D&D 4E New to 4ed. : what do i have to know/look out for?

[Eilathen]

Hi everyone,

As the title suggests, i am new to DnD 4e. I had some of the books for years, but i never really read them in much detail and i never played it. Now, this has changed...somehow my interest in 4e has risen to the point that i want to use it (i'm a bit sad that my interest comes that late as it is now a real pain to find any of the 4e books for reasonable prices, especially where i live anyway...side-note closed).

Now my question is this: what would you 4e veterans tell a new 4e GM and/or player? What are the pitfalls of this edition? Overpowered builds to avoid? Details to keep in mind? Books to avoid and books that are must-haves . Talk to me about 4e! In particular: talk to me about the mechanical need-to-knows and important progressions.

Thank you all in advance for you help.

P.S.: Is it just me or do the boni get real crazy with ascending tiers of play?!

 

[ccs]

Are there any other would-be 4e players where you live?

 

[Eilathen]

Probably somewhere, yes. But in the groups i am in, there are none so far. If we want to play 4e, i guess i have to be the GM (and i don't mind) and i will have to bring it up.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Get the essentials Rules Compendium, and DM book (can't remeber its title) It's the most up to date print version of the rules of the game, and it's a nice compact package. Also get the monster vault, skip the monster manuals. If you have the older monster books, cut monster HP in half. Literally in half. Seriously.

4e works great out of the box for the most part, especially in Heroic (lvls 1-10).

Pm me and I will see about getting you some digital resources as well.

 

[MoutonRustique]

My main suggestion is this:

Do NOT worry about much of anything until you get a good couple of play experiences with it.

4e is huge in terms of rules and books and adventures and etc. There is no need to look at how high the mountain is until you even start on the path.

Unless the people you play with are genius builders (or they use the Char-Op advice), there are no "game breaking builds" - they simply don't exist (and even then, the disparity won't be that great until you hit the higher levels.) This isn't 3.x: you don't need to be as watchful and mindful of the PCs.

2nd piece of advice:
4e works very well when combat isn't used in a frivolous manner (especially at first) - the battles are awesome set-pieces of action and drama: they loose a lot of appeal if you're constantly in "meaningless" struggles against those 3 orcs that are just there in the corridor.

3rd piece of advice:
While the text in the rule books may sound prescriptive, it is not.

4th (and final) piece of advice:
If you want to find out about the very many approaches there are to key elements such as:
- skill challenges
- magical items (quantity, power, etc)
- house rules
- level / xp progression
- combat encounter building
- trap / hazard design and use
- custom monster creation
- etc.

You should really use this forum to ask directly and get into the discussions (we are few but passionate[!] about this game, and many of the others are downright geniuses!) You'll get more and faster by being part of the discussion. Don't worry, we (well, at least a good few of us) like to constantly rehash stuff! - and this is not sarcastic. I am being quite sincere.

Other good places are the rpg.net forums or the GitPG 4e forum. (You'll probably find many of the same posters, but a few noteworthy ones are "exclusives" of each.)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My main suggestion is this:

Do NOT worry about much of anything until you get a good couple of play experiences with it.

4e is huge in terms of rules and books and adventures and etc. There is no need to look at how high the mountain is until you even start on the path.

Unless the people you play with are genius builders (or they use the Char-Op advice), there are no "game breaking builds" - they simply don't exist (and even then, the disparity won't be that great until you hit the higher levels.) This isn't 3.x: you don't need to be as watchful and mindful of the PCs.

2nd piece of advice:
4e works very well when combat isn't used in a frivolous manner (especially at first) - the battles are awesome set-pieces of action and drama: they loose a lot of appeal if you're constantly in "meaningless" struggles against those 3 orcs that are just there in the corridor.

3rd piece of advice:
While the text in the rule books may sound prescriptive, it is not.

4th (and final) piece of advice:
If you want to find out about the very many approaches there are to key elements such as:
- skill challenges
- magical items (quantity, power, etc)
- house rules
- level / xp progression
- combat encounter building
- trap / hazard design and use
- custom monster creation
- etc.

