D&D 4E Some questions about 4e

[S'mon]

It's presumed that in combat, you know where all enemies are unless they have some way of getting total concealment and then make a stealth check that beats your perception check. Just going invisible doesn't make them disappear, they also have to roll stealth (which they can do because invisibility grants total concealment). Only after the accompanying stealth check can you not see them.

By 'not see them' I take it you mean 'are not aware of their location'.

Anyway this (defaulting to assumption of perfect situational awareness) generally works ok for invisibility, but not so much for blindness - including the result of total darkness, as well as individual blindness.

 

[malraux]

By 'not see them' I take it you mean 'are not aware of their location'.

Anyway this (defaulting to assumption of perfect situational awareness) generally works ok for invisibility, but not so much for blindness - including the result of total darkness, as well as individual blindness.

In practice, it works out about the same though. When I'm blind, I still know where everyone is, unless they make a stealth check, which they can do because when I'm blind, everyone has total concealment from me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have some questions I couldn't find in the players handbooks or the dungeon master guides. Maybe you could help me out.

1#
I'm playing as DM with a monk in the group. The monk can, when he hits with certain attacks, give 5 vulnerable cold to an enemy.

If the enemy has 15 resist cold, and he gets 5 vulnerable cold. How does that work?

2#
About implements. Again, I use the monk as an example.

Monks normally attack with their fists. However, you can choose implements for them, like daggers.

If a monk uses daggers, are they stabbing/cutting instead of punching?

I know that the flavor text doesn't adjust to the weapons/implements you have.
The character builder does say that the monk is using his daggers for damage.

3#
Some classes can use daggers as implements. Some of those daggers are jagged. Those daggers have a curved shape. When you stab someone with a jagged dagger, the curved shape will cause additional damage.
This is translated in 4e as 'On a critical hit, target gains 10 ongoing damage. Save ends.'

If a sorcerer uses a jagged dagger, and he critical hits with an acid orb attack. Does the 10 ongoing damage still applies?

Since he didn't stab, I guess the jagged critical effect didn't work.
Or is this too much realism interpreted in d&d?

4#
Can a fighter mark an enemy he can't see? (Fighter is blinded or enemy is invisible.)

What if the fighter can't see the enemy, but he knows it's there? (A PC can see the enemy, and he told the fighter where it is.)

What about hunter's quarry, avengers oath etc?


That is all I could think of right now. If anyone can help me with this, it will be appreciated.

OK, doing some actual research here...

1) The creature will have both, effectively resist 10 cold for all practical purposes.

2) Monk attacks have the 'implement' keyword. Rules-wise if you use a dagger as an implement as a monk (note that this requires at least one feat) you can describe it however you want. Presumably you'd describe it as stabbing since using a dagger as an implement requires having it in your hand. How you describe things is however ultimately up to you.

3) Yes, the properties of a Jagged Weapon will apply to any attack made using it, regardless of whether it is an implement or a weapon power. So the Sorcerer would gain the 19-20 crit and the 10 ongoing damage on a critical hit. They are quite nice items.

4) Fighters ALWAYS mark anything they attack (unless you choose not to, you don't HAVE to mark). Note that you cannot make opportunity attacks against something you cannot see, so the fighter will be less effective when blind (and will generally have a -5 to-hit penalty on any attacks made while blind). Opponents are also out of LoS of the blind character and thus can try to hide from him, at which point he won't know where they are. Other characters can use a free action to say something like "it is on your left!' but in general this won't make much difference mechanically, though it might have story consequences.

As for the ranger, Hunter's Quarry allows you to designate the closest enemy that you can see. A blind ranger can't see, and thus cannot place an HQ at all. If one is already in place however he can still gain the benefits of it.

 

[Pentius]

I have some questions I couldn't find in the players handbooks or the dungeon master guides. Maybe you could help me out.

1#
I'm playing as DM with a monk in the group. The monk can, when he hits with certain attacks, give 5 vulnerable cold to an enemy.

If the enemy has 15 resist cold, and he gets 5 vulnerable cold. How does that work?

2#
About implements. Again, I use the monk as an example.

Monks normally attack with their fists. However, you can choose implements for them, like daggers.

If a monk uses daggers, are they stabbing/cutting instead of punching?

