gentle_songbird
First Post
Thanks for the info. I'll look into it.
D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, its nice to see a few new faces in the ranks of 4e people.
CRJohnston
First Post
My group recently got into it. It's a bit late to the party but we dig it for the most part. Coming from Pathfinder, 5th edition felt a bit too streamlined, like 3rd edition doing awkward AD&D cosplay. While not a perfect system 4th has a lot of good ideas that I'd like to import into future pathfinder games like minions and the bloodied condition.
Fox Lee
Explorer
My group still 4es - not everybody specifically prefers it, but three out of four GMs are very attached to the smoothness of running in 4e. We use a couple of simple variants - to whit, inherent bonuses and free expertise feat - but those are the only major changes we've needed to use. Oh, and we have never paid attention to item rarity - we looked at those rules when they came out, but everybody was just kind of "meh, whatever".
I do use a LOT of homebrew, though - still super bitter about no Psionics update for the GSL >:\ - so I kinda stopped using the official character builder a while back. Since they went online-only I've been using HeroLab for character building/tracking; it's a paid program, but it's worth the cost for me because integrating my homebrew stuff is a priority. It does have some issues with content attained from the DDI scraper utility (mostly things tend to lose triggers, much like monster powers do in the official monster builder) but there's a community project going to fix those errors, so good times
For monsters, I usually fall back on Masterplan, since I read that the offline Monster Builder was never updated to reflect MM3 monster maths,
I do use a LOT of homebrew, though - still super bitter about no Psionics update for the GSL >:\ - so I kinda stopped using the official character builder a while back. Since they went online-only I've been using HeroLab for character building/tracking; it's a paid program, but it's worth the cost for me because integrating my homebrew stuff is a priority. It does have some issues with content attained from the DDI scraper utility (mostly things tend to lose triggers, much like monster powers do in the official monster builder) but there's a community project going to fix those errors, so good times
For monsters, I usually fall back on Masterplan, since I read that the offline Monster Builder was never updated to reflect MM3 monster maths,
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
My group still 4es - not everybody specifically prefers it, but three out of four GMs are very attached to the smoothness of running in 4e. We use a couple of simple variants - to whit, inherent bonuses and free expertise feat - but those are the only major changes we've needed to use. Oh, and we have never paid attention to item rarity - we looked at those rules when they came out, but everybody was just kind of "meh, whatever".
I do use a LOT of homebrew, though - still super bitter about no Psionics update for the GSL >:\ - so I kinda stopped using the official character builder a while back. Since they went online-only I've been using HeroLab for character building/tracking; it's a paid program, but it's worth the cost for me because integrating my homebrew stuff is a priority. It does have some issues with content attained from the DDI scraper utility (mostly things tend to lose triggers, much like monster powers do in the official monster builder) but there's a community project going to fix those errors, so good times
For monsters, I usually fall back on Masterplan, since I read that the offline Monster Builder was never updated to reflect MM3 monster maths,
What offline Monster Builder? lol. AFAIK there's never been an official offline version of the Monster Builder has there? The ONLINE version has pretty buggy maths though, yes. You can make it work, and its nice in the sense that it formats your stat block pretty nicely for printing, but you do have to pretty much hand-tweak the actual numbers to get them to look right (luckily its not hard to do that, just annoying).
I've thought about Herolab, but I'd REALLY like something that's actually cross-platform. These days "windows only" isn't really acceptable anymore.
Fox Lee
Explorer
No, there was an official offline one, way back when. Came with that "Adventure Tools" loader that promised all the other digital tools they never got around to making (WotC and software are always a fickle mix, I find). It's buggy as heck (I think it's technically a beta), uses older monster maths, and frequently loses bits of information from a stat block (usually trigger conditions and recharge values on powers) when you go to edit a monster. An exercise in frustration.
I tried the online monster builder once, it wouldn't even let me change the name of a power. Pfff, hell with that >3>;
Fair. Nobody at my table uses not-Windows on their laptop (well, I have a Linux dual boot for uni work, but I still use Windows for day to day stuff) so it's not been a big deal for us, but I can see why that'd be a dealbreaker for others.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Huh, I've had DDI since day one, and I don't even remember offline Monster Builder. The offline CB was (and is if you still fiddle with it) very nice, but I presume the offline MB was just about useless since I can't even remember using it! The online one though really isn't at all bad. It has some problems but I've used it MANY times to build monsters. I mean what's really the alternative? I have HTML templates that you can hand edit to make a reasonable looking statblock, and you can kinda make a halfway usable one in OO Writer if you screw with it long enough, but in none of those cases do you get any math help (not that there's much reason to have something do the math, but its convenient at least).
D'karr
Adventurer
Indeed there was an offline monster builder packaged as part of their adventure tools software package. It came out about 4-6 months after the offline CB. They were doing demos of it at GenCon where they were showing the campaign building capabilities that never materialized. To this day I still use both of these offline tools (MB & CB). Yes the offline MB has issues but it saves me quite a bit of time so it is still quite useful. With CBLoader the offline CB is fully expandable, which makes it very nice to have.
rabindranath72
Explorer
I bought the 4e books when they came out, played some, but the strong ties to the grid made me drop the game and sell it. I don't like grid combat, I don't own and don't particularly like minis, and I have limited space to play.
I saw 4e as a big improvement over 3e, w.r.t. simpler rules and straightforward design (and I just love the monster designs.)
Fast forward a few years, I discovered 13th Age...so I thought why not mixing all these cool ideas with the broader scope of 4e? So I bought a few 4e books again (now selling mostly for a dime and a song around here) and decided to design a set of "interface" rules to 13th Age combat.
So...yes, I am still playing 4e, sort of; I plan on starting a 4e campaign soon to test the house rules, and I hope they will work out fine.
Cheers,
Antonio
I saw 4e as a big improvement over 3e, w.r.t. simpler rules and straightforward design (and I just love the monster designs.)
Fast forward a few years, I discovered 13th Age...so I thought why not mixing all these cool ideas with the broader scope of 4e? So I bought a few 4e books again (now selling mostly for a dime and a song around here) and decided to design a set of "interface" rules to 13th Age combat.
So...yes, I am still playing 4e, sort of; I plan on starting a 4e campaign soon to test the house rules, and I hope they will work out fine.
Cheers,
Antonio
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