Need Help with Info?

[Lichemaster]

Hello all!

My 14 year old son final asked today for me to run him and his friends through a game.

I have been playing Pathfinder for the past 5 years and have 4th ed. books and have yet to read one (I know, I know).

Can any and everyone please post links to anything that will make the D.Ming easier for me?

Downloads of the basic stuff I need? (starting to read the players handbook tonight)
or charts or references to make the game run more smoothly?
I will be running the basic first encounter right out of the D.M's guide.
Pregens for the first adventure?
Whatever you think may help?


Thanks for your help.

 

[CM]

I'd suggest a 1-month subscription to Wizards' DDI service for $10 to try it out: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/subscription.aspx

This gives you access to the D&D 4e compendium, every issue of Dungeon & Dragon magazines from the 4e era, the character builder, and the adventure tools. The compendium lets you quickly find stat blocks of creatures to use in your adventures, premade trap stats, spell and magic item descriptions, and so on, all with errata updates.

Check out the DM's guide page 42 for suggestions on how to handle actions the players want to take that aren't covered by the rules. Take any skill challenges listed in a published adventure with a grain of salt. Don't run them literally as printed, just use them as guidelines. Use the "fail forward" theory instead--if the players do poorly in a challenge use that as an opportunity to introduce complications that they have to handle rather than outright failing.

Reskinning creatures and powers is one of a 4e DM's best tricks. You can create a unique and memorable NPC opponents just by taking some random stat block from the compendium and giving it one or two player character powers. Use the updated NPC building rules on the last page of this document: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateDMG.pdf to calculate appropriate statistics for custom NPCs. 4e is very different from 3e and derivative games in that a NPC's ability scores don't matter. NPCs are built according to very simple rules and are defined by their unique powers rather than their ability scores and feats.

As for pregens, I'm not affiliated with this site but found it in a quick web search: http://dungeonsmaster.com/pre-generated-character-library/

Hope you enjoy the game. I find that 4e is a real pleasure to DM.

 

[Quickleaf]

Hello all!

My 14 year old son final asked today for me to run him and his friends through a game.

I have been playing Pathfinder for the past 5 years and have 4th ed. books and have yet to read one (I know, I know).

Can any and everyone please post links to anything that will make the D.Ming easier for me?

Downloads of the basic stuff I need? (starting to read the players handbook tonight)
or charts or references to make the game run more smoothly?
I will be running the basic first encounter right out of the D.M's guide.
Pregens for the first adventure?
Whatever you think may help?


Thanks for your help.

My 4e DM cheat sheet is over here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?307923-4e-DM-Cheat-Sheet

You can find pregens with just a bit of google searching very very easily. Here ya go:
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Tool.aspx?x=dnd/4new/tool/charactersheet
http://4e.educatedgamer.net/Home/pregens

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Why not go with what WotC offers on this page: Learn to Play?

While Keep of the Shadowfell isn't an adventure future generations will talk about, the first parts actually showcase what D&D is about: battling nasties (and taking their stuff!), interacting with villagers and delving into a dungeon.

 

[DonAdam]

Make sure you're using "up to date" monsters. In the initial release of 4e the monsters did too little damage so combats dragged out quite a while.

This is worth a skim: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?254630-Stalker0-s-Guide-to-Anti-Grind

 

[pemerton]

My advice, for what it's worth, is to have a chart of DCs and damage expressions handy, and use these to adjudicate your players' wacky action calls. With the standardised numbers 4e makes it really easy to improvise, and to set up stakes ("Your wizard tries to shut down the portal by channelling away all the magic energy? OK, on a Hard Arcana check you succeed; otherwise you take 1dX+Y amount of damage from the magical backlash, and on anything less than Medium will get no more retries and will have to find another way to solve your probem").

If you think 1 check is too easy, or not dramatic enough, that's when you run it as a skill challenge. The key to running a good skill challenge, in my view, is to narrate a change in the situation after each success or failure, so that the players aren't just rolling dice like a board game, but actually engaging the fictional situation by explaining what their PCs do to try to achieve their goal as the challenge unfolds.

 

[Manbearcat]

> Help your child come up with a sensible backstory that meshes Background, Theme, and Class.

Eg: Your child is a Woodsman, WIlderness Explorer, Ranger that grew up on the borderlands, learning to live entirely self-sufficiently under the tutelage of his father or a lodge.

> Grab the DMG 2. Pick a companion character that fills a role that your child isn't taking and run that character.

Eg: Your child is a Ranger Striker. You make a Hunting Dog Animal Companion that is a Leader of the Warlord variety - improves Action economy of your child and maybe gives a heal 1/encounter as a minor action.

> Use a standard, non-complex genre trope that riffs off of that backstory.

Eg: Something falls from the sky, landing in the mountains that your son's frontier village is at the base of. The fresh water that comes from the mountain is despoiled, the land quickly defoliates and abberant creatures attack the settlement at night. A group of Rangers have investigated but have not returned.

> Grab the scaling DCs and damage expressions. Encourage your child to adlib during combat and interract with the world (and devise an interractive environment that is more than just mere color).

> Run your child through a complex Exploration Skill Challenge (maybe a "Find the Extraterrestrial Object! at 10:3 and ) and a simple one (maybe a "Seal the Portal" or "Destroy the Object" that stops the abberant, Far Realm taint that is threatening the area). Perhaps a 3rd Skill Challenge to "Escape the Mountain Apocalypse!" for something catastrophic that happens at the end of the destruction of the extra-terrestrial object.

> Sort out 3, meaningful combat encounters of progressive difficulty that focus on mobility and dynamic interaction with the terrain (and that gives your child fun opportunities to deploy their specific resources!).

You guys will both have to work on your craft so be open about that and you guys can both learn the system together and how best to leverage it. Look up the various threads on these boards about Skill Challenges for techniques and various approaches that will broaden your horizon and deepen your understanding of non-combat, conflict resolution.

And get the DMG2!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

DMG2 is a very fine book, yes.

I think what I found was that MAINLY 4e is a great action/adventure themed game. It works best when you run adventures like Hollywood. Indiana Jones would make a rather good 4e adventure. If the party is in a frying pan, send them to the fire! If the fight is boring, have the floor collapse! If the bad guy is boring, he grows a new head and starts flying around blasting things or something. Give the PCs nice solid fairly straightforward motives and goals, and then use those to make the combats and etc interesting. A fight is boring, but a fight where the bad guys are trying to escape with the paladin's kidnapped girlfriend before he can stop them is exciting! 4e can do all the investigation, exploration, prep stuff that other editions can, and does that fine, but its finest features are wasted on simple 'clear every room' type dungeon crawling or lots of simple routine combats.

 

[Manbearcat]

4e is a great action/adventure themed game. It works best when you run adventures like Hollywood. Indiana Jones would make a rather good 4e adventure. If the party is in a frying pan, send them to the fire! If the fight is boring, have the floor collapse! If the bad guy is boring, he grows a new head and starts flying around blasting things or something.

This is key here. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. That is the genre motif that 4e does in spades. Keep the pressure on and the action up and you guys will have a swell time.