D&D 4E Advice on playing 4E as a strategy/wargame?

[Spykron]

I come from more of a miniwargame background such as Warhammer/Heroscape and was interested in learning the ways of dungeons and dragons, but more as a strategy RPG.

I'm looking for advice on what books/rule sets I should read or if you have experience on an easier way to go about this play style.

Ideally I'd like to play out stories with a wargames feel, yet the focus would be on the characters and turns of events instead of "i won and you lost."

thanks!

 

[Spykron]

actually let me put it this way:

I'm mostly interested in power gaming/min maxing character builds and party builds.
These builds would really only be for playing battles, and the idea is to be more of a strategy rpg, instead of just a strategy game like Warhammer.

however im new to D&D and looking for advice on the easiest way to get into 4E with this kind of playstyle in mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, Essentials characters aren't super tweakable. Basically though if you don't need any of the 'fluff' you might be best off to buy a Rules Compendium, which contains all the core combat rules, skills, and some basic encounter building rules. From there you could just sign up for DDI and you have the online Compendium, which has ALL the crunchy stuff in it. You also get Character Builder. Presumably Monster Builder is returning in an online form as well, hopefully soon. However monsters are pretty much whatever you want them to be and there are 1000's of them in the Compendium, which you can tweak as much as you want. The full up monster building guidelines are in DMG1 with added stuff in DMG2, but it is safe to say if you look at a bunch of stat blocks you will get the idea, assuming you even need to build much totally custom.

One thing you will find with 4e. It isn't REALLY designed for PvP. So if you will be doing that you may find that combats are fairly swingy. PCs have a LOT less hit points than monsters (not so much at low levels, but high level solos can have 4-5x PC hitpoints). Thus at high levels you'll find a PC can often single-shot another PC, and this is even true at low levels for strikers. PCs have a lot of healing potential, so over the long term they are quite durable though. In a single fight that doesn't matter much. Powers are another area where single battles are a bit odd. PCs are designed with the idea in mind they will fight 5 fights in a day before an extended rest. In an arena style "go full at it" single fight you'll need quite a bit stronger opponents (again more so at high levels) as there's no reason every PC can't just drop daily powers one after another in a row.

Now, if you fight out basically a 'delve' sort of format where PCs go up against 4 or 5 encounters one after another with monsters it will work quite well, as that's just normal play with the fluffy bits hacked out. Heck, some groups basically do that now.

There could be other interesting options though. You could design stat blocks specifically tweaked for pure tactical play. Basically monsters with less hit points would make pretty good tactical wargame units to fight against each other. Adjust them all to have MM3 level damage output and shave off maybe 25% of their hit points and that would probably be a decently interesting game. You'll probably have to tweak a bit.

There are some design decisions that were made in the combat rules that exist really purely in order to simplify things a bit and for purely gamist reasons. Like archery ignores your allies because otherwise it would kind of suck to be the archer of the group and constantly be trying to deal with avoiding firing through your own party at the enemy. In a pure skirmish game where both sides are controlled by a single player that kind of consideration isn't an issue and you could perhaps houserule things a bit to make it a bit less gamist, depending on your preferences.

 

[jbear]

For min/maxing you can read lots of stuff on the Wizards Character Op forums.

As for how to play 4e in a wargame style ....

You could set up a 5 vs 5 character team, each player runs one team each. Establish terrain effects/advantages or the objective on the battlemap before play. I guess pretty much like D&D Minis. More players ... divide up the characters ...

As for adventuring wargame style ... Are you DMing? Because really it's the DM that sets the tone and style of a campaign. Assuming you are the DM, by simply setting the tone role-play light and setting up a series of short, tactical delves (a series of linked combat encounters) I think you will achieve what you are looking for. Eg. the PCs are members of the Raiders Guild. This means they receive highly detailed information about the raid they are about to be assigned, maps etc. Their task is retrieve artifacts and neutralise threats that might endanger their lucrative position in society. The Raiders Guild may have an enemy organisation that competes against the Raiders in order to retrieve the artifacts beforehand or weaken the Raiders position in society. Basically they go on mission after mission. The missions are not necessarily inter-related. Players compete, against members of the other organisation, not each other.

