D&D 4E The reason 4E doesn't work well except for "Dungeon Delves" or "Encounters"

I am currently running a "sandbox" style game, in a Kingmakerish vein using a region of my own device and some basic "realm" rules with the PCs as heroes and would-be leaders.

Difference is that I am using 4e as a game engine.

Well for starters, for all those people who say that 3e sucks because casters can do everything and fighters just have to stand around, but they fixed that in 4e.... you must only be talking about combat.

The reason is because of rituals: the druid and the wizard have 'em the rest don't. And when it comes to sandbox-style play i.e. in a not-precisely-defined-"encounter"-space all their "super kewl" daily attack powers and utility powers dont' mean a thing.

Meanwhile, the druid and wizard are wrecking the region with the simplest of rituals which I can tell:

1. WotC never designed to actually be used
2. If they were designed to be used they were strictly thinking from a 4-5 round combat perspective.

Example?

Using a very simple low-level ritual and for the cost of about 55gp the wizard was able to transcribe an Undead Ward around the entire town that is their homebase. With a very high Arcana check I think only level 18 or higher undead can bypass or effect the warding.

Given that one of their major foes in the region is a lich-queen intent on destroying the cities and towns of the free people, this has essentially made their town immune to her armies.

(it should be noted that the party is about level 6.. and we intend to stop the game around low paragon.. so the highest level foe.. the lich-queen is pegged at 15).

Similarily to those vast hordes of undead.. a simple spell makes the party appear to be "undead to all non-intelligent undead" no save, no attack roll, extremely long duration. This lets them (for about 35gp) infiltrate or bypass almost the entirety of the lich-queens large forces of undead.... sure sure the occasional "smart" undead like a Wight Knight Captain or such will catch on to them... but by and by for no skill check and minimal costs rituals allow them to completely mitigate entire ARMIES.


So yeah... 4E (like 3e before it) is still broken quite easily by:

1. Magic
2. Players who are willing to put their heads together to thing of creative ways to use #1

You sure the ritual can cover the whole town at once?

AsmodeusDM said:

The reason is because of rituals: the druid and the wizard have 'em the rest don't.

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The rest is just a single feat away and most don't even require a skill check, thus lower modifiers don't matter much

AsmodeusDM said:

Using a very simple low-level ritual and for the cost of about 55gp the wizard was able to transcribe an Undead Ward around the entire town that is their homebase. With a very high Arcana check I think only level 18 or higher undead can bypass or effect the warding.

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And the necormancer's living apprentice can just create an opening with a standard action (and since the circle effects friend and foe and caster alike, it's not a good idea to set the circle against your own type).

AsmodeusDM said:

Similarily to those vast hordes of undead.. a simple spell makes the party appear to be "undead to all non-intelligent undead" no save, no attack roll, extremely long duration.

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If the creature type is the only thing the undead are set to guard against, a vampire or revenant PC could also just stroll through them

frankthedm said:

You sure the ritual can cover the whole town at once?

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Yes, just takes more time. Given a couple of days/weeks/months/years one could cover as large an area as time allows.

How many squares are in that town your PCs warded? Let's say the town is 1000 feet on each side. That's 200 squares in length, times 200 squares in width, for 40,000 squares. That means a caster will spend 40,000 minutes drawing the circle. That's 666 hours, or 27 days. How did he do the etching again?

Second, any creature that can pass through the barrier can break it with a standard action. All it takes is for an undead to charm, beguile or trick a living creature (or to ask a high-level undead) to walk two steps into the barrier and spend a standard action.

Mirtek said:

Yes, just takes more time. Given a couple of days/weeks/months/years one could cover as large an area as time allows.

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Nope. All the etching must be done without a break, or the ritual is lost (at no further cost).

Interrupting a Ritual: At any time before a ritual is completed, you can stop it and suffer no ill effect. You don’t expend any components or pay any costs until a ritual is completed. You can’t resume a ritual that was interrupted, however, so you do lose the time you spent on an interrupted ritual.

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I also just noticed that Deathly Shroud only applies to the caster and can not be used on someone else.

So while the party could do it by giving a scroll to each non-ritual-caster-member, this is also one of the cases where a check is important, thus the durations would suck

As others have pointed out, I think this is more an issue of incredible ritual abuse. Protecting that town should take a lot more than reading off a simple ritual. What kind of lich queen is she if she doesn't have any living servants, or can't at least charm/mind control one? Also like pointed out, the ritual takes 1 minute per square within the intended zone of protection to create. So as per the example, a 200x200 square area takes 666 hours and 40 minutesof uninterrupted casting to create. Or: 27 days and 16 hours to create.

Even if we're generous and say that both the Wizard and the Druid work together, we can only realistically halve the time to 13 days of non-stop work each.

So, in short: your players can't do what they did.

4e works fine for a VAST majority of non-combat and open-world situations, but there are always ways to break the game if you're willing to bend the rules.

We have "Domain Turns" of a month-duration each. We calculated it out to be just about a month long to do the whole town (as some have noted above).


And yes I agree.. as the DM I could easily have all those things happen.. I could also have a meteorite "randomly" fall from orbit and crush their town...

I prefer not to be a dick.

AsmodeusDM said:

We have "Domain Turns" of a month-duration each. We calculated it out to be just about a month long to do the whole town (as some have noted above).

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So it's not "4e not working" but rather "your houserule not working". Different case

AsmodeusDM said:

And yes I agree.. as the DM I could easily have all those things happen.. I could also have a meteorite "randomly" fall from orbit and crush their town...

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That's not being a dick. These are the drawbacks these rituals simply have.

Enforcing the rules of the game is not being a dick (even if your players complain).

You can't cover an entire town with a single casting of Undead Ward, period. Sure, take a month and blanket it with 30 castings... costing more like 1000 gp in components. This is available to level 6 characters but it's a serious chunk of change.

In any case, the main difference here with 4e is that PCs don't automatically learn rituals (except for a few specific exceptions). They are by default unavailable. So the "magic arms race" is entirely at the DM's discretion. If the wizard learned Undead Ward, it's because the DM made it available. If the DM is making Undead Ward available in the same campaign world as a lich queen with undead armies, it's the DM's responsibility to sort things out in a way that makes sense.