D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

Scrivener of Doom said:

I did much the same thing: they each have 3-5 alternative rewards on top of their magic items at level 11 and the character are quite complicated. But, honestly, all it takes is a little bit of work. A single page with triggered powers listing the triggers and effects. Another page with standard tactics. I mean, it's not rocket science and all it takes is a few minutes before the session to refresh yourself. Heck, I do it as the DM and I also have to run the NPCs and monsters.

Again, a few minutes preparing and reading a cheat sheet and anyone with a more than average IQ should be good to go. And, frankly, it's still a lot easier to prep a 4E Paragon Tier class than a mid-level spellcaster in any other edition: everything's there on the bloody character sheet!!!

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So how long do your combats run? I mentioned earlier that our sessions were about 3 hours, and it was commonplace for the entire session to be a single combat. Bigger fights could stretch across 2 sessions.

tyrlaan said:

So how long do your combats run? I mentioned earlier that our sessions were about 3 hours, and it was commonplace for the entire session to be a single combat. Bigger fights could stretch across 2 sessions.

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Other than epic showdowns? For me about 45 minutes - an hour being a long combat. And with a four player group that played weekly I could manage a build-up and combat in an hour.

As a point of comparison a recent Pathfinder fight that was meant to be a boss-battle lasted ten minutes; two of us recognised the description of a demilich and pulled out all the stops. And killed it before it had time to act. My Pathfinder character sheet is approximately 40 pages; I'm playing a Summoner and need the statblocks of my monsters (complete with Augment Summons) to hand. Which means a lot of out-of-game prep to streamline the thing to playable fast at the table.

tyrlaan said:

So how long do your combats run? I mentioned earlier that our sessions were about 3 hours, and it was commonplace for the entire session to be a single combat. Bigger fights could stretch across 2 sessions.

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Technically speaking, I have had a (roughly) two-hour combat, though it was something of an unusual case and partially broken up into segments--and had some other extenuating circumstances. This is TequilaSunrise's game, by the way. Specifically, we (foolishly) alerted the entire enemy hideout to our presence, meaning what would've been several rinky-dink combats became one big old party. I believe we had something like 12 or 13 enemy combatants on the field at once? And none of them were minions. And then to top it off, two out of five players didn't show so two of the other players covered for them, and all three of the present players are new or semi-new to playing 4e (counting myself--I've only played at MOST 10 sessions between three campaigns).

I consider this a decent "worst-case scenario" for our group, although I'm sure it COULD have been longer too. The terrain wasn't part of the challenge (just an entryway); there were no traps, thank goodness; and the enemy surrendered after the captain fell and it became a five-on-five. A regular 'involved combat' would probably be, much as Neonchameleon says, 45-60 minutes. A quick skirmish might be half an hour. The only way I could see a combat running over into another session is if it came late in the session and we had to stop before it ended.

Also, although there wasn't a lot of time after the aforementioned combat, we still managed to get in a good 10-15 minutes of roleplay and another, I dunno, 5-10 minutes of in-character planning for the next move. Questioning the captured guards, trying to overcome the compulsion affecting them, rounding up their gear and weapons, finding a good place to temporarily lock them up so we could safely explore the rest of their base, etc.

Throughout its lifespan, there was so much talk about how to shorten the length of combat in 4E, but really, the focus should've been on how to make those combats more exciting. If you present a bunch of boring enemies, you get an hour-long slogfest. If you get a good mix of enemy types, combat goals, traps and action skill challenges, it's three hours of awesome. 4E has a very tight tactical combat engine, but it does take time - it's built for epic tabletop confrontations, not mundane skirmishes in a narrow passageway.

Anyway, we're still playing it. Here's a pic as proof!

Scrivener of Doom said:

I think 4E needed designers and developers who actually used it for their home games. And that was not always the case. There's an adventure design seminar on YouTube hosted by Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls at some Con where the audience asks the two WotCites to tell them about their campaigns. Chris, of course, mentions Io'mandra or whatever whereas Mike has to say, "I'm not running a campaign." It was like the 2E days where designers didn't actually play the game they were working on....

