D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

[Will Doyle]

[MENTION=6682161]Will Doyle[/MENTION] Your blog has some very excellent things! I understand this could be a large amount of work (for little to no return), but if there is an easy way to activate the "4E tags", that would be supper!

Thank you! I keep telling myself I should pick it up again, as nowadays I only ever post once every two or three months.

Adding a button to filter by tag should be easy. I'll try to put one in over the weekend.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is that. Unfortunately they gave it to the wrong classes - the martial ones. If it had been sorceror-blowback most of the time it would have worked well.

I'm adding this to my ideas collection

I actually kept them - but every single multi-attack I've written so far I think (I haven't worked on it for a while) has been a basic attack. Some people like playing that way, others like the tactical element and I'm trying to keep a lot of people happy.

Its just too much trouble, and I like to stick to one level of abstraction, so that I can always clearly say that "your attack consists of many thrusts and feints throughout the round" and not the weird 4e situation where you switch levels of abstraction constantly.

Yup! I actually went for two levels of advantage/disadvantage, with the first level being +2 and the second as in 5e. But that's a playtest situation and I could be convinced to drop the intermediate step.

My motto is KISS, so I stuck with the one only. Of course you can definitely argue that its a bit coarse, but one of my goals was to pull things to a very slightly higher level of abstraction and focus the tactical concepts more firmly on extracting tactics out of narrative vs imposing it ON narrative, which is 4e's way.

One of my biggest tweaks was to simply declare Death To Ability Scores. This amongst other things allows me to have the Fighter having a superb presence (replaces intimidation) in the game but by default not being terribly good at rapport (replaces diplomacy) or manipulation (replaces bluff). Meanwhile the rogue is by default good at manipulation but they have low presence so aren't so good at being either intimidating or thought competent.

I haven't gone that far. I have retained 6 scores varying from +0 to +5 (with '+*' being basically 'godlike, you can do anything'). I think ability scores have some very nice RP uses and I'm trying to keep a rather D&D-like feel to things. It is after all at some level a 4e hack, though I don't care about mathematical compatibility (even so, 4e monsters, etc pretty well work with nothing more than adjustments to the numbers).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Its just too much trouble, and I like to stick to one level of abstraction, so that I can always clearly say that "your attack consists of many thrusts and feints throughout the round" and not the weird 4e situation where you switch levels of abstraction constantly.

Fair enough. I worked on the principle of breadth being a good thing, so different players had different tastes. I even have a Vancian Wizard class in there complete with a spellbook. And several ways of creating "Just hit things" characters.

My motto is KISS, so I stuck with the one only.

Fair enough. As I say, this is subject to playtesting and I may end up with the simpler system.

I haven't gone that far. I have retained 6 scores varying from +0 to +5 (with '+*' being basically 'godlike, you can do anything'). I think ability scores have some very nice RP uses and I'm trying to keep a rather D&D-like feel to things. It is after all at some level a 4e hack, though I don't care about mathematical compatibility (even so, 4e monsters, etc pretty well work with nothing more than adjustments to the numbers).

Oddly enough, one of my design goals was mathematical compatibility so you can pull out MV or MV:TTNV and use them (or any of the few good 4e adventures) with very little conversion.

 

[tyrlaan]

Other than epic showdowns? For me about 45 minutes - an hour being a long combat. And with a four player group that played weekly I could manage a build-up and combat in an hour.

As a point of comparison a recent Pathfinder fight that was meant to be a boss-battle lasted ten minutes; two of us recognised the description of a demilich and pulled out all the stops. And killed it before it had time to act. My Pathfinder character sheet is approximately 40 pages; I'm playing a Summoner and need the statblocks of my monsters (complete with Augment Summons) to hand. Which means a lot of out-of-game prep to streamline the thing to playable fast at the table.

Technically speaking, I have had a (roughly) two-hour combat, though it was something of an unusual case and partially broken up into segments--and had some other extenuating circumstances. <snip>

A regular 'involved combat' would probably be, much as Neonchameleon says, 45-60 minutes. A quick skirmish might be half an hour. The only way I could see a combat running over into another session is if it came late in the session and we had to stop before it ended.

Okay, now I want to figure out what on earth we were doing wrong, because a 60 minute or less combat was the rare exception.

Though in the 3e games I played in back in the day, combats would often take the full session as well...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Fair enough. I worked on the principle of breadth being a good thing, so different players had different tastes. I even have a Vancian Wizard class in there complete with a spellbook. And several ways of creating "Just hit things" characters.

Yeah, worthy goals. I'm sure I could probably stitch a 5e-type wizard into my system too without a lot of trouble. It would maybe seem odd though.

Fair enough. As I say, this is subject to playtesting and I may end up with the simpler system.

Well, I certainly am not locked into anything. I'm doing it as an exercise for myself in game design, and I think I'll use it to run a little limited fantasy campaign with, one that shouldn't have to go to higher levels so I can just focus on making a few simple characters work well. This is assuming I can get our group to really play it...

