D&D 4E Rambling thoughts about D&D 4th Edition

If you haven’t watched it yet, here is a link the video of Rob Heinsoo running a game of 4e for some people.
The first two hours is a discussion of the development of the game, then the play starts. Something about clearing out an almost abandoned temple so that a new god can take up residence.

Rob does impromptu rule making. “You just rolled a 2; if you are willing for this bad thing to happen, I will allow you to do this good thing.”

They changed the rules for group checks between the DMG1 and DMG2.

In the first book, there is a “lead checker”, that makes the final roll, while the other members of the party make checks to help, with results of 10+ adding a 2 point bonus to the “lead checker’s” result (maximum of +8).

In DMG2, it changes the group check to where at least half the party must succeed on a check to count as a success.

The first method is necessary if one is using the DMG1 DCs, because they are quite a bit higher than the DCs in either the DMG2 or the Rules Compendium.

I ran the first room of “Kobold Hall”, from the first Dungeon Master’s Guide, using owlbear rodeo. It was a little work getting it up and running, and I had the problem of the players continually messing with their character names, but I think it works well as a digital table.

The players had their character sheets that they were using, and I had the DMG opened to the adventure. You can “assign” information to the monsters, which is what I did to keep track of their HP. I used the generic token for a monster, which sports the image of a goblin, to represent the kobold. There are five kobolds in room 1, which I named, “Vick”, “Mick”, “Nick”, “Rick”, and “Slick”.

Slick got away, but the rest of the kobolds were destroyed.

I had changed the room slightly, making two squares in front of the pool be collapsing floor traps, and tried to entice the players to move onto those squares by describing the glint of treasure at the bottom of the pool, but they didn’t take the bait, unfortunately.

The “secret room” of the dungeon has a young white dragon; I am considering changing that to a young blizzard dragon, from MM3.

I noticed that the map of the dungeon in the book is turned sideways, with north being to the left instead of straight up.

Owlbear also allows a fog of war option, which took me a while to figure out. You can also assign a light to characters or monsters, which I want to figure out how to implement.

My goal for a campaign is to create a world based off the old computer game Majesty, where the player takes the role of a fantasy king who hires adventurers to solve quests and bring in taxes, which can be used to improve the town (adding shops and guilds and defensive structures).

My thought is to start the campaign allowing only humans, half-elves, and Halflings, and only fighters and rogues as class options, opening up new races and classes as the PCs complete quests. If they explore the Mystic Forest, for example, they can start playing as elves and rangers, while if they clear out the haunted mine, they get access to playing as dwarves. Helping fight off a goblin army unlocks warlords.

Or, alternatively, players can create characters of any race/class, but cannot advance beyond, say, level 2, until the appropriate structure is built (a monastery for clerics and paladins, a magic academy for wizards and warlocks, etc.).

Glad to see that 4E is still getting attention. It's like the game was finally discovered about 5 years ago, after all the nay-sayers and net trolls gave up bad-mouthing it and WotC announce 5th (which again, drew all the nay-sayers and trolls).

People talk about the “sacred cow slaughter” that happened with 4e. One that I haven’t seen mentioned is the sacred cow of avoiding min-maxing.

After disparaging 4e a few years back, Puffin Forest put up a new video a few months ago where he creates a 4e character (a Paladin). He starts B/X style with rolling for stats, down the line, then picking the race and class.

That isn’t how to play 4e. You want your character to be effective, so min-max the snot out him or her. Your character begins as a hero. It’s in the rules.

How did this happen? Maybe the character engaged in low-tier heroics. Maybe the character was trained by heroes. The DMG2 talks about a rift in reality, with energies seeping out and spontaneously granting the characters their powers. My favorite explanation is a “Ritual of Power” that is conducted for the purpose of turning farmers and shopkeepers into paladins and wizards. In any case, the characters should start with a 20 (+5) in the prime ability.

cavalier973 said:

People talk about the “sacred cow slaughter” that happened with 4e. One that I haven’t seen mentioned is the sacred cow of avoiding min-maxing.

After disparaging 4e a few years back, Puffin Forest put up a new video a few months ago where he creates a 4e character (a Paladin). He starts B/X style with rolling for stats, down the line, then picking the race and class.

That isn’t how to play 4e. You want your character to be effective, so min-max the snot out him or her. Your character begins as a hero. It’s in the rules.

How did this happen? Maybe the character engaged in low-tier heroics. Maybe the character was trained by heroes. The DMG2 talks about a rift in reality, with energies seeping out and spontaneously granting the characters their powers. My favorite explanation is a “Ritual of Power” that is conducted for the purpose of turning farmers and shopkeepers into paladins and wizards. In any case, the characters should start with a 20 (+5) in the prime ability.

Click to expand...

I agree that characters are supposed to start out heroic, and that the game is designed and balanced around point-buy, so there's no harm in min-maxing. But starting with a 20 definitely isn't necessary.

It’s hard but not impossible to build an ineffective character in 4e. But basically any sensible ability score allocation will work:

16 +2 racial
18 raw
18 +2 racial if you want to tryhard
Even 14 +2 racial is do-able

Joshua Randall said:

It’s hard but not impossible to build an ineffective character in 4e. But basically any sensible ability score allocation will work:

16 +2 racial
18 raw
18 +2 racial if you want to tryhard
Even 14 +2 racial is do-able

Click to expand...

Indeed. I have played a Paladin where I wanted him to have broadly good stats. In order (with Dragonborn racial mods), 16/14/8/12/14/16. Just gotta make sure you use +3 proficiency weapons and such (or other accuracy-boosters, such as Valiant Strike), and you're golden.

I think it was “Knights of Last Call” that pointed out a half-elf fighter can use the dilettante feature to pick “scorching burst”, toss that out in a battle against some clumped enemies, and mark all of them.

Basically, giving allies a +2 bonus to all defenses against attacks from those enemies.