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That... that explains a lot actually. Wow, now another thing to be sad about...

I only got around to using Masterplan about a week ago and the version I have is brilliant. Even the monster builder is really, really good. I've also now got offline versions of the Character Builder and Compendium: I'm ready for WotC to turn off their servers and/or Silverlight to go to its death.

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Masterplan is excellent, don't get me wrong on that - but you missed out on the pre-C&D phase where you could import everything you needed with a single click, share everything you created easily, share your "templated"/"campaigned" settings and content in a single click (ok, two or three, but still!) A whole market/community could have been born from this!

I understand why all this had to be killed. But man... It was just so awesome! I guess I'm seeing it in a dimmer light for having been blinded by hope (wow... that was maudlin!)

And, can you imagine what that software could be with a decent UI designer? An API? ! So many things lost before they were even created...

I should probably play some Vampire: The Masquerade... I have so much angst right now, I'd be "killin' it"!

Hmmm, I wonder if someone could get CBLoader to export a character sheet in that format?

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Perhaps, but I don't think so. The CBLoader "mearly" allows to use more xml files for content and settings - that we can use themes at all was one of the more explosive discoveries back in the "slow strangulation" of the offline 4e tools (no updates, poison-pill updates, no Dark Sun, lies about the possibilities of it - and then finding out it's already in the software) - goodwill was not won on that day...

Interesting. I must admit, I really don't tinker with the PC side of 4E at all as I decided that it was going to be all Character Builder, all of the time. Depending on how much tinkering I can do with the offline version, I may take a fresh look at some character options much in the vein you are suggesting but I will wait until after my next campaign. My next campaign features a knight and a slayer and this will be my first time seeing the Essentials classes in action. If simpler works, then maybe I will look at E-versions of some of the other complicated classes.

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It is probably too much work to bother with - it's just a form of compulsion on my part :must tinker!

Neonchameleon said:

One reason I slimmed down Trifold 4e as much as I did. (Another reason was to save paper). [space] It's easier when you roll your own classes

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That is, indeed, probably the sane way to go about it.

There were also vague plans I had to make character sheets work off mobile apps that created monster-style statblocks.

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If you ever get that working, I would be greatly indebted to you should you choose to share it.

On a side note this is something I absolutely despise in 13A - from the player side. "Roll to attack before you worked out what you were trying to do at a closer level than stick the pointy end in people". And yes, I've occasionally used the trick with NPCs. (Odds and evens I found works - but more than one type of trigger that way is too much).

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On the PC side of things, it does clash with the very tactical play available in 4e and it certainly changes how "action declaration" is approached - in these situations, preferences can't really be argued, they simply are. And, on this point, I'm not sure I disagree with you - aside from certain "chaos/wild" based classes where a random element of effect is the whole point of the thing. But those are for a very specific clientèle.

But for monsters, man, do I love it!
Ex: A dragon's "claw/claw/bite" non-sense* becomes a single attack where if you target everything in range, on an even roll (or 16+, or whatever) you add ongoing elemental damage (i.e. that was a bite), on another you push/slide (that was a tail), etc.

For those kinds of foes, you can significantly reduce the number of "specific attacks" and those : "you use 1 of these and 2 these with a standard action" kind of powers that just take-up space on the stat-block (is it "block" or "bloc"?)

It also works great for those situations where "a telling blow" should have an added effect : rogu-ish types add a "debuff" on 16+, this demon poisons, etc. It's especially nice for abilities that used to be reserved for "on a crit" but really should happen more often.

On the player side - it can be an excellent vehicle for magic item abilities : things that aren't quite in their control, but should happen more often than [0,1] times before they upgrade the weapon/item (as I've seen happen so often in the heroic tier.)


*I says "non-sense" in the sense (sorry) that it reinforces very strongly the "this game action" is "this in-game action" - which I dislike since, in other parts, one attack isn't "one sword swing". I'm not a fan of "middle-ground" solutions in these cases. I prefer one or the other : either an attack is a fairly abstract game construct to which general descriptors are attached, or it's an actual in-game event described in precise detail. I understand these things are always on a scale, but I prefer my systems to be more firmly on one side of the pivot point. It's a preference thing - so I get that others prefer the opposite.