Oddly enough, one of my design goals was mathematical compatibility so you can pull out MV or MV:TTNV and use them (or any of the few good 4e adventures) with very little conversion.

Yeah, and I really would LIKE to use a lot of the great 4e material. OTOH there's a certain freedom in not worrying about it too much. So for instance I've tweaked the MM3 style stat block some more and produced one I like even better, etc. The numbers aren't a LOT different, but I have cut things down to 20 levels with 3 tiers, so monsters have to be re-leveled mainly, and a few of the more tricky ones need powers tweaked to conform to the slightly different action design.

 

[Manbearcat]

Okay, now I want to figure out what on earth we were doing wrong, because a 60 minute or less combat was the rare exception.

Though in the 3e games I played in back in the day, combats would often take the full session as well...

@Neonchameleon and @EzekielRaiden experience comports with my own. The second 1-30 campaign I ran had a work-day that typically featured 1 standard combat (level at heroic, level + 1 at P, level + 2 at E) and 1 major combat (level + 3 at heroic, + 4 at P, + 5 at E).

Doing rough numbers, it would look something like this:

Standard Combat @ 4 rounds

3 PCs @ 60 seconds apiece (action declaration and resolution included)

Myself (GM) @ 90 seconds for all the bad guys (action declarations and resolution included)

60 seconds/round for between turn actions for whole table (declaration and resolution)

5.5 minutes * 4 rounds = 22 minutes.

Setting up battle-map might put us just under 30 minutes.

Major Combat @ 6 rounds

5.5 minutes * 6 rounds = 33 minutes.

Setting up battle-map might put us just under 40 minutes.

Honestly, that is might be too much time allocated. We've been through plenty of L + 2 combats in 20 minutes (including set up).

Anyway, there are tons of things to do to quicken the overhead/clerical side of fights:

1) Everyone helps with setup.

2) Use challenging terrain that causes damage from forced movement (that is just general best practices but it dovetails with speeding up combat).

3) Use 1 to 2 standard creatures worth of Hazards (more damage going around from FM and less HP to ablate).

4) Have well-organized character sheets (especially when it comes to in between turn triggers and actions).

5) Stay mentally engaged at all times and have action ready to be declared within 10 seconds of your turn starting. Roll dice together.

6) Assign a helper or have good markets to handle SE or EoYNT status effects.

My end-game 3.x fights would either be Nova and Splat or a 3 + hour affair. My 4e fights don't even come close to this dynamic. Setup is the most burdensome part.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Neonchameleon and @EzekielRaiden experience comports with my own. The second 1-30 campaign I ran had a work-day that typically featured 1 standard combat (level at heroic, level + 1 at P, level + 2 at E) and 1 major combat (level + 3 at heroic, + 4 at P, + 5 at E).

Doing rough numbers, it would look something like this:

Standard Combat @ 4 rounds

3 PCs @ 60 seconds apiece (action declaration and resolution included)

Myself (GM) @ 90 seconds for all the bad guys (action declarations and resolution included)

60 seconds/round for between turn actions for whole table (declaration and resolution)

5.5 minutes * 4 rounds = 22 minutes.

Setting up battle-map might put us just under 30 minutes.

Major Combat @ 6 rounds

5.5 minutes * 6 rounds = 33 minutes.

Setting up battle-map might put us just under 40 minutes.

Honestly, that is might be too much time allocated. We've been through plenty of L + 2 combats in 20 minutes (including set up).

Anyway, there are tons of things to do to quicken the overhead/clerical side of fights:

1) Everyone helps with setup.

2) Use challenging terrain that causes damage from forced movement (that is just general best practices but it dovetails with speeding up combat).

3) Use 1 to 2 standard creatures worth of Hazards (more damage going around from FM and less HP to ablate).

4) Have well-organized character sheets (especially when it comes to in between turn triggers and actions).

5) Stay mentally engaged at all times and have action ready to be declared within 10 seconds of your turn starting. Roll dice together.

6) Assign a helper or have good markets to handle SE or EoYNT status effects.

My end-game 3.x fights would either be Nova and Splat or a 3 + hour affair. My 4e fights don't even come close to this dynamic. Setup is the most burdensome part.

That sounds about right. I tended to going for injecting more 'story' into my fights, which tended to mean they would rarely need to wrap up the hit points of all the opponents, which tends to take care of a lot of things, and makes the fights more interesting and engaging. In effect it amounts to what you're saying though, if the building is on fire, then everyone is taking damage and/or avoiding various fire-related hazards as they fight, there are areas of fire to push into, etc.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Okay, now I want to figure out what on earth we were doing wrong, because a 60 minute or less combat was the rare exception.

Though in the 3e games I played in back in the day, combats would often take the full session as well...

Honestly? Almost certainly no one thing. When 4e is kept fast it zips. People are engaged. They are worried. They are looking for chances to jump in.

