D&D 4E Essentials, questions from someone trying out 4e again

[Saracenus]

Why not focus on what Laylander is looking for? He would like to see options for doing this in D&D 4. Maybe it's not the best system to do it, but sending him to a different system doesn't seem to be answering the question: "How can I do this with D&D 4?"

Um, because I did do just that after the section you quoted. While your answer was house rules to incorporate "crafting" in 4e, mine was an attempt to make use of the rules on hand within the edition.

Coming back to my question, its valid ask why D&D? The player wants to be a Jewler and have a life outside of adventuring (nothing wrong with that, its just his stated preference). The system does not elegantly accommodate this style of play. So, why force 4e's square peg into a round hole?

If generating house rules is something the OP wants to do, then by all means go forth and make it happen.

I just think there are better solutions to the problem than using 4e (please do not take this as edition warring, its not. I love me some 4e and it is pretty much all I play at the moment, I just recognize some built in limits on the game).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Um, because I did do just that after the section you quoted. While your answer was house rules to incorporate "crafting" in 4e, mine was an attempt to make use of the rules on hand within the edition.

Coming back to my question, its valid ask why D&D? The player wants to be a Jewler and have a life outside of adventuring (nothing wrong with that, its just his stated preference). The system does not elegantly accommodate this style of play. So, why force 4e's square peg into a round hole?

The thread context is clearly that someone wants to try D&D 4 Essentials. If I want to try D&D 4 Essentials, playing another game doesn't satisfy that goal. I give you this. It may be okay to point out that D&D 4 is not designed around this, and that other games may be better suited for that. But the focus IMO should be on providing assistance and evaluating how to do it. If he wants an action/combat focused RPG with crafting, and he wants to try D&D 4 Essentials, but also wants Crafting rules, then Rolemaster is pretty much irrelevant (unless you suggest a way how he can steal Rolemaster rules and integrate them into Essentials). Rolemaster will give him Crafting Roles, but not healing surges and Knights with Defender Auras or teleporting Eladrin or whatever else D&D 4 Essentials includes and the OP may find interesting about D&D 4.

If generating house rules is something the OP wants to do, then by all means go forth and make it happen.

I just think there are better solutions to the problem than using 4e (please do not take this as edition warring, its not. I love me some 4e and it is pretty much all I play at the moment, I just recognize some built in limits on the game).

I didn't see your comment as an edition warring issue. I just noticed that leading the direction in that way is not helpful for the topic at hand.

Of course, this meta-discussion isn't really helpful either.

So I will add additional suggestions to save this post!

1. Add the skills to existing skills.
   Just add the skills you want (even if with subskills like in 3E) to the game and give everyone free additional training in one.
   D&D 4 skill challenge framework may not be perfect, but they are designed to allow customized "non-combat" encounters following simple base rules. You can apply this to Crafting, Performances and the like as well. Risk of course is that theoretically someone may waste "precious" feat slots on these new skills, but I will simply pretend you and your group are smart enough to figure things out.
2. Treat these as backgrounds and use existing or costum ones to handle it. When the background applies, apply a bonus to an ability check or a skill check you find appropriate.
3. Roll these skills into existing skills.
   Either denote a skill that covers a Craft/Perform/Profession, or a range of skills that may be usable (particularly helpful if you want to use skill challenges along with that, as it gives more opportunities to contribute.)
   • Crafting may be part of Athletics, Acrobatics/Thievery, Arcana and History, for example. It requires physical strenght or manual dexterity, it may require secret knowledge, and it may involve a lot of traditional techniques (and Dwarves get a bonus to History IIRC)
   • Perform may fall under Bluff or Diplomacy.
   • Profession may be Insight or Thievery.

 

[Quickleaf]

There might be a way to accomplish what the player wants within the existing rules - it's a bit of a stretch but here's what I'm thinking:

Take the hireling rules (with some custom made using the provided guidelines). Combine it with the treasure parcel rules, and have some of the treasure come from the jewel-making; how much exactly you can come up with some way to determine (using the art objects/gems as a guideline). Then include "upgradeable" adventuring treasure which increases in value if the jeweler takes time to polish, repair, and arrange a buyer. You might require minor quests to acquire special alchemical formulae in order to perform these "upgrades". There was a Dragon article (maybe someone can help with the issue #?) which took a loose look at guilds in general, though nothing specifically about running them; but you might find inspiration there. Then include NPCs from the guild as quest-givers and contacts. And if the player wants to make magical jewels have them take a background from Scales of War which allows for that or just allow them to have the enchant magic item ritual - suitable items include citrines, solitaires, ioun stones, gems of colloquy, necklaces, brooches, rings, etc.

