D&D 4E Forked: "Math and Grind" or "Why Rechan is Right" (From: "4e One-trick ponies")

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Ah, OK - for use on a PC the sheet is pretty poor, I agree. Have you tried using iPlay4e? I believe that has a good interactive sheet, usable on-line in combination with the eCB (i.e. you build the character on the CB, then use iPlay4e to view the character during play).

I will go hunt that down, but by eCB, do you mean the DDI character sheet? (The players use the free offline builder.)

Re. printing, I have a colour printer in the games room, and by "hiding" cards that haven't changed we generally need only 1-2 pages printed per character per 2 level-ups (up to 20th level, which is where we are so far). I suppose if you're playing weekly the turn-around would be higher and it could become an issue.

Our host actually has a printer. I wonder if we can do something with it? (One player sometimes prints his sheets, but that's mainly to give me a record.)

 

[Balesir]

Will it allow for printing them out? If so, you are my new bestest friend evar!

It's a bit fiddly, but I just tried it and it let me copy-paste to Word (where it came out fully formatted) and printing from there is a breeze.

 

[Balesir]

I will go hunt that down, but by eCB, do you mean the DDI character sheet? (The players use the free offline builder.)

I mean the online one - you need your DDI login to use it. I don't know whether/how it would work with the offline one. We use the offline one, too, but don't use iPlay4e...

Our host actually has a printer. I wonder if we can do something with it? (One player sometimes prints his sheets, but that's mainly to give me a record.)

It depends a bit how it's set up. We have a household network with networked printers and wireless access points, so any PC can be linked up and printed out from. We can get 2 or 3 PCs going with the CB - and even a tablet or two with the online one, if we want to - and get printouts from any of them. As long as there is at least one PC with the CB available connected to the printer, though, you should be able to print in a pinch, at least.

 

[D'karr]

It's a bit fiddly, but I just tried it and it let me copy-paste to Word (where it came out fully formatted) and printing from there is a breeze.

Ok, I just downloaded, and "installed" this. It took me the best part of 5 minutes to figure what to do with the software, which is not too bad. You are right, it is a bit fiddly. But it does output to a format I can cut/paste and print out.

You are officially my bestest friend evar!!!!

 

[Balesir]

Ok, I just downloaded, and "installed" this. It took me the best part of 5 minutes to figure what to do with the software, which is not too bad. You are right, it is a bit fiddly. But it does output to a format I can cut/paste and print out.

You are officially my bestest friend evar!!!!

I have officially achieved something today! Yay for me!

 

[Garthanos]

I found the article - http://angrydm.com/2010/04/the-dd-boss-fight-part-1/

He makes some good points - a solo monster is going to be hit with 4x as many status effects as a regular monster, so is even more vulnerable to being nerfed by simple powers that Daze, Weaken, Slow, etc. Imagine a big climactic fight in your game with your tough bad guy, but every round, the PCs can Daze him, so the BBEG can't take opportunity attacks and is only limited to one action per round. With the 3 stage solo, each time it moves to a new stage, it gets to shrug off some status effects.

I think if you take 4x the status effects you need 4x the resistance to those ... and I dont mean making it all or nothing, its rather like having a dazed effect remove one of the heads of the hydra phenomena not shut down the whole beast.

Ah reading the artical very good.. that is what I meant by mult-stage battles... but waves of minions are in the same category the party has easy minion clearing and area of effect attacks and its too valuable clearing them all at the start, so when to use those powers becomes a non-choice, so you break it up have them appear in waves and make some of them have a price when you clear them (the exploding minion trick and similar things).

 

[NewJeffCT]

good point on waves on minions. But, part of the problem is that if the PCs see a bad guy using an action point (or, RPing it, taking more actions than usual and to greater effect), they know to focus their attention on that bad guy.

 

[Ratskinner]

I've attached the combat sheet (worked up in Excel) for the invoker in my game. All the players have something similar.

Ye gods! I never played or ran 4e at high levels, and that sheet makes me glad of it. That's way to complicated and fiddly for my tastes. No wonder people suffer "analysis paralysis."

Nowadays, I think I'm looking for some bizarre cross of Dungeon World and 13th Age. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain that DW was "grindy".

 

[Quickleaf]

At the risk of sounding like I am slagging off on players, I am also amazed at how few players I have encountered in 30+ years of running D&D who actually take the time to organise their character sheets - or construct a short summary - to make managing this sort of information easier.

As a DM you have to do this with effectively multiple characters but these "namby-pamby" players cannot handle one or two....

Hell yeah! Proper usage of "namby-pamby" about D&D players. Us DMs may make difficult players (for other reasons) but at least we frickin' organize or sheets!

 

[Garthanos]

good point on waves on minions. But, part of the problem is that if the PCs see a bad guy using an action point (or, RPing it, taking more actions than usual and to greater effect), they know to focus their attention on that bad guy.

One thing I have considered is changing all durations to save ends... consistancy is your friend when it comes to tracking - additionally attendant minions can use there actions to grant an extra valuable save (see heal check) ie.. must deal with minions before disabling big bad or its rarely disabled even partially for very long