What Do You Feel is Necessary or Recommended?

masteraleph · May 14, 2018

Divine Power is critical to Paladins, in particular- the PHB version doesn't have enough options for a CHA or STR primary Paladin to take at every level (basically, you have to have them as co-primaries). It also introduces Divine Sanction, which allows Paladins to function as zone defenders. The other * Power books have helpful options, sometimes even character defining options, but Paladins are really incomplete without DP.

Hedonismbot · May 17, 2018

Definitely skip to the Monster Vaults + MM3.

For the * Power books, maybe figure out what characters will be involved and get the books relevant to their power source after that?

Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium is definitely not mandatory, but fun.

Eltab · May 19, 2018

I thought Primal Power and secondarily Divine Power were excellent fluff-building books. PP got Barbarians past the 'Hulk Smash' trope. DP + Astral Sea = a realization that the gods are outnumbered overcommitted and desperately need reinforcements - luckily there are several 'ascend to divinity' Epic Destinies.

Neverwinter Campaign Guide offers a Heroic-tier set of intertwined plot threads. Most villains are designed to be recurring but eventually defeat-able.

I liked the two Dark Sun Campaign books but they do tie you into a unique campaign world with features that don't transfer around the multiverse well.

AbdulAlhazred · May 22, 2018

Jhaelen said:
I'd especially recommend the 2nd Draconomicon because it provides some excellent insight into making the various good-aligned dragons into great villains.

If you don't care much about dragons, my two other favorite books from the 4e era were 'The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea' and 'The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos'. Apart from providing great background info about the 4e cosmology they were full of material ready to be inserted into your games: story hooks, encounters, terrain features, etc.

I also liked 'Hammerfast: A Dwarven Outpost Adventure Site' a lot. It's a very detailed description of a rather weird dwarven settlement with countless npcs, story hooks and even a small campaign outline. IT had everything that all of the 4e adventure modules lacked.

Draconomicons were cool in terms of adding a lot of interesting color to dragons, and a LOT of ideas for how to use them in campaigns. The added types are cool, though I think there are already SO many that it is a little bit overkill. Even so, I liked them.

The Plane Above/Below are interesting books in the sense of having a HUGE amount of material in them that covers a vast range of possible variant adventuring locations. They're a little 'far out' for a lot of what I do, but I really enjoyed them and may eventually use some of the info if I get to run another Epic tier campaign.

Demonomicon is in the same vein. Lots of good story hooks and stuff for that nastiest of locations...

AbdulAlhazred · May 22, 2018

MwaO said:
To 3.5 lovers? 3.5 MC'ing has very little to do with 4e Hybrids, if anything. I mean, almost no one split 50/50 in classes.

4e Hybrids are the closest thing to AD&D MC'ing to me. Except (generally) balanced and fun.

In a strict mechanical sense, this maybe true, but from a standpoint of 'mix and match from 2 classes' its very much in the vein of what you can do in 3.x. Toss in MCing as a 3rd class option and you can do pretty much any crazy munging together, much like 3.x.

MwaO · May 22, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
In a strict mechanical sense, this maybe true, but from a standpoint of 'mix and match from 2 classes' its very much in the vein of what you can do in 3.x. Toss in MCing as a 3rd class option and you can do pretty much any crazy munging together, much like 3.x.

Not really. 3.x's default tended to be dip in one class, everything else in another. 4e's default is 50/50. And with certain builds, 50/50 is nearly impossible or idiotic in 3.x because there's not really a good Prestige Class to make it work. Rogue|Cleric as an example. 4e? Elf with 18 Dex/Wis. Pick Dex Rogue powers and Wis Cleric powers. Done. Or be a Half-Orc with 18 Str/18 Dex and take all weapon powers.

Using just PHB 1-3, both work fine. Obviously, you can optimize both - but they're both workable in a standard campaign without having to do something weird such as not being a Rogue 4/Cleric 4 - which is either a really bad spellcasting Cleric or doing bad damage Rogue on any given round.

AbdulAlhazred · May 23, 2018

MwaO said:
Not really. 3.x's default tended to be dip in one class, everything else in another. 4e's default is 50/50. And with certain builds, 50/50 is nearly impossible or idiotic in 3.x because there's not really a good Prestige Class to make it work. Rogue|Cleric as an example. 4e? Elf with 18 Dex/Wis. Pick Dex Rogue powers and Wis Cleric powers. Done. Or be a Half-Orc with 18 Str/18 Dex and take all weapon powers.

Using just PHB 1-3, both work fine. Obviously, you can optimize both - but they're both workable in a standard campaign without having to do something weird such as not being a Rogue 4/Cleric 4 - which is either a really bad spellcasting Cleric or doing bad damage Rogue on any given round.

Well, now we're getting into the weeds...

If you want to emulate a 1 level 3.x 'dip' then you just use some build options, maybe an MC feat, or even just reflavoring some powers and such in 4e. So in that case Hybrid is not even useful. Hybrid IS useful for the case where you want to really mix-and-match, and that was CONCEPTUALLY what the MCing in 3.x was intended to do. In any case, you can still pick MOSTLY powers of one or another class, even as a hybrid. Certainly its typical to favor one as being the central part of your concept and the other providing some 'sauce'.

I just never saw 4e hybrids as really that critical to the game. Even calling them 'nice to have' is IMHO kind of overselling it. MCing is already pretty good for what people normally do.

Garthanos · May 24, 2018

masteraleph said:
Divine Power is critical to Paladins, in particular- the PHB version doesn't have enough options for a CHA or STR primary Paladin to take at every level (basically, you have to have them as co-primaries). It also introduces Divine Sanction, which allows Paladins to function as zone defenders. The other * Power books have helpful options, sometimes even character defining options, but Paladins are really incomplete without DP.

I always thought Galahad was a Str / Wis Paladin myself dower and antisocial even

Tony Vargas · May 24, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
Hybrid IS useful for the case where you want to really mix-and-match, and that was CONCEPTUALLY what the MCing in 3.x was intended to do.

IDK the intent, but conceptually, 3.x MCing made class-levels into building blocks - a big step away from the inherent issues with class/level based design. The problem was that, to work, the next level of any class you had needed to balance with the next level of your other classes, and the first level of every other class, but 3e class designs were still mired in mechanics from the games balance-over-many-levels design. The only class that came close to matching the MC system was the fighter.

4e might actually have been able to handle more modular MCing, the classes were so much less imbalanced, and the advancement structure less inconsistent...

Garthanos · May 24, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
4e might actually have been able to handle more modular MCing, the classes were so much less imbalanced, and the advancement structure less inconsistent...

Sure most of the time ( coughtwinstrikecough )

What Do You Feel is Necessary or Recommended?

masteraleph

Explorer

Hedonismbot

Explorer

Eltab

Lord of the Hidden Layer

AbdulAlhazred

Legend

AbdulAlhazred

Legend

MwaO

Adventurer

AbdulAlhazred

Legend

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight

Tony Vargas

Legend

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight

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