My XP at DDXP

[JesterOC]

I'm sure some of it will become easier to manage as you grow more familiar with the rules but still ... I'm not liking what I'm hearing about this right now.

Of all the things I have heard so far, this too is the most worrisome. However I think the key here is that the need to remember what is going on is shared. The fighter only has to worry about marking, if the DM forgets I'm sure the fighter will remind him. The character that can act on bloodied will be responsible for asking that data from te DM. I don't think you really need tokens for those states.

Why does the entire group need to know who is bloodied all the time and track the creature with a marker? Looks like overkill to me.

The hardest thing the the DM will have to keep track is all of the monster special marks and effects. But the DM is in the best position to alter what type and how many monsters attack the party. Again it is better than remembering the durration of effects and looking up spells in the players handbook when using monster inate magic.

All in all it looks like there has been 2 steps towards steamlining combat and 1 step back due to the number of effects in play now.

All in all it is better but not as effortless for the DM as I had hoped. But it does look like more fun for the player.

JesterOC

 

[Zinovia]

I'm concerned a bit by the number of conditions that need to be tracked. On the other hand, at least we don't need to worry about durations for them or recalculating stats on the fly.

We picked up some of the magnetic markers from Alea while at Genghis Con recently, and they look perfect for marking conditions in 4E.

 

[SCMrks]

I just saw on the WotC site that the new Save My Game article is about keeping track of conditions in 4th Ed. It gives helpful suggestions.

The whole group needs to know who is bloodied because you my have a power that can be used only on bloodied enemies and it is disappointing to attack opponent A then remember afterwards that you could have done more if you had attacked opponent B. The Save My Game article mentions how important Bloodied condition is.

I will say again that even with all this to keep track of the game was fun. We just helped each other remember the new rules and what to do.

 

[pukunui]

I agree that some of these things can be handled by the players (assuming they're trustworthy and/or aren't forgetful) but what's annoying is that there are lots of conditional modifiers. As SCMrks said, there's no blanket bless anymore. Instead, there's a whole lot of stuff that either affects one character/monster (a mark or a curse), or else it affects people within a limited area (the elf racial bonus to allies' perception), or else totally depends on specific conditions (the halfling's bonus to AC when adjacent to at least two larger creatures). Part of me knows I'll be able to handle tracking most of them, but what worries me more is that we simply won't remember they're there ...

In our 3.5 game, we often forget about the conditional things that don't come up all that often. I was hoping they were moving away from that sort of thing with 4e but it looks like I was wrong.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Some weapons, like the great ax, are High Crit weapons that do max damage + a die roll on a crit.

I think that was from an earlier version that was floating around during playtesting. My DM ran it that way at first, but later admitted he had screwed up and a crit was just max damage.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

ok i have a real qurestion sence i have never used minis in d&d how hard would it be to run a game without minis and markers. i keep hearing no harder then 3.5 but sence u have played it how hard do u think.

 

[TerraDave]

Thanks for sharing! Random replies:

Tracking conditions and power use seem to be the main "game play issues" coming out of XP.

We have been told that some weapons do bonus damage (die) on a crit.

Cleric is, well, almost like other editions: a second tier fighter who heals and buffs. Not my favorite class from the playtest.

Ranger was impressive, but needed higher con or the toughness feat.

 

[Brutorz Bill]

This is quite possibly the first thing I've heard about 4e that makes me unhappy. As my group's DM, I struggle to keep track of all the ongoing effects in our 3.5 game. The WotC PR machine gave me the impression that they were reducing the number of effects you had to keep track of during an encounter, but from what I've seen of the DDXP stuff, there are just as many, if not even more, things to track during an encounter. I'm sure some of it will become easier to manage as you grow more familiar with the rules but still ... I'm not liking what I'm hearing about this right now.

As our groups main DM. This is a MAJOR turn off to me. The more I hear the less I like about 4th ed. I thought 4th was supposed to streamline things, make combat easier. Sounds to me like you now have to use miniatures as well as tokens. No thanks!

 

[Iron Sky]

When I ran some test adventures, I found a system that seemed to work pretty well.

Everyone rolled initiative and jotted down everything's init(rolling individual monsters seperately and minions together).

Then I wrote something like the following:

Init Creature(s) AC/Fort/Ref/Will Effects(Ongoing/Marked/Etc) Hp(Max/Blood/Current)

5 Kobold Minions 15/12/15/12 3/1/3 #2, #4

8 Steve(Ftr) 19/15/14/13, 5 Fire, Hob(2) Mark

10 Hob(1) - Archer 17/14/16/14, Slow, Sleep, Steve's Mark, 36/18/36 25 8

12 Joe(Pal) 20/14/15/16

13 Hob(2) - Soldier 19/15/15/12, 5 Acid, Joe's Mark, 44/22/44 31

16 Hob(3) - Warcaster 18/13/14/17, F. Blst( ), F. Staff(x), 38/19/38

21 Al(Rng) 17/14/16/13

For the players, I could see if they were bloodied since we use two colors of flat glass beads to show hp. Red = bloodied total, blue = the rest. Blue beads were removed first. If the pc had only red beads showing, they were bloodied. Temporary hp were blue beads upside down(they were flat on one side, domed on the other) and "death marks" were red beads upside down. Me and the players like being able to easily and visually see how many hp they have, and saves alot of sheet/eraser wear-and-tear.

Meant a bit of prep before the fight, but only a couple minutes, but after thatit went really smooth on my end.

 

[pukunui]

Sounds to me like you now have to use miniatures as well as tokens.

For me, it's the other way around. I feel like I'm being told that I now have to use tokens (and a whole host of other "DM aids") as well as miniatures.

I read that Save My Game article when it first came out, so my memory of its details are a bit hazy, but if 4e's "ease of DMing" is only possible through the use of a whole slew of "DM aids", then I'll be very unhappy.

I'll go ahead and state that I'm better at multitasking than your stereotypical male, but I'm still not that good at it, especially when I'm under pressure (whether self-imposed or not) to perform on game night. I tend to forget a lot of the little details during any given session (like, a few sessions back, I forgot that shield blocked magic missile, so the PCs were able to slay a juvenile red dragon primarily through the warmage's use of several empowere magic missiles).

For the record, I'm not saying I'm against "DM aids". In fact, I'm all for them (see my above comment about forgetting things). What I don't like is the suggestion, whether real or imagined, that 4e might expect me to use them in order for it to be easy to DM. If it's not easy to DM without a whole lot of little aids, then it's not going to be any easier to DM than 3.5.