D&D 4E New to 4ed. : what do i have to know/look out for?

[MwaO]

As long as you don't put a tricked out mulriattacking ranger with all the right feats and gear to max out stacking bonuses next to a Binder or Vampire, 4e just...isn't unbalanced. At a normal table where no one is hunting The OP Build, pick whatever you want and have fun, and the game will run just fine.

Though Vampire can actually keep up with the tricked out multi-attacking ranger if also tricked out...MC Fighter, power swap for Rain of Blows, go Shock Trooper for Paragon Path is the basic elements necessary...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Though Vampire can actually keep up with the tricked out multi-attacking ranger if also tricked out...MC Fighter, power swap for Rain of Blows, go Shock Trooper for Paragon Path is the basic elements necessary...

I wouldn't call that a tricked out vampire. That's something else, IMO. The ranger doesn't need MC feats or power swapping to be OP. it just needs Twin Strike and the right feats and gear to stack static damage bonuses.

Either way, the point was simply that 4e runs fine as long as you don't combine CharOp builds with low efficacy later classes. As long as you don't chase the OP build, all the classes play fine with each other.

 

[MwaO]

I wouldn't call that a tricked out vampire. That's something else, IMO. The ranger doesn't need MC feats or power swapping to be OP. it just needs Twin Strike and the right feats and gear to stack static damage bonuses.

Drelzna in S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth(1982) is a Vampire Fighter. Strahd is a Vampire Wizard. Iconic vampires, almost by definition in D&D, are expected to have a class of some sort. They released a whole set of feats that only work if you're either a multi-classed or hybrid vampire with powers from another class. Vampire's a class that's intended to power swap, but you don't have to do it - that's one of the reasons that they have such limited power choice.

Unless the Ranger is picking up minor action attacks or off-action attacks, Twin Strike isn't enough to be overpowered. It is roughly at the point where it ought to be to do expected Striker damage in a non-optimized way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Drelzna in S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth(1982) is a Vampire Fighter. Strahd is a Vampire Wizard. Iconic vampires, almost by definition in D&D, are expected to have a class of some sort. They released a whole set of feats that only work if you're either a multi-classed or hybrid vampire with powers from another class. Vampire's a class that's intended to power swap, but you don't have to do it - that's one of the reasons that they have such limited power choice.

Unless the Ranger is picking up minor action attacks or off-action attacks, Twin Strike isn't enough to be overpowered. It is roughly at the point where it ought to be to do expected Striker damage in a non-optimized way.

lol even if we accept your "supposed to power swap" rather than the more accurate "those are feat taxes they put out after being told the vampire was mechanically terrible", the vampire still has to take multiple feats in order to stand next to a non optimized ranger. Or even a normal rogue, barbarian, etc, even the warlock pre-fix.

Rangers, on the other hand, are doing more at-will damage to a single target than anyone else, with twin strike and class features, as long as their feats and gear add static damage. No feat tax, just any damage bonuses of different, and thus stacking, types. No one else gets high damage at as low an investment. Ranger unoptimized in any way is in line with other strikers. ANY optimization puts them ahead. Minor and off action attacks give the ranger brutal nova round potential. The vampire has to take at least two very specific feats and a specific paragon path just to compete with a mildly optimized ranger. It is a drastic difference.

All of which is a tangent. I don't care about an unhelpful nitpick of the example. This is the last I'll say on it. If you've nothing to say about the actual point, find someone else to argue with.

edit: wording made the last paragraph much more aggro than it was intended.

 

[Manbearcat]

Now my question is this: what would you 4e veterans tell a new 4e GM?

In my prior post (of which the mention tags failed), I mentioned three things:

1) Identify with your players what the action will be (the point of conflicts, the themes and premise of play).

2) Story should snowball with that as the glue (each scene should be informed by it in some way).

3) Make failure interesting. Interesting for both the characters and the players. Failure needs to mean that the situation changes dynamically and leads to a new decision-point. Mechanical * failure to woo the king for support (be it passionately espousing the virtues of the quest through Diplomacy or reciting a ballad that should bind the king by the legacy oath of his forbears with History) shouldn't lead to the king just staring blankly, unimpressed, or simply saying no and shutting down the situation. It should lead to the king's chamberlain arrogantly butting in out of turn and citing some sort of obnoxious technicality. Or an enemy bursting into the throne room with false testimony against the PCs. Or the king takes a drink from his chalice to consider the words and is obviously in sudden distress (poison?). Or any number of things that would hurt the PCs chances to successfully earn patronage and requires they act to change the situation back in their favor.

4) And the last. Provoke and encourage movement (both PCs and NPCs moving themselves and force moving other combatants). Obstacles, terrain, hazards, objectives that require being here or there, enemy units with effects for being too close or too far away, and stunting opportunities by interacting with the battlefield. Provoke and encourage.

If you do nothing else, work to master those 4. 1 and 2 are equally as important as 3 and 4, but the latter two are more difficult skills to hone and typically what separates an average 4e GM from a + GM.

* micro - meaning failure 1 or 2 in a Skill Challenge

 

[TarionzCousin]

The 4e community seems very friendly and helpful.

They are.