4e doesn't handle a jeweler running a guild per se, but this approach might approximate what the player is looking for.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Monsters in MM3, MV, and MV:Threats are all the newest designs. If you are using DDI any monster in the Compendium which has a new-style statblock is updated (they have missed a few there too that are in MV like Adult Green Dragon). Updating a monster to the new stats is also pretty easy. Look at the errata for DMG1, it tells you what the new numbers should be (very slight adjustments really) and then make sure damage is around level + 8 average for a basic attack. Honestly for the lower level monsters, say levels 1-5 the old monsters were pretty much fine with a few exceptions.

I think level advancement is just one of those things that different groups find work better with more or less XP than baseline. Remember, there are 30 viable levels now, so advancement being a bit faster gets you to 30 in about the time you used to get to 20.

I never really experienced "PCs just stomp everything" so, I'm not really sure what to say about that. If the players are going to really optimize all the PCs then I guess they can kind of trivialize near-level encounters. Faster play, well, it seems like both a thing where some tables seem to have the problem and others don't. It is self-reinforcing too, boredom slows things down, which produces more boredom.

If you play nothing but WotC modules, things can be sloggy feeling. The encounters really need to be more dynamic and interesting. They have some good ones, but I find you really want to either lay on the interesting terrain and stuff and/or make the encounter important to the plot and have other goals besides kill the enemy. I run very few "just kill the monster" type encounters, and I always make those the easy ones. In a dungeon crawl mode I tend to make a lot of them below level. They're worth limited XP, so you can use more of them. Just make sure the monsters get a chance to get in a couple hits, things like surprise or etc help.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you don't have to go to any real extremes to do something like "character who has a profession".

1) Player picks the background Profession: Artisan (specific type, this is open-ended). He now has the required knowledge to do all 'non-adventuring' type functions of his profession. He can get a +2 bonus to any check that involves his profession.

2) Use skill challenge mechanics when he wants to do something beyond just making a basic living at his profession. Success allows him to achieve whatever it is he's after. It could be making a masterpiece or building a new store, etc. Any profit is simply a treasure parcel.

Beyond this level of detail AFAIK no edition of D&D every provided rules. Hireling and henchmen rules were never designed to cover ordinary employees in a business. Various people have put out rules for things like this that can be used with D&D if desired but mechanically 4e has as much support for this sort of thing as any edition ever did, basically none. 3.x crafting skills for instance are no help. Their 'you make money' check is pretty much uselessly unrealistic and lacking in detail for this, and crafting checks for making things ARE just modified ability checks, which 4e's ability checks are as well, there's just no difference.

 

[The Little Raven]

He is talking about playing a jeweler and creating a trading guild he runs.

There's a feat called Martial Practices that grants non-magical Ritual-like abilities. One of them is a simple crafting one, and there are some ones that allow you to make basic magic armor/weapons (enhancement bonus and masterwork only). You could also make create additional ones to allow him to make rings, certain neck and head pieces, solitaires and the like. There's no real mechanics aside from "Spend gold equal to cost of item and wait amount of time determined by DM, at least one hour."

As for him running a guild, Quickleaf suggested a couple of good ones. There is the option to divert a certain portion of the wealth from treasure parcels to be money he receives from the guild. You could also use the hireling rules to represent guild members that serve him in certain capacities while present.

For me, those would be sufficient, since the character is primarily an adventurer. The question is how central to the character are the jeweler and guildmaster aspects? Is he going to want to spend most of his time making brooches and collecting guild dues, or is he going to want to use things like that as a "palette cleanser" between adventures? You might consider planning some side quests and such related to the guild (internal politics, hostile competition, etc) to help reinforce the feel without necessarily having to come up with new mechanics wholesale. Sometimes he has to make decisions, like raising guild dues, or creating/removing bylaws, which cause further issues down the road.

You don't need a Profession or Craft Skill to achieve any of this kind of thing in 4th Edition. There are all kinds of mechanics scattered around that you can bring together depending on how involved you want it to be, and you might have to do a little bit of content creation (such as the additional Martial Practices mentioned above), but nothing serious by any means.