D&D 4E How to get started if you want to give 4e a try.

[FallenRX]

Was thinking about running 4E for some friends, been awhile since i played it, they were curious, im curious to see how they feel about it
Whats the best way to get into it.

Buying the Essential's books and running it using that, or buying the Original 3 big books.

Also should i not use the original monster book, but use the essentials one?

 

[Haplo781]

Was thinking about running 4E for some friends, seeing how they feel about it.
Whats the best way to get into it.

Buying the Essential's books and running it using that, or buying the Original 3 big books.

Also should i not use the original monster book, but use the essentials one?

Essentials classes are not recommended outside of Mage and Warpriest, particularly if your goal is to learn 4e. Most e-classes don't teach you how a regular 4e class is supposed to work. Player's Handbook 1-3 and the X Power books are a good baseline for character builds, though you should be aware of the copious errata for PHB 1 especially.

Your go-to monster books are Monster Manual 3, Monster Vault, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, and Dark Sun Creature Catalog.

Due to the sheer amount of content in 4e and the "everything is core" philosophy, it's generally recommended to use a digital compendium, although I can't link to any here due to piracy rules.

You can find a dedicated 4e community here: Join the D&D 4e Discord Server!

 

[aco175]

I would suggest Keep on the Shadowfell (KotS) as a good starter adventure. You do not need to play the follow-on adventures, but that one is good.

 

[Haplo781]

I would suggest Keep on the Shadowfell (KotS) as a good starter adventure. You do not need to play the follow-on adventures, but that one is good.

KotS is specifically called out by basically everyone as not a great starter adventure.

If you're going to use it, do Justin Alexander's remix. Or just run Reavers of Harkenwold.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Essentials is an easier path to get into the game, especially for newcomers who've never played. The character choices are more streamlined, as well as more in-line with traditional classes and races. And for a group that is just dipping a toe, you won't need to buy a ton of out-of-print and outdated sourcebooks. You can always get them later if you decide you want to go further as a group.

 

[GreyLord]

I would first start them on the basics.

This is free

4e Quickstart

Using that as an introduction should get them to understand the basics of the game.

After that, I would probably go with Essentials first, with Heroes of the Fallen Lands as the PHB and using the Monster Vault as the Monster Manual.

However, using the PHB/DMG/MM isn't a bad course either. There were some imbalances that were changed later that you may want to update to using to make it flow better, but it will probably flow better for the player to using that from the Original Quickstart (link above) than the Essentials Books.

PS: Keep on the Shadowfell is also free and has some quickstart rules included also.

Keep on the Shadowfell

Finally, Khyber's Harvest is also a free Adventure for 4e released on DMsguild

Khyber's Harvest

 

[overgeeked]

Keep on the Shadowfell is a grindy dungeon crawl that absolutely does not play to the strengths of 4E. It runs almost exactly counter to them.

In my experience, 4E works best when you do fewer, bigger fights that are spread out in time rather than constantly churning through combat.

The Quickstart rules are free so that’s a good place to start.

The Essentials classes are simpler than the core classes. If that’s what you and the players want to start, go for it.

There is a 4E reddit and discord. You can find a lot of help there. Especially of the technical variety related to the character builder.

The Essentials monster books are great. As is MM3. The maths are off in MM1 and MM2.

 

[overgeeked]

My favorite part of 4E was skill challenges. They’re poorly implemented in all the books. But the best presentation of them is in the Essentials DM’s Kit and Rules Compendium.

My advice would be to remove the “before three failures” portion of skill challenges. Give them a time limit instead. Something like 3-4 rounds. This keeps the mechanics almost identical to RAW (if that’s important to you), but also fixes a huge problem with the subsystem as a whole.

For early adventures and monsters, I’d suggest using the maths from Blog of Holding.

Have fun. It’s a great game and it does it’s thing quite well. Not everyone’s a fan of what it does though.

 

[Haplo781]

My favorite part of 4E was skill challenges. They’re poorly implemented in all the books. But the best presentation of them is in the Essentials DM’s Kit and Rules Compendium.

My advice would be to remove the “before three failures” portion of skill challenges. Give them a time limit instead. Something like 3-4 rounds. This keeps the mechanics almost identical to RAW (if that’s important to you), but also fixes a huge problem with the subsystem as a whole.

For early adventures and monsters, I’d suggest using the maths from Blog of Holding.

Have fun. It’s a great game and it does it’s thing quite well. Not everyone’s a fan of what it does though.

Honestly? Do whatever makes sense for the situation at hand.

 

[overgeeked]

Honestly? Do whatever makes sense for the situation at hand.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I have a whole house rule system for handling skill challenges. I'm just suggesting what would be an easy fix to a common problem with skill challenges.