doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Have you looked into Essentials at all? It's more streamlined, but runs about the same. Combat goes faster, IME, too.
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D&D 4E Late to the D&D 4E Bandwagon - First Impressions
- Thread starter Shades of Green
- Start date
Have you looked into Essentials at all? It's more streamlined, but runs about the same. Combat goes faster, IME, too.
Shades of Green
First Post
How does Essentials feel in actual gameplay? Does it has less content/powers?
Neonchameleon
Legend
Completely compatable at the same table - the characters tend to have fewer powers and, more importantly, much less overwhelming decision points. (So rather than deciding who to attack and whether to use an at will or encounter power at the same time your first choice is which stance to be in (you have two), your second is who to attack, and your third is whether to use power attack. For people with analysis paralysis issues it plays much faster and isn't substantially different otherwise. Also it needs less errata; something like six of the eight PHB classes are currently online for free.
Storminator
First Post
My game has a PHB wizard, a runepriest, a ranger|cleric hybrid, a battlemind, a thief, a warpriest, and a cavalier|binder warlock hybrid. 3 AEDU classes, 1 AEDU hybrid, 2 Essentials classes, 1 Essentials hybrid.
They all seem to work fine together. Since we replaced the Essentials Assassin with the Essentials thief, they all seem reasonably balanced. The Essentials Assassin was horribly underpowered and frustrating for everyone. The thief is super simple to play, with few powers, but constant effectiveness. The warpriest seems to have piles of powers (including magic items he has 12 dailies LOL), and is also constantly effective. The cavalier|binder is impressively effective, which I didn't expect.
No one has as many powers or fiddly bits as the PHB wizard, but he is carrying around 2 artifacts (Eye and Hand of Vecna), and is multiclassed (Assassin).
PS
Are you talking about the one from Heroes of Shadow? I thought it read quite well. What makes it so underpowered?
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Just out of curiousity, what about Pathfinder? If you like 3E and 3.5E, it sounds like you're in the target audience for Pathfinder.
Storminator
First Post
Yes, it's the HoS one. It's striker bonus damage is very limited. It can do good damage with a poison, but those are dailies. It get a bonus batch of d10s (# dependent on level), but that is an encounter power. So once per encounter, or a couple times a day it deals significant damage, and all the other turns it's throwing out 1d4, or 1d6, sometimes with Dex mod, sometimes not.
The assassin typically was doing ~10-15 damage per attack at 9th level. The thief we replaced the character with (same character, new build) typically does 30, each and every round. And throws in the occasional 60.
Huge, huge difference. Literally went from "Zoul is irrelevant" to "get Zoul to kill it!"
PS
Dragonblade
Adventurer
I'm a veteran 4e player and DM and have a few thoughts.
On improv using the 4e framework - Great! That's the stuff of great games. 4e does a great job of supporting this for DMs by providing a nice chart of recommended DCs and damage expressions by level. I do a lot of on the fly adjudication of player stunts in my games and encourage my players to use their abilities creatively outside of combat.
On combat grind and player resiliency - Pre-MM3 monsters had defenses too high and damage too low. To compensate, I now use the 13th Age Escalation Die mechanic in my 4e games, and boost pre-MM3 monster damage. +5 damage per tier per attack is a good rule of thumb. For example, a level 12 monster should get +10 damage to any attack or ability which deals damage to the PCs. I also try to avoid using abilities that stun or take away player turns. If even that damage isn't enough to drop at least one PC per combat below zero, then up it by another +5. Every group is different. I have two leaders in my group, and they are pretty resilient so I hammer them with tough encounters.
Now, as far as combat taking too long, I don't mean to sound rude, but this is entirely on the group. Not the game. Every PC's entire turn can be taken in 30 seconds or less. Every player should know what their PC can do since 4e makes it easy by laying it all out on their sheet. Every player should spend the turns they aren't actively doing something by paying attention in battle and reviewing their abilities. When their turn comes up, it should be Standard this, Move here, Minor that, Done! In fact, for simpler classes, like the Essentials classes, even 30 seconds is more than needed. I played a Slayer once and was done with my turn in 10 seconds or less most of the time. Literally 10 seconds.
We had a real problem with long combats and found it was due to analysis paralysis and too many players not paying attention and not knowing their PCs. Well, these things build on each other and pretty soon every turn takes 10 minutes because no one is paying attention and has to be brought up to speed and then looks over their sheet, etc. As DM, you need to put a halt to this behavior. I expect all my players to know their PCs abilities intimately. Especially the casual ones. Then I time them. Any actions not started within 30 seconds are lost. Skipped. Too bad. Next player up.
