Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="OnlineDM" data-source="post: 5372261" data-attributes="member: 90804">Time bubble: I gather that you're referring to the fact that you roll initiative when combat begins and proceed in turn order until combat ends.  What method are you used to?  (I've only played 3e and 4e, so I don't know the 2e alternative.)  I will say that you absolutely do NOT have to freeze the outside world during a combat; feel free to have more monsters or allies wander in partway through.  That's usually fun!Powers outside of combat: You are ABSOLUTELY allowed to use powers outside of combat, and I encourage my players to find creative ways to do this.  Some are more obviously useful outside of combat than others (Fey Step is great in lots of situations), but if your fighter wants to use Tide of Iron against a stuck lever, why not?  Tactical combat: Yep, D&D4e is built around this.  If you and your group don't enjoy tactical combat, you could theoretically try to run it in more of an old-school way, abstracting from tactical positioning, judging things like combat advantage for sneak attack based on flavorful description and so on.  That's throwing away a lot of what 4th Edition is all about, but if you don't like that stuff, pitch it!Outside of combat stuff: I think you're saying, "The 4th Edition books give me tons of support for running tactical combats.  That's lovely, but I'm really interested in running interesting role-playing and cool stuff do to outside of combat."  This is true.  The DMG2 is good for a lot of the non-combat stuff (I highly recommend it), but most of that is up to the DM to develop on their own.  I think that's because tactical combat lends itself well to lots of rules in books, but fun role-playing and exploration is less rule-based and so it's left to your imagination.I think some people interpret this to mean that D&D4e is just about combat, and I think that's a mistake.  You're just left more to your own devices when it comes to the non-combat parts of the adventure.  As a DM, I'm fine with that!  I like my own devices for non-combat stuff.</blockquote>

Verification