Unfortunately the correct DCs are not in the errata (it has the first revision but not the second). I posted the correct numbers upthread, and they are also on Quickleaf's cheat-sheet.
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D&D 4E Late to the 4E party
- Thread starter Bob_in_DC
- Start date
Dungeoneer
First Post
Ah yes, my bad for skimming. Thx!
MoutonRustique
Explorer
[MENTION=6778397]Bob_in_DC[/MENTION]
Enough insipid praise.
You've got oodles of responses so far and they are very good. Here are mine :
1 - keep the game flowing : have the monsters risk OA (formerly known as AoO), try not to use Soldier types when not required.
2 - don't be afraid to change things. 4e is very precise in its presentation and that can make it intimidating to change. Don't worry overmuch about it - no one here is going to come over to your house and yell and throw your books in a fire if "mess it up".
2a - at first, it can be a good idea to ignore the smaller effects of some monsters (a -2 until end of turn, etc, etc.) unless you feel the effect is key to the monster's /feel/. Until you get a solid handle on things, don't be afraid to have the "basic attacks" be simple damage.
2aa - I suggest you keep forced movement - it's fast to do and fun.
3 - try to have a bit of cool terrain in every encounter - they don't need tons of it, just one (or two) and have your monsters /try/ to use it. If they fail, that's fine - the PCs will feel like they got an extra victory for not having had to suffer it. Examples : stacks of wood that can be released (Diablo III style), a hole in the ground, a very tangled brush, a pillar runed with blood-magic, etc.
4 - use the skill challenge mechanic as a guide - not a straight-jacket (goes with point 2). If you think failure is a consequence of /not enough success in a given time/, have a number of success required with a set number of rounds (as opposed to x Success before 3 Fails)
5 - don't feel the absolute need to look at the errata - aside from monster errata (that's a good idea)
6 - If money is not a big problem, get : Monster Vault : Threats to the Nentir Vale - it is awesome!
7 - don't let anyone play a drow ranger - just don't (I'm kidding! ... ok, not really... yes I am! ... seriously, please don't...)
8 - the incredible intellectual might I've laid bare should really impress upon you the difficulty in running 4e - I mean, if I can do it...
That, up there, is an excellent resource - excellent (and I use almost nothing at the table. In 20 years of play, those are the only things I've ever printed out and used. 20 years!)
Enough insipid praise.
You've got oodles of responses so far and they are very good. Here are mine :
1 - keep the game flowing : have the monsters risk OA (formerly known as AoO), try not to use Soldier types when not required.
2 - don't be afraid to change things. 4e is very precise in its presentation and that can make it intimidating to change. Don't worry overmuch about it - no one here is going to come over to your house and yell and throw your books in a fire if "mess it up".
2a - at first, it can be a good idea to ignore the smaller effects of some monsters (a -2 until end of turn, etc, etc.) unless you feel the effect is key to the monster's /feel/. Until you get a solid handle on things, don't be afraid to have the "basic attacks" be simple damage.
2aa - I suggest you keep forced movement - it's fast to do and fun.
3 - try to have a bit of cool terrain in every encounter - they don't need tons of it, just one (or two) and have your monsters /try/ to use it. If they fail, that's fine - the PCs will feel like they got an extra victory for not having had to suffer it. Examples : stacks of wood that can be released (Diablo III style), a hole in the ground, a very tangled brush, a pillar runed with blood-magic, etc.
4 - use the skill challenge mechanic as a guide - not a straight-jacket (goes with point 2). If you think failure is a consequence of /not enough success in a given time/, have a number of success required with a set number of rounds (as opposed to x Success before 3 Fails)
5 - don't feel the absolute need to look at the errata - aside from monster errata (that's a good idea)
6 - If money is not a big problem, get : Monster Vault : Threats to the Nentir Vale - it is awesome!
7 - don't let anyone play a drow ranger - just don't (I'm kidding! ... ok, not really... yes I am! ... seriously, please don't...)
8 - the incredible intellectual might I've laid bare should really impress upon you the difficulty in running 4e - I mean, if I can do it...
Wrathamon
Adventurer
which ones are good and which ones are too be avoided?
Wrathamon
Adventurer
One of the strengths or 4th!
Also, character powers can be re flavored as well! The game is so easy to re-flavor it is amazing. Let them!
if they want to make a boxing goblin with the rogue, then let them. The W might be using Dagger for the weapon but let them say its their brass knuckles and their attacks are punches.
The presentation and emphasis of the rules of 4e doesn't actually show its strength. Which is flexibility and creativity, because the balance (when using the updated monster and challenge dcs) you can do a lot more improv then other editions.
If the player wants to do something not on their character sheet, an improv action ... look up an appropriate Difficulty check or if its a crazy attack, you can look up the Damage that's appropriate for the heroe's level.
The game is the strongest when players are allowed to do things not on their character sheet and you as a DM should encourage it. That is why their isnt a ton of non-combat abilities. Don't think the player is stuck just using their powers. Powers are just there for combat balance. They should be used as creative launchpads for solving problems and promoting heroic actions! You have skills and rituals but really let them make stuff up and give use the guidelines for damage and DCs to balance it out.
Scrivener of Doom
Adventurer
The best are probably the EPIC adventures. There is just so much material - story, stat blocks, entire campaign arcs - to steal from those even if you don't run them.
