Which rules do you tend to forget or flub?

[HeavenShallBurn]

Spell Resistance, I pretty consistently forget to apply it.

 

[Kzach]

The only thing that really confused me during my first go at the rules was saving throws. Not having ever even looked at the SAGA system, I didn't understand what the designers meant by Fort, Ref, Will being defenses. To me, they were saving throws. Took a bit of mental acrobatics to finally think, "Attack vs. defense, save vs. ongoing effect."

I do recommend taking advantage of the Combat Advantage rules. Throw in some terrain and other stuff that might give the players or enemies combat advantage.

Also, I highly recommend throwing the ball in the player's court when it comes to describing character actions. The abilities, IMO, tend to encourage roleplay by the fact that they're more complex than simply attacking and being successful or not.

For instance, the fighter has the ability to keep an opponent from moving. Imagine a situation where an orc is trying to get past the fighter. He provokes an attack of opportunity and the fighter hits him with a bonus +2 to the roll. So you describe the round as something like, "The orc makes a desperate lunge and then tries to run past as you duck under your shield," now, describe your character's actions. And the player then can respond imaginatively like, "Using the momentum of defending myself, I spin around, using the shield as a feint to hide the hammer as it slams into the orc's chest and throws him back against the wall. I then shout, 'You ain't goin' nowhere, ugly!'"

I'm not saying it's unique to 4e, but the extra actions of most abilities, at least IMO, do tend to encourage more descriptive and interactive play.

 

[That One Guy]

Uhh... I played a demo of 4e yesterday. I think flubbing things for temp is okay, but try and figure out what the correct rules are later. Uhh... don't forget recharge rules or forget to apply the fact that encounter powers for the baddies are once per encounter. Ummm... that's pretty much it, I think.

 

[CleverNickName]

So far, my experience with 4E hasn't been very positive...which is to be expected when I don't even have the rules in front of me. But from what I could tell, marking is going to be the most difficult thing to keep track of in a 4E game.

I expect to see lots of house rules designed to get rid of marking, unless the official books have a better way of handling it.

 

[TheLordWinter]

So far, my experience with 4E hasn't been very positive...which is to be expected when I don't even have the rules in front of me. But from what I could tell, marking is going to be the most difficult thing to keep track of in a 4E game.

I expect to see lots of house rules designed to get rid of marking, unless the official books have a better way of handling it.

Marking is definitely a pain in the butt. By any chance, did you try it with tiles or poker chips or something to that effect or were you trying to do it via memory?

 

[Spenser]

Thank you for the replies!

Charging was probably the biggest point of confusion for my players and I. We had to reread it a couple times during the game. It's not that the rules are extremely complicated, it's just that they're very different from previous versions.

I hear you on that -- The charging rules are pretty different, and I'll admit I'm a still bit confused. The italic text in the PrRC says A) you can charge in a non-straight line and B) you don't necessarily provoke an OA from the opponent you charged. Given the text that we have, I can believe A), for now. But I'm uncertain about B). B) would make sense, but is there some reason we know that for certain?

Make sure they're aware of new ranged attack rules (firing into melee, no cover from allies, etc) and the (no)tumbling/OA rules.

Uh-oh, ranged combat is a point of confusion for me too. It took me forever just to figure out you get your Dex bonus to damage now when firing a weapon. As for firing into melee -- so... I think you can just freely do this now in 4e? Is that right?

For the eight years I've been playing 3x, the players regularly use grapple and just about every time there's an aspect of it that requires a rules check. Just this week it was how to resolve a tie on the grapple check because no one could remember.

Oh, you are so not alone.

Somethink I've seen trip a lot of people up in playtest reports is the difference between the fighter's Combat Challenge and Combat Superiority.

Yikes, that wasn't even on my radar screen -- after reading a couple times, I think I get it now, thanks!

The only thing that really confused me during my first go at the rules was saving throws. Not having ever even looked at the SAGA system, I didn't understand what the designers meant by Fort, Ref, Will being defenses. To me, they were saving throws. Took a bit of mental acrobatics to finally think, "Attack vs. defense, save vs. ongoing effect."

I do recommend taking advantage of the Combat Advantage rules. Throw in some terrain and other stuff that might give the players or enemies combat advantage.

The new defenses and saving throws, I do think I get. As for obstacles and whatnot, absolutely, because we want to test that out too. Moving into squares, cover, etc. And fighting on a featureless, infinite plane is kind of boring. Honestly, I'm going to just steal the WoW arena maps. Mostly because when the team of four hobgoblins comes marching out on to the field, I totally want one of them to look around, groan, and say "Arrrgh!! Stupid Korg got disconnected again!!" "Oh well. Guess we fight these noobs anyway."

Marking is definitely a pain in the butt. By any chance, did you try it with tiles or poker chips or something to that effect or were you trying to do it via memory?

Some definite consensus around marking being difficult. Poker chips, that's a good idea.

 

[CleverNickName]

Marking is definitely a pain in the butt. By any chance, did you try it with tiles or poker chips or something to that effect or were you trying to do it via memory?

Yeah, we used poker chips (red for bloodied, blue for marked, etc.), but it was still a colossal pain in the ass. We had to remember to place them under the minis and we had to remember to take them away after we were done with them, and if several minis were all adjacent to each other the chips wouldn't fit over the right squares, and the chips weren't visible under anything larger than Medium-sized, etc.

The theory is good. But in practice, poker chips (or bottle caps, or little bits of string, or pipe cleaners, etc.) are just one more thing on the table that you have to keep track of. One more thing that keeps falling off the table, or keeps getting buried under papers, or keeps knocking other stuff over. As if all of the books, maps, character sheets, notes, dice, pencils, minis, and wet-erase markers piled on top of my battlemat-turned-tablecloth weren't already making me crazy.

/rant

Anyhoo. After the second battle, we tossed 'em back into the package and started doing all of the marking from memory.

I'm still holding out hope that Marking and other "aura" buffs aren't as prevalent in the official 4E books, as the previews make them sound. I wouldn't mind having to deal with them on rare occasions, but certainly not every battle.