As for which books to buy etc. I guess DDI is your best option. This gets you access to all the player crunch with current errata and the Monster Builder gives you access to all the monsters. The Rules COmpendium gives you all the up to date rules, which you'll probably want a physical copy of. There is a book made up of Delve adventures (Dangerous Delves?) which give the beginning of a delve style adventure at each level (basically 3 encounters linked together with a few ideas on how to expand the adventure. It might give you a good idea of how to build the delve format. However the monster math is totally out of date, so you'd have to update the math. From what I have read they don't seem to be the most interesting of adventures. With DDI you'd have access to all the adventures from Dungeon magazine. If you used the Chaos Scar adventures, this might fit in to this kind of style fairly well.

Good luck

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, a sort of 'Stargate' style campaign is ideal for this sort of thing. Drop the PCs in Sigil, City of Doors and just give them a mission every week. They go through a door, raid some location, have some fights, and return. You can level them up after each mission, so 30 weeks for 30 levels if they play at a decent clip. That gives you a good framework with no real need for any more RP than anyone cares to put into it, and the players can make up whatever teams they want by swapping in new characters of the level of the week.

 

[DonAdam]

Dungeon Delving is basically wargaming.

 

[Spykron]

thanks guys! that rules compendium sounds useful.

 

[GameDoc]

Dungeon Delving is basically wargaming.

I agree.

4e combat easily lends itself to the tactical approach used in wargaming. Particualry since each class has a specific role to play (controller, leader, defender, striker) as does each monster (artillery, brute, skirmisher, soldier, controller). Good strategy involves making those character's strenghts and weaknesses play off of one another.

If I were going to do it, I would do two things:

1. Use monsters as the bulk of a palayers' force (most of the human, elf, dwarf, halfing, etc. archetypes are available in monster format) and use the guidelines from DMG 1 to adjust levels as needed.
2. Allow one "hero" for ever X numer of levels of monsters and use the PC classes for these. To keep the combat faster and simpler, I would limit the heroes to basic attacks, one at-will, and one encounter. If you want hero orcs, goblins, kobolds, etc. that aren't in the PC races, use the MM rules for making them as PCs.

All of this is available on DDI and all you should need at the table is the Rules Compendium. If you want an additional book, I would suggest the DMG 1 for it's guidelines on tweaking monsters. Just make sure you grab th eratta too.

 

[AlioTheFool]

I agree.

4e combat easily lends itself to the tactical approach used in wargaming. Particualry since each class has a specific role to play (controller, leader, defender, striker) as does each monster (artillery, brute, skirmisher, soldier, controller). Good strategy involves making those character's strenghts and weaknesses play off of one another.

If I were going to do it, I would do two things:

1. Use monsters as the bulk of a palayers' force (most of the human, elf, dwarf, halfing, etc. archetypes are available in monster format) and use the guidelines from DMG 1 to adjust levels as needed.
2. Allow one "hero" for ever X numer of levels of monsters and use the PC classes for these. To keep the combat faster and simpler, I would limit the heroes to basic attacks, one at-will, and one encounter. If you want hero orcs, goblins, kobolds, etc. that aren't in the PC races, use the MM rules for making them as PCs.

All of this is available on DDI and all you should need at the table is the Rules Compendium. If you want an additional book, I would suggest the DMG 1 for it's guidelines on tweaking monsters. Just make sure you grab th eratta too.

I disagree that Dungeon Delving is equal to wargamming, but otherwise, I agree with this post.

4E isn't really designed for wargamming. Monster stat blocks would work if it's all monsters on both sides (one "PC" wouldn't be too bad). I'm not sure you'll be incredibly happy with the experience though.

What I'd actually suggest, if you're looking to wargame in the D&D universe, would be to look at the DDM Guild, who handled updating all D&D miniatures to the 2.0 version of the game with stat cards for skirmish battles. That won't really give you any flexibility though. If you're looking for the ability to "level up" you might be better off with a more lightweight system. One lightweight system you could look at is Wizard, Rogue & Mage, which is freely available on DriveThruRPG.com.

I'm not saying any of this to discourage you from playing D&D. I just don't think it will leave you satisfied. Personally, I would like to play the style of game you're discussing, but D&D just doesn't give me what I'd need to do it.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think 4E would be what you are looking for. 4E can be roleplaying and it can also be combat-focused. As for books, maybe essentials is what you want, as it is a bit cheaper to get into and simpler in approach.

Good luck with your game.