D&D 4E Anyone playing 4e at the moment?

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Someone must have me on ignore or I have someone on ignore one since I can't tell who you are talking to or about. Which dungeon?

Scepter Tower of Spellgard, and it was S’mon

 

[Garthanos]

Someone must have me on ignore or I have someone on ignore one since I can't tell who you are talking to or about. Which dungeon?

Me too high 5

 

[pemerton]

S'mon and I are discussing the vampire (6th level solo) and the flooding room in Sceptre Tower of Spellgard, an early 4e module. I changed the dungeon a lot, but don't remember how much I changed the vampire's stats. S'mon changed the stats to MM3 standard (MM3 didn't exist when I ran it) but I think left the dungeon largely unchanged.

 

[S'mon]

S'mon and I are discussing the vampire (6th level solo) and the flooding room in Sceptre Tower of Spellgard, an early 4e module. I changed the dungeon a lot, but don't remember how much I changed the vampire's stats. S'mon changed the stats to MM3 standard (MM3 didn't exist when I ran it) but I think left the dungeon largely unchanged.

I basically just changed the monster stats, added a bit of treasure, lowered some skill DCs to be closer to 4e-final-form, and puzzled out something workable from the bolloxed up dungeon map that doesn't match the encounter maps or area descriptions.

 

[vagabundo]

Sadly my 4e Hexcrawl fizzled. In part because of my hexcrawling skills - first time and second because it was run remote on Roll20.

We've moved to the rules lighter Trail of Cthulhu and Masks of Nyarlathotep.

I would like to try it again. 4e is quite decent for the prep and running of a sandbox/hexcrawl. I just didn't do it right.

 

[S'mon]

Sadly my 4e Hexcrawl fizzled. In part because of my hexcrawling skills - first time and second because it was run remote on Roll20.

We've moved to the rules lighter Trail of Cthulhu and Masks of Nyarlathotep.

I would like to try it again. 4e is quite decent for the prep and running of a sandbox/hexcrawl. I just didn't do it right.

4e I think is a bit tricky for effective long term hexcrawling because of how levelling works. Either you are doing it Oblivion-style and levelling everything to PC level, or you have some pretty hard gating/channeling/direction.

One thing I've noticed is that 4e with MM3+ monster stats is much more tolerant of over-level PCs than under-level PCs; I've found fights where the PCs are 1-3 levels higher than the monsters have worked great and felt fun; the players get to show off and feel awesome, and they can get through a lot of encounters, but they still feel challenged. So for hexcrawling you can include a lot of lower level encounters and not worry too much if the PCs are focusing on lower level areas. The main thing is you prob don't want them long resting after every fight. I think the best approach is a small scale map, Keep on the Borderlands style is great but up to 1 or 2 miles per hex allows for several small encounters per adventuring day.

For my current game I made this KotB style local area map for a small hexcrawl element. It has worked out very nicely. I think the best approach in 4e is to have a hexcrawl area map built for either 1 level (ca 10 encounters, around 3 4-5 hours sessions IME) or at most 3-4 levels, the size of one of those HPE adventures. Then have the threats increase roughly in concentric circles from the start location, West Marches style. That way PCs probably won't get in too deep too fast.

 

[Argyle King]

That's why we ex-RM players love 4e D&D!

This particular one caused so much angst online. But at our table we (which is kinda me as the GM bringing the relevant player along with me) adopted an approach on day one which ended up corresponding to the eventual WotC erratum on the topic.

And @S'mon, I remember that vampire. My PCs beat it, but were more like 5th level I think. And I don't remember now how much I tweaked it from the published version but not as much as you did. I had a flooding room trap involved also, but can't remember now if it was simultaneous or subsequent. I do remember the PCs using floating coffins as life rafts!

I didn't have a problem with the idea.

My comment was more that it was an example of an option being released that was immediately used in a way which had appeared to have never been considered before it rolled out.

...which happens sometimes. It's not uncommon for an audience to see something differently. But that seemed to be the case a lot with 4E.

I've often been curious what was happening at WotC which produced a drastically different view of the game than how the players around me viewed the game.

 

[Garthanos]

I've often been curious what was happening at WotC which produced a drastically different view of the game than how the players around me viewed the game.

I know one thing which changed over time they lost large numbers of their core designers

 

[Campbell]

I largely view 4e as an accidentally brilliant game. We know that it was created by a deeply divided design team. It's no wonder parts of the team did not get it because it wasn't the sort of game they wanted to design.

 

[Garthanos]

I largely view 4e as an accidentally brilliant game. We know that it was created by a deeply divided design team. It's no wonder parts of the team did not get it because it wasn't the sort of game they wanted to design.

There was huge amounts of intent in the original design expressed by original team leadership, I do not think accidental is the right word exactly.