My XP at DDXP

[PeelSeel2]

I think it should be easy. If it is a bonus to a particular character, it will behoove them to remember it. I am not going to as a DM. If it concerns and effect a character has on a monster, the player had better remember it when it is that monsters turn. All I need to remember as a DM is what bonuses do my monsters have and what negatives do the characters have. Work load now reduced by half.

 

[Falling Icicle]

That's probably my biggest concern about 4e. They say that they've simplified things and that combat is so much faster and easier to run now, but there's so many little marks, bonuses, +1 to this, +1 to that to keep track of. It sounds like a nightmare to me.

 

[fnwc]

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.

An alternative might be to ask your players to keep track of ongoing damage affecting them as well as any ongoing damage they might be causing monsters. This will help distribute the load among all of the players.

That way, when the gnoll berserker's turn comes around, the Warlock might remind the DM to take 5 ongoing poison damage and make a save.

 

[caudor]

Hum...marks, tokens, tracking little things? Maybe someone will create a computer applet to track some of this stuff. Or maybe this is where the virtual D&D table will help out.

This news is a little disconcerting now, but I'll probably get over it after learning the new rules.

 

[pukunui]

An alternative might be to ask your players to keep track of ongoing damage affecting them as well as any ongoing damage they might be causing monsters. This will help distribute the load among all of the players.

That way, when the gnoll berserker's turn comes around, the Warlock might remind the DM to take 5 ongoing poison damage and make a save.

Yes, this is what I plan to do. And I'm probably going to tell them that if they forget, then tough beans. The show must go on. The only instance where I would possibly revisit something is if a PC died because something was forgotten or because a rule was misremembered or whatever (I do this already).

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think it should be easy. If it is a bonus to a particular character, it will behoove them to remember it. I am not going to as a DM. If it concerns and effect a character has on a monster, the player had better remember it when it is that monsters turn. All I need to remember as a DM is what bonuses do my monsters have and what negatives do the characters have. Work load now reduced by half.

I agree. I don't see a problem. In fact it looks like book-keeping has been move to whoever benefits from a rule and that gives them incentive enough to track it.

I've tried to use tokens but found that they are generally more trouble to use than just try to remember stuff. So what if you forget a bloodied free attack once in awhile? In sports this sort of thing happens all the time. It's just a game.

 

[wedgeski]

Complexity isn't the problem for me, it's the *type* of complexity. In a 3.x game, there could be so many overlapping buffs and conditions that keeping track was just a nightmare. How many DM's have heard their players declare a miss and then be reminded by someone of a bonus to hit that they forgot about? If any groups are like mine, it happens a lot. +1 to this, -2 to that, this condition stacks, that one doesn't... horrible. Although it might seem like there's a lot of that in 4ed, most of them seem binary: he is being marked, he is not; she is bloodied, she is not. The basic battlefield conditions are relatively simple to handle.

It seems like 4ed has shied away from a full-frontal SAGA-type condition track, unless anyone knows different, and I'm disappointed by that because I thought it was a great innovation. it suggests that the D&D designers think a certain level of complexity is demanded by your average D&D player, which is an interesting thought by itself.

 

[keterys]

So, in the two preview sessions I played:
In the first, we didn't use coins or tokens or anything, at all. We just said things, and kept track. No problems.
In the second, we tried out using the tokens to get the hang of it... and honestly it actually probably was more harmful than helpful, but I think mostly because we weren't used to it.

Either way, it didn't feel like more things to track than a normal 3rd ed game. In fact, it felt like a lot less to track than the 3rd ed game I did that weekend where I had to track several buffs and debuffs in everchanging amounts.

I think one of the things I liked best was not having to track durations. What I knew for the round was up to date, no need to increment.

 

[hong]

I've tried to use tokens but found that they are generally more trouble to use than just try to remember stuff. So what if you forget a bloodied free attack once in awhile? In sports this sort of thing happens all the time. It's just a game.

In sports you forget to take a free attack on bloodied opponents once in a while?

Cancel that Swedish tour!

 

[Plane Sailing]

For those who played, you can perhaps answer a question for me about saving throws to remove conditions.

These happen at the end of your turn, right?

a) Do they happen just *before* the effect for that turn, or just *after* (e.g. if you are taking acid damage from the dragon are you guaranteed the damage and then save to remove it?

b) Where there any actions you could take to get an extra save (e.g. Can I jump into the water as a standard action to attempt to wash the acid off and get an extra save?)

c) Did the 'miniatures' save rule applied, in that if you rolled a 20 on any of your 'saving throws' it removed all remaining conditions at once? And if so, was that only on a natural 20 or did it include saving throw modifiers like the dragons +5 or humans +1?

Cheers