I know that the flavor text doesn't adjust to the weapons/implements you have.
The character builder does say that the monk is using his daggers for damage.

3#
Some classes can use daggers as implements. Some of those daggers are jagged. Those daggers have a curved shape. When you stab someone with a jagged dagger, the curved shape will cause additional damage.
This is translated in 4e as 'On a critical hit, target gains 10 ongoing damage. Save ends.'

If a sorcerer uses a jagged dagger, and he critical hits with an acid orb attack. Does the 10 ongoing damage still applies?

Since he didn't stab, I guess the jagged critical effect didn't work.
Or is this too much realism interpreted in d&d?

4#
Can a fighter mark an enemy he can't see? (Fighter is blinded or enemy is invisible.)

What if the fighter can't see the enemy, but he knows it's there? (A PC can see the enemy, and he told the fighter where it is.)

What about hunter's quarry, avengers oath etc?


That is all I could think of right now. If anyone can help me with this, it will be appreciated.

1) As AA said, he'd have resist 10 cold. Resist and Vulnerable cancel out as much as they can.

2) The Monk uses any weapon he gets as an Implement. Note that the damage of his Monk powers does not change to a d4, though basic attacks do. He is free to describe attacks as cutting, stabbing, punching, kicking, headbutting or whatever else your group is fine with.

3) The Jagged Weapon's properties work even when used as an Implement, as opposed to being stabbed into someone.

4) Firstly, someone brought up LordofWeasels "Rules of Hidden Club". LoW is right. Keeping that in mind, the only time an attack or power cannot be used while blinded(or the target is invisible) is if the target line of the power says, "Creature you can see". The default is "You can use this, sight or not" and exceptions to that will be clearly called out in the power.

Lastly, I wasn't sure where to put this, so here goes, end-of-post blob. In my experience, a lot of 4e rules work better if you treat them not as trying to model the physics of the game world, but as parameters on acceptable narration from the players. The suggested flavor texts are just that-suggested. So maybe the Jagged Dagger is doing more damage because of the curved blade, or because of a jagged blade, maybe it's giving the character a constant, yet subtle psychic compulsion toward viciousness(it is magic, after all), maybe the sorcerer finds that the dagger really helps him get a stronger grip on his arcane energies, or maybe the dagger itself doesn't show up at all in the player's narration, but while he has it he is free to narrate his character as getting in some really good hits. Any of these is fine, and won't break the game.

 

[Reffy]

Thank you very much for all the info.

The resist/vulnerable question is answered. I had a feeling it would be like that (-5 + 15 = 10), but I just want to make sure.

I will look at what monks are actually doing, but I presume a monk with daggers is stabbing/kicking. For flavors text purposes only.

The jagged weapon property can also be used on implements.
I thought I was using too much realism. I want to say something about that later.

I understand the marks/oaths on invisible targets.


About adding too much realism to 4e, to figure out how the rules work, it will mostly result in huge discussions.

In my group, there was a wizard that could make enemies helpless (save ends). He assumed, just like it would be in the real world, that helpless means the target is unconscious.
He even pointed out to the dictionary that helpless is like being tied up or something like that.

However, in 4e different rules apply. Helpless can make you a target of coup de grace, but it doesn't necessarily make you unconscious.
This was a discussion I was having with another player, that applied realism to 4e.


Another thing was when I told him about characters who are always looking in all directions. I'm not talking about all-round vision from beholders, but it means that you don't have to move your characters face all the time.

The player mocked this, saying that all the characters are spinning like crazy to see what's going on.
Again, adding realism to 4e, which didn't helped at all.

Thank you all for the replies. It helped a lot.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

About adding too much realism to 4e, to figure out how the rules work, it will mostly result in huge discussions.

In my group, there was a wizard that could make enemies helpless (save ends). He assumed, just like it would be in the real world, that helpless means the target is unconscious.
He even pointed out to the dictionary that helpless is like being tied up or something like that.

However, in 4e different rules apply. Helpless can make you a target of coup de grace, but it doesn't necessarily make you unconscious.
This was a discussion I was having with another player, that applied realism to 4e.


Another thing was when I told him about characters who are always looking in all directions. I'm not talking about all-round vision from beholders, but it means that you don't have to move your characters face all the time.

The player mocked this, saying that all the characters are spinning like crazy to see what's going on.
Again, adding realism to 4e, which didn't helped at all.

