D&D 4E New gamemaster to 4e

[Tequila Sunrise]

Hey, tuxedoraptor! Like MoutonRustique advises, D&D is a very good game and you can trust it 99% of the time. And that problematic 1% is easy enough to deal with. In fact I wrote a blog post with my 7 advisories to new 4e DMs, as well as a short discussion on where 4e fits into D&D's entre of play styles.

Hope you're having a great night!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Balance in dungeons & dragons is, -for lack of a non controversal analog- not a thing normally, so when we DO get some semblance of balance, it gets blown out of proportion as being too much. when it reality, it was just barely enough to even be considered balanced. (I had an analog of american health care but figured that would just start a flame war, so I dropped it) I really wish a company or a person would buy 4e from wizards of the coast and give it the paizo treatment. The player has no problem with underpowered things, he just feels that something wasn't right with the runepriest. He also swapped thievery with dungeoneering. He currently is working on a feat for the class as well. Also I will probably use one or two things from the first monster manual mainly since orcus is in it and that saves me the time of making a big evil villian that isn't cliche, that and punching gods in the face is satisfying for most players.

The real issue with the Runepriest, IMHO, is it is just super complex and fiddly, to no real good end. Its power level is OK, a bit under supported but really not weak in any sense. Its just a beast to play it and try to keep track of all the constantly changing effects.

There's a LOT of really good material in various Dragon issues. Given the fact that the DM doesn't have to vet every single thing a player wants to use, there's no real reason not to go with a "go ahead and use options from Dragon if you can find them." Most players aren't going to bother, but a few will, perhaps, and if it proves amusing for them, then great!

Likewise there's little reason to create a list of actual restrictions on what content players can use from official books either. Every book has good stuff in it, and even things you personally don't consider to be 'good' are quite playable and likely someone will surprise you by making a cool and quite playable character out of a bladesinger, seeker, or vampire (three classes that usually get dissed for being on the weak side).

I'd note that, stats-wise, Orcus is rather a clunker. As an MM1 Epic Solo he's critically lacking in action denial mitigation. Epic PCs are very good at getting the edge on solos. Something like Loth from MM3 is literally 10x more challenging, even though she's not as tough in a basic sense. MM1 Orcus is an OK starting point, you just have to embellish it, and never make the mistake of thinking that solos are actually something you use by itself, lol.

 

[tuxedoraptor]

Yeah, the runepriests problems reared up pretty much immediately: The player wants to be a defender, but hates the fact he would have to spread himself between constitution, strength and wisdom to really put it off. He kinda had an "ah damnit" moment and regrets this very much. We have a controller in the form of a binder warlock simply because the player likes the flavor, should I tell him to abort now or let it be?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, the runepriests problems reared up pretty much immediately: The player wants to be a defender, but hates the fact he would have to spread himself between constitution, strength and wisdom to really put it off. He kinda had an "ah damnit" moment and regrets this very much. We have a controller in the form of a binder warlock simply because the player likes the flavor, should I tell him to abort now or let it be?

Well, Runepriest isn't MY cup of tea, but my guess is it can be made to work, maybe with a little MCing and feat work.

As for the Binder, its an icky class, IMHO really the closest thing to a fail in 4e. I mean, you can play it, and if you have fun with it then that's awesome! OTOH its supposed to be a controller, but its got nothing in the way of real control. It simply fails at it's primary role and isn't even a decent striker. Amusingly a regular PHB1 warlock can simply access all of the powers that come with the Binder (they are just warlock powers, nothing stops you from selecting them) which means basically anything good the Binder got is not really specific to it anyway. This is of course true of many subclasses, but most of them at least have a reasonably compelling set of class features, which this particular class utterly lacks. Nothing in 4e is unplayable by any means, but if he's going to feel the sting of being somewhat underpowered in combat then he might try something like the straight warlock (which is a pretty good controller, particularly the feylock). IMHO you can easily achieve equally good flavor, but of course that's just me...

 

[tuxedoraptor]

Well, Runepriest isn't MY cup of tea, but my guess is it can be made to work, maybe with a little MCing and feat work.

As for the Binder, its an icky class, IMHO really the closest thing to a fail in 4e. I mean, you can play it, and if you have fun with it then that's awesome! OTOH its supposed to be a controller, but its got nothing in the way of real control. It simply fails at it's primary role and isn't even a decent striker. Amusingly a regular PHB1 warlock can simply access all of the powers that come with the Binder (they are just warlock powers, nothing stops you from selecting them) which means basically anything good the Binder got is not really specific to it anyway. This is of course true of many subclasses, but most of them at least have a reasonably compelling set of class features, which this particular class utterly lacks. Nothing in 4e is unplayable by any means, but if he's going to feel the sting of being somewhat underpowered in combat then he might try something like the straight warlock (which is a pretty good controller, particularly the feylock). IMHO you can easily achieve equally good flavor, but of course that's just me...