My advice: Don't let the haters get you down. Avoid any threads that have edition warring in them and simply enjoy your game.

 

[Mad_Jack]

One note about CharOp in 4E, and that you can see in some of the examples above, is that although a lot of things may be very good most of the "tricks" require at least two or three separate elements (a combination of a specific class and multiple feats and/or magic items) to get them to work in their most basic form, and usually aren't "overpowered" at their basic level - it's not until you start adding in a fourth or fifth element that they begin to become obnoxious. As long as your players aren't trying to pursue them out to their full extent, they shouldn't be a problem in an average party unless everyone else was attempting to maximize their underwater basketweaving.

 

[pemerton]

3) Make failure interesting.

Agreed. This is what I was trying to get at in post 23 upthread.

4) And the last. Provoke and encourage movement

Yes. This connects to my comment upthread in post 13, that 4e likes space.

Another advantage of space and movement is that it helps break down a tendency that I personally haven't experienced (because I use space in my combat encounters!) but that I've seen reported by more than one other poster: namely, the players come up with by-the-book combat strategies where they open with their best powers, focus fire, and experience cookie-cutter combats.

If the enemies are approaching from multiple fronts, and if there are things that are separated on the battlefield but the PCs can't ignore (eg there's a burning house to the west, and a squad of goblin archers to the east), then the players will have to make choices about how to split up the PCs, how to deploy their defenders and protect their squishies, where they should be prioritising offence and where they just want someone to hold the line, etc. And if the geography and threats/challenges are different each time, and the timing of things is different each time, then the answer will be different each time - no simply strategy playbooks, nor cookie-cutter combats.

1 and 2 are equally as important as 3 and 4, but the latter two are more difficult skills to hone and typically what separates an average 4e GM from a + GM.

Harder, perhaps, yet not as hard as all that - at least in the case of (4). My visual imagination is not all that good (my drawing sucks and I have trouble giving directions to a driver when the map is "upside down" relative to the left and right of the car), but I've been able to come up with some pretty interesting combat layouts for 4e. (Even if I do say so myself!)

Which brings me back to space. I remember this fight, where the sorcerer PC crashed 50 squares away from the other PCs, being pursued by hobgoblin wyvern-riders. As the other PCs tried to close the distance to help him, a hobgoblin phalanx advanced on their original position, which they wanted to protect (it had a tower they were looting, and valuable books they had piled up on a tarpaulin just outside the tower). So the players have to split their forces in some fashion, unless they want to either abandon their downed friend, or abandon their tower and loot. And this also creates the tactical question of how the PCs might cover 50 sq quickly (movement powers, clever use of delaying/readying etc), where the archer should go and which "front" he should concentrate on, etc.

And this didn't require anything fancy in the way of terrain, other than "here's the tower", "here're the books", "over there are the ridges that the hobgoblins have marched down out of".

The combat we ran at the opening of our G2 episodes had a similar character, though with slightly fancier terrain (but drawn up by Gygax, not me) that made verticality another aspect of the space.

I think (3) is harder than (4) - my narrative imagination is (I think) richer than my visual one, but I nevertheless find that achieving (3) is consistently more demanding on me, as a 4e GM, than achieving (4).

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , on phone so not going to be able to quote and respond to each part.

I think my take that "provoking and emcouraging movement is an issue for 4e GMs" stems from the unfortunately pervasive "combat slog is inherent to 4e" meme. Personally, after running approximately 75 levels worth of play (at all levels), I've not experienced it once. But the internet meme persists nonetheless.

My sense is the issue (insofar that there is one) is multifaceted:

1) too many damn players at the table (which will feed back into too many enemy units if you aren't using hazards as a healthy part of your encounter budget)..
2) too many players not putting in the effort to minimize the handling time of their on-turn and off-turn actions.
3) GMs not framing combats around "extra-HP-ablation goals."
4) GMs not leveraging the inherent dynamism of the combat engine by failing to provoke or encourage movement (and stunting). Which is a head-scratcher because the system advocates it heavily and shows you how.

The first two are group/player issues. The latter two are GM-side. 4, by itself, goes a loooooooooooong way toward mitigating "sloggines."

I think a lot of GMs just want to port their skill-set from AD&D (et al) straight to 4e, without learning and leveraging the nuance of the mechanical widgets and unique principles of the 4e ruleset. Hence some of the (misplaced as it is your own responsibility) frustrations. 4e encourages movement and gives you all the tools to facilitate dynamic (spatially, decision point-wise, and narratively) combat. It should become intuitive after a fair go (or immediately if you have prior exposure). But not if you're bolting on an incompatible approach and ignoring/misunderstanding the machinery. But 4e somehow bore the responsibility of the users' own error.

Thoughts?

 

[Eilathen]

Very interesting discussions! Thanks for that. I have to be honest, it does intimidate a bit ^^ Luckily, i also heard that 4e is "easy" on the GM (on the internet but also from a friend of mine who DM'd 4e for a while)

I have to say, i'm pretty motivated to give this a try. But i guess first things first: 1) ask my players if they are interested 2) start reading a lot of the books, especially DMG1 and 2 (right?) ....

Anyway...thanks again to all of you. And discuss on...i'm avidly reading along