How do we actually play the game?

[hailstop]

I enjoy the game, but I think they made PCs too hard to kill. I've been playing for 8 months, and DMing for about 2, and I don't think I've ever seen a PC in real danger. It's starting to bother me, and I could see this eventually turning me off the game completely. Success is boring when there's no chance of failure.

This is bothering me somewhat too. We've only had two deaths, and one of those was collateral damage from a fellow party member's spell. While we've occasionally had some dirt naps, they don't happen often, and it's almost always the defenders. I don't think the Warlock has dirt napped once. Even then, there's never been more than one failed death save.

And given Raise Dead, even if they die it's not that big of a deal.

I have brought in a house rule with 75% hp and a dmg bonus equal to 1/2 the monster level.

 

[ST]

This is an interesting question in general. If you think about a boardgame, System (the stuff you do at the table, like this player takes a turn, then the next) and mechanics (the stuff you do during turns) is pretty much explicitly laid out.

In most roleplaying games, you have mechanics galore, but overall System is sort of hashed out from group to group. Who speaks when? Stuff like that. It's often left totally up to GMs, and it can differ a lot from table to table.

That's sort of what hits me when people talk about 4e not being usable for noncombat stuff. No, the mechanics aren't much involved in those scenes, but the system is. And that system is often a status quo that gets reused by a group for any game they play.

I don't think 3x or 4e are all that good at handling that overall system, how do we actually play this at the table, question. In combat, sure, within a set thing that needs to be resolved, yeah, but there's a lot more to the game than that.

(Oops, my bad -- this thread seems to be about mechanics, not system.)

 

[LostSoul]

I use wandering monsters.

I don't use minions very often.

I don't prepare a list of skills to be used, and in what way, in skill challenges.

I don't use treasure parcels by PC level.

I don't use DCs by PC level.

 

[Nebulous]

After playing in the new heroic tier game I just started, I think that I figured out why characters can be tough to threaten some times: healing surges. What makes combats really dangerous in 4E is when characters start running low on healing surges. It used to be where characters wanted to rest when they started running out of spells for the day. Because powers refresh so quickly, it's healing surges that really become the issue. Attrition is more dangerous than the raw power of the monsters the characters fight.

Yep, this is what i have noticed too. Healing Surges are really the hit points DMs need to track in 4e (i track their current surges after every game so we're all on the same page). If the party is full, they can keep fighting. When they start getting down to 2, 1 or 0 surges, a character death is impending whether they have dailies or encounter powers left or not. But letting them rest too much is a sure way they will NEVER get low on surges, so you have to take that into consideration. I think that PCs get worn down over several sessions, and rarely get their butts totally kicked at full strength at the start of an adventure.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yep, this is what i have noticed too. Healing Surges are really the hit points DMs need to track in 4e (i track their current surges after every game so we're all on the same page). If the party is full, they can keep fighting. When they start getting down to 2, 1 or 0 surges, a character death is impending whether they have dailies or encounter powers left or not. But letting them rest too much is a sure way they will NEVER get low on surges, so you have to take that into consideration. I think that PCs get worn down over several sessions, and rarely get their butts totally kicked at full strength at the start of an adventure.

Within an individual combat, the healing surge triggers is the relevant resource to see if the PCs die. Usually, if you get low on triggers, you also get low on all other daily resources. Of course, once you are at this point, most parties will rest - assuming they survive the encounter. It would be interesting to see what happens if the party can't rest at this time. As long as they still have some surges left, they could still enter "easy" encounters around their level. But I haven't done this in play yet. Most of the time, there is still a safe spot to rest.

 

[LostSoul]

Healing surges are why I put wandering monsters into play.

 

[Stoat]

I find WotC's published skill challenge system to be cumbersome and poorly explained, even after Mearls' various articles. I use Stalker0's Obsidian system, and I use it a lot.

I quit giving out XP several years ago during my last 3.5 campaign. I tried again when my group started with 4E, but gave up after 1-2 sessions. I have a rough idea how many encounters the PC's need to get through to level, and they level after they do that many encounters.

Although it hasn't come up in the game yet, I'm probably going to do something about enchanting/disenchanting/buying/selling magic items. But I don't know what.

Other than that, I mostly run the game as written.

 

[Nebulous]

I find WotC's published skill challenge system to be cumbersome and poorly explained, even after Mearls' various articles. I use Stalker0's Obsidian system, and I use it a lot.

I quit giving out XP several years ago during my last 3.5 campaign. I tried again when my group started with 4E, but gave up after 1-2 sessions. I have a rough idea how many encounters the PC's need to get through to level, and they level after they do that many encounters.

I just used Stalker0's Obsidian too and thought it was very good, much better than the default rules. While Mearl's articles are informative, they still don't want to make me run a SC. Just too much work to create it, with not enough payoff.

And like Stoat, i quit giving out XP years ago as well. I just tally up encounters and level them every 8-10 encounters, it's so much easier and almost no math. I'll occasionally hand out Fortune Points as rewards though for exceptionally good ideas or roleplaying.

 

[tmatk]

Yep, this is what i have noticed too. Healing Surges are really the hit points DMs need to track in 4e (i track their current surges after every game so we're all on the same page). If the party is full, they can keep fighting. When they start getting down to 2, 1 or 0 surges, a character death is impending whether they have dailies or encounter powers left or not. But letting them rest too much is a sure way they will NEVER get low on surges, so you have to take that into consideration. I think that PCs get worn down over several sessions, and rarely get their butts totally kicked at full strength at the start of an adventure.

I think that may be the problem, party is resting too much. I feel a house rule coming on - Random encounters that occur while resting are worth 0 XP. That should keep them moving!

 

[Rechan]

I personally have found that monsters don't survive very long, and sometimes don't hit very well. So I made a habit of giving all monsters (at least brutes) an extra +1 to hit.

I found the 4 minion thing to be a wash.

Action points are oft not remembered and ignored. Daily powers are really upsetting when they miss.

My biggest changes are relaxing the adherence to the primary score of the class, since that seems to consume the character creation or hurt the math for the character. Although I haven't really gotten the chance to use any of these houserules just yet.