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My Return to 4th Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Kinneus" data-source="post: 5536797" data-attributes="member: 48215"><p>Not to diminish your beautiful post, but I think those are legitimate concerns... and what's better, they've been addressed since your absence.</p><p> </p><p>Early 4e monsters were pretty severely under-powered. Basically, their defenses and hitpoints were too high, while their damage was much too low. This lead to the impression that 4e was "less harsh" than previous editions, and PCs generally seeming to die less often. Instead, they'd just sort of stand there and slash away at this giant block of HP with their At-Will powers.</p><p> </p><p>They caught on to this issue around Monster Manual 3, leading them to reduce HP and defenses across the board, but to seriously upgrade monster damage. This lead to swifter, 'swingier' and (in my opinion) more exciting combats.</p><p> </p><p>To make things even crazier, they brought back the awesome Dark Sun setting. Dark Sun has a reputation for harshness, and 4e upholds that reputation. I speak from experience; I'm currently playing in a Dark Sun campaign. I've played for about five or six sessions with this group... and I'm currently on character #3.</p><p> </p><p>They also fairly recently released rules for "inherent bonuses" as an alternate to magic items. You're right; magic items (or specifically 'enhancement bonuses') are necessary to 4e's math. Players used to need a magic weapon, magic armor, and a "neck slot item" (like an amulet of protection or a magic cloak) to keep their to-hit bonuses and defenses in line with expected parameters.</p><p> </p><p>But now, you can opt to use inherent bonuses for your campaign. Those boring +1, +2 bonuses associated with most magic weapons, armor, and amulets? You can now choose to make them inherent in the characters, with the PCs get a +1 or +2 as they level. These bonuses don't stack with magic items; which allows you to either ignore magic items completely (great for a low-magic campaign), or instead to focus on only handling out cool and flavorful magic items instead of the rather boring "magic sword +1".</p><p> </p><p>So... I'm glad you finally came around on high heroic fantasy! It can be a real hoot. But if you get tired of it, and decide you want to try some old-school brutality or low-magic fun... hey, you can do that too!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kinneus, post: 5536797, member: 48215"] Not to diminish your beautiful post, but I think those are legitimate concerns... and what's better, they've been addressed since your absence. Early 4e monsters were pretty severely under-powered. Basically, their defenses and hitpoints were too high, while their damage was much too low. This lead to the impression that 4e was "less harsh" than previous editions, and PCs generally seeming to die less often. Instead, they'd just sort of stand there and slash away at this giant block of HP with their At-Will powers. They caught on to this issue around Monster Manual 3, leading them to reduce HP and defenses across the board, but to seriously upgrade monster damage. This lead to swifter, 'swingier' and (in my opinion) more exciting combats. To make things even crazier, they brought back the awesome Dark Sun setting. Dark Sun has a reputation for harshness, and 4e upholds that reputation. I speak from experience; I'm currently playing in a Dark Sun campaign. I've played for about five or six sessions with this group... and I'm currently on character #3. They also fairly recently released rules for "inherent bonuses" as an alternate to magic items. You're right; magic items (or specifically 'enhancement bonuses') are necessary to 4e's math. Players used to need a magic weapon, magic armor, and a "neck slot item" (like an amulet of protection or a magic cloak) to keep their to-hit bonuses and defenses in line with expected parameters. But now, you can opt to use inherent bonuses for your campaign. Those boring +1, +2 bonuses associated with most magic weapons, armor, and amulets? You can now choose to make them inherent in the characters, with the PCs get a +1 or +2 as they level. These bonuses don't stack with magic items; which allows you to either ignore magic items completely (great for a low-magic campaign), or instead to focus on only handling out cool and flavorful magic items instead of the rather boring "magic sword +1". So... I'm glad you finally came around on high heroic fantasy! It can be a real hoot. But if you get tired of it, and decide you want to try some old-school brutality or low-magic fun... hey, you can do that too! [/QUOTE]
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