D&D 4E Taking the 4e Plunge; Helpful hints?

[pemerton]

Plenty of good advice here.

My 2 cents worth: don't hold back on the terrain, the action etc. 4e is really at it's best when all the stops are pulled out. Like Manbearcat said upthread, don't muck about with attrition-style encounters. In my first 4e session the PCs fought assassins who had strung a chain across the river to block their boat - there was swimming, and a little island in the middle of the water, falling into the water, stealing the assassins' raft, etc. In the third session the 1st level PCs ended outside the stockade they were defending, in a forest, surrounded by a dozen or more goblin minions plus leaders. As long as you don't overlevel your low-level encounters more than 1 or 2 levels you should find that PCs are pretty resilient, and even when the monsters seem to have them on the ropes will be able to come back strongly and triumph.

Here are some links to some actual play reports that I have posted from my own 4e game. They give examples of some of the techniques you can use in 4e, especially taking advantage of some of its less familiar elements like DCs and damage that scale by level, its emphasis on tactical mobility in combat, and skill challenges.

Here are also links to two possibly helfpul threads, one on skill challenges, and one on "scene framing" as a useful approach to GMing 4e.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I'm thinking Power Cards....

Instead of using Power Cards my group puts the full pages our character sheets into clear plastic pockets that can be inserted into a three-ring notebook. We use dry erase markers on the plastic pockets to track healing surge use, hit points, and we X out a power when it's been used. I find that it's a very handy way to keep track of my character during combats. (We use the print outs from DDI but you can do this with character sheets that are created by hand too.)

 

[Balesir]

Instead of using Power Cards my group puts the full pages our character sheets into clear plastic pockets that can be inserted into a three-ring notebook. We use dry erase markers on the plastic pockets to track healing surge use, hit points, and we X out a power when it's been used. I find that it's a very handy way to keep track of my character during combats. (We use the print outs from DDI but you can do this with character sheets that are created by hand too.)

Physical markers of some sort are helpful - either erasable sheets, or we use coloured glass beads (red for healing surges, silvery for action points, blue for magic item uses, which we still use). One advantage of getting the Monster Vault, apart from the well designed monsters therein, is that you get cardboard pogs that have "bloodied" markings on the flip side. I blu-tac these to the bases of the figures we use, because a visual cue for bloodied status is handy.

Talking of visual cues, I also use red and green coloured glass beads for Skill Challenges; once the players realise that they are in a challenge, these give a visual indication of how they are doing, without breaking the narrative flow by announcing successes and failures vocally.


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[pemerton]

For character sheets, I think the DDI printouts are awful. They seem to make it needlessly hard to find the info you need.

My players use home made sheets (Word table/column layout, or Excel for the connoisseur!) which have their options listed by action type and recharge period, and then the relevant info set out in the matrix (to hit, damage, effects, etc). For everyone but the controller it all fits on one page. (The controller's effects are a bit too funky for that.)

Usage is just marked in pencil and then erased/crossed out as appropriate.

Anyway, I definitely think a good solution to the character sheet problem is crucial, because 4e can get fairly sheet-intensive fairly quickly!

 

[Quickleaf]

I will echo [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's advice to focus on fewer harder "staged" encounters rather than wandering monster/inconsequential encounters.

That's said, I know that war of attrition style dungeon crawling is possible in 4e (just ran 10 sessions of my converted Dragon Mountain!). I used lots of minions & a few lower level monsters (especially ones that deal healing surge damage, inflict disease, or rust monsters), well-designed traps, some sort of exploration pacing / random encounter mechanic the PCs could interact with, and very difficult extended resting. Together these made the war of attrition readily apparent and got the party thinking strategically, and had a fun old school feel.

 

[Manbearcat]

Talking of visual cues, I also use red and green coloured glass beads for Skill Challenges; once the players realise that they are in a challenge, these give a visual indication of how they are doing, without breaking the narrative flow by announcing successes and failures vocally.

