What should a seasoned 3.5e DM expect from their first 4e session?

[Rokes]

After nearly a year away from playing my regular weekly D&D games, I've decide to pull my head out of my backside and start gaming again. Specifically, start DMing again, and I've decided to run Rescue at Rivenroar this Sunday.

So what should a seasoned 3.5e DM expect from their first 4e session?

My assumptions:

• The players will come up with some strategies and maneuvers in combat that I won't be expecting, probably resulting in at least one encounter going much faster than planned.
• I will screw up at least once counting diagonal movement.
• I will lose track of a few marks or on-going effects.
• One player will reach dying because of an unexpected monster power/tactic.
• Everyone will have fun!

 

[Obryn]

I would expect some confusion for the first few sessions. 4e is a different kind of beast, and our first few sessions were ... "rocky", I think is a fair term.

One good way to keep track of effects is to make your players track them. Really, if you get them started now, it will save you a lot of effort in the long run. Try to get some kind of marker for conditions, though - especially warlock curses, hunter's quarry, and defender marks.

-O

 

[Festivus]

Some things I found:

* Combats took longer at 1st level than 3.5
* Things were less complex to manage as a DM because the full stat blocks of the monsters were right there, and they were smaller.
* Transitioning from feet to squares, and the diagnol movement thing takes getting used to, and yes you will mess up for several games. It's even harder if you still play 3.5 (like I do).
* There is no more 5 foot step, only a shift, and that is a move not a minor or free.
* The skills you are used to people doing don't always exist... I still make calls for them and I have been running 4E since before it came out.

 

[Festivus]

I would expect some confusion for the first few sessions. 4e is a different kind of beast, and our first few sessions were ... "rocky", I think is a fair term.

One good way to keep track of effects is to make your players track them. Really, if you get them started now, it will save you a lot of effort in the long run. Try to get some kind of marker for conditions, though - especially warlock curses, hunter's quarry, and defender marks.

-O

This.

Also, for ongoing conditions on monsters I have a shorthand method I use. So when tracking damage on a monster, and he gains ongoing 5 fire damage save ends condition I would annotate to the right of the hitpoints column 5 fire and circle it so I know to roll a save to end that condition. If it's an effect that ends on a players next turn I write the condition (e.g. slow) and then a number representing the persons seat around the table.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I would echo comments about players tracking effects on them. I usually place a glass bead beside any minis that have ongoing effects and remove them as the saves are made.
I would also reccomend using coins or something to mark curse, hunters quarry and so forth.
I also think that printing out power cards for each character (the character generator application does a very good job of this really helps. Expecially as it calculates the base numbers.

In running, yeah, you will make mistakes but no one os likely to notice. The only thing is that party tactics are likely to be suboptimal and it is a good idea that if the party is obvisously winning then have to monsters run or just kill them off on the next hit.

 

[Cadfan]

A few things you're used to are in different places than they were before. Your players will have similar issues. Consider hinting to them about abilities they have but don't seem to be remembering. Rituals are a commonly missed opportunity, for example.

4e assumes that certain aspects of your character's background will not be represented on your character sheet in the form of a statistic. This may or may not be a problem for you or your players. If someone's only experience is with 3.5, they may be accustomed to only being able to have skills or traits if they have a numeric representation on their character sheet. Try to distance from that mindset a little bit, and treat character background and non-adventuring skills in a more freeform manner.

That about covers it. There are some "how to avoid edition wars" tips, but you don't seem the type to get into edition wars.

 

[Verys Arkon]

I'll agree with the above posters, and add OAs

Opportunity Attacks only occur on two occasions
1) when a enemy moves out of a threatened square (usually adjacent)
2) when an enemy uses a ranged or area attack while in a threatened square

It still catches some of my old 3.5 players.
- Standing up doesn't provoke
- Close blast or burst spells don't provoke
- Most monsters don't have threatening reach, and neither do PCs with polearms

As for DMing, page 42 will let you adjudicate most things on the fly, and save you from looking up any rules you don't know or can't remember which lets you keep the game from stalling. I memorize the 'magic number', or the moderate difficulty DC for the party's level. Once I have that number memorized, it is easy to add or subtract 5 for an easy or difficult check (note that the DCs have been errata'd.)

 

[RangerWickett]

One regular complaint I have made and heard is that having a bunch of powers encourages you to use those powers, instead of making your own stuff up. Like, when it came to my turn, I would often look at my powers (which we had printed out on cards) to figure out which was best, whereas in 3e, if I was a fighter I'd just do what seemed like it would work, and we'd figure out the rules as necessary.

It's not much different from being a spellcaster. You've got a small variety of hammers, and you try to find which will nail your enemies best.

If you want to avoid this and keep things from bogging down into "which power do I use this turn," I suggest telling every player to write down a new at-will power on their character sheet: "Do Something Cool."

That way, when they look through their list of powers, they'll be like, "I could use reaping strike, or I could tide of iron. Or, I could do something cool. Hm, maybe I should try grabbing the kobold and holding his face in that firepit over there. See how 'shifty' he is when he's getting turned into barbecue."

When PCs 'do something cool,' check the DMG, I think page 42, or 45 or something, and see the table that describes about how much damage their attacks should do.

 

[Storminator]

My assumptions:

• The players will come up with some strategies and maneuvers in combat that I won't be expecting, probably resulting in at least one encounter going much faster than planned.
  

Even more likely, your players won't grok the synergies inherent in the system, and will botch a couple easy encounters.

You have plenty of monsters and NPCs to throw at your learning curve. Your players, not so much. I recommend letting your players rebuild their PCs once they figure out how things really work in 4e.

PS

 

[SteveC]

Some of the problems depend on the kind of characters you have. For me, the biggest offender was the fighter's combat superiority/combat challenge. I still get it wrong periodically. If you can give a list of the characters your group is playing, there's probably some specific "tips to watch for" that we can provide you with.

--Steve