What Do You Feel is Necessary or Recommended?

doctorbadwolf · May 24, 2018

The Rules Compendium/Cyclopedia/whatever it’s called is a must, as it has the most up to date version of the rules, the most polished skill challenges, etc.

Other than that, monster vault, and some adventure if you find any cheap (good mini monster vaults), and then it depends on what your group is into.

If you can find a copy of Shadowfell:Gloomwrought and beyond, it’s one of my favorite dnd books, as is Heroes of The Feywild.

AbdulAlhazred · May 25, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
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...

Well, a true ala-carte system like 3e's would have meant effectively you could combine any two elements in 4e into one character. There are ways that becomes VERY optimizable. Even in late 4e there were still things you just couldn't really bring together, particularly certain combinations of feats (though a lot of this was a consequence of pre-reqs). I think they came as close as they could without just admitting utter capitulation to the min-maxers.

Garthanos · May 25, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
I think they came as close as they could without just admitting utter capitulation to the min-maxers.

I think they could have done more in terms of opening up some very flavorful and fitting combos they made some feats that stepped up certain combinations the Warlock/Paladin Crimson Fire etc feats are a hot example that I believe was in the Dragon Magazine.

This could have been a route to mixing two defenders and other similar things that are cludgy shrug its just conjecture.

Maybe even more designs with paradigms analogous to the Berserker could be flavorful with on the fly explicit role changing.

AbdulAlhazred · May 25, 2018

Garthanos said:
I think they could have done more in terms of opening up some very flavorful and fitting combos they made some feats that stepped up certain combinations the Warlock/Paladin Crimson Fire etc feats are a hot example that I believe was in the Dragon Magazine.

This could have been a route to mixing two defenders and other similar things that are cludgy shrug its just conjecture.

Maybe even more designs with paradigms analogous to the Berserker could be flavorful with on the fly explicit role changing.

Well, we can take this back to the topic of the thread, and just state that ALL OF DRAGON is 'Recommended'. Everything WotC published there for 4e is a large body of high quality material.

Garthanos · May 25, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
Well, we can take this back to the topic of the thread, and just state that ALL OF DRAGON is 'Recommended'. Everything WotC published there for 4e is a large body of high quality material.

Yes indeed the material was no less fully part of the game because of where it was presented.

Scrivener of Doom · May 26, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
Well, we can take this back to the topic of the thread, and just state that ALL OF DRAGON is 'Recommended'. Everything WotC published there for 4e is a large body of high quality material.

Yep, that's one of the many reasons why I think the best answer to the OP's question is: either subscribe to DDi tools and get everything, or find the offline version of the same.

I wouldn't run 4E without the offline Compendium, CBLoader-powered Character Builder, or Masterplan for monster building.

Tony Vargas · May 26, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
Well, a true ala-carte system like 3e's would have meant effectively you could combine any two elements in 4e into one character.

Which is prettymuch the case with 4e Hybrids. It'd just mean a lot more than any two if it were fully a'la-carte.

4e couldn't do 3.5 style MCing, exactly, levels weren't fungible, but it could've gone further that way, letting you pick more powers from other classes without the complexity of the hybrid rules or the feat taxes of PH MCing, for instance.

There are ways that becomes VERY optimizable. Even in late 4e there were still things you just couldn't really bring together, particularly certain combinations of feats (though a lot of this was a consequence of pre-reqs). I think they came as close as they could without just admitting utter capitulation to the min-maxers.

Classes in 4e were pretty well-done, balance-wise, and were what I was thinking of.
Feats were apalling, balance-wise: a few too-many must-haves, a tremendous amount of meaningless chaff. Don't get me wrong, I liked feats for the customization, but they were a pain to sort through.

Tony Vargas · May 26, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
Well, we can take this back to the topic of the thread, and just state that ALL OF DRAGON is 'Recommended'. Everything WotC published there for 4e is a large body of high quality material.

There was some pretty questionable stuff in Dragon, too. I've known DMs to just ban it all rather than try to sort it out, and I've had some less than stellar results from allowing this or that item or whatnot from Dragon, myself.

AbdulAlhazred · May 26, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
There was some pretty questionable stuff in Dragon, too. I've known DMs to just ban it all rather than try to sort it out, and I've had some less than stellar results from allowing this or that item or whatnot from Dragon, myself.

Well, there's some 'bad' stuff in lots of places. But 4e's version of 'bad' is "oh, if we combine these feats, and this power, and MC into this, and take this PP, and get these three items, then we can do 2.5x more damage than anyone else for 3 rounds."

I think THE most 'broken' thing in 4e is a stupid trick where you can basically become unkillable at 29th level. If you made it to 29th level, well, so what? I mean its what I would classify as 4e's equivalent of a 'first world problem'.

There are of course various other somewhat abusive build strategies and whatnot, but none of them really makes the game unplayable or even unfun. The worst you could run into is a group that's half super-optimizers and creates a herd of chargebarians while the other half all play pixie wardens or something stupid.

darkbard · May 26, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
There are of course various other somewhat abusive build strategies and whatnot, but none of them really makes the game unplayable or even unfun. The worst you could run into is a group that's half super-optimizers and creates a herd of chargebarians while the other half all play pixie wardens or something stupid.

Could not agree with this assessment more! So long as each player in the group (including the GM) is roughly on the same page with regard to optimization, the game is perfectly viable for the whole range of builds, from hapless PCs whose players don't understand the basic math of the system to high-level PCs whose players have optimized every build choice for combat (or important single skill) effectiveness.

And, as you note, it takes real work and a combination of multiple build components to reach very high optimization (or a complete disregard for character mechanical effectiveness to be unplayable).