You'll find that 30 seconds is a long time. As turns speed up, players won't have as much time to get distracted by other things. They'll find they need to pay attention to be ready to go. It might take a session or two, but then your game will be humming along. Also, its important that as DM, you are ready to go with your monsters, since once your players speed up, you will be the time bottleneck. As DM, I try to take each monsters turn within one minute. Before any encounter, I pause the game for a quick break to review all the monsters in the upcoming battle, so I'm not the one wasting everyone's time trying to decide what to do once the battle starts. There are tricks to this but its too much to explain now.
Another thing I recommend is to designate one player to manage the initiative for the combat. Usually, the player most likely to disengage, or get off topic, is the best choice. Have them track everyone's initiative, even the monsters, and call out the players who are up and then let the next player in line know they are up next. You can also designate them, or another player, as timekeeper whose job is to keep everyone within the 30 second limit (except for the DM). This actively engages that player, and is one less thing you have to deal with as DM.
On improv using the 4e framework - Great! That's the stuff of great games. 4e does a great job of supporting this for DMs by providing a nice chart of recommended DCs and damage expressions by level. I do a lot of on the fly adjudication of player stunts in my games and encourage my players to use their abilities creatively outside of combat.
On combat grind and player resiliency - Pre-MM3 monsters had defenses too high and damage too low. To compensate, I now use the 13th Age Escalation Die mechanic in my 4e games, and boost pre-MM3 monster damage. +5 damage per tier per attack is a good rule of thumb. For example, a level 12 monster should get +10 damage to any attack or ability which deals damage to the PCs. I also try to avoid using abilities that stun or take away player turns. If even that damage isn't enough to drop at least one PC per combat below zero, then up it by another +5. Every group is different. I have two leaders in my group, and they are pretty resilient so I hammer them with tough encounters.
Now, as far as combat taking too long, I don't mean to sound rude, but this is entirely on the group. Not the game. Every PC's entire turn can be taken in 30 seconds or less. Every player should know what their PC can do since 4e makes it easy by laying it all out on their sheet. Every player should spend the turns they aren't actively doing something by paying attention in battle and reviewing their abilities. When their turn comes up, it should be Standard this, Move here, Minor that, Done! In fact, for simpler classes, like the Essentials classes, even 30 seconds is more than needed. I played a Slayer once and was done with my turn in 10 seconds or less most of the time. Literally 10 seconds.
We had a real problem with long combats and found it was due to analysis paralysis and too many players not paying attention and not knowing their PCs. Well, these things build on each other and pretty soon every turn takes 10 minutes because no one is paying attention and has to be brought up to speed and then looks over their sheet, etc. As DM, you need to put a halt to this behavior. I expect all my players to know their PCs abilities intimately. Especially the casual ones. Then I time them. Any actions not started within 30 seconds are lost. Skipped. Too bad. Next player up.
You'll find that 30 seconds is a long time. As turns speed up, players won't have as much time to get distracted by other things. They'll find they need to pay attention to be ready to go. It might take a session or two, but then your game will be humming along. Also, its important that as DM, you are ready to go with your monsters, since once your players speed up, you will be the time bottleneck. As DM, I try to take each monsters turn within one minute. Before any encounter, I pause the game for a quick break to review all the monsters in the upcoming battle, so I'm not the one wasting everyone's time trying to decide what to do once the battle starts. There are tricks to this but its too much to explain now.
Another thing I recommend is to designate one player to manage the initiative for the combat. Usually, the player most likely to disengage, or get off topic, is the best choice. Have them track everyone's initiative, even the monsters, and call out the players who are up and then let the next player in line know they are up next. You can also designate them, or another player, as timekeeper whose job is to keep everyone within the 30 second limit (except for the DM). This actively engages that player, and is one less thing you have to deal with as DM.
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Dragonblade
Adventurer
If the time shock of 30 seconds is too much at first, you can start with a minute. Either way, players should be paying attention and should know what they plan on doing as soon as their turn comes up. Also, emphasize that its ok to just skip their minor action most of the time. As turns speed up and players don't have to wait 20 minutes for their turn to come up again, then they'll find less need to try to squeeze every last possible thing out of their turn.
I play 4 hour sessions, once a week, and can get through 3-4 combats and still spend half the session on role-playing. Our average combat lasts about 30 minutes.
I play 4 hour sessions, once a week, and can get through 3-4 combats and still spend half the session on role-playing. Our average combat lasts about 30 minutes.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
The poisons can be used to have bonus damage on every attack in an encounter, and after a while you should be able to do so every combat. The once per encounter assassin strike is signifigent damage, and assassins are doing [w]+stat+1d8 every turn, at the least. You seem to have forgotten Attack Finesse, which is 1d8 extra damage on all attacks with assassin weapons. So, use a rapier and break the game with light blade OP, and the class works just fine.
