iron Sky · Mar 6, 2011

In my experience, the conditional modifiers aren't too bad when you work your way to them from a low level, adding one every few sessions. It's when you make a paragon/epic character from scratch that you forget stuff constantly...

Plane Sailing · Mar 6, 2011

Nice stats, Sagiro!

Mathew_Freeman · Mar 7, 2011

Count me as another one of the "too many conditional modifiers at high level" crowd. I also follow the route of trying to avoid those kinds of feats and powers in favour of static bonuses.

That said, having a 16th level Barbarian with about 4 things that trigger off "Reduce an enemy to 0hp" is a LOT of fun.

AbdulAlhazred · Mar 7, 2011

Iron Sky said:
In my experience, the conditional modifiers aren't too bad when you work your way to them from a low level, adding one every few sessions. It's when you make a paragon/epic character from scratch that you forget stuff constantly...

I think it depends a lot on what sort of player you are. People that have been playing 4e for a good while and for whom it is their primary system and want to spend a decent amount of time playing, studying the rules, and going over options will do OK. My experience is that the player who is just playing and who's interest in the game is pretty much limited to when they're at the table will have a hard time. 4e isn't really a very casual system. That pretty well describes the players in my game. Currently 2 of them are fairly casual players. One has played other RPGs and is pretty into it. He's got a pretty good grasp of his character, the rules, and a decent idea of available options. The second one is sharp but hasn't played other RPGs and hasn't spent a lot of time figuring out her character. Both of my other two players are pretty hard core 3.5 DMs, they play and they understand the game, but they aren't super clear on a lot of the details. Both of them have some trouble grappling with all the options they have. I'd consider my group pretty average. They CAN handle it, but they do struggle sometimes. Were I starting this campaign today I'd probably have a couple of them run Essentials characters and I suspect they'd probably be perfectly happy with that.

blargney the second · Mar 8, 2011

My wife's rogue has a bunch of conditional modifiers, largely dependent on whether the target is bloodied, granting CA, or both. I made her a little chart that's basically a venn diagram, with the total modifiers tallied up in each section. She seems quite happy with that solution.