What should a seasoned 3.5e DM expect from their first 4e session?

[Puggins]

Different DMs have different methods of running combats, and there are plenty of valid methods.

One that helps tons in 4e, though, is to announce the attack result of monster attacks, and rely on the player to tell you whether it hits him or not.

For example:

Balthazar, the Crocodile lunges at you, attempted to lock its jaws around your leg. It attacks and hits an armor class of 19. Does that hit you?

This provides positive synergy in two ways:

(1) It puts the onus on the players to remember all the minor bonuses they gain from powers and situational feats to their defenses, something you really shouldn't be worrying about. You can always ask them to justify why it doesn't hit if there's confusion.

(2) Lots of powers are immediate interrupts, like a wizard's Shield spell. This gives the player the opportunity to interject with these powers without interrupting you ("it hits you with an ac of 19 and does..." "Wait! I cast my shield spell!").

 

[Dragonbait]

Like all new games, expect combat to be a cluster F- for the first few sessions. You'll then find a rhythm.

Work WITH the players to learn the new system, and like others have said, let them keep track of their own conditions.

It's just close enough to 3E and Star Wars SAGA that it is sometimes easy to slip back into the old rules and cause some major havoc (5-foot step, reverting back to charge being a Move + Standard action, forgetting about Action Points, and so on).

Also, in 4E the GM takes back some powers which is a double-edged sword. The PH and DMG do not dictate everything you are allowed to do, and it's up to you to sometimes set an appropriate DC and choose the skill(s) that can work to accomplish the goal.

Just keep in mind that with time it will improve. If a group passes judgment on a game after 1 encounter, then they probably had no real interest in playing it in the first place. I know I didn't really like 4E until my 5th to 8th session when I finally understood the bulk of the system.

 

[Scribble]

4e prep work DMwise takes a ton less time. USE that time to do other stuff for the game. Like spend more time on the NPC fluff, or descriptive elements. Or spend more time on the terrain of the battlefield. Terrain can add a TON of fun to the game, especially after you have a few sessions under your belt, and you understand how things happen in combat.


In regard to ongoing effects.

For initiative I use "pictures" of the characters/enemies taped to the wall next to me in order. (Printed from fiery dragon's counter collection digital)

When a PC or a monster has an ongoing effect I tape a little yellow plastic poker chip thingy next to them, so when we look at who's next in initiative, and see the yellow marker we instantly know that person has the ongoing effect.

 

[mudbunny]

If you want to avoid this and keep things from bogging down into "which power do I use this turn," I suggest telling every player to write down a new at-will power on their character sheet: "Do Something Cool."

That way, when they look through their list of powers, they'll be like, "I could use reaping strike, or I could tide of iron. Or, I could do something cool. Hm, maybe I should try grabbing the kobold and holding his face in that firepit over there. See how 'shifty' he is when he's getting turned into barbecue."

When PCs 'do something cool,' check the DMG, I think page 42, or 45 or something, and see the table that describes about how much damage their attacks should do.

Genius!!!

 

[Obryn]

Oh! A biggie that I almost forgot, and bungled for the first session or two. (And, btw, which everyone fumbles at first, I think.)

You only get 1 immediate action per round. So, kobold dragonshields cannot hop backwards several times in a round when an enemy gets close. Fighters cannot attack every marked enemy who shifts around them. Swordmages can only block damage (or teleport) once per round if a marked target violates their mark.

It makes a big difference, and it's easy to overlook.

-O

 

[Imaginary Number]

As a recent convert from 3.5e to 4e, I can attest that all of the above advice is good. My group actually had no problem at all getting accustomed to the 4e movement rules; in fact, they seemed pleased that they didn't have to worry about when they did or did not have to count two squares for diagonal movement. And, even though this was repeated a few times earlier, it cannot be emphasized enough that the players should be responsible for keeping track of their own marks, hunter's quarry, etc., and that visual aids (different colored glass beads, poker chips, or whatever by minis to represent different status conditions) are indispensable in keeping track of such things. Although I agree in principle with RangerWickett that the players should not forget that they always can "do something cool," for at least for first few sessions I'd recommend encouraging the players to get a feel for how they work and, more significantly, how they can work in conjunction with each other. 4e assumes synergy and tactical teamwork among the players, and the players won't learn those things as quickly if they're encouraged to act off-script from the get-go. A couple other things that I did or should have done before my first 4e session: 1) Study and learn the rules for passive perception, searching, and stealth. You'll be making checks for those things constantly, and the 4e rules are very different than they were in 3.5. 2) Don't forget that each monster (and player, of course) has a standard action, a minor action, and a move action each turn. In the heat of combat, I often reverted to 3.5 mode and forgot that the monsters could take a minor action as well as move and attack. 3) Run a few practice encounters on your own with the monsters you'll be using in the adventure. Most 4e monsters have a special ability or schtick (like, e.g., goblin tactics) the uses of which may not be immediately apparent from their stat block. Think through how you can use the monsters' abilities to their advantage before you run the encounter with the players. Good luck!