EzekielRaiden said:

Technically speaking, I have had a (roughly) two-hour combat, though it was something of an unusual case and partially broken up into segments--and had some other extenuating circumstances. This is TequilaSunrise's game, by the way. Specifically, we (foolishly) alerted the entire enemy hideout to our presence, meaning what would've been several rinky-dink combats became one big old party. I believe we had something like 12 or 13 enemy combatants on the field at once? And none of them were minions. And then to top it off, two out of five players didn't show so two of the other players covered for them, and all three of the present players are new or semi-new to playing 4e (counting myself--I've only played at MOST 10 sessions between three campaigns).

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Humm... yeah, that counts. !

MoutonRustique said:

My greatest sadness with 4e is the loss of potential :
- the GSL and C&D mindset killed 3rd party support in all forms
- the mechanics didn't get the time (vs the man-hours - which it did get, but it isn't the same : humans need actual time to pass to figure things out; not just MOAR WORK!) to really evolve and explore what they could do

There are no really good tools for 4e. Don't get me wrong, there are a few nice ones, and a few that could have been awesome (Masterplan being one of these) but were hit with the C&D so hard...

Things that are obviously good ideas but were never made :
- a customizable output character builder : I don't believe that anyone can honestly say that the character sheets we got were good. They were pretty, but never useful for play.

4e plays much easier for players if their characters actually look like monster stat-blocs. While it's true that they all have a whole lot of building blocs, in play, they're not really all that hard to handle - there are few situations w/o an obvious choice - and the pertinent numbers don't really change all that much.

- an encounter builder that actually outputs your encounter in a useful form for TT play! I mean... COME ON! Those stat blocs practically beg to be used in a WYSIWYG printing editor - that I have to make a print-screen, post it in paint, crop it and use it in Word is a freaking blasphemy! A BLASPHEMY I say!

On another note :
Has anyone used the 13Age monster abilities approach in 4e?

I'm talking about the "odd natural hit" = action 1; "even natural hit" = action 2, etc. It just seems like one of those excellent things 4e didn't get the time to get around to.

It's a very elegant design and it can be used with the same intent/purpose of random recharge, attacks that should get something more "on a good hit", and many other situations.

Lastly
I'm trying to figure out a way to re-1E-fy the attack option a tad : a bit more abstract. My main target is removing multi-attacks as they are currently presented.

My ultimate goal would be to consolidate everything from a round into a single attack and damage/effects sequence.

Advantages:
- easier to estimate PC cabilities
- easier play in combat (hopefully)
- quicker play in combat (hopefully)
- easier to bring in things like DR (which I really like)
- a bit less jarring on the "attacks are abstract, but not this one, but yeah this one too, but really it's a single swing, but not really, but yeah kinda..." that bothers me a bit in some situations
- reduces static modifier damage supremacy
- can make monsters even better* which sounds impossible - but it's true!
- something else I'm forgetting at the moment...

I've also got charge in my sights - I'm not fond of it (I actually dislike it a fair bit.) It's just too easy to justify all those little bonuses that end up making it the best option in almost all cases (a little +1d6 dmg, of course, he's charging, makes sense. Oh! and let's add a little push to that, makes sense. Oh! and this and that and... WHERE DOES IT END!? )

Well, this turned out much, much longer than I intended...

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Yeah, I'm eliminating multi-attacks entirely, they simply don't exist in my hack (or won't, I haven't really written more than a handful of powers). Minor Action doesn't exist either, its either a Free Action or forget it, none of this grubbing for an extra attack. I do have an 'opportunity action' that can be an OA, and could happen at either reaction or interrupt speed depending on the effect. This hard limits you to one per round, which has a very big effect on streamlining play (its interesting that 5e also followed a similar path, I think I first wrote up my approach in 2010 though, so its more a matter of parallel construction than '5e-izing 4e').