But, basically, the adventures got better with time so start with the later years (the first number indicates what year it belongs to.).
Anyway, there are more than 200 LFR adventures so I cannot give a general review other than to say these ones have been particularly important to my games: DALE1-2 Blades for Daggerdale, SPEC1-1 Shades of the Zhentarim, and SPEC1-2 Zhent's Ancient Shadows. Of course, I like almost anything Zhent-related.
The worst? Nahhh, I don't want to slag off at guys who did this for free. I will say this, though: this isn't the slimy, warm residue of a radioactive sewer pipe that was served up during the 2E days of the Living City version of organised play. At least most of the authors made an effort not to deliberately make the adventures stupid.
Wrathamon
Adventurer
That makes sense to not rip stuff that was junky. I know that the early stuff wasn't that great (which is why I stopped playing) but heard good things later so its good to see.
I can see the epic level stuff being good since wotc didnt release much for that tier of play (DMG 3!!)
I can see the epic level stuff being good since wotc didnt release much for that tier of play (DMG 3!!)
Hi, everyone. OP again.
Here's where we are on my return to 4E:
1) I subscribed to D&D Insider and poked around for a while.
2) My players and I agreed that we didn't want to deal with the complexity of working through the Essentials and other later books and figuring out which rules to use. We're just going to stick with the original PHB. To the extent that I have access to errata, I'll do my best to incorporate that, but I'll try not to worry about that too much. We plan to use Character Builder, so any character-specific errata should be included automatically.
3) While my players are normally fairly big on characterization and story, they're not interested in that for now. They both want to do pure hack and slash just to assess and gain experience with the 4E combat mechanics. My thought, therefore, is to pick up the Dungeon Delve, have them create first level characters, and run through the first level dungeon in Dungeon Delve. If my players are interested in continuing, we'll level up to level 2, run through the second level dungeon in Dungeon Delve, and repeat until we get tired of it, decide to create new characters and start a legitimate adventure, or reach level 30, whichever comes first. I understand that each level of Dungeon Delve only has three encounters; my players see that as an advantage, since it'll give them a good sense of what each level is like without taking forever for them to advance.
4) My players agreed to play two characters each for a total of four characters. Given our interest in starting with the basics, they'll collectively play a fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard (they also decided that whoever plays the wizard will not also play the cleric, so each one will get a spellcaster and a non-spellcaster to see what kind of differences there are, if any). They'll also each play one human and one demi-human.
So, I think that's about it. Does that all sound reasonable to you? Is there anything I'm missing?
I understand that Dungeon Delve is designed to work with specific dungeon tiles. I'm happy to get some of those; does anyone know which ones I need to get? I plan to get everything in one big order.
Someone on Amazon said that Dungeon Delve is designed for five characters. I'd hate to ask my players to add another character to their load; how difficult will it be for me to adjust the difficulty down to account for the fact that the party will only have four characters?
I think that's it. Thanks again.
Here's where we are on my return to 4E:
1) I subscribed to D&D Insider and poked around for a while.
(A) I found it hard to get a good sense of what's in the books I don't have (for example, the Essentials books) since, as far as I can tell, you can't just read them straight through. I used the filter to check out a lot of the rules from the various books, so I think I have a vague idea, but it's not as clear to me as just reading it straight through.
(B) I downloaded all the issues of Dragon and Dungeon, except for the various issues in the middle where they don't let you download whole issues (for those, I looked through and downloaded a handful of individual articles that seemed particularly noteworthy, but there weren't many of them).
2) My players and I agreed that we didn't want to deal with the complexity of working through the Essentials and other later books and figuring out which rules to use. We're just going to stick with the original PHB. To the extent that I have access to errata, I'll do my best to incorporate that, but I'll try not to worry about that too much. We plan to use Character Builder, so any character-specific errata should be included automatically.
3) While my players are normally fairly big on characterization and story, they're not interested in that for now. They both want to do pure hack and slash just to assess and gain experience with the 4E combat mechanics. My thought, therefore, is to pick up the Dungeon Delve, have them create first level characters, and run through the first level dungeon in Dungeon Delve. If my players are interested in continuing, we'll level up to level 2, run through the second level dungeon in Dungeon Delve, and repeat until we get tired of it, decide to create new characters and start a legitimate adventure, or reach level 30, whichever comes first. I understand that each level of Dungeon Delve only has three encounters; my players see that as an advantage, since it'll give them a good sense of what each level is like without taking forever for them to advance.
4) My players agreed to play two characters each for a total of four characters. Given our interest in starting with the basics, they'll collectively play a fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard (they also decided that whoever plays the wizard will not also play the cleric, so each one will get a spellcaster and a non-spellcaster to see what kind of differences there are, if any). They'll also each play one human and one demi-human.
So, I think that's about it. Does that all sound reasonable to you? Is there anything I'm missing?
I understand that Dungeon Delve is designed to work with specific dungeon tiles. I'm happy to get some of those; does anyone know which ones I need to get? I plan to get everything in one big order.
Someone on Amazon said that Dungeon Delve is designed for five characters. I'd hate to ask my players to add another character to their load; how difficult will it be for me to adjust the difficulty down to account for the fact that the party will only have four characters?
I think that's it. Thanks again.
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