 

[Rokes]

Thank you all for the invaluable advice!

Try to get some kind of marker for conditions...

I picked up a pack of multi-colored pipe cleaners and I've cut them in 2" lengths for players to use as marks (and bloodied). Marking and Ongoing Effects are probably my biggest worry. I'm hoping that it's not as much of a pain as it reads.

* The skills you are used to people doing don't always exist... I still make calls for them and I have been running 4E since before it came out.

I can't wait until I ask someone to make a Use Rope check! Oh, wait. I never did that in 3.x either.

-snip-

That about covers it. There are some "how to avoid edition wars" tips, but you don't seem the type to get into edition wars.

It's all D&D. It's all telling a story, rolling some dice, having fun, and making memories with friends. The rules have always been what you make of them. Make Characters not War!

As for DMing, page 42 will let you adjudicate most things on the fly, and save you from looking up any rules you don't know or can't remember which lets you keep the game from stalling. I memorize the 'magic number', or the moderate difficulty DC for the party's level. Once I have that number memorized, it is easy to add or subtract 5 for an easy or difficult check (note that the DCs have been errata'd.)

Are there any plans to reprint the PHB (and DMG, MM, etc) with Errata? There seems to be some massive ones (Stealth, Skill Challenges).

I suggest telling every player to write down a new at-will power on their character sheet: "Do Something Cool."

This has to be one of the best pieces of advice I've ever read. Consider it stolen! XP for you good sir!

Regarding the "Do Something Cool" attitude. I think I have the right crew for that. My wife's first ever D&D game was at the IRON DM tournament in 2007 playing for Ancient Sensei, the DM that won! I got to "break her in" right, and see her really take a liking to the game. Heck, her little halfling climbed up the 100 ft. tall Minotaur demon thingy as we were fighting it. IShe then swung around to its face using its ear in order to stab it in the eye. This from a first time player! Needless to say I was quite proud!

Some of the problems depend on the kind of characters you have. For me, the biggest offender was the fighter's combat superiority/combat challenge. I still get it wrong periodically. If you can give a list of the characters your group is playing, there's probably some specific "tips to watch for" that we can provide you with.

--Steve

As of right now I'm blessed with playing with all newbies (to the rules at least, not the concept of role-playing though). While I think some things would be easier with my normal crew, this may give me the opportunity engrain the "Do Something Cool" attitude. I think we're going to have:

Halfling Rogue (Wife)
Half-Elf Paladin (Gasp! Another female player!)
Some sort of arcane blaster type I would imagine.

I think I'm going to run a 3rd level Gnomie Bard NPC who will follow them through their early travels for support. Enough oomph to help them keep alive, but should be easy enough to keep him from stealing anyone's thunder. Plus, then I get to roleplay a "playing" story teller too! w00t!

 

[SteveC]

:

Halfling Rogue (Wife)
Half-Elf Paladin (Gasp! Another female player!)
Some sort of arcane blaster type I would imagine.

Well from that list, I can think of a few things: first, the rogue's sneak attack only works once per round, and then only if the rogue is using the appropriate weapons. Unlike 3x, you aren't automatically flat-footed in the first round of combat, but the rogue has a special class feature that lets them get combat advantage in turn one before their opponents go, so it's sort of the same thing.

The other thing involving rogues is how stealth and hiding work. It's a bit harder to hide in combat than what the PHB states, so take a look at PHB errata to see the difference.

For a paladin, the biggest thing to remember is how their challenge works: they only apply it once per round as well, so should the paladin challenge a creature with more than one attack, he only gets to do the damage once. That was a big issue with our group to begin with.

Arcane blasty characters are actually very straightforward, so I don't think you'll have much trouble there.

Just one more piece of advice: a lot of people like to print and use cards to keep track of their powers, but only do this if it makes sense to your players to do so. One member of my group just made a list of their powers that the cross off as they use, and it works just fine for them. In other words, do what you think will work to keep track of the different powers your characters have.

--Steve

 

[WalterKovacs]

Part of it will depend on how new the PCs are to playing. If they are new:

(a) The defender will forget to mark people ... this is especially true for the fighter since he has to basically declare whether or not he wants to mark every time he attacks. It is sometimes best to assume the fighter is marking unless he says otherwise, it's just easier that way.