This is good advice and I forgot to mention this in my post upthread.

Don't be afraid to let your players know they are in a Skill Challenge. It is a metagame framework to resolve non-combat challenges. Think of it like HPs, Attacks and Defenses. Players know they are in a combat because they are referencing those and the ablation informs them of progress. Whereas Balesir uses beads, I use two dice; one color for the number of successes required to win and another color for the number of failures required to "lose". These tick down as successes and failures accrue. Announce your Skill Challenge stakes! Maybe give it a title filled with flourish, pomp and circumstance so your players fully "get" what the nature of the challenge before them! Treat it as a comic book scene where each action is a panel whereby the acting character get to do their thing and impose their creative will upon the narrative.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Best advice: your daughter needs to convert her friends to Savage Worlds....

Lol. I suggested that and I think that's where it will ultimately end up.

 

[Jester David]

Oh, and I encourage reflavouring. A strength (and weakness) of 4e is the detachment of flavour from powers. It's easy to rename and describe elements of the game differently.
Don't make a new monster when you can just give an old monster a new name. Just swapping out the iconic power of a humanoid monster and giving it to a different monster increases the foes at your disposal.

 

[pemerton]

I know that war of attrition style dungeon crawling is possible in 4e (just ran 10 sessions of my converted Dragon Mountain!).

You should link to your thread!

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Things went very well. Luckily, she has some gaming experience under her belt. But I think we can all agree that Savage Worlds and D&D4e only resemble each other in very basic ways. However, she... frickin... LOVED 4e. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Savage Worlds is now a thing of the past at the moment. We'll see how it goes as she gains levels and things get more complex in 4e.

She made up an Elf Druid, Spring-flavored which gave her a wolf companion. This let her have a bit more stopping power than just a plain adventurer would have. She particularly liked the way that the Character Builder printed off power cards (which I printed on card stock and cut out for her) for her to hold onto and use. She liked healing surges, too.

I started her off on a wagon with a farmer, traveling through a forest to Sanctuary Keep in the Pass of Forlorn Hope that cuts through the Dragon's Teeth mountains into the former lands of the Shadow Empire. The War with the Shadow in the West is over. He's been pulled down and imprisoned on the Diarnak Plateau. Now his former realm is open for pilgrims and pioneers to carve out civilized lands from a wilderness teaming with fell creatures.

She stopped the wagon to hunt up some rabbits with her wolf to get a feel of the skill system (I used a Skill Challenge for it.) As she and the farmer were cooking of some tasty smelling rabbits, I had a couple of Kobolds investigate which gave her a moment to use the combat rules in a very simple scenario, let her get familiar with her powers and how they work, etc.

Then she tracked the kobold to their lair, decided not to enter and returned to the farmer to complete the trip to the Keep. Once there, she let the guards know about the kobold and she was told that there is a 5 silver for every left kobold ear she brings in. That had her head back out.

This is where her playing a session here and there of things like FATE and Dungeon World really kicked in. She's big on helping to narrate the world. As such, she decided that the bodies of the two kobold she killed had been dug up, probably by the other kobolds in the lair.

That gave her a reason to enter the lair where she tripped over a trip wire, narrowly avoided a pit trap and battled two more kobolds and took their ears. Plus she ran through a group of three Dire Rats, took an attack of opportunity which did max damage to her and had her flee from the cave to return to the Keep.

In the Keep, she interacted with the NPCs, collected her bounty, spent some money (including a donation at the Church of Pelor) and some other strictly roleplaying stuff.

Basically, the two-hour taste test went spectacular. She wanted to keep going, but I'd prepared only a bare bones adventure in case she hated it and wanted to go back to games she knew.

Friday she wants to play for 4 hours at least. Looks like she's hooked.

I think the only reason we got so much done was that I followed some of the excellent advice here. Lowered hit points, right mix of creatures, etc.