D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[Undrave]

Hmmm, a single one-shot adventure, full module, or a full campaign? Do you want it to be focused on showing off 4e's differences/strengths, or something that's more of a 'full rounded' adventure?

A full module would be fine but if you got a full campaign laying about I'd like to check it out too. I can modify fights to make them more exciting on my own.

 

[Mannahnin]

https://www.enworld.org/threads/best-4e-module.678863/post-8222893

 

[Voadam]

Anybody got suggestions for a good 4e Adventure? I might try to get a group together for me to DM but I really can't think of a campaign at the moment.

The later 4e modules are generally considered quite nice.

HS1 The Slaying Stone is a later 4e one and is a 32 page 1st level one.

Madness at Gardmore Abbey is 128 page boxed set one for levels 6-8 that deals with a Deck of Many Things.

I had great fun playing through the later parts of Revenge of the Giants, a 160 page adventure for levels 12-17.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I treat Essentials like Bo9S-era 3.5 or even Tasha's-era 5e. They'd filled out almost all the obvious parts of the framework so the next thing to do was warp the framework and add in things that couldn't really be done in the initial framework. Useful and interesting splat material.

But I disagree Essentials ended support for AEDU classes given the Heroes Of X series.

Heroes of Shadow at least, was done in the essentials style, am I missing something?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Heroes of Shadow at least, was done in the essentials style, am I missing something?

HoS has multiple AEDU classes and class options in there.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

HoS has multiple AEDU classes and class options in there.

Ah, the general thing in 4e is that the AEDU classes could pillage some of the powers of the essentials classes-- for instance HOS provides Nethermancy and Necromancy as essentials Wizard options, but the powers themselves can be looted by the original Wizard as well. The Warlock options are actually for the Binder, which was the essentials Warlock, in that respect it's no different from Hero of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. But the support they received at that point was largely incidental to the designers being conscious enough to maintain some compatibility, and some classes received very few powers from this overall, or didn't receive powers compatible with their core features since the essentials classes sometimes used different ones (for example, the Executioner Assassin in HOS, has very little to do with the O-Assassin previously published.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ah, the general thing in 4e is that the AEDU classes could pillage some of the powers of the essentials classes-- for instance HOS provides Nethermancy and Necromancy as essentials Wizard options, but the powers themselves can be looted by the original Wizard as well.

HoS was (as was tradition for a Mearls book) the worst of them. And had a full new AEDU class (vampire, arguably also Binder), and a whole lot of usable powers.

Meanwhile Heroes of the Elemental Chaos had, to my certain knowledge, the Desert Wind Monk, the Monk not being an Essentials class at all. Heroes of the Feywild had the Protector Druid, explicitly calling to the PHB2 and not the Essentials Druid. And the Dungeon Explorers Handbook had martial exploits certainly for the Rogue that of course you needed a Dragon feat to allow the Thief to take..

Yes, there was more stuff in the post-Essentials splatbooks that was exclusive to the classes that didn't have existing splatbooks than there was for those that did. That didn't mean all support had gone away. And remember that the Martials got Martial Power 2 before Essentials came out. The idea that the old classes were unsupported rather than simply needing less new support is IMO completely wrong.

or didn't receive powers compatible with their core features since the essentials classes sometimes used different ones (for example, the Executioner Assassin in HOS, has very little to do with the O-Assassin previously published.)

And those assassins were both bad. Frankly the oAssassin's Shrouds mechanic was fundamentally bad design. There's a reason it stayed in Dragon magazine.

 

[Undrave]

The later 4e modules are generally considered quite nice.

HS1 The Slaying Stone is a later 4e one and is a 32 page 1st level one.

Madness at Gardmore Abbey is 128 page boxed set one for levels 6-8 that deals with a Deck of Many Things.

I had great fun playing through the later parts of Revenge of the Giants, a 160 page adventure for levels 12-17.

Hmm I have the Slaying Stone... somewhere... but I'm not fan of the way they have a skill challenge to get the stone from the Dragon but have no guideline of what to do if they fail. The Dragon is way too powerful for level 1 PC and he could just fly away with the target of their quest. And I don't know if it establishes a good enough reason to continue into the city is that happens. It's a huge weak point of the whole thing for me.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Any love for the Scales of War AP that ran for 16 adventures and took PCs from 1 to 30?

Published in the late and lamented Dungeon magazine (but still available on the DMs Guild)

Scales of War

Scales of War is an adventure path in the Points of Light campaign setting introduced in Dragon 366.[Dr366:53][Du156:4] The following articles are tagged in relation to scales of war: Characters of War [Dr366:53] Creature Incarnations: Gnolls: The Get of Yeenoghu [Dr369:40] (Related: Den of the...

dnd4.fandom.com

 

[niklinna]

I too never found the Essentials classes necessarily 'bad' or a 'wrong headed' direction to take classes. A variety of the AEDU structure could allow for some interesting classes. Take the Skald: two daily powers at LVL 1, but you can only use 1, and they operate as a kind of encounter-long buff to a class feature. That's potentially neat! And I very much loved playing my lightning Elementalist -- as a concept there is a particularly limited set of features or abilities that such a class might have. (Not that the class as delivered was complete in all of those, or didn't have it's oddities that "forced" one to dip outside the narrow concept.)

That said, I did find a quality difference in a good number of the Essentials classes, both in terms of being half-baked (not enough time allowed to playtest and develop, I would guess) and the classes that seemed explicitly designed to be "this existing thing, but 'simpler"' felt underwhelming. (Would have IMHO been better to design from 'cool concept and also simpler, much like the Elementalists felt.) So, on the whole, I found the E-classes more of a mixed bag with sometimes confusing organization but not a disaster of an idea/direction.


I said it before upthread already, but I will never pass up a chance to sing the praises of the Rules Compendium! It rocks so hard!

It might well be that re-using the names of existing classes from the Players Handbook(s) is what so seriously confused me. I was like, wait, we already have a Fighter and a Wizard, what's going on here? Calling them Martial, Divine, etc. would have made things clear to me.