Thank you all for the replies. It helped a lot.

Yeah, it can be a hot topic of debate. I would say that basically not all of the conditions were really intended to be used on their own. For instance helpless and restrained can go together pretty nicely to create "you are completely tied up and can't do a thing" or it works with unconscious pretty well. It isn't really very useful on its own, but more as a way to get rid of duplicating a whole lot of rules in multiple places.

Honestly I think the lack of facing in 4e is no more or less realistic than what existed in previous editions. Outside of combat the DM can let you sneak up on someone that isn't looking in your direction. In combat/against a really alert enemy it seems like it would be pretty hard to do in any case. There are actually a fairly significant number of ways you can achieve it though. Most rogues can pull off darting out of concealment and hammering an enemy with CA (and thus SA) without much trouble. Many of them can manage to disappear in plain sight or with the barest amount of help (dim light for instance).

And remember, the rules really are there to give you A way of dealing with various situations. If the default rule seems inappropriate then the DM certainly can do something different in that situation or hand out a modifier, etc. If it seems like the way a power's mechanics work produces a silly result in a given situation you can always have something different happen in that one instance, though with some imagination you can usually visualize most things in some reasonable fashion. Sometimes even retconning things a small amount will work well. The orc goes off to the left, and the bard pulls him back to the right, did he really ever go left at all? Or did the bard just mock him and piss him off so he went the other way to start with? Some things also seem odd within the context of turn-by-turn mechanical resolution of combat, but if you take a little step back and realize that the fight isn't REALLY made up of turns then things seem more natural. The prone orc that gets pulled up next to the fighter with Come and Get It was already staggering back to his feet (IE on the orc's next turn it would stand up). 99% percent of the time things will make sense that way, and the other 1% you can just say "well, the unconscious orc on the other side of the pit simply doesn't get affected by CaGI in this situation." It won't come up too often.

 

[thewok]

The enemy has resist 15 cold and 5 vulnerable cold.

In practice, here's what that means: a creature can decide whatever order it wants for the purposes of applying resists and vulnerabilities (not sure of citation). So in practice, if it takes 15 cold damage, it'll choose to resist it first, at which point it takes 0 cold damage. But if it takes 16 cold damage, it'll end up taking 6 cold damage (16-15+5).

the first reply had it. The two offset before being applied. This is the clarification in the Rules Compendium:

"If a creature has vulnerability and resistance to the same type of damage, they both apply. Subtract the smaller value from the larger one and apply the result. For instance, a creature that has vulnerable 5 fire and resist 10 fire is treated as if it has resist 5 fire."

So, in your example, when the target is hit with an attack that deals 15 cold damage, it is treated as if it has resist 10 cold, and still takes 5 cold damage.

 

[thewok]

Another thing was when I told him about characters who are always looking in all directions. I'm not talking about all-round vision from beholders, but it means that you don't have to move your characters face all the time.

The player mocked this, saying that all the characters are spinning like crazy to see what's going on.
Again, adding realism to 4e, which didn't helped at all.

The characters aren't spinning around like tops, but they are looking around to maintain situational awareness. It's also more than just seeing things, as hearing plays a part in that as well.

That's why flanking grants combat advantage. When two opponents are completely opposite each other, the guy being flanked can't see both at once. Thus, it is easier to hit him, as he has to keep tabs on people on either side of him. If someone else comes along, he can still see that person, no matter which way he turns to view the two flanking him. Thus, the third person does not get the benefit of the CA from flanking (though he may get it from another source).

 

[nightwyrm]

The characters aren't spinning around like tops, but they are looking around to maintain situational awareness. It's also more than just seeing things, as hearing plays a part in that as well.

Or like how your teacher knows exactly how you're disrupting the class behind her back even while she's writing on the board.

 

[malraux]

the first reply had it. The two offset before being applied. This is the clarification in the Rules Compendium:

"If a creature has vulnerability and resistance to the same type of damage, they both apply. Subtract the smaller value from the larger one and apply the result. For instance, a creature that has vulnerable 5 fire and resist 10 fire is treated as if it has resist 5 fire."

So, in your example, when the target is hit with an attack that deals 15 cold damage, it is treated as if it has resist 10 cold, and still takes 5 cold damage.

Stupid rules changes. It used to work the other way.