The Escapist on D&D Past, Present, and Future

[Argyle King]

Johnny3D3D:

I hate how the character builder loads out the "power card" page on the character sheets so I use https://power2ool.com/ to build each power (if you have DDI like me you can log in and copy it over rather than doing it from scratch), use the toolbox to "print" and then cut and paste the images into MS Word or Publisher to make my powers page.

The nice thing is I can create my own powers, re-skin existing ones, etc. Right now power2ool.com does powers, items, and monsters. Hopefully traps, terrain and other stuff will get added in the near future.

Cheers,

Thanks for the advice.

I don't have DDi, but I appreciate the advice.

Usually I just use a piece of paper (like I said,) or I take a few index cards and make what I suppose would be a homebrew version of power cards. I suppose I could print the information onto the index cards if I wanted to save myself from the modicum of writing that doing it by hand makes me do.

 

[billd91]

@ Those who feel 4E is a pain to track.

Does the group as a whole keep track of the game or do you expect the GM to do it all? While I do feel 4E has some hidden complexity due to how different one set of mechanics and one class can potentially be from another, I find keeping track of the action to be rather easy. In my regular group, everyone helps.

As a player, if I use a power which gives a boost, bonus, or penalty, I keep track of that. This might mean reminding the guy next to me what my power did when it's his turn. This might mean making a note on my character sheet which reminds me that I get a bonus to using a certain weapon because of a feat. I suppose I always assumed that writing things down on a character sheet was normal.

We kept track of our own. And once you're dealing with a dozen cards with powers and magic items plus a growing load of conditional feats, I found it was more trouble than it was worth. For one thing, you're pretty much constantly twiddling round-long effects that could be coming from any one of five other PCs at the table. I found multi-round long spell effects from earlier editions a lot easier to deal with, in no small part, because I had a few rounds to learn to remember the effect. We found them a lot less likely to be constantly changing.

I did find earlier levels in 4e easier to deal with. Under 5th level wasn't a problem, but even by 10th level things were getting decidedly complicated, though still more manageable than the 17th level I quit at.

 

[Argyle King]

We kept track of our own. And once you're dealing with a dozen cards with powers and magic items plus a growing load of conditional feats, I found it was more trouble than it was worth. For one thing, you're pretty much constantly twiddling round-long effects that could be coming from any one of five other PCs at the table. I found multi-round long spell effects from earlier editions a lot easier to deal with, in no small part, because I had a few rounds to learn to remember the effect. We found them a lot less likely to be constantly changing.

I did find earlier levels in 4e easier to deal with. Under 5th level wasn't a problem, but even by 10th level things were getting decidedly complicated, though still more manageable than the 17th level I quit at.

I suppose I can understand that. Oddly, that's one of the reasons (aside from feeling they weren't worth the cost) that I never used the official power cards. I felt as though all of the additional fiddly bits such as power cards and fate cards and whatever other kinds of cards there are would make the table too cluttered and create a barrier between the players and the table.

 

[billd91]

I suppose I can understand that. Oddly, that's one of the reasons (aside from feeling they weren't worth the cost) that I never used the official power cards. I felt as though all of the additional fiddly bits such as power cards and fate cards and whatever other kinds of cards there are would make the table too cluttered and create a barrier between the players and the table.

We never invested in them either. We would cut out the cards printed by the character creator program. They made the game more manageable... to a point. Then they became a bit too fiddly, unfortunately, they were also too necessary for keeping track of what a character can do/has done with his encounters, dailies, daily uses of magic items, and other transient effects.

 

[Alphastream]

I think we are getting pretty far off-topic here. Different people like different versions for different things.

The Escapist article and ensuing threads are really about the aggregate behavior seen at the industry level rather than personal likes/dislikes.