When it goes wrong, for whatever reason, people take longer and the vicious circle starts. People are confused about where they are. They then need reminding. And this takes long enough that other people get disengaged and the whole thing takes twice as long. This was compounded by the fact that there were no simple classes until Essentials.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Okay, now I want to figure out what on earth we were doing wrong, because a 60 minute or less combat was the rare exception.

Though in the 3e games I played in back in the day, combats would often take the full session as well...

It's hard to give specifics, but there are some general patterns that I think really help:

1) Having, as others have said, a "crib notes" version of your character sheet, specifically geared for combat use. When I temporarily took over the Wizard, I jotted down the powers he had, defenses, etc. It helped that he mostly tried to stay out of sight and such. I'm strongly considering making a simplified "list of powers + basic tactics" file to work from during play.

2) "Lumping" similar enemies together. Got five of the same thing on the board? Give them one initiative count and roll all same/similar attacks before rolling any damage. This will mostly apply to DMs, of course.

3) Use something to represent enemy morale. A simple system checks for loss of group leader, hitting half strength, and losing the numbers advantage, for multi-person fights. For solos, consider bloodied and half bloodied to be turning points, if a solo's gonna break it will start to show by then. Basically, avoid spelling out the tail end of a foregone combat, especially if your players like to capture enemies alive rather than having a "kill 'em all" attitude.

4) Don't be afraid to use minions. Over-use is possible, but they're really nice for making fights seem scarier than they are.

5) Encourage the spreading out of resources throughout the day, while discouraging "perfectionist" power usage. It's REALLY hard to use a legitimately "bad" power in 4e, but it's also hard to get a perfect storm of effects. I've done it, but that was because the choice was easy to see (Dragon Breath onto a space with 7/9 square occupied, then pop a daily to hit 4-5 adjacent enemies and continually mark all adj. enemies for the rest of the combat? Yes please.) Such things should be rare and feel awesome when they happen, rather than being seen as the "default."

6) On the other hand, don't feel at all bad/remind your players it's not bad to use At-Wills. In that same fight as the beautiful setup, I ended up using At-Wills for *most* of the other rounds...and still felt like I was helping. In this sense, the Essentials classes are somewhat helpful, actually, because they naturally encourage more Basic Attacks. Having a very beat-'em-up style Leader, and a party that can take advantage of it, will also help there.

7) Consider, during down time or between sessions, having your group's rules buff (who may not be the DM) talk briefly one on one with each player. Stuff like, "when we get into a fight, what are your priorities? If you go last, who are you watching for a good set-up? If you go first, who do you hope will follow your lead?" Things like that can really really help. IMO, 4e is much more a "team game" than prior editions. Your party doesn't have to be a Radiant Mafia nor a crazy basic-attack extravaganza, but things will go faster and generally better if they know both what they can do for a friend, and what their friends can do for them.

8) This last one can be a double-edged sword, but having terrain more interesting than "flat, open field/empty room" can also make a big difference. That "obvious" set-up I mentioned earlier happened because the entryway funneled the attackers right at us, so they were all bunched up and pouring out from one place. Have your players think, as much as possible, about where they would best be able to use their cool moves. A Wizard wants to balance "not getting shanked" with "close enough to drop sick fires on the far side of the choke point." A Paladin (which I'm playing) must balance holding attention while not getting in over his head. Rangers will depend on whether they're melee or ranged focused. An Avenger may want one guy all alone, or may want to have all their friends join the beatdown. The terrain will influence how easy these general goal are, and players should immediately start thinking about where they can go to have the most effect. In a sense, it's a bit like learning to mentally "see" the possible moves any given chess piece can make, so you're able to see a potential fork before it happens.

Edit:
Gosh, can't believe I forgot this one!
9) Minor actions and off-turn attacks are a "sometimes" food! If your group has timing problems, cut down on off-turn actions, and remind them that there is no shame in having nothing to spend your minor on. Minor actions tend to be relatively specialized, so it's okay if you don't use it every round. One solution I saw...somewhere...was to make an "aim" universal minor action: +1 to hit a particular target for your other attacks that turn. Simple, obviously effective, but clearly less good than a sustain or minor action attack, if available. Also helps avert the whiff effect.

Also...
10) Use later-era monster stats, MV or MM3 or later. If you played mostly early 4e WotC adventures....that's also partly to blame, WotC's early work was...frankly atrocious for 4e adventures (or so I've heard). Newer monsters are less "big sack of HP," more "fragile but nasty." They die faster, but they tear up PCs faster, too--much more exciting, much more "is this it, are we going to die?" without, generally, dying.

 

[tyrlaan]

Thanks folks!

Those are A LOT of different things I hadn't considered! These definitely have me rethinking the use of 4e the next time I run something.

Someone mentioned the found an answer to the Compendium? Would said someone be willing to contact me on the side about said answer...?