Alright then. I told him to take the binder, stuff it in an envelope, mail it to the raven queen cleverly disguised as a book of undead summoning and hope it works. We fed the goliath runepriest to asmodeus. Now my players are looking at the warder,the shaman and as normal, the warlock.....Any tips? The invoker isn't off the table, but it feels like it wants to be a blaster more than the avenger. The shaman looks genuinely interesting and well....the warlock is the warlock. He likes the power names.

 

[MwaO]

This link might be helpful:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...acter-Optimization-WOTC-rescue-Handbook-Guide

 

[MoutonRustique]

Alright then. I told him to take the binder, stuff it in an envelope, mail it to the raven queen cleverly disguised as a book of undead summoning and hope it works. We fed the goliath runepriest to asmodeus. Now my players are looking at the warder,the shaman and as normal, the warlock.....Any tips? The invoker isn't off the table, but it feels like it wants to be a blaster more than the avenger. The shaman looks genuinely interesting and well....the warlock is the warlock. He likes the power names.

So sad about the [runepriest]! It's my favourite class! (That said, I've not played all that many characters - mostly DM)

Here's what I know from the other side of the table (in terms of mechanics only - everything else is pretty much up to RP) :
- shaman is excellent for the tactically minded and offers appreciable advantages to the other players (plus the fluff bits are excellent)
- warden is excellent at creating puddles and really being a pain for team monster. It doesn't "bring the pain!" as much as other defenders (usually), but is excellent at staying alive
- invoker is an excellent controller and can deal a fair amount of hurt. Most of it's powers are also ally-friendly so area attacks are very easy to use. Because of a few PPs and such, it's also one of the lynch-pin in many optimization constructions - which isn't something you really need to worry about, but it's important to know before hand if you're going to browse CharOp threads.

Lastly, and I can't stress this enough - "power" only matters relative to the other players. If the players don't feel overshadowed by another(s), there is nothing bad going on. All these "objective" ratings you'll see are always with regards to "the usual character" - it's pretty hard to stumble upon OP or UP(?) builds as they tend to require a pretty high level of system mastery and access to tailored items.

Of course, if they're not feeling their characters - then, of course, change it up!

 

[tuxedoraptor]

well, we are still trying things out and figuring out what we like. Though for our story of orcus reawakening, avenger has a rather high chance of being one. Possibly avenger/shaman/knight as that would be an effective spread of not dying. Though the knight could easily be a fighter, it just isn't a big deal. The runepriest might see another session, just not soon.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Alright then. I told him to take the binder, stuff it in an envelope, mail it to the raven queen cleverly disguised as a book of undead summoning and hope it works. We fed the goliath runepriest to asmodeus. Now my players are looking at the warder,the shaman and as normal, the warlock.....Any tips? The invoker isn't off the table, but it feels like it wants to be a blaster more than the avenger. The shaman looks genuinely interesting and well....the warlock is the warlock. He likes the power names.

Shaman is a really interesting class. It isn't as fiddly as a Runepriest, but it has a lot of potential tactical depth to it. That and it is really just pretty unique (I will guess somewhere in 3.x someone published something that presages the 4e Shaman, but its a pretty novel design).

Invokers are great, though they tend to suffer from a bit of being a sort of divine wizard. As the wizard got massive waves of additional support in every later book that tended to overshadow the Invoker. Still, they have very good support and they really are quite distinctive.

The standard warlock is a bit of an odd class. It started out deeply V-shaped and it was really hard to make it truly put out damage at low levels. You had to stick to the best possible options, AND be fed the right items. Later on new class options, feats, and some general tinkering with the game helped. Warlocks have a diverse set of pathways they can follow in build terms, maybe more than any other class, and some are scary to the level of almost being really broken (and then got some solid nerfs to the most egregious stuff). High level warlocks are potentially tops in DPR and have plenty of flavor. Can be a bit of a path getting there, but always a fun class to play.

 

[tuxedoraptor]

We rarely use magic items, Right now we have a dwarf world speaker shaman, a goliath fighter and a human warlock. He wants to take the infernal pact but not pump constitution so hes thinking the sorcerer king pact. I told him fine but the pact will not have any dark sun related flavor. To be fair though, the pact itself seems pretty good for a generic warlock pact