You should really use this forum to ask directly and get into the discussions (we are few but passionate[!] about this game, and many of the others are downright geniuses!) You'll get more and faster by being part of the discussion. Don't worry, we (well, at least a good few of us) like to constantly rehash stuff! - and this is not sarcastic. I am being quite sincere.

Other good places are the rpg.net forums or the GitPG 4e forum. (You'll probably find many of the same posters, but a few noteworthy ones are "exclusives" of each.)

This, also.

Although inwould add that 4e combat circles back round to being super fun even in the little battles if you halve monster hp.

And that aome things like skill skill challenges and the warlock class got major rehashes in the last year of the edition being supported, so look for those updates. They work a lot better and are more fun.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?404208-D-amp-D-4th-Edition-Purge

this guy is selling a bunch of 4e stuff. Good deal.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Hi everyone,

As the title suggests, i am new to DnD 4e. I had some of the books for years, but i never really read them in much detail and i never played it. Now, this has changed...somehow my interest in 4e has risen to the point that i want to use it (i'm a bit sad that my interest comes that late as it is now a real pain to find any of the 4e books for reasonable prices, especially where i live anyway...side-note closed).

Now my question is this: what would you 4e veterans tell a new 4e GM and/or player? What are the pitfalls of this edition? Overpowered builds to avoid? Details to keep in mind? Books to avoid and books that are must-haves . Talk to me about 4e! In particular: talk to me about the mechanical need-to-knows and important progressions.

Thank you all in advance for you help.

P.S.: Is it just me or do the boni get real crazy with ascending tiers of play?!

It is really easy on the DM because the math works right, at least with post MM3 math.

The boni don't get crazy at higher levels, since the math works. However, hit points generally inflate faster than damage. The real big issue I found with gaining levels in 4e is the action economy. I've had monsters dish out an attack of opportunity, which caused three players to shout out that they had immediate interrupts they wanted to use, and after that's done the monster got toasted (didn't manage to land the hit due to death), which then caused a PC to get a free attack, which triggered a free action, and then we're surprised that it's only Player 2's turn now... *sigh*. I find 4e surprisingly broke down a bit at paragon.

I was surprised because you didn't really get more abilities past level 11, just replacing abilities you already had.

I blame the bloat (which every other version of D&D except maybe 5e and Pathfinder all went through), but it's hard to keep the bloat out of 4e if your players have character builders.

 

[Eilathen]

Thank you all for your help! I really love the responses i get here and also on rpg.net. The 4e community seems very friendly and helpful. That's a big plus as well. So, thanks again.

And i will try to heed your advice, MoutonRustique, to "get in" and ask direct questions and get in on the discussions. As soon as i start to really play DnD 4e, i am sure i will be able to do that

Oh and please keep on talking in here. Any and all advice or play-experiences, sample monster-creations, example skill challenges etc. etc. . are welcome!

 

[Igwilly]

Well, in my honest opinion, 4e’s biggest problem is errata. Tons, tons, tons and tons of errata.
In theory this would be good, hey, they’re improving the game. In practice, however, things go wild when trying to play the PHB with errata and such. At the middle of the edition’s life, all the previous monsters were thrown in the trash can with the MM3 Update. Really, it feels like the main trio was rendered useless after 2 or 3 years of 4e.

Another thing I would like to tell you: you know when people say about 4e being focused on combat-heavy, dungeons crawling game? It’s just not true. Don’t do a classic dungeon crawl adventure. In my experience, 4e is better adapted to event-based, heroic, scene-by-scene game. So instead of an enormous dungeon, playing combats as the plot unfolds and tension scenes demand is the way to go here. Dungeons must be small, with lots of non-combat encounters. This isn’t either a quality or flaw: it’s a feature, just what it is.
That also means that many 4e’s adventures were horrible. Because they tried to use the dungeon-crawl theme.
The DMG2 actually has an optional rule about rewarding XP for role-playing. Honestly I simplify it with the following house-rule: when the game gets involved for cool interaction, out-of-combat activity, when important things happen for quite some time, but no combats occurred, just award the players with XP equal to an even-level encounter. Seriously. Just do it. After I started doing this, game quality went up to eleven.