D&D 4E 4E: Recommended Books

[FitzTheRuke]

Any recommendations for the best adventures?

Probably Madness At Guardmore Abby. It's from late 4e.

I ran every single one of the 4e Adventures back in the day, and I remember having to do a lot of heavy lifting on the earlier pamphlet adventures. (IE rejigging stuff so that encounters work and the story makes sense). This one was very good, IIRC.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Pretty much, aside from the DMG and MM, I only bought the books that had major PC resources, including the Essentials books.

 

[Lord Shark]

Probably Madness At Guardmore Abby. It's from late 4e.

I ran every single one of the 4e Adventures back in the day, and I remember having to do a lot of heavy lifting on the earlier pamphlet adventures. (IE rejigging stuff so that encounters work and the story makes sense). This one was very good, IIRC.

Besides Madness at Gardmore Abbey, there's The Slaying Stone and Reavers of Harkenwold.

The Chaos Scar adventures published in the Dragon were good for short one-session games. And even though it was very uneven, I liked the Scales of War adventure path. They may be difficult to track down these days, though, since they were only published digitally and no longer available through Wizards.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The four part Against the Giants adaptation is really great too. IMO it was a shame that they didn't include the extra Stone Giants chapter in Tales from the Yawning Portal. I mean, I understand why (the desire to translate only the original and the premium of space) but I still think it was too bad.

 

[Undrave]

Absolutely. The Manual of the Planes, Planes Above, and Planes Below are all amazing books if you like planar stuff.

I got Plane Above but never bought Plane Below. How similar are they?

Besides Madness at Gardmore Abbey, there's The Slaying Stone and Reavers of Harkenwold.

The Slaying Stone is a good basis for a somewhat sandboxy game, but it has a critical fail point where you can just... FAIL to convince the dragon to help you and he's not only too high level to fight but he could just... fly away... and the book has NO guidance on what to do at that moment.

This was something of a weakness of the Skill Challenge format is that you should have a plan for failing and they rarely provided those.

 

[Rikka66]

Besides Madness at Gardmore Abbey, there's The Slaying Stone and Reavers of Harkenwold.

The Chaos Scar adventures published in the Dragon were good for short one-session games. And even though it was very uneven, I liked the Scales of War adventure path. They may be difficult to track down these days, though, since they were only published digitally and no longer available through Wizards.

I think all the issues are available for purchase on DM's Guild, but at $5.00 a pop seems ridiculously expensive.

One of the smaller releases I picked up for 4e was the Hammerfast supplement, which detailed a dwarven city and was pretty much all setting and plot hooks. I enjoyed it, though it's weird how the main advertising is about the citizens living alongside ghosts, but the biggest plotline is about dwarves and orcs living together due to God contracts.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Although I'm clearly not the original poster, I wanted to thank you for all the replies! I've played every version of D&D and miss a lot of what was in 4e and want to look at it again.

Any recommendations for the best adventures?

Scales of War was a nice 1-30 adventure path. Here's a link to some downloads. Index of /dnd/resources/scales of war

They were written by different people due to Dungeon Mag's publishing schedule. So they are somewhat uneven - and sometimes you have to stretch to make them connect well. But they really build out the western end of the Nentir Vale and then gets planar.

 

[Eltab]

+1 for Primal Power.
Finally a barbarian who is not just a caricature: Incredible Hulk Grab Axe.
Other primal-based societies were brought out of the wilderness or the edge of the map to gain 'where my character comes from' levels of description.

The two Dark Sun books did a good job describing this very not-standard D&D world, and bringing out the deadly monsters that make the world so dangerous. (Some of the monsters walk on two feet and know speech.)

Neverwinter Campaign Setting was written to be a dynamic world where you could actually fight Bad Guys (not just their minions) at lower levels. The lore and plot threads can be used with any rule set.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Any recommendations for the best adventures?

There were very few standout adventures during the short, turbulent lifespan for this edition. Most of those have already been mentioned in this thread, and will likely be repeated again. But I'll reiterate that Reavers of Harkenwold is often regarded as one of the best starting adventures (level 2-3) of any edition. I even had a project thread about expanding it and connecting it more directly to the other highly regarded adventure, Madness at Gardmore Abbey. You can view that thread (with links to more) over here.

More importantly, most physical products are becoming increasingly more difficult to track down, and consequently more expensive. Your best bet will be the DMs Guild for digital (pdf) versions, including Dungeon magazine.

Historically, Dungeon has been one of the best resource for finding a large variety of adventures. The trick is figuring out which issues have the most relevant options for your needs and tastes. Unfortunately, a lot of the offerings during this cycle were (IMO) more misses than hits.

• The Against the Giants series (issues 196-200) is a great conversion from the 1e originals.
• The Chaos Scar (various issues) is a sandbox-style campaign of episodic adventures for heroic tier characters.
• The Scales of War is a massive "Adventure Path" (I hate using that term, but it actually fits this time) that takes characters from level 1 to 30. Not recommended for a casual group, or a casual DM.

The Encounters modules are another option, but they are not your typical adventures. Designed for organized play, these were originally designed to be played in public at the rate of one encounter per weekly session. Great for busy DMs who wanted to play regularly but didn't have the time to prep for more than one encounter at a time. Not so much for the rest. But like everything else, they can easily be expanded and used as a spring board for your own campaigns.

One of the greatest strengths of 4e, however, is how incredibly easy it is for DMs to build encounters. Unfortunately, it wasn't a strength the company play to strongly enough in their products. I would have loved to have seen more "DM toolbox" products like the Neverwinter Campaign Setting that offered more references, ideas and inspiration than hard-coded scripts and plotlines with just enough new crunchy bits to use.

 

[shah_0]

Great suggestions and links, thanks!