(b) Players may not be used to letting the other players know about their condition. It's important for them to communicate with each other, especially in they want the leader to heal them up. While he can wait until the character drops below zero before healing (you get more "bang for your buck" since you get back to zero for 'free') you risk skipping that PCs turn once or twice, and at least make them use up their move action to get back up. One way to balance this against make it seem to gamey is to have some way to make sure everyone knows when someone is bloodied in game and out (this is also important since monster and PC powers interact with being bloodied, so it's important you and the players communicate in that regard).

---------------

I'm a new DM, and started DM'ing with 4e. I hadn't even played any 4e myself when I started DM'ing.

I definitely had some trouble at first with making the monsters perhaps a bit too 'easy' (which was probably for the best, since the group was new as well). This mostly consisted of not realy reading the adventure heavily ahead of time.

If you are going with an adventure path (like Keep on the Shadowfell) or any kind of pre-packaged encounters here are some important points:

(a) Read the tactics section. This will give you an idea of 'how to play' the monsters, and not only that, but points out their various powers and how they interact with each other. It let's you know if/when the monsters might run away, etc. You can obviously change this up as you go, but at first it gives a good idea of how to play things, and can make for some interesting situations, like when a monster is able to alert the next encounter so you have a prepared group (with extra help) that can try to get suprise on the PCs. Conversely, you can reward the PCs for a quick decisive victory by giving them the opportunity to ambush the group of monsters.

(b) Read the features section. This will give you infromation about the terrain features which are an important in making the encounters seem different and interesting. I know that our druid loves to be able to thorn whip people into pits whenever they come up.

(c) Read just about everything. There will often be a key phrase hidden in some spot. Some monsters are just plopped into an encounter, and they have some powers that are irrelevant ... such as requiring an ally of a certain type or level that just isn't there. I recall a couple times where I made things a bit harder for the players because I misread a power (one example, a monster was able to attack twice ... but I missed the part that said it had to be against different targets), and the opposite has also happened. In some cases there are important things happening in the encounter (like constantly spawning minions, or the means to get out of a seemingly impossible to escape trap, etc).

(d) Many published adventure paths fail to follow the recommended treasure parcel rules. This is a long term thing, but you'll want to figure out how you want to handle treasure and you can't rely on some adventure paths to take care of that for you (in the published modules like Keep on the Shadowfell it's worse, since they give you specific treasure which could potentially be useless for the actual party you have. The economy system, and the math expects the party is getting magic weapons, armor and neck slot items (at least) at regular intervals.

EDIT:

I also had a leader DM PC. I actually went with the tactical Warlord, in part because one of his at-wills was to give another PC an extra attack during the turn, and much of his help is passive (like the action point bonus, intiative bonus) making it useful as a hands off type PC. Also, the sort of game I was playing it helped turn my "give players advice of what they can do in this situation" can work 'in game' as the tactical warlord giving tactical advice. So the leader DM NPC should work out. Leader is bit of a thankless job, so it does work well as the DM NPC in that respect, as you can more easily have him step into the background doing the buffing effects and make everyone else shine a bit more.

 

[Bodhiwolff]

Rather than talk about what you can expect from a 4E game, I'll just make a few suggestions as to how to present 4E in its best light.

What I found worked *really* well for our crowd was ...

a) Power Cards! Having individualized power cards with finalized calculated numbers (not simply formulae) as well as the rules summaries, winds up making the game go *so* much more smoothly. You never have to look up any rules, there is no page-flipping, and everything is pre-calculated speeding up all of the decisions.

b) Item Cards! Being able to hand the players a card with the item description, rules, etc., on it really ups the ante. Coming to the table with a stack of goodies to give out makes every gaming session feel like Christmas!

c) Gamer Mat -- This isn't for everybody, but our gang can't live without it now! Rather than using character sheets, I got my gamers to switch to gamer mats. We use poker chips for hit points, tokens for healing surges, and never, ever have to crack out a character sheet during a game. Record-keeping is simplified, the game speeds up, you can instantly glance at somebody's mat to see how wounded (or healthy) they are, and the entire process is streamlined. Between a Gamer mat with calculated modifiers on it, and a stack of Power Cards, my players never crack a book during a game. No more pencils, no more erasers, cleaner, neater, faster.

d) Map, miniatures, tokens, glass beads, printed tokens, etc. Since much of the game now centers on the battle grid, making the gaming grid just a smidge more attractive pays off in spades. Taking a little time to print off a token or two, or create specialized paper miniatures or templates, makes the game that much more fun. We cannibalized our copies of Descent to use their wonderful tokens.

After presenting 4E using this system, my gamers can't go back to "normal" RPG presentation.