OTOH I am rejecting ALL temporary modifiers, including power bonuses and anything else of that ilk that isn't permanent and replacing it all with advantage/disadvantage. This is a HUGE win, many trivial +1s simply don't warrant even existing in this regime (they aren't good enough to invoke advantage), and when something DOES give advantage you can immediately stop scrapping for another +1 that stacks, there isn't one.

I estimate these changes almost double the speed of combat, along with a significant reduction in the number of powers, the number of ongoing effects, and a few other minor tweaks (5e-style resistance/vuln/immunity for instance).

Scrivener of Doom said:

I think 4E needed designers and developers who actually used it for their home games. And that was not always the case. There's an adventure design seminar on YouTube hosted by Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls at some Con where the audience asks the two WotCites to tell them about their campaigns. Chris, of course, mentions Io'mandra or whatever whereas Mike has to say, "I'm not running a campaign." It was like the 2E days where designers didn't actually play the game they were working on....

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YUP!

I have experimented with it a little but, so far, I've really just gone with expanding critical ranges and boosting damage and effects that way. But I "buy" the increased damage from the critical with lowered damage from the normal attack effect. Anyway, it's a concept I plan to play with a bit more and, of course, it is inspired by 13th Age.

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I was thinking of reworking the whole check system to work on a progressive basis, so a roll 5 under would be a 'bad thing', and a roll 5 over would be a 'good thing', which could of course be translated into this sort of setup. It works well as long as AC vs Attack Bonus stays in a fairly predictable range, though I guess it could also contribute to weaker monsters getting less deadly as you level up too.

[MENTION=6682161]Will Doyle[/MENTION] Your blog has some very excellent things! I understand this could be a large amount of work (for little to no return), but if there is an easy way to activate the "4E tags", that would be supper!

MoutonRustique said:

I should probably play some Vampire: The Masquerade... I have so much angst right now, I'd be "killin' it"!

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*Points in the direction of Urban Shadows for a better ruleset for that sort of game*

If you ever get that working, I would be greatly indebted to you should you choose to share it.

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If I get it working of course I'll share - what would the point be otherwise. It's somewhere in my to-do list behind three RPGs that are WIP, and writing a book about contemporary Christianity however. (Of course part of the point of Trifold 4e is the PCs are meant to be mathematically compatable with classic 4e ones so you can play both at the same table, and you can copy/paste the blocks into index-card format.

And, on this point, I'm not sure I disagree with you - aside from certain "chaos/wild" based classes where a random element of effect is the whole point of the thing. But those are for a very specific clientèle.

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There is that. Unfortunately they gave it to the wrong classes - the martial ones. If it had been sorceror-blowback most of the time it would have worked well.

But for monsters, man, do I love it!

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Me too - as long as you keep your triggers simple. Too many triggers just gets more annoying than remembering interrupts.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yeah, I'm eliminating multi-attacks entirely, they simply don't exist in my hack (or won't, I haven't really written more than a handful of powers).

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I actually kept them - but every single multi-attack I've written so far I think (I haven't worked on it for a while) has been a basic attack. Some people like playing that way, others like the tactical element and I'm trying to keep a lot of people happy. (The Archivist Wizard, fwiw, is a classic spellbook-spellcaster for whom I raided the OGL liberally and may have to if I ever publish put under the OGL even if I can make the rest Creative Commons).

OTOH I am rejecting ALL temporary modifiers, including power bonuses and anything else of that ilk that isn't permanent and replacing it all with advantage/disadvantage. This is a HUGE win,

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Yup! I actually went for two levels of advantage/disadvantage, with the first level being +2 and the second as in 5e. But that's a playtest situation and I could be convinced to drop the intermediate step.

One of my biggest tweaks was to simply declare Death To Ability Scores. This amongst other things allows me to have the Fighter having a superb presence (replaces intimidation) in the game but by default not being terribly good at rapport (replaces diplomacy) or manipulation (replaces bluff). Meanwhile the rogue is by default good at manipulation but they have low presence so aren't so good at being